Seeing the immense vitality of Third World liberation struggles, they found the existing forms of Western anti-imperialist solidarity with these struggles (street protest, symbolic action, etc.) lacking. Solidarity had to become something “you could hold in your hands”, something material. And what better to hold in your hands than money? So they became, in essence, a “fundraising organization” for Third World revolution, over the course of decades sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to revolutionary organizations across the world but particularly in Africa and the Middle East. They got this money from robbing banks, conducting mail fraud, and other swindles, not out of a particular romanticization of criminal activity, but because that was the only way they saw of acquiring the amounts they wanted to send. Throughout their practice, they maintained above-ground organization (for example a public-facing effort to gather and ship clothes to refugee camps run by revolutionary organizations), travelled extensively, and thought strategically about which groups to support. This book, a short compendium of articles about, essays by, and interviews with KAK/M-KA members, details the history of the group, their ideas and development, and what key members think of the group now, in hindsight.

Reading through these documents, there are a few contradictions that seem to come up again and again. One is between “going with the people you have” versus attempting to grow a mass movement. This group believed that building an anti-imperialist mass movement in the West was impossible, and even granting that, it begs the question of where the line is between individuals and movements. The group’s initial cadre was, after all, composed of many people drawn in by the movement against the Vietnam war, and they also recruited people through front organizations. Conducting public, “movement” work is a necessary condition of finding people who are willing to contribute to other types of work. “Political solidarity” has to precede “material solidarity”. So is it just a matter of finding the right balance? Is “movement work” solely an instrument for bringing people into other work, or does it have other political possibilities? Why did the Blekingegade group put less and less focus on recruiting new members and growing the organization? Could they have scaled their model of simultaneous aboveground, public work and “undercover” work to an organization of 100 or even 1000 people scattered in chapters across other European cities?

The question of revolutionary “impact” also surfaces in some of the books’ discussions. As a support organization, the KAK/M-KA never saw themselves as a group directly making revolution, so the question of failure or success in their work is harder to evaluate. When comparing their ideology and practice to that of NCM groups, or the Red Army Faction, you could say they had a more realistic ambition - while NCM participants might have dreamed of spurring on the revitalization of the American labor movement, and RAF members of “waking up” the West German masses, the Blekingegade group had more modest aims, and they never expanded their group beyond the fifteen or twenty people it quickly grew to. You could say they “adapted to reality” instead of trying to make reality adapt to them. But was their contribution more “modest” than these other groups? This group of 15-20 “average Danes” supported revolutionary groups around the world with much-needed financial and other resources over a period of decades. From this perspective, they were punching above their weight, by finding a practice that allowed them to maximize their revolutionary “leverage” as a small group of ordinary people.

Combining these questions about impact with our earlier ones about recruitment and scale of the group, we can ask more generally if the group ever went beyond revolutionary “Red charity”. This isn’t intended as a pejorative, but rather an objective description of their work. Were there other possibilities for growing their work, either quantitatively (a bigger “Red charity” operation or an attempt to evangelize their approach to other Left groups) or qualitatively (”Red charity” plus some new form of practice)? Certainly, this must have been a topic of debate within the group, but there isn’t much discussion of it in these materials.

Regardless of how the KAK/M-KA answered these questions, or the reasons they had for retaining their original form and practice for so long, what they have left behind, and what is documented in this book, is an admirable material practice of anti-imperialism. If we want to move beyond a symbolic, “ceremonial” anti-imperialism on the Western left, we should take their slogan to heart: “Solidarity is something you can hold in your hands.”

Craftsmen of World Revolution (Klaus Viehmann)

This short opening essay helps put the group in historical context and asks questions about how applicable their theory of change and politics are today.

Viehmann raises some interesting points here related to the personal and psychological aspects of membership in a group like KAK/M-KA, acknowledging the challenge of building an organization that requires so much personal commitment, sacrifice, and risk, as well as the positive effects of this personal dedication.

Unfortunately, among the side effects of “expropriation forte” are repression and prison sentences. A sustainable redistribution of funds needs solid craftsmanship if it wants to rest on golden floors. People engaging in such activities must have answers to a few questions: What do you want from life? Self-realization? Personal happiness? The happiness of others? Who are these others? How far away are they? Does solidarity end with your family, your friends, your country, or your continent? Is your aspiration to make a revolutionary commitment or to temporarily join a working group? Do you want to grow old with your political practice? The existential framework required for illegal practice is not always comfortable: organizational discipline instead of personal self-realization, continuity instead of spontaneity, a bourgeois facade instead of subcultural havens, solid convictions instead of discursive formations, secrecy instead of openness, selflessness instead of identity politics, and so on.
The individual motivation—perhaps also the precondition—for the craft of acquiring money is the hope that you are able to contribute to a new world, to effectively harm the powerful, to overcome capitalist alienation, to create meaningful ways of living instead of “being lived.” This might sound terribly existentialist, but social being and political consciousness—in other words, thinking and acting—have never been one-way streets. To sever the dialectical relationship between practical experience and analytical reflection leads to a dead end, the consequence being either academic inaction or spontaneous actionism, neither of which provides a solid ground for organized solidarity. Inaction produces nothing that “can be held in your hands,” and spontaneous actionism might be beautiful, but the struggle for liberation is long and not always exciting. The history of many movements suggests that each political generation only has the strength to rebel once, even if this strength lasts a long time in some individuals, probably because they are socially organized in a way that allows for extended collective reflection.
In an abstract sense, (international) solidarity means to establish a relationship between political subjects, people, and organizations. It is not based on projecting your visions of revolution onto objects of charity. In a proper relationship of solidarity, no one is stuck in awe worshiping “leaders,” and no one allows others to make decisions for them. Discussions happen on a level playing field, and people give according to necessity and conviction without cutting deals. It is a relationship based on basic human interaction, not on formalities. Solidarity, in this sense, doesn’t mean searching for a new struggle every few years when you have become disillusioned with the last one; it doesn’t mean looking for the next best place “where things are happening,” or for new “heroes,” as soon as the former ones are gone or have proven themselves corrupted.

Viehmann here seems to suggest that more experimentation could have been done with organizing workers directly. The history of New Communist Movement and other groups which “went down to the factories” shows persistent limitations that KAK would have probably run into as well, but the last question posed here, on organizing migrant workers, is a hint towards a broader one: even if we view the core popular classes as mostly politically inert, are there specific class fragments or groups, like migrant or undocumented workers, who have a different relation to imperialism and a different set of political possibilities?

Surprisingly, there was less reflection on crucial questions of revolutionary strategy, or at least this is how it appears in retrospect. For example, one of the conclusions drawn by members doing factory work in Frankfurt in 1974 was that workers in Western Europe weren’t interested in left-wing leaflets; this was taken as yet another reason for prioritizing the support of liberation movements. Fine. However, had the Blekingegade Group brought left-wing leaflets instead of money to Beirut or South Africa, would anyone there have been interested in them? Or, to put it the other way around: how would the group have been received in Germany had it provided money to the migrant laborers fighting both German skilled workers and bosses?

Following along the lines of trying to find “outcast” class fragments, are there other “axes” beyond the strictly material/economic that can be used to rally some sections of the popular classes to anti-imperialism?

Is alienation (the psychological situation) not related to the material reality of the working class? Can people, considering all of the fears and the deception they are facing, even name their “objective interests”? Would they really sacrifice peace, health, and happiness for a second car?

Key political point of KAK brought up to the present day: “We can see some sparks at the precarious margins, but there is no prairie fire”:

The metropolitan working class remains quiet; or it is kept quiet by means of hegemony and repression, particularly in places where “muting” it in a traditional Fordist manner ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We can see some sparks at the precarious margins, but there is no prairie fire.

So far, so good? Are the questions raised above, questions of individual commitment and definitions of solidarity, now answered? Are we still trying to “overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence”? Do we live or “are we lived”? Is revolutionary transformation in the metropole a precondition for global justice? What does a contemporary revolutionary strategy look like? Is the notion of (world) revolution outdated? Perhaps people simply no longer ask these questions after they have so often been, quietly and shamefully, removed from the agenda of a left defeated by hostile social conditions and overwhelming repression? Perhaps the urgency of these questions has been psychologically repressed? But psychological repression is no substitute for political discussion, especially when it is impossible for the metropolitan left to escape questions that inevitably surface in other countries and under different historical circumstances.

Thinking about where the metropole is headed, are Global South solidarity efforts enough? What about the need to fight fascism? How can anti-imperialist work contribute to building a “strategic defense”?

Among other things, the experience of fascism has taught us that at least some of the “masses” can be won for counterrevolutionary, imperialist, anti-Semitic, and racist objectives. An imperialist war in the tricont to secure superprofits or important raw materials might find support in the future as well. The left must be prepared for this and ready to act. In traditional jargon, the left needs to “organize its strategic defense.” After all, the (revolutionary) left will remain a minority in the metropole for the foreseeable future.
In a certain way, the Blekingegade Group attempted to turn this necessity into a virtue. Yet, any minority sabotaging the metropolitan machinery raises important questions, too: What is at stake? (Counter)power? Hegemony? If not, what else? How high is the price? Who wins today, who tomorrow, who in a year from now? Who organizes whom? How can a social division between cadres and vanguards and “the rest” be avoided? How can protracted social isolation be prevented?

The first point here is key - social support determines the “fragility” of a particular group or strategy - whether it can continue on or will disappear after the first big mistake. But “sabotage” of imperialism in some way is still the order of the day.

The logistical possibilities of our activities cannot be separated from the social support they enjoy. The history of the Blekingegade Group is yet another example confirming the following: when repression hits, due to errors of practice or due to a changed raison d’état, a small mishap can turn into a political disaster, namely the loss of the capacity to act. Yet, those who don’t insist on denying it know that there can never be an end to global exploitation without the weakening of the imperialist metropole and the “sabotaging” of its economic, financial, and military resources. Nobody can escape the challenge posed by global necessities, despite the limited options we have.

Anti-imperialism Undercover: An Introduction to the Blekingegade Group (Gabriel Kuhn)

A brief history of the group that offers good practical background and context for the rest of the book.

KAK’s origin is in the popular anti-Vietnam War struggle, but crucially that popularity was among students and youth, not the working class:

The Vietnam War served as empirical evidence for Appel’s theory, and in February 1965 KAK organized one of the earliest European protests against the U.S. aggression. The fact that workers remained largely absent from the demonstration—despite strong mobilization efforts at some of Copenhagen’s biggest factories—seemed to confirm Appel’s analysis of a corrupted and complacent Danish working class. Yet he found numerous recruits among young radicals who were drawn to KAK by the Vietnam Committee (Vietnamkomité) that the organization had established, its militant stance, its uniqueness among the Danish left, and not least by Appel’s compelling personality.

Interestingly, it was always a small group, and, from Kuhn’s telling, never attempted to grow significantly beyond this size:

KAK never had more than twenty-five members and was mainly considered a training ground for elite revolutionaries ready to seize the revolutionary moment in the imperialist world when it came.

What were the consequences of this? Crucially, why was the growth of the group still constrained if not everyone was clued in on the illegal work? Could the group have grown larger while maintaining the same numerically small illegal practice, or would this have been too dangerous?

Only a few selected KAK members were involved in the illegal practice. The rest of the membership was not informed. Essentially, this created an inner circle within the organization that consisted of people involved in illegal activities.

After some internal drama, the M-KA forms as the main spin-off, but with similar structure and size as before:

M-KA remained small, never extending to more than fifteen members. Material support for Third World liberation movements remained a priority. After the turmoil during the last months of KAK, the M-KA members managed to regain the PFLP leadership’s trust and reestablish contact with the other liberation movements they had collaborated with. The illegal practice continued. Once again, it was confined to an inner circle, without the rest of the membership being involved.

This is raised later on, but it points to a key challenge in our external circumstances today. Even funds obtained “legitimately”, when routed to certain organizations, become highly dangerous legally, and the “terrorism” label can be used to throw the book at activists:

Today, things would be different. Since the former Danish prime minister and current secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, emerged as one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of the “War on Terror” in the early 2000s, Danish antiterrorist legislation has undergone dramatic changes.

It Is All About Politics (Niels Jørgensen, Torkil Lauesen, and Jan Weimann)

In this essay, three key members of the illegal practice attempt to clarify the groups strategy, aims and history, in light of recent, bourgeois journalism on the group in Denmark.

“You just had to take a good look around you”:

It was crystal-clear to us that the Western European working class was not revolutionary in the 1960s— you just had to take a good look around you. This realization became our starting point.

Maoism becomes less of a north star as the group evolves, partly due to China’s optimistic view of the Western working classes. Similar lines could probably be heard today from some socialist and communist groups in the Global South, but does that necessarily undermine collaboration?

When the CPC held its Ninth National Congress in 1969, some of its declarations sounded as if the revolution in Western Europe would break out any minute. Its description of the Western European working class as “revolutionary” was a complete delusion. KAK criticized this in a special issue of Kommunistisk Orientering. As a result, the official ties to the CPC were cut.

As the group broke with orthodox Maoism and came to a more sensible “realpolitik”, they developed a clearer view on Soviet Union:

We had completely different perspectives on the Soviet Union: while we saw the Soviet Union as a tactical ally in the fight against imperialism (even if we didn’t see eye to eye with them on everything, especially not the political implementation of socialism), the CPC saw the Soviet Union as the most dangerous imperialist power of them all.

More detail on the divergence with China:

Basically all of the Third World movements we supported were criticized by the CPC and the Maoist organizations in Western Europe. Most Maoist organizations supported other movements; movements we had no sympathies for whatsoever. In Angola, for example, we supported the MPLA, while China supported UNITA and FNLA. UNITA was a group of anticommunist bandits who terrorized the civil population. By supporting them, China formed an alliance with the U.S., South Africa, and Israel. Later they also collaborated with the FNLA, which was known for murdering everyone when attacking white farms: the white owners as well as the black workers and their families. In the Middle East, the Chinese approach was also different from ours. The PFLP never received any support from China other than a box full of Mao books.
[…]
It was important that we were not Maoists, because we fundamentally disagreed with China’s foreign policy. Our reference points were the unjustified exploitation and oppression of the Third World and the sympathies we had for the revolutionary movements emerging there as a consequence of this.

The authors summarize the liberation movements in the 70s as taking place along three axes:

There were many possible reasons for a liberation struggle emerging in a particular place. The wish for national independence—the national aspect—was one. The wish for food on the table and for breaking the power of a foreign ruling class as well as the exploitation of resources and labor by foreign corporations—the economic aspect—was another. The wish for fundamental changes to power relations and the distribution of resources within the country—the socialist aspect—was a third. Often, two or all three of them were interrelated.

The group saw the Panthers and Weather Underground as signs of possible further unrest in the U.S.:

None of this meant that a revolution in the U.S. was waiting around the corner. But it showed that even the U.S. was fragile. It seemed that if the flow of wealth from the poor countries to the U.S. could be stopped, the country would experience a crisis that would not be solved by a few simple reforms.

With the lack (at least for now) of the same “window” for radical change, how can organizations build similar levels of commitment from members?

In short, in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, there was a real possibility—a “window”—for radical global change. We saw the combination of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in many parts of the Third World and the anti-authoritarian youth revolt in Europe as the objective conditions for such a change to not only be possible, but probable. This contributed to our radicalization and commitment as militants. We were not just pursuing a dream. It seemed possible for us to be a small wheel in a big revolutionary process.

The group’s practice placed an emphasis on deep study and material analysis (of current circumstances, not old theory), and using travel as a part of this:

We also conducted economic analysis as well as in-depth political studies of various countries, and examined the liberation movements we considered collaborating with. In all of this, a purely theoretical perspective was never enough. KAK members embarked on many travels in the early 1970s to get a better understanding of what life was like in different parts of the world. Each journey lasted up to a few months. The experiences were summarized in reports about economic conditions, power relations, living standards, imperialist dependencies, etc. The reports were then discussed at KAK meetings. The countries we visited were India, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, and the Western countries of Portugal, Germany, Northern Ireland, the USA, and Canada.

The KAK decision to focus exclusively on Third World Solidarity and not working-class organizing did not come from a position of inexperience. Like many New Communist Movement groups in the U.S., they experimented with sending members into the factories. The last point here differentiates KAK from the “substitutionist” label people often apply to underground or guerrilla Global North groups - KAK did not see themselves as a vanguard or stand-in proletariat, but as a simple support organization for revolutionary organizations elsewhere in the world:

The Western European working class desired higher wages and stronger welfare. It did not desire radical change. This implies no moral judgment. It was a simple matter of interests. Our analysis corresponded to our own experiences. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many KAK members worked at big companies: B&W, FLSmidth, Tuborg, and others. In the mid-1970s, four KAK members also worked in Germany for a year to get an impression of the situation in a different Western European country.
Today, we believe that history has proven our analysis right. Since the 1970s, the Western European working class has not shown any desire for revolutionary change. We were not the dreamers; we were the realists. It wasn’t us but the DKP and KAP who wrote socialist programs for Denmark.
In Marxism, one distinguishes between a revolution’s object and subject. The object is the economic and political conditions you wish to change. The subject is the oppressed and exploited social groups that can make this change possible. In traditional Marxist theory, it is the working class that occupies the role of the revolutionary subject. However, we did not see the Western working class as such, since its situation was not defined by exploitation and oppression, at least not primarily. On the contrary, Western European workers had much to lose: their living standards were high; many working-class families owned a house and a car. There was no desire for revolution. The situation was entirely different for workers and peasants in Third World countries. It is wrong to say that we substituted ourselves—or a small group of militants—for the working class. The people we saw as the revolutionary subject were the ones active in Third World movements with popular support.

On their purported “isolation” from the left, they emphasize that this was true for much of the traditional Danish/European left, but not true on a global scale:

We discussed politics with liberation movements whenever we visited them or whenever some of their representatives came to Denmark. We also had contacts to Western political groups that shared our perspectives and political priorities, such as the Liberation Support Movement, LSM, in North America and like-minded groups in Norway and Sweden. In Denmark we had contacts with solidarity projects supporting the PFLOAG/ PFLO in Oman and movements in the Philippines, the Western Sahara, and El Salvador. Through Tøj til Afrika we were in contact with Ulandsklunserne and other organizations providing practical help for refugee camps, among them WUS (the later Ibis) and Mellemfolkelig Samvirke. We felt in no way isolated.

KAK (perhaps not M-KA later) held out long-term hope for a radical change in circumstances in Denmark, hence the additional long term goal of building disciplined organization:

In its political practice, KAK had two goals. The first one was to create a disciplined and effective organization able to work both legally and, under certain circumstances, illegally. The second one was to exercise political and practical solidarity with Third World liberation movements.
[…]
Today, we are convinced that for the KAK leadership the actions themselves were at least as important as their results. They wanted members of the organization to gain experience in illegal activities.

Summarizing Tøj til Afrika, a completely above-ground project started by KUF (KAK front group essentially), that served as the introductory project for many members:

TTA mainly collected used clothes and sent them to refugee camps in Africa administered by liberation movements where they were distributed according to need. Many KUF and KAK members, as well as sympathizers, became involved in practical work through TTA: clothes needed to be collected, sorted, packaged, and shipped. Soon, the Copenhagen TTA activists were joined by local chapters in Odense, Løgstør, and Holbæk.

The authors start to discuss the illegal work, which may have started as an “experiment”. Also note escalation of action, the group did not go to illegal work immediately:

The KAK leadership wanted answers to the following questions:

• Was it possible to acquire significant economic means by illegal activities?
• Did the organization have members that could engage in such activities?
• Could the members engaged in these activities hide them from other KAK members as well as from people outside of the organization?
• Was it possible to engage in such activities without using excessive violence?
• Was it possible to engage in such activities without drawing the attention of the authorities?
• Could the activities be defended politically and morally?
• Would the members engaged in these activities answer these questions in the same way as the leadership?
  It is important to remember that we did not go directly from collecting clothes to robbing cash-in-transit trucks. Members had partaken in violent demonstrations and direct actions before, such as the petrol bomb attack against the Bella Center. This made the step to robbery easier.
  It did not take long before KAK’s leadership considered the experiment successful. This, however, demanded some structural changes within the organization. In particular, security was tightened. As a result, socializing was not a big priority within KAK from 1972 to 1976. Contacts between members focused on the political work. One member close to the leadership was excluded because he was considered a security risk.

On the group’s opinion of the Red Army Faction in West Germany (however, even if the org never took credit for their illegal work, they did continue to put out above ground anti-imperialist publications - what was the purpose of this if not to attempt building an “anti-imperialist” front?):

Furthermore, the RAF wanted to support the struggle in the Third World by building an anti-imperialist front in Western Europe. We considered this utterly impossible. We never sent out a single communiqué to explain our actions precisely because of this. For us, there was no feasible revolutionary perspective in Western Europe. The change had to come from the Third World, and therefore the most important thing to do for Western anti-imperialists was to support Third World liberation movements materially.

They maintained an important day-to-day distance from more visible anti-imperialist groups:

Therefore we developed procedures with the PFLP that ensured us not having contact with other Europeans during our visits. We did not want an arrested RAF member mentioning a secret Danish group involved in robberies as a means to support Third World liberation movements. For the same reason, we avoided contact with Palestinian activists in Denmark. Only once, after we had lost contact with the PFLP during the breakup of KAK and the subsequent founding of M-KA, did we decide to get in touch with PFLP members living in Denmark. We instantly paid a price for this: the PFLP members were under surveillance by PET agents, who consequently also took an interest in us. We never repeated that mistake.

This section, on the reasons they decided against working with the PLFP break-away Special Ops / Wadi Haddad group, gives insight into KAK thinking process on who they wanted to support:

• The most important one was that Haddad’s actions had little to do with mobilizing the Palestinian people. Instead of creating popular resistance against the Israeli occupation, as for example the Intifada did, Haddad chose elitist actions, that is, actions that required a high level of training and sophisticated equipment. The effect was that the actions pacified rather than mobilized the Palestinian population because ordinary Palestinians could not partake in them. It was militant demonstrations and throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers that inspired widespread resistance.
• We were puzzled by the fact that Haddad had opened the first of our meetings by asking what we could do for him and by explaining what he could do for us. Practical collaboration seemed more important to him than common political ground. This went against our principles. We always discussed politics first.
• Haddad’s operations simply became increasingly unsuccessful. When he had organized hijackings and similar high-profile actions as a PFLP member, his intention was to put the Palestinian question on the map. With this, he succeeded. After his split from the PFLP, however, all of his actions were fiascoes, both practically and politically.
• We thought that the PFLP had the right political analysis of the situation in Jordan after the so-called Black September of 1970: In the late 1960s, the Palestinian organizations in Jordan decided to be very open. They carried weapons in refugee camps and also on the streets of Amman. Jordan was also used as a base for operations against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Palestinians comprised 60 percent of Jordan’s population and King Hussein began to perceive them as a threat to his rule. In September 1970, he ordered a military attack on the refugee camps. The result was that the Palestinian organizations were forced to leave the country and move to Lebanon. George Habash and Wadi Haddad had different answers to this. Haddad concluded that the resistance movement had to go underground since it was not strong enough for an open, and therefore vulnerable, presence in an Arab country. Habash concluded that the resistance movement had to stay above-ground and be visible, since this made popular support more likely. Besides, one needed to defend the refugee camps in Lebanon, especially in light of the right-wing Christian forces active in the country.
  The reason why we decided to continue our collaboration with the PFLP under the leadership of George Habash was that it had the popular base that we always saw as a precondition for supporting any movement.

**The authors take some time to discuss a Danish anti-fascist group called the Wollweber League, active before WWII (this seems to have relevance in combining anti-fascist work with the approach KAK took of being “undercover” and not “underground”):

Was it justifiable to use illegal means to damage Danish property and to even endanger innocent people when you had the option to work legally within the democratic framework? As shown by their actions, their answer was yes.

Just like the Blekingegade Group, the Wollweber League had no desire to make it known that it stood behind these actions. In order for their fight against the fascists to continue, they had to remain invisible.
Another parallel between the Wollweber League and us was the massive disapproval both groups met. Parts of the left called us “Maoists,” “lunatics,” “terrorists,” “anti-Semites,” and so forth. When the Wollweber League blew up the Spanish trawlers in Frederikshavn, the left reacted no differently. In an article published after the event in the DKP’s journal Arbejderbladet [Workers’ Journal], the party’s central committee had the following advice for its readers: “Watch out for provocateurs consisting of Trotskyists, informers, Gestapo agents, and Nazis! ... Beware of these elements and their kingpins, who we will soon expose.”

Returning to group history, authors’ describe the transition to the M-KA - dropping long term focus on building a revolutionary cadre group, and instead focusing entirely on material solidarity:

M-KA’s organizational goal was different from KAK’s. Even if Gotfred Appel considered revolutionary development in Denmark to be highly improbable, he intended to build an organization that had the resources, the knowledge, and the discipline to act once a revolutionary situation in the country would occur.
[…]
For M-KA, supporting liberation movements was a revolutionary end in itself. Any possible revolution in Denmark was too far away and too abstract to even consider. Rather, we saw three things as being crucial: to develop political analysis and theory; to spread our analysis and theory; and to continue with the illegal and legal practice. We wanted to provide material support for liberation movements as an organization with a solid independent analysis. The Danish perspective moved further and further into the background and gave way to a thoroughly global perspective. One could say that M-KA was a reflection of “globalization” before the term was invented. Our logo combined a globe with a five-pointed star.
Establishing a new organization set an enormous amount of energy free. We had been in the doldrums for almost a year. The authority of Gotfred Appel and KAK’s internal discipline had been hindering independent initiatives and developments even longer. Now there were new possibilities. It was time to act again.

The group’s new structure, with some key differences to KAK:

M-KA was a small, but hard-working group. People were either “full-time activists” on unemployment or they dedicated all of their free time to the organization. Some people left, others joined. The membership was always around twelve to fifteen people. Because of the illegal work, new members were only fully included after a year, once we had gotten to know them well. There was a bigger circle of sympathizers and volunteers who helped with the legal solidarity work. Our journal Manifest had about two hundred paying subscribers.
The way M-KA was organized marked a rupture with the centralism and closedness of KAK. We had a democratically elected leadership and, all in all, a horizontal structure. We wanted to form an organization able to develop its politics by way of internal as well as external discussion. Holger was a driving force in the early days of M-KA, but solely because of his dedication—he had no formal leadership role. His death in 1980 was a hard blow to us. However, the following years proved that M-KA had become strong and grounded enough to continue its work nonetheless. Administrative, theoretical, legal, and illegal tasks were assigned on the basis of mutual agreement. This gave the organization stability and made it effective.
It is clear that the illegal practice set limits as to how open M-KA could be. Only those involved in the illegal practice knew the details. But the decision about which liberation movements to support was taken by the entire organization. We had also established an offset print shop and a publishing house in the northwest of Copenhagen. There we printed journals of liberation movements, information material for Tøj til Afrika, and, eventually, a series of pamphlets and books. The expenses were paid for by member contributions, which depended on the individuals’ means. In some cases, those were quite high.

Returning to need for “concrete analysis”:

We were convinced that in order to develop an effective practice we needed to study economic and political relations and to have a concrete analysis of where and how to get involved in people’s struggles. Our practice was always informed by strategic and tactical reflections that we dedicated much time to. An important factor was the discussions we had with liberation movements and the experiences we shared with them. We developed our political perspectives together.
We also resumed our travels. M-KA members went to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, the Philippines, and different countries in the Middle East. The entire M-KA membership visited the PFLP in Lebanon in 1981, both to discuss politics and to give members who had never been to Palestinian refugee camps an opportunity to see them.

Other key topics the group researched:

We examined the historical origin of the world’s division into rich and poor countries; we looked at why some former colonies—in South America—remained poor, while other for- mer colonies—in North America—developed and became rich; we studied crisis theory and capitalism’s ability to adapt and transform; we studied the Soviet Union’s development in the 1980s; we looked at U.S. military strategy in the Third World after the Vietnam War.

On choosing movements and groups to support:

We had four criteria for deciding which movements to support:

• a socialist perspective
• broad popular support
• strategic significance for the struggle against imperialism
• a tactical consideration: we wanted our limited means to be used in ways that made a difference. This is why we often supported movements during the earliest phase of their struggle, when they did not yet receive much other support.

Note this strictly practical consideration on acquiring what they needed, and how they brainstormed other ways to make money as well. There was no particular “fetishism” of armed actions:

The reason for continuing the illegal practice was first and foremost that it allowed us to provide much bigger quantities of material support than our legal activities.

We always discussed options other than robberies. We thought about making money through investments—but no one in KAK (or M-KA, in later years) knew anything about investments. We had one member who knew about IT, but his knowledge did not allow for great moneymaking schemes.

On a one-time kidnapping plot for the rich heir of a Swedish company, which ended up not happening:

In the end, we were simply appalled by the idea of kidnapping someone, and this feeling only became stronger with time. This was probably the most important reason.
In hindsight, it was idiotic to even consider this kind of crime. It would have been way too harsh on the victim and it went beyond our capacities. When the time came, we simply weren’t able to do it. Therefore, once the plan had been abandoned, we all concluded that we would never consider anything like this again. We decided that we should return to what we knew instead, which was robbery.
We thought that we could get away with the most spectacular coups, as long as the planning was right. However, it is difficult to be active for almost twenty years without making small mistakes. A single small mistake might not get you caught, but the mistakes add up and make you vulnerable. In retrospect, it wasn’t the actual robberies that made PET suspicious of us. It was the mistakes we had made in our communication with the PFLP and an increasing carelessness regarding security.

Remarkably, some of the key activists in the group were long under police/intelligence service surveillance, but this still did not uncover link with the illegal work!

Niels and Holger were observed when they came home from the U.S. in 1979. It was basically revealed to them during a stopover in London. They were searched and questioned about their journey. When they asked for a reason for the interference, they were told, “We know very well what kind you are.”
Our homes were also searched. Sometimes, the agents didn’t return things to their proper place, or they were forced to leave in a hurry. We were convinced that our phones were tapped, and always used them carefully. When Torkil applied for a job at the Foreign Ministry, he was told that he could not be cleared. We knew that PET had an eye on us.
Our analysis was that PET knew about our contacts with the liberation movements, especially the PFLP, and that this was what made us interesting. They probably also knew that we were involved in illegal activities, but they didn’t know the details. When we were arrested in 1989, it became obvious that PET’s knowledge was limited.

The authors spend quite a bit of time here addressing the morality of their practice:

If the motto of the end justifying the means implies that you can use any means you want (without any consideration for the consequences for others) in order to achieve any end you have decided to pursue, then the Blekingegade Group has never followed such a motto. At the same time, we have never followed the motto that the end never justifies the means either. After all, there is a third option—which, in fact, is much more realistic than the other two: not all ends justify all means, but, depending on the circumstances, some ends justify some means.
[…]
It is hard to say where exactly the legitimate use of violence begins. In the case of the Danish resistance movement, the lines were drawn by the individual resistance groups and the individual resistance fighters. It was them who had to live with the decisions for the rest of their lives. This is the simple core question of each political dilemma: What do I do?

“Our conclusion was that we had to act”:

What was our personal situation like in the late 1960s and early 1970s? We witnessed a global uprising on the one hand, and lived privileged lives in a Western country on the other. Our conclusion was that we had to act. We felt that there existed incredible injustice in the world and we wanted to contribute to a profound political and economic change. We also felt that we were in a position that allowed us to act, and that it would have been inexcusable if we didn’t.
We find it difficult to share the perspective of the “voice” in PØK’s book when it states that “one can never compare different forms of suffering.” To begin with, the quest for a better and more just world does not begin with a cost-benefit analysis. It begins with a simple statement: “Enough!” Reflections about what you can achieve, and at what price, come later. Secondly, if you want to act politically, you cannot escape such reflections. That was true for us, and it has been true for anyone who has ever been involved in political struggles. Why bother with global economic justice, social welfare, or health care if you do not want to alleviate suffering? How can you fight an occupying power, resist oppression, and rise up, if you’re not affected by certain forms of suffering in a particular way? We all are affected by certain forms of suffering in a particular way in our everyday lives. We care more about people who are close to us than about people we don’t know or who we count among our enemies. That is human. Everything else enters the realm of divinity.

They take an interesting view of their own prosecution:

In this world of inequality, we lived and acted in a country in which there was no desire for revolutionary change. That’s why we did not send out communiqués explaining our actions, in contrast to organizations like the RAF, the Red Brigades, and others we have been associated with. In the Danish context, our activities were simply criminal. That was also the reason why we never felt that the legal system was treating us unjustly and why we never saw ourselves as political prisoners. In the context of the Danish state and legal system, we were criminals, pure and simple. We had answered the questions we were facing in a particular way, and we had to accept the consequences— even if the motivations for our criminal activities were rooted in an analysis of the global political system.

“It is a story about doing something, since doing nothing was not an option for us”:

The story of the Blekingegade Group is a story about political action as a reaction to the political action of others. It provides an example of how to connect national and international politics. It is a story of anger at injustice and a will to change the world. It is a story about doing something, since doing nothing was not an option for us. It is a story about political analysis and about reflections on what is true and what is not.
Global exploitation and inequality were the main causes of our political actions. As we know, global exploitation and inequality still exist. But so do the movements trying to end suffering and oppression. The struggle continues.

Solidarity Is Something You Can Hold in Your Hands (Gabriel Kuhn interviews Torkil Lauesen and Jan Weimann)

Jan was radicalized from KAK publications (did they take full advantage of their publications as a recruiting tool in later years? Seems they stopped recruiting after the initial cadre):

Reading those articles was a revelation to me. They described convincingly why the class struggle had no perspective in Denmark and why it was necessary to support revolutionary movements in the Third World instead. As a consequence, I went from moral opposition to the war to theoretical study and activism.

Again, on the use of more-open, action-oriented organizations as a recruiting ground and filter:

KUF was sort of a recruiting ground for KAK. While KAK focused on theory, KUF was more action-oriented. KUF always had more members, too, and at times there were modest attempts at challenging the dominance of KAK—but Gotfred Appel always kept things in check.
How did the Anti-imperialist Action Committee fit in?
Torkil: It provided an arena for direct action. It was quite open and a testing ground for potential KUF and KAK members.

Same theory as NCM groups, but realized limitations of factory work sooner than NCM groups (”everything seemed pretty damp”). They still felt the need to put their Marxist faith in the working class to the test first:

What led to the theory?
Torkil: In the 1960s, Gotfred had a Maoist perspective. Many KAK members were sent to work at big companies such as the shipyard Burmeister & Wain, the machine manufacturer FLSmidth, and Tuborg Breweries. The intention was twofold. First, KAK members should study the living conditions of the workers. For example, was it a problem for them when their children needed new shoes or had to go see the dentist? Second, KAK members should try to mobilize the working class on a “nonrevisionist and anti-imperialist” basis. This proved extremely difficult. There was no “single spark that could start a prairie fire”—everything seemed pretty damp.
[…]
Jan: KAK was still a Marxist organization and the industrial proletariat is central to the Marxist concept of revolution. You didn’t want to count out the working class that easily. So, instead of just drawing the obvious conclusions from our analysis, it still needed to be put to test. I would say that the infiltration of the factories was a final attempt to establish a politically productive relationship to the working class. But that didn’t happen. It even proved impossible to get workers involved in the Vietnam solidarity movement.

The mass movement as a recruiting ground but also further proof of the lack of anti-imperialist sentiment among the working class proper:

The Vietnam War seems to have played an important role for KAK. How did your experiences from organizing protests against the war influence your
politics?
Torkil: The protests confirmed where the Danish working class stood. Those who came to the demonstrations were young people and students, not workers.
[…]
Torkil: The DKP, for example, controlled the Sømændenes forbund, a seamen’s union. During the Vietnam War, the union was quite happy to ship supplies to the American troops in Saigon, as long as its members had their wages doubled for sailing into high-risk zones.

Interesting de-personalization of their theory, and recognition of possibility for minority support for anti-imperialism. Question is, how big can that minority be? Can it have any real social importance? Note at the end here, they do not hide from their own class backgrounds or see themselves as completely “leaving” their own conditions:

On a psychological and social level, the workers never were our enemies, though. Most individuals follow their objective interests.
So, how come some don’t? Like, apparently, you?
Jan: Of course there is always a difference between the situation of an individual and the situation of a class; or, between psychology and sociology, if you will. There is a possibility for individuals to act against the objective short-term interests of their class. But these individuals will always be a minority and even for them it needs special circumstances.
Torkil: The special circumstances in our case were provided by the unique situation at the end of the 1960s. Social protest movements in the imperialist countries, liberation movements in the colonized countries, and a widespread belief in a better world opened a window for us. And then there was KAK right here in Denmark, which provided a concrete possibility for revolutionary organizing. This was a strong cocktail.
But to be clear: as an individual you can never completely leave the objective conditions of your life behind. In 1974, we published a book, in which guerrilla fighters from Angola told their stories. It was called “Victory or Death.” That was not our reality. We could always make choices. Your socialization always catches up with you. Today I like to say that I can feel neo-liberalism running in my blood, too ...

The group recognized that underground struggle in their context would be futile, and that also allowed them a legal, aboveground practice that provided many benefits:

To go underground and openly declare war on the state would have been a lost cause. The state would have crushed us within six months.
Jan: To have a legal anti-imperialist practice was also important for recruiting sympathizers. We never looked for mass membership, but we still needed a support network and tried to find the right people.

Again the emphasis on discipline and commitment (in common with NCM groups of Maoist lineage):

What was life like as a KAK member?
Torkil: We were a very disciplined and hard-working group. Politics came before your personal career or your personal interests, often enough your family. During long periods of time we were “voluntarily unemployed” in order to entirely focus on political work. Those of us who were active in Tøj til Afrika, like myself, collected clothes, sorted and packed them, and drove around to collect things for the flea markets. In the summer holidays, we also organized two-week Tøj til Afrika camps, which introduced new people to the organization. With KAK, we had a study circle once a week to discuss theoretical problems. Personally, I wrote articles and formulated drafts for position papers. There was also the publishing and printing work, and not least the illegal practice, which was very time-consuming. It was not just about planning and executing different actions, but it also included numerous trite tasks: paying rent, moving cars, organizing equipment, etc. And during all of this you had to make sure that you weren’t under observation. Yet, as stressful as it was, after a few years it became a part of everyday life—although the stress always returned before a bigger action, that was never just routine.
All in all, though, I have good memories of the time in KAK. It was satisfying to be engaged in a practice that corresponded to your theory.
Jan: Commitment was crucial—you were available for the organization around the clock. If your contribution was needed, you didn’t hesitate and went to work. I remember that I once got home after midnight on New Year’s Eve. Understandably, my wife wasn’t happy. She was a Tøj til Afrika member but not part of KAK. She didn’t know about the illegal work, and so I couldn’t explain to her that we had been out for shooting practice.

On not focusing on many of the big debates of the day:

Jan: However, as Torkil said, we did not take any side in the Sino-Soviet conflict as such and stayed away from the ideological debates and polemics
[…]
We were primarily concerned with the conditions for the liberation struggle in a specific country, not with ideological subtleties or postrevolution development strategies. Our discussions with liberation movements focused on the analysis of the current political and economic system and the possibilities to attack it.

Researching groups on paper first and then making direct contact with some of them:

Can you tell us more about how you decided to support particular movements? You have made your criteria clear, but how did you get the information required to make the relevant decisions? Did you meet with representatives of all the movements you were interested in supporting?
Jan: Not at first. There were so many liberation movements, it was impossible to have direct contact with them all. We began by looking at what they had written about their theory and practice.

More on the selection process:

We always tried to have a good understanding of a particular movement before we considered supporting it. Even if we weren’t that concerned with ideological subtleties, common political ground was crucial. Everything else followed from there.
Another aspect that was important was the degree of support that a particular movement already had. One of the organizations we supported, the PFLOAG/PFLO in Oman, was small and did not get much outside support, so for them a million Danish crowns really made a difference.

Methods/levels of support provided:

One could say that we had three different ways of supporting movements: some we supported legally through Tøj til Afrika; some we supported illegally; and some we supported both legally and—to a smaller degree—illegally, but without telling them. The PFLP knew what we were doing, but none of the other movements did. ZANU, for example, got resources that we acquired illegally, but they were unaware of it. Many liberation movements were infiltrated by intelligence services, and we did not want to take any risks.

Supporting the PFLP in particular had knock-on effects due to it’s well-practiced internationalism:

In general, the PFLP had a strong internationalist outlook. It allowed liberation movements from around the world to use its facilities. During my visits, I saw Kurds, Turks, Iranians, South Africans, and Nicaraguans. In other words, supporting the PFLP meant to support many liberation movements. Finally, the PFLP was a well-established organization with a lot of potential. It had a proper army with training camps, it ran clinics and children’s homes, even a pension system.

Another group they could have supported, but did not due to lack of mass support:

Did you have contacts with DFLP members as well? It seems that their line would have been close to yours, with a strong focus on popular uprisings and reservations towards high-profile actions.
Torkil: In theory, you are right, but in practice they were a small and intellectual group. We perceived them as akin to many left-wing groups in Europe. They did not have the mass base that the PFLP had. So although there was some contact, there was no close collaboration.

Another RAF comparison, interesting point Torkil makes here about the RAF’s “rebellion on the private level” (could be seen in the WUO/other Sixties radicalism as well) and how KAK/M-KA did not put much emphasis on this:

Torkil: We had different politics and a different practice. We also had different backgrounds. The youth rebellions of the late 1960s, which seemed important for the formation of many of the urban guerrilla movements, were of little importance to us. It seems to me that for RAF members, the rebellion on the private level was very central. Politics and private life, including the relationship to your family, your living arrangements, etc., were considered to be closely linked. In KAK, we didn’t see things that way. We were strongly rooted in Marxist-Leninist cadre politics. This was an aspect that Gotfred Appel had brought to the organization from his long experience in communist parties. Discipline was key—and so was patience. Many of the urban guerrilla movements wanted revolutionary change here and now. We pursued a long-term strategy.
Furthermore, our practice was “invisible” with regard to Danish society. We were not at war with the Danish state and did not send out communiqués after our actions. We used illegal means that looked like ordinary crime to support Third World liberation movements. That’s very different to the urban guerrilla groups, which attacked European states head-on. We saw that strategy as suicidal, because, according to our analysis, there was no chance of winning. There was no mass base. If we had tried something similar in Denmark, we would have been finished very quickly. Instead, we wanted to be an ally to Third World liberation movements for many years. We managed at least twenty. That also meant that we were still supporting liberation struggles at a time when most urban guerrilla groups had vanished or were entirely on the defensive. They were underground revolutionaries and anti-imperialists, we were undercover ones*.*

As example of the group’s discipline, an early “spontaneous” action catches heavy criticism from KAK leaders:

However, one thing led to another, and suddenly we were caught up in heavy streetfighting, Molotov cocktails were thrown, etc. When Gotfred and Ulla returned to Denmark, they were furious. They called us immature and adventurist. We were summoned to the school bench, so to speak, and told to read Marx’s Capital, Lenin, and so on.
It seems to me that many of the people who joined the urban guerrilla movements were very action-driven and never had any such experience. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we were action-driven, too, but we had someone who challenged us when our actions weren’t productive.

Responding to a question on why the group didn’t train in PFLP camps, they point out that the skills involved in their “undercover work” were much different from “guerrilla” work - and part of any “undercover work” is building a “detailed knowledge of the society” one operates in:

We have visited such camps, but we never went through any training there. Why should we? What was it that that we could learn at a camp in Lebanon? We wanted to do illegal work in Denmark. Of course, they can teach you how to dismantle a gun and how to put it back together, but you can learn that in Denmark, too. Most of the other things you could learn in those camps were irrelevant to us. We didn’t need to cross desert borders in the middle of the night, we needed to know how to rent safe apartments, how to protect ourselves against surveillance, how to stake out targets for possible actions, how to do robberies without leaving a trace, and so on. Undercover work requires a detailed knowledge of the society you operate in. We had to learn these things ourselves.

When speaking about the RAF and other urban guerrillas, Torkil and Jan do not make any moral judgement, but instead highlight strategic differences and the different measures of “impact” each group had:

It is important to note that we in no way want to condemn or discredit the German comrades, even if we might have seen certain things differently. They fought under specific conditions and did what they considered right. And some of their actions we could get behind fully, such as the attacks on U.S. army bases during the Vietnam War. This was a concrete interference with the imperialist war machine. We might have considered similar things—however, there were no U.S. army bases in Denmark.
Torkil: Another important difference is that due to our “invisible strategy” we lacked the fairly wide circles of sympathizers and supporters the German groups had. We were small and weren’t able to engage in high-profile actions. Hence, our impact was smaller, too.
Jan: Well, it depends on what you mean by “impact.” As far as an impact on the state or on European society is concerned, yes, our impact doesn’t compare to theirs—I still remember the “Wanted” posters at every German gas station I stopped at in the 1970s. The German groups were looking for a confrontation with the state, and the state responded accordingly.

On the Liberation Support Movement in North America, a similar org they had contact with:

Both organizations also had the same practical focus, namely the material support of liberation movements. The LSM made a huge contribution to spreading information about liberation movements in North America, especially by publishing Life Histories from the struggle, which opened the eyes of many North Americans.

More on their relationship the with movements they supported:

I think it’s also important to differentiate between learning something about movements and demanding something from movements. We always tried to learn about them, but we never made demands. Once we gave them a million crowns, it was entirely up to them to decide what to do with the money. They knew best what they needed it for. Whether it went to medicine, plane tickets, or machine guns was none of our concern.

On making the choice of which movements to support, and how hard it is to do this “strategically”:

When you chose the movements you supported, how important was the strategic factor? You have said that you were particularly interested in struggles that were of strategic significance for the overall fight against imperialism. One could argue that this easily leads to an instrumentalization of movements: it is not so much their struggle per se that is of interest, but whether it fits in with the revolutionary master plan of Western vanguardists.
Torkil: To a certain degree, you are right. In this respect, our deterministic world view didn’t help much. We were know-it-alls who thought we could make very general assessments. After 1978, things changed, however. Our personal connections to people active in the liberation movements and our knowledge about their situation and the conditions of their struggle also increased. We became less abstract in our understanding of the world and overall more humble.

LSM / Carroll Ishee’s critique of the WUO is followed by what LSM saw as more effective anti-imperialist action:

As an exemplary action, Ishee mentions the attack on the army headquarters in Lisbon by the Portuguese Revolutionary Brigades in April 1973: the brigades took many valuable documents with them and sent copies to the liberation movements in Portugal’s African colonies.

On why none of the members volunteered directly for armed struggle:

There was a group called “Volunteers for Vietnam.” Holger was somewhat involved with them. They were ready to go fight with the Viet Cong and traveled to the Vietnamese embassy in Prague to present themselves. However, the ambassador basically asked them, very politely, to go home. Some of them took that hard. But of course the ambassador was right. How are ten youths from Denmark going to help the Viet Cong in the jungle? They don’t know the environment, they are unfamiliar with the culture, they can’t speak the language. When they’re finally down with malaria, they are nothing but a burden. For us, it was more important to build a strong organization in the metropole, where we were based, in order to provide useful support. We discussed many forms of support, but the conclusion always was that providing money and other material supplies was most useful.
Torkil: When you are twenty years old, it is easy to see yourself as a heroic freedom fighter in the Third World. But those glorious images quickly fade once you really see the reality of the liberation struggle. Besides, the more we got to know about liberation movements, the more we also got to understand that there was no lack of manpower. In the 1970s, millions of people were ready to die for socialism. There were many Europeans ready to join the PFLP. That’s why providing money seemed more useful to us. And I’m sure for the liberation movements, too. They wanted ten million crowns more than a few extra fighters. The only exceptions were people with special skills. Marc Rudin, for example, played an important role for the PFLP because he knew a lot about graphics and radio communication.

Kuhn asks the interviewees to respond to a Ted Allen piece accusing other radicals of writing off white workers for reasons of convenience (if you instead see potential for changing their attitudes, that takes a lot more work):

Torkil: Allen presents the position he is criticizing in very moralistic and voluntaristic terms. This was not our approach. We were much more structural. Well, maybe in the late 1960s we held positions close to the one criticized here. At that time, we did use terms like “bribery” to describe the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class. But from a Marxist perspective, that was the wrong approach. The problem is not that anyone is consciously led astray, the problem is that the material conditions create specific economic interests and forms of consciousness, which in turn lead to specific forms of social relationships and institutions. So, white workers were not “evil” or “guilty,” it was simply not in their interest to radically change the global economic order.
Regarding the statement being “wrong”: in a formal sense, the labor aristocracy has nothing to do with skin color but with wages and living standards. At the same time, racism of course played a crucial role in the U.S. in the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was at its height. In our analysis, poor Americans were not considered part of the labor aristocracy as a whole. But most white workers were.

This bit helps explain why M-KA did not take the same bombastic positions on the Sino-Soviet split as other Western groups:

Once you were in close contact with liberation movements, there was little space for romanticization. The cynicism of realpolitik was very tangible, and you were constantly forced to compromise. We certainly did not live under the illusion that we were working with saints.
[…]
Torkil: One problem is that it is easy to be idealistic and principled in theory and very easy to judge the actions of others. But once you act yourself, it is very hard not to make your hands dirty.

Political solidarity vs. material solidarity, the key difference in the M-KA’s practice. However, weren’t many KAK initial members recruited/trained at “political solidarity” demonstrations? For example earlier, they discuss an action shutting down the screening of a U.S. propaganda movie during the Vietnam War. So clearly these “political solidarity” events have some utility:

You regularly used the slogan, “Solidarity is something you can hold in your hands.” Where did it originate from?
Torkil: We used the slogan with regard to the majority of anti-imperialist groups in Europe. There was a strong focus on solidarity demonstrations and petitions and the like. They called it “political solidarity.” We just wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t enough. What really counted was material support. And I think the message is still important.

More on discipline, commitment, and the faith placed in members:

You have already stressed that KAK was a very disciplined organization. Did that help with the criminal activities? You ended up becoming Denmark’s most successful twentieth-century robbers.
Jan: Discipline is important for building a strong organization, and it is important for effective illegal work. We learned early on from practical experience that a lack of discipline could mean less money, to put it bluntly. So, in that sense, there was a connection. At the same time, I would say that other factors were at least as important. For me personally, two things were crucial. First, a strong commitment to the organization: we had promised each other to make a difference, and I wanted to do my part. Second, an acknowledgment of the faith that the organization put into you: you were selected for a certain task and you didn’t want to let the organization down.

From KAK to M-KA, summarizing strengths and drawbacks:

Jan: I agree that the changes were overall positive. We became less dogmatic and prejudiced, and we enriched our theory by adding Arghiri Emmanuel’s analysis of unequal exchange. But we also encountered some challenges that we had no proper answers to. Perhaps most significantly, our circle of supporters and sympathizers decreased steadily. Partly, this might have been a consequence of general political developments, that is, of anti-imperialism becoming weaker. But we also had ourselves to blame.
Torkil: That is true. We had difficulties mobilizing sympathizers. However, I think the problem dates back all the way to 1972, when KAK developed the illegal practice. Security was ever more important and it became difficult to integrate new members. Plus, it was clear that we would never gain mass support with our political ideas—they simply weren’t very popular in our part of the world.

More on the M-KA structure and organizational culture:

The leadership of M-KA consisted of three to four people who were appointed in an informal process based on consensus. They coordinated everything, so that different activities wouldn’t clash with one another: the legal and illegal practice, theoretical studies, the publishing work, etc. They also called for meetings, paid the bills, and took care of other administrative tasks. About every other month, the whole group—about fifteen people— had a full-day meeting, where important decisions were made, also based on consensus.
You mentioned Arghiri Emmanuel: I read that in the 1970s he calculated that if the world’s wealth was distributed equally, everyone could afford the living standard of an average Portuguese. Apparently, you took this as a guideline for how to live your own lives. Is that true?
Jan: No. In KAK, the political and the private were clearly divided. No one had a moral investment in how others lived their lives. This was also true for M-KA, although the political and the private overlapped a bit more. There was overall a stronger social dimension in M-KA.

Another attempt to make money above board:

That’s why you opened Café Liberation in 1987. I was wondering what the clientele was like, especially since you weren’t that popular among the Danish left.
Torkil: The clients were just regular folks. It wasn’t a particularly political crowd, although we organized some political events in the café.
How did it go financially?
Jan: Unfortunately, we didn’t make much money. I think we were just a bit ahead of our time, to be honest. These days, places like Café Liberation— what we call “café latte places” in Denmark—have become very popular. Back then, this was a new concept. Hip urban coffee shop culture wasn’t born yet. We would have made more money with a traditional pub.

What mistakes led to getting caught?

Mainly careless communication with liberation movements—even if their European representatives were to blame in many ways. Their security standards often differed from ours. But there were other mistakes, too. For example, we regularly used the same methods for stealing cars, the same types of fake documents, etc. We were aware of the problem and tried to use as many variations as possible, and we also planted false evidence to deter the police. But in the end, the way we operated tied our robberies together. Still, it took the police nearly twenty years to connect the dots.

It was not possible to indict us for terrorism, because the Danish laws weren’t written that way. Today, this has changed. Recently, Anton Nielsen, the seventy-two-year-old chairman of the Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen, an antifascist organization founded by Danes who fought against the fascist European regimes in the 1930s and ’40s, was sentenced to two months in prison because his organization had collected money for the PFLP.

The subject of the conversation returns to morality:

The problems in the world aren’t black and white. If you get involved in conflict, it is hard to keep your hands clean, even if you fight on the side of the oppressed. Today, certain forms of civil disobedience and extraparliamentary action are morally accepted. The criminal means we used are not. It is up to each and any individual to judge them. Personally, I sleep well at night knowing what I have done.

Torkil on surviving prison:

Torkil: Resistance is crucial in the prison environment. We are talking about an extremely controlled space. The authorities try to break prisoners in order to make their incarceration easier. The ideal prisoner is quiet and passive and detaches himself from society. If you don’t want to be broken, you must remain active—physically, psychologically, intellectually, and socially. You need to engage with your surroundings, inside prison and, as much as possible, outside of it. However, if you do this, you will inevitably come into conflict with the prison system. Being active in prison is synonymous with resisting in prison. It is the only way to retain your identity, dignity, and self-respect.
[…]
Since the authorities try to take control over your space and your time, you have to try to reclaim your space and your time. I managed to maintain relationships with my family, my friends, and the outside world, I did my studies, and when I was released I was in better physical shape than ever. I managed to turn the theft of space and time into something positive. That’s why I don’t look back at my time in prison with bitterness. It was not a traumatic experience, but an extreme one that allowed me a very close insight into the functioning of state power.

The basis of your theory has to be material reality. This hasn’t changed. If your theory is not based on material reality, you become a dreamer, and fantasy replaces theory. As a dreamer, you can proclaim whatever you want. But transforming society has nothing to do with wishful thinking. Useful theory must be based on the analysis of the actual material conditions.

Torkil still sees world-system change as necessary for metropole working class revolution, but he also emphasizes the need to reconstruct a positive vision of socialism:

Once our profits and living standards are affected, that is, once we can no longer buy goods as cheaply as we have become used to, we will no longer be able to ignore this and things will start moving. Plus, there are other factors to consider: global warming, overpopulation, migration, etc. It is even possible that production in the Third World will collapse. That would be a huge problem for capitalism. Look at what seemingly small things can do: a simple real estate crisis can cause serious unemployment.
But crises do not necessarily lead to progressive change. Often, reactionary
forces benefit. How can that be avoided?
Torkil: Socialism has to be seen as an attractive and realistic solution to people’s problems. Considering the historical track record of real socialism, that is not a given. To say that some mistakes have been made and that we should just try the same experiment again, won’t help. I don’t think that’s possible, and I believe very few people do. It is mandatory to formulate new and concrete ideas of what a socialist economy should look like. These ideas have to be based on people’s experiences. Again, the organization of democratic socialism must appear both attractive and realistic.

Migration is a key flashpoint that increases the ranks of those living “below” the labor aristocracy:

Migration is another important issue. In Denmark and in other European countries, most migrants are quickly integrated into the labor market, but in the U.S., for example, you have millions of illegal immigrants who work for very low wages and whose living standards can’t be compared to those of the old U.S. working class. This creates tensions that will inevitably lead to widespread social conflict.

This positive view of the progress made by previous waves of struggle is refreshing:

In addition, the old struggles haven’t disappeared. Of course it’s easy to point out the failures of the liberation movements. The PFLP does not hold power in Palestine. But if you always look at things from the most negative angle, you might as well stop doing anything. Even if Mugabe has “betrayed” the revolution in Zimbabwe, it was still a step forward when the country got rid of the white colonialists’ regime. The same is true for FRELIMO taking power in Mozambique and for many similar cases. The struggle in Palestine continues as well, even if socialist ideas have taken a backseat.

On answering “What Can Communists in the Imperialist Countries Do?” today, both political and material solidarity are needed:

I still like the slogan, “Solidarity is something you can hold in your hands.” This can always be a guiding principle for political action, even when you lack answers to the big questions. Solidarity is always needed, and there are always possibilities to express it in concrete ways. However, analysis, theory, and propaganda are also needed to encourage solidarity, so this aspect of political activism doesn’t lose its importance.

Do you have any concrete examples for how to express solidarity today? Or
for which movements to support?
Torkil: In China, I think it’s important to support left-wing currents within the Communist Party, independent working-class movements, and all initiatives that fight for a global instead of a national perspective in union politics. In the Middle East and in North Africa it is crucial to support the progressive forces that remain. I hope that the Islamist wave will subside, but liberal democracy will not help the poor farmers and the unemployed in the region either. If the left manages to reorganize itself and to formulate ideas for fundamental changes in property relations, I think that socialist politics can be revived. The situation is very fragile and seemingly small things can have a great effect. Finally, I think we must support what is left of the movements from the 1970s in Palestine, in the Western Sahara, in Colombia, and certainly in Mexico. Some other questions need more investigation: Is it, for example, possible to connect the struggle in Greece with anti-imperialist politics and a broad global perspective? In any case, none of these struggles can be fought successfully without an understanding of global capitalism’s class structures and a commitment to a global equality in living standards.

Socialism and the Bourgeois Way of Life (Gotfred Appel, 1968)

You can see that Appel still emphasizes preparing for a future in which the world-system changes such that Danish masses cannot continue living in the same way:

But nevertheless when that time comes we shall find ourselves in a situation, where we shall have to build our socialist Denmark with diligence and thrift. The glare of advertising and the whole of the gigantic industry behind the noise, will stop. The hurlyburly of fashion will come to an end, the status symbols will lose their importance and their value—and no longer will there be such a difference in the standard of living from country to country that it will be cheaper for Danes to go by jet-plane to Mallorca than have one’s holiday on the [Danish island of ] Bornholm!

Should communists fight for more “benefits”? Appel asks, who decided what these “benefits” are?

Or should we, as the revisionists want us to do, carry on the efforts to lead the working class in the direction, which we know to be wrong? Should we assist and lead it in the efforts to get still more of the “benefits”, which the bourgeoisie has succeeded in making the working class consider “benefits”? Should we lead it to satisfy still more of the “needs” which the bourgeoisie has imposed on it through the glare of advertisement of the consumer’s society? Should we be really “revolutionary”, even, and help the working class invent new needs of exactly the same kind?

Trade-union struggle as simply winning the rights to more consumption?

Should we not openly say that the whole of this struggle for the fulfillment of bourgeois needs is leading the working class directly away from a socialist way of thinking? That the trade union activity at the present level of development of the parasite state is directly harmful and a hindrance to the struggle for socialism?

Appel sees a “gradual” process in which the “bribery” of the working class fades away, after which communists will have more of a role to play. Is this gradualist view correct, or would changes in living standards come in more precipitous shocks? In either case, do we see changes like this happening today, and if not, on what horizon?

In the course of this development more and more people will have their eyes opened—if revolutionary communists prove able to conduct their ideological, political and organizational struggle correctly, and if they are able constantly to sum up experience, correct mistakes made, and deepen their understanding together with the changes in this reality and through this to create close links with these increasing numbers of people.

What is KAK? (1974)

More on their “bribery” concept:

This bribery should not be understood in such a way that one can actually calculate how large a part of the wage-packet’s contents is payment for the value of labour, and how large a part is bribery. It should be understood as meaning that the whole of the imperialist world’s economic, industrial, technical, cultural and social development in the last analysis is based upon robbery and plunder in the former colonies and dependent countries, now the “Third World”.

Explaining the dual focus of KAK in more detail, still maintains vanguard aspirations:

KAK could of course have changed its name long ago to that of “party”— the ideological-political unity of the organization has long made this possible. However, we consider it at best meaningless to undertake such a change of name, since in our view the creation of a revolutionary party must be inextricably linked with an objective social necessity if it is to have any value. In our view, there must be a movement, a considerable movement, in society as a whole and especially in a large section of the working-class before a revolutionary party becomes a necessity and thereby has the possibility of playing an important part in the development of society.
When the economic situation, and with it the political situation, has changed to such a degree that the bourgeoisie begins to force the working- class to revolutionary struggle, a struggle for power in society, a struggle to determine the form of society, then the time will be ripe. Then the working-class will need a well-organised, close-knit vanguard. People who beforehand have mastered Marxist theory will be able to play an important role when a spontaneous movement breaks out amongst the workers and when they “succeed in gaining control over it”—to quote Engels once again. “To gain control over” means in this connection to prove capable of putting forward the correct slogans, of providing the correct leadership. Only those who gain this “control” will at that time constitute the vanguard of the working-class, and they will therefore be the party. The name of the organization is of no avail.
Through this short account of KAK’s fundamental view, the tasks at hand have in reality already been formulated. They consist in giving political and practical support to people and to organisations which in one way or another are already fighting the plunder by the Western hemisphere and which thereby are helping to undermine the foundations of the parasite state. They consist in building an organization with political-ideological unity, through this work and through continued investigation and studies of the course of development of the whole world, and with as high a degree of discipline and self-sacrifice as is possible at all times—an organization which will gradually become better and better equipped to discover and determine the turn of events “that will lead the masses to the real, decisive and final revolutionary struggle” (Lenin), and which—when the day comes—can place itself at the head of this struggle and lead it to victory.

Manifest–Communist Working Group: A Short Introduction (M-KA, 1986)

interesting explanation here for the divergence between socialist bloc support for Third World struggles and the expectations those struggles had for support. This is a less moralistic approach than many radical groups have taken, by stating that there is “nothing directly treacherous” in the fact that the socialist bloc had a more defensive posture:

The fact that the socialist countries and progressive movements in the Third World face a common enemy and have the same goals makes them potential allies. They both have the strategic goal of conquering imperialism and replacing capitalist exploitation with a socialist world order. For the Third World, this is a necessary prerequisite for a solution of the enormous social problems with which they are faced—and the socialist countries cannot feel secure, and their economic development will be hampered, as long as imperialism exists. But the developed socialist states and the movements of the Third World often adopt differing tactical positions in their confrontations with imperialism.
One might speak of a tactically offensive and a tactically defensive position. The liberation movements and the socialistically oriented movements in the Third World are in the frontline, in a strategic and tactical offensive. They have everything to win and nothing to lose. The socialist countries, on the other hand, occupy a tactically defensive position. As long as the imperialist system retains its present strength, they must constantly defend their dearly won independence. There is thus nothing directly treacherous in this defensive policy, though on occasions it might appear somewhat opportunist.

Re-summarizing the evidence for KAK’s view:

One would have great difficulty finding an example of the English working class having supported the anti-colonial struggle that took place within the Empire. By and large, it has supported the changing governments’ colonial policies throughout the past 100 years, from Ireland to Southern Africa, from India to the Falkland Islands. Nor indeed can the French working class boast of having supported Vietnam’s, Algeria’s or Syria’s struggle for independence—far from it. Generally speaking, the working class of USA has also rallied around the imperialist and anti-socialist policy of this country throughout the world. When the people of USA nevertheless did eventually turn against the Vietnam War, they did so not in solidarity with the Vietnamese people, but because the war was beginning to cost too many U.S.-American lives. Generally speaking, the workers of the Western World are pro-Israeli and consider the Palestinians to be terrorists. The working class of the imperialist world does not favor Apartheid, yet they certainly do not wish to have a socialist South Africa either. Anti-communism has increased in the Western World in recent years. The microscopic Left, which does after all exist in the imperialist countries, has never wished to face these facts, but has instead always excused the working class.

What Can Communists in the Imperialist Countries Do? (M-KA, 1986)

An anti-imperialist mass movement does not exist, but is it worth attempting to create this mass movement?

In the richest imperialist countries there are no classes today which are objectively interested in overthrowing the imperialist system, because all classes in these countries profit by this system. Any social movement in the rich imperialist countries must be seen in the light of this fact. A mass movement has only a socialist perspective if it is directed against imperialism. Such a mass movement does not exist in the imperialist countries.

On “crisis” in the West, M-KA takes a view opposed to the traditional left instinct for “stabilization” of the situation:

The revolutionary perspective of the crisis has been completely forgotten. From a revolutionary point of view, crises are necessary. When the crisis is really felt, the Communists must oppose chauvinism, racism and hatred towards immigrant workers, and support anti-imperialist movements and progressive states in the Third World.

Again, political/propaganda support of liberation movements has not been matched with material support:

During this period the left wing devoted quite some time to liberation movements all over the world, but there was a striking disproportion between the often very militant and uncompromising slogans and the minimal value it had to the liberation movements and their struggle. The majority of the left wing did not concern themselves with the liberation movements with the primary aim of supporting them, but rather because they hoped to mobilize more people.

Value of material support:

Talks with representatives of the liberation movements and visits to the movements have confirmed that it is of use to offer material support, as they often lack the most elementary things to be able to carry on their struggle and to be able to mitigate the hardships of the masses.

To begin struggle for socialism here, imperialism must be destroyed:

It is our aim to gather anti-imperialists in order to support the struggle against the suppression and exploitation of the Third World. As things are now it must be a matter of individuals, as there is no objective basis for mass movements with anti-imperialist views in Denmark today.
The solidarity for which we work is not based on pity or bourgeois humanitarianism, but on the awareness that the emancipation of the proletariat in the exploited countries is a condition of the destruction of the imperialist system and the introduction of socialism in Denmark.

The M-KA did not hesitate to pass their analysis on to people in the movements they supported:

We shall communicate our views to the anti-imperialist movements and states in the Third World and to anti-imperialist groups and organizations in all countries. In particular, we shall discuss our opinion of imperialism and the economic and political conditions in Western Europe. For a long time the left wing has passed on its illusions about the conditions in Europe and the solidarity of the working class with the liberation movements. We shall continue to tell the liberation movements not to count on an active support of their struggle on the part of the labour aristocracy. On the contrary, they must expect opposition, and this is not due to ignorance or lack of information about the struggle, but to the position of the working class of the imperialist countries as a labour aristocracy—a global upper class.

The book retains the informal style and anarchist-leaning feel of Sakai’s writing and perspective, which can be more entertaining than standard left-theory-speak but, at times, annoying and non-sensical (like his off-handed description of present day Russia as the “Great Russian stalinate”, a phrase you could just as easily come across in a Washington Post editorial). But Sakai’s characteristic bluntness helps get across some crucial points about how the lumpen are misconstrued in the standard Marxist view.

What is Sakai’s definition of the lumpen here? One the one hand, he repeatedly asserts that the lumpen is actually a “non-class”, or a bundle of disparate class fragments. But they are share the reality of being “unplugged from regular class society”. Beyond this, Sakai takes an expansive view of the category: at varying points, he discusses people from opera singers to sex workers to soldiers, to puppet-state kleptocrats (think the U.S.-installed Afghan government) who could all be seen as lumpen. At times this expansiveness in the category is confusing: he classifies soldiers and police officers as lumpen, but it is hard to see them as “unplugged” from class society. Part of his point here is to “de-stigmatize” the idea of a lumpen identity and not see it as a moralistic label. “Lumpen” is also not a stand-in for “criminal”, but Sakai does focus much of the book, particularly in discussing the Chinese Revolution, on criminal groups. Everywhere, he underscores the political indeterminacy of the lumpen - from Chinese secret societies (elaborate bandit gangs, essentially) fighting on both sides of the Chinese Civil War, to U.S. gangs becoming alternately radical street organizations (his example of “Young General” early in the book) or tools of counterinsurgency (the Blackstone Rangers essay).

One of his crucial points is that a baseline-negative view of the lumpen prevents revolutionaries from seeing the range of political possibilities present among lumpen class fractions. The probabilities for what side people end up on, of course, vary greatly across historical circumstances - as he points out, the way lumpen “broke” in Weimar Germany was much different to the way they broke in revolutionary China. Here, he cites “oppressor and oppressed nation theory” as useful for answering why that is, but you could probably safely replace that term with one referencing the Global North / Global South divide and see what he’s getting at.

More generally, the point he makes about Marxist orthodoxy often blinding revolutionaries to political possibilities is applicable not just to the lumpen, but to class analysis more generally. As he discusses, the Communist Party of China, in the early years, not only had a negative view of the lumpen, but also of the peasantry - in their view, no class except the industrial proletariat was good enough to build the party around. It was only bare necessity (the brutal Nationalist repression in the cities) and deep social investigation that allowed them to eventually re-orient around a rural strategy, one that first relied heavily on collaboration and recruitment among the lumpen for survival, and then grew strong with the involvement of masses of peasants. Moving beyond the superficial view of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the only politically important classes was crucial to the Communists’ later success. Of course, this was combined with a simultaneous focus on overcoming the class limitations present in each particular new recruit - whether you were from a petty-bourgeois, lumpen, or peasant background when you joined the Party, the aim was to become “proletarianized”, at least in your political consciousness.

What are the practical lessons? Primarily, that we should proceed on the basis of real class analysis, instead of imagining an idealized class structure and projecting it onto our society. And we should avoid singling out the lumpen as uniquely deficient: as Sakai points out, “all classes and peoples growing up within capitalism have flaws and bring their characteristic problems in a revolution­ary context. Yes, even intellectuals, work­ers and peasants.” No class breaks 100% for the revolution, and understanding this helps us see that capturing even small, breakaway parts of each class can be valuable.

But what determines the politics of specific lumpen fragments? Is it based on whoever “gets to them first”? Does it come down to individual psychology or are there deeper patterns? How can revolutionaries consciously influence this process of sides-taking? For example, how do we explain the contrasting examples of “Young General” with his radical street organization, and the Blackstone Ranger’s collaborationist and exploitative politics? Here, Sakai offers less. He is concerned mostly with opening up the field for questions, for further investigation on the basis of the overall indeterminacy of the lumpen. To determine further why particular lumpen people or groups evolve in radically different political directions, and how we can intervene politically in that process, is left to us. As Sakai puts it, “there’s a lot more physics involved”.

Prologue: “Science” and “theory”

Sakai opens with his conception of a new and better science and theory, along with what he sees as the dusty theory we often kick around. This is expanded upon in the next chapter. There are also some notes here on the limitations and problems of bourgeois science but they are not as relevant to the main focus of the book.

The crisis of revolutionary theory right now is that it's plain too old and obsolete. Meaning that in practice it's largely unus­able. This is understood as a practical reality, and we usually leave revolutionary theory behind us in the attic when people go out to play. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the lumpen/proletariat, that most dramatic, most elusive of maybe-or-maybe-not “classes.” This mat­ters because the revolutionary movement and the lumpen have a much longer and more involved relationship than we’ve fully owned up to. Whether revolution­aries think it’s good or not, the lumpen are going to play a big part in everyone’s future. No better place, then, to start remaking the tool of theory.

Chapter 1: Re-starting at the margins

“This is the book that i always looked for when i first came into the movement, but never found”, Sakai opens this chapter with. One of his main purposes in this work, expressed over and over, is the hammering on the complexity of class in the real world. The common reduction of class society to simply working class / not working class (or its inverse, the Occupy Wall Street frame of bourgeoisie / everyone else) is easier than conducting a real analysis of class. Seeing beyond this binary leads us to some strange observations, of course in the context of this book, the huge importance of lumpen in political developments around the world and throughout history:

Revolutionaries have always pointed to the industrial working class as our main instrument of change, but in this life­ time it has just as often been the lumpen/proletariat that has surprised us, has been the force of disruption. Even in the raising of unexpected new social orders. Whether that’s good or ill, whether anyone likes it or not. Whether it’s the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in the 1960s, explic­itly proclaiming the lumpen/proletarian leadership over the entire Black community—or the many thousands of death commandos from all over the world, drawn to the lumpen warlord banner of the Islamic Caliphate’s shifting state of fugitives. If NATO, the White House, the Great Russian stalinate, and most of the Arab capitalist regimes of the Middle East, all have to declare war on you, you gotta be repping something XL.
Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t just about some latest big thing, and workers are definitely at the heart of the liberation we need ... It’s just that there are several ideas we were critically mistaught. One of which was to settle for the old, oversimpli­fied, stick-figure picture of class structure that anti-capitalist pioneers such as Marx and Bakunin and Engels had hurriedly drawn in the sand, so that nobody would admit that in real life, “class” is much more complex and has a specific gravity to it.

As he will do repeatedly throughout this book, Sakai dispels some common stereotypes of this  “partial class” - and defines the lumpen-proletariat for what it is not:

The lumpen/proletariat cannot be defined as simply the poorest of the poor, or the ever-unemployed. Nor can it be pictured simply as career criminals and beggars, as many believe. Although these categories often find themselves within the lumpen. It is identified by its central characteristic: as a “partial-class” or "non­ class” of peoples who have voluntarily or involuntarily left the regular classes of economic production and distribution. Who are “unplugged” if you will from regular class society. Of those declassed fragments or strata fallen out of the class structure, who are then forced to find a living from parasitism or outlaw activities.

Here he introduces a story told in full at the end of the book, but also a recurring theme - lumpen playing on both sides of class war.

In the late 1960s, the u.s. government experimented with hiring the Blackstone Rangers and Disciples street organiza­tions in Chicago as mercenaries. Paid with “poverty grants” to violently repress “riots” and all other Black community anti­ capitalist activity. They even put a stop— at gunpoint—to spontaneous looting and burning after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It worked very effectively for euro-capitalism, abruptly ending all protests in the designated test area. But also got in the way of the much greater machinery of straight-up police repression, and so had to be discontinued.
Taking what they had learned, the police and government made a more sophisticated and “deniable” counter­ insurgency program. Remaking mas­sively unemployed street youth into loose mafias under tacit police supervision, to de-politicize oppressed communities and set things in motion for the even bigger wave of mass incarcerations. Capitalism once caught napping by anti-capitalist revolutionaries had now woken up to the future of recycling lumpen as instru­ments of mass social repression against their own, and even against their own selves. We could say that all sides are play­ing with rigged decks now.

“Why is an understanding of the lumpen so important now?” He answers with a reference to “mass parasitism”, a defining feature of imperialism today, and defining framework for understanding core class society:

The “right” or privilege of patriotic par­asitism becomes a program for industrial workers and youth just as with capitalists, whether it’s the white settler nationalist Trump campaign or the nominally left Occupy Wall Street. As parasitism itself continuously increases within rotting capitalism. The defined parasitism of the armed robber seems confusing compared to the parasitism of the suburban white high school students. Who is the para­site—the unionized crane operator put­ting up the condo highrise downtown or the young sex worker a block away from where I’m writing this tonight? If we really have it, you know, our class analysis is a weapon.

From this passage it’s not actually clear what connection he makes between this category of “parasite” and that of “lumpen” - even if the crane operator is “parasitic” in the sense Sakai means, they are certainly not “unplugged” from regular class society.

Chapter 2: Lumpen - German: shred, damaged, miscreant, as in broken-proletariat or feral-proletariat

Re-introducing the definition of lumpen as a fragmented, non-unitary, bundle of broken off class-fragments:

This is not one “class" but a “partial class" in Engels’ words, or a “non-class” as some label them now. It’s important to keep in mind that parasitism alone can­ not define them, since capitalist society itself is by its nature supremely parasitic.

Chapter 3: Uncertain cast of characters

Who were the lumpen Marx decried in some of his early writings? Listing and discussing some of the class fractions who made up Bonapartist support.

Chapter 4: Theoretical split: who is on the edge of rebellion or betrayal?

Bakunin vs. Marx on the lumpen and their potential.

Chapter 5: Forensic analysis of suspect: k. marx

More on Marx, why he came to a certain view of lumpen, and how that view evolved:

But Marx and Engels didn’t see how we always need some outliers to cre­atively cross lines and go against laws and customs. To be rule-breakers. Finding new shortcuts and paths for the most oppressed and those without hope. That liberation needs Huey Newtons as well as Fannie Lou Hamers. Needed Malcolm X and Eazy-E as well as Jesse Jackson (oh, wait, nobody ever needed Jesse). That the surprise outlaw creativity of the lumpen might be a necessary ingredient, too, to make the mix.

Stepping aside here, just a moment, we gotta say something: For some rea­son, radicals are often encouraged to think that Marx and others of his times were writing ... just to you and me, and speaking about an eternal “now.” No, Marx absolutely wasn’t writing to you or me. He wasn’t writing to any people of color, or anyone who used the internet. Not to women, either, whom he scarcely mentions. And he sure wasn’t analyzing today’s mutant world which he didn’t come close to seeing. Not his fault, that. He was speaking to his own people, men who were politically active in the culture of the mid-1800s European civilization, and he was first crudely trying out vari­ous ideas to capture the essence of what was a new reality for him. But it shouldn’t be “new” or “unknown” to us.

Marx begins to realize the lumpen as active political participants, and some even as revolutionaries, but still with major political faults:

Speaking particularly about former work­ers or other insurrectionary veterans, who had enjoyed the exciting movement life so much that they had lost all interest in going back to working-class jobs or civilian life in general. Instead, they now spent their days hanging out in the cafes and bars, hustling the rent money, gossip­ing and talking up the latest conspiracies: "It is they who throw up and com­mand the barricades, organize the resistance, plunder the arsenals, lead in the seizure of arms and munitions in homes, and in the midst of the insurrection carry out those daring coups which so often cause disarray in the government ranks. In a word, they are officers of the insurrection.”
Marx spoke quite frankly. He then went on to severely criticize that mixed scene of what had become professional con­spirators, of lumpen militants and what he felt were dissolute workers, for their bad politics. Which, he pointed out, lead them to be so eager for action that they prematurely start fighting at the first hint of unrest, misjudge political situations, and overestimate the role of technical military factors as against the whole of the workers’ movement. At a guess, Marx could well have been right, since these are common errors in revolutionary struggle right now as well as then.

In a sidebar page, Sakai introduces a view that comes back around later, an expansive view of the lumpen. But is this in conflict with earlier definition of lumpen as those who have “fallen out” of class society? Here Sakai seems to be doing exactly what he criticizes elsewhere - using lumpen as a moral label instead of a positional, class label.

We mostly only see the clowns and losers, you know, when it comes to euro-settler lumpen. Most white lumpen are “invisible” because they aren’t in conspicuous revolt against bour­geois society, no matter how much they privately despise it. To see just one part of these strata: They can get lots of weapons and legal permission to invade and occupy and beat and kill colonized peoples, while wearing tough uniforms and getting a nice salary, too. Why look like a weirdo parading around in a Nazi costume, when you can be a police offi­cer or a guard or a career military professional and do blood sport for real? And their class population spreads far wider than that in this parasitic oppressor society, too.

Sakai gives an example of what he sees as politically positive lumpen street organization, relating the story of a teenager he calls “Young General”, who worked to protect his neighborhood from KKK terror while burglarizing white-owned businesses with the rest of his gang:

He wasn’t giving speeches about it, that’s certain. However, when i looked at what he was doing, what the prac­tice actually was, there was a pattern so sharply cut you could pick it up and put it in your jacket pocket: he was organizing his street organization brethren to go to the front lines, and do their soldiering defending their People, not throw down killing others just like themselves. And he recruited his nighttime crew on the same principle. Rather than sell poison to your own People, you can forcefully take your survival from the white oppressors them­selves, ripping it right out of their wallets. Survival itself can chew so fine. You can see why i called him “Young General,” in serious respect.
He was living and working and devel­oping his politics violating the law every step, doing crime and dangerous crime at that, just about as regularly as some of us would punch in at the factory. Wasn’t his a real working-class politics, though? It's telling that his crimes and his group’s use of violence were so very different in essence from the crime and group violence that so many lumpen street leaderships were ordering up in their auto-homicidal civil wars over territory and dope. In both cases, poor New Afrikan young males using guns and doing crimes—but in han­dling the texture of the class politics, your hand knew the real difference. One was pulling people up, the other was pushing them down.

Chapter 6: Evolution of left views on lumpen

Barely a chapter, but talks about introduction of sex workers into the category of lumpen.

Chapter 7: Women interpenetrate lumpen/proletariat

Largely focused on sex workers, their political indeterminacy, and the fact that (like other lumpen class fragments) they are less numerically “marginal” than you would assume. One data point he mentions there is a recent estimate (from the Illinois State Attorney-General, so maybe with a grain of salt) of 16,000 sex workers in Chicago alone, compared to less than 10,000 workers employed in Chicago-area automotive plants!

Chapter 8: Theory Mao tossed to us

Starting to introduce Mao’s views on lumpen, which is tackled in much more depth in the second book here.

At one point, a majority of soldiers were “lumpen”:

At the party’s 1929 Gutian conference, two years after the Red Army’s founding, Mao Z’s report on their political-military situation bluntly said that their military’s “roving banditism and other such politi­cal problems had their root in the reality that "the lumpen-proletariat constitute the majority in the Red Army" (while in those years of rebuilding right after the Autumn Harvest uprising, Mao also had reported that "the soldiers of peasant or working class origin in the Fourth Army in the Border Region constitute an extreme minority.”). Lumpen/proletarian soldiers were the definite majority of the many thousands of revolutionary fighters under his leadership. Although neither Mao Z nor the rest of the party leadership were eager to broadcast this heretical and scandalous situation.

Sakai returns to 1800s France, and a reactionary lumpen militia, the Garde Mobile:

Even still, the lower class origins of its new militia of desperation, teenagers often literally in rags, made the wealthier classes fearful that they were only arm­ing unreliable street proletarians. When these Garde Mobile turned out to be the vanguard fighters in defense of the estab­lishment—actually leading the more uncertain regular army troops and those fearful bourgeois National Guard volun­teers—astonishment mixed with polit­ical relief in the better neighborhoods. The Garde teens’ enthusiastic savaging of workers with their sharp bayonets and rifle butts was applauded, as were the mass killings of surrendered workers.

The lumpen again not as marginal as assumed, and more intertwined with the “traditional” working class:

Recognizing the destitute, paupers, at the edges of society, Marx was including a cat­egory which comprised both the lumpen and lowest working class mixed together. Orphans and some other destitute chil­dren, disabled former workers, the sur­viving aged, and so on. might have been excluded from the ordinary employed capitalist workforce, but many were still very much part of the working class. Then as now.

But if only half of only that first total of 4 million lumpen plus others on the margins—which included all street crim­inals, professional gamblers, unemployed mercenaries, counterfeiters, beggars, sex workers and so on—were really lumpen/ proletarians, those outcast class strata would have been within the range of 6% or more of the whole French population then of 35 millions. So that is a fairly large number for people completely outside a society s economic production and distri­bution. But as we shall see, that was only a start to build on for Marx.

Despite the existence of reactionary lumpen militia, most still chose not to join:

This Garde Mobile militia, so brilliantly conceived of in desperation by capitalist authorities, was far from popular as a class choice even for unemployed and hungry young workers. Marx tells us that the new recruits received “1 franc 50 centimes a day”, but doesn’t explain fur­ther, as he assumes that his contempo­rary readers will know what that meant. The bribe was actually considerable. The Garde Mobiles young recruits in Paris received six times the pay of a regular infantryman in the French army! That amount was a normal working-class wage for that time. In addition, of course, the recruits got free housing in the bar­racks, free uniforms and boots, and in the early months free food at their own military mess halls. At a time, we must keep in mind, that the Chamber of Com­merce estimated 54-4% unemployment and much homelessness in the Parisian working-class districts.

Yet even those inducements weren’t enough to convince most of the young and desperately poor to go to work as enforcers for the state. To be some kind of cops, in other words. Just as in our world the constant propaganda din of “Lethal Weapon” type tv cop dramas, added on top of Hollywood crime movies and politicians’ speeches and minority recruiting drives in the community—still cannot convince more than a handful of New Afrikan and Latino kids in New York City to apply for the police academy, i mean, class enemy is class enemy.

This is an interesting point, on the relation between youth and political indeterminacy (the same observation could be made about youth petty-bourgeois defections to the revolutionary side, something talked more about in left circles):

Stormy Karl M was so bent on label­ing the repressive Garde Mobile as an amoral clan of declassed criminals hav­ing nothing to do with “his" decent work­ing people— 'sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, " as he puts it— that he stumbles past the way in which those emerging class realities worked. Which was not like assembling the rigid wooden blocks that kindergartens use, but was all about the sensuous interplay of currents of young people along partly fluid class borders. Making life choices of who they were, some inconsistently or opportunistically trying different things, trying even to change back and forth. You know what i mean.
The deal is, those youth did really have minds of their own, in a hard and for some even a life-or-death situation. Some made the choice to work for the state, repressing and killing poor working people who were rebelling for just cause. That choice was the moment in which they coalesced in a tangible way, made solid, their partly ambiguous class identity, some becoming lumpen/proletarian. Most chose otherwise, even those committed to a lumpen life, from what we know (if estimates of roughly 100,000 declassed outcasts in Paris even much earlier were true, it’s obvious that most had little to do with helping that weak regime in 1848). So some youths may well have been lumpen street people before joining the Garde, but even those who were simply jobless would-be workers became lumpen in choosing the Garde and its class role. Lumpen were not simply gathered by the capitalist state, but more impor­tantly also created.
Marx’s first-in theoretical scouting didn’t at that time answer a basic question: If poor youth were so “malleable,” such apparent clay at the hands of the capital­ists, then why did so many of them resist the regime’s bribes and inducements in the first place? Why were many of them being so human and risking death and lifelong imprisonment in revolution? The reality is that those lower-class youth in Paris were making choices, not so much of “employment” but as to who they would be. That’s what youth is, we all know, that period in which you leave childhood by making life choices, experiencing being both the shaper and the shaped. Trying out choices in the only real way you can, on your own life and its risky future.

Sakai extends the lumpen concept to upper classes too (maybe a lumpen/bourgeoisie to go along with the lumpen/proletariat!). This is interesting, especially as he ties it to imperialist “puppet states” at the end of this paragraph, but not explored that much further:

As Marx said specifically of France at that time: “The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society." [his emphasis] Because that particular class, at that historical moment, was not centered in business loans or financing construction and other such usual activities, but only lightly veiled criminal activity. Thefts of public funds, using the state for robbery, graft, swindles, and big and small fraudulent ventures. Like in the pro-Western stage prop “government" in Afghanistan at this very moment. Where explicit criminal activity isn’t a byproduct of government, but criminal activity is the government.

Lumpen rule as capable of temporarily overriding old ruling block / capitalist class fractions while still protecting capitalism (similar to analysis of fascism as petty-bourgeois rule that goes against individual capitalist interests while preserving the system / strengthening it long-term?):

What solidified Louis Bonaparte’s re­gime, was that his rule was widely and correctly recognized as violently hostile to capitalist parties and politicians, but protective of the overall capitalist system and culture itself. Marx quotes London’s The Economist as praising Bonaparte’s leadership in 1851: “The President is the guardian of order, and is now recog­nized as such by every Stock Exchange of Europe."

Good point here on the frequent disconnect between all the varied political actors capable of taking state power and our conception of the “important” classes in capitalism (capitalists, workers, sometimes peasants):

Just because you are marginal to pro­duction and distribution, doesn’t nec­essarily mean that you are always mar­ginal to state power. If you can be large enough and organizable enough to take over the 19th century French state, no less, and run it for its dysfunctional capitalist owners, then why not entire movements and nations and continental regions in other times and places? (Remember, that was a time when the industrial proletar­iat itself in European nations was small, like 5% of the population or similar, and yet was shaking the governments in their capitals).

Chapter 10: The class in hiding

Again, lumpen does not equate to criminal for Sakai, the category goes beyond that and is more flexible:

So we find the lumpen/proletariat as street hustlers and civil rights leaders, as imams and politicians, if not as often as being policemen and armed robbers. In nationalistic move­ments as well as being nation-erasing warlords and terrorists. Just as Louis Napoleon once threw on the jumbled costumes, first of modernizing social reformer, and then of the restorer of faux royal grandeur. Having no reg­ular class ideology, in politics the lumpen find it convenient to use ide­ologies and causes even as temporary uniforms, sometimes changing them like clothing.

Chapter 11: The iron force-feeding funnel of the cash nexus

Lengthy discussion about early capitalism and its push to end payment-in-kind / workers taking home valuable scraps of production. This becomes criminalized in favor of the cash wage (but Sakai still gives examples of payment-in-kind in the current day), which can come to mark a more clearly defined boundary between workers and lumpen.

Chapter 12: Jane Austen goes to school with the lumpen/proletariat

Early capitalist England and the relationship between enclosure of the commons and the creation of a new criminal class, and the creation of early security systems, surveillance, extension of police into rural zones, execution and other harsh punishment etc. This is the real historical emergence of the lumpen as a normal part of capitalist society:

Fred Engels closes in on a significant understanding, though: that such law­ breaking and violence against English property and lawmen themselves was “the first stage of resistance to our social order, the direct rebellion of the individual by the perpetuation of crime.

This exact same observation in their own times and places was also scribed by Mao Z back in old China, as well as by the influential anti-colonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon in the 1950s, then by 1960s New Afrikan theorists here (often quoting Fanon) such as George Jackson and the Black Panther Party. And as Atiba Shana reminded us time and again about boys on the street: revolutionaries always have to search in the juvie, in prisons, and in the midst of the lawless for their own, because for colonially oppressed young men, “The first rebellion is always crime.”

Chapter 13: In mid-journey… some notes towards lessons

Re-summarizing:

The first key for us to understand this—and the lumpen in general polit­ically—is that they are not a class. Everyone, that Capital-writing fiend Karl included, kept forgetting this fact in prac­tice. Lumpen aren’t like the working class or the assorted middle classes, they aren’t one class.

The lumpen are a social category of different class strata or fragments or splinters. They aren’t one thing, and certainly not politically. We’ve learned that the hard way, for sure. What dis­tinguishes the Lumpen/proletariat is that they have been cast out of or have left the functioning classes of patriarchal capitalism. Though many of them are among the very poorest, the most desper­ate, the step that distinguishes them is that they have fallen out of class. They’re “unplugged” socially. That is, the lumpen/proletariat has no regular role as groupings in "legal production and distribution, and to survive must often devise immediate if short-lived ways to get their livelihood from others.

In 1848, Marx could discern that underneath the fancy uniforms—“green epaulets”!—of the Garde Mobile were lumpen street boys torn from their cul­ture and context. But since the other lumpen weren’t wearing Mao caps or even faded old Bone Thugs-N-Harmony t-shirts, he couldn’t tell that probably many other lumpen poor men and women were active on the opposing side. At that same battle fighting on the other side of the barricades, with the workers’ revolution. And lots of Paris lumpen surely weren’t on either of the warring sides. (If there’s an alterna­tive to good vs. evil, our lumpen will find it.) Karl was only really seeing a selected part of the city’s lumpen. This is a contin­ual problem with outside observers miss­ing lumpen strata who want to remain as anonymous as possible.

The system still throws out lumpen:

The oh-so sophisticated capitalism of today’s Globalization still has the same vicious family traits as the earliest, crud­est industrial capitalism. We have many more people than places to put them in the straight capitalist system. That’s how the system structures itself to work on us. That’s coded in its genes. There’s always crowds of folk, in the suburb as well as the favela and inner city, who are forced for survival to make work for themselves out of bounds. If you take the “morality” out of it, it opens the discussion.

On improvisation and unpredictability:

Thing is, the lumpen have no such safe path or routine in life to follow. They have to constantly figure out ways to keep their ball up in the air. Improvise, do things “normal” people aren't willing to do, step off on real risks, even leap into sure failure because you know that you have to do something and maybe out of that crash you find the handhold that leads to something more workable. The one thing that you can't do is just stand around and do nothing, because every day you have to eat something and you have to have shelter of some minimal sort. And it all has to come from somewhere or something you found or did. There’s a certain fierce freedom in facing the world bare-handed, alone.

The notion of having a revolution or any kind of crisis at the grassroots of society without the lumpen—invited or no—is almost laughable. Try keeping moths away from lights, why don’t you, or curious kids away from forbidden music and sex. Any mass festival of discontent or violent political brawl brings some lumpen running. Because society’s big disorder is like their order. Containing new possibili­ties and opportunities. Someone’s revolu­tion is someone else’s job fair.

That kind of restlessness and drive to wherever carries real risks. Why lumpen go down in flames a lot. But on the other hand, the creativity these broth­ers and sisters bring to the table can be a big contribution. We’ve seen this in the struggle, time and again. Think that both the lumpen and the working class can learn from each other, share things each needs to be better at politically.

Anyway, we've only just opened Pan­doras box here. We outlined how these lumpen/proletarian strata were formed in the industrial capitalist epoch—made both in the politics of daily splinter-class life and understood in radical theory. We’ve not only shown how the lumpen are defined, but how their role in society has been far less marginal than people assumed. In capitalist crisis, in situations of extraordinary state formation, the lumpen/proletariat can even be at the center of political struggles. All this is a foundation, but the intense learning expe­riences of the 20th century revolutionary movements, of the turbulent 1960s for instance, still have to be uncovered. To say nothing of today’s unresolved global capitalist crisis which engulfs country after country, destroying entire societies. When we decided to cut short the writing and print the beginning as this volume, it also meant that a second companion vol­ume had to be coming. We’ll be back.

Addendum / correspondence: kicking it around

Sakai back and forth with the editor. The part on warlordism seems key here, but not extended any further:

Then again, you have to be mindful, since some progressives race over the cliff’s edge here, seeing the state only as some giant robot. It is not simply some behemoth running amok. In general the state isn’t separate from the class structure, but an expression of it. Unlike feudal or tribal societies, individual capitalists cannot rule over their society directly as themselves. The state derives its power precisely from its nature as the instru­mentality by which the ruling classes operate society. In less common cases the state gets unmoored, floating temporarilv out of feuding hands of ruling elites, and very much into lumpen hands. This is warlordism, usually a passing makeshift phase, but as the capitalist system decays and breaks down now it comes quicker and quicker.

Mao Z’s Revolutionary Laboratory & the Lumpen/Proletariat

Background / crazy-quilt of Chinese politics

A quick once over of the Chinese political situation at the beginning of 20th century.

Theory stuff

Even postmodern society is fought over continually by classes, no matter how dis­guised their identity and moves. In real life these classes are much more complex and diverse than they once appeared in the early days of Europe’s 19th century industrial capitalism. That’s why real-time theory about classes is such a practical need for us.

Our goal is direct, to improve our ability to identify the broken-up class terrain that we are moving across, so that our step is more sure. The lumpen are so critical as a subject to us today because they are at the violent edge of tumultuous change, in every society worldwide.

What’s so important for us about theory here, is that theories are generaliza­tions that draw on more than one example or one practice, but are a systemic overview from many sources, explaining an entire area of reality.

!!!:

One practical note to all theory, is that simply having it doesn’t guarantee you anything. Nada, zip, as they say. Like reading a moving book of poetry doesn’t make you yourself a poet or an insightful person. Just like having a med school education doesn’t guarantee the researcher that their newest trial drug will work. Most times, no, in fact. Theory is an important and irreplaceable aid, but actually carrying out revolutionary resistance against the grain of the harsh world is a higher level of understanding than that.

There are real consequences to being without functional theory. Without such a general theoretical framework, we don’t learn well from practice, for instance. We don’t do well at building organizations. Or in critiquing our own attempts at confronting capitalism. Nor do we teach well at all.

Chapter 1: Theory Mao tossed to us

Here introducing a key Mao quote that will come back around many times here:

Shortly thereafter that same year, in his better-known Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, his key theoretical summary was cast in the final form that became so memorable later for many of us: “Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolu­tionary force if given proper guidance.”

Mao Z’s terse last line summing up the lumpen became well known among many 1960s-70s revs in the u.s. back then. Most notably by the Black Panthers, who quoted it frequently because they were led by lumpen and aimed at organizing lumpen. When white students tried following their breakthrough, the idea reverberated far beyond the much smaller ranks of those leftists who called themselves Maoists. It seemed so basic, it didn’t occur to would-be revolutionaries like myself that it wasn’t anywhere as simple as it seemed, and that in fact i didn’t fully understand it.

But what our guy Mao Z knew even then, subtly coloring those first words in 1926 when he called them a potential “revolutionary force,” was that the lumpen played a key role in the revolutionary pro­cess. They weren’t just bit players or minor actors on the large stage of overturning society. The lumpen in China were major wildcards in the mass revolutionary struggle that actually took place. Whether that fits anyone’s theory or not. Their lived politics were far more real than all that.

How did Mao’s “vagabond army” form? From a former warlords military leadership:

Starting the next Spring of 1928, other “red" forces began converging with Mao’s, as the new Red Army began to take shape. General Chu Teh (Zhu De in the new trans­lation system) became the commander­ in-chief of the rapidly growing central Red Army, with Mao Z as the chief polit­ical officer. In a historic partnership that shifted the center of gravity of the entire revolutionary leadership to the distant solar system of mass guerrilla war in the countryside. Chu Teh was then the more famous, as a mercenary general, and the force was often called “the Chu-Mao army” in the Chinese newspapers and by the public. With many tens of thousands of soldiers.

A career military officer, Chu Teh had won battlefield promotion in difficult circumstances to general, and was a star in Chinese military circles. Eventually, after the 1911 overthrow of the Qing dynasty, holding powerful government offices that came with a high income from the cus­tomary bribes and graft, Chu Teh soon had a mansion, a harem with several wives as well as concubines, and a heavy opium habit. Before he conquered his long-time addictions to put everything else away and become a revolutionary. It’s no sur­prise that Chu Teh was also covertly a senior member of the Elder Brother secret society, a tie he freely admitted actively sustaining in his Communist guerrilla years.

In discussing other key military figures from secret societies (e.g. criminal or bandit gangs in the Chinese context), again restating the significance of lumpen involvement:

In those first years of the Red Army, when the whole democratic movement was reeling on the defensive, retreating under constant attack, forced under that great repressive pressure to transform into an illegal mass movement of under­ grounds and partisan organizers and rebel militias and soldiers by the many thousands—or perish—the lumpen/proletariat were the indispensible social base for the revolutionaries. Not simply some useful people, but temporarily the key strata, maybe not according to anyone’s political doctrine but in the actual real time situation.

At the party's 1929 Gutian conference, two years after the Red Army’s found­ing, Mao Z’s report on their political­ military situation bluntly said that their military’s “roving banditism” and other such political problems had their root in the reality that “the lumpen­ proletariat constitute the majority in the Red Army”

On lumpen as the explanation for widespread and violent peasant rebellions in this era (these rebellions were not organized by the CPC):

Instead of the Communist Party, Mao Z placed as the key instigators a new grouping of the most oppressed themselves—which he referred to as the “utterly destitute.”

This was difficult to pin down on the surface, because the party was report­ing from the countryside through a filter. Bluntly, closeting the lumpen as much as possible. Because the major role of the lumpen in the revolution was so counter to established Marxist class views, both Mao Zedong and the party itself worked to lessen the flashy guest appearances of their lumpen/proletariat on late-night tv talk shows. Remember, this was a time when Mao Z himself was being heavily attacked personally within the party for even recognizing the radical potential of lumpen outlaws. Party leader Li Li-san specifically criticized him for the big-time error of “guerrillaism infected by the view­point of the lumpenproletariat.” (In hind­sight, amusing words, don’t you think?)

On the break with orthodoxy Mao’s analysis represented:

Mao was in no sense an anarchist then, unlike earlier in his student days, when his roommates were anarchists and his first revolutionary study group was based on anarchist ideas. Still, it isn’t hard to notice that in Mao’s rural class analysis, the militant cutting edge of “utterly destitute” lumpen/proletarians and desperate wandering labor­ers is a lot closer to Mikhail Bakunin’s anarchist class vision of lumpen “des­titute proletarians” than it was to Marx and Engels’ “scum of all classes.” Hiding under familiar Marxist forms of discourse, Mao’s political recogni­tion about the lumpen in his time and place was actually a profound change.

Both working with the Communist Party and working without the party in many places, the lumpen/proletariat— using their underground outlaw organizations such as the Elder Brothers and the Red Spears—were helping start and lead this massive countryside rebellion. No wonder Mao was dancing around with his words pretty carefully, since this was like big time heresy, like something totally impossible or totally outrageous accord­ing to previous Marxist views.

Chapter 2: Imaginary “proletariats” and rural class differentiation

On the Party’s search for a non-existent rural proletariat after the severe repression of the urban movement, and Mao’s attempts to instead “face reality”. It is very useful in seeing how oftentimes, proceeding on the basis of Marxist slogans about class brings us further and further away from any real analysis of the current class situation.

Interesting side-note here on the NCM at the end of paragraph, and a warning on easy interpretations of class terrain:

One big reason harassed Mao Z was so determined to keep doing rural social investigations was to help establish what the class reality really was (and perhaps bring the party HQ back down to factual ground). Don’t misunderstand this: it’s easy to be amazed by these kind of gross misjudgements long after the fact, but always hard for any new generation of rev­olutionaries to work out what social forc­es to base root change of society on. Look at all the ex-college student radicals here in the u.s. empire, who in the turbulent 1960s went into the factories and blue­ collar communities to hopefully organize masses of revolutionary white workers for the base of a “New Left.” Until they actu­ally lived that class terrain, they didn’t know how unrealistic that strategy was.

The immense poverty of the countryside actually prevented the hoped-for “agricultural proletariat” from developing:

Peasants in China then by definition had some owned or rented farmland to support themselves on even if only par­tially, and had some implements such as a plow or a draft animal to farm with even if rented or borrowed. In varying degrees that materially established their class segment differences from poor peas­ants to middle peasants to rich peasants. Both land and farm implements were pre­cious and hard to come by in the Chinese countryside of the 1920s, where millions starving literally to death was an ordi­nary happening.
The rural proletariat, in contrast, were initially defined as bare agricultural laborers, without any cash or material property or means of support save their bodily strength. Wage work in that hun­gry peasant countryside was extremely scarce and very poorly paid, since few farmers could afford to hire outside labor.
While the rural proletariat was a class that the urban Communist intellectuals initially put great hopes on. this semi­ class was thinly scattered across the land and were only a very small and dis­continuous part of the rural population, often economic refugees without stable residences. Largely unable to act coop­eratively even with each other, they were greatly outnumbered in the revolutionary countryside by the lumpen/proletariat, in embarrassing contradiction to the party’s borrowed left preconceptions.

With the urban proletariat organization drowned in blood, and a rural proletariat nowhere in sight, a realignment needs to happen:

We can imagine Mao and Chu Teh and their comrades tearing their hair out reading fantasy off-target documents on strategy from far away party headquarters in Shanghai. Mao's reports back were like an antibiotic trying to combat a brain infection, a stream of key facts reassem­bling a stark picture of the real situation. Knowing this, we can see why Mao thought social investigation was such a con­stant practical need in revolutionary work. In his 1930 social investigation of Xingguo County’s Yongfeng district. Mao found that the rural proletariat barely existed in any numbers and played little if any polit­ical role. Out of the 8,800 people in the dis­trict, there were only the equivalent of fif­teen full-time agricultural laborers hired each year.

Chapter 3: Add theory and bring to boil

A brief interlude to caution against over-generalization of what happened in China. Did other lumpen’s have the same political possibilities/probabilities? No:

Here it’s useful to apply oppressor & oppressed nation theory. This con­cept for understanding one aspect of capitalism, holds that the high imperial­ist period (end of 19th century to at least three-quarters through the 20th century) was characterized by the ownership of the entire world by the various imperial­ist powers through colonialism and neo­-colonialism. No longer would there be independent countries or autonomous indigenous areas. World capitalism as a system was asymmetrical, though, fitted together by contrasting oppressor nations and oppressed nations, colonizer and col­onized. Which had opposite economic roles, opposite class structures, and oppo­site mass cultures and politics. Stunning conceptual tool, this theory, to be sure.
So while many of the lumpen/proletariat in China were often “instinctively” against the wealthy and the oppressors, and for the leftist politics of fighting for the poor, the mass of lumpen in the German would-be empire were on the far right during the “temporary nation” of the 1918-1933 Weimar Republic. And beyond, as events proved. The Chinese revolu­tion towards state socialism happened simultaneously as the far right German revolution towards the new radical fascist society. Saying this is only the roughest of guides politically. Used here just to show how we can’t automatically extrapolate the experience in one society to extend in a linear fashion into another. There’s a lot more physics involved.

Chapter 4: A mass laboratory of revolutionary crisis

The massacres of 1927 and then the growing civil war forces the party to adapt.

Chapter 5: Social investigation finds lumpen/proletariat

What is some of the early work that leads to successful adaptation? “Seeking truth from facts” a.k.a. social investigation.

Social investigation as minutely-detailed and scientific / statistical work, not generalized observations or “common-sense” analysis:

One of the advanced work traits that our young friend Mao Z kept in his toolbox were social investigations. These weren’t surprising exactly, being a part of revolutionary work ever since Karl Marx first tried it out in a modest way, in his “workers inquiry” questionnaires. But they are seldom used. Complete class analysis sometimes as detailed as per­son by person of the social and economic structure of a given area or workplace, these surveys could be smaller but still a scientific investigation. In other words, a heck of a lot of work (having done surveys and small-scale social investigation of one neighborhood street, can verify that it’s a lot of work). Mao Z thought that they were invaluable to revs, though, big-time useful, practically speaking.

One interesting side-note, again returning to this theme of decoupling the lumpen from a “respectability” based definition:

Although legal, Mao notes that pros­titutes were among the “nine low classes" as set down long-ago for society by the Qing dynasty. They were specifically grouped at the bottom of any respect­ability with opera singers, barbers, back massagers, pedicurists, chimney sweeps, those who sang folk songs to accom­pany tealeaf picking, county government clerks, and most instrumental musicians. So to understand that women sex work­ers in that major society in world terms were trash just like opera singers and local government clerical workers, puts a somewhat different spin on things. The seemingly arbitrary nature of who is respectable and who is not in any class society is always interesting when viewed from the far outside, no?

Chapter 6: Mao’s Xunwu social investigation built on work with lumpen

Not especially relevant to his argument here, but does ground things a little as to what the party was up against:

It is seldom understood here that Gen­eral Chiang Kai-sheks Western-backed repression in 1927 against China's revolu­tionary and democratic people of all kinds, was easily far more severe and bloody than what the Nazis did against leftists and progressives after they took power in Germany. Despite the u.s. left’s euro­ centric assumptions, the actual physical repression against socialists and anar­chists by Hitler was less savage, less mur­derous, less broad, than what took place in China then. Easiest understood by what they did to women accused as “reds.”
Women were not a large part of the Communist Party and were kept out of the leadership, of course, but their early feminism had deeply upset rightists. So they were special targets not only for death squad executions, but sometimes for prolonged spectacles of torture pre­cisely like the infamous lynchings of New Afrikans in the u.s. South. In most cities and villages every woman with short hair the rightist soldiers saw was to be killed, that being taken as a sure sign that they were involved in Peasant Associations or had democratic sympathies.

On the party starting to link up with secret societies as it fled the cities:

Gu Bo’s alliance with those lumpen was specifically military, and as the out­cast society had secret followers and allies and contacts all over the county, they gave the radical fugitives a new toe­ hold in organizing underground revolu­tionary Peasant Associations and armed cells. Not a small kind of help to those on the run for their lives.
What Gu Bo did in Xunwu, was only the logic of the situation, and was hap­pening all over the country. Because the lumpen/proletarians and their secret or­ganizations had been there on the scene first, existing outside the law generations before any ideological leftists had even appeared. They were the underground network of the experienced survivors and outlaws of various kinds that the badly damaged and diminished revolutionaries needed to turn to. When you’re forced out to sea with your life at stake, you turn to sailors not real estate agents. And maybe turn to pirates best of all.

Chapter 7: What happened in Xingguo county

Parallel to the urban movement being crushed, peasant rebellions and organizing gain steam, and the party is amazingly slow to react and embrace this rural energy:

In the most politically advanced vil­lages, the Peasant Associations had begun dividing up and equally redistributing the land. While in some, their “Peasant Self-Defense Army” used old rifles seized from the corrupt local government “Home Guard” militia to temporarily become the armed power. The Communist Party leaders back in the urban center were alarmed, and declared as political pol­icy that the peasant movement had gone “too far.” Many association militants had been arrested even by local reformist authorities allied to the party, and even by “red” officials themselves. While at other places peasant “riots” had broken through the authoritarian order and violently attacked landlord compounds. So Mao sent to the party his famed March 1927 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, which was throwing down politics. His gun was loaded with the challenge to his big city party and its followers, to change or perish:
“All talk directed against the peasant movement must be speedily set right. All the wrong measures taken by the revolutionary authorities concerning the peasant movement must be speed­ily changed.”
That the party was then urban-centered and largely opposed to the peasant rebel­lion breaking out, explains why the rev­olutionaries had no infrastructure in the countryside when they needed to recenter themselves there as a matter of sur­vival. Mao Z was still being criticized for the supposed error of grassroots peasant organizing! Which party leaders put down with the fancy, pseudo-Marxist name, “localism of peasant consciousness.”

Ideology about which classes had to be revolutionary and which could not be became a real, material limitation and obstacle to shifting strategy in the right direction:

Pragmatically, Mao had to be careful to sound at least basically orthodox in a Marxist sense about the lumpen/proletariat, or risk falling politically to accusa­tions of being anti-working class or anti-Leninist or anti-something. For the same reasons, Mao’s deepening relationship with the militant lumpen/proletariat had to be covered for or defended as only practical expediency.

Chapter 8: Picking up the thread in Xingguo county

On the “gritty” reality of lumpen organizations playing on both sides:

One of the things we pick up right away there was the reverse side of the coin. Which was the also large numbers of lumpen/proletarians fighting on the other side. Like, fighting with the army divi­sions of the new Kuomintang imperialist- backed regime. For instance, if the Elder Brother Society was increasingly mobi­lized as part of the revolutionary forces in the large and critical Yangtze valley region, then the Green Gang in Shanghai on its own coastal territory was commit­ted to working with Generalísimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist state in rooting out and killing Communists and anarchists and trade unionists and other democrats within its reach.

Even the very same people ended up playing both sides in quick succession:

One reason that the surviving Com­munist fugitives in Southern Jiangxi province’s Xingguo county managed to gain the hidden life raft of the criminal Three Dots Society, was that they had reached an alliance with the bandit leader Duang Qi-feng. A known martial arts master from a poor background, Duang Qi-feng with his nine brothers led an influential bandit gang in the area. What was problematic was that his Three Dots Society gang had apparently just been on the other side. Had been said to have just finished tak­ing part in the “White” repression for pay, leading the assault on the CCP headquar­ters and executing of dissidents in the city of Ganzhou earlier in 1927. Not certain if they were sharing these little business details with their new Communist allies.
Nevertheless, this awkward combina­tion of hardluck forces was immediately successful at turning the tables. Their small victories, such as overrunning a wealthy landlord’s compound and redis­tributing his grain and property for them selves and others, attracted other small bandit bands to join them. Success led to more success in a certain practical logic. Other surviving revolutionary cells in nearby areas similarly grew by absorbing lumpen bandits and military deserters in survival actions against the feudal- capitalist elite.

The initial reliance on lumpen military support, conquering territory and then organizing peasants, gets results:

This was the overall picture as well. Staying alive by allying with and recruit­ing large numbers of “floating people,” including specific criminal secret societ­ies, the young revolutionaries were able to build platforms reaching much larger numbers of peasants. Was this difficult, organizationally and politically? Probably both very difficult and very educational. In a countryside brought to awareness by the shock of actual person-by-person land redistribution, as well as a new kind of community life in villages and counties reorganized by the revolution, from 10,000 surviving and often scattered members in late 1927, the party had grown to 300,000 members by early 1934.
Driven largely out of the big cities, the party had in a move of logical but unprec­edented boldness set up nine “Soviets"— using the Bolshevik term for workers’ councils that eventually came to be a tag for that Bolshevik-run society as a whole. The Chinese used it to designate Red areas they militarily held and were socially reorganizing or governing. By 1934 there were nine such separate Soviets, stretch­ ing over a number of provinces in South China, with a population of about nine millions. The “capital,” the Central Soviet Area at Ruijin, Jiangxi province, encompassed sixteen counties and had a population of three million.
The unspoken line of building on pro­tracted peasant People’s War by relying heavily on the lumpen/proletariat to play a creative role in the mix, had proven itself in the specific situation of the Chinese revolutionary crisis. They were like much of the O.G. Recognizing the lumpen’s major role in revolutionary change was not tactical opportunism; deeper than that, it was an invaluable strate­gic understanding in that situation.

Chapter 9: Soldiers, hooray!

Hinting at how police / soldiers could be seen today:

Every society has a somewhat different class structure, we know, with its classes having their own particular characteris­tics or shape. Much Chinese lumpen activ­ity such as sex work for women or soldier­ing for men wasn’t in itself illegal in the Old Society. Karl Marx initially felt that deserters or discharged soldiers in early 1800s Europe were driven by hopeless­ness to violent criminality in order to sur­vive, thus becoming lumpen/proletarian. But from the Chinese society’s view­point, Karl only had a torn-off hand­ful of incomplete analysis. To Chinese back then, all soldiers and professionally armed men were seen as marginalized people engaging in irregular, dangerous and socially undesirable activity. Even police and government soldiers. All were considered lumpen or floating people” in their terminology.
We are going into the question of the class identity of armed men making their livelihood from homicidal violence, often “eating” the societies they work in. In part because they were of special importance to this historical example of Mao Z and that revolutionary move­ment built on guerrilla fighters. But also because lumpen outlaws of many kinds are pushing the frontlines of change now in our own world of here and now. So the earlier examples throw light for our understanding.

The “men with guns” always float around and change sides:

In fact, the whole mix of marauding bandit gangs on the roads, the uniformed national army soldiers, anti-landlord armed rebels of various kinds, pickup rifle-bearers in a regional warlord army, village thug militia of the landlords that might have chased those bandits we started with, as well as the traditional secret lumpen quasi-criminal societies that all of the above might have belonged to, were seen as all being part of a single lumpen class splinter. As interchangeable hats in one lower déclassé violent social fragment of armed men. With the same persons changing from one to another to another of such roles, as survival circum­stances dictated. Especially during the long period of warlordism which became ascendant in decaying China.

About “G.I. Joe” and “Army helicopter pilot Barbie”: The Western capitalist pro­paganda model of the idealized “citizen­ soldier,” who serves his or her nation for patriotic reasons for a few years in time of need—but then returns to their civilian community and their basic class life as a dairy farmer or college student or what­ ever—wasn’t even remotely real in early 20th century China. And is hardly real here today.

Here he finally brings it back home, and this also ties back to our misleading equation of lumpen as un-”respectable”. But how does identifying the “career mercenaries” (e.g. military) as lumpen help us exactly? In what way does the category of lumpen, now encompassing both petty criminal gangs domestically, and U.S. imperialist “home invaders” internationally, illuminate something new about either group?

Turning up the contrast, in our great Babylon a young euro-settler officer in the u.s. military who took part in or even commanded lethal hits on inno­cent villagers in any anonymous country “Whocaresistan” might be pictured in the capitalist media as a respectable or even heroic “middle-class” citizen. Like, one Wall Street hedge fund i heard about, loves to quietly recruit its rookie traders from the ranks of Israeli elite commando junior officers. One bloody hand washes the other. The bourgeoisie has always looked for useful lumpen elements to bet­ter add a super-aggressive edge to its dirty operations, even adopting some of them up into its own upper class ranks.
While a New Afrikan youth in a hoodie who jacks someone up outside our local subway station for their iPhone and wal­let, is consigned down to the lower “crim­inal classes,” as a “gangster,” a lumpen. Soon to be in state prison. Thus, two pro­fessionally violent men of two different nations here are said to actually be in two widely separate classes; the first one wholesale killing for imperialism is “good,” while the other much less violent person only doing it retail is designated as a mar­ginalized “criminal” outside regular soci­ety. Remember, imperialist propaganda is just what it is, but it sure isn't our class analysis.
It was more accurate when the Chinese Old Society took those two occupationally violent types of men—the govern­ment mercenary and the illegal bandit— as both belonging to one and the same lumpen/proletarian class strata. Maybe in a parallel understanding of today’s ille­gal “street” organizations in a Los Angeles or a Houston referring to their members as “soldiers.”
X-rayed up that way, we might see our imperialist military here as divided into two broad class segments: one being the mostly “economic draftees” who, whatever their young illusions, never do become career military, and who after a term or so return to their difficult civilian lives and communities. The other class segment being the highly stratified mass of career mercenary soldiers, airmen, and naval sailors, who find their adult lives as home invaders forcibly occupying and killing while patrolling populations of alien people in distant countries around the world. The “Global village” is really just our very violent home invasion.
That first class segment retain the iden­tity of the classes which they came from and return to. The second class segment of career mercenaries are lumpen of dif­ferent types, certainly so long as they stay within the professional military world, now outside “normal” class relations of production and distribution. Having a similar relationship to the world’s class economy as ethnic militias, the drug mafia commandos and assassins, or the "soldiers" of our urban street organiza­tions.

Chapter 10: Naming the lumpen/proletariat

As the “Red base areas” grow, dealing with the lumpen within party held territory now starts to be a political problem, and the party takes a stab at, firstly, defining the lumpen:

As early as 1930, after considerable dis­cussion, the party’s 4th Red Army and the Minxi Soviet base area government jointly the named some 30 occupations of lumpen/ proletarians, the top eight of which in terms of numbers in the Soviet area were: bandits, thieves, women sex workers, sol­dier “riff-raff,” actors, servants, gamblers, and beggars. Other expected occupations were also on the list, of course, such as local policemen, opium den bosses, run­ners (my first job at age ten, i nostalgi­cally recall) and human traffickers. But there were groups on that list that might surprise us, such as freelance scholars (or literati), as well as Buddhist and Daoist monks.

The party retains this idea of reforming the lumpen, which we’ll see again shortly in post-revolutionary China:

By 1941, Peng Zhen, who was the party official most tasked to supervise the lumpen problem, had issued a new class list of who was officially to be identified as lumpen/proletarian. It was an effort to be more complete, and emphasized pointing out that many of those who worked for the capitalist state were themselves lumpen/proletarian parasites. Naming many more kinds of common capitalist state flunkies as well as the usual low-level hustlers: "... village policemen, town­ ship clerks, retired policemen, policemen, retired county government clerks (popu­larly called dog’s legs), jailers, jail guards, hoodlums, gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, promiscuous women, drug runners, beg­gars, deserters, traffickers in human beings, funeral musicians, charlatans, witches, fortune tellers, travelling monks, professional hit men, etc.”
Most significant, as part of the People, the “floating element” were still defined by Mao not as “Enemies of the People,” but still only as unfortunates forced for sur­vival into "improper” livelihoods until the revolution could liberate them. This was one foundation of their mass work. This was reaffirming a distinctly warmer view of the lumpen/proletariat, of course, than what Marx once had called “that passively rotting mass.”

Chapter 11: Beggars/work the streets

Brief aside on beggars in Chinese society, the development of beggars guilds and professional beggars - once again showing the common-sense conceptions we have of lumpen elements are not transhistorical.

Chapter 12: Practice kicks theory forward / as theory guides practice

More about the internal view of lumpen in the CPC and how it was forced to “evolve” as the “facts on the ground” changed, and a good point at the end here, on political problems coming from every class:

They underlined characteristic “mud­dled class consciousness” about and by the lumpen fighters, such as “opposition to the masses,” “adventurism (wanton burning, killing and looting),” as well as “roving rebelism (no concept of political power).” Then, concluding with the final smackdown:
“The Red Army and Red Guards are the important tools of the revolution­ary masses in seizing state power and protecting it. The components of these important tools must all be workers, peasants and revolutionaries; no vag­abonds can be allowed to penetrate into these organizations”
Yeah, well, the resolution does go through some of the military-political errors that other Mao Z writings of that early startup period hammered down on. But the paranoid conclusion, ordering that “no vagabonds can be allowed” in the rev­olutionary army that was in practice then heavily composed of and dependent upon lumpen, bore no relationship to objective reality. Totally meaningless left blah blah blah word slinging (not that i haven’t done it myself—all too common when we don’t have real answers to give out). We can tell how much contempt about the “dirty” lumpen there still was in the 1930 Chinese party, and how much yearning there was for that old-style orthodox Communist or old-style Imperial Chinese culture stig­matizing them and excluding them.
In the same years that Mao Z was pushing the recruitment of lumpen fight­ers into the revolution—and pointing out how they constituted a majority of the Red Army—the party was also warning against them as a special danger. Now, all classes and peoples growing up within capitalism have flaws and bring their characteristic problems in a revolution­ary context. Yes, even intellectuals, work­ers and peasants. This is definitely true in the real world if not in the imaginary intellectual world. Everyone is part of the problem as well as part of the solution. Only the lumpen, however, are usually painted by leftists in such a darkly nega­tive overcast.

On why the lumpen is unpredictable and can break many different ways:

What everyone is often too busy to hear, was that for the lumpen/proletariat it wasn’t the same time as on the clocks of the working class and peasantry and intellectuals. For those other more “reg­ular classes, if conditions weren’t favor­able or a good choice didn’t materialize, they could always just lay low and do daily life as normal. Patiently organizing or pre­paring for a better breakthrough. But so often the lumpen didn’t have that choice. Their alarm clock was always ringing. If a good choice didn’t open up, they often had only bad choices they had to jump into. If armed revolution looked too shaky a step, then working as a criminal or serving the regime were survival options. Lumpen had no farm or factory job or schoolroom to fall back on.

On lumpen role in defense against Japanese invasion, and as collaborators too:

That entire Chinese mercenary regiments and divisions of lumpen soldiers by the many tens of thousands were corruptly going over to serve the Japanese invasion, certainly didn’t lead Mao Z and the revo­lutionary movement to think any better of the lumpen/proletariat as drinking bud­dies. So the lumpen were well represented on all sides, good and evil, of every conflict in China at the same time. A gritty but morally easy going, non-denominational reality. As successful as the Red Army’s “flipping” of enemy lumpen soldiers into being its own recruits had been, now the Japanese imperialists were rivaling the Communists as recruiters. The very optimistic class analysis of the lumpen in 1926 probably wasn’t at the top of Mao Z’s the­oretical mind at that moment.

But while Mao retains the tactical flexibility to incorporate lumpen elements into his army, he is also aiming for a qualitatively different army than a bandit gang / secret society / capitalist army. This factors in later as the lumpen are given a chance to “proletarianize” after the revolution:

Mao Z was saying that the lumpen/pro­letarian “non-class” category of “soldiers" (ping), was only correct for labeling the bad guys—“White” reactionary armies and militias and landlord thugs and cops. While, on the other hand, he insisted that his men and women, the revolutionary good guys, the People’s Liberation Army troops and Red Guards militia them­ selves, weren’t any lumpen “soldiers" at all. Rather, Mao argued, they were better identified as “fighters” (chan-shih) for the People. Who by their political choice for the Red Army were becoming proletarianized. In fact, men and women in the party and Army were actually forbidden by Mao Z to call the Red troops by the term “soldiers," and strictly ordered to always call themselves “fighters” instead.

The clever part here is simultaneously absorbing these disparate groups and transforming them into holders of a shared identity:

Separating their own fighters and cadre in class theory from the lumpen/ proletariat—and then co-opting theoret­ically into the “peasantry” those from the traditional men’s lumpen secret societ­ies—was only a small start.
It signaled that under Mao Z’s polit­ical leadership, the party had in prac­tice divided up and sifted through the separate lumpen/proletarian fragments. Those judged immediately necessary and useful, primarily fighting men from the ranks of bandits and rival armies, were absolved of the stigma of being “rootless” lumpen. While the not immediately either useful or hostile—most beggars and drug addicts and sex workers and others hus­tling on the street or surviving as petty servants of the wealthy—were catego­rized as still lumpen/proletarian, but as innocent victims of capitalism to be dealt with later.

Chapter 13: Lessons / drawing in pencil

Trying to extract some generalizable things here from the Chinese experience.

On illegality / criminality / non-respectability and its enduring connection with revolution (but this also makes sense when considering revolutions happen to societies in deep crisis, crisis which often brings with it a rapid increase in criminal / survival activity):

One surprise: that same Chinese early 20th century revolution validated Marx’s suspicions of the dangerous class” all right, but also validated Mikhail Bakun­in’s anarchist vision of the important revolutionary outlaws of the “destitute proletariat”. The two clashing views of 19th century European revolutionary thinkers who were only starting to turn their perception on the lumpen, turned out to not be either/or contradictions, but in a deeper way two warring aspects of the same heterodox lumpen “partial­ class” reality. As many declassed social fragments, the lumpen in Old China were both good and evil as well as indifferent, simultaneously.
[…]
Also, that large-scale experience re­minded us again of something basic that we surely know, but can forget: The lumpen as fallen out of class fragments are people of crisis. Dramatically chang­ing in size and even political character in response to intensifying war and natural disasters, no less social upheavals and economic depressions of the system. The lumpen that Mao Z knew in his youth were not the same actors that he was see­ing at the end of the long civil war.
One lesson we were reminded of again from that experience, is that revolution­ary activity has a natural relationship to the terrain of mass illegality and underground life. This criminalized world is the ground that the lumpen/proletariat know as their own. No group of would-be revolutionaries can be sure that they will not have to navigate and survive on that fractured terrain. As the Chinese Communist Party discovered to their shock in 1927.
Revolution always needs to move around in the zone of illegal and out­cast life anyway; to draw resources from it, to find needed people in, mon­itoring its near and far seismic activity for danger and opportunity, while in general respecting it and learning from it. To unthinkingly dismiss the lumpen and their shadow world matches the description of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
Not a few groups of revolutionary intel­lectuals from privileged backgrounds in this country or that, have tried to make a point of what they considered their superior morality, particularly as opposed to criminals and street people. We can take this as the petty self-delusion it was.
Like the Bolshevik leaders before the Russian Revolution, whose central committee was once horrified to find out that their underground administration in the South was financing the whole party with Stalin's violent bank expropriations. The stuffed shirts never did find out that the smuggling of illegal revolutionary flyers and books across Scandinavia into Russia was paid for by also smuggling more profitably what was then illegal pornog­raphy (Le. condoms and explicit sex edu­cation pamphlets). For that matter, the Communist bomb factory that ran semi­ underground next to Russia in Finland, in a tacit handshake with the local Finnish police, would have sent many “respect­able” intellectuals in that party into a concussion.

Interesting side note here:

By the way, i always notice when the UN or some childrens rights agency screams about the recruitment of "child soldiers” in some lumpen Afrikan civil war. Not that we’re the same as them, but the fact is that revolution is like pure math­ematics—it’s best for the very young. Like in desperate poverty and oppression, is it really better for kids to just sit there and die passively? Grown-up societies aren’t going to save them, that’s for sure.
In 1936, the average age in the Red Army was only nineteen—and most Red fighters had joined at age 15 or 16. Some had been the 10 or 11 year old orphan boys and girls picked up to shelter and teach by Mao's wandering army, running errands and messages, and called “little red dev­ils”. Others had joined the movement first at 13 or 14 in the revolutionary village teenager organizations, then graduated “naturally” and eagerly into the Red Army. Think that’s “too young" to come out of the Wilderness? Clarence 13X, Malcolms equally smart compatriot, started re­-building his oppressed community in a more radical way specifically by recruit­ing bands of 10 year olds.

Since the lumpen is many disparate class fractions, it doesn’t break cleanly one way or another, and it doesn’t need to:

A real part of the lumpen were enough for the strug­gle to win, they didn’t have to get all or most of those outcast class fragments. That’s an important practical lesson just by itself.
When we say that the lumpen can’t be just labeled together as one class, there’s something specific we’ve got stuck in our throats and gotta cough up. There’s an off-target tendency to define lumpen/proletarian as deviant behavior, another way of saying someone is a psychopath or amoral or something. Because of the whole dissing and social bias against the lumpen. Like, believing the lumpen are really the down and out who’ve been driven out of their own humanity—who are nasty, amoral, treacherous, like a Brandon Darby or your enemy going off on you any moment. That’s true for some really messed up poor people i’ve run into, absolutely—but just as true for some middle-class types we’ve known (to say nothing of the capitalists, who always take the big prize for individ­ualistic, amoral and vicious).
Lumpen/proletarian isn’t a behav­ior, it isn’t good or bad, its a certain kind of objective relationship to the regular structure of economic produc­tion and distribution. Being out of that whole “normal" class structure thing, that is, and having a different conscious­ ness because of it. Mao is always quoted talking about lumpen as “brave fighters," and the stereotype of them is macho, is of militants, gunmen, soldiers, and the like. But in protest politics here, for instance, it wasn’t unusual to find lumpen as organiz­ers, fundraisers, public speakers, political leaders, or sympathizers quietly doing behind-the-scenes practical work, to say nothing of the con-artists and hustlers attracted to the action—the whole wide range of political activism good and bad. To be sure, most here in the u.s.a. weren’t admitting to being lumpen but held up cardboard class identities over their faces. That’s Western culture for you.
Mao Z was so good at working with them politically because he recognized their specific lived politics as real, whether right or wrong by leftist stan­dards, rather than thinking of them in an abstract way as an unrespectable “class."

Postscript / coming home: reforming the lumpen/proletariat

How the party dealt with lumpen after the revolution.

Heavy focus on “integration” of lumpen into “regular society”. As Sakai points out, obviously not the way we see social work done today:

Many different kinds of party pro­grams were initiated to bring those marginalized back into full participation in economic production. From farming “labor exchange brigades" (i.e. labor co­ ops) where peasants formed labor teams of their choosing to work their separate plots in turn together-to propaganda campaigns tugging at opium addicts to join new “mutual aid groups" where they could talk about their problems and encourage each other to get clean. This wasn’t social work in the old way, but a main element of the party’s economic program in the newly liberated territory. Which was under economic blockade from the “White" regime and the Japanese invaders. Villages were organized to share the burden, giving returning lumpen shel­ter and food while the local “red" cadre found handicraft making equipment and materials or small pieces of farmland for them.

As the lumpen re-integrates into post-revolutionary society, it also starts to disappear:

In part, the revolutionaries felt they need­ed these public campaigns and displays, to help turn around existing mass prejudice against the dispossessed. Sympathetic real life “speaking bitterness” stories of selected lumpen/proletarians were spread nationally. In particular, first-hand sto­ries by poor women beggars and sex work­ers. That was a major aim of the whole campaign, as well as to prove the superi­ority of the revolution by its ability to take on and eliminate the kind of mass suffering which even the most affluent Western cities did nothing about.

Blackstone rangers: u.s. experiment using “gangs” to repress black community rebellion

This essay, written in the 70s and available to read separately from this book, can be seen as a brief example of Sakai applying his analysis of the lumpen’s political “indeterminacy” to a relatively close-to-home example. Interesting in how different parts of the U.S. state had different reactions and different views on what to do with lumpen organizations.

How does this contrast with Sakais earlier analysis? Of course they weren’t revolutionary - as Sakai might say, so what? Note that anti-social activity was also present in the lumpen elements in the Chinese revolution e.g. the “secret societies” or bandit gangs - so clearly the mere fact of participating in “anti-social”, often violent activities, doesn’t always restrict the political possibilities:

Contrary to the myth so often projected, the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples were never “revolutionary,” or even usu­ally militant. The youth gang leadership openly and honestly looked to their own interest, bargaining and maneuvering with all sides to get the best “deal.” Andrew Barret, Youth Director of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (and a former street worker with a "Stone" affili­ate), summed it up very concisely:
"The Rangers are becoming highly politically oriented. They are inter­ested in getting a piece of the action, not tearing down the system.”

As Greenlee himself points out:
“Most of street gang activity is antiso­cial. and it is and was a serious prob­lem to the community. They weren’t robinhoods; they weren’t robbing from the rich to feed the poor. Their rip-offs weren’t taking place in Highland Park, they were taking place in Woodlawn and Lawndale. They were ripping off their friends, neighbors, mothers, fathers and daughters."
While the Black liberation organizations have always had to fight the repressive police structures, to publicize their rac­ist crimes and organize against them, the “Stones" and “Ds" leadership had a policy of submission to the police. Time and again they hoped that cooperation with the police might earn them favors, partic­ularly personal protection from arrests.
What was the exact nature of that cooperation with the Chicago Police Department? The gang leadership, par­ticularly elements of the "Main 21" of Blackstone, served the police as inform­ers and enforcers, suppressing sparks of Black unrest. 1966, 1967 and 1968 all saw massive Black "riots," rebellions in the Chicago Ghetto. All three years the "Stones" leadership worked with the police to keep the Woodlawn community "quiet." In a grant application to the O.E.O.. the Woodlawn Organization gave an example of this activity:
”... Ranger activity during the widely publicized westside riots in Chicago during the summer of 1966. At the time the riots were underway, the Rangers were under considerable pressure to join the rioters because of their alliances with Westside groups.
“The Ranger leadership met and decided not to participate in the riots but, more importantly, decided to make an organized effort to prevent similar violence in Woodlawn.”

Differentiates here the various negative reactions to rioting, and how reactions some were based on greater strategy concerns whereas others were simple counter-insurgency tactics:

Many Black organizations in various cities, fearing the destruction of these rebellions and viewing them as a futile direction, worked to “cool” their communities (the B.P.P. itself did so in Oakland, California, for example). But to these particular gang leaders this “riot prevention” took the form of close cooperation with the police, and was only the most visible tip of their submission to the state apparatus.

After the police killing of a Black man, the focus of the white community is finding accomplices in the Black community who can work to prevent White property damage:

Instead of organizing protests against the white merchants or taking action against racists themselves or even just standing aside and letting some rough justice be attempted, T.W.O. and the gangs had to act as police auxiliaries and protect white business property. In both Brazier’s letter to O.E.O. and Finney’s statements to the press the spotlight is on how the T.W.O.-gang combination prevented the liquor store from being destroyed; in both accounts one is struck by how unimport­ant the murder of a Black father seems. In the congratulatory newspaper editorials, statements by liberal politicians, memos to Washington, etc. the use of the threat of violence by a gang against commu­nity residents—clearly illegal by existing laws—is warmly applauded. This reveals the essence of capitalist “Law and order.”

Here, this is true, but then again, are these factors not present in other lumpen that broke different - also consider this whole essay in relation to Sakai’s anecdote (early in the book) about street organization with a “radical” orientation (the aside about “Young General”) - that  targeted white businesses instead of protecting them. What led that organization to such radically different politics?

First, the gang leaders had a strong nat­ural orientation towards protecting white business in Woodlawn. They viewed the community—people and commerce and real estate—as a resource to be mined for its profitability. Every white businessman who left the area simply meant a source of potential income lost. When the liquor store incident happened the Rangers and Disciples met and assessed the situation. According to Nick Lorenzo, “We agreed that this community is ours and we’re going to keep it.”

Again, what are the counter-vailing factors that would have allowed the gang to develop in a different way?

Secondly, the gang leadership shared with the government an opposition to grassroots Black organization. After all, a successful mass Black organization in Woodlawn would have crowded the “Stones,” even recruited people away from them. So that as their troubles increased, as police arrests and court cases piled up, as Fort and others were indicted on federal charges of embezzling O.E.O. funds, the gang leadership was paralyzed. By 1968, the police repression was so heavy against the “Stones” as to be crushing. Fort him­self was arrested one hundred fifty times in six months—almost once a day!

On involvement of top “machine politicians” in using the gang for counter-insurgency:

It is widely assumed that Mayor Richard Daley viewed the O.E.O. grant and the gangs as a threat to his Machine and that he therefore used repression to crush them. On the contrary, Mayor Daley always appreciated how useful the gangs could be. In 1966 Jeff Fort was given a job at the City’s Woodlawn Urban Progress Center. At that time, Denton Brooks, head of the City’s “Anti-Poverty” program (Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity) took Fort and other Main 21 to lunch and suggested that the “Stones" submit a proposal for an “anti-poverty" grant.' Black youth gangs had previously been used by the Chicago Police Dept, in order to harass and drive out Black community organizers. In 1965, Chicago SNCC’s attempt to do “grassroots” organizing came under heavy attack from local gangs, with vandalization of the SNCC office, intimidation of children at the SNCC “Freedom School” and beat­ings of SNCC workers contributing to the death of the project. It was alleged that this conflict was caused by the police, who gave the gangs a “license” to commit crimes in return for attacking SNCC.

On the split in state approach (more cutting-edge “COIN” techniques vs hardline repression). How does this play out today? Is directly involving gangs even necessary?

It is important to see that there was a sharp split in the white government over how to pacify the ghetto. The gang proj­ect, an advanced counterinsurgency pro­gram with certain real similarities to U.S. programs in Vietnam and the Philippines, brought this split out in the open. In Vietnam, we saw this split between the “civic action” programs of the U.S. Special Forces, which sought to use bribes/re- forms to recruit ethnic minority native forces to fight the communist insurgency, vs. the conventional warfare of annihila­tion using massive levels of U.S. regular troops and firepower so clumsily wielded by General Westmoreland and his clan. The analogy lends insight to Chicago. The liberals wanted to use reforms to recruit “native” forces to pacify the ghetto, while the conservatives wanted to turn the police loose to repress anything Black that lifted its head. Some wanted to do both, which is what happened both in Vietnam and Chicago.

Postscript (2017)

Interesting connection with general rise of NGO-ized protest groups / astroturfed “movement” - the “aboveground” counter-insurgency work that works complementarily to the “underground” manipulation of lumpen organization:

T.W.O.—The Woodlawn Organization- featured prominently in our story as the main sponsoring community non-profit organization. It is closed down now. T.W.O. was first injected into a poor New Afrikan community as a highly-funded virus, designed by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (I.A.F.). It was to be a spotlighted demonstration that the I.A.F.s patented, pro-capitalist reform organizing could smother grassroots New Afrikan insurgencies. I.A.F. was, of course, where Barack Obama’s white handlers sent him to learn the tactics of top-down community organizing.” Long led by Rev. Leon Finney Jr. and his wife, Georgette Greenlee, T.W.O. before its recent demise was always highly successful—at least for the Black bourgeoisie. Rev. Finney Jr. and his wife, for instance, were paid $293,000 in 2010 by the organization. Plus an addi­tional $190,000 paid to Finney-owned companies for providing rental space and food for T.W.O. The neighborhood is now steadily gentrifying while working class New Afrikans are being driven out, so T.W.O.’s historic pacification mission is now “mission accomplished.” Although the non-profit organization’s end was due to the State of Illinois’s findings that T.W.O. recently defrauded the state of $689,000 in various no-show grants, no criminal pros­ecution is yet in sight. Business as usual for neo-colonial “democracy.”

1. The importance of using idealism to increase commitment, and the recruitment of youth as a natural corollary of this.
2. The creation of a culture of intense dedication within the party.
3. “The party in action” providing both the main source of recruitment as well as the baseline level of activity that sustains dedicated membership and leadership development.
4. The use of study groups as a way to build unity around key ideas and to convince new members that the party can win.
5. Systematic and widespread leadership development, by pushing people to develop new and challenging skills and take leadership in other facets of their lives outside the party.
6. Honest and straightforward collective criticism that “cuts through the compliments and cant so that it is possible to see whether the purposes of your cause have really been served by the activities in which you have been engaged.”

A quick and engaging read, this text is a good reminder of the seriousness which characterized communist organizations of old, and a source of inspiration for thinking about how to build our own organizations.

Chapter 1: The Starting Point

As Hyde points out, Communist groups have had immense success by cultivating a dedicated minority of hard-core members (a.k.a a vanguard) but they are not entirely unique in this, they just may not pay as much lip-service to the idea of majoritarian democracy as other groups:

Even so, it is probably true to say of the Communists that never in man’s history has a small group of people set out to win a world and achieved more in less time. Certainly, they have brought far more people under their sway by the methods they employ than anyone else has done during the same period. Moreover, they have always worked through a minority. This is true of those territories which they now rule and also of those where they have not yet come to power.
This is, however, less exceptional than would appear. In practice, most organisations and causes work through minorities. Even those who believe most deeply in majority rule still depend upon the faithful few to do the work, to make the necessary sacrifices in time, energy and devotion to keep the movement going.
The Communists have learned from experience, and as a result both of pooling their ideas and of learning from the successes and failures of their movement everywhere, how best they can make the maximum impact upon others, even though they must work through a minority. Many of the methods they have evolved have grown out of this realisation. It is these that I consider it is most useful for us to examine.
The Communist Party throughout the world has thirty-six million members. Of these, a very high proportion live in lands ruled by Communism. There, quite consciously and deliberately the party is kept small so that it may retain the character of an élite. Only a few million live and work in the non-Communist world. Yet the impact they make upon it is such that we are conscious of their presence the whole of the time. They have profoundly influenced the thought of the majority. The policies of other parties are notably different from what they would otherwise have been because the Communists exist.

Why the “correct ideas” are not enough for effective organization:

Beliefs are important to Communists. Communist policies grow out of them. Reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, may not be easy but it is necessary to an understanding of Communists and Communism. But it is not this that attracts people to the Communist cause. In my experience, the strength of Communism lies in its people and the way in which they are used. It is at this level that Communists have most to teach us. They use well the human material at their disposal. Most often non-Communists do not.
Perhaps I should make it clear that when I speak of Communists in these terms I do so against a background of having associated with Communists in almost every part of the world, not just some special sort of British Communists, or Western Communists, who live in affluent societies. A point which must be grasped in any discussion of world Communism is that Communists are, or become, much of a type the world over. They have certain things in common which distinguish them everywhere.

Good communists believe in materialism but are also the ultimate “idealists”, as he puts it here - and the connection here he makes with youth is especially key - youth is also where we see many class-defections, or people taking a definitive side that is not always sharply in line with their “objective” class interests. It is is exactly the “subjective” factor of idealism that can lead to important minorities of middle-class youth taking the side of socialism. The flip side of this is youth in more desperate conditions taking the side of revolutionary action because they see a bleak future ahead in “adult society” - they have the most to gain from revolution and the new possibilities it would create:

If you ask me what is the distinguishing mark of the Communist, what it is that Communists most outstandingly have in common, I would not say, as some people might expect, their ability to hate—this is by no means common to them all. I would say that beyond any shadow of doubt it is their idealism, their zeal, dedication, devotion to their cause and willingness to sacrifice. This characterises the Communists wherever Communism has still to come to power and is obviously true of many in the very different circumstances where it now rules. The vast majority of the Communists I have met anywhere conform to this pattern.
This is no accident. It does not just happen. The Communists have evolved their own means by which they are able to evoke an exceptional degree of dedication. And they use it very effectively indeed. To understand how it is done, one must follow through the process step by step from the start.
The majority of those who join the Communist Party are young. The average joining age used to be between seventeen and twenty-five. Today it is between fifteen and twenty-five. For some years now they have been recruiting successfully among fifteen to seventeen-year-olds. The British Communist Party recently organised a recruiting campaign which brought in several thousand new members. When, in due course, the General Secretary made his report to the Executive Committee, he said that most of those who joined during the period of the campaign were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.
A majority of the Asian Communists with whom I have shared prison cells joined the movement when they were at school. Go to Caracas, Venezuela, and you will find that some of the Communists’ greatest successes are amongst high school and secondary school boys and girls. Some of the guerilla bands in the mountains of Venezuela are manned almost exclusively by youngsters of this age who have left their homes and their studies in order to be able to start the armed fight for Communism. The first sign of Communism which missionaries in Africa have discovered has often been when strikes occurred in their own mission schools. In other words, the successful appeal to the very young is not a British phenomenon. One finds it everywhere.
Youth is a period of idealism. The Communists attract young people by appealing directly to that idealism.
[…]
Wherever I have travelled I have found that young people are idealistic. This is natural to any healthy youngster. I can only conclude that it is the way God wants them to be. We offend against charity and justice, and against commonsense too, when we sneer at starry-eyed idealism. We do it to our own loss.
Young people have always dreamed of better worlds and we must hope that they always will. The day we lose our dreams all progress will cease. Idealistic young people will want to change the world and will pursue their own idealistic course in any case. If their idealism is not appealed to and canalised within the circles in which they have grown up they will seek elsewhere for an outlet.
The Communists have demonstrated that the idealism of youth is something which can be harnessed and used with tremendous effect. It is a dynamic thing. Despite all the twists and turns of Communist policy it continues over the years to provide the dynamism of the Communist movement.

If there is one point emphasized over and over in this book, it is the level of dedication communist parties have been able to expect from their membership - communism becomes the “dominant thing” in the lives of members:

Communism becomes the dominant thing in the life of the Communist. It is something to which he gives himself completely. Quite obviously it meets a need, fills a vacuum at the time when he is first attracted to it. More significant is that it normally continues to be the dominant force in the life of the Communist for as long as he remains in the movement.
The Communists’ appeal to idealism is direct and audacious. They say that if you make mean little demands upon people, you will get a mean little response which is all you deserve, but, if you make big demands on them, you will get an heroic response. They prove in practice that this is so, over and over again. They work on the assumption that if you call for big sacrifices people will respond to this and, moreover, the relatively smaller sacrifices will come quite naturally.

The “virtuous circle” of high expectations in an organization (anyone can probably relate to his counter-example of this at the end of the second paragraph):

Such sacrifices, whether at the level of leaders or of rank and file, are impressive. And they do impress those who associate with the movement. Particularly impressive is the fact that sacrifice is found at all levels of the organisation. Youngsters of every continent have responded to this example of idealism expressing itself in terms of sacrifice. This is true of the newly-developing areas. It is true also of the ‘decadent’ West. Indeed, the more materialistic our society becomes, the more the dedicated man stands out by way of contrast. The dedicated man makes his own appeal simply by virtue of the fact that he is dedicated.
Like attracts like. Those who are attracted by the dedication they see within the movement will themselves be possessed of a latent idealism, a capacity for dedication. Thus dedication perpetuates itself. It sets the tone and pace of the movement as a whole. This being so, the movement can make big demands upon its followers, knowing that the response will come. If the majority of members of an organisation are half-hearted and largely inactive, then it is not surprising if others who join it soon conform to the general pattern. If the organisation makes relatively few demands upon its members and if they quite obviously feel under no obligation to give a very great deal to it, then those who join may be forgiven for supposing that this is the norm and that this is what membership entails.
If, on the other hand, the majority of members, from the leaders down, are characterised by their single-minded devotion to the cause, if it is quite clear that the majority are giving until it hurts, putting their time, money, thought and if necessary life itself at its disposal, then those who consider joining will assume that this is what will be expected of them. If they nonetheless make the decision to join, they will come already conditioned to sacrifice till it hurts.

This anecdote (while amusingly centered on the party newspaper) adds some color to Hyde’s idea of what it is like for Communism to become the “dominant thing” in someones life, and the real sense of purpose and meaning that can create:

Often ex-Communists meeting together can talk of the ‘old days when we were in the Party’ rather like old soldiers discussing nostalgically the campaigns they shared in the past. We had been doing this. We had talked of old comrades who now saw themselves as our enemies, of the campaigns in which we had engaged together.
Then, very wistfully, he said: ‘Do you remember what life was really like in the Party? You got up in the morning and as you shaved you were thinking of the jobs you would do for Communism that day. You went down to breakfast and read the Daily Worker to get the Party line—to get the shot and shell for a fight in which you were already involved. You read every item in the paper wondering how you might be able to use it for the cause.
‘I had never been interested in sport but I read the sports pages in order to be able to discuss sport with others and to be able to say to them, “Have you read this in the Daily Worker?” I would follow this through by giving them the paper in the hope that they might turn from the sports pages and read the political ones too.
‘On the bus or train, on my way to work, I read the Daily Worker as ostentatiously as I could, holding it up so that others might read the headlines and perhaps be influenced by them. I took two copies of the paper with me; the second one I left on the seat in the hope that someone would pick it up and read it.
‘When I got to work, I kept the Daily Worker circulating. One worker after another would take it outside, read it for a few minutes and bring it back to me again. At lunchtime, in the canteen or the restaurant, I would try to start conversations with those with whom I was eating. I made a practice of sitting with different groups in order to spread my influence as widely as I could. I did not thrust Communism down their throats but steered our conversations in such a way that they could be brought round to politics or, if possible, to the campaigns which the Party was conducting at the time.
‘Before I left my place of work at night, there was a quick meeting of the factory group or cell. There we discussed in a few minutes the successes and failures of the day. And we discussed, too, what we hoped to be able to do on the following day.
‘I dashed home, had a quick meal and then went out, maybe to attend classes, maybe to be a tutor, maybe to join some Communist campaign, going from door to door canvassing or standing at the side of the road selling Communist papers—doing something for Communism. And I went home at night and dreamed of the jobs I was going to do for Communism the next day.’
Rather sadly he added: ‘You know, life had some meaning and some purpose in those days. Life was good in the Communist Party.’
He was right. Of course it was. It is quite wrong to suppose that it is only the saints who are not sad. Sinners can get quite a lot of fun out of life too. And those who are dedicated get immensely more out of life than those who are not. The day he had described had been my life and that of most of my old comrades. It was a day in the life of a dedicated man, a normal day in the life of a hardcore Communist Party member. It is not surprising that he looked back at that life from the wasteland of his present purposeless existence with a considerable degree of nostalgia.

To resummarize:

What distinguishes the Communist movement from most others and makes it possible for so small a minority to make so great an impact upon our time is the dedication of the average individual member and the immense and dynamic force this represents when all those individuals collectively make their contribution to the cause. Without that they would not be prepared to accept the organisation, the discipline, the unending ‘Marxist education’, the incessant appeals for ever more action. All these contribute to the Communist impact, but the starting point is dedication.

Chapter 2: Taking the Plunge

Communism “asked for the whole man and got it”:

I recall a conversation with a judge in South East Asia before whom hundreds of captured and surrendered guerilla fighters and detainees had appeared. He told me, that without prompting, he could invariably distinguish between those who were trained Communist Party members and those who were mere sympathisers. Of many of the intellectuals who came to Communism in the West in the 1930s it might be said that their association with the Communist movement led to a flowering of their talents. The finest period of many of the artists, writers and poets, who came to Communism—even though they subsequently left it—was the one when they were Communists. This was partly because their work became more meaningful to them because they now had a cause for which to live and to which they could harness their talents. But it was also the case that Communism demanded everything of them. It asked for the whole man and got it.

Tying back to his earlier talk about idealism, this quote shows that “idealism” maybe is the wrong word - because Communist self-belief in their ability to actually transform the world in their lifetimes was so strong in this era:

Individual members of the Communist Party are brought to believe that together they and others like them can change the world. In their lifetime. They are convinced that this is not just a dream for they have techniques and a Marxist science of change-making which provide them with the means by which this can be done. When you have succeeded in making men believe that change is necessary and possible and that they are the ones who can achieve it; when you have convinced them that they and the small minority of whom they are a part can transform the world in their lifetime, you have achieved something very considerable indeed. You have put into their lives a dynamic force so powerful that you can bring them to do what would otherwise be impossible. The dull and humdrum becomes meaningful. Life becomes purposeful and immensely more worth living.

On the “Party in action” being the key point of contact with new recruits - specifically, the dedication of the Communists and their concern with real problems. This also helps to select for people who understand the level of dedication that will be required once they join the party:

To understand the Communist achievement one must understand the sheer mechanics, as it were, by which people, quite ordinary people with only average potentialities, can be brought to a state of mind where they are anxious to serve their cause by becoming leaders, are made into leaders and are enabled to lead effectively. As I describe the method which the Communists use, Christians and others may care to relate it to their own work.
The majority of people who join the Communist Party do so knowing very little about Communism. This is as true of the intellectuals as of the workers. The potential recruit sees the Party in action. Frequently, someone he knows is associated with it, or someone with whom he works comes to his attention because of some form of activity in which he is engaged. It may be that signatures are being collected for a peace petition, or a Communist-led campaign is being conducted to improve working conditions or to obtain higher wages. Or he may see the Party campaigning to prevent a widow from being evicted from her slum dwelling. The important point is that he sees the Party in action and he admires what it is doing. From this he goes on to be more conscious of its other campaigns and increasingly to feel that these correspond to real needs. They are relevant where so much that is being done by other bodies seems to be quite irrelevant to the titanic needs and ills of our time.
In other words, it is the Party in action, an active, campaigning body, and the people who make up the Party, who normally provide the spur to the recruits’ first approach to Communism. To spell it out: recruits to Communism are usually attracted by the dedicated people who are Communists and by the Party in action, and this action is appealing because it appears to be concerned with real problems. The Party operates at a level which is meaningful to the potential recruit. It comes to him, as it were; he does not have to seek out the Party.
[…]
The strongest impact made upon the mind of the recruit by the first Communist with whom he associates is likely to be of dedication. The first impression made by the Party comes from its activity—and the apparent relevance of that activity to our times. This being so, the man who decides to become a Communist does so in the expectation that he, too, will have to be dedicated and active as well. This, he knows from the start, is what is involved in being a Communist. He comes to the Party, therefore, prepared to have to give of himself to an exceptional extent.

Again, the difference in culture/expectations that is key to effectiveness:

In circumstances like these, the number of non-dedicated, non-active members continues to grow. Their minimal Christianity, their lack of dedication and absence of activity becomes the norm. It is a vicious circle.
The norm in the Communist Party is quite different. The consequence is that the recruits come expecting right from the start that a lot is going to be asked of them. This is tremendously important. It means that the recruit gets off on the right foot. The Party has only to underpin and maintain a concept which is already in the mind of the new member.

Chapter 3: The Follow Through

This chapter, which can sound a little dated, still conveys an interesting idea about the importance of selling the party paper. As a commitment device and a demonstration of moral courage:

The instruction of the new Party member does not normally begin immediately after he joins. Quite deliberately, and with good reason, the Party sends its new members, whenever possible, into some form of public activity before instruction begins. More specifically, it is designed to commit the recruit publicly to Communism.
Quite often this will take the form of being sent out to stand at the side of the street or in some public place selling Communist papers, periodicals or pamphlets. This may appear to be a very simple, somewhat low-grade form of activity. It is in fact of profound psychological significance. For the new recruit, still having to adjust his mind to the thought that he is now a Communist (and he knows that for large sections of the public the very name is a dirty word), this is something very significant indeed. He is making a public witness for the cause which he is now making his own. And he is, incidentally, committing himself to the Communist cause in more ways than one.
When I was a Communist I sold the Party’s papers at the roadside. I hated it. Only someone who has done the same will understand what I mean. You take up your stand in some particularly public place, armed with your pile of papers. With the eyes of the world upon you, you unwrap them, feeling very self-conscious as you do so. You are convinced that everyone is wondering what you are going to produce from that parcel. You hold up a copy of the paper and you try to shout its name, and hardly recognise your own voice as you do so. The significance of all this is that, humble as the task may appear, to engage in it requires for many people a certain degree of moral courage.

Chapter 4: Study Groups at Work

On Party study groups and the general structure that makes them effective.

Once recruits have sold the paper enough to field a lot of hostile questions, they are hungry for more knowledge about communism, capitalism, and the Party, and it is from this real felt need that the Party starts educating them.

He will be made to feel right from the start of the very first session that instruction is not an end in itself; that acquiring knowledge may be interesting but that this should have some purpose. He is made to understand that the knowledge he gains will be so much ammunition for the fight, something to be used, not just absorbed. And he can see that this is not just words for all around him are people who are living the Communism he is being taught.
The way in which the subject matter is presented emphasises the difference between these classes and orthodox ‘adult education’. If he has ever attended other adult classes he will know that it is normal for quite a high proportion of the people who attend them to be there simply ‘out of interest’, and that others are learning simply for the sake of learning. They are the sort of people who talk a lot and do little. Armchair philosophers and bar-parlour know-alls. It would be untrue to say that there are no people at Communist classes who enjoy the sound of their own voices. But the recruit will soon see that these are the ones for whom the tutor shows the least patience or that the attention he gives them is aimed at persuading them, or pressurising them, into linking words with action.
Important too is the fact that the tutor is not simply asking his pupils to go into battle, he is quite obviously involved in it himself. The examples he uses, the anecdotes he tells, are not taken from books. They come direct from his own experience, from his contact with people and from the workaday world. The demand for total commitment implicit in the tutor’s words is made acceptable by the knowledge that the tutor is himself totally committed. If he is so obviously dedicated he has the right to present the world in terms which emphasise the need for dedication.

Hyde details the “Inspirational Approach” the party education first takes, tackling the key questions and the role the party plays:

(1) The kind of world we live in.

(2) How that world can be changed.

(3) The force that can change it.

(4) The Communist Party, the party of the working class.

Some other key ingredients:

Global Struggle:

Next, the subject matter is presented in global terms. It is presented against the background of a world in conflict. The recruit is made to feel that there is a great battle going on all over the world. That this includes his own country, his own town, his own neighbourhood, the block of flats in which he lives, the factory or office where he works.
He is made to feel also that the period of history in which he happens to be living is a decisive one and that he personally has a decisive role to play. He is part of a great, worldwide movement which is challenged on all sides, confronted by an implacable enemy and involved in a battle which will decide the course of history for generations ahead.

Instruction for Action:

Next, the instruction the recruit receives is from the start linked with action. It is made meaningful to those who receive it. It is the tutor’s job to somehow connect it up with real life in every way. Each person being instructed must be made to feel that, no matter how theoretical the subject, what he is being taught is meaningful to him in his life and meaningful to the world and times in which he lives. The tutor sees his job as not simply that of pumping so much information into the heads of so many people but rather that of giving them instruction which will lead almost automatically on to action.
Any Communist tutor who is worth his salt finishes each class with these words: ‘What are the comrades going to do about what they have learned today? How are you going to apply it to the hospital where you are nursing? You in the school where you teach? You in the factory where you are employed? You as a housewife to the neighbourhood where you are living?’
The first item on the agenda when the class next meets will be: ‘How did the comrades apply what they learned last week?’ It does not matter whether the subject is trade union history, scientific socialism or dialectical materialism, teacher and taught must try to relate it to life and action.

The Fight Against Evil:

Quite apart from this ‘war propaganda’ aspect of the subject, the point we are considering is that Communist instruction is presented in such a way that the Party member is convinced that he is on the side of good, and involved in a struggle against evil. This appeals to something deep in his nature, something good. In their hearts, many men, perhaps most men, like to feel that they are on the side of righteousness. The Communist is brought to believe precisely this. What was, when he first joined, little more than a vague ‘feeling’ that he was identifying himself with a cause which is on the side of good, is transformed into a deep intellectual conviction.
An immense amount flows from this. One reason why the Communist is prepared to make his exceptional sacrifices is that he believes he is taking part in a crusade, he is on the side of righteousness. His total dedication is really no more mysterious than the fact that millions of men could, almost knowingly, march straight into a mincing machine to be chewed to bits in senseless battles between 1914 and 1918. They left home and loved ones, prospects and careers, almost anxious to throw away their young lives. Dedication of this type is normal in time of war. By creating a similar psychology, the Communists in time of peace get the response that goes with it.

Finally, the use of both “economic” and “ethical” appeals:

Communist propagandists know that Communism has both an economic and an ethical appeal. To one man, it will be the economic appeal which will be most powerful. He is most likely to be the one who is at the receiving end of poverty, underpayment or unemployment. To another the ethical appeal will be the greater. This will most probably be the deeper and more enduring of the two. In practice, the Communists usually combine the ethical with the economic, even when they are appealing to the man at the ‘receiving end’.
Anyone who has ever led a strike which is being fought on a ‘bread and butter issue’ knows perfectly well that if it is going badly and the morale of the strikers threatens to decline and crack, then, if you really want to give it a boost, you must stop talking economics and switch to the ethical appeal. You get away from simply stressing that the strike is for so many extra pence an hour and insist that there is a tremendous principle at stake. That way you maintain morale and increase the willingness to fight to a finish.
The Communists use this. Basically, they appeal to something that is good.

Chapter 5: The Story of Jim

This is the interesting (and at times funny) story of the personal and political transformation of an initially uninspiring party recruit who Hyde helped develop into a real leader, and the overarching point is that the communists, working with the same “human material” as any other organization, pushed people much further. The lessons are summarized at the end of the chapter:

Jim’s story says much of what can be said about the training of a leader as the Communists see it. First, I inspired him, gave him the clearly-defined goal of a new and better world and the belief that he and others could between them achieve it provided that they prepared themselves sufficiently for the moment of opportunity. I gave him a sense of involvement in a battle, and the conviction that by going to classes he would gain the arms and ammunition required for the fight.
The classes he attended were geared to his needs. What he learned was presented in terms which were understandable to him as a worker. The classes he attended were small ones. We shall come to this later, but this is of great significance. There, he was an individual and in the intimacy of the small group could, despite his reticence, be brought to make his contribution to discussion.
By making him a tutor, we gave him confidence in himself, enabled him to glimpse his own unsuspected potentialities. By making him a tutor, too, we made him think in an organised way, sifting what was relevant from that which was irrelevant; he learned, because he had to, how to get the ideas out of his head into the heads of others. He was made articulate. We gave him knowledge which others had not got and an intelligently selected group to whom this could be passed on. By training him, then putting him up to speak in the market-place and at the street corner we showed him that he could influence larger bodies of people, too. We helped him to grow in stature when we thus brought him before the public eye as one of the Party’s leading local figures. Then we gave him specialised training in preparation for the sphere of activity in which he could be most effective, where there was the biggest job to be done, and which lay nearest to hand.
[…]
Yet, on the other hand, it is also conspicuously true that the individual member of the Communist Party who undergoes its training and its formation frequently blossoms as a personality. People who have been seen as failures by other organisations are frequently turned by the Communists into successes. Men who have been bypassed or rejected by others, who seem too ordinary, too mediocre to be even considered as leaders, are shown by the Communists to have potentialities of leadership, nonetheless.
The Communists show confidence in the Jims of this world where others ignore them. They demonstrate in practice all too frequently a greater faith than we in the human material that God puts into our hands.

Chapter 6: The Formation Process

This chapter goes into more detail about higher-level party classes / study groups and how they are structured. Useful read when thinking about design of book/study groups that are oriented towards action or higher ideological unity.

One guide for tutors deals with this under the somewhat quaint heading ‘Against “bashism” as a method of education’. This is explained as follows:
‘There is an old diehard theory that the best way to teach children to swim is to throw them into the sea. All the reports of miraculously floating infants are dutifully recorded. There is silence on those that sank.
‘A similar theory once prevailed in certain circles of Party tutors that the way to teach people was to “bash” them. Publicly expose their weaknesses, misformulations and deviations. This may have had a good effect on some hardened characters but of those who never returned to be bashed again there is no record.’
The passage that follows may surprise those who have learned only of Communists and Communism from the anti-Communist propagandists and who therefore suppose the Communists’ methods are always and necessarily ruthless and coercive.
‘My own experience is that a kindly and decent attitude to students is one of the first demands on a tutor. Many comrades find things difficult; many are diffident, are nervous at first in the field of study. I am for the most co-operative and comradely atmosphere; an endeavour to listen patiently to what comrades have to say even if you feel it is wrong; an effort to pick out from contributions what is good as well as what is bad, and to explain mistakes in the most comradely and helpful manner. In general there is a very strong case for modesty on the side of tutors who often have less experience than those they are helping to study.
‘Rough treatment should be reserved for those who are arrogant and intolerant to others in the course of the class or discussion.’

In what we have seen of Communist ‘education’ and tutorial methods, it will be clear that there is much that the non-Communist, and particularly the Christian, may not copy. There is much in it that will, quite properly, be an affront to the mind of any democrat. But there is much, also, from which others might learn. This is particularly true of the Communists’ attitude to the question of study and formation, and their recognition that those who would serve a cause must establish a unity of theory and practice in their own lives. It is here that the non-Communists tend most often to be at their weakest. It is assuredly where the Communists have their greatest strength.

Chapter 7: ‘You Must Be The Best’

The principle of being the best at your day job (as explained later, this also applies to other areas of a Communist’s life - like hobby or cultural groups, or as a student):

And so, the Communists say, if you are going to be really effective in your place of work, you must set out to be the best man at your job. In many Communist parties this has even been made an unwritten rule. It is repeated in Communist circles over and over again—every member should aim to be the best man at his job. It is not a bad rule.
I knew a man who helped to lead a movement of the unemployed from just after the end of World War I right through to the beginning of World War II. When there was an unemployed agitation in South Wales he would be there to help build it up. Barricades went up in the streets on Merseyside and he would arrive to lead the fight. If hunger marchers went to London he would go with them. He was a full-time agitator, devoting all his efforts to spreading Communism amongst the unemployed by championing their cause. As a result of riots in which he was involved, he went to both jail and hospital time after time.
By the time World War II came, most of the unemployed had already been absorbed into war industries. There were less and less of them for him to organise. Then came the certainty that able-bodied men would be directed by Government either into the armed forces or into industry. The Party leaders decided that he should return voluntarily to industry instead of waiting to be directed there.
During World War I he had worked in a branch of engineering which required a very high degree of skill. He decided to go back to the same type of work. By way of preparation he dug out and studied his engineering manuals again. Then he applied for, and got, a job in a factory engaged in war work, employing top-grade craftsmen. The workers there had never been particularly well known for their Communist sympathies. When they heard that the notorious agitator was coming to work among them they were cynical. ‘He may be all right at talking, and leading unemployed, and fighting the police at the barricades, but we’ll soon see whether he’s any good at his job,’ they said.
He arrived on the job and, contrary to expectations, he did not talk, he did not agitate. He just got on with the work. And, for a period of some months, that is all he did. During that time he concentrated on recapturing his old skill, mastering the work once more.
[…]
Only when he had already, to the surprise of everyone, established himself as a craftsman amongst craftsmen did he go into action. By this time he had the respect of every worker in the factory and in the trade union branch. It was only then that he stood for a vacancy on the shop stewards’ committee. He was elected. In his trade union branch he let his name go forward for a minor position and got it. He did both jobs well. Before long his was the dominant influence in the shop stewards’ committee. Simultaneously, he went up the trade union ladder. Within two years of returning to an industry from which he had been absent for twenty years, he had obtained one of the most influential positions in his union, where he could profoundly influence policies which concerned the working lives and conditions of hundreds of thousands of Britain’s key war-workers.
The Communist approach to the choice of methods to be used, or rejected, where no Marxist principles as such are involved, is the pragmatic one. They test their methods by the simple question ‘Does it work?’ They have demonstrated that being the best man at your job does work very well indeed. They have proven this over and over again.

This same rule is applied to the Communists’ work among students. As is well known, Communists are active amongst students everywhere—this is particularly true today of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is true that you will find the occasional Communist student who gets so carried away by his Communism, gives so much time to political activity, that he fails all his examinations. This is not viewed with approval by the Party. Indeed, he is likely to be called to account for it. His Party group leader is likely to tell him: ‘You work very hard for the cause, and we are very grateful to you for what you have done. But you would have done a better job for Communism if you had passed your examinations instead of failing them. You would be more likely to carry conviction amongst your fellow students. More important, you would be more effective later on. You will not always be a student. Student life is a preparation for what follows. We want you to use this student period as your preparation for going out and making a mark in your profession so that you may do a good job for Communism there. So the better you do in your exams, the better it will be for the cause.’
Once the student has grasped this point, his studies become more meaningful. They cease to be just a wearisome necessity and become a form of activity for the cause. If he finds them hard or distasteful, then this is a sacrifice he is making. Such an approach to his studies tends to make him more successful in them.
The Communists carry this same unwritten rule that each member should be the best of his group into their activities in other organisations.

Chapter 8: Campaigns, Criticism, and Cadres

How the “party in action” works.

On campaigns:

In urging their members to be active, therefore, Communists are not going against the grain. They are using something which has its own appeal. People, once they are suitably activised, get satisfaction from being active. If this can be made meaningful, then they will get even greater satisfaction, for they will feel that they are engaged in something virtuous. The Communists recognise this. To an exceptional extent they succeed in keeping their people almost constantly in action and in making members’ activity relevant to the needs or desires of the people they are seeking to influence and activise.
This, then, is their approach to the technique of campaigning. Collectively the leaders at all levels must find issues upon which to campaign which will relate activity to the real needs of the people. Ideally, these issues should be linked to the people’s deepest desires. Quite frequently Communist campaigns have on the face of it little to do with the long-term aims of Communism. But they have a great deal to do with keeping Party members in action, attracting others to the movement and creating the image of a party which alone concerns itself with the lives and problems of ordinary folk.
Much of Mao Tse-tung’s success, particularly during the guerilla phase of his fight, depended upon his party’s ability to discover the needs of the people and to come before them as their champions. In one of his essays he describes this approach as ‘from the people to the people’. By this he means that the Party should send its members out among the people, try to discover what they want most, what are the questions which are troubling their minds, what are the things which are nearest to their hearts. Then they should report back to their Party, cell or group what they have discovered. This should then be discussed and the means be found by which it can be used for the Communist cause. The Party then adapts its campaigns to the things the people already want. You take the raw material for campaigning from the people, give it a Communist content, then give it back to them again. Since, as Mao notes, it originated with them, they will naturally respond to it.

Books by Lenin and Stalin read like military textbooks. The terminology is that of the military academy. Communists think in terms of strategy and tactics. They think like so many army officers. And any military man should know that the art of campaigning is to be able to maintain the morale of your troops come what may.
He knows that a big defeat may lead to his men’s becoming demoralised, but that there are ways of avoiding this. He knows, or should do, that you can take a big defeat and still maintain morale if you throw your troops quickly into action again in some sector of the front where they can get a quick victory, no matter how small. Leave them inactive and before long they are demoralised. So, for this reason, you need your long-term objectives, but you need intermediate and short-term objectives as well. The long-term objective of a Communist world may not be achieved for some time (although Communists believe it will be achieved in our lifetime). But Communist Party members are also given goals which are capable of realisation here and now.

But there must also be the short-term, immediate objectives. Campaigning for these is like the little skirmishes into which the wise officer sends his men knowing in advance that they stand a good chance of getting a small victory. This is of great psychological importance in constantly keeping morale at the highest pitch. Campaigning for well chosen immediate objectives helps to ensure that members do not lose heart, it keeps them continuously working for the cause, and therefore tied to it. A sudden cessation of activity, due to sickness or some other contingency, has been the downfall of many a Communist—it has led to his attitude towards Communism cooling off and to his subsequent defection.
The immediate objective may be almost anything which links people with the Party, weakens the position of the ‘ruling class’ and the opponents of Communism, or advances the cause of Communism. If the members can see results from time to time, as Communists normally do, then they feel that all the fighting and campaigning is worth while, and they get the very human satisfaction of seeing ‘something attempted, something done’.

One obvious immediate objective is the making of converts. This is something which is in the mind of the Communist all the time. He is out to make converts whenever and wherever he can. Often the methods of individual members have been crude. They have proselytised so blatantly that they have built up a very natural and understandable resistance to their efforts. This is not peculiar to Communists. There have been many others who have fallen into the same trap.
Communists learn from their mistakes and so their conversion methods have tended to become more subtle as the years have gone on. But this does not mean that their members have become less conversions-minded. Any Communist who is worth his salt, moving into association with a new group of people, will almost instinctively look around to see who are the ‘probables’, the ones who may most easily and usefully be brought into the Party. Having selected these, he will try to devise ways and means of bringing about their conversion.

I recall how on one occasion, back in my Communist days, I discovered that people living on a housing estate just on the outskirts of the town where I was working, had to go some three-quarters of a mile out of their way in order to get into the town. This was because their way was blocked by the mainline railway which ran past the estate. I at once started a campaign for the construction of a footbridge over the railway. It was a perfectly legitimate demand—someone should have provided such a bridge years ago when the estate was first built. So far as I recall I got literally every resident to support the demand. A splendid agitation, with petitions, meetings and marches—and good Press publicity—was conducted in the name of the Communist Party.
We did not get our footbridge, but we got a unit of the Communist Party established on the estate, where previously I was the only member living there, and so, from our point of view, the campaign was a complete success.

On criticism:

They run a campaign, engage in some form of activity, and this is followed by what is called the ‘inquest’. At the inquest they are not concerned about being polite to each other. Their sole concern is to discover what weaknesses were revealed by the campaign, what mistakes they made. So they do not tell each other how wonderful everyone was and how splendidly the campaign was run. On the contrary.
When you make a contribution to the discussion, you first criticise yourself, admitting that it was in such-and-such a way that you went wrong. You make no reference to your successes. These can be taken for granted. Instead you say: ‘I slipped up completely on this, on that and on the other.’ Then, having criticised yourself honestly and frankly, you consider you are entitled to do the same with the other people present.
You point out where they went wrong, too, and seek the views of others on the matter. Every mistake is brought to the surface. But, more important, persistent probing reveals why the mistakes were made, how they might have been avoided and how the lessons learned from them can be applied to specific forms of activity which are already planned.
[…]
Certainly for the Communists’ purposes, they have demonstrated that the idea is a good one. One of its most important consequences is that the leaders feel free to send members into action without being inhibited by the thought that they may make mistakes. For they already know that mistakes need not be disastrous, provided that all concerned study them in due course, learn from them and try to ensure that they are not repeated. Bolshevik self-criticism is of considerable psychological importance because it helps to create a serious-minded approach to the members’ activities. To the man who joins the Communist Party and sees self-criticism at work it looks like clear evidence that here is a serious-minded group of people anxious to cut through all the cant and nonsense and get on with jobs that matter.

After describing an impromptu party-organized march that led thousands of housewives to confront town leadership over a lack of coal for heating their houses:

Our housewives’ demonstration had been given frontpage treatment by the Daily Worker which described it as a great Communist campaign. It goes without saying that Monday’s Daily Worker carried an even bigger story, with bolder headlines, proclaiming the great victory for which our local Communist Party had been responsible. And the appropriate moral was underlined that the people of that London industrial suburb were now no longer shivering, because they had refused to shiver in silence. Then came the inquest when we met as a Party branch to discuss this seemingly so successful campaign. Our propaganda had very naturally described it as a great success. But what was our verdict at the inquest?
It was that the campaign had been a failure. Why? We had demonstrated to the authorities, and to ourselves, that the housewives of our town were angry at a situation which had grown out of the war. We had had thousands of angry housewives in fighting mood. Then victory had come. But it had come too easily. Now, as a consequence, we had thousands of contented, complacent housewives sitting smugly by their stoves, preening and complimenting themselves on what they had achieved by their own efforts. We should have built up class anger; we should have given the campaign a revolutionary content; we ought to have made some converts to the Communist Party, some new readers of the Daily Worker. We had not done so. From our point of view the results had been unhelpful rather than helpful to the revolutionary cause. We wrote it off as a failure. That is Bolshevik self-criticism in action.
If there was anything in this for others to adopt and adapt it is surely the attitude of mind. A determination to be absolutely honest with yourself and with each other about what you are doing. To cut through the compliments and cant so that it is possible to see whether the purposes of your cause have really been served by the activities in which you have been engaged. To say to yourself and to each other ‘What is all this really about, what is it really for?’

On the systematic development of cadres - if a cadre is a “professional revolutionary”, this is their “professional development”:

The Christian wrestles with the old Adam, the good Communist wrestles with the old bourgeois beneath the skin.
But the Party member is not left to achieve all that is expected of him in some lonely fight with his baser, bourgeois self. Nor is he left to wrestle alone with his self-cultivation like someone trying to pass some impossibly difficult examinations on the basis of self-study courses. The Party is there to aid him.
In a famous speech to the graduates from the Red Army academies in May 1935, Joseph Stalin launched the slogan: ‘Cadres decide everything’. Techniques, he said, were important, but in the final analysis it was upon people that techniques depended for their success. It was no use simply trying to develop techniques if you did not also develop your people.
This slogan was taken up and applied in practical fashion by Communist parties all over the world. In every one of them was established a special Cadres Department. This existed at every level of the Party. Its task was to ensure that each member was developed to the uttermost, made just as effective as possible in the fight for Communism. From the top to the bottom of the Party, at every organisational level, people were appointed to supervise this work.
In a well run local branch, for example, there would be the cadres secretary who was supposed to know all the members individually and to know as much about them as possible. A good cadres secretary kept a card index file in which were noted the forms of activity in which each member engaged, the classes he attended, his response to them, those spheres of activity or study in which he had excelled, those, too, for which he had shown no aptitude or inclination.
Within the particular unit of the Party the cadres secretary had an overriding authority. By this I mean that he was entitled to go to the branch or group leader and say that he considered that Comrade X was being used for too much campaigning, was in danger of becoming an activist who knew little of what all the action was about or, conversely, was attending many classes but doing little of a practical character and so was in danger of becoming an armchair philosopher. He would tell the group leader that this situation had to be rectified, and together they would discuss how the comrade concerned might most easily be persuaded to bring about a proper balance between theory and practice in his life. It would then be the cadres secretary’s job to see that this was accomplished.
He would visit a member he considered to be in need of guidance, who looked like developing away from the Party or showed signs of still clinging to old bourgeois prejudices and attitudes. Earnestly they would discuss together how the comrade might improve himself and so become a good Communist, the sort of person he wanted to be.
There is not the slightest doubt that when this cadres work was operating most successfully it brought about the very rapid development of Party cadres, gave the individual Communist a feeling that, having totally committed himself to the Party and submitted himself to the direction of the cadres secretary, he was now an ‘improving’ person and on the way to perfecting himself as a Communist.
[…]
When Stalin concerned himself with the development of people, when he tried to impress upon his Party leaders that people must be treasured and developed, he had of course only a certain section of the people in mind—those in the Communist Party or who were of direct and immediate use to it and, as was later shown, who were of immediate use to himself. His ‘humanity’ was selective. But his slogan: ‘Cadres decide everything’ was not a bad one.

Chapter 9: The Value of Techniques

This chapter deals with various techniques around propaganda Hyde considers important, much of which is fairly specific, but there are some generalizable lessons too.

How communist parties must distinguish themselves from bourgeois electoral parties:

The Party know from experience that people tend to be influenced by the mere fact that Communists are not just talking but are doing something, and then go on to accept the thought that they are probably accomplishing something, too.
Communists try to prove to the public that they care about them as people. Anti-Communist propaganda has built up the idea that Communists care only about power. In the newly-developing areas, in particular, they have combated this idea so successfully that there are large numbers of people living in vitally important areas today who, whilst not accepting Communist beliefs or whilst knowing little or nothing about Communist teachings, still believe with absolute conviction that ‘only the Communists care’.
[…]
Political parties today are very much concerned about creating an image which they hope will be acceptable to the public. Public relations experts and advertising agencies are brought in for the purpose. It is all rather artificial, this attempt to create by slick publicity methods an image which does not necessarily have much relation to the actual performance past, present or potential of the party concerned. Sooner or later the public must sense this. But, when the Communists set out to create an image by the means I have just described, this looks genuine and convincing. It is certainly likely to achieve more among an unsophisticated public than all the costly publicity methods of the Communists’ opponents.

In retelling an anecdote from the Russian Civil War, about a group of illiterate peasants rushing to the front to join the Red Army, Hyde emphasizes the simplification of complex ideas: propaganda needs to be understandable by everyone.

It is for such simple ideas that men will die. Not one of those peasants could have explained even the rudiments of dialectical materialism. In all probability none had ever heard of it. The name of Lenin, as the champion of the poor, was known to them, but they were illiterate and so had never read his writings. But Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks had succeeded in reducing their message to a simple proposition for simple people. In so doing they made a major contribution to the victory of the revolution. For revolutions, no matter whether they are bloody Communist ones or peaceful Christian ones, are made by simple people, even though they may be led by intellectuals.
If a Communist who is put on to propaganda work has been a good Communist he will already be close to the people. He will know their language, the way they think, the way they express their ideas. It is therefore easy for him to do his propaganda in their language, to know what will get through to them and what will not. The spokesmen of the non-Communist world too often are remote from the minds and lives of those to whom they wish to convey ideas.
The Communists would say that, if your propaganda is to succeed, then you cannot live sealed off from the world. You must identify yourself with those amongst whom you wish to do your propaganda. The burden is on you. You have to find a way to get your ideas to them. If they are not receptive, it is no good blaming them. It is because you have not found a way to make them receptive. You will only do this if you understand how their minds work and if you make what is meaningful to them immensely meaningful to yourself.

Chapter 10: Leaders for What?

The last chapter emphasizes that the party views development of leaders as paramount to their cause - and that these leaders should then go out and lead to the maximum extent possible in the other areas of their life:

International Communism’s inner Party journal, The World Marxist Review, frequently refers to Communists as ‘soldiers of the revolution’. This is how they see themselves. And the fight goes on, no matter whether they are operating in a ‘revolutionary situation’, or in periods of more gradual change, which they see as ones of preparation. In that situation, they set out to establish themselves as leaders. They cannot all be leaders of the Communist Party itself, for it would be a case of all chiefs and no Indians. That is not the aim. Each Communist Party member is expected to be a leader in any field of activity into which life may take him. Trained automatically, spontaneously to take up a position of leadership wherever he goes. After all, men are not suddenly going to follow the Communists, when at last the barricades go up in the streets, unless they have already established themselves as leaders. Stalin, at the grave of Lenin, said: ‘We Bolsheviks are men of a special mould.’ The Communist Party everywhere sets out to produce men of a special mould.

Hyde closes with what leadership really means for the communists. It means creating an entirely different mindset, creating “integrated people”:

The task of making leaders is really one of creating an attitude of mind. When some new situation arises, the reaction of most people is to ask; when is someone going to do something about it? The spontaneous reaction of the trained leader is at once to ask himself: what do I do in this situation?
He comes before his fellows and says: We should do this and that and the other. And they follow him. Partly because he speaks with authority, they respect him and look up to him, but also because they have learned from experience that he has something to offer.
The Communist is taught always to ask himself: What do I do as a Communist? The answer he provides flows direct from his beliefs. Action and belief are always related in his mind and in his practice too.
The Communists are not interested in producing leaders as such. It is Communist leaders they want. Men who will lead for the cause not just for themselves. […] Leadership training is not just to help ambitious men to the top, or to make little men who have done leadership courses feel bigger than they really are. Still less is it to produce führers, either large or small.
It has much more to do with the making of integrated people. Ones who understand what they believe, are deeply dedicated to it, and who try unceasingly to relate their beliefs to every facet of their own lives and to the society in which they live.

First Make a Revolution (Medical Students)

An interesting passage about class backgrounds and the post-revolutionary necessity of changing attitudes instead of having a “fatalistic” view of people:

Some time ago, a few months, a group of students here in Ha­vana, recently certified as doctors, did not want to go to the coun­tryside and were demanding extra payment for doing so. From the viewpoint of the past, this was not out of the ordinary, at least it seems that way to me, and I understand it perfectly. This was the way it was, the way I remember it being some years ago. It is the rebellious gladiator once again, the solitary fighter who wants to ensure a better future, better conditions, and to make others appreciate the necessity of what he does.
But what would happen if it were not those boys-the majority of whose families could afford several years of study-who com­pleted their courses and were now beginning to practice their pro­fession? What if instead 200 or 300 peasants had emerged, as if by magic, from the university lecture halls?
What would have happened, simply, is that those peasants would have run immediately, and with great enthusiasm, to attend to their brothers and sisters. They would have asked for the posts with the most responsibility and the hardest work, in order to show that the years of study they had been given were not in vain. What would have happened is what will happen within six or seven years, when the new students, children of the working class and the peasantry, receive their professional degrees of whatever type.
But let's not approach the future with fatalism and divide people into children of the working class or peasantry and counterrevolu­tionaries. Because that is simplistic, because it is not true, and be­ cause there is nothing that educates an honorable man more than living within a revolution.
None of us, none of the first group that arrived on the Granma, who established ourselves in the Sierra Maestra and learned to re­ spect the peasant and the worker, living together with him-none of us had a past as a worker or peasant. Naturally, there were those who had had to work, who had known certain wants in their child­ hood. But hunger, true hunger-that none of us had known, and we began to know it, temporarily, during the two long years in the Sierra Maestra. And then many things became very clear.
We, who at the outset severely punished anyone who touched even an egg of some rich peasant or landowner, one day took ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra and said to the peasants sim­ply: "Eat." And the peasants, for the first time in many years-some for the first time in their lives-ate beef.
In the course of the armed struggle, the respect we had for the sacrosanct ownership of those ten thousand head of cattle was lost, and we understood perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millons of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. [Applause] And we learned it there, we who were not sons of the working class or the peasantry. So why should we shout to the four winds that now we are the superior ones and that the rest of the Cuban people cannot learn too? Yes, they can learn. In fact, the revo­lution today demands that they learn. It demands they understand that pride in serving our fellow man is much more important than a good income; that the people's gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate. And each doctor, within the scope of his activity, can and should accumulate that prized treasure, the people's gratitude.

If we medical workers achieve this:-and you'll allow me to use once again this term I had forgotten some time ago-if we all use that new weapon of solidarity, if we know the goals, if we know the enemy, and if we know the direction in which we must travel, then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch-it is the personal road of each individual; it is what he will do every day, what he will gain from his individual experience, and what he will give of himself in practicing his profession, dedicated to the people's well-being.

The Role of the University (University of Havana)

On how universities can be remolded to serve socialist construction, and specifically why the creation of new professionals is an important political problem:

Is this inevitable? Is it inevitable that, within a certain period of time, universities are doomed to become a brake, that is, virtual centers of counterrevolution? I reject that with all the strength of my revolutionary conviction, because the only thing we lack-ab­solutely the only thing-is coordination. Nothing more than that little word, which has become the goal of all government institu­tions, and should also be the object of attention of the student compañeros. Coordination between the students of the University of Havana and the universities of Las Villas and Oriente. Coordina­tion between the programs of study of these three universities and those of the institutes and secondary schools that will supply them with students. Coordination between all these student bodies and the revolutionary government. Coordination so that at a certain moment, for example, the students know that at some point in the future the government's plans for development will require a hun­dred chemical engineers. They will take the necessary measures to organize the training of these hundred chemical engineers who are needed. Coordination to avoid an excess of my colleagues, doctors, who would vegetate in bureaucratic jobs, instead of carrying out the great social function of medicine, attending only to the struggle for life. Coordination so that the number of graduates in those old fields of study called the humanities are reduced to the amount necessary for the cultural development of the country, and so that the student body turns to those new fields of study that technology is showing us day by day, and whose absence today will be deeply felt tomorrow.
This is the whole secret to success or failure-let's not say fail­ure-relative failure, the failure to achieve the plans of the revolu­tionary government in the fastest way possible.
Right now, together with technicians from international organi­zations and from the Ministry of Education, we are studying the basis on which to establish technological institutes, which will pro­ vide us with an average scientific foundation. That will help our development a great deal. But no country can really call itself de­veloped until it can make all its plans and manufacture the major­ity of the products necessary for its subsistence within its own bor­ders. Technology will allow us to build things, but how to go about building them, to see farther down the road, is the job of planners. This is what must be studied in quality universities, with a broad cultural base, so that those coming out of the new university we all dream of will be able to answer the call of Cuba ten or fifteen years down the road.
Today in many posts we see a number of doctors, of profession­als, carrying out bureaucratic tasks. Economic development has raised its finger and said: no more professionals are needed in these fields of knowledge. But the universities have shut their eyes to the warnings of the economic process and they have continued churn­ing out this professional layer from their classrooms and lecture halls. We have to step back and carefully study the characteristics of development and then proceed to produce the new professionals.

Against an individualistic focus on finding ones’ vocation:

Someone once told me that a profession was the result of voca­tion; that it was something innate and could not be changed.
First of all, I think that position is wrong. Statistically speaking, I don't believe that an individual example has any importance. But I began studying engineering and ended up a doctor; I later be­came a commander, and now you see me as a lecturer.
There are basic vocations, that's true, but today the branches of science are so vastly differentiated, on one hand, and so intimately tied together, on the other, that it is difficult for anyone to say at the dawn of their intellectual development what their true vocation is. Someone may want to be a surgeon and that will happen, and they'll be happy doing that their whole life. But along with him there will be ninety-nine other surgeons who could just as well have been dermatologists, or psychiatrists, or hospital administrators, depend­ ing on what an extremely demanding society enables them to be. Vocation can only play a tiny part in the choice of new professions being created or in the reorientation of those we already know. It can't be anything else, because other factors stand in the way. These are, as I said, the huge needs of a society; in addition, there is the fact that nowadays hundreds and thousands, and maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Cubans have had the vocation to be doctors or engineers or architects, or any other profession, but have not been able to do so simply because they could not afford it. In other words, among individuals, vocation does not play the decisive role.

We should always think in terms of the masses and not in terms of individuals, without believing that we are anything other than individuals and jealous defenders of our individuality. To analyze and figure out the needs of a country, each of us must be able to defend our point of view a thousand and one times, if necessary. Still, it's criminal to think in terms of individuals because an individual's needs are completely unimportant in face of the hu­man conglomerate of that individual's fellow countrymen.

Never forget, technology is a weapon (Architecture Students)

We attack and are relentless toward those who take up arms against us; it does not matter if these are outright weapons of de­struction or ideological weapons to destroy our society. The rest, those who are dissatisfied, those who are unhappy yet honest, those who state that they are not socialist nor will they ever be, to them we simply say: "Before, no one ever asked you whether or not you were a capitalist-you had a contract and you fulfilled it. We say: fulfill your contract, do your work, espouse whatever ideas you like; we won't interfere with your ideas."
That is how we keep on building, with many problems, with many leaps backward. The revolution's road is not one of continuous successes, sustained advances, or rhythmic strides forward. At times we reach an impasse, when we lose revolutionary momentum, when we get disoriented. We have to regroup our forces, analyze our prob­lems, analyze our weak points, and then march forward. That is how revolutions are made and consolidated. They are made the same way we began ours-by a group of men, supported by the people, in an area favorable for the struggle.

What a Young Communist Should Be (Anniversary of youth organizations)

After the revolution, and without the same possibility for individual heroism, it becomes a challenge to maintain the same level of energy and dedication, especially among youth. At the end of this passage he brings in a pretty interesting view of how work still continues along the old lines, and raises the challenge of how to create a new conception of work:

We still see today how the youth-heroes, almost like in the nov­els-who can give their lives a hundred times over for the revolu­tion, who can respond massively to whatever specific task they are called upon to do, nevertheless sometimes do not show up at work because they had a Union of Young Communists meeting. Or be­ cause they stayed up late the night before discussing some initiative of the youth organization. Or sometimes for no reason at all, with no justifiable reason. So when someone looks around at a volun­teer work brigade to see where the Young Communists are, it often turns out there are none; they haven't shown up. The leader had a meeting to attend, another was sick, still another was not fully in­ formed about the work.
The result is that the fundamental attitude, the attitude of being a vanguard of the people, of being that moving, living example that drives everybody forward as the youth at Playa Giron did-that attitude is not duplicated at work. The seriousness that today's youth must have in meeting its great commitments-and the greatest com­mitment is the construction of socialist society-is not reflected in actual work. There are big weaknesses and we must work on them, work at organizing, work at identifying the spot that hurts, the area with weaknesses to be corrected. We must also work so that each one of you achieves a clear consciousness that you cannot be a good communist if you think about the revolution only at the moment of decisive sacrifice, at the moment of combat, of heroic adventure, at moments that are out of the ordinary, yet in your work you are mediocre or less than mediocre. How can that be?
You already bear the name Young Communists, a name we as a leadership organization, as a leadership party, do not yet have. You have to build a future in which work will be man's greatest dignity, a social duty, a delight, the most creative activity there is. Everyone will be interested in their work and the work of others, in society's daily advance. How can it be that you who today bear that name disdain work? There is a flaw here, a flaw in organization, in clarify­ ing what work is.
This is a natural human flaw. People-all of us, it seems to me­ much prefer something that breaks the monotony of life, some­ thing every once in a while that suddenly reminds us of our own personal worth, of our worth within society. I can imagine the pride of those compañeros who were manning a cuatro bocas, for ex­ample, defending their homeland from Yankee planes. Suddenly, one of them is lucky enough to see his bullets hit an enemy plane. Clearly, that is the happiest moment of a man's life, something never to be forgotten. And those compañeros who lived through that ex­perience will never forget it. But we have to defend our revolution, the revolution we are building, day in and day out. And in order to defend it we have to make it, build it, strengthen it, through the work that youth today don't like-or at the very least they put at the end of their list of duties. That is an old-fashioned mentality that dates back to the capitalist world, where work was indeed a duty and a necessity, but a sad duty and sad necessity.
Why does that happen? Because we still have not been able to give work its true content. We have not been able to link the worker with the object of his labor; and at the same time, imbue the worker with a consciousness of the importance of that creative act that he performs every day. The worker and the machine, the worker and the object to which he applies his labor-these are still different and antagonistic things. And that has to be changed, because new generations must be formed whose main interest is work and who know how to find in work a permanent and constantly changing source of fresh excitement. They need to make work something cre­ative, something new.

The principal responsibilities of the Young Communists:

That is what has to be done, remembering that work is the most important thing. Pardon me if I repeat it once again, but the point is that without work there is nothing. All the riches in the world, all humanity's values, are nothing but accumulated work. Without that, nothing can exist. Without the extra work that creates more sur­pluses for new factories and social institutions, the country will not advance. No matter how strong our armies are, we will always have a slow rate of growth. We have to break out of this. We have to break with all the old errors, hold them up to the light of day, ana­lyze them everywhere, and then correct them.
Now, compañeros, I wanted to share my opinion as a national leader of the ORI on what a Young Communist should be, to see if we all agree. I believe the first thing that must characterize a Young Communist is the honor he feels in being a Young Communist, an honor that moves him to let the world know he is a Young Com­munist, something he doesn't hide or reduce to formulas. He ex­presses that honor at all times, so it comes from the bottom of his soul, and he wants to show it because it is his greatest pride. In addition, he should have a great sense of duty, a sense of duty to­ ward the society we are building, toward our fellow human beings, and toward all humanity around the world. That is something that must characterize the Young Communist. And along with that there must be deep sensitivity to all problems, sensitivity to injustice; a spirit that rebels against every wrong, whoever commits it; questioning anything not understood, discussing and ask­ ing for clarification on whatever is not clear; declaring war on for­malism of all types; always being open to new experiences in order to take the many years of experience of humanity's advance along the road to socialism and apply them to our country's concrete con­ditions, to the realities that exist in Cuba. Each and every one of you must think about how to change reality, how to make it better.
The Young Communist must always strive to be the best at ev­erything, struggle to be the best, feel upset when he is not and fight to improve, to be the best. Of course, we cannot all be the best. But we can be among the best, in the vanguard. We can be a living ex­ ample, a model for those compañeros who do not belong to the Young Communists, an example for older men and women who have lost some of that youthful enthusiasm, who have lost a certain faith in life, and who always respond well to example. That is an­ other task of Young Communists. Together with that there should be a great spirit of sacrifice, not only in heroic ventures but at all times, making sacrifices to help the next compañero in small tasks so he can finish his work, so he can do his work at school, in his studies, so he can improve in any way.
[…]
It will be so because you are Young Communists, creators of the perfect society, human beings destined to live in a new world where everything decrepit, everything old, everything that represents the society whose foundations have just been destroyed will have de­finitively disappeared. To reach that goal we have to work every day, along the lines of improving ourselves; of gaining knowledge and understanding about the world around us; of inquiring, finding out, and knowing why things are the way they are; and always con­sidering humanity's great problems as our own.

Li takes much of the theory used in this book from Immanuel Wallerstein and World Systems Analysis, especially his theory of crisis and emphasis on the “semi-periphery” as a crucial point in the world system. He presents a brief history of China’s 20th century development path that is admirable for highlighting some of the objective factors that lead to “reform and opening up”, for example the desire for more advanced technology. But he also emphasizes the political decisions that were made by CPC leadership, seeing the reform turn as a culmination of a decades-long process in which a privileged layer of cadres and bureaucrats moved further and further from the experiences of the masses. He is largely critical of present-day China but not in an entirely one-sided way, highlighting at one point that “at a time when large parts of the world are suffering under the tyranny of neoliberal austerity, China may be the only large country where the working class is making significant gains in their struggle against capitalist exploitation.” His theory is complemented by extensive statistics (and sometimes basic calculations) demonstrating the evidence for his argument - both in examining growth and profit rates from 20th century capitalism and using them to forecast when crisis occurs, as well as statistics demonstrating the impossibility of satisfying current economic growth rates with existing energy resources.

Readers in the U.S., who have been able to observe first-hand the immense ramp-up of imperialist propaganda against China just in the last half-decade, might be surprised by the lack of discussion on U.S.-China relations, or more generally how imperialist powers will approach China in the context of growing global crisis. This book was written before many of the more aggressive anti-China actions of the Trump and Biden administrations, but several years after Obama had announced his “Pivot to Asia”, which already signaled the intention of the U.S. to constrain and contain China geopolitically. Recent measures of economic warfare, for example the “chip war” the U.S. has initiated, are already affecting China’s political economy and national strategy (e.g. through the Dual Circulation strategy and the continued state-led investment in key breakthrough technologies), and this growing imperialist pressure will certainly play a role in any future “crisis” and how it is resolved. Li may see these factors as outside the frame of his analysis - his basic job in this book is to prove the long-term economic and ecological unsustainability of global and Chinese capitalism. But for us, fighting and constraining U.S. and Western imperialism is probably the most important way we can contribute to the possibility of China, and the rest of the world, finding a socialist exit from the coming crisis.

Chapter 1: China and the Twenty-First-Century Crisis

In this first chapter Li lays out his essential points and central theses (already covered above).

Chapter 2: China: Classes and Class Struggle

This chapter lays out Li’s brief sketch of PRC history, both examining the early, Mao-led decades and the basic political economy / “social contract” at that time, as well as some of the objective constraints that would eventually push China towards the reform period. Li, while highly critical of the reform-era leaders like Deng Xiaoping, and the top layers of the post-Mao CPC in general, does not seem to see the reform period as the result of entirely subjective factors or “betrayal” by Deng. As he points out, China under Mao was already responding to some of the same basic factors that would encourage opening-up as a strategy, including a desire for faster technological development. On the other hand, already in the 1950s he sees a system in which CPC cadres and state bureaucrats are starting to gain material privileges over the rest of the Chinese population, which also factors largely in his analysis of why the reform-and-opening-up road was taken. On this question, I’d have to read further into his sources or Chinese history in general, as I have some natural skepticism towards the “party elite” as stand-in-bourgeoisie idea, especially as it is used in some quarters as an easy way of bashing Actually Existing Socialist states (in the example of the USSR, for example, being able to dismiss the country as “state-capitalist” can be a convenient way out of defending a contradictory and flawed, but still progressive and socialist-led experiment).

Summarizing the economic development of the PRC up until the early/mid 70s (note in the last paragraph the emphasis on access to Global North technology as a driver behind diplomatic re-alignment):

The primary task of the new People’s Republic was to achieve rapid industrialization and “catch up” with the western capitalist countries in industrial and military capacity. But this task had to be accomplished under the post-revolutionary historical conditions. The new Chinese state was a “socialist state,” that is to say, it was the historical product of a great popular revolution based on the mobilization of the peasants and the workers. As a result, the socialist state was defined by an implicit social contract between itself and the great majority of the population (the peasants and the workers).
Under the post-1949 social contract, the socialist state would mobilize economic surplus to achieve rapid industrialization and economic growth. In the short run, workers and peasants would make a contribution to “socialist economic construction” by generating economic surplus and accepting low levels of material consumption. In return, the socialist state would provide the workers and the peasants with basic social security, health care, and education. The Communist Party cadres would give up their material privileges and share the material hardship with the masses. In the long run, the socialist state would not only provide high material living standards to everyone but also eliminate all forms of inequality, preparing the material and social conditions for the classless communist society.
The socialist social contract began to be undermined when the material privileges of the Communist Party cadres and intellectual “experts” were expanded and institutionalized during the implementation of the Soviet-style First Five-Year-Plan (1953–1957). The gross mismanagement of the bureaucratic elites led to the failure of the “Great Leap Forward” campaign (a campaign with the intention to accelerate industrialization). This was followed by natural disasters and a major economic crisis from 1960 to 1962.
The crisis of the early 1960s led to a major split of the Communist Party leadership. The Maoists, led by Mao Zedong (the great leader of the Chinese Revolution), argued that the crisis could only be resolved through “continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The post-1949 social contract had to be honored and the Communist Party would have to uphold its stated objective of “transition to communism” by constantly reducing and eventually eliminating various forms of economic and social inequality.
Against the Maoists, Liu Shaoqi (who was then the President of the People’s Republic) and Deng Xiaoping (who was then in charge of the Party Central Committee’s daily affairs) argued that economic growth and industrialization could only be achieved by providing the Communist Party cadres and the intellectual experts with greater managerial power (unchecked by the workers and the peasants). Moreover, the cadres and the experts would have to be rewarded with more material privileges in accordance with their greater managerial power. For the Maoists, the economic development strategy advocated by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping would sooner or later lead to “capitalist restoration” in China.
The battle between the Maoists and the Liu-Deng faction led to the massive political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Unable to win the support from the majority of the Party and state bureaucrats, Mao Zedong made one last attempt to save the revolution by directly calling upon the workers and the young students to rebel against the bureaucracy. But the workers and the student rebels were politically inexperienced and divided. The Party and state bureaucrats survived the initial panic and organized counter-attacks. In many cities, the army intervened to support the established bureaucrats. Radical workers and student rebels were brutally repressed. By 1969, the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution came to an end (on the bureaucrats’ counter-attacks and the army’s repression of Maoist rebels, see Lao Tian 2008).
Internationally, China found itself in hostility against both the United States and the Soviet Union, a situation that could not be sustained. To break the geopolitical isolation and have access to western technology, it became necessary for China to improve relations with western capitalist countries. In 1971, the People’s Republic of China was admitted into the United Nations as “the only lawful representative of China.” Richard Nixon visited China the following year, paving the way for the eventual normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. In 1973, China decided to import 4.3 billion dollars of industrial equipment from the western countries and Japan. China began to depend on imports of western technology to accelerate economic growth (Zhang, H. 2008).

Li then gives Dengism a more thorough treatment, as we move into the late 70s, 80s and beyond.

Returning to more “objective” factors, why the Chinese working class didn’t have a very good shot at preserving the state-socialist system:

However, socialist China remained a part of the capitalist world system and had to follow the basic laws of motion of the system. Within the capitalist world system, states are compelled to compete against one another in economic and military terms. Those who failed the competition would become vulnerable, risking either internal instability or external intervention.
In the 1950s, Soviet technological assistance helped China to lay down the foundation of industrialization. By the 1970s, it became necessary for China to import western technology in order to sustain economic growth. But to import western technology, China had to increase exports and capture a larger share of the world market. China was not able to compete with the western core capitalist countries in term of technology. Nor was China able to compete with some semi-peripheral countries (such as the Middle East oil exporters) in term of natural resources. China had to compete with many peripheral countries with the only significant “comparative advantage” China had – a large supply of cheap labor force. To take full advantage of this “comparative advantage,” the Chinese ruling class decided to renege on the historically established socialist social contract through privatization and the destruction of the “iron rice bowl” in the state sector.
An alternative path of development, advocated by Mao Zedong in the 1960s, was to “continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Under the Maoist alternative strategy, China would pursue a greater degree of economic and social equality. In return, the workers and the peasants would accept a longer period of material hardship. Socialist China would refuse to play by the rules of game of the capitalist world system with the anticipation that the global rules of game would be fundamentally transformed by the coming world revolution.
By the 1970s, both the Chinese revolution and the world revolution were in retreat. The Chinese Communist Party officially abandoned the Cultural Revolution almost immediately after Mao’s death. The urban working class was politically confused and disoriented. Although the urban working class had strong economic bargaining power in the 1980s, they did not have political leadership and were unable to advance their own interests as a class. It was a class war the Chinese working class could not win.

Here Li introduces a recurrent idea, extending his use of World Systems Analysis, that the semi-periphery countries are most prone to crisis (both “accumulation” and “political” crises) as a result of the growing proletarianization of the labor force:

In the capitalist world system, the core countries tend to have a relatively large urban middle class (the professional and technical workers) and fully proletarianized working class. All types of wage workers often account for more than 90 percent of the total labor force of a core capitalist country. This reflects the fact that the world surplus value is concentrated in the core countries, allowing the capitalists to pay a large amount of “loyalty rent” to co-opt the internal middle class and working class.
By comparison, the peripheral countries tend to have a large number of agricultural petty commodity producers and semi-proletarian workers. The combined bargaining power of the agricultural producers and the semi-proletarian workers tends to be weak, consistent with the fact that the peripheral countries tend to specialize in low value-added activities and receive a relatively small share of the world surplus value.
Under certain historical conditions, some peripheral countries may be able to move upwards in the hierarchy of the capitalist world system. If a peripheral country is transformed into a semi-peripheral country, a large proportion of the labor force would become proletarianized. The proletarianized working class has the capacity to demand more economic and political rights. If a semi-peripheral country fails to meet the working class demands under conditions consistent with effective capital accumulation, the country is likely to suffer from both an accumulation crisis and a political crisis.

Li returns to China to sketch a brief picture of the current class structure and recent important class transformation:

Over the past two decades, China’s social structure has been fundamentally transformed. The total wage-earning labor force (including rural wage workers, urban wage workers, professional and technical workers, and public sector employees, excluding the unemployed) grew from 39 percent of the total labor force in 1990 to 55 percent of the total labor force in 2012. This growth can be entirely accounted for by the growth of the semi-proletarian rural workers.
The intense exploitation of semi-proletarian rural workers has been the foundation of Chinese capitalist prosperity. But experience from other capitalist countries suggests that within one or two generations, many of the semi-proletarian rural workers will evolve into fully proletarianized urban wage workers. During this process, they will learn to get organized and become a powerful political and social force.

According to China’s “National Rural Workers Monitoring and Survey Report,” there are 125 million “new-generation rural workers” defined as rural workers who were born in 1980 or after. New-generation rural workers account for 47 percent of total rural workers.
Compared to traditional rural workers, new-generation rural workers are better educated, concentrated in big cities and coastal provinces, more likely to search for employment outside of their home areas, mainly employed in manufacturing, and have higher consumption expectations.

On Chinese class struggle in recent years:

In 2010, strike waves swept through China’s automobile, textile, and electronics industries. Millions of workers participated in the strikes. Following the 2010 strikes, local governments began to raise minimum wages. From 2010 to 2014, Shenzhen’s local minimum wage surged from 900 Yuan (about 150 dollars) per month to 1808 Yuan (about 301 dollars) per month; Shanghai’s local minimum wage rose from 960 Yuan (about 160 dollars) per month to 1820 Yuan (about 303 dollars) per month.
From 2011 to 2013, Chinese workers continued to win strike victories. In December 2011, workers of the Japanese-owned Hailiang storage-products company in Shenzhen went on strike for nearly a month and won a pay raise of 30 percent. In October and November 2013, workers of the Taiwanese-owned Xianjin microelectronics company in Shenzhen went on strike for three weeks and won a pay raise of 20 percent (Gong Ping She 2014).
At a time when large parts of the world are suffering under the tyranny of neoliberal austerity, China may be the only large country where the working class is making significant gains in their struggle against capitalist exploitation.
[…]
This raises the question whether the economic and political demands of Chinese workers can be accommodated by China’s current capitalist system. If not, can the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class be contained within a reformed capitalist framework? Or, will the Chinese working class struggle bring about a fundamental social transformation that goes beyond the historical framework of capitalism?

Here an alternate path is laid out (much of it a return in form to the China of the 1950s and 60s), while acknowledging the constraints on China’s choices:

In the historical era of neoliberalism and global counter-revolution, China had to compete effectively in order to consolidate and improve its relative position in the capitalist world system. Even with the industrial foundation built in the Maoist era, China was in no position to compete with the western core capitalist countries on the technology front. China was not able to benefit from any significant monopolistic rent based on high-value natural resources (unlike the Middle East oil exporters, large Latin American economies, or the Russian Federation). The only realistic “comparative advantage” China could rely upon was to combine the Maoist industrial foundation and a large cheap labor force and turn itself into the center of manufacturing exports in the global capitalist economy. China’s pursuit of manufacturing exports coincided with the global capital relocation that took place in the late twentieth century and played a crucial role in changing the global balance of power in favor of the global capitalist classes, helping global capitalism to overcome the system-wide crisis of the 1970s.
The only conceivable alternative would require the Chinese Party and state elites to give up a substantial portion of their material privileges. By sharing material hardships with the working class and continuing to provide workers and peasants with basic social security, the Communist Party leadership might be able to convince the great majority of the population to live within a relatively closed socialist system for a prolonged period of time. If China were to follow this alternative path, it might create a relatively favorable political environment for a new wave of global revolution when neoliberal capitalism enters its own major crisis.
The Cuban experience after 1990 has demonstrated that it is possible for a socialist state surrounded by neoliberal capitalism to maintain the basic socialist framework for several decades, provided that the Communist Party leadership was willing to sacrifice its own material interests. But in the absence of a major socialist revolution in a big country, even Cuba has been under growing pressure to undertake neoliberal-style “economic reform”.

A discussion of the Bo Xilai affair follows - Bo was the CPC party chief in Chongqing, and the figurehead for a more social-democratic, state-development oriented faction of the CPC, before being purged and prosecuted on corruption charges. Li believes this was the final defeat of any organized Left faction in the CPC. Here we should not that this book was published in 2015 - both the intensifying military and economic aggression from the U.S. (already contributing to some visible shifts in Chinese political economy, for example the “Dual Circulation” strategy) as well as recent signals by President Xi (some would call it lip-service) around “Common Prosperity” (a slogan also raised by Bo Xilai) could be brought up as counter-points to Li’s general analysis here, but in any case, CPC internal politics are not a major focus of this book, so we leave that argument for another time.

Li returns again to the thesis of semi-peripheral crisis, this time giving examples of three states which went through this crisis and what this predicts for China:

In the 1980s, non-agricultural employment reached 70–80 percent of the total employment in Brazil, South Korea, and Poland. From 1980 to 2012, China’s non-agricultural employment rose from 31 percent to 66 percent of total employment, with an average growth rate of about 1 percentage point a year. At this rate, China’s non-agricultural employment will approach 75 percent of total employment by 2020 and may exceed 80 percent by 2025. By 2020, China will have a level of proletarianization comparable to that in Brazil, South Korea, and Poland in the 1980s.
Based on the historical experience of Brazil, South Korea, and Poland, when China’s non-agricultural employment reaches the range of 70–80 percent of total employment, the political and economic demands of the Chinese working class and the urban middle class may begin to exceed the capacity of the Chinese regime of capital accumulation to accommodate. This incompatibility will lead to an accumulation crisis and a socio-political crisis.
In the case of Brazil, South Korea, and Poland, their crises happened when global revolution was in retreat and neoliberalism was advancing in every geographic area in the world. The crises were all resolved within the capitalist framework by reestablishing favorable economic and political conditions required for capital accumulation.

Chapter 3: Economic Crisis: Cyclical and Structural

This chapter lays out some more theory on crisis, borrowing heavily from WSA but also traditional Marxism - here we are still in the realm of traditional, “strictly economic” crisis, not having brought in the aspect of ecological crisis (which, as we will see later, Li also sees as a fundamental part of the coming economic crisis).

Briefly, on WSA theory of crisis, and “bifurcation”:

An often-heard argument in favor of capitalism is that capitalism is supposed to be a uniquely flexible and resilient system. From time to time, the capitalist economy would fall into crisis. But capitalism has always found a way to recover from a crisis and rebuild conditions for capital accumulation on increasingly larger scales. In this sense, crisis may be seen as an indispensable mechanism regulating capitalist life processes, eliminating the inefficient and wasteful elements while making the system stronger and healthier.
However, according to Immanuel Wallerstein, the world system theorist, there is nothing unique about capitalist “flexibility” or “resilience.” Every economic, social, or physical system relies upon “cyclical rhythms” to restore “equilibrium.” But in addition to “cyclical rhythms,” there are “secular trends” that over time change the parameters of operation of the system. At some point, the underlying parameters diverge from the equilibrium so much that the equilibrium can no longer be restored. The system starts to undergo wider and more violent fluctuations, forcing the system into “bifurcation”.

Li also summarizes here the typical Marxist view of under- and over-consumption crises.

He then lays out various reasons for why a low-to-no-growth economy is coming:

Firstly, “technology isn’t what it used to be!”:

However, in a recent research paper, Robert Gordon, a prestigious neoclassical economist specializing in economic growth, questioned this neoclassical assumption with some powerful historical evidence. Gordon argues that the rapid economic progress made over the past two and a half centuries may turn out to be “a unique episode in human history.”
Gordon observes that there have been three industrial revolutions since 1750. The first industrial revolution, which invented steam engines and railroads, lasted from 1750 to 1830. The second industrial revolution, which invented electricity and internal combustion engines, lasted from 1870 to 1900 and had many spin-off inventions (such as airplanes, air conditioning, and interstate highways) that drove economic growth for much of the twentieth century. The third industrial revolution, which invented computers, the web, and mobile phones, lasted from 1960 to the present.
Gordon argues that the second industrial revolution was far more important than either the first or the third. The third industrial revolution has nearly run its course but has produced only a short-lived growth revival from 1996 to 2004. Many of the important inventions that took place in the second and third industrial revolution could only happen once in history.
In the future, we will have to face a world with fewer and less important innovations. Improvement in living standards will be further hampered by “six headwinds”: the declining share of labor force in the population, the stagnation of educational attainment, rising inequality, competition from foreign workers (depressing wages of American workers), energy and environmental constraints, and heavily indebted households and government. Economic growth will slow down and eventually approach zero.
[…]
Since 1983, the long-term tendency towards accelerating economic growth has been reversed and the US long-term average economic growth rates have trended downwards. Based on the current trend, the US long-term average economic growth rate will decline to 0.3 percent by the second half of the twenty-first century, returning to the growth rates in the eighteenth century. For all practical purposes, this would be the end of modern economic growth.

Why does low-growth matter? Because:

Capitalism is an economic system based on accumulation of capital on increasingly larger scales. If the economic growth rate approaches zero but the capitalists continue to invest in new capital, then the output–capital ratio would collapse. For example, if productive net investment is 4 percent of economic output but economic growth rate is only 0.5 percent, then the output–capital ratio would fall to 0.125. If output– capital ratio collapses, the profit rate would also collapse. If capitalists stop making investments in response to the collapse of the profit rate, the capitalist economy would cease to operate as a viable economic system

Another factor contributing to a low-growth regime is generalized "profit squeeze":

Wallerstein argues that as capitalism develops, there has been a tendency for the wage cost, the material cost, and the taxation cost to rise relative to the value of economic output. As the population moves from rural areas to the cities and as a growing proportion of the labor force becomes proletarianized working class, the workers demand higher living standards and more extensive political and social rights. The expansion of the global capitalist economy has depleted natural resources and degraded the environment, raising the costs of material inputs. Both workers and capitalists demand state interventions that would help to improve their conditions relative to the workers and the capitalists in other states. The state is also under pressure to cover some of the rising wage cost and material cost through government spending.
As the rising wage, material, and taxation costs reach their respective asymptotes, capitalist profits will be squeezed and capital accumulation becomes increasingly unfeasible. The system will enter into a structural crisis that can no longer be resolved within its own institutional framework.

Chapter 4: The Capitalist World System: The Limit to Spatial Fix

How capitalism escaped low-growth before (the “spatial fix”) - and why it was able to (lack of effective self-centered development of the periphery = abundant natural resources and no hard ecological constraints for the core).

More WSA-influenced explanation:

In the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, the periphery mainly consisted of geographic areas with relatively low population density and abundant natural resources. Natural resources (precious metals and raw materials) were extracted from the periphery to supply the core. Since the nineteenth century, the periphery has included the great majority of the world population. The periphery specializes in highly competitive, low value-added economic activities. Economic surplus is extracted from the periphery and transferred to the core through “unequal exchange” (commodities exported by the periphery embodying greater amount of labor are exchanged for commodities imported from the core embodying smaller amount of labor).
The periphery has functioned as the strategic reserve for the capitalist world system. The great majority of the peripheral population lives in rural areas, providing a potentially large cheap labor force that can be drawn into the dynamics of global capital accumulation when it is called upon. Historically, effective capital accumulation (rapid economic growth at exponential rates) was largely limited to the core and the semi-periphery. The absence of effective capital accumulation in the periphery meant that the peripheral regions (with between two-thirds and three-quarters of the world population) had comparatively low levels of resource consumption and environmental impact. As a result, up to the mid-twentieth century, global capitalism had been able to expand without much concern over resources and environmental constraints.
The semi-periphery plays an indispensable role for the operation of the capitalist world system. Politically, the semi-periphery acts as the “middle stratum” that helps to prevent unified resistance by the oppressed great majority against the system’s privileged few. Economically, the semi-periphery is equally important for the stability of the capitalist world system.

Returns to the idea of China becoming semi-periphery and moving toward crisis (and why this matters globally, as the last “spatial fix” disappears):

However, within about a decade, China’s average labor term of trade is likely to approach or exceed one. China’s labor terms of trade are likely to turn favorable against not only all the peripheral economies but also most of the semi-peripheral economies. By then, China will become a semi-peripheral state. Given China’s enormous economic and demographic size, China’s entry into the semi-periphery will have fundamental implications for the operations of the capitalist world system and may suggest that the successive “spatial fixes” as a historical strategy to revive the capitalist world system has reached its limit.

Chapter 5: The Next Economic Crisis

This chapter focuses on the specific factors leading to capitalist crisis within China. It takes the concepts laid out in the previous two chapters, specifically about the tendency towards profit squeeze and the dangers of falling profits and growth rates, and applies them to an analysis of China’s economy.

On profit squeeze due to increased class struggle:

As the Chinese working class begins to get organized, the capitalist class increases its demands on the state, and the state has to pay for the growing environmental cost, both the wage cost and the taxation cost are set to rise in the future. The capital cost may resume rising as China’s output–capital ratio keeps falling (if the ratio of capital stock to economic output rises and the depreciation rate stays constant, depreciation as a share of economic output will rise). Chinese capitalism has entered into the era of profit squeeze.

Why the U.S. can tolerate a lower-profit-rate regime better than China:

During the postwar economic boom (from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s), the US profit growth rates exceeded 5 percent. By the mid-1970s, American capitalism was in deep crisis and the profit growth collapsed. Under the Reagan administration, US profit growth experienced a strong recovery. Since then, American capitalism has struggled with declining economic growth rates. Under neoliberalism, profit share has increased. But the increase of profit share has not been sufficient to offset the negative effects of declining economic growth rates. The US ten-year average profit growth rate decelerated from 5.5 percent for the period 1974–1984 to only 0.1 percent for the period 1998–2008. For the period 2003–2013, the ten-year average profit growth rate recovered to 2.1 percent.
Despite the slow pace of profit growth, American capitalism has ironically benefited from low ratios of accumulation. Given a certain profit growth rate, a lower ratio of accumulation implies higher marginal profit rate and in the long run, higher average profit rate. In the 1960s and the 1970s, when American capitalism focused on “material expansion,” the US ratio of accumulation averaged about 30 percent. By the 1990s, the US ratio of accumulation declined to about 20 percent. For the period 2004–2013, on average only 13 percent of US capitalist profit was spent on capital accumulation. The decline of the US ratio of accumulation reflects the financialization of American capitalism and the relocation of industrial capital from the United States to the peripheral regions.
[…]
Figure 5.7 shows that Chinese capitalism has behaved very differently from American capitalism. While American capitalism has focused on financial accumulation, Chinese capitalism has become the center of global industrial production and depends on heavy investment in industrial equipment and infrastructure to sustain capital accumulation.
[…]
From 1991 to 1996, China’s profit growth rates and marginal profit rates were very high. Profit growth rates fluctuated around 20 percent and marginal profit rates fluctuated around 50 percent. In the late 1990s, profit growth decelerated sharply as massive privatization reduced the working class purchasing power and depressed domestic demand. Staring with 2001, when China entered into the World Trade Organization, China’s profit growth accelerated. By 2007, the profit growth rate reached 18 percent and the marginal profit rate reached 37 percent.
However, after 2007, both profit’s growth rate and marginal profit rate fell sharply. In 2012, profit’s growth rate fell to 1 percent and the marginal profit rate fell to 1.5 percent. The sharp decline of profit’s growth rate and marginal profit rate raises serious questions regarding the future of Chinese capitalism.

Li also goes into China’s demographic challenges (tight labor market, aging population) as compounding the growth rate and profit rate problems.

Based on falling profit we can expect crisis:

Based on the historical experience of American capitalism, when the profit rate fell to the range of 10–12 percent, private investment was likely to collapse, sending the economy into a deep recession. Using US historical experience as a guide, the Chinese economy is likely to enter into a major crisis in the 2020s when China’s profit rate falls to 10–12 percent.

Chapter 6: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and the Global Crisis

Finally turning his attention to the other elephant in the room, this chapter examines, in great detail (much of the chapter is simple presentation of statistical tables and comparisons between different countries’ energy mixes), the coming energy and climate crisis. The argument here is two-fold. First, that our energy and other ecological resources cannot keep pace with “healthy” capitalist economic growth in the coming decades. Oil and fossil fuels are rapidly approaching or have already passed their peak of output, and all alternative energy sources are constrained by a variety of other factors, so that no one particular source offers a “silver bullet” replacement for fossil fuels. The second prong of the argument is that on our current path, even if our energy use could keep pace with and not constrain economic growth, the rate of emissions reductions we achieve will be dwarfed by that same economic growth, leading to ecological collapse in some shape or form. So if the world takes steps to avoid the economic crisis of peak oil (for example by exploiting to the maximum available oil deposits, including with more locally destructive methods like fracking), the ecological crisis will be even more catastrophic. And if the world takes more proactive steps to avoid the ecological crisis, then the further limiting of economic growth will only serve to hasten the arrival of the economic crisis (the low-to-zero growth regime that Li sees as terminal for capitalism). But again, these aren’t either-or crises: instead, we will see some mixture of the two over the next decades: both immense suffering, displacement, and destruction of nature from the climate crisis, and similarly agonizing effects from the economic crisis. If we are to survive and make it through this century, we should hope to see more economic crisis than ecological crisis - for while the economic crisis has a way out, in the form of moving beyond capitalism, the ecological crisis presents us with the possibility of severe and irreversible damage to our ability to survive on Earth.

On the impossibility of lofty emission intensity reduction goals:

The above reasoning suggests that it is basically impossible for the global economy to achieve an annual reduction rate of emission intensity of 6 percent over a multi-decade long period. Thus, under conditions of unlimited economic growth, it is not possible for the world to achieve the emissions reduction required to limit global warming to no more than 2°C relative to the pre-industrial era. In fact, even if the world immediately commits to zero economic growth, it would be nearly impossible for the world to achieve an annual emissions reduction rate of 3 percent each year between now and the end of the twenty-first century.

But what about electric cars?

The world’s current car fleet is about 800 million (Oak Ridge National Laboratory 2014). Assuming that the lithium requirement for electric vehicles will be 10 kilograms per battery, it would take 8 million tonnes of lithium to replace the world’s current car fleet with electric vehicles. The world lithium production in 2013 was 35,000 tonnes. Currently, about 30 percent of the world lithium consumption is used for batteries and only a fraction of the lithium consumption for batteries is used for electric vehicles (USGS 2014). If the entire world’s annual lithium production (at the rate of 2013 production) is used to make batteries for electric vehicles, it will take about 230 years just to replace the world’s current car fleet with electric vehicles.

Here on the economic crisis of peak oil:

The section on “Oil and Economic Growth” argues that peak oil may have a devastating impact on global economic growth. In Figure 6.20, it is implicitly assumed that other forms of energy can substitute for oil without much difficulty. This assumption may prove to be too optimistic. Nevertheless, global economic growth rate is projected to fall below 2 percent by 2030, fall below 1 percent by 2040, and approach 0.7 percent by 2050. By comparison, during the period 1913–1950, a period of major crisis of global capitalism that included the Great Depression and two world wars, the average annual growth rate of the global economy was 1.8 percent. After World War II, the world economic growth rate fell below 2 percent on several occasions: in 1975, 1981–1982, 1991–1993, and 2009.
Based on historical experience, a prolonged period during which the global average economic growth rate stays below 2 percent may be considered a period of major crisis of global capitalism. As the world economic growth rate falls below 2 percent, the global capitalist system is likely to suffer from persistent economic and political instabilities. By this definition, the projections shown in Figure 6.20 imply that global capitalism will enter into a new major crisis after about 2030.
To the extent that the coming major crisis can no longer be resolved within the basic institutional framework of capitalism, it will prove to be the structural or the terminal crisis of global capitalism.

Chapter 7: The Unsustainability of Chinese Capitalism

What are the options for dealing with the crisis of Chinese capitalism? There aren’t many good ones.

Just like global capitalism, Chinese capital faces both economic and ecological crisis, with no easy exit:

Theoretically, Chinese capitalism can adapt to lower economic growth rates by lowering the ratio of accumulation. But a lower ratio of accumulation would undermine the capacity of Chinese capitalism to deliver industrial goods to the global capitalist market. With a lower ratio of accumulation, labor productivity will grow less rapidly. If the Chinese workers’ wages continue to grow more rapidly than labor productivity, the competitiveness of Chinese capitalism in the global market will be undermined. In addition, a lower ratio of accumulation implies a smaller share of investment in China’s gross domestic product (GDP). To compensate for the lower investment share, household consumption needs to rise relative to China’s GDP. But a higher household consumption share cannot be achieved without a major redistribution of national income from the capitalists to the workers. Such redistribution will accelerate the decline of the profit rate.
Given these dilemmas, in the short- and the medium-term, Chinese capitalism will struggle to lower the ratio of accumulation. Assuming that the Chinese capitalism can lower the ratio of accumulation to about 50 percent, the Chinese economy needs to grow at least 5 percent a year in order to keep the long-term profit rate above 10 percent (assuming a constant profit share).
All economic activities (including the so-called service sectors) involve some forms of physical and chemical transformations of the physical world. Rapid economic growth cannot happen without massive consumption of material resources and degradation of ecological systems. This raises the question of how long Chinese capitalism can maintain rapid economic growth without irreparably damaging China’s and the global ecological systems.

Low growth is both necessary and inevitable due to aforementioned reasoning (profit squeeze, future collapse in capitalist investment, etc):

To meet the requirements of RCP 4.5 and assuming that China is entitled to 19 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions budget, China’s economic growth rate will have to fall below 5 percent after 2020. To the extent that the Chinese capitalist economy will probably need to have a more than 5 percent economic growth rate to maintain economic stability, climate stabilization requirement is incompatible with the normal operation of Chinese capitalism.
After 2030, to meet the climate stabilization requirement, China’s economic growth rate will need to fall below 2 percent. After 2035, the Chinese capitalist economy will have to contract in absolute terms to stay on the emissions reduction path required by RCP 4.5. No capitalist economy can operate with negative economic growth rates for a prolonged period of time.
The above analysis makes it clear that neither Chinese capitalism nor global capitalism can be made compatible with the basic requirements of climate stabilization under conditions that will promote the long-term sustainability of human civilization. If the global capitalist system continues to operate under its own laws of motion through the rest of the twenty-first century, there is the real possibility that the material foundation of human civilization will be irremediably damaged.

Chapter 8: The Transition

What is the way out of these interlocking and global crises? This is the question Li tries to answer in this chapter. One notable piece is lacking in his analysis of the ways China’s crisis could be resolved - imperialism! Nowhere does the U.S. factor in the discussion of how Chinese internal crisis would play out, even in the third scenario where total societal collapse leads to a “balkanization” of China. Certainly Li understands economic imperialism, and uses it in his analysis of the world system in other parts of the book, but he overlooks what many people most closely associate with imperialism - war! With how quickly the U.S. has ramped up pressure on China in the past 5 years, and it’s extensive military preparation for confrontation, does the possibility of war not deserve attention? Especially with the “hot” war ongoing in Ukraine, in which the U.S. military and NATO have found new “reason for being” while still shying from direct confrontation, great-power competition, in both the economic and military sphere, is very much back. Without speculating on how the U.S. would respond to significant internal crisis in China, we can assume that they would respond to it. And from what we saw with the dissolution of the USSR, the U.S. would try to shape that crisis in the direction of a total destruction of Chinese international power, a destruction of any semblance of planning or state-owned enterprises, and the general immiseration of the Chinese working population. With that understanding, Li’s three scenarios laid out here take on much different lights, because only in the first scenario is centralized, continuous Chinese state power preserved throughout the crisis.

Li first summarizes his argument again:

Capitalist accumulation has fundamentally transformed China’s social structure. As a growing proportion of China’s labor force becomes proletarianized wage workers, a new generation of the Chinese working class begins to get organized. Squeezed between rising living costs and declining income expectations, many Chinese urban youth have seen their “middle class dream” smashed. A new anti-capitalist alliance that includes the working class and the progressive sections of the urban middle class begins to take shape. As China’s non-agricultural employment rises above 70 percent of the total labor force, it will be increasingly difficult for Chinese capitalism to accommodate the urban population’s rising demands. By the 2020s, China is likely to be confronted by both an accumulation crisis and a political crisis (see Chapter 2).
To maintain economic and political stability, it is necessary for the Chinese capitalist economy to grow rapidly. But if the Chinese economy continues to grow rapidly, China’s rising demand for oil, natural gas, and coal is likely to impose an unbearable burden on world energy markets by the 2020s or the 2030s. China’s ecological systems will continue to deteriorate in the coming decades. Beyond the 2030s, climate stabilization consistent with the long-term sustainability of human civilization may require negative growth of the Chinese economy (see Chapter 7).
The previous chapters of this book have argued that by the 2020s, economic, social, and ecological contradictions are likely to converge in China, leading to a major crisis of the Chinese capitalist system.
China has been at the center of global capital accumulation in the early twenty-first century. As economic, social, and ecological contradictions begin to overwhelm Chinese capitalism, the global capitalist system is entering into a structural crisis that can no longer be resolved within its own institutional framework. The age of transition has arrived.

On the last spatial fix and the contradictions it was unable to resolve for good, and what Li sees as a crucial leadership void in global capitalism (”exactly when the system enters into its structural crisis”!!!):

The “spatial fix” in the late twentieth century helped the capitalist system to win the global class war by partially dismantling the post-1945 global “New Deal.” However, the victory of global neoliberalism was purchased at a very high price, at the expense of the long-term sustainability of the global capitalist system.
The relocation of industrial production to the peripheral areas with a large cheap labor force helped to increase the production of global surplus value and revive the worldwide profit rate. However, the de-industrialization of the core countries and especially the financialization of the United States—the incumbent hegemonic power—led to new economic and social contradictions. Rising inequality undermined the political legitimacy of the core capitalist states. Financial liberalization greatly increased the instability of the global capitalist system. In the short term, financial expansion helped to revive American imperialism. In the long term, the deepening economic and social contradictions have accelerated the decline of the American hegemonic power, depriving the global capitalist system of effective leadership exactly when the system enters into its structural crisis (on the decline of the American hegemonic power, see Arrighi 2007).

Why India and other regions cannot provide new spatial fixes:

In the coming years, China is likely to advance into the semi-periphery (when China’s per capita GDP rises above the world average and China’s gains from unequal exchange begin to exceed the losses). The peripheral share of the world population will decline to about 50 percent. This raises the question whether the remaining labor force in the periphery can generate sufficiently large economic surplus to be transferred to the core. If world wealth is no longer concentrated in the core, could the core capitalist countries still manage to maintain economic and social stability?
In the late twentieth century, China’s participation in the global capitalist division of labor helped to lower the global labor cost and revive the global profit rate. In the future, when Chinese workers demand more economic and social rights, could another large geographical area be mobilized to contain the rising labor cost in China and the rest of world?
For a new geographical area to replace China as the new center of global industrial production, the new area needs to meet several requirements. The new geographical area needs to provide a sufficiently large cheap labor force that is at least comparable to China’s in size. The labor force needs to be equipped with adequate infrastructure and the necessary qualities and skills required for capitalist industrial production. The geographical area needs to be ruled by an effective capitalist state that can provide various political and social conditions required for capitalist accumulation. Finally, capitalist accumulation in this newly developed geographical area will not be constrained by resources depletion and ecological crisis.
Excluding China, the periphery of the capitalist world system now includes mainly Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many countries in these geographical areas currently suffer from political instability and do not have the adequate physical infrastructure required for capitalist industrialization. India is probably the only country that can potentially supply an industrial labor force that is comparable to China’s in size.
[…]
Thus, at best, it will take India another 20 years to supply an industrial labor force that is as large as China’s. However, in terms of physical health and basic literacy, the quality of India’s labor force is likely to fall behind China’s in the foreseeable future. The insufficient quality of labor force will be a serious constraint on India’s future industrialization.
To function as the center of global industrial production, a country needs not only a large cheap labor force with adequate skills and physical health, but also massive investment in capital infrastructure and abundant energy supply. In this respect, Indian capitalism faces insurmountable obstacles.

Li proceeds to talk about Indian energy resources, and other factors that disqualify it as a new spatial fix / save for capitalism.

Returning to China, Li lays out three rough scenarios for the internal outcomes of crisis:

Overall, it is unlikely that the coming major crisis can be resolved within the existing framework of Chinese capitalism. China’s political future may follow one of the following three scenarios.

On this first scenario, he is not very optimistic about its likelihood. Again, one wonders if any of the developments in China since the publication of this book would affect his analysis:

Under the first scenario, pressured by the growing popular protests, the Communist Party leadership may begin to undertake serious economic and social reforms to accommodate the interests of the working class and the urban middle class. The Communist Party leadership may decide to abandon the neoliberal policy of “reform and openness,” implement some form of wealth redistribution, and tax the capitalists to pay for the social and environmental costs. However, with rising wage, taxation, and resources costs, the capitalists will reduce investment, leading to growing unemployment and economic crisis. At this stage, to sustain the progressive economic and social policies, the Communist Party leadership may be persuaded to pursue a more socialist-oriented model of development. To offset the decline of capitalist investment, the Communist Party leadership may decide to revive state-owned enterprises. As public investment gradually replaces private investment, the economic foundation for a new socialist economy may be established. Under such a scenario, China will be able to revive the socialist model of development with comparatively less political turbulence.
However, back to the 1990s, the Communist Party ruling elites were already committed to the transition to capitalism. Since then, the political and economic interests of the Communist Party leadership have converged with the interests of the transnational and domestic capitalist classes. After the Bo Xilai incident, the Communist Party leadership purged from its own ranks the last significant faction that was in opposition to neoliberal capitalism. Given these developments, it is highly unlikely that the Communist Partly ruling elites will give up their power and wealth without a major fight.

In the second scenario, popular revolution without a political direction leads to a liberal (presumably pro-West?) regime - scary thought.

Under the second scenario, the coming crisis of Chinese capitalism will lead to the disintegration of the Communist Party dictatorship. Throughout the country, “mass incidents” will explode, leading to a popular revolution overwhelming the Party state. At the national level, formal liberal democracy may be established. But the capitalist class may retain substantial influence through their control over the army, the police, and the tax revenue. Because there is not a nationally recognized, unified leftist political party, the revolutionary socialist left may initially have difficulty in taking over national political power.
However, China is a big country. There will be many places where the working class has a relative advantage over the capitalist class. In many cities and provinces, the political rule of the capitalist class may be sufficiently weakened so that local political power falls into the hands of the workers and revolutionary socialists. By taking advantage of the weakness of the newly established “liberal democratic” national government, leftist local governments may survive and become consolidated. By undertaking preliminary progressive policies that meet the local population’s immediate needs, such as housing, health care, education, improvement of working conditions, pollution cleaning, and the elimination of local mafias, local leftist governments will begin to gain popular support.
On the other hand, the capitalist economic, social, and ecological crisis will continue to deepen. Unable to solve these crises, the national capitalist government and the various local governments under the control of local capitalists will be further weakened. The working class and the urban middle class will continue to make economic and political demands that the national and local capitalist governments are unable to accommodate. As the legitimacy of capitalist national and local governments declines and the popular support for local leftist governments grows, the nation-wide balance of power will be gradually turned in favor of revolutionary socialist forces, laying down the foundation for nation-wide socialist transformation.

The third, most dire scenario, although probably less likely than number two, sees a breakup a la USSR early 90s. It’s hard to share Li’s relative optimism here (and in scenario two above) on the possibility of socialist forces being able to organize and take power in the aftermath of such a collapse - instead, would the principal effect not be a total crisis of legitimacy and depoliticization of much of the population, similar to what happened in the former socialist states after 1991? Or is the comparison wrong?

Under the third scenario, the coming crisis of Chinese capitalism may lead to a general political and social collapse. Effective central government may not be restored for a prolonged period of time. In the worst case, China may fall into a civil war. Certain areas where ethnic minorities are concentrated, such as Southern Xinjiang and Tibet, may begin to split away from China. Under such a scenario, there will still be certain geographical areas where the conditions are relatively favorable for the working class. In some cities and provinces, workers may be able to take over local political power and the revolutionary socialist left may be able to provide political leadership. Whether the local workers’ governments can survive depends on whether they can defend themselves with an effective armed force (such as workers’ militia), whether they can establish a secured base of economic revenue, and whether they can skillfully take advantage of the internal contradictions of the capitalist class.
If local workers’ governments can survive the initial phase of collapse and gain popular support, their political influence is likely to consolidate and expand. As the political powers under capitalist control fail to resolve the on-going economic, political, and ecological crises, revolutionary socialist forces will have the opportunity to gradually gain the upper hand in the struggle for national political supremacy.

Li’s quick and dirty appraisal of 20th century AES and why it failed:

Twentieth-century socialist states remained a part of the capitalist world system and had to compete against the capitalist states economically and militarily. Political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of privileged bureaucrats and technocrats, who over time evolved into a new exploitative ruling class.
Initially, socialist states were generally successful in achieving both effective capital accumulation and improvement of people’s living standards. By eliminating the traditional ruling classes, socialist states were able to mobilize economic surplus to achieve rapid industrialization. However, by the 1970s and the 1980s, socialist states were squeezed between rising labor and resources costs and their inability to compete with the core capitalist countries on the technology frontier. The Communist Party’s ruling elites took advantage of the economic crisis to dismantle the socialist social contract and complete the capitalist transition. The former socialist economies were restructured to become suppliers of cheap labor force or raw materials in the capitalist world system.

Li ends the book with a short sketch of how he thinks 21st century AES will need to work, in the context of “hard” ecological limits. Compared to the simultaneous-global-revolution-that-immediately-abolishes-commodity-production fantasy presented in many Western Marxist tracts, this actually seems refreshingly hard-headed and realistic, in acknowledging the initial focus on state-directed, ecologically-minded investment, the problem of capital flight, and the initial necessity of "Socialism in One Country". The prospect of “delinking” is also interesting here, but Li only really name-checks it, so I would be happy to see a more detailed explanation of what role he sees it playing in future socialist states.

To achieve zero economic growth or a sufficiently low economic growth rate compatible with ecological sustainability, the socially necessary condition is that society as a whole has control over the surplus product so that society can democratically decide how to use the surplus product and to limit the pace of capital accumulation to a level that is consistent with ecological sustainability. For example, society can collectively decide to use most of the surplus product for public consumption and environmental cleaning and to use only a small portion of the surplus product for capital accumulation, or not to use any surplus product for capital accumulation at all.
As the global capitalist system begins to collapse, the immediate concern for future socialist governments will be how to organize the economy to meet people’s basic needs without worsening the ecological crisis. To meet the immediate demands of the great majority of the population (for food, housing, health care, education, and other basic needs) and to reduce environmental degradation, socialist governments should pursue economic policies that would help to slow down the pace of capital accumulation as soon as possible. This can be achieved by imposing taxes on capitalists, forcing capitalists to pay for the social and environmental costs of capitalist production, and by effectively enforcing labor and environmental regulations.
Socialist economic policies will inevitably lead to lower profit rates, discouraging capitalist investment. Capitalists may respond by attempting to move capital abroad or by undertaking investment strikes (withdrawal of capital from productive investment). The threat of capital flight can be defeated through strict control over financial capital flows across national borders. To fight back against capitalist investment strikes, socialist governments should increase public investment rapidly. In addition to investing in social infrastructure, socialist governments should build and expand productive state-owned enterprises on a massive scale so that socialist governments can count on the productive state-owned enterprises to provide most of their tax revenue. In countries where much of the capitalist wealth is politically illegitimate (for example, in former socialist countries, much of the current capitalist wealth originated from illegitimate privatization), the socialization of the economy can be accelerated through confiscation of illegitimate capitalist wealth.
With the above policies, socialist governments can achieve socialization of the economy within a reasonably short period of time. However, future socialist governments will have to confront the classical challenge of how to build “socialism in one country” in a capitalist world system. Although the future socialist revolutions will take place in an environment in which the global capitalist system has entered into structural crisis, at least initially, socialist economies will still be partially constrained by the laws of motion of the capitalist world system. Socialist economies will remain a part of the global capitalist division of labor and will be under pressure from global market competition, which may force the socialist economies to pursue “competitiveness” thorough exploitation of cheap labor and resources.
To reduce and temporarily remove such pressure from the global capitalist market, future socialist governments may learn from the experience of twentieth-century socialist economies by pursuing the strategy of “delinking.” That is, the socialist economies can try to delink from the global capitalist economy by imposing strong protectionist policies and drastically reducing the size of foreign trade. In countries that heavily depend on imports of fossil fuels (such as China and India), the strategy of “delinking” can be pursued in combination with the de-carbonization of the economy (that is, reducing the total consumption of fossil fuels).
In the short run, the strategy of “delinking” would help socialist governments to establish a state monopoly over domestic markets and greatly reduce the pressure of global market competition. This would provide the maneuvering space for socialist governments to socialize the economy and to implement socially and environmentally progressive policies (which tend to increase labor and resources costs).
The experience of twentieth-century socialism demonstrates that in the long run, if global capitalism manages to survive major crisis (as happened in the twentieth century), socialist economies would have great difficulty in surviving the pressure of global market competition. However, in the twenty-first century, global capitalism most likely will enter into a structural crisis that can no longer be resolved within its own institutional framework. In such a world-historical context, the strategy of “delinking” pursued by individual socialist countries will help to accelerate the breakup of the global capitalist system. For example, if China undergoes a socialist revolution, given China’s central position in the current global capitalist division of labor, the entire global capitalist commodity chain will begin to fall apart. The disintegration of the global capitalist division of labor will further destabilize the rest of the global capitalist system, leading to more socialist revolutions.
By 2050, much of the world will begin to live under one or several economic and social systems that are fundamentally different from the current global capitalist system. Future generations will face the urgent world-historical task of cleaning up the global environment and searching for a new socio-economic path that will lead to long-term sustainability.
As capitalism ceases to be a viable economic and social system, humanity will have to ask if there is any economic and social alternative to socialism, however socialism will come to be defined in the twenty-first century.

Even though this book has an essentially “internal” lens on developments in American class structure and class politics, much of it actually complements an “external” viewpoint that sees these developments in the context of contemporary imperialism, core/periphery relations, and the formation of a labor aristocracy. If contemporary theories of imperialism explain why the popular classes of the U.S. benefit from imperialism, this book help explains how these benefits came to be distributed (unevenly and racially), how they have erased the terrain of class struggle (through trade-union reformism, chauvinism, and collaborationism), and how the potential exclusion of key segments of the U.S. working class from these benefits could lead to a rebirth of some kind of real, anti-imperialist, revolutionary politics in the coming decades. Crucially for U.S. anti-imperialist activists, Davis warns against majoritarian thinking, recognizing that at least at first (and barring significant “re-ordering” of the world-system), principled revolutionary and anti-imperialist politics will not be broadly popular and will often face vicious attacks (including from the social-democratic left). The book is short on prescriptions for action. It is more valuable as an autopsy of the 20th century U.S. labor movement and organized left, and a call to create something better - a call to wake from the nightmare of “late imperial America”.

Part One: Labor and American Politics

Chapter 1: Why the American Working Class Is Different

Davis opens by tracing the development of the U.S. working class from the founding of the country onwards, and the major factors inhibiting any early development of radicalism.

An early note on the lack of “popular class” influence on the American Revolution:

Another important difference between Europe and America was the class composition of the leadership of the democratic movement. In Europe, bourgeois liberalism had (at least until 1848) generally taken a position of adamant opposition to ‘democracy’. Its strategic aim was to mobilize the plebeian masses against aristocratic power without thereby being forced to concede universal suffrage. The manipulation of the English working classes by the Whigs in reform struggles of the 1820s and early 1930s was a classic case. To the extent that the bourgeois revolution actually became a ‘democratic’ revolution, it was because elements of the plebeian strata (urban artisans, petty bourgeoisie, declassed intellectuals, supported by the multitudes of journeymen, laborers, and sections of the peasantry) violently assumed leadership, usually in the context of a life-or-death threat to the survival of the revolution or temporizing betrayal by the haute bourgeoisie (France in 1791 or Germany in 1849). Furthermore, by the 1830s, surviving elements of this plebeian Jacobinism were rapidly being transformed, under the impact of industrialism, into a proletarian proto-socialism (Blanquism, the Communist League, etc.
In the United States, by contrast, the commanding heights of the bourgeois-democratic ‘revolution’ were dominated, without significant challenge, by the political representatives of the American bourgeoisie. Thus, in a certain ironic sense, the American bourgeoisie (in a definition encompassing historically specific configurations of large merchants, bankers, big capitalist landowners or planters, and, later, industrialists) was the only ‘classical’ revolutionary-democratic bourgeoisie in world history: all other bourgeois-democratic revolutions have depended, to one degree or another, upon plebeian wings or ‘surrogates’ to defeat aristocratic reaction and demolish the structure of the ancien regimes.
This was partly a result of the fact that the ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution in America was not an uprising against a moribund feudalism, but rather a unique process of capitalist national liberation involving, in the period from 1760 to 1860, a multi-phase struggle against the constraints imposed by a globally hegemonic British capital on the growth of native bourgeois society. It is possible to see the Revolution of 1776, for instance, as very much a civil war against Loyalist comprador strata, and the Civil War as a continuing revolution against an informal British imperialism that had incorporated the cotton export economy of the South in an alliance of neocolonial dependency. In the first phase, a merchant-planter coalition overthrew the obstacles to internal expansion, and in the second, an alliance of fledgling industrial capital and Western farmers created the preconditions for national economic integration.

As Davis points out, there was never any thorough-going “democratic revolution”, even through civil war:

The same factors also gave the democratic movement in America its relatively ‘conservative’ cast. In contrast with the anti-feudal revolutions of France or Spain, for example, there was no broad, radical assault on the legitimating institutions and ideology of society which might later serve as a model for working-class revolutionism. The plebeian colonial masses did not rise up under the leadership of their planter and mercantile ‘revolutionaries’ in 1776 to ignite a worldwide democratic revolution—as the sans-culotte followers of Saint-Just and Robespierre would aspire to do a few years later—but rather to defend the special gift of popular liberty that God and Locke had granted their Puritan ancestors. Similarly, in arousing the North in 1861, Lincoln and the Republicans vehemently rejected the revolutionary slogans of Garrison and the Abolitionists (the extension of ‘equal rights’ to Afro-Americans and the destruction of the slave order) to appeal, instead, to the ‘preservation of the Union and Free White Labor’. These ideological nuances have far more than incidental significance; they testify both to the solidity of bourgeois political domination and to the inhibition of ‘permanent democratic revolution’ in America.

Here he introduces a theme he will return to many times, the rivalry of early European immigrant groups at a crucial point in the labor movement, as well as pointing out a uniquely strong religiosity in American culture (although, interestingly, the late 20th century growth in evangelicalism doesn’t feature strongly in his later analysis of Reagan’s America):

Partly rooted in purely economic rivalries in the labor market (although modern labor historiography has uprooted the hoary old myth that the Irish arrived in New England textile mills as strike breakers), the Yankee-versus-immigrant polarization in the working class also reflected a profound cultural antagonism that would hinder efforts at labor unity for more than a century. It would be easy to define this cleavage as a persistent opposition between native-Protestant and immigrant-Catholic workers; yet this antinomy does not sufficiently capture the complex nuances of how, on the one hand, religion, ethnicity, and popular custom were concatenated into two rival systems—or, on the other, how they were integrated into the matrix of a global, and highly distinctive, American bourgeois culture.
The central paradox of American culture is that while Engels was correct when he labelled it the ‘purest bourgeois culture’, Marx was equally right when he observed that ‘North America is preeminently the country of religiosity’. In the absence of a state church or aristocratic hierarchy, secularization was not a requirement for liberalism, and America did not experience the kind of ‘cultural revolution’ represented by Jacobin anticlericalism in Europe. Nor did the American working class develop the traditions of critical, defiant rationalism that on the Continent were so vital in orienting the proletariat toward socialism and in establishing an alliance with the intelligentsia. Instead, the industrial revolution in America went hand in hand with the reinforcement of religious influences upon popular culture and working-class consciousness.

And here’s the really big one:

This account of the working class in the 1850s would be incomplete without discussing a third divisive force: racism. American democracy was, after all, the most spectacularly successful case of settler-colonialism and the correlative condition for ‘free soil, free labor’ was the genocidal removal of the indigenous population. Moreover, as Tocqueville observed, the antebellum North was, if anything, more poisonously anti-Black than the South.
An already consolidated white racism tied to the myth of a future Black flooding of Northern labor markets led most native workmen to oppose social equality and suffrage for Black freedmen. From Boston to Cincinnati, the white lower classes periodically rioted, attacked communities of freedmen, hounded Abolitionists, and imposed color bars on their crafts. Northern Blacks were everywhere excluded from the universalization of manhood suffrage in the 1820s and 1830s, and on the eve of the Civil War only four states in the Union allowed freedmen even a qualified franchise. The rise of the Republican Party and massive Northern opposition to the extension of slavery contributed little to changing these prejudices. The young Republican Party carefully skirted or openly opposed the integration of Blacks into Northern society; deportation to Africa, in fact, was the favorite solution. Although segments of the native white working class, especially in New England, eventually embraced Abolitionism, they remained a minority whose opposition to slavery was most often framed within a pietistic religious ideology, rather than within a clear political analysis of the relationship between capitalism and slavery. Unfortunately more articulate and widely heard voices in the working class were those of ‘labor leaders’ and disgruntled Jacksonian radicals like Orestes Brownson or George H. Evans, who, in the guise of class politics, advocated an alliance of Northern labor with the slaveowners against ‘capital’.
Among the immigrant proletariat, on the other hand, a section of the German workers possessed a more or less revolutionary understanding of the political implications of the slavery crisis for the future of American labor. They attempted to mobilize support for Abolitionism, and denounced the efforts of pro-slavery demagogues like Herman Kriege and the New York Staats-Zeitung. But these ‘Red 48ers’—including the vanguard ‘Communist Club’ of New York—were ghettoized by language and their lack of understanding of the culture of American labor. Their heroic efforts had little impact upon the mainstream of the labor movement.

After a discussion of attempts by some Irish republican radicals to push abolitionism in the U.S.:

Thus, despite Garrison’s and O’Connell’s combined efforts, Abolitionism failed utterly to stir the most exploited and outcast strata of the Northern working class. Although the Irish stood loyally by the Union in the Civil War (few as Republicans, most as ‘Union Democrats’), anti-Black racism grew as the rising cost of living combined with a class-based conscription system to further increase the miseries of the immigrant ghettoes and fuel the distorted perception that ‘the Blacks were to blame’. The great Draft Riot of 1863—the bloodiest civil disturbance in American history—exhibited the schizophrenic consciousness of the immigrant poor: their hatred of the silk-stocking rich and their equal resentment against Blacks. Although attempts have been made to rationalize the sadistic attacks by the Irish on freedmen as the consequences of a desperate rivalry for unskilled jobs between the two groups, this analysis has lost ground in the face of growing evidence that Blacks had already been excluded from most categories of manual labor and that the competitive ‘threat’ was totally one-sided—directed in fact against Blacks.
Perhaps the racism of the Irish must be seen instead as part and parcel of their rapid and defensive ‘Americanization’ in a social context where each corporatist lower-class culture (native-Protestant versus immigrant-Catholic) faithfully reflected through the prism of its own particular values - the unifying settler-colonial credo that made them all ‘CITIZENS’.

Here, instead of choosing the facile explanation of Debsian socialism and it’s decline (they were simply outfought or repressed) Davis looks deeper:

Underlying the debacle of 1896, however, was more than simply the successful conspiracies of Gompers and the conservative Populists to derail a radical farmer-labor coalition. Even when full allowance is made for the demoralization and confusion created by the infighting within the AFL and the Populist party, a great discrepancy remains between the radicalism of the veteran trade-union militants—Debs, McBride, Morgan, etc.—and the apparent apathy or indifference of the majority of the urban and still predominantly unorganized working class. Despite the fact that Depression-era Chicago was frequently described by contemporary observers as a city ‘trembling on the brink of revolution’, the Labor-Populists won only about twenty percent of the potential labor vote (40,000 out of 230,000) at the height of their influence in 1894. Moreover, in a pattern of regional exceptionalism that would be repeated again in the twentieth century, the movement for an independent labor politics failed to grow in the other major urban-industrial centers outside of the Chicago-Northwestern area. Were there not, therefore, other, more profound forces acting to disrupt the advance of Labor-Populism and to deflect the development of American labor from the path traced by British and Australian labor parties?
Two factors stand out most clearly. First, the united rebellion of the Southern yeomen and farm tenants—the cutting edge of agrarian radicalism—was broken up by a violent counterattack of the regional ruling class which counterposed ‘Jim Crow’ and redneck demagogism to the Farmers’ Alliance and interracial cooperation. A vicious panoply of Black disfranchisement, racial segregation, and lynch terror was installed in the nineties to suppress militant Black tenants, to keep them tied to the land, and to prevent their future collaboration with poor whites. At the same time, the defeat of the great New Orleans General Strike of 1892 destroyed the vanguard of Southern labor and wrecked interracial unity among workers. Out of its ashes arose a stunted, Jim Crow white unionism on one hand, and a pariah Black sub-proletariat on the other. These twin defeats of Southern tenants and workers were decisive in allowing merchant-planter reaction to block the development of a free labor market: freezing the Southern economy for more than half a century in the disastrous mold of a servile cotton monoculture.
Secondly, this Southern counter-revolution was paralleled north of the Mason-Dixon Line by a resurgence of nativism and ethno-religious conflict within the industrial working class. In the bleak depression days of the mid-nineties, many native as well as ‘old’ immigrant workers came to believe that burgeoning immigration was creating a grave competitive threat.

Finally, it must be noted that the renaissance of the ethno-religious and racial conflict at the end of the nineteenth century was intimately connected with a far-reaching transmutation of popular ideologies. In the face of the race terror in Dixie and the demands of US expansionism in the Carribean and the Pacific, the old popular nationalism framed by Lincolnian Unionism was being remolded into a xenophobic creed of ‘Anglo-Saxon Americanism’ based on social Darwinism and ‘scientific racism’. The coincidence of this ideological torsion within popular culture with the second major recomposition of the American working class, fed by the new immigration, provides a context for understanding the increasing rightward shift of the AFL after 1896 towards Jim Crow unions, immigration restriction, and narrow craft exclusivism. Although trade unionism for the first time survived a serious depression, the later nineties were reminiscent of the 1850s, by reason of the intensity of the working-class dissension and fragmentation as Protestant was again mobilized against Catholic, white against Black, and native against immigrant.

Chapter 2: The Barren Marriage of American Labor and the Democratic Party

Here we enter the 20th century, and trace the development of the labor movement through the crucial 30s and 40s.

The Communist Party tries to get in on the New Deal coalition:

On the other side, the CP’s turn toward Lewis, under the rising star of Earl Browder, was a logical part of a broader maneuver to legitimize the Communists as the left-wing of the New Deal coalition. In time they would have to pay a terrible price at the hands of their erstwhile allies for this ‘center-left coalition’. Meanwhile, the Party’s work in the unions began to take on a totally new character as the exigencies of intra-bureaucratic struggle assumed priority over the defense of rank-and-file democracy or the creation of a mass socialist current in the unions. Communist criticism of Lewis (and later of Murray) ceased, the call for an independent labor party was muted, and by 1938, the party’s factory cells and plant papers were abolished.

Here Davis looks deeper than the standard narrative of “bureaucratization” or betrayal for an explanation to the essential conservatism of the trade union movement:

It would be mistaken to assume, however, that the rightward and divisive posture of the AFL in the late thirties was exclusively the result of its ossified bureaucracy defending its traditional sinecures. Equally important was the fact that the ancien régime ultimately drew its solidity from the relative conservatism of its predominantly skilled, native-Protestant and ‘old immigrant’ membership. It was, moreover, precisely this stratum of the working class which was most susceptible to the ideological and cultural pressures of the petty bourgeoisie. The relative social gravity of the middle strata and the degree of permeability between its lower levels and the upper sections of the working class have both been unusually high in the United States—perhaps higher than in any other industrial country. An adequate theoretical approach to the history of labor in the thirties would have to chart the course of the various movements and perturbations of the different middle strata and their mediating impact upon the development of working-class consciousness (and vice versa). Suffice it to say, that while middle-class insurgencies of the first Roosevelt administration tended in a generally ‘populist’ direction that politically buttressed the New Deal, after 1937, there was a profound middle-class counter-reaction to the CIO and the growth of the left. This anti-CIO, anti-radical backlash, incessantly fanned by the press and the corporate media, contributed to the retrenchment of the AFL bureaucracy and provided it with a broad patriotic sanction for opposing the new industrial unions. At the same time, the resurgence of the AFL in the context of the rightward shift in national politics put the CIO leadership under increasing pressure—especially after the Ladies Garment Workers and the Milliners union rejoined the AFL in 1940 in protest at the dominant ‘center-left’ alliance within the CIO. Under siege, Lewis and Hillman clung even more desperately to their links to Roosevelt and the shrunken liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

The CP undergoes “deproletarianization” as they abandon trade-union militancy and absorb themselves even further into the New Deal coalition:

The sycophantic policies of the Communists did little, however, to broaden their base in the industrial working class. Although the party reached the zenith of its popular influence in this period, with perhaps 75,000 members and a periphery of more than 500,000, a majority of its growth came from an influx of second-generation Jewish white-collar and professional workers. Between 1935 and 1941, the non-blue-collar component of party membership jumped from barely 5 percent to almost 45 percent, while the New York component more than doubled from 22.5 percent to nearly 50 percent. As Nathan Glazer has pointed out in his study of the party’s changing social composition: ‘During the thirties the party was transformed from a largely working-class organization to one that was half middle class … even though the party had increased five-fold since the late twenties, there had been no such increase in the cadres in important industries. The party strength in the unions—except for maritime and longshore and the white-collar unions—was not a mass-membership strength. It was based on organizational control.’ While the Communist Party was undergoing this paradoxical process of simultaneous growth and relative ‘deproletarianization’, the rest of the left was near collapse. The Socialist Party, unable as always to give its trade-union interventions any strategy or coherent leadership, virtually disintegrated in a series of factional splits and defections after 1936, while the Trotskyists were seriously weakened by major doctrinal schisms in 1940. The curious result was to give the CP a resonance in national politics and a hegemony on the left that was quite unequalled since the heyday of the old Socialist Party in 1910–12, while at the same time the party was becoming more detached from strong roots in the newly unionized industrial working class.

Davis summarizes the new labor peace post WWII:

In contrast to World War One, when the army had been obdurately uncooperative with business’ efforts to coordinate procurement and production, the generals and the admirals now entered into a new and permanent collusion with war contractors and their political agents. The emergent ‘military-industrial complex’ succeeded where the NRA had failed in melding the political and economic ingredients for state monopoly capitalism.
But this new coordination between private accumulation and the imperialist state required a level of labor productivity and industrial peace which could only be secured through the willing collaboration of the trade-union bureaucracy. Interestingly, the CIO leadership on the eve of World War Two (and under the influence of Catholic corporatist theories) submitted precisely such a plan for permanent harmonization of the interests of capital and labor through an integration of collective bargaining with scientific management. The proposal that Philip Murray took to Roosevelt in December 1940 as a basis for the organization of defense production advocated the formation of ‘industrial councils’, which would allow unions to participate in various aspects of plant management while encouraging a common interest between workers and the front office in raising productivity. Murray made the argument—later expanded by Walter Reuther—that the greater the degree of formal union ‘partnership’ with management and government, the more effective the control which the union leadership could exercise over disruptive or subversive ‘minorities’ in the rank and file.

WWII as the last opportunity for creation of a truly multi-racial labor movement, and the predictable failure to take this opportunity:

The weakness of left influence over wartime labor militancy also diminished one of the few counterweights to the pervasive and growing racism of the white working class in the war plants. At the beginning of rearmament, Blacks had been universally excluded from defense jobs, and it was only after the rise of the ‘March on Washington Movement’ in 1941 organized by a Black trade unionist, A. Philip Randolph, that Roosevelt reluctantly signed an executive order against job discrimination. Although real job equality was never remotely achieved, significant numbers of Black workers did obtain footholds (usually the worst jobs) in aircraft, vehicle assembly and shipbuilding, where they often worked side by side with newly proletarianized whites from the rural South and Southwest. The result was that the wartime insurgence against working conditions and the no-strike pledge often overlapped with racist attacks on the new Black workers. Between March and June 1943, over 100,000 man-days were lost in a wave of ‘hate-strikes’ against the upgrading of Black workers. One of the largest occurred at the Packard Works in Detroit during April 1943, when 25,000 whites struck ‘in retaliation for a brief sitdown of Blacks protesting their not being promoted’. Two months later, all of Detroit erupted into anti-Black pogroms and riots which took thirty-four lives. A year later, and following innumerable other incidents in shipyards and rubber plants, a massive racist outburst in Philadelphia, sparked by the refusal of white streetcar employees to work with Blacks, forced FDR to send 5,000 federal troops to restore order.

Here (and elsewhere) Davis focuses his attention on cultural and ideological roots, and sidenotes the “powerful material supports” and “new structural position of the American working class within a postwar world economy” without elaborating further - again, a hesitance to acknowledge the power of the sheer economic forces at play:

But there were deeper reasons for the sudden riptide of anticommunism, which pulled asunder the decade-old ‘left-center’ alliance within the CIO. The integration of the unions into the Cold War consensus was correlated with a far-reaching rearticulation of the cultural universe of the American working class. The Second World War, in particular, was a watershed of enormous importance—comparable to the 1890s—in reforging blue-collar identity. Earlier, I contrasted the immanently solidaristic and perhaps even social-democratic thrust of the CIO with the recharged conservatism of the AFL, as well as with the anomie and racial conflict produced by the wartime recomposition of the industrial working class. By themselves, these divergent ideological currents only denoted the contradictory possibilities of the period and the highly unsettled, transitional state of proletarian consciousness. What ultimately created the basis for a new cultural cohesion within the postwar American working class was the rise of wartime nationalism. It must be recalled that ‘Americanism’ had previously served as a watchword for successive nativist crusades, as broad strata of the ‘new immigrants’ stubbornly clung to their old ethnic identifications and patriotisms, refusing to submit to a coercive cultural assimilation. Even the savage official jingoism of the First World War, far from welding together a nationalist unity within the working class, further divided it through its antagonism to the Germans, alienation of the Irish, and persecution of more radical immigrant groups. The significance of the new nationalism that had been incubated in the thirties and fanned to a fever pitch by the war mobilization was that it was broadly inclusive of the white working class (Blacks, Mexicans and Japanese-Americans need not apply) and, moreover, was propped-up by powerful material supports. The latter included the job-generating capacities of the permanent arms economy, and, in a more general sense, the new structural position of the American working class within a postwar world economy dominated by US capital. With the adoption of peacetime universal military service in the late 1940s—whose burden fell almost entirely on working-class youth via a system of class-biased educational and occupational deferments—the American state acquired a potent instrument for inculcating patriotic, anti-radical and pro-authoritarian attitudes in each generation of workers.

This section introduces a central theme: the intertwined defeats of the labor movement and the Black liberation struggle.

The enfranchisement of the Southern masses should have been the key to the recomposition of the Democratic Party and the consolidation of a liberal-labor congressional majority. But the problem of suffrage was inextricably bound up with the existence of those two other pillars of class rule in the South: Jim Crow and the open shop. Only a massive unionization campaign closely coordinated with full support for Black civil rights could have conceivably generated the conditions for interracial unity and a popular overthrow of Bourbon power. The abandonment of ‘Operation Dixie’ in the face of systematic repression and the CIO’s own internal Cold War contradictions was an almost fatal blow to the once bright hopes for such a labor-based rebellion in the South. At the same time, the national CIO’s gradual backtracking on civil rights (a trend again intimately connected with the rise of anticommunism) left the Black movement even more vulnerable to the racist backlash which swept the country in the late forties. This disarticulation of the labor and Black movements had devastating consequences for both. Its immediate result was to give the ancien regime in Dixie a new lease on life and to allow the Dixiecrat secessionists of 1948 (who bolted the regular ticket in protest over Truman’s civil rights platform) to triumphantly re-establish their power in the Democratic Party during the early 1950s. In the long run it made the civil rights revolution incomparably more difficult and bloody, reinforced white working-class racism, and forced Black liberation into a more corporatist mold.

Again here a slight over-emphasis on culture/voluntary actions of CIO:

There were, of course, moments in the thirties and forties when the struggle for industrial unionism seemed to be creating an alternative culture and a new mode of daily life. The sight of the Women’s Auxiliary driving the police off the streets of Flint, or the sound of ten thousand Ford strikers singing ‘Solidarity Forever’, were experiences that transcend the smug equations in latterday textbooks on the ‘Dynamics of Wage Determination’. But the overall character of trade-union militancy in the 1930s and 1940s was defined, as Dubofsky has recently emphasized, by the limited, episodic participation of most industrial workers. The wartime recomposition of the working class introduced a basic discontinuity which was reflected in the contrasting internal dynamics and political resonances of the 1934–37 and 1943–46 strike waves. Add to this the persistence of labor disunity, and it is clearer why CIO militancy lacked the experiential power and coherence to create the embryo of a new working-class ‘culture’. What was created, instead, was a new nexus of relations and alliances in the workplace that provided sufficient unity to ensure the effectiveness of the union, while outside the plant the working class continued to find its social identity in fragmentary ethnic and racial communities, or in a colonized leisure.

Chapter 3: The Fall of the House of Labor

Bringing us up closer to the time of publication, Davis starts to describe how the post-war ‘Fordist’ regime has come apart and what is replacing it.

As the old system of industrial relations is torn apart, American management is baring something of its real soul. As Howell John Harris has emphasized in his important study of the origins of collective bargaining, the majority in management has always held to an attitude of conservative ‘realism’, and remained unreconciled to the principles of unionism, dealing with unions only as a ‘necessary evil’. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that there never was a peaceful settlement of the American class war, much less a ‘social contract’ between labor and capital, but rather an armed truce which lasted only as long as: 1) the deepening of internal mass demand was the primary engine of capital accumulation; and 2) unions could sustain a credible threat to resume the offensive against capital. When both of these conditions were eroded by far-reaching political and economic changes (to be discussed in greater detail in chapter five), and in the balance of class power, a thoroughgoing crisis of the institutional forms of collective bargaining became inevitable.

The auto industry as the model for US post-war industrial relations:

The articulation of collective bargaining with the political economy was fought out in the three great wage rounds of 1946, 1948 and 1949. Although Lewis’s coalminers were, as usual, the first in the door, winning pensions in 1946 and health benefits in 1949, it was the protracted struggle between the autoworkers and General Motors that cast American labor relations in their postwar mold. As the Editors of Fortune interpreted it, the ultimate Treaty of Detroit was a basic ‘affirmation … of the free enterprise system’: first, the autoworkers accepted ‘the existing distribution of income between wages and profits as “normal” if not as “fair”’. Second, by explicitly accepting ‘objective economic facts—costs of living and productivity—as determining wages,’ the contract threw ‘overboard all theories of wages as determined by political power, and of profit “as surplus value”’. Finally, ‘it is one of the very few union contracts that expressly recognize[s] both the importance of the management function and the fact that management operates directly in the interest of labor’

On “international Fordism” (again, here “mass consumption” in the core countries and the global conditions necessary for that consumption take a backseat in the analysis):

The ‘deep structure’ of the postwar boom was the expansion of the internal markets of the three metropolitan zones (North America, Western Europe and Japan) through the coordination of mass consumption with continuous productivity increases. The integral linkage of this coordination was provided by the new socialization of the wage relation achieved, at least partly, through the struggles of the American working class. In all the advanced capitalist societies, this socialization had three generic characteristics: 1) the more or less extensive substitution of some form of collective bargaining for the individual wage contract; 2) the more or less extensive insulation of the real wage from deflation through arbitrary wage competition, and the linkage of the nominal wage to the advance of social productivity (rather than merely individual effort); and 3) the collective provision of social security and some more or less extensive social ‘safety net’. In every other respect, however, the institutional forms through which this socialization of the wage relation was achieved differed across the OECD zone. It is not merely that there are different industrial relations ‘systems’ in the various social formations, but the very nature and scope of what constitutes ‘industrial relations’, as distinct from social security or state administration, differ as well.

Once again Davis unfavorably compares the U.S. labor movement to European labor movements, without necessarily drawing attention to the limitations of those movements in their own right:

In contrast to European or antipodean labor courts, the control of the apparatus of arbitration is private and involves a much expanded role of union staff experts, personnel managers and outside arbiters. To operate this system and to maintain a far more decentralized galaxy of individual contracts (over 125,000) has entailed the growth of union officialdom into a bureaucratic stratum qualitatively larger than in any other capitalist society. By 1962, for instance, there were 60,000 full-time, salaried union officials in the United States (one for every 300 workers), as contrasted to 4,000 in Britain (one for 2,000) or 900 in Sweden (one for 1,700).
In summary, nowhere else have ‘industrial relations’ (i.e. the regulation of the bargaining process) been spun-off with the same sub-systemic autonomy and institutional self-interest as in the United States. Nowhere else has there developed such a dense mass of private ‘common law,’ nor so extensive a substitution of legal bureaucratization and arbitration for administrative state intervention or a public judiciary (as in the Australian system of labor courts). The driving logic of the system has been the collusion of union officialdom and management to prevent any ‘statization’ of collective bargaining or, for that matter, the emergence of any ‘dual power’ such as that achieved in postwar Britain by the strength of independent shop-steward organization.

Turning his attention to the political-economy developments of the 60s and 70s that led the way to the collapse of organized labor:

Not only did the AFL–CIO have desultory and declining successes in organizing within the rapidly industrializing urban areas of the Southeast and Southwest, but it egregiously failed to coordinate the efforts of individual unions fighting plant relocation in right-to-work states. During the 1960s, a majority of corporations resorted to the radical socio-spatial strategy pioneered by GE and the non-union sector in the 1950s: building smaller factories for greater managerial control (500 employees was often reckoned optimum); decentralizing them in weakly organized regions of the Sunbelt or the Midwestern rural periphery; recruiting workforces (farmers or housewives) without previous union experience; and implanting, from the beginning, the manipulative structures of the ‘communications’ model of personnel management geared toward worker individualism.
Although this strategy has occasionally backfired—as in the case of the memorable rebellion at GM’s ruralized super-assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio—it was more often successful, resulting in a new union-resistant geography of American industry. United States capital has gone furthest to break up the power of urban-union industrial agglomerations. As Lonsdale and Seyler point out, ‘Without a minimum of formal federal policy on the matter, the United States has probably experienced more decentralization, and, in effect, non-metropolitan industrialization, than any major industrial nation, capitalist or socialist.’ With cheap energy as a key factor in allowing industry to disperse in the search of malleable, non-union labor, non-metropolitan manufacturing increased faster or as rapidly as metropolitan production in every region except the West, and nearly ninety percent of new manufacturing jobs were created outside the old unionized Heartland.

Summarizing the state of the labor movement in the 80s, his predictions here, of a slow decline and continued conservatism, have largely been borne out in subsequent decades:

To understand the current status of unionism, it is useful to imagine the American labor-force roughly divided in half. One half, including goods-producing industries along with transportation and government, is weakly organized, about thirty percent; the other half, including services, trade and financial services—is basically an open shop (only seven percent union). Within the weakly organized half of the economy, moreover, the only sector of unionism demonstrably able to hold its own is the public sector, which in 1984 for the first time became the largest single contingent of the trade union movement (5.661 million versus 5.302 million in manufacture and 2.146 million in transportation-communications)—a shift which will probably have increasing consequences for the AFL–CIO’s internal balance of power as well. Yet even within the state sector, the organized share has only been maintained by vigorous new recruitment in the face of the sweeping privatization of public services sponsored by the Reagan administration at all governmental levels.
It is likely that this decline will continue and perhaps even accelerate in some sectors like construction and trucking. The US trade-union movement has yet to pass through the eye of the storm. The plunge in membership caused by the 1980–82 recession, followed by the offensive power of management through the subsequent recovery, presages even harder times when the economy again goes into a downswing, or some of the landmines in the financial system explode. Unionism is probably not headed toward extinction, but toward a kind of Babylonian captivity in a system of decentralized industrial relations dominated by the corporations and conditioned by the great mass of unorganized labor outside. As union bargaining power declines, it is also likely that union leaders will embrace political alliances with their corporations to demand greater protectionism or restriction of immigration. In the face of the real challenge of a new international division of labor, quasi-racialist calls to defend American standards and products may be the easiest and most demagogic way out for embattled trade-union bureaucrats. Certainly there are many precedents, including the AFL’s ill-fated alliance with the American Legion and the Taylor Society during the 1920s, or the AFL–CIO’s current bed-sharing with the military-industrial complex.

This part may be questionable - with hindsight, we can see both the destructive effects of neoliberalism and the effects that have worked to strengthen core country “mass purchasing power” - namely, that the movement of industrial and other production to low-wage countries has made many goods cheaper and more plentiful in the West:

At the same time, it would be delusory to imagine that the decline of union wage power will lead to some new rearticulation of industrial relations along a ‘neoliberal’ model. The success of the current management offensive is destroying the foundations of the political economy of Fordism, without establishing any new linkage between the transformation of the conditions of production and the growth of effective demand. The partial desocialization of the wage relation depresses mass purchasing power and creates further segmentation in the working class. The great danger, of course, is that concessionary bargaining, by weakening the unions’ role in the regulation of the economy, invites the return of some of the central contradictions of the old liberal regime of accumulation, including underconsumptionism.

Part 2: The Age of Reagan

Chapter 4: The New Right’s Road to Power

It is hardly surprising that California politics provided the primitive accumulation of conditions for the emergence of the New Right and the presidential ambitions of Ronald Reagan. California, as everyone knows, is the prefigurative laboratory for national political trends: its internal antinomies usually anticipate the form and content of social conflicts elsewhere. It is sufficient to recall Berkeley, Watts or Delano, which literally and symbolically
heralded the movements of the late sixties, or Orange County, the antediluvian suburb universally recognized as both the birthplace and promised land of the New Right. The rabid polarization of the Southern California suburbs against the campuses and ghettoes, together with iron-heeled power of the corporate growers, created a ripe political context for new modes of right-wing mobilization. Indeed, one of the most important sequences of experiences through which the New Right came to recognize its power was the series of referenda that united a middle-class and white working-class backlash against integrated housing (1964–65), abolition of the death penalty (1965, 1976), the rights of farm labor (1972), school busing (1979) and property taxes (1978).

This is followed with more detailed discussion of Californian party politics, direct democratic aspect of referenda (which allows more direct buying of policies), direct mailing as a new mobilization tactic, etc.

Here he draws attention to the jockeying for power between different class fractions of the bourgeoisie:

The American political system differs radically from other parliamentary democracies. It is wrong to imagine that it can be analyzed as a special variety of European politics minus
a working-class party; equally, the positional signifiers ‘right-left-center’, which in Europe automatically condense stable congruences of class and ideology, are often inapplicable, if not positively misleading, in describing American political alignments. Central and exceptional characteristics of American party politics include: the subordination-integration of organized labor within one of the capitalist parties; the political segmentation of the proletariat and middle strata by racial and ethno-religious conflict; the singular weight and episodic militancy of the petty bourgeoisie; the distinctive complexity and fluidity of the internal structure of the big bourgeoisie; and the importance of regional polarizations within a federal political structure.
These last two factors are especially important in understanding the internal politics of the modern Republican Party and are closely related to one another. Regional conflicts have often refracted the prolonged struggles for power between different capitalist fractions, while the successive appearance of industrial ‘frontiers’ has created opportunities for the emergence of new regional centers of capital. In contrast to the geo-financial centralism of other capitalist countries, the dominance of Wall Street has always been qualified by competition with financial centers in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and, more recently, Los Angeles and Houston. As a result, the privileged access to national government enjoyed by older sections of the bourgeoisie has been repeatedly challenged by the assault of newer, regionally based capitalist groups—a conflict facilitated by a relatively decentralized political system that permits consolidation of local citadels of capitalist power on a state or municipal basis. These complex struggles between capital have tended to shape competing coalitions of interests within the bourgeoisie. At the level of national politics, it is possible to distinguish a traditional core fraction of finance capital, as well as successive peripheral fractions in opposition.

On the success of mobilizing right-wing bases on single-issue campaigns (notably the things many leftists dismiss as “culture war” issues):

Simultaneously, the sustained, systematic expansion of single-issue movements under right-wing control was creating an unprecedented array of interlocking organizations and constituencies, ranging from ‘law and order’ interest groups (Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, National Rifle Association, etc.) to ‘new Cold War’ lobbies (American Security Council) or politicized fundamentalism (Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority). The largest and most effective category of single-issue groups, however, were those devoted to the defence of the sanctity of white suburban family life, including dozens of mass anti-busing movements, Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-ERA Eagle Forum, Anita Bryant’s anti-gay-rights campaign, and—largest of all—the ‘Right to Life’ crusade. Significantly, several of these single-issue blocs—the pro-Cold War, anti-busing and anti-abortion movements in particular mobilized widespread support from classical New Deal blue-collar constituencies, thus demonstrating that social conservatism, racism and patriotism provided powerful entrees for New Right politics where Goldwaterite economic conservatism had dismally failed. As Viguerie explained in 1981: ‘It was the social issues that got us this far, and that’s what will take us into the future. We never really won until we began stressing issues like busing, abortion, school prayer and gun control. We talked about the sanctity of free enterprise, about the Communist onslaught until we were blue in the face. But we didn’t start winning majorities in elections until we got down to gut level issues.

On the Eastern Establishment / core bourgeois and its growing non-partisanship, and a good note of the growing power of think-tanks and other “parastate” organizations in building bourgeois consensus:

To a profound degree, the ‘core’ had disengaged itself from a specific or permanent commitment to a particular wing of the Republican party or even to the GOP per se. With the presidency in virtually uninterrupted crisis from 1965 onwards, and with a general weakening of the role of regular party apparatuses in the face of the ‘new politics’, the political articulation of core interests became increasingly dependent on the strengthening of parastatal rather than partisan institutions. First, as a result of Vietnam and the world economic crisis, there was a massive reinforcement of the ‘bonding’ between the key corporate foreign and macroeconomic policy organs (the Council on Foreign Relations, Committee for Economic Development, and so on) and their corresponding departments and cabinet positions in Washington. In the same spirit, David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission represented an unprecedented (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to create a network of bipartisan support for what was intended to be a unified program of the core’s domestic and transnational interests. Secondly, the new linkage between PACs and single-issue politics spurred an expansion and reorganization of corporate lobbies and employer associations. The ‘interest group’ level of American politics became more important than ever, while simultaneously becoming less dependent upon partisan affiliation. The number of corporate PACs exploded from a mere 89 at the end of 1974 to 954 in January 1981, while a powerful new alliance of the largest corporations—the Business Roundtable—was organized to coordinate congressional lobbying.

Further fragmentation of “working-class” identity and the growing hegemony of middle-class politics:

The stagflation of the 1970s transformed the objective terrain and subjective discourse of politics in America in a way which encouraged the growth of right-wing neo-populism. While traditional depressions have tended to achieve a levelling effect in the composition of the working class, stagflation worked oppositely, deepening and exaggerating intra-class differentiation. Where differentials have tended to be as historically great, and labor market segmentation as extreme, as in the United States, protracted stagflation produced chasms of inequality between working-class strata. In the 1970s, for instance, the wage differential (not including supplementals) between steelworkers and apparel workers virtually doubled; or in absolute terms, where the difference between their wages in 1970 was $83, in 1980 it was $277! This has led some analysts to go so far as to suggest the existence of a tendential ‘Brazilianization’ of the American social structure, as it polarizes not only between classes, but within classes, to create opposing camps of inflationary ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The consequent fragmentation of the class structure facilitated the recomposition of politics around the selfishly ‘survivalist’ axis favored by the New Right: ‘The complexity of the “restratification” of the working class has aggravated the tendency in American politics for class issues to become lost in a welter of sectoral and stratum divisions. This, in turn, has helped promote a politics that is not only more than usually self-interested and short-sighted, but also centered increasingly on a narrowed range of “social” issues, especially those of home and family. Where relative prosperity or impoverishment may hang on the timing of a house purchase or the fact of working in (say) the aerospace rather than the auto industry, or having been born in 1940 rather than 1950, the sense of commonality of experience and needs disintegrates.’
As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, the divisive impact of stagflation upon the working class was further abetted by the dramatic reversal in the levels of activism sustained by the left and right respectively. As the movements of the sixties declined, new movements of the right surged forward. Black power and women’s liberation were eclipsed by middle-class militancy, as unprecedented numbers of white-collar, professional and managerial strata became active in single-issue campaigns or local politics, often abandoning their old party affiliations en route. Although a radical minority of these movements acted to recycle the personnel and concerns of the New Left, the mainstream flowed rightward with strong overtones of racial and sexual backlash. This ‘greening’ of American politics effectively disfranchised the poor, while simultaneously ensuring that the new activism of the middle classes acted as a ventriloquism for the voices of corporate PACs and New Right lobbies.
In the absence of pressure from the left, the momentum of conservative activism has pushed the ‘center’ many leagues rightward. Much has been written about the collapse of liberalism among congressional Democrats since Reagan’s inauguration, but well before the election, leading figures on the Democratic ‘left’ were staking out new homes further right. It should be recalled that it was Frank Church, not Jesse Helms, who orchestrated the outcry against Soviet troops in Cuba (who had been there since 1963), while George McGovern was supporting revival of the B-1 bomber project and Alan Cranston was proposing ingenious ways to transfer social spending to the Pentagon. Like the GOP, the Democratic Party has also undergone profound transformations in its internal power structure: as the influence of the trade-union movement declines and big-city machines disappear, an increasing number of Democratic congressmen have become dependent upon corporate PACs and correspondingly sensitive to the pressures of New Right single-issue campaigns. Most suburban Republicans and Democrats have become virtually indistinguishable, and, as the votes over budget cuts during Reagan’s first term illustrated, the support of conservative Democrats provides the regime with a functional majority in the House as well as in the Senate. Several years ago, the United Auto Workers organized a conference to explore the prospects for a new ‘Progressive Alliance’ based on labor, minorities and women; little or nothing came of this initiative. Indeed, it was probably almost a decade too late to resurrect successfully the New Deal coalition. It is chastening to recall Irving Howe’s warning in 1964 that the failure of the labor movement strongly to ally itself with Blacks was enabling the New Right ‘to enter its “take off” phase’. Seventeen years later, it landed.

Chapter 5: The Political Economy of Late Imperial America

The purpose of this chapter is to try to identify the social forces and circumstances that have brought about the transition to Reaganism and a newer, but not necessarily ‘higher’, stage of American imperialism. My central hypothesis is that the historical era defined by the equation of ‘Americanism’ with democratic capitalism—that is, by the progressive expansion of bourgeois democracy and mass consumption under the aegis of the United States—is approaching its terminus. The root cause of this crisis, I will argue, is only partially located in the internal contradictions of the labor-process and profit cycle of the ‘Fordist’ regime of accumulation that has been the institutional order of postwar metropolitan growth. Fully as important as the gradual exhaustion of the sources of productivity and profitability in the old system of accumulation have been the politically imposed limits on geographical expansion—represented in this account primarily by the defeat of reformist capitalism in Latin America—and to its domestic deepening, in the United States, with the halting of the ‘Second Reconstruction’. The ‘pure’ logic of the system has, to so speak, been over-determined and overridden by, first, successful resistance among the oligarchical strata in the class structure of a large part of the semi-industrial periphery, and, secondly, by mobilization of a heteroclite coalition of sub-bourgeois strata in the United States. The result, I shall argue, is both a ‘structure of crisis’ and a nascent politico-economic coherence, as what I term the logic of ‘overconsumptionism’ increasingly directs the restructuring of American hegemony.

The point he makes late in the second paragraph hints towards an acknowledgement of benefits of imperialism to US citizens (although is still more focused on military-industrial profits and geopolitical maneuvering as opposed to ‘unequal exchange’ as a transfer mechanism):

This quasi-absolutist centralization of strategic military power by the United States allowed an enlightened and flexible subordinancy for its principal satraps. In particular, it proved highly accommodating to the residual imperialist pretensions of the French and British—the mock-heroic secession of the force de frappe and the enduring myth of the ‘special relationship’. This flexibility has been grounded in the particular disjunction of economic and military power, and expenditure, which the structure of American hegemony has permitted. The Yankee legions on the Elbe and along the DMZ, together with the nuclear umbrellas that protect them, made it possible for the European and Japanese economies to provide, respectively, high social-welfare overheads to integrate labor, and vast trade and agricultural subsidies to preserve international competitiveness—with each keeping up a strident ideological mobilization against communism all the while. In other words, the major allies, with the signal exception of Britain and its high per capita military outlays, have reaped the social-conformist fruits of militarism without having to pay the real market price.
On the American side, analysts have frequently alluded to the tradeoffs between the costs of the permanent arms economy and the low relative levels of welfare provisions and employment security. Yet this has seldom ruffled a public opinion trained since Lend-Lease to equate military expenditure with job creation and general prosperity. Even those sections of capital outside the lush gardens of the defense industry have gained from the innumerable spin-offs and multiplier-effects of the military budget, including the vast state subsidization of research and development. Finally, as hegemon, the United States has been uniquely able—by virtue of specific conjunctural circumstances—to ‘cash in’ its integrative military supremacy for enhanced economic advantages. An outstanding example of such an operation, of course, was Nixon’s and Kissinger’s manipulation of the Arab bourgeoisies’ military dependence on the United States to reassert American control over both oil and petro-dollars, to the detriment of European and Japanese production costs and trade balances.

In describing the Fordist cycle of accumulation - rising productivity, profits, wages - David paints a largely domestic picture, ignoring the global circumstances and outside inputs that made this cycle possible:

The first pattern of accumulation—what Aglietta terms the ‘intensive regime’—was based on the full-circuiting of rising productivity, profits and wages via multi-year collective bargaining and a super-liquid domestic credit system supported by federal home loans and tax relief for mortgages. Previously, during the first great consumer-durable boom of the 1920s, the majority of the semi-skilled industrial working class remained trapped in poverty-level incomes, unable to participate in the hoopla of car and house buying. (In this sense, incipient Fordism was defeated by the very success of the employers’ ‘American Plan’ in uprooting trade unionism and blocking wage advances.) As we have seen, it took the decade-long struggle of the new industrial CIO unions to force the way for union recognition and the codification, in the collective bargaining agreements of 1948–50, of a dynamic wage system that synchronized mass consumption with labor productivity. In this fashion, perhaps a quarter of the American population—especially white-ethnic semi-skilled workers and their families—were raised to previously middle-class or skilled-worker thresholds of home ownership and credit purchase during the 1950s. Another quarter to one-third of the population, however, including most Blacks and all agricultural laborers, remained outside the boom, constituting that ‘other America’ which rebelled in the 1960s.

This paragraph is as true as it was in the 80s, but what have been the political consequences of this low-wage growth? Immense low-wage employment is almost the “dark matter” of American political economy, a heavy weight that appears politically inert:

Thus, relative poverty is being mass produced, not only through the exclusion of third-world men from the primary labor-market, but especially through the dynamic incorporation of women into burgeoning low-wage sectors of the economy. Low-wage employment, far from being a mere ‘periphery’ to a high-wage core, has become the job growth-pole of the economy.

Here is a clear statement of his “overconsumptionism” idea, which certainly has some resonance with contemporary theories of imperialism. In his view, the traditional petty-bourgeois has been enlarged and benefited instead of the (white) working class benefiting as much as it used to:

Similarly, as stronger unions bargained for ‘welfare states in single industries’ via contractual health and retirement supplementals, the general thrust for national, inclusive welfare policies was diffused and weakened. Moreover, at the height of the antiwar and Black-power movements in 1968–70, the old-line craft unions, along with their allies in the Mafia-controlled teamsters and maritime unions, wrecked any hope of a New Deal-type social alliance by viciously attacking antiwar protests, opposing schemes for Black control of local institutions (like the police or schools), rejecting demands for affirmative action in apprenticeship programs, and, in a majority of cases, aligning with the urban-Democratic anciens régimes against ghetto and campus demands, even frequently against newly unionized public-sector workers. Because the trade union movement was fundamentally disinclined to become a genuinely hegemonic reform force—or, still less, to accept the lead of the civil rights movement—a welfare-statist or ‘neo-Fordist’ outcome to the social and economic crises of the next decade was almost a priori excluded. Finally, as we have seen, while business unionism rested comfortably in the niche of the high-wage sector of the economy, it had little incentive in vulgar cost-benefit terms to organize low-wage workers, even when they were centralized in giant hospital or office complexes. The result of this abdication was that American trade unions surrendered their ability to influence the processes of class and occupational formation in the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, including the new science-based industries.
What then did occur in the 1970s—with the exclusion of any social-democratic alternative—was the emergence of a new, embryonic regime of accumulation that might be called overconsumptionism. This has little to do with the sumptuary habits of the very rich, whose wasteful profligacy with yachts, mansions and exotic drugs is an incomparably smaller social problem than their control over the global means of production. Rather, by overconsumptionism, I wish to indicate an increasing political subsidization of a sub-bourgeois, mass layer of managers, professionals, new entrepreneurs and rentiers who, faced with rapidly declining organization among the working poor and minorities during the 1970s, have been overwhelmingly successful in profiting from both inflation and expanded state expenditure.
Unusually large middle strata and a plethora of people in ‘contradictory class locations’ have been permanent features of the twentieth-century American social landscape; what is new is the way in which the ‘tertiarization’ of the economy has been harnessed to the distributive advantage of an expanded managerial-professional stratum, as well as opening new frontiers of accumulation for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Correlatively, the Fordist circuitry of patterned wage/productivity agreements, which used to assure the channelling of part of the social surplus back into the expansion of real wages and the upgrading of labor-power, is breaking down. The old charmed circle of the poor getting richer as the rich get richer is being superseded by the trend of poorer poor and richer rich, as the proliferation of low-wage jobs simultaneously enlarges an affluent market of non-producers and new bosses.

Electoral politics is now more than ever the arena of the middle classes:

The organized expression of this socioeconomic program was the rolling earthquake of suburban protests after 1976, including the anti-busing movements, campaigns for a return to educational ‘basics’, landlord and realtor mobilizations (truly massive, with hundreds of thousands of ardent members organized against rent control and public housing), and, most importantly, what the Los Angeles Herald Tribune once called the ‘Watts Riot of the Middle Classes’—Proposition 13 and its spin-off revolts, which forced nineteen states to enact legislative or constitutional limits on property or income taxes. Although obviously besotted with law-and-order and racialist themes, these campaigns were in most cases organized on a different socioeconomic plane—with a more hegemonic political project—than the earlier backlash outbreaks of the ethnic Northern working class or the national Wallace movement.
They tended to move from mere defense of existing socioeconomic inequalities (as symbolized by the political integrity and fiscal autonomy of white suburban areas) to shrewd, assertive strategies for new upward redistributions of power and income through shifting tax burdens, privatizing collective consumption, and removing obstacles to the exploitation of cheap local labor. More than merely transient forms of protest against minority group demands, these mobilizations have been exploited to reinforce a now dense infrastructure of local interest representation and political influence which safeguards and perpetuates the position of the popular nouveaux riches. Overrepresentation at the electoral level has been creatively manipulated to consolidate overconsumptionism at an economic level.

Chapter 6: Reaganomics’ Magical Mystery Tour

An analysis of the Reagan era reconfiguration of the “ruling bloc”:

According to Edsall, the oil independents, flush with new billions from the 1970s energy price explosion and rapidly diversifying into real estate and leisure industries, have provided the ‘financial glue’ between the New Right and the Republican Party. Constituting an estimated one-third of the major joint contributors to Republican and conservative causes, the oil independents are the core of a new power-bloc which, thanks to the continuing shift of capital and tax revenues to the West and the South, is displacing Northeastern multinationals in the active control of the Republican apparatus. In this sense, the recent near-extinction of ‘moderate Republicanism’—i.e., the Dewey-Rockefeller wing dominant from 1940 to 1964—is part of a larger pattern involving the supplantation of Fordism and the rise of new rentier and military contractor networks. Profiting so stupendously from the recent infusion of debt and defense spending, together with the perpetuation of the Sunbelt boom, the new powerbrokers of Republicanism, for all their anti-state rhetoric, are unlikely to act as anything other than the most avid supporters of the current, pathological prosperity.

How much of this, about US hegemony now disorganizing the relatively stable post-war world system, holds? The “shift in […] mass consumption towards surrogate affluent and military markets” is a little confusing to me.

Where US military hegemony and monetary sovereignty once provided coherence for this system of interrelationships, it now has become the principal disorganizing force. First, the shift in internal American demand from mass consumption towards surrogate affluent and military markets has generated, as we have seen, the spiralling budget and trade deficits that have further unbalanced the ‘great triangle’ of intermetropolitan trade, while simultaneously siphoning off European and Japanese savings. Secondly, the collective trusteeship now operated by the Western banks over the economies of Latin America has confiscated whatever developmental gains they might have achieved in the current expansion of US trade. Indeed, the traditional relationship has been stood on its head, as Latin America runs a trade surplus and exports capital to the United States. The neoclassical burden of adjustment to this new trading order has been borne by the poorest inhabitants of the hemisphere, including the five millions of flagelados (or ‘scourged ones’) estimated to have starved to death in Northeastern Brazil in the course of the first Reagan administration.

Chapter 7: The Lesser Evil? The Left, the Democrats and 1984

Davis turns his attention the organized left and how they have responded to the moment.

The cadre groups (eg New Communist Movement groups) merely misread the moment, while the opportunists completely absorbed themselves into the moment - and equally gained nothing!

From the McGovern candidacy of 1972, however, sections of the former New Left, together with a younger cohort of 1970s activists, began to slip back into Democratic politics, initially on a local level. At first there was no sharp ideological break with the sixties’ legacy. The ‘New Politics’, as it was typed, seemed just another front of the antiwar movement or another tactical extension of the urban populism espoused by SDS’s community organizing faction. By 1975, with the sudden end of the Vietnam War, a strategic divergence had become more conspicuous. On the one hand, an array of self-proclaimed ‘cadre’ groups, inspired by the heroic mold of 1930s radicalism, were sending their ex-student members into the factories in the hope of capturing and radicalizing the widespread rank-and-file discontent that characterized the end of the postwar boom. On the other hand, another network of ex-SDSers and antiwar activists—of whom Tom Hayden was merely a belated and media-hyped example—were building local influence within the Democratic ‘reform movement’: the loose collocation of consumer, environmental and public-sector groups, supported by a few progressive unions, that had survived the McGovern debacle.

Davis returns again to the primacy of Black liberation, and how under-appreciated its defeat has been:

Although its significance was only vaguely grasped at the time, this increasing polarization between workerism and electoralism coincided with, and was immediately conditioned by, the decline of the Black liberation movement that had been the chief social motor of postwar radicalism. A dismaying, inverse law seemed to prevail between the collapse of grassroots mobilization in the ghettoes and the rise of the first wave of Black political patronage in the inner cities. While Black revolutionaries and nationalists were being decimated by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO program of preemptive repression and infiltration, Black community organization was being reshaped into a passive clientelism manipulated by the human-services bureaucracy and the Democratic Party. Although, as we have seen, the civil rights movement remained an unfinished revolution with an urgent agenda of economic and political demands, its centrality to the project of a popular American left was tragically, and irresponsibly, obscured in the late 1970s. The ranks of the white, ex-student left, preoccupied with academic outposts and intellectual celebrities, showed a profound inability to understand the strategic implications of the halting of the civil rights movement. For all the theoretical white smoke of the 1970s, including the endless debates on crisis theory and the nature of the state, the decisive problem of the fate of the Second Reconstruction was displaced beyond the field of vision. With minimal challenge or debate, leading journals like Socialist Review and Dissent tacitly demoted Black liberation—the critical democratic issue in American history —to the status of another progressive ‘interest’, coeval with sexual freedom or ecology.

An even more profound crisis has reshaped Black politics since 1978. The incorporation of Blacks into the Democratic Party, and the deradicalization of the civil rights movement, have depended on the precarious material infrastructure of expanding federal employment programs and urban grants-in-aid. The new Black professional—managerial strata of the 1970s have been disproportionately employed in the management of the social services and educational complexes of the inner city, as well as in administering the network of Great Society programs that provided temporary employment and minimal welfare to the ghetto poor. Similarly, the ability of Black Democratic city halls to pacify the cities and ameliorate their decay on behalf of their corporate landlords has been in direct proportion to the federal funding of urban budgets.

Underlying this apparent collapse of political will has been the insurgent power of middle-class voters, who, in collusion with corporate lobbyists and an avaricious Pentagon, have created a new, implicit consensus in US politics. Choosing between the vast income transfer programs that disproportionately subsidize the middle class (Social Security, federal aid to education, mortgage interest deductions, and so on), the new arms race, and the much smaller sector of means-tested assistance to the poor, the neoconservatives and the neoliberals have banded together to slash the last. For its part, as Kim Moody has shown, the AFL–CIO has also retreated, since the emasculation of the Humphrey–Hawkins employment bill in 1978, from any energetic advocacy of full employment measures, emphasizing instead the protection of its own organized sectors. Left without allies or partisans, Black America has been savaged by a new immiseration. Nearly half of all Black children are growing up in poverty, and in the upswing of the Reagan ‘recovery’, the Black unemployment rate, which historically has been double the white rate, is now three times higher (at 16 percent).

On the radicalism of the Jesse Jackson campaign:

Meanwhile, the Jackson campaign first befuddled, then enraged its erstwhile liberal critics (who, like the New Republic, had a priori dismissed it as a demagogic exercise in Black sectionalism) by unveiling a coherent, alternative foreign policy—more comparable to a Nonaligned Movement manifesto than to any hitherto imagined Democratic platform. This foreign policy, with its central emphases on ‘support for liberation struggles’, US non-intervention, and nuclear disarmament, was elaborated through an extensive dialogue that involved the Hispanic community, the peace movement, the Catholic left, and the oppositional foreign policy establishment (notably the Institute for Policy Studies), as well as Black pan-Africanists and nationalists. Jackson personally underwrote the priority of these planks in his campaign by audacious meetings with Ortega and Castro, as well as by his visible participation in left-led demonstrations against the invasion of Grenada and intervention in Central America. These initiatives far exceeded the functional requirements of the primary campaign as a simple Black protest against Democratic neglect. As Maulana Karenga has pointed out, Jackson’s defiance of the rules of the Cold War courted repudiation by the ‘new Black patriotism’ that had been ostentatiously endorsed by various Black sports and entertainment celebrities. Instead, he won an overwhelming voter support, seconded by significant sections of the Hispanic electorate, that can only be interpreted as a popular mandate for the Rainbow coalition’s strategic linkage of full employment, disarmament and anti-imperialism. Given the generally dismal historical record of international social democracy on imperialism (from the capitulation of the Reichstag deputies to Prussian militarism in 1914, to the supine support of the British Labour government for US genocide in Southeast Asia), the combination of Jackson’s economic and social with his foreign policy positions was extraordinary indeed.

Jackson’s campaign faced blatant racism and red-baiting from much of the social-democratic left:

The chic racism that had invested liberal critiques of the Jackson campaign in the spring came flooding down the spillways after November in even more strident forms. Nor was the putatively left press immune to such fulminations. In January, In These Times published a retrospect of the Rainbow Coalition’s role in the election by James Sleeper that sounded, even if more gently and paternalistically, many of the same themes of the New Republic: Jackson’s rallies ‘were group exercises in therapeutic self-assertion, bonfires that failed to illuminate the larger political landscape because they generated few constructive programs for American society as a whole … Jackson’s upfront appeals for racial solidarity in the election arena violate(d) traditional American political culture…’ Dissent, for its part, brought an ex-Black revolutionary turned born-again Jew, Julius Lester, to denounce Jackson as a racist and anti-Semite, of ‘questionable morality’, who had tried to pretend that he was a Black ‘Wizard of Oz’. Lester blamed the Rainbow for attempting to build a futile coalition of ‘rejected groups’ instead of looking towards the broad middle classes, the true source of ‘empowerment’. Meanwhile, for Social Democrats USA, Bayard Rustin was on hand at Norman Podhoretz’s birthday to denounce Black extremism and to praise the great man for ‘refusing to pander to minority groups’ in his fight against quotas and Black studies.

Some theses Davis ends the chapter with:

(1) The turn of the ex-New Left toward the Democratic Party coincided, almost to the exact moment, with the liberal retreat from the Great Society program and the beginning of the abandonment of a hegemonic reformism that included the Black poor. Almost every major theme of Reaganism was prefigured in the 1977–78 domestic and foreign policy shifts of the Carter administration (thereby inviting one to reverse Ted Kennedy’s description of Carter as ‘Reagan’s clone’).
(2) The ascendency of electoralism on the left, far from being an expression of new popular energies or mobilizations, was, on the contrary, a symptom of the decline of the social movements of the 1960s, accompanied by the organic crisis of the trade-union and community-service bureaucracies. Rather than being a strategy for unifying mass struggles and grassroots organization on a higher, programmatic level, electoralism was either imagined as a substitute for quotidian mass organizing, or it was inflated as an all-powerful catalyst for movement renewal.
(3) Most of the pro-Democratic left generally misread the direction of the class and racial polarization taking place in the United States and its impact on traditional electoral alignments. Starting from the misconception that a ‘left’ politics (whether hyphenated with liberalism or socialism) could be re-established directly on the basis of anti-Reagan populism, it seriously underestimated the power of the petty-bourgeois insurgency which is sweeping both parties and recomposing their leaderships. By the same token, it wildly overestimated the attraction of the Democrats, who lack any serious alternative economic program, to a divided and socially dispirited working class.
(4) The naive belief in a hidden left majority indicated a deeper incomprehension of how the electoral arena is socially structured and technically manipulated. Refusing to recognize the implacable fact that the power of US capital is reinforced by a field of property interests millions strong, the electoralist left acted as if middle-class and corporate domination of the institutions and media of the political system could be equalized merely by mass voter registration—at times appearing to give credence to the parliamentary cretinism that believes the electoral system to be a level playing field between social classes. In fact, the American electoral system, historically the most structurally antagonistic to radical or independent politics, has virtually become an extension of the advertising and television industries (See above, chapter four).
(5) The role of the trade-union movement in 1984 demonstrates all too clearly the contradictions of attempting to manipulate the system through its own elite apparatuses. The AFL–CIO Executive mobilized a great deal of organizational and financial clout, with only paltry political result.
[…]
(8) Because, as James Weinstein has pointed out, the historic social-democratic leadership has conceived itself playing an essentially ‘courtier’ role vis-à-vis the trade-union and Democratic leaderships, it was unwilling to ally with the one mass left constituency in American politics: the Black electorate. Indeed, with its explicit anti-imperialism, the Jackson campaign probably invited an impossible leap from DSA leaders like Harrington or Howe, who have given life-long dedication to liberal zionist and anti-Communist causes. Moreover, the absence of any serious debate about the election in DSA, except from a passionate group of Black members, leaves open (and unlikely of positive resolution) the question of whether even the ‘Debsian’ grassroots of that organization are capable of challenging its traditional mortgage to Israel and the Cold War, or of realigning the organization toward mass political currents that do not have the endorsement of liberalism.
(9) At its worst, the backlash among sections of the white left against the Jackson campaign exposed an ugly neo-racism. More generally, the patronizing reactions to the Rainbow Coalition revealed how profoundly ‘white’ the self-concept of many left-liberals had become, and how unwilling they remain to accept even a modicum of non-white leadership. The contrasting reactions to Ferraro and Jackson are sobering in that regard. Moreover, as the shrinkage of the gender gap in the election indirectly showed, no matter how important feminist consciousness must be in shaping a socialist culture in America, racism remains the divisive issue within class and gender. There can be no such thing as a serious reformist politics, much less an effective socialist practice, that does not frontally address the struggle against racism and defend the full program of a Second Reconstruction.

Epilogue: Inventing the American Left

Davis concludes by taking stock of Reaganism and what might lie ahead.

Ominous end to this quote, on the “true politics” of overconsumptionism:

Reaganism, in contrast, has had the success of a transitional form, temporarily welding together, through military Keynesianism and financial hyper-accumulation, the interests of all propertied layers at the expense of a new immiseration for the poor and a broken social truce for the unions. It has been an attempt to preserve the entire structure of property values and capitalization accumulated by the bourgeoisie, the middle strata and the more privileged segments of the white working class over the past thirty years—a popular front against the depreciation of inefficient fixed capital or the deflation of speculative equities. But the very success of the first phase of Reaganomics, as I argued in chapter six above, has only prepared the way for the inevitable second phase of conflict and zero-sum competition within the Reaganite coalition itself.
My central point in the preceding chapters is that the common program of the new Progressivism is unlikely to charm a new golden age of high growth into existence. Its deployment of state spending, fiscal transfers and deregulation to fertilize the entrepreneurial and professional opportunities supposedly immanent in the new technologies and services can at best stave off the inevitable day of reckoning for the imperial hegemony of the US economy. A more likely scenario is that the middle strata and the nouveaux riches will have to confront in the next downturn what they feared (but avoided through Reaganomics) in the last: a closing frontier of income and status mobility. Only when broad sections of the middle classes have had to live for a time on diminished rations will the true politics of ‘overconsumptionism’ become visible in mature form.

Describing a future that has already arrived?

At one pole will be the sumptuary suburbs and gentrified neighborhoods occupied by the middle classes, the rich and elements of the skilled white working class. Undoubtedly, neoliberalism will seek to preserve the superstructures of social liberalism—sexual toleration, free and virtually unlimited choice among cultural commodities, and the general ethos of human potential—while building new parapets between this gilded paradise and the other social orders. Outside, in the first circle of the damned, will be the ghettoes and barrios, now joined by déclassé and deindustrialized layers of the white working class. Possessing ‘citizen’ rights to a minimal social safety net, this enlarged low-wage working class would remain politically divided and disenfranchised, as unions continue to be destroyed and the influence of labor and minorities within the political system declines. With fading hopes of entry into the norm of consumption defined by the boutique lifestyles of the middle strata or the ‘secure’ employment status of the shrunken core workforces of the great corporations, this sector of the nation will increasingly encounter social degradation and relative impoverishment in the next crisis cycle. But by 1990, there will also be a large outer perimeter of US society composed of workers without citizen rights or access to the political system at all: an American West Bank of terrorized illegal laborers or, if the Simpson–Rodino legislation is successful, of officially third-class Gastarbeiter. In the next twenty years, this third tier could be a social layer of twenty to thirty million people, a poor Latin American society thrust into the domestic economy.
Policing the widening divisions in American society in a time of economic crisis and vanished hopes for the return of a full-employment economy may involve not only futuristic techniques of surveillance and preemptive repression (sanctified by the longevity of the Burger Supreme Court), but also the further dissemination of a culture that justifies the spiralling viciousness necessary to justify socioeconomic apartheid. This ideology, already on the horizon in such night-time TV staples as Miami Vice, Hunter, and Hill Street Blues, and in the streets in the disgusting popular outcry in support of the New York City ‘subway vigilante’ Bernhard Goetz, reposes on a simultaneous sentimentalization of middle-class life and a demonizing of a putative ‘underclass’. Insider the laager of Yuppie comfort and professional–managerial values, an enlightened psychological sensitivity informs the management of human relations, while outside, in the second and third tiers of US society, there exists a virtual free-fire zone. Girding themselves for the defense of their accumulated affluence, the new and old middle strata are taking on the armor of merciless resolution—celebrated in New Republic editorials and iconized in popular consciousness by films like Rambo and Sudden Impact—to exclude and repress the dangerous classes that prowl the circumference of their pleasure dome.

The note here about a possible “new, Bolivarian scale” of struggle in Latin America was prescient, but of course has also faced predictably brutal repression by the U.S. Also interesting is the prediction that “American hegemony will increasingly depend upon the substitution of US military for economic power in an unstable international configuration” (unstable a.k.a. multipolar?):

The same survivalist instincts will regulate neoliberalism’s approach to international affairs. Bereft of any grand design for restoring order to a world market rocked by financial defaults and huge trade disequilibria, a neoliberal regime, after fruitless wrangling for multilateral coordination, would probably resort to bilateral diktats aimed at extracting drastic economic accommodations from unwilling ‘allies’. As the protectionist tide bursts its dike, US trading partners will be faced with a broad range of retaliatory threats, from the restriction of their imports to the pullback of US troop deployments in Europe and Northeast Asia. Great as tensions between Japan and the United States may well become, the new economic nationalism is likely to reach even more acute pitch in the Western Hemisphere, as future administrations accelerate the trend towards the integration of North America into a single, complex economic system. The management of Mexico’s unemployment and social unrest could eventually require militarization of the border zone (as opposed to the half-hearted militarization of the current INS regime), and, not impossibly during the 1990s, a return to the intervention of the Wilsonian period.
I have earlier argued that the emergent system of post-Fordist American hegemony will increasingly depend upon the substitution of US military for economic power in an unstable international configuration. If there is a long interregnum of financial disorder and declining trade through the 1980s or early 1990s, a virtual social collapse of many of the already stricken societies of the Southern Hemisphere cannot be excluded. In that event, whatever the immediate outcome of US intervention in Central America, Washington would probably be confronted with a revolutionary crisis of much wider proportions in South America within the decade. Although the variety of forms this crisis will assume cannot be entirely foreseen, its dominant ideological colour, unlike in the Middle East or East Asia, is more likely to be an insurgent socialism than any other—perhaps on a new, Bolivarian scale.
The bunkered, economically insecure middle strata of the USA—the mass ruling class of the American world system—will not look with sympathy upon further revolutionary unrest in the Western Hemisphere. It is scarcely plausible that, having turned their backs on the new poverty of US cities, they will endorse the level of economic aid and co-development necessary to restore growth and absorb escalating social tensions in Latin America. More likely is the prospect that the current counter-revolutionary interventions in Central America are merely opening salvos in a generalized social war pitting the insurgent poor of the Hemisphere against not only their local ruling classes but, increasingly, the rich classes in the North as well. For the ‘broad right’ in North America would, in these circumstances, see the revolutionary process in Latin America and the Caribbean (including the potential Yankee Ulster of Puerto Rico) as an immediate and overarching threat to a US economy that has become increasingly entrenched in its hemispheric fortress.

Could just as easily have been written in 2016 or 2020:

If the details of this scenario—hastily sketched but not, for all that, empty exercises in imagining the future—strike the reader as unduly pessimistic, the reason why they are so drawn is that the political and economic supports for a more humane capitalism no longer seem to exist. The view expressed here is diametrically opposed to that of many recent left-liberal and social-democratic writers, who profess to see vistas of new liberations and reformist possibilities in late imperial America. A virtual cottage industry has come into existence since 1980, providing visionary recipes for workers’ control, the restoration of craft production, expanded welfarism, economic democracy and social control of investment. Most of these heartening schemes, typically offered as brains trust advice to the left wing of the Democratic Party, have been characterized by a complete absence of strategic design: that is, they lack any specification of the means for their realization. They contain no hint of how, in a period of rampant deunionization and the self-immolation of traditional liberalism—when to stem the tide of either would suppose some massive shift in the balance of forces to the left—they could find a conceivable agency.

Davis once again summarizes some key strands of his argument, and the key question at the end of this quote is one we still need to answer today:

The Fordist absorption of the new immigrant strata and their eventual ‘Americanization’ during the 1940s and 1950s destroyed the social and cultural base of the existing forms of American socialism and communism. Their project could not be revived, as NAM and others essayed, by personal witness and local activism, however cleverly blended with popular culture. Nor is it likely, given the record of such movements up to the present and the growing fractures among various economic strata described above, that a mass socialist politics could ever grow incrementally from molecular conversions or from single issue campaigns of a sporadically radical character. It is equally implausible that such a mass movement could take the form of an ‘extension’ of American laborism, as much of the traditional left has consistently imagined. For all its recurrent threats to form a third party, the trade-union bureaucracy remains firmly and closely, for this generation at least, tied to the Democratic Party. In turning from its original Debsian ideal toward entrism into the Democratic Party, most of NAM and the intellectual left aligned with it tacitly abandoned the hope of an explicit socialist politics, to become what Irving Howe has described as ‘loyal allies and supporters’ or ‘friendly critics’ of liberalism.
In the wake of these failed projects and lost directions, it remains to be asked whether there is any visible social constituency in the United States for a popular left. Or, to frame the problem in Lenin’s terms: are there any subaltern strata whose class position is fused with a special oppression that transcends the limits of bourgeois political reform, and whose struggle for daily survival, therefore, generates anti-systemic elements of protest and political solidarity?

Davis concludes with interesting but somewhat vague calls for a focus on regional solidarity and internationalism, as well as a focus on building organization among the Black and Latino working classes:

But the ability of any resurgent social movement in the ghettoes, barrios or factories to challenge the present mass property bloc of capital and the middle classes in the United States is more closely linked today than ever before to the fate of US imperialism on a world scale. If one precondition for the future of a popular left in the United States is a revived struggle for equality based on independent socialist political action, the other and equally crucial condition will be increasing solidarity between the liberation movement in Southern Africa and Latin America and movements of the Black and Hispanic communities in the USA.
The possibility for organizing mass solidarity must be one of the principal hopes of international socialism. Just as the struggles in South Africa and Central America can provide models of commitment, creativity and organization to youth in the inner cities, so could the development of a broadly based solidarity movement in the United States act as a major constraint on America intervention abroad, and a common basis for political action that crosses the color barrier which has inhibited much of the left’s political activity during the past decade. It is no disparagement of the existing anti-nuclear or anti-intervention movements to insist that the real weak link in the domestic base of American imperialism is a Black and Hispanic working class, fifty million strong. This is the nation within a nation, society within a society, that alone possesses the numerical and positional strength to undermine the American empire from within.

Ultimately, no doubt, the left in the United States will have to confront the fact that there is never likely to be an ‘American revolution’ as classically imagined by DeLeon, Debs or Cannon. If socialism is to arrive one day in North America, it is much more probable that it will be by virtue of a combined, hemispheric process of revolt that overlaps boundaries and interlaces movements. The long-term future of the US left will depend on its ability to become both more representative and self-organized among its own ‘natural’ mass constituencies, and more integrally a wing of a new internationalism. It is necessary to begin to imagine more audacious projects of coordinated action and political cooperation among the popular lefts in all the countries of the Americas. We are all, finally, prisoners of the same malign ‘American dream’.

Written by Aaron Leonard with help from Conor Gallagher, “Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists” is at once a movement history and a useful exposition of political repression and infiltration at a key moment for U.S. radicalism - the late 60s into early and mid 70s. However, I think the title of the book mis-sells things: while the FBI specifically (and their files on the RU, which the authors were able to attain through public records requests) plays a role in the story, much of this book is a straightforward history of the Revolutionary Union (later Revolutionary Communist Party) from origins to decline. It takes its place as a more “close-up” examination of a key New Communist Movement organization (for a more general overview of the movement as a whole, “Revolution in the Air” by Max Elbaum is the place to start). However, it is not so detailed as to include many insights on the RU’s organizational practices (how recruitment happened, expectations of members, how RU decided on targets for industrial concentration, etc), which is disappointing for me and will be for others who seek to learn more practical lessons on organization from a group with some relatively impressive accomplishments.

Overall, Leonard’s interpretation of the group’s trajectory misses the mark in some places. He ascribes to “Stalinism” or dogmatism what is better explained by a persistent strain of white chauvinism in the group, as well as a failure to come to terms with the position of the U.S. working class in the global system and the consequent possibility that revolution would not be on the short to medium term agenda in the U.S. This seems to be a common feature among NCM groups, who on the one hand had an admirable ambition to organize deeply and radically within the U.S. working class but on the other hand had no “plan B” that would allow them to withstand the onslaught of neoliberalism and the rising tide of conservatism that defined the late 70s into the 80s. Even if we can’t picture the NCM surviving the changing political landscape with the same energy and vitality it had at it’s peak, could a different, more realistic strategic outlook have allowed more groups and more cadre to pivot towards Third World solidarity work or other areas? Certainly some NCM cadre must have moved towards that work as the movement dissipated, but as far as I know not in an organized manner. The events in China, first the growing re-alignment with the U.S. against the USSR and then the ascent of Deng and the reform period, are also pointed to as a key contributor to the final crisis in the RCP. And it certainly is true that the extensive inspiration the group took from Red China and Maoism in particular put it in a position where such events were bound to disrupt the group and weaken morale. But again, this was not the singular crisis of the group, which had been weakened already by staking out unpopular positions on the radical left (most notably, their anti-busing stance!) and failing to change their predominantly white make-up.

Would it have mattered if they had weathered the storm of 1976? Major social, political, and economic changes in the U.S. were already underway, and their promising work in the labor movement, had it grown further, may have met with increased repression (both from the state and the conservative center of gravity of the U.S. trade union bureaucracy) or simply a point at which communist politics would not appeal to most workers (this limitation already hinted at by some of their work). Similarly, the larger factors at play may have provided natural limits to their organizing among students, or veterans for that matter.

Regardless of these counter-factuals, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of the RU/RCP and the New Communist Movement in general, a movement whose lessons and failures are important to learn for U.S. socialists and anti-imperialists today. Hundreds of highly disciplined, motivated, skilled cadre, trained in the mass movements of the 60s, threw themselves into struggle, achieved some impressive results, but ultimately were no match for the tides of history. If we want to make our own contributions to struggle in the present day, these are some examples we should at least study.

Introduction: The Way from San Jose

The book’s opening helps to answer a question some readers may have (especially if they have come into contact with the present-day RCP): why study the Revolutionary Union? Or by extension, the New Communist Movement? First, because it is one of the only radical organizations that took forward the torch from the mass movements of the sixties:

The RU/RCP’s roots lay in the most important struggles of the sixties. Its leaders emerged from the anti-HUAC protests, the Free Speech Movement, the Peace and Freedom Party alliance with the Black Panthers, and the struggles in the final year of SDS, among other key events of the time. These individuals in turn formed an organization that went from a handful of youthful Maoists, former Communist Party USA members, and China-philes, to become a national organization with well over a thousand cadre and many thousand active supporters.
By 1971, while groups such as the Black Panthers and Weathermen were in disarray, retreat, or disintegration, the Revolutionary Union, the forerunner of what would become the RCP, was ascendant. While some of the more sensational actions of these other groups had captured the imagination of portions of the youth population, it was the RU/RCP that was arguably the largest inheritor of sixties radicalism.

Summarizing the impressive accomplishments of an organization that only counted with at max around a thousand members, and went from formation to obscurity in less than a decade:

Amid the shifting terrain of the crisis-wracked seventies these newly minted Maoists sent cadre to factories to immerse themselves in major US industry. In a few short years they had an established presence in the steel plants across the US, the mines of West Virginia, auto plants in Detroit, meatpacking centers of Tacoma, Chicago, Milwaukee, and dozens of other greater and lesser industries. They were at the heart of militant labor struggles, particularly in the wildcat strike movement in the West Virginia coalfields. Along with this they inspired and lead dozens of chapters of the university based Attica Brigade/Revolutionary Student Brigade. They politically lead—controversially—Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and were a critical force behind the highly influential, US-China Peoples Friendship Association.

Chapter 1: Foundation

This chapter deals with the key founding members of the RU and their backgrounds. It is interesting to see here the mix of different levels of experience - the real veteran of the group, Bergman, had many decades organizing with the CPUSA, then PL, before helping to found the RU. One of the criticisms he held of PL after leaving was their lack of focus on the quiet, deep, organizing work that he saw as crucial to building a new party. This seriousness of focus on organizing comes across when reading about other crucial members as well. Also present among early members was an early focus on anti-imperialism and anti-war activism, specifically moving beyond general street demonstrations into more targeted work:

Despite the arrests, surveillance, and subpoenas, Hamilton’s commitment and determination only increased. By late 1966 he had left PL and become active in Students for Democratic Society—at a time when that group was turning more attention to anti-war work. Hamilton himself was consumed with how to take the anti-Vietnam war effort to a more effective level. As historian Michael Foley points out, Hamilton along with Lennie Heller, “independently arrived at the same idea for a draft resistance movement,” in what would come to be called, “The Resistance.” One result would be a national Stop the Draft Week in October 1967. As part of the week, Hamilton sent a telegram to then California Governor Ronald Reagan, reflecting the level of resolve and frustration that was beginning to characterize the overall antiwar movement, “[d]ebate has accomplished nothing; the war must be stopped.” This was not idle talk, as his note made clear: “We plan to shut down the Oakland Induction Center.” In the course of the protest that took place, hundreds, including Hamilton, were arrested.

RU cofounders like Bob Avakian had fairly extensive contact with the Black Panther Party, and saw room for extensive collaboration, although Leonard has some criticisms’ of the BPP’s lack of political line. It certainly makes an interesting contrast with the RU’s increasingly well-defined (or as Leonard considers it at times, dogmatic) line:

While their ten-point program was relatively straightforward, their overall politics were never as clear; embracing everything from Marxism, Black Nationalism, to anarchism; though revolutionary Black Nationalism would appear to have been their unifying theme. As a result the organization could have Huey Newton, whose thinking went through numerous shifts, proclaim the group, “dialectical-materialist,” but also put forward something he called, “intercommunalism,” which stated, “Socialism in the United States will not exist. Socialism will not exist anywhere in the world, because for socialism to exist, a socialist state must exist, and since states do not exist, how can socialism exist?” Or have Bobby Seale, in a more direct and pragmatic way, state that, “One might say he’s a socialist or a communist, on the contrary, I’m a Black man trying to get some of the wealth out of this country.” As for Cleaver, his views tended more toward action and all that implied. Politically he would come to extol the virtues of the lumpen (or criminal) class in opposition to the working class, a highly fraught strategy, to say the least. Such a range of thinking created a situation, where the idea of the Panthers—disciplined organization, the notion of a larger revolutionary unity, and a willingness to be theoretical—was far more powerful than the actual ideas of the Panthers. This was to prove critical in limiting their ability to go forward.

Leonard summarizes the initial membership and leadership, what brought them together, as well as how white the founding group was, which will end up kneecapping the group in various ways:

It was in the larger Palo Alto area that Franklin would work with the Peace and Freedom Party, as well as the student-oriented, Peninsula Red Guard, based in Palo Alto and comprised of the Franklins and graduate students. But it was on the Stanford campus that he made his biggest mark. Young, charismatic, and intellectually sophisticated, Franklin would exert a great influence on those around him. He would be responsible for radicalizing no small number of the undergraduate and graduate students he came in contact with.
While the four people profiled above were critical figures in the formation of the RU, with Bergman standing out, it would be wrong to limit the group’s creation and early evolution to them. Here one would need to add Jane Franklin and Mary Lou Greenberg of the Peninsula Red Guard, Vern Bown, an ex-CPUSA member and old comrade of Bergman, as well as Larry Harris, Gertrude Alexander, Barry Greenberg, and a number of other was these forces that would form the Bay Area Revolutionary Union in the spring of 1968.
From the beginning the group had a strong percentage of women cadre and leaders, it was the case, however, that this was a mainly white group—though it would draw in some Latino and Asian cadre. The absence of Black and other non-white ethnicities, in the early days especially, appears to have to do with a strategy of the new organization seeing itself, at some point, merging with other organizations, rather than recruiting such forces directly into their organization.
Regardless, what those who initiated the RU held in common was a connection to critical events of the time; the Cultural Revolution, the defiance of HUAC, early and aggressive anti-Vietnam war work, and bold support for the Black Panther Party. Individually and collectively they represented a strain of radicalism that was more disciplined, more theoretical, and more strategically inclined, than most of the other trends in operation at the time.

Chapter 2: SDS, the RU, and the FBI

The exact founding circumstances of the group are laid out in this chapter, as well as the early FBI infiltration and the FBI’s general strategy and attitude towards the radical left in that era.

The standard script of Students for a Democratic Society reads something like this: It arose in the early sixties full of youthful idealism, got down to the hard work of joining with the civil rights movement, transitioned to anti-war activism, became increasingly radical, then self-immolated in sectarian squabbling with a small hard core of Weatherman going off into a brief foray of infantile terrorism, while the rest of the organization faded away. It is a tight narrative, with a strong beginning, middle, and end. There is, however, a problem. Two huge pieces are left out; the emergence of the Revolutionary Union and its critical influence within the grouping, and the FBI’s aggressive and elaborate efforts to destroy the organization.

An initially influential group in SDS, PL, takes openly chauvinist political positions which lead to a loss of prestige among much of the radical left (this basic mistake is later repeated by the RU!):

Though they likely did not know it at the time, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP or just PL), which had assumed the mantle of the key Maoist organization of the US, was moving quickly to the margins. It had recently adopted contrary positions around two of the biggest fault line questions of the day. In regard to Black people in the US, they put forward a position against Black Nationalism, which was at odds with the one animating an entire generation of Black youth and their large body of white supporters. In regard to the struggle in Vietnam, they denounced the National Liberation Front, which was leading the armed struggle in South Vietnam.

On RU’s successful early recruitment among other left groups:

All this was in the context where the RU had hit the ground running. Though it was not yet public, throughout 1968 it was working aggressively to set up left wing caucuses within the Peace and Freedom Party, as a way of extending its organizational reach. The Executive Committee meetings are replete with discussion of PFP, and the need “to strengthen the radical caucus and to extend its control over PFP.” Some of the results were quite good, for example Bruce Franklin reported, “that the Palo Alto group controls Peace and Freedom movement of San Mateo County and PFM of Santa Clara County.” This work would continue for at least the next year, and appears to have been a crucial source of early RU expansion.

An example of how sophisticated the FBI’s tactics were (although unclear if this exact tactic was carried out):

It is worthy of a side note here the Bureau was not just working the RU – PLP rift in targeting the RU at this early date. They toyed with using the RU’s own writings against them:
“We can slightly alter RU publications, have them reproduced by the laboratory and distributed in great numbers to Marxist, Black militants, SDS, left publications, etc. throughout the country. By altering the publications, we can distort the political line of the RU, in fact, turn it into a revisionist line in a subtle manner.”

Leonard turns briefly to  the Weather Underground - while not entirely dismissive, he is critical, and takes the opportunity to praise the more “strategic” vision of the RU:

The approach today reads as a rather confusing work in progress—vague statements about a mass revolutionary movement counterposed with a clandestine party and revolutionary violence.
For its part, according to the Executive Committee informant, the RU early on thought there might be a basis to work with this grouping:
“In discussing the Weatherman Group (DOHRN group), the general feeling on the part of the Executive Committee was that this group is pretty good and that the RU should work with them. The RU felt that many of the proposals as to the new organization of SDS set forth by the Weatherman Group in New Left Notes were actually the same proposals that had been made by the RU.”
The actions and strategy the Weathermen adopted, however, would soon render any possibility of the two working together as moot.
In contrast to this, the RYM II faction, which included the RU, in a more traditional Marxist way, advocated the role of the working class. The RU view particularly, saw their role as more than a support apparatus—even an armed one—for revolutionary forces internationally and oppressed populations within the US. Theirs was a view that there was preparatory work for revolution to be done among this base and other sections of society, short of immediate violent revolutionary action. Particularly for the RU, there was an element of waiting in the Maoist sense of, “gaining time to increase [the] capacity to resist while hastening or awaiting changes in the international situation and the internal collapse of the enemy, in order to be able to launch a strategic counter-offensive.” Contained here was a long-term view, less anxious and more strategic.

Chapter 3: Beyond the Student Movement

The RU’s early activity, as they start to get rooted and build momentum.

At a conference with the BPP (not sure if I’d describe Avakian’s rhetoric below as “workerist”):

In the end Avakian did attend the conference, and his speech was widely applauded by many on the left. The 26-year-old Avakian’s speech contained a fair amount of rhetorical jargon, (“the primary ideological content of American fascism is racist white supremacist genocide.”) but it also called up the imagery of the thirties, “We’re going to get the ILWU to stop scabbing on the Vietnamese people and stop loading munitions ships.” This workerist stance would soon come to characterize the emerging Revolutionary Union.

Early attempts at “base-building” and getting rooted in working-class areas:

The attempt to apply this worker-based model, amid the shifting sands of the late sixties, was most clearly on display in the RU’s efforts in Richmond California. At the end of 1967 Steve Hamilton, Bob Avakian, and one other area activist had moved to the relatively industrial area of Richmond. According to Hamilton this was with, a “generalized commitment and optimism in regard to ‘integrating with the working class.’” Initially they focused on building ties in the community, particularly working with the young workers they were meeting and introducing them to projects undertaken by the Black and introducing them to projects undertaken by the Black Panther Party. They also worked with a local section of the Peace and Freedom Party around issues such as community control of police and for a militant perspective within an anti-poverty agency.

An example of a pretty effective intervention in trade union struggle, accomplished by bringing radical students in to support a strike:

The RU’s effort to support a strike by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union is exemplary of their pathbreaking efforts in the working class. Here was a strike ostensibly about wages and other basic union demands, but played out amid tepid union support and Standard Oil’s strikebreaking effort of importing scab, non-union labor. It also took place amid a larger societal upsurge, the police rampage at the Democratic Convention the previous summer, a violent effort to break a strike at San Francisco State College demanding Third World Studies, and ongoing protests against the Vietnam War. When the Richmond strikers found themselves being beaten and maced by police on their picket lines, some made profound connections, as one striker remarked,
“[W]e believed what we read in the newspapers. Now we know what kind of coverage we have been getting from the press, and I think we should be finding out what’s happening from the people actually involved and we should be supporting them, just like they have supported us.”
The fact that students, on four separate occasions stepped up to support the strike, seriously bolstered the effort, nearly shutting the giant refinery down and “introduced an aspect of uncertainty, which continually keeps the company off balance fearing for it refinery.” It also questioned some of the deeply held assumptions about Black people and their confrontations with police. As one worker noted, “[l]ast time there was a riot in North Richmond I was afraid to come to work; next time I’ll be right there in the riot.”
For their part, the RU was popularizing the experience and drawing out their own lessons.
“A strike, when it is not a token tactical ploy in ‘labour-management relations’, is in many ways like a miniature revolution. Struggle, instead of collaboration, is the order of the day. The old individualistic ways of solving, blunting, or avoiding contradictions and confrontations give way to collective ways of facing them and fighting.”
In this way they saw themselves shaping a model of how to build a base among the working class; one that went beyond the constrained parameters of trade unionism, envisioning such work crossing a bridge toward a revolutionary movement.
In turn, the authorities watched this closely. The FBI’s chief journalistic conduit in the Bay Area, Ed Montgomery, reported on a May 1969 SDS event held at New York University where Bob Avakian spoke about the RU role in the strike. According to Montgomery. “Avakian said they brought in 300 to 400 students who joined the picket lines,” and “were able to politicize the strike.”

RU conducts anti-war work on campus, with some results:

While working to shift its base toward the working class, the RU continued to be immersed in the upsurges roiling the campuses. In that respect their work at Stanford University stands out. Depending on which side of the divide you were on, Stanford between 1969 and 1971 was either a place of exhilarating protest or, in the words of its former President Richard Lyman, “[p]retty much a descent into hell.” Unlike its Berkeley neighbor to the north, Stanford was not convulsed by political turmoil until later in the sixties, however, its privileged and relatively isolated position would also be shattered. This was concentrated in the struggle against the military research being carried on by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
[…]
In the wake of that meeting [meeting with school administrators in which they admitted working on military science/tech], on April 3, there was a mass meeting involving some 700 people that drew up demands that Stanford abandon classified research for the US government. This would be the beginning of what became known as the April 3rd Movement. Six days later there was a sit-in/occupation at Stanford’s Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL), where, “[h]undreds of students [were] involved in small working committees. Up to 1000 attend[ed] general meetings, broadcast live over KZSU. Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, [spoke] at AEL. After the Judicial Council [threatened] discipline, 1400 students sign[ed] a Solidarity Statement that they, too, are part of the occupation!”
The occupation ended after the faculty promised, “to end classified research.” Things, however, did not improve for university officials. The following year, in the spring of 1970:
“Police were summoned repeatedly to Stanford, and there were running battles between police and rock-throwing demonstrators. Substantial damage was done to university buildings. For a time, many buildings were blockaded and classes canceled, even when the students enrolled in them wanted to meet. The school year ended in chaos.”

Leonard again shifts focus back to the FBI side, and an early attempt at snitch-jacketing a key member of the RU:

The FBI was also targeting specific individuals with dirty tricks. This can be seen in an effort aimed at RU member, Chris Milton. On April 17, 1969, Milton went to the Oakland Induction Center, after being ordered to appear for induction. At his appearance, he was joined by the, “Chris Milton Defense Committee,” which included Bob Avakian and Barry Greenberg and other RU members and supporters. The FBI, in a memo relating to Milton’s appointment assessed that it was, “An excellent opportunity to discredit REDACTED within the RU”—the redaction most likely being Milton. What they proposed was to imply that Milton had been “blowing off his mouth to Army officials.” The memo, from J. Edgar Hoover, suggested a note be drafted on “appropriate stationery” and sent to the RU’s public address. It stipulated that this should be unsigned, but worded “to indicate it is written by a disgruntled serviceman at the Induction Center.” The text of the anonymous letter reads:
“Friends
If you’re wondering why REDACTED has dodged induction, its [sic] because he has a big mouth. He is blabbing to the intelligence guys about a “dictatorship” in Peking, your Rev Union and guns and even the Panthers.
I can’t wait to get out but he wants on the payroll without uniform.”
This was a popular FBI method that was termed, ‘snitch-jacketing,’ wherein the Bureau or their operatives would circulate rumors that a dedicated member of an organization was in some way working for the other side. In this way the FBI was trying to cast suspicions and create an atmosphere of apprehension and mistrust, and were also trying to alienate certain members, drive them out of the organization, and/or provoke harm toward them.

How the RU thought about military organizing is interesting, in seeing how ambitious and confident the group was:

In other words the RU was not only opposing the US’s war in Vietnam, they were keen to work among the military to undermine that effort. Goff recounts the decision making process after a collective leader had been drafted:
”[A]nd the collective agreed 100 percent that he should go into the Armed Forces because of his usefulness, because he is an expert at causing—he was an expert in riots and demonstrations. I personally witnessed that he could control whole crowds of people to go over and trash a building or I mean break windows. They thought he would be good because he could be so effective in the Armed Forces.”
The Goff testimony was also a window into the seriousness and commitment of the RU, albeit in a refracted and unintentionally humorous way. At one point Lawrence Goff spoke to the discipline of the group compared to his Navy boot camp training, which he felt was, “mild [compared] to the type of discipline I received in the Revolutionary Union.”

Leonard points to the result of an early conflict over Stalin’s legacy as a bad omen, saying it impeded the group - but this seems to be more his personal feelings than an accurate analysis - as we will see later, the main factors leading the the groups decline were schisms and unpopular stances on strategy in the present day, as well as external factors like developments in China. It is left unclear how the defense of Stalin or Mao actually impinged the future development of the group:

Of course the group did ultimately settle this, upholding Stalin—which along with Mao was their raison d’être. This embrace of Stalin, albeit critical (as discussed in the previous chapter), would be a millstone around the group’s neck, impinging their future development, always having to reconcile its politics within the greater communist narrative in which people like Stalin sat.

Another example of successful early recruitment, this time Leonard discusses a national organizing tour in which RU leaders met with independent cadre collectives in various cities, many of which ended up joining RU wholesale. The corresponding FBI response:

In this the FBI was actively trying to limit the gains the RU could make. Word was sent out to fourteen different field offices to conduct interviews of people who had met with the RU representatives. The purpose, “to make possible affiliates of the RU believe that the organization is infiltrated by informants on a high level;” this tactic, portraying the RU and its leaders as government agents, being a recurring theme and tactic of the Bureau.

The extent of RU spread and reach before the first split:

All that taken into account, whatever the FBI was doing, was largely not working. As the FBI’s David Ryan, who was assigned to the Leibel Bergman “investigation”, would later testify to, “[w]e found the Revolutionary Union rapidly spreading in terms of organization and contacts.” By February 1972, by the government’s own account, there were RU collectives in existence in Chicago, RU representatives in Detroit, Reading, Pennsylvania and Trenton. On the campuses, the RU had a presence at Eugene, Antioch, and Fresno State College. There was also RU organizing going on in Los Angeles, New York City, and at Pennsylvania State University, and in Philadelphia. As positive as all this was, any further expansion was predicated on navigating an extremely important internal debate; one that would end in the Revolutionary Union’s first major schism.

Chapter 4: Protracted War or Protracted Struggle

A debate over strategy gets heated and provokes the first major conflict among RU leadership.

FBI plans on splitting leadership with more snitch-jacketing:

In the late 1960s the FBI saw Leibel Bergman as the key leader of the RU. Alternately they saw Bruce Franklin as the RU’s most high profile member, one in their estimation who “represents one of the most militant radical extremists on American campuses.” It is no surprise then given a certain doctrine of trying to rend organizations that they attempted to set the two against each other. This was infused with a certain urgency; the RU appeared to be growing and there was a need to “take appropriate action to slow down the extent of its operations.” To this end they “felt [it] appropriate at this time to attempt to cause more of a rift between REDACTED and BRUCE FRANKLIN.” As other documents relating to FBI schemes make clear, the redacted person they wanted to involve in the rift was Leibel Bergman. One of the plans they devised was to try and make Franklin think Bergman was some type of agent:
“San Francisco proposal calls for alleged Chicom [Chinese Communist] agent to telephone Franklin in California from Canada to arrange for a later personal clandestine meeting in Vancouver. At Vancouver meeting the alleged Chicom agent would express distrust of RU leader Leibel Bergman, ask Franklin to investigate Bergman and furnish results to [REDACTED] and imply future funding of RU.”
Another plan had the FBI draft a letter, to be secretly sent to Franklin, again suggesting Bergman was working with the government. In the memo it suggests writing a letter from what is claimed to be an anonymous member of the Progressive Labor Party. That person would in turn raise suspicions about Bergman.

Discussion of an early related org, Venceremos, which would disintegrate later due to a botched illegal operation that lead to significant prison time for some members:

In his testimony, Larry Goff told Congress that the discipline in Venceremos was “more lax and the organization itself much more disorganized,” His feeling was that “many who went with Venceremos were those who had difficulty in accepting the strict discipline of the RU.” The two informants overall assessment was prescient:
“The Goffs offered the opinion that, of the two groups, the RU is the much more dangerous because of its long-range plans for revolution, the secrecy and subterfuge of its operations, and its concentration on building a “mass line” among the working classes. The Goffs feel that the Venceremos group is composed of individuals ready to engage in unorthodox and unwise activities and is more immediately dangerous in terms of terrorism and violence, but that Venceremos will divulge its planned activity and, as a result, its member’s will be arrested or killed before Venceremos can present a long-range threat.”
While the Goffs were later ridiculed by some as unsophisticated and obvious agents, their assessment here was largely on the mark.

A paper by Bruce Franklin ignites internal debate over underground action:

In hindsight the notion of initiating revolutionary military action within the US, ought to stand as misguided in the extreme. Yet at the time there was not only confusion, but a romantic allure. Leaving aside the moral element, to argue, as the paper Protracted War did, that things were entering the phase of armed struggle, was a serious misreading of the actual situation. This confusion, in turn, had consequences. Such nascent “military” actions taken by radicals against the authorities and their institutions in such a context ultimately would be confronted as a law enforcement matter, and would by and large stand isolated from broad support. They would largely be seen (and were largely seen) as illegitimate in the Weberian sense, of the state having a “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force”—and here we need to put aside the particularity of the urban insurrections among Black people in the US in the mid to late sixties, and the relative legitimacy of that violence, among large quarters of the affected populations. That is not to say a large number of people, especially youth, did not champion such things, but that does not negate the overarching reality. In that regard, the RU struggle with Bruce Franklin et al, is instructive. It likely saved them from going over a political cliff. It nonetheless left its marks, impelling the RU in its own problematic direction.

Larger ideological criticism crystallizes here, of course “voluntarist” critique of Maoism is not new but this still has some kind of explanatory power for RCP’s later devolution (faced with extremely adverse global circumstances, group membership still saw making the revolution as something that could happen, if only the group had the correct line):

The concept of line the RU was adopting was taken from Mao and the Chinese Communists. Mao’s canon is replete with invocations on the need for practice to gain knowledge, i.e.,
“If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.”
There was also, however, in Mao’s outlook, a strong current of voluntarism, (in the philosophical sense of the primacy of will). A concentrated exposition can be seen in the following:
“The correctness or otherwise of the ideological and political line decides everything. When the Party’s line is correct, then everything will come its way. If it has no followers, then it can have followers; if it has no guns, then it can have guns; if it has no political power, then it can have political power.”
Allowing for Mao’s use of overstatement for emphasis, this nonetheless reads as highly problematic. It transforms the concept of having principles, strategic vision, and a core belief system, into a dogmatic construct. And it was this concept of ‘line’ that the RU and later the RCP would increasingly embrace.

Chapter 5: Peoples’ China

This chapter deals of top RU members’ visits to China and a general summary of the political situation in China / what inspiration they took from the Chinese Revolution.

On how the FBI used Bergman’s connections with China to justify increased surveillance (useful pretext but certainly not necessary):

According to Huston, Bergman had a threefold mission; to form a national union of pro-Maoists radicals, to forward information to the Chinese Communists, and to recruit agents to be trained in China, “after which they would return to this country and operate on behalf of Communist China in a nonpublic or submerged fashion.” The information in the Huston report corresponds closely to the FBI’s assessment that Bergman “had promised his friends (Chinese) that he would do a job for them.” The similarity in tone of both reports suggests that Huston and Nixon were getting their information from the FBI. In their view, “Bergman is an identified Chicom Intelligence Agent.” This was a highly dangerous label to be put on a US citizen, but it was a large part of the basis for justifying the FBI’s campaign not only against Bergman but the larger RU.
[…]
As a result of the secret allegations, however, the government—at the highest levels—undertook an intensive campaign of watching Bergman’s activity; not only by monitoring publicly available information and through informant reports, but also by establishing telephone taps, breaking into his apartment and placing microphones into his living quarters, and contemplating—and quite possibly acting on—deploying close circuit television cameras in or outside his residence.

Chapter 6: Coalitions, Infiltrators, and Schisms

More about the RU’s industrial concentration strategy (certainly not unique among NCM groups), and successful strike support:

From its strongest base in the Bay Area the group continued deploying cadre into industry. Former students at UC Berkeley, Stanford and other schools in the Bay Area now found themselves working in places such as the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the US Postal Service. This would be a scene replicated nationwide in all the places where collectives and individuals joined the RU, these mainly former students, would be directly entering the working class by getting manufacturing and other working class jobs.
The RU also sent cadre to El Paso Texas in October 1972, to investigate a strike by 4000 Chicano workers, mainly women, against the Farah textile company—the then largest manufacturer of men and boys pants in the US. What followed was an effective strike-support effort on the part of the RU that included establishing committees in 19 cities nationwide. These committees sponsored support programs, distributed leaflets, and spread the word of what the Farah workers were engaged in. There was also, at times, a more militant edge where people also went into department stores and removed slacks from the racks, or even spilled paint on them. The RU’s effort in this case coincided with a successful outcome. The strike, which ended in early 1974, concluded with union recognition. The activity around the Farah strike—much like the earlier Standard Oil Strike—would serve as a type of model for the new communist movement.

On the promising early efforts at uniting the NCM (one big conference in NYC counted 1200 attendees) and the break that put those efforts to rest (again, driven largely by RU chauvinism):

These forums, along with an organizational entity, the National Liaison Committee, were part of a process of integrating several organizations into a single new communist party, all of which seems to have been proceeding well. Then—behind the scenes—things took a bad turn. When the new political terms emerged, the results were a sharp political shift. As informant Sheila O’Connor would report,
“[t]he RU now views the national question (blacks, Chicanos, Indians), as no longer being primary. The changes in the U.S. are now being made by the working class black and white. This change in position cost the RU two allies. The Black Workers Congress and Puerto Rican Socialist Party. [Sic – Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization]”
O’Connor’s version—or who ever transcribed her reports—of the struggle is at once an oversimplification and a capsulation. The two allies O’Connor refers to had been part of the National Liaison Committee (NLC). Begun in 1972, the NLC initially consisted of four groups: I-Work-Kuen (an Asian organization), the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization (formerly the Young Lords), the Black Workers Congress, and the Revolutionary Union.

Some more detailed explanation of this conflict follows, but it’s not that interesting.

FBI created whole organizations!

In the early 1970s, “at the direction of the bureau,” Burton founded something called the “Red Star Cadre,” a fake new communist organization set up to further the FBI’s efforts. Red Star Cadre benefited from the dynamic in the new communist movement in the mid-seventies wherein anyone who claimed the mantle of ‘anti-revisionism’ was on a mission to create a new communist party. The result was a frenzy of activity by organizations both sizable and minuscule. This was ample raw material for the Bureau to deploy its notional collectives concept, with subsequent jargon—buffeted by the insights of people like SA Herb Stallings.
Among Burton’s efforts was joining together with several other NCM groups for a conference in Canada with the aim of creating a new party. Of the seven groups participating, five were from the US: American Communist Workers Movement (M-L), Association of Communist Workers, the Red Collective, the Communist League and Red Star Cadre. Two of those groups, Burton’s Red Star Cadre and the Red Collective, were FBI manifestations.
[…]
A sense of the disruptive ability in such constructions comes through in Burton’s sworn statement. In December 1973, while visiting Chicago with the leader of the Communist League, Nelson Peery, he said, “Under the FBI’s direction, I discouraged this group from working with the Revolutionary Union by characterizing the RU as being populated by old line members of the Communist Party who were working for the FBI.”
According to Burton, the Bureau supplied him and his group with everything from operating funds to T-shirts, with a large red star and the legend “Fight Back.” In addition to Burton, the Tampa “cadre” included “several former intelligence officers from the military and area students being paid by the FBI.” It also had ties with police agents who had infiltrated Vietnam Veterans Against the War, “who broke up the local chapter and promoted a split with the national organization.”
While Burton and his group trolled around various new communist entities between 1972 and 1974, his key objective was to prevent, “the merger of the Revolutionary Union (RU) and the October League (OL).”

The chapter ends with another, more damning example of RU white chauvinism: the position they took on busing. When tied back to the earlier related fact that they were a self-selecting nearly all white group, one can see how a position like this, that should have generated immediate pushback and criticism within the group, instead was allowed to see the light of day:

Meantime, the fallout from the political terms set by the National Liaison Committee controversy had direct consequences. This was best exemplified in Boston in the fall of 1974. At the end of the 1973-74 school year, a Federal judge in Massachusetts, Wendell Arthur Garrity, issued a ruling that Boston school authorities had “knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation.” The remedy, the court said, was to implement a busing program to integrate the schools. What came about as a result was a plan to transfer students between primarily Black and white neighborhoods including the old Irish-American neighborhood of South Boston, notorious for its racial intolerance. In this way the RU attempted to implement its newly found position of putting the unity of the working class, front and center. What they came up with was a scheme where working class unity could trump the brutal contradictions of race. Taking things to an extreme, a headline in Revolution in October 1974 proclaimed, “People Must Unite to Smash the Boston Busing Plan.” For the RU this was a matter of the ruling class dividing “the workers and [attempting] to drive a wedge between the struggles of the working class and the struggles of oppressed nationalities.” A follow-up article elaborated the RU’s view:
“Those who think that the only way to stand with Black people and other oppressed nationalities is to attack white workers as simply a bunch of racists, who think that the ruling class is the friend of the oppressed, can at best only drag at the tail of the struggle, and, if they continue in this path, can only end up falling over backwards completely into the camp of the ruling class.”
This astonished quite a few people, including the Boston Globe who noted, “[u]nlike most radical leftists groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, the group [RU] opposes busing.” This in the context of ugly demonstrations—with white mobs, bombarding buses carrying Black students, with rocks, bottles, and eggs. The RU’s position was ridiculed widely on the left, and inside its own ranks it created serious dissension. Regardless, they held firm. Years later—after the group had repudiated this position—Bob Avakian would reflect on the episode saying, “We missed the essence of what was going on,” and that he was personally “horrified at the initial [Revolution] headline.” The damage, however, was done. The political fallout would have lasting consequences for the RU in terms of loss of prestige if not legitimacy in certain quarters.

Chapter 7: Sinking Roots and Making the Papers

Despite losing the prospect of any broader leadership within the NCM, RU continues to intensify focus on working class industrial organizing:

The RU’s trouble in the Boston Busing crisis and the National Liaison Committee aside, they continued to expand their organizational reach, both among students and veterans, but perhaps most significantly within the working class. As they did so they confronted not just the limits of doing radical political work among a population largely non-receptive to radical politics, but also the consistent attention of the FBI and its proxy agents, particularly the Bureau’s friendly media.****

Good work but happened at the wrong time?

The RU’s work in industry was always an uphill climb, albeit one with shimmering moments. Here perhaps the quintessential experience was their initiative to create a communist political presence in the West Virginia coalfields. They had in mind to go ‘among the masses’ and build a base, and dig in for the long haul of struggle. From their standpoint here was the working class in concentrated form. Yet it was the working class in the context of the volatile situation in the mid-seventies: the energy crisis, neoliberal economic shifts, an attempt to re-cohere the US homeland on a much more conservative basis than that of the previous decade.
The first problem confronting RU cadre was to be able to erect a screen between their former political selves and where they were going, in order to gain a foothold in this sharply different section of the population. To that end, “What we did was move off the grid for a while,” —not only not being politically active but being extremely circumspect in establishing themselves in West Virginia. This was not for no reason, as he later learned authorities had, “contacted people in at least three states trying to uncover where we [his partner Gina Fall and he] had gone.”

This early “culture-war” battle over school textbooks will sound familiar:

One of the earliest matters confronting these newly settled cadre was a controversy around a social conservative issue. In the fall of 1974 rightwing forces, lead by some clergy in the area, but with the hand of the John Birch Society lurking in the background, sought to ban textbooks quoting such figures as George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver and Alan Ginsberg, from school shelves. Beyond their verbal protests, the forces behind these moves sparked wildcat strikes in support of their efforts. As Ely recalled, “it was a paradox that one of our first serious tasks was to use those connections to help suppress and constrain a reactionary rightwing strike—and convince the militants not to take it up.” They did this by working with some militant antiracist Black Vietnam veterans based in Beckley, West Virginia—producing literature in opposition to the protesters. In this way some of the steam was taken out of these reactionary efforts. The volatility in the textbook strike was, however, two-fold; on the one hand this was an attempt to incite people around highly conservative issues—where there existed no small basis for it—on the other it utilized the historic solidarity to enlist people in this unjust cause.

Leonard understates it here, but “receptivity toward bread and butter issues, but less attraction by most, to their communist politics” is key - as in past strategies of industrial concentration that ended up being more successful (ie CPUSA in 30s), even radical trade-unionism did not point the way to a broader anti-racist, socialist consciousness, especially in the conditions of the 70s. It is clear here that they still lacked the analysis of imperialism that would allow them to see any political limitations in core country working-class organizing:

The RU’s work in the coalfields was at once exceptional and typical of what the group’s cadre were confronting as they moved into steel, meatpacking, auto, and other major industries—a certain receptivity toward bread and butter issues, but less attraction by most, to their communist politics. One could argue that the limits they met were similar as those argued for by such groups as the Weathermen who railed against, “white workers who just want more privilege from imperialism.” However, this was always a moving target, and the space between 1968 and 1977 was considerable. Put another way, the coalfields in the mid seventies were not Standard Oil in the late sixties. The US was no longer locked in a losing war in Vietnam, nor did it have the twin challenge of the Soviet Union and China internationally. It was also not confronted with unrelenting turmoil within its cities and on its college campuses. Instead it was in the midst of a neoliberal transformation that was reshaping industry within the US itself. The RU’s communist work in industry was always going to be difficult, but as the decade went on, it became more so.****

RU continues activity on campuses:

Despite its focus on getting cadre into strategic industries the RU had not abandoned efforts to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of SDS. In a pamphlet issued in 1972 they laid out their aim to build a student movement based on the politics of anti-imperialism, this in the face of claims that, “the student movement was dead and buried.” The RU’s experience would bear out this assessment to a degree—while things had markedly declined from the peak years of 1968-70, it still had a considerable vitality—albeit one quickly waning.

Short discussion of RU influence within Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Of course it is natural here that US academics and historians would disparage the RU involvement: given how taboo it would be to directly criticize a veterans group, it is politically advantageous to blame the RU “fifth column” for radicalizing these otherwise basically patriotic veterans!

Unlike the RU/RCP, VVAW has been written about extensively both in academic works and in popular publications, and the RU/RCP’s presence is spoken to, to a degree, in that context. There is in this, however a standard narrative, one in which Maoists and hard-core radicals wrecked the organization. For example Andrew Hunt in, The Turning, describes the RCP’s “ruinous influence over the national office.” Similarly, Gerald Nicosia in Home to War, writes, “[t]he danger was that every member of the RU was pledged to carry out the will of its monomaniacal chairman, former Berkeley activist Bob Avakian.” The latter statement would seem more an insight into that author’s assessment rather than the actual situation, given Avakian did not wholly dominate the RCP until the bulk of VVAW parted company from the Party in 1977. That aside, there was something more fundamental in play, which Nicosia himself acknowledges:
“Existing VVAW leaders had simply been recruited into the RU because their enormous anger was pitched to a similar frequency as the RU’s raging frenzy against the capitalist system.”
This would seem more the nub of the issue, i.e., the national leadership of VVAW came under RU influence because a hard core of its membership at that moment, had no interest in coming back into the American fold. In short, the RU convinced a large section of VVAW’s leadership that Maoism, and the RU, was the path forward for tearing down the US empire. Understood in this way, it is not so much that the RU took over VVAW in the mid seventies— though there was an element of that—it was more the case that VVAW took itself into the RU.****

Chapter 8: The Short Leap from RU to RCP

RU finally “builds the party” it has wanted to - although instead of this happening through an agglomeration of other NCM groups, it is at this point merely a name change and further formalization of the organization.

On the RCP’s social conservatism (again, not unique in NCM groups):

In the RU/RCP’s view homosexuality was akin to religion; it was a belief system and a conscious choice. As for how it fit into the struggle, they were firm that the larger movement toward gay liberation “is counter-revolutionary and anti-working class,” because it sought to find a place for gay people in the established society. The same document did allow that individual, “gay people can be anti-imperialist,” but was clear they could not be communists.
Stripping off the Marxist pretensions, for what was supposed to be a forward looking and visionary Party, their position was striking in its conservative, even puritanical, sensibility. It was further problematized by the fact that an upsurge of gay men and women in the United States was already underway and was about to hit critical mass—something this newly proclaimed vanguard would deliberately stand apart from. This was all made worse by its intransigence; once adopted as ‘line’ it was set in stone, and would not be abandoned until decades after the RCP’s peak strength and influence had come and gone.
The irony here is that the Party and the RU before it, like the rest of society, included gay men and women—though only in a closeted capacity. Perhaps most notably in this regard, but hardly singularly, was Steve Hamilton, who was privately gay before coming out in 1980. This only after leaving the group.

A peak of activity, a march organized in Philadelphia and connected events, shows promise and an ability to organize larger, more complex actions:

In the end there were two major counter-bicentennial marches in Philadelphia. The larger July 4th coalition drew in the range of 30,000 people. By comparison, the RCP event was considerably smaller, with press-reports ranging between 3,500 and 4,000. The numbers, however, do not convey the qualitative element in play. The Rich Off Our Backs action, with its guiding slogan, did carry a certain revolutionary charge. Further, more than just a single demonstration, the Party’s campaign was spread over several days, beginning with a demonstration by its Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee in Washington, DC on June 30. It then moved up to Philadelphia for roving demonstrations with various focuses: support of striking rubber workers, Philadelphia city workers, and a VVAW-lead march at the USS John Dewey docked in Philadelphia. The demonstrators, traveling via open-air flat bed trucks, worked to engage and connect with the people of Philadelphia, especially in the largely Black neighborhoods where they were generally warmly welcomed.

Some other impressive high-water marks, for the RCP’s trade union work and also student organizing:

In the wake of the Bicentennial demonstration, the advances in work in the coalfields, the strength of the Party’s work in auto, steel, meatpacking and other industries, the group pushed for a leap in its organizing in the working class, through the formation of a National United Workers Organization.
On Labor Day weekend 1977, 1,500 people, mainly RCP cadre and supporters, based in industry came together in Chicago’s Pick Congress hotel to form the National United Workers Organization. In the parlance of the RCP this was an “intermediate workers” organization. A place for the Party to work with rank and file around day to day issues, but to also expose them to the broader radical program of the Party, up to and including recruiting them into the organization.
Along with the higher profile steelworker and miners, the array of those in attendance provided a window into the inroads the Party had made in industry. There were pineapple and hotel workers from Hawaii, agricultural workers from the Salinas Valley, electronics workers from San Jose, garment, hospital, and auto workers from the east coast, textile, electrical, petrochemical workers from the South. While showcasing the RU, and later the Party’s work in the previous eight years to establish a base in industry, it also attempted a continuity with the communist labor movement of the past. The speaker for the RCP was Vern Bown, a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an old comrade of Leibel Bergman’s from their days in the Northern California CP (he was also called before HUAC in 1960), and an early member of the RU. Bown, emphasizing the role of communist in struggle, told the audience, “All my life I have been a worker and most of my working life I have been a communist. And I have never seen these two as being in any way separate, or contradictory.”
The Convention consisted of key plenaries and workshops hammering out the positions of the new organization. This in turn culminated in a proclamation: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common!” The statement emphasized the stand of the working class against discrimination, for unity of different nationalities, against unemployment, against war for empire—all in the face of “growing crisis and increased” attacks on the working class. Such high sounding rhetoric was seen as a first step in what would be a highly influential organization advancing the overall work of the Party. As things turned out this would be the last such convention.
In like fashion, on November 19 and 20, 1977 on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana, students across the country gathered in a convention; in all some six hundred came together to proclaim the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. Along with the students was a smaller number of Party cadres assigned to work with working class youth, and some of the youth they had attracted. This was the Party’s realization of a long sought effort toward establishing a “young communist league,” i.e., a student-working class youth organization.
[…]
A speaker at the close of the convention strove to end things on a high note: “We are determined to be the generation that grows up to establish socialism in this country. The future is ours, because we have shown this weekend that we do dare to take it.” Events just over the horizon would prove the statement, and the prospects for the newly formed organization, as illusory.

Chapter 9: The Final Split

And then what happened?

By November 1977 the RCP had grown from less than two dozen Bay Area activists with members concentrated on several campuses and in a handful of factories, into a nationwide organization, with well over a thousand cadre, thousands more supporters, and pride of place near the top of the charts in the FBI’s threat analysis. While the bulk of organizations and individuals who had attained notoriety in the sixties had largely come and gone, taking with them a certain brand of radicalism, the RCP by contrast, had traversed that terrain and expanded, and seemed poised to continue—and if not grow dramatically, continue as a sizable and significant radical force. Then Mao Zedong died, and it all started coming apart.
Mao’s death in September 1976 sparked a crisis worldwide for a certain kind of revolutionary force. Maoist organizations and groupings had proliferated and thrived during the previous twenty years. Mao’s death would set loose a flood of confusion and disorientation, leading once vibrant organizations to disappear, implode, or disband.

Describing the results of a split after the arrest of the Gang of Four, and an inconvenient truth that is surprisingly common in movement histories - for organizations that care a lot about line, many splits end up simply playing out along interpersonal lines:

The results were immediate. Bergman and Jarvis left the organization, taking a third of the membership with them, mainly cadre in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee areas, while splitting cadre in the Chicago and Boston area. Here a point needs to be made, that for all the essentializing of ‘line’ in this struggle, and this was also true in the Franklin schism, people tended (though this was not absolute) to break along familiar lines, i.e. they went with people and leaders they knew.

Again we see the overdetermination of global events and circumstances in relation to whatever local/national repression the RU faced:

While the specifics of what the authorities were doing in this time—including operating in the troubled waters of this acrimonious split—remains largely hidden, it is the case that the turn in China away from revolutionary Maoism, solved a formidable problem. If the FBI played no role in the airing of the dirty laundry, internal secrets, and the war of words between the RCP and RWHq—an unlikely prospect given everything they had been able to do before that point—then it must have taken pleasure in the fact that the two factions were essentially undertaking mutually destructive work, in a better way than they ever could.
Regardless, events in the world had a far more decisive effect than anything they attempted in all the years and effort they had expended on the RU and the RCP. One can reasonably liken it to the climactic battle scene in Gangs of New York where the two sides square off—chains, clubs, and fists at the ready for the final show down, only to look up in baffled amazement as canon-balls fired from US military gunboats in the harbor, hurtle toward them. The FBI and the RCP may have been locked in battle, but in the end larger forces decided the war.

Interesting problems raised here about how a generation of young activists matures and this changes the organizational culture. Compounded with the sheer numbers lost during the split, which transformed RCP into a rump organization:

Under Avakian’s leadership, a rectification campaign was launched inside the remaining organization. There had already been weeks of concentrated study and meetings for cadre to get steeped in Avakian’s position. This would soon give way to a dramatic transformation of how the group went about its work.
Throughout the seventies the organization had taken on many of the trappings of US society, including no small amount of listlessness, malaise, and even decadence. This was compounded by the fact that it had gone into the heart of the American mainstream, the stable US working class. For the previous five to seven years most cadre were in monogamous relationships, many with young children, living in working class neighborhoods, drawing union salaries, and attempting to assimilate into the lifestyle of those they were organizing. They took out mortgages, listened to country music, and drank on weekends. Along the way, not a few developed drinking problems, didn’t have much time for reading, and were dragged down by the politics of the shop floor. This was to be no more, as a singular focus on “revolution” was reintroduced and emphasized—albeit without the social upheaval of the previous decade. Meantime, the Party organization in key parts of the country had been decimated. In New York only a handful of members remained loyal to the Party—and they were mainly cadre living in New Jersey. A few Asian cadre, who had moved East from the Bay Area a few years earlier, remained loyal, but by-in-large the RCP had lost its footprint in the largest city in the country. The organization’s presence in Philadelphia too, given the stature garnered during the Bicentennial struggle, was entirely gone (though there were still Party cadre in northeast Pennsylvania; in Allentown, Pottstown and Reading), likewise Milwaukee had been decimated and Chicago—the Party’s center—was bifurcated. There were other losses in smaller cities and towns, which aggregated up to a significantly diminished organization. This was a situation the RCP would never completely recover from. The upsurge of the ’60s and ’70s was now in the past, with no similar historic confluence forthcoming. The lost cadre would not be replaced.

Chapter 10: After the Fall

A tragi-comic, ill-considered demonstration when Deng visits Washington leads to serious charges against key RCP members, further weakening the organization. RCP starts to move away from deep organizing (for which it no longer has sufficient numbers, commitment, or momentum) into irrelevant “newspaper politics”:

Under Avakian’s leadership the RCP was redefining itself. It began to reject the whole strategy of having cadre working among the industrial proletariat in favor of the more amorphous strategy of “Create Public Opinion/Seize Power,” taken from a saying by Mao, “Before you make a revolution, you must first create public opinion.” This also flowed from a reading of Lenin’s pamphlet What Is To Be Done, that the communist, “ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people [emphasis original], who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects.” As a result the Party began extricating itself from building a base among the more stable unionized working class in favor of what increasingly was being defined as the “real proletariat”—a term Avakian would popularize to describe, the “strategic orientation that Lenin stressed, of going down lower and deeper to the basic sections of the proletariat, whose interests more conform to and give rise to an inclination or gravitation toward proletarian revolution.” Here the work of creating “revolutionary public opinion” through a weekly newspaper distributed in the housing projects as well as among immigrant workers and lower paid industrial workers, along with key demographics like youth and other social groups was the primary focus. From this point on the Party no longer would attempt to base cadre—in any meaningful way—among what it identified as strategic sections of the working class. Rather they would attempt to “build a base” through a network of connections made via their newspaper.

Here the FBI and local police also start coming down harder at the remnants of the party, seeing their opportunity to seal the fate of the organization for good.

More on the slow decline and loss of morale:

Bob Avakian’s exit also signaled a retrenchment on the part of the Party and a stepping away from sharper confrontational tactics. This in turn led to an easing to a degree, of its ability to function. At the same time, cadre continued to exit. It was not just the toll of the repression, or the schisms, or the political infighting, but the gradual realization on the part of a good number of formerly dedicated members that, ‘things had changed.’ Unlike earlier episodes of mass exit, this loss of membership was not focused around a particular political fault line or organizational split, but rather individual decisions. This was accelerated by the disconnect between the assessment coming from the top of the Party which insisted on the more or less standing possibility of a revolutionary situation arising. As Avakian argued, the group needed to be ready to seize on events, “whenever a revolutionary situation does develop—which, as we’ve seen from experience, can develop suddenly and without much warning.”

Which parts of this decline could have been staunched by a more clearheaded assessment of the global picture? Obviously it was hard for them to see the future, but one thinks that if they had entered with more general skepticism about the radicalism of the US working class, or a different understanding of what revolutionaries in the U.S. could affect, the dimming prospects of revolution would not have had such disastrous effects on morale.

Chapter 11: Conclusion

Leonard’s overall view on why the group came to the end it did is not so convincing, at least until the second paragraph here. Especially frustrating is Leonard again blaming the roots of sectarianism and dogmatism on the RU’s “tying itself so uncritically to the communist legacy” - because the RU’s most costly errors and misteps, at least the ones Leonard focuses on in this book (white chauvinism, position on busing, etc), were largely failures to correctly analyze the concrete situation they faced, not “misreadings” or undue adulation of Stalin or Mao:

In the end, however, one needs to look at the piece as a whole. The controversies that made up the nodal points and their resolution are definitive here: the struggle against urban guerrilla warfare that lead to a heightened organizational authoritarianism, the inherent reactive response in opposition to the complex debate around nationalism, the dogmatic methodology used to analyze the intricate, complex, and shifting events in China. Such things, among not a few others, serve as points of transformation, largely in the wrong direction. While nothing here was ever so simple as “all bad” or “all good,” there was a clear trajectory. The sectarianism, dogmatism, and voluntarism, eventually came to characterize the group; diminishing and overwhelming much of the critical grounding, liberatory vision, and communal spirit—that had made it attractive in its beginnings. The reasons for this are many, but the overriding one being its willingness from inception to tie itself so uncritically to the communist legacy dating back to the Russian Revolution. Here is the paradox, had they not taken inspiration from the socialism of China, which in its time was the most formidable model available, they likely would have withered on the vine. But the Maoism of mid-to-late sixties China, for all its lofty goals and some of the real good it did for its people, was, on the terms it was constituted, unsustainable—to say nothing of the universe of controversies and very bad things that happened in the same period. By the seventies, however, it was in transition toward something else. Thus the RU/RCP’s future was tethered to the rise and fall of a model that was about to hit its limits.
Of course the rise and fall of this group is not wholly a story of China. It is also one of the US war and its eventual defeat in Vietnam, the upsurge of struggles for national liberation worldwide, and the revolutionary Black freedom movement within the US. Such things were the raw fuel impelling the creation of this organization, but such things were a moving target. By the mid-seventies the resurgent conservatism that would accompany the US as it entered onto a neoliberal path, was limiting what a revolutionary communist group could do “in the working class,” and the wider society. As we have noted, what was possible in Richmond, California in 1968, was not possible in West Virginia in 1977.

A final note on taking a more measured view of FBI. Last sentence invites the question - can you tell the story of any revolutionary movement / party without the story of its repression? The need arises here to compare how RU fared versus other orgs in how it withstood repression - and what specific factors of RU organizational culture helped or hurt it. For after all, there have been countless movements and organizations which faced much fiercer repression and infiltration and survived - so here repression absolutely cannot be seen as the determining factor (or even a particularly key factor) in the group’s eventual decline.

And here it is our view that the FBI needs to be understood differently than it has been up to now. In this two popular tendencies stand out. One dismisses the Bureau as paranoid, over-reactive, and largely ineffective. The other too often mystifies the Bureau’s power, ascribing too much agency to “COINTELPRO” and other covert undertakings—suggesting its hand in all outrages and unexplained events. In what we have written it ought to be clear the actual situation is not so cut and dried—all real FBI absurdities, and nefarious (and outlandish) undertakings aside. The Bureau we met in relation to the RU/RCP was a largely sophisticated entity, albeit one arguably most effective when employing tried and true methods. They had the foresight to see the RU as an emerging ‘threat’ even before it became a publicly known organization. Not only did they penetrate the group’s executive committee by early 1968, they appear to have gotten an informant to the level of the national central committee by 1971. That is beyond the not inconsequential lesser informants and casual snitches who came and went throughout this period. While they were largely unable to staunch the emergence of the group, and its expansion into a national organization—such successes were no small matter. Yes, the FBI often came across as ‘unhip,’ and absurd, as befit J. Edgar Hoover’s organizational culture, but that did not mean they could not recruit people who were unrecognizable as FBI operatives, and keep them in place for significant blocks of time. All that taken into account that was not, in the end what lead to the RU/RCP’s ultimate decline; bigger forces, as we have shown, were responsible for that. We do, however, give more credit to the initiative exhibited by the Bureau in shaping this group and affecting how it interacted with the larger world. To put it more directly, it is not possible to understand this grouping—and this is likely a point applicable to quite a number of organizations in that time—without understanding the role of the Bureau in relationship to it.

Chapter 1: The "Liberal" Vision of Society

THE GENERAL IDEAS which govern the dominant liberal vision of the world are simple and may be summarized in the following terms:
Social effectiveness is equated by liberals with economic efficiency which, in turn, is confounded with the financial profitability of capital. These reductions express the dominance of the economic, a dominance characteristic of capitalism. The atrophied social thought derived from this dominance is “economistic” in the extreme. Curiously, this reproach, wrongly directed at Marxism, in fact characterizes capitalist liberalism.
The development of the generalized market (the least regulated possible) and of democracy are decreed to be complementary to one another. The question of conflict between social interests which are expressed through their interventions in the market and social interests which give meaning and import to political democracy is not even posed. Economics and politics do not form two dimensions of social reality, each having their own autonomy, operating in a dialectical relationship; capitalist economics in fact governs the political, whose creative potential it eliminates.
Apparently, the most “developed” country, the one in which the political is actually conceived and practiced entirely in the exclusive service of the economy (of capital, in fact)—obviously the United States—is held to be the best model for “all.” Its institutions and practices should be imitated by all those who hope to be contemporary with the world scene.
There is no alternative to the proposed model, which is founded on economistic postulates, the identity of the market and democracy, and the subsumption of the political by the economic. The socialist option attempted in the Soviet Union and China demonstrated that it was both inefficient in economic terms and antidemocratic in the political sphere.
In other words, the propositions formulated above have the virtue of being “eternal truths” (the truths of “Reason”) revealed by the unfolding of contemporary history. Their triumph is assured, particularly since the disappearance of the alternative “socialist” experiments. We will all truly arrive, as has been said, at the end of history. Historical Reason has triumphed. This triumph means then that we live in the best of all possible worlds, at least potentially, in the sense that it will be so when its founding ideas are accepted by everyone and put into practice everywhere. All the defects of today’s reality are due only to the fact that these eternal principles of Reason are not yet put into practice in the societies that suffer from these deficiencies, particularly those in the global South.
The hegemonism of the United States, a normal expression of its avant-garde position in using Reason (inevitably liberal), is thus both unavoidable and favorable to the progress of the whole of humanity. There is no “American imperialism,” only a noble leadership (“benign” or painless, as liberal American intellectuals qualify it).
These “ideas” are central to the liberal vision. In fact, as we will see in what follows, these ideas are nothing but nonsense, founded on a para-science — so-called pure economics — and an accompanying ideology — postmodernism.

Chapter 2: The Ideological and Para-Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism

On "Imaginary Capitalism":

THE CONCEPT OF CAPITALISM cannot be reduced to the “generalized market,” but instead situates the essence of capitalism precisely in power beyond the market. This reduction, as found in the dominant vulgate, substitutes the theory of an imaginary system governed by “economic laws” (the “market”) which would tend, if left to themselves, to produce an “optimal equilibrium,” for the analysis of capitalism based on social relations and a politics through which these powers beyond the market are expressed. In really-existing capitalism, class struggle, politics, the state, and the logics of capital accumulation are inseparable. Consequently, capitalism is by nature a regime in which the successive states of disequilibrium are products of social and political confrontations situated beyond the market. The concepts proposed by the vulgar economics of liberalism—such as “deregulation” of the markets—have no reality. So-called deregulated markets are markets regulated by the forces of monopolies which are situated outside the market.
Economic alienation is the specific form of capitalism which governs the reproduction of society in its totality and not only the reproduction of its economic system. The law of value governs not only capitalist economic life, but all social life in this society. This specificity explains why, in capitalism, the economic is erected into a “science”—that is, the laws which govern the movement of capitalism are imposed on modern societies (and on the human beings which form those societies) “like laws of nature.” In other words, the fact that these laws are the product not of a transhistorical nature (which would define the “human being” vis-à-vis the challenge of “scarcity”) but of a particular historical nature (social relations specifically characteristic of capitalism) is erased from social consciousness. This is, in my opinion, how Marx understood “economism,” the unique characteristic of capitalism.

Love this quote:

The effective response to the challenges can only be found if one understands that history is not governed by the infallible unfolding of economic laws. It is produced by social reactions to the tendencies expressed by these laws which, in turn, are defined by the social relations within the framework in which these laws operate. The “anti-systemic” forces—if one wants to refer to this organized, coherent and effective refusal to the unilateral and total submission to the requirements of these alleged laws (in fact, quite simply the law of profit characteristic of capitalism as a system)—make real history as much as the “pure” logic of capitalist accumulation. These forces govern the possibilities and the forms of the expansion which then develop within the framework that they have organized.

Amin sees postmodernism (roughly characterized as "suspicion towards universalism" without a "true critique") as supporting ideology of contemporary liberalism:

The ideological discourse of postmodernism is sustained by these regressions. Recuperating every common prejudice produced by the disarray characteristic of moments such as ours, it methodically lays out, without concern for overall coherence, one argument after another encouraging suspicion towards the concepts of progress and universalism. But far from deepening the serious critique of these expressions of Enlightenment culture and bourgeois history, far from analyzing their actual contradictions, which are aggravated by the obsolescence of the system, this discourse is satisfied with substituting the impoverished propositions of liberal American ideology for a true critique: “live with your time,” “adapt to it,” “manage each day”—that is, abstain from reflecting on the nature of the system, and particularly from calling into question its choices of the moment.
The praise for inherited diversities proposed in place of the necessary effort to transcend the limits of bourgeois universalism thus functions in perfect accord with the requirements of contemporary imperialism’s project of globalization, a project that can produce only an organized system of apartheid on a world scale, sustained as it is by reactionary “communitarian” ideologies in the North American tradition. What I qualify as the “culturalist” retreat, which is at the forefront of the scene today, is thus implemented and manipulated by the masters of the system, just as it is equally often seized upon by the dominated peoples in confusion (under the form of so-called religious or ethnic fundamentalisms). This is the “clash of barbarisms,” as Gilbert Achcar has written, giving Huntington’s thesis a self-realizing character.

The world system has not entered into a new “non-imperialist” phase that is sometimes characterized as “post-imperialist.” On the contrary, it is by nature an imperialist system exacerbated to the extreme (extracting resources without effective opposition). The analysis that Negri and Hardt propose of an “Empire” (without imperialism), in fact an Empire limited to the Triad—that is, the three major regions of capitalism, the United States, Europe, and Japan—with the rest of the world being ignored, is unfortunately inscribed both in the tradition of Occidentalism and in the currently fashionable intellectual discourse. The differences between the new imperialism and the preceding one are found elsewhere. Imperialism in the past was multiple (“imperialisms” in conflict), while the new one is collective (the Triad, even if this be in the wake of United States hegemony). From this fact, the “conflicts” among the partners of the Triad are only minor, while the conflict between the Triad and the rest of the world is clearly the major one. The disappearance of the European project in the face of American hegemonism finds its explanation here. Furthermore, accumulation in the prior imperialist stage was based on the binary relation between the industrialized centers and the non-industrialized peripheries, while in the new conditions of the system’s evolution the opposition is between the beneficiaries of the centers’ new monopolies (technology, access to natural resources, communications, weapons of mass destruction) and peripheries that are industrialized, but still subordinated by means of these monopolies. In order to justify their thesis, Negri and Hardt need to give a strictly political definition of the imperialist phenomenon (“the projection of national power beyond its frontiers”), without any relation to the requirements for the accumulation and reproduction of capital. This definition, which stems from vulgar university political science, particularly of the North American variety, eliminates from the start the true questions. Their discourse deals with a category “empire” placed outside of history and thus happily makes no distinction among the Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, British colonial, and French colonial empires. No care is taken to consider the specificities of these historical constructions without reducing them to one another.

Bit about neoliberalism's relation to the state ("not at all suppressing the state, but liquidating only political practice, thus allowing it to fulfill other functions") especially on the mark here:

The influence which the Empire thesis has gained in the opinion of the Western left, and among youth, derives entirely, in my opinion, from the harsh observations it makes about the state and the nation. The state (bourgeois) and nationalism (chauvinistic) have always been rejected, and rightly so, by the radical left. To assert that, with the new capitalism, their decay is beginning can only be pleasing. But, alas, the proposition is not true. Late capitalism certainly puts on the agenda the objective necessity and possibility of the withering away of the law of value; the technological revolution makes possible, in this context, the development of a network society; the deepening of globalization certainly challenges the existence of nations. But obsolescent capitalism, by means of a violent imperialism, is busily annulling all of the emancipatory possibilities. The idea that capitalism could adapt itself to liberating transformations, that is, could produce them, without wanting to, as well as socialism could, is at the heart of the American liberal ideology. Its function is to deceive us and cause us to forget the extent of the true challenges and of the struggles required to respond to them. The suggested “anti-state” strategy unites perfectly with capital’s strategy, which is busy “limiting public interventions” (“deregulating”) for its own benefit, reducing the role of the state to its police functions (not at all suppressing the state, but liquidating only political practice, thus allowing it to fulfill other functions). In a similar way, the “anti-nation” discourse encourages the acceptance of the role of the United States as military superpower and world policeman.

Chapter 3: The Consequences: Really-Existing Globalized Liberalism

Amin here talks through a few different major consequences of the American project/liberal virus, including a discussion of the modern rural/peasantry problem and how it would end up if liberal market relations were pushed even further:

An additional twenty million modern farms, if given the necessary access to important areas of land (taking it away from peasant producers and undoubtedly choosing the best soil) and if given access to the capital markets that would enable them to acquire the proper equipment, could produce enough to replace the peasant production currently purchased by solvent urban consumers. But what would become of the billions of these noncompetitive peasant producers? They will be inexorably eliminated over the course of a few dozen years. What is going to become of these billions of human beings, already for the most part the poor among the poor, but who can at least feed themselves, somehow or other, though rather poorly for a third of them (three-quarters of the undernourished in the world live in the rural areas)? Fifty years of any more or less competitive industrial development, even given the fantastic hypothesis of a continual growth of 7 percent per year for three-fourths of humanity, could not possibly absorb one-third of this reserve. In other words, capitalism is by nature incapable of resolving the peasant question and the only prospect it offers is a planetary shantytown of five billion human beings “too many.”

In the Marxist camp, only Maoism grasped the magnitude of the challenge. And that is why those critics of Maoism which see in it a “peasant deviation” prove, by that very assertion, that they do not possess the necessary tools to understand the nature of really-existing (always imperialist) capitalism. They are satisfied with substituting an abstract discourse on the capitalist mode of production in general.
What to do then?
It is necessary to preserve peasant agriculture for the entire visible future of the twenty-first century. This is not for reasons of romantic nostalgia for the past, but quite simply because the solution to the problem is found by going beyond the logic of capitalism and becoming part of the long, secular transition to world socialism. Thus it is necessary to design regulatory policies for the relations between the “market” and peasant agriculture. At the national and regional levels, these regulations, specifically adapted to local conditions, should protect national production, thus assuring the indispensable security of food at the national level and neutralizing the food weapon of imperialism. In other words, delink internal prices from those of the world market—as they should be—by increasing the productivity of peasant agriculture, which is undoubtedly slow, but continual, thereby allowing control over the population transfer from the countryside towards the cities. At the level of what is called the world market, the desirable regulation probably should occur by means of interregional agreements, for example, between Europe, on one side, and Africa, the Arab world, China and India, on the other, thereby responding to the requirements of a development which integrates instead of excluding.

Introducing his concept of "low-intensity democracy", as well as a warning about this form of democracy potentially degrading even further (it is not clear whether he sees this as a possibility for Global South, North, or both):

But that is not the only possibility of hiding the divergence between democracy and the market. If, in a concrete historical conjuncture, a fragmented movement of social criticism has been weakened because there appears to be no alternative to the dominant ideology, then democracy can be emptied of all content which restricts and is potentially dangerous for the market. It becomes a “low-intensity democracy.” You are free to vote as you choose: white, blue, green, pink, or red. In any case, it will have no effect; your fate is decided elsewhere, outside the precincts of Parliament, in the market. The subjection of democracy to the market (and not their convergence) is reflected in political language. The rotation of those in government (but not those in power), always called upon to do the same thing—that is, obey the market—has taken the place of the alternative—that is, a clear choice between socially different options and perspectives. Everything that has been said and written on the double dilution of citizenship and class consciousness into the spectacle of political comedy and the consumption of commodities is contained in this separation between the political and the economic.
This is where we are today. It is a dangerous situation because, with the erosion of the credibility and legitimacy of democratic procedures, it could very well lead to a violent backlash that purely and simply abolishes those procedures altogether in favor of an illusory consensus founded on religion or ethnic chauvinism, for example. In the peripheries of the system, democracy, which is impotent because it is subject to the brutal demands of a savage capitalism, has become a tragic farce, a democracy without value; Mobutu replaced with two hundred Mobutist parties!

The contradiction between the individual and the collective, immanent to every society at all levels of reality, was overcome in all social systems prior to modernity by the negation of the first term, that is, by the domestication of the individual by society. The individual is thus recognizable only by and through his/her status in the family, clan, society. The terms of the negation are inverted in the ideology of the modern (capitalist) world: modernity affirms the rights of the individual over against society. This reversal is only the preliminary condition of a potential liberation, because it simultaneously liberates a potential for permanent aggressiveness in the relations between individuals. Capitalist ideology expresses the reality of this by its ambiguous ethic: long live competition, may the strong win. The devastating effects of this ideology are sometimes limited by the coexistence of other ethical principles, largely of religious origin or inherited from earlier social forms. As these barriers break down, the one-sided ideology of the rights of the individual can only result in horror. There is a striking contrast here between, on the one hand, American ideology which grants to individual liberty an absolute priority over social equality (extreme inequality is, as a result, accepted) and, on the other hand, the European ideology which attempts to link the two themes together without, for all that, being capable, within the context of capitalism, of resolving the contradictions. The attachment of the citizens of the United States to the right to bear arms—with all the well-known disastrous consequences—is the extreme expression of this concept of barbaric liberty.

Chapter 4: The Origins of Liberalism

The concomitant birth and development of modernity and capitalism are not the products of chance. The social relations characteristic of the new system of capitalist production implied free enterprise, free access to markets, and the proclamation of the untouchable right to private property (which is made “sacred”). Economic life, emancipated from the political power which dominated it in regimes prior to modernity, is made into an autonomous domain of social life, driven by its own laws alone. Capitalism replaces the traditional relation in which power is the source of wealth with the reverse relation which makes wealth the source of power. But so far, really-existing modernity, whose development has remained enclosed within the framework of capitalism, is ambiguous on this question of the relation between power and wealth. In fact, it is based on the separation between two domains of social life, the management of the economy, which is entrusted to the characteristic logics governing the accumulation of capital (private property, free enterprise, competition) and the management of state power by the institutionalized practice of political democracy (rights of the citizen, principles of a multiparty system, etc.). This arbitrary separation vitiates the potential emancipatory power proclaimed by modernity. The modernity that has developed under the limiting constraints of capitalism is, as a result, contradictory, promising much more than it has been able to deliver, thereby creating unsatisfied hopes.

Amin's view of the principal (but disappearing) political/cultural difference between Europe and the US:

On the basis of this observation, I would venture to explain one of the differences, still visible today, between American society and culture, on the one hand, and European society and culture, on the other. The operation and interests of dominant capital in the United States and in Europe are probably not as different as sometimes suggested (by the well-known opposition between “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” and “Rhenish capitalism”). The conjunction of their interests certainly explains the solidity of the Triad (United States-Europe-Japan) despite the secondary commercial conflicts which can and do oppose one part of the Triad to the others. But the decisions and choices of society, the social projects that inspire the spirit, even implicitly, are fairly different. In the United States, liberty alone occupies the entire field of political values without any problem. In Europe, liberty is always counterbalanced by an attachment to the value of equality with which it must be combined.
American society despises equality. Extreme inequality is not only tolerated, it is taken as a symbol of the “success” that liberty promises. But liberty without equality is equal to barbarism. The many forms of violence that this one-sided ideology produces are not the result of chance and are in no way a ground for radicalization; on the contrary. The dominant culture of European societies has up to the present day combined liberty and equality with less imbalance; this combination, moreover, forms the foundation of the historic compromise of social democracy. Unfortunately, it is true that the evolution of contemporary Europe is tending to bring the society and culture of the continent into harmony with those of the United States, exalting the characteristics of the latter into models and objects of an uncritical and overwhelming admiration.

The political culture of the United States is not that which took form in France beginning with the Enlightenment and then, above all, during the Revolution and, to various degrees, marked the history of a good part of the European continent. The differences between these two cultures are more than visible. They break out during moments of crisis, resulting in violent oppositions (such as whether or not to respect international legality on the question of the war against Iraq).
Political culture is the product of history viewed over a long period of time which is always, of course, unique to each country. On this level, the history of the United States is marked by specificities which stand out from those that characterize history on the European continent: the founding of New England by extremist Protestant sects, genocide of the Indians, slavery of the Blacks, development of “communitarianism” associated with the successive waves of immigration in the nineteenth century.

The particular form of Protestantism implanted in New England made a strong impression on American ideology which has continued right up to the present. It was the means through which the new American society began the conquest of the continent, legitimizing it in terms taken from the Bible (the violent conquest by Israel of the Promised Land, an incessantly repeated theme in North American discourse). Thereafter, the United States extended to the whole planet its project of realizing the work that “God” had commanded it to carry out. The people of the United States see themselves as the “chosen people”—a synonym in actual events for Herrenvolk, to return to the parallel Nazi terminology. And this is why American imperialism has to be more barbaric than its predecessors, who did not proclaim themselves to have been given a divine mission.
Of course, the American ideology in question is not the cause of the imperialist expansion of the United States. The latter obeys the logic of capital accumulation, whose (completely material) interests it serves. But the ideology is perfectly appropriate. It confuses the issue.

Above quote begs the obvious question of why this Herrenvolk idea should not be identified with Europe as well, considering the continental legacy of colonialism and fascism, which is much more extensive than just the "aberration" of Nazism.

The successive waves of immigration have played a role in reinforcing the American ideology. The immigrants are certainly not responsible for the misery and the oppression that precipitate their departure from their former homes. On the contrary, they are victims. But the circumstances—that is, their emigration—lead them to renounce collective struggles to change the conditions common to their classes or groups in their own countries and result in an adherence to the ideology of individual success in their adopted land. This adherence is encouraged by the American system, to its own advantage. It retards the growth of class consciousness which, having barely begun to mature, must face a new wave of immigrants which, in turn, aborts any political crystallization. But simultaneously this migration encourages the “communitarianization” of American society, because “individual success” does not exclude the inclusion of the immigrant into a community of origin (the Irish, the Italian, etc.), without which the individual’s isolation could become unbearable. Here again the reinforcement of this dimension of identity—recuperated and encouraged by the American system—is done to the detriment of class consciousness.

The ruling class of the United States has developed, in these circumstances, a complete cynicism, disguised by a degree of hypocrisy that every foreign observer notes, but that the American people never see! The use of violence, in extreme forms, is implemented every time it is necessary. All the radical American militants know it: to sell out or be murdered is the only choice left to them.
The American ideology, like all ideologies, is “worn away by time.” In “calm” periods of history—marked by strong economic growth accompanied by satisfactory social effects—the pressure that the ruling class must exert on its people is weakened. From time to time then, according to the needs of the moment, this ruling class “reinvigorates” American ideology by means which are always the same: an enemy (always external, American society being declared good by definition) is designated (the Empire of Evil, the Axis of Evil) enabling the “mobilization” of every means destined to eliminate it. Yesterday it was communism, which, through McCarthyism (forgotten by the “pro-Americans”), made the Cold War possible as well as the subordination of Europe. Today it is “terrorism,” an obvious pretext (September 11 strongly resembles the Reichstag fire in this respect), which causes the real project of the ruling class to be overlooked: securing military control of the planet.
The avowed objective of the new hegemonist strategy of the United States is not to tolerate the existence of any power capable of resisting the injunctions of Washington. To carry out that objective, it seeks to dismantle every country that is deemed to be “too large,” so as to create the maximum number of failed States, easy prey for the establishment of American bases ensuring their “protection.” Only one state has the right to be “great,” the United States, according to the last three presidents (Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush Junior).

By "Latin Americanize" here should we assume simply creating puppet regimes?

The American global strategy pursues five objectives:
1)  To neutralize and subdue the other partners in the Triad (Europe, U.S.A., Japan) and minimize their capacity to act outside of American control.
2)  To establish military control through NATO and “Latin Americanize” the former parts of the Soviet world.
3)  To establish undivided control of the Middle East and Central Asia and their petroleum resources.
4)  To dismantle China, ensure the subordination of other large states (India, Brazil) and prevent the formation of regional blocs which would be able to negotiate the terms of globalization.
5)  To marginalize regions of the South that have no strategic interest for the United States.

More precisely, one of the major weaknesses of American thought, resulting from its history and its ideology, is that it has no long-term vision. This thought is embedded in the immediate about which it collects an alarmingly large quantity of data. It believes that it can clarify its immediate choices exclusively through the analysis of the “present,” always judging the “past” as irrelevant (the expression “it is history” is an American synonym for “without importance”). The future, in these conditions, is always conceived as the simple projection of the immediate. This is what explains the popularity of idiotic texts like Huntington’s work The Clash of Civilizations. Using the same method, a writer who would have been alive during the religious wars of the sixteenth century would have concluded that Europe was condemned to self-destruction or at least that one of the two camps (Protestant or Catholic) would succeed in dominating the whole continent.

Certainly, the fight to defeat the project of the United States will take many forms. It requires diplomatic aspects (the defense of international law), military aspects (the rearmament of every country in the world in order to meet any aggression contemplated by Washington is imperative; never forget that the United States utilized nuclear weapons when it had a monopoly of them and renounced their use when it no longer had such a monopoly), and political aspects (notably in reference to building a European presence and reconstructing a nonaligned front).

Chapter 5: The Challenge of Liberalism Today

The final chapter, where Amin describes in more detail what he sees as the potential alliances that could challenge American power.

I would give top priority here to the construction of a political and strategic alliance between Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, extending it, if possible, to Peking and Delhi. I expressly say political, with the objective of restoring international pluralism and the UN to all their proper functions, and strategic, with the objective of constructing together the military forces capable of meeting the American challenge. These three or four powers have all the requisite technological and financial means, strengthened by their traditional military capabilities, to construct such forces, before which the United States would appear much weaker. The American challenge and its criminal ambitions force this response. These ambitions are excessive and it is necessary to prove it. Forming an anti-hegemonist front is today the very first priority, just as forming an anti-Nazi alliance was yesterday.

The objectives pursued by Washington include several parts:
1)  the seizure of the most important petroleum regions of the world and consequently the exertion of pressure on Europe and Japan with the aim of subjecting them to the status of subordinate allies;
2)  the establishment of permanent American military bases in the heart of the Old World (Central Asia is equally distant from Paris, Johannesburg, Moscow, Peking, Singapore);
3)  consequently the preparation of other “preventive wars” to come, above all aiming at large countries which are likely to assert themselves as partners with which “it is necessary to negotiate” (in the first place China, but equally Russia and India).
The realization of this objective implies the installation of puppet regimes imposed by the armed forces of the United States in the countries of the region in question. From Peking to Delhi and Moscow it is understood more and more that the wars “made in USA” definitely form a menace directed more against China, Russia, and India than against their immediate victims, such as Iraq.

The solidarity of the dominant segments of transnationalized capital in all the partners of the Triad is real and is expressed in their rallying to globalized neoliberalism. The United States is seen in this perspective as the defender of these common interests—of necessary, by military means. The fact remains that Washington does not intend to share equally the profits from its leadership. On the contrary, the United States aims to make vassals of its allies, and in this spirit is only ready to grant minor concessions to the subaltern allies of the Triad. Will this conflict of interests within dominant capital lead to a rupture in the Atlantic alliance? This is not impossible, but it is not probable.

For the moment, undoubtedly, the governments of the South still seem to be fighting for a “true neoliberalism” in which the partners from the North, as well as those from the South, would agree to “play the game.” The countries of the South will find that this hope is illusory.
Thus, it will be necessary for them to return to the unavoidable concept that all development is autocentered. To develop is first of all to define national objectives that would allow for both the modernization of productive systems and the creation of internal conditions in which those systems would begin to serve social progress. Then the forms of the relations of the nation in question to the developed capitalist centers would be subjected to the requirements of this logic. This definition of delinking (mine)—which is not the same as autarky—places the concept of development at the opposite pole from (liberalism’s) principle of “structural adjustment” to the demands of globalization, in which development is forcibly subjected to the exclusive imperatives of the expansion of dominant transnational capital, thereby deepening inequality on the world scale.

Amin ends the text with a set of hypotheses. These are the most interesting ones.

FIFTH HYPOTHESIS: The United States’ option in favor of militarizing globalization strikes directly at the interests of Europe and Japan
This hypothesis follows from the second one. The objective of the United States, among other things, aims at placing its European and Japanese partners in a subordinate position (in a position of being vassals) by using military means to take over all the decisive resources of the planet (petroleum in particular). The American oil wars are anti-European wars. Europe (and Japan) can partially respond to this strategy by moving closer to Russia, which is capable, in part, of supplying them with petroleum and some other essential primary materials.

This hypothesis strains to see the Euro/Japanese interests in a "subordinate position" - yes, maybe in reference to the US, but in relation to the world system they are obviously still on top, so why bite the hand that protects? It is not clear that US militarization "strikes directly" at their interests, but even if it does, will that outweigh the benefits they reap from a US led order? Do they see a reason to stop or seriously question this arrangement just in the hopes of gaining a marginally better position within the world system?

NINTH HYPOTHESIS: Questions relative to cultural diversity should be discussed within the context of the new international perspectives outlined here.
Cultural diversity is a fact. But it is a complex and ambiguous fact. Diversities inherited from the past, as legitimate as they may be, are not necessarily synonymous with diversity in the construction of the future. It is not only necessary to admit this, but to investigate it.
To call upon only the diversities inherited from the past (political Islam, Hindutva, Confucianism, Negritude, chauvinist ethnicities, and more) is frequently a demagogic exercise of autocratic and comprador powers, which enables them both to evade the challenge represented by the universalization of civilization and to submit in fact to the dictates of dominant transnational capital. In addition, the exclusive insistence on these heritages divides the Third World, by opposing political Islam and Hindutva in Asia, Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of other religions in Africa. Basing a united political front of the South on new principles is the means of overcoming these divisions maintained by American imperialism. But then what are and can be the universal “values” upon which the future can be built? The Western-centered and restrictive interpretation of these values legitimizes unequal development, an inherent product of globalized capitalist expansion yesterday and today. It must be rejected. But then how to promote genuinely universal concepts, with contributions from everyone? It is time for this debate to begin.

This is an interesting passage but asks more questions than it answers - would want to read more Amin on this subject.

Part 1: Theories and Concepts of Labour in the Global South

Chapter 1: The Labour Atlas: The Southern Working Class Holding Up the World

As one could guess from the title, this chapter introduces a view of a divided world that will be familiar to readers of Zak Cope, John Smith, or other contemporary imperialism scholars. There are a few interesting comments beyond this however:

Thus, throughout the global South, trade unions which came of age from the 1940s to 1970s as strong and vigorous guardians of an incipient working class have now been eroded or rendered impotent in defending the broader working-class rights. Prior to the implementation of neoliberal reforms, strong unions sought to defend the rank and file and organize the most deprived workers. Today, unions are unable to even defend their own members, let alone organize the hundreds of millions of workers who have entered the labour force in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
The dominant pattern on a global level is the withdrawal of trade unions from the sphere of work in all but a few sectors. Yet the fading of strong and responsive trade unions has not diminished the aspirations of workers for strong labour and effective representation. Today, in the absence of strong trade unions, the dominant trend among scholars of labour movements is to demonstrate that the working class is engaged in new forms of organization. These scholars posit that workers reject the old form of labour organization, which was deficient in democratic participation and as a rule engaged in labour–management cooperation, which weakened the power of workers. The claim that trade unions had devolved into ossified organizations benefiting only labour leaders, thwarting the foundation of trade unions in the post-war era that was directly related to mass waves of labour protests and demands for representation. Thus, labour scholarship asserts that because established trade unions ineluctably ensconce themselves into serving the interests of capital or compromising with it, workers have formed independent, autonomous trade unions to advance their class interests.

Introducing the need for "stronger organization", but here Ness does not specify an alternate thesis to why the existing trade union movement has degenerated so thoroughly and abandoned this "stronger organization".

The book also argues that with stronger organization, labour struggles would expand dramatically, as workers are prone to engage in disruptive activity under the umbrella of a class-wide organization which has the capacity to defend and advance conditions, prevent the setting of one segment of the workforce into opposition against another, and act as a class- wide force. Thus, the labour scholarship is misplaced, as it fails to integrate the significance of strong unions and parties. Thus, we must distinguish between the quotidian protests which occur openly today and real class power, reflected in organization.

On formally urban areas that are more rural in level of development (but what about other definitions of rural, ex. what are the primary industries, how is land managed, etc?)

A decisive factor in Third World urbanization from 1950 to the present is the enduring connection between the urban proletariat and rural regions. In addition, basic services and urban infrastructure do not accompany the growth of urban zones in these regions. The designation ‘urban’ does not denote access to clean water, sanitation, electricity, transportation, healthcare, education, or even food stocks. Unsurprisingly, planetary population growth is associated with higher density rates, which are often likely to change rural zones into urban settlements, but density does not imply basic services that are typically present in the global North.

Serious scholarship is built upon a resolute refutation of the latest fads that captivate labour intellectuals, which only confuse and distort a vivid conceptualization of the stark divisions that are appearing globally. Most recently, conceptual distortion of workers, the working class, and working-class organization has emerged as scholars conjure up terms such as ‘the precariat’ and ‘autonomous unions’. There are no new discoveries about the nature of labour and working-class organization. Concomitantly, we must reject the dominant view in the West that the working class is dis- appearing as a social force through the introduction of new technology and its application in the material world. Digitization and robotization are the latest iterations, but they will not change the calculus of class antagonism and the necessity for working-class and peasant organization.

Chapter 2: Workers' Movements in the South: Inequality, Poverty, and Enduring Relevance of Rural Proletariat and Informal Sector Workers

An opening critique of the NGO/worker-center model:

A large and growing unionization campaign involved migrant labourers, for example the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), essentially an NGO, directed a fair-food campaign educating consumers about the poor conditions among underpaid migrant labourers working for food processing companies and fast-food chains. The organization, which serves workers in the fields, primarily relies on donations from middle- and upper-class consumers. The organization emphasizes membership involvement, but there is scant evidence of direct worker involvement. CIW is not a union of workers, but an NGO which considers itself a human rights organization conducting various campaigns claiming to be ‘worker-driven’, such as the Fair Food Program launched in 2011.
As we enter the 2020s, wages and conditions of migrant workers have only marginally improved. However, the number of migrant labourers in the urban sector of the economy has declined over the past 30 years. Some of the workers’ centres have transformed their activities from direct representation to advocacy for better conditions. Consequently, migrant workers do not have direct representation, but their causes are supported through various corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. Thus, for the most part, workers themselves do not participate actively in their own labour organizations, but rely on best practices established by these organizations. Devoid of direct representation, the leaders of these organizations, almost exclusively labour rights lawyers and advocates, have advanced the cause of changing the laws to protect migrant labourers, restaurant employees, and domestic workers. Consequently, CSR campaigns in the USA, as elsewhere, have evolved into promoting good practices and pose no risk to employers.

On the IWW in it's heyday:

However, the IWW did not represent a robust political organization representing the working class on a broader level. Thus, while militant workers mobilized and waged strikes, in every case any concessions from capital could not be preserved. In this way, in the absence of a political platform for workers, aside from perfunctory opposition to capitalism writ large, the IWW was an inchoate political force which would not attract workers seeking a strong organization capable of establishing and maintaining concrete gain. Like twenty-first-century autonomists, the IWW had no programme to challenge the capitalist state.

Fordism and its different forms:

This book views Fordism as a model of labour relations as an interregnum which was confined principally to the West from around 1930 to 1975, and was not replicated in other eras or regions of the world. Fordism exemplifies the class compromise, a system whereby industrial workers consent to cooperate and collaborate with management to produce efficiently in exchange for stable and well-paying jobs. Fordism took root in Western Europe and North America in the era of mass production prior to the 1970s crisis of capitalism and the introduction of neoliberalism. In the metropolitan and settler-colonial states, Fordist unions typically were unified with social democratic and labour-based parties, where they had relatively formidable influence over organizational decisions influencing their industries. As strong sectoral-based unions in large industrial factories in steel, automobiles, and electronics, the parties customarily had high levels of membership participation, even if the end of the era was marked by speed-ups, intensification of labour productivity, and shopfloor dissent. Global South Fordism was dominated by a small number of unions formed around state-owned public sector industrial manufacturing (e.g. steel, shipping, mining, electricity) dominated by strong, centralized Marxist and Left parties. In contrast to the global North, Southern Fordism encompassed a small segment of the urban industrial working class, while the vast majority of the population laboured in rural regions or in settlements surrounding urban areas (see the discussion of rural labour in Chapter 1).

Ness has an interesting argument here for recent failures in US industrial organizing (like the losses at car plants in the South):

US labour scholars often point to the sophisticated anti-union campaigns directed by public relations specialists and law firms as a reason for the failure to organize workers, but to most American industrial workers, trade union membership was not seen as appreciably improving relatively high wages compared to most jobs. Most significantly, by the 1960s, service and public service unions in education, healthcare, and beyond had surpassed manufacturing unions in membership and influence over the labour movement. Although a growing number of teachers and educators went on strike in the USA in 2018–19, the public sector is viewed as an essential service, in contrast to private sector work. Even though the teacher strikes were often unauthorized, they gained substantial public support. Consequently, manufacturing, service, and retail sector unions are typically far more cautious in taking job actions and strikes than public sector workers.

On strikes (similar argument applies to street protests/riots, which are a continuous symptom of class struggle but not necessarily an advance in it):

As such, contrary to Silver, the number and intensity of strikes are not measures of capacity for the working class to build organizational economic and social power. In themselves, strikes do not consolidate the power of the working class. In the absence of a strong working-class organization, whether union or party, the inability to absorb the class-conscious working class and adopt the aspirations of workers in political decisions will not lead to short- or long-term success, as fetishizing the spontaneous strike is in reality a bourgeois construct.
Without doubt, a democratic, militant, and mobilized working class is indispensable for building strong labour unions, which can in turn con- solidate and preserve working-class militancy of the past. However, trade unions which lack a transformative and revolutionary ideology, necessarily linked to a political party, are incapable of building lasting class-wide power and solidarity. Instead, labour unions will default into sectoral, geographic, racial, ethnic, and identity formations, dispensing with class solidarity.

Thus, imagining autonomism as a successful revolutionary programme for the broader working class is a utopian construct which proclaims the obvious and palpable militancy of industrial labour as a novel development, whereas the evidence of class struggle over 150 years plainly displays that labourers will always resist exploitation and oppression. However, this book argues that if workers form a strong revolutionary organizational force, that resistance will be sustained and far more successful. While it may be pleasing to proclaim autonomous resistance as tantamount to victory for the oppressed, contra John Holloway, we cannot change the world without taking power. Undeniably, the historical record over the past century reveals that taking political and economic power (over the shopfloor, community, or state) has brought palpable gains for workers. Confirming that workers have the capacity to act is no more than the surrender of tangible power to capital and the state. Autonomism signifies an admission of defeat and a celebration of the capacity of workers to every so often disrupt capitalist exploitation and bourgeois state power with no viable organizational alternative with which to challenge neoliberalism.

Choice Lenin quote:

"The non-propertied, but non-working, class is incapable of overthrowing the exploiters. Only the proletarian class, which maintains the whole of society, can bring about the social revolution. However, as a result of the extensive colonial policy, the European proletarian partly finds himself in a position when it is not his labour, but the labour of the practically enslaved natives in the colonies, that maintains the whole of society. The British bourgeoisie, for example, derives more profit from the many millions of the population of India and other colonies than from the British workers. In certain countries this provides the material and economic basis for infecting the proletariat with colonial chauvinism. Of course, this may be only a temporary phenomenon, but the evil must nonetheless be clearly realized and its causes understood in order to be able to rally the proletariat of all countries for the struggle against such opportunism. This struggle is bound to be victorious, since the ‘privileged’ nations are a diminishing faction of the capitalist nations."

Revolutionary union (fighting and winning everyday battles + long-term vision of revolution):

A revolutionary union must both fulfil the immediate needs of workers and remain committed to ending the alienation of workers from the capitalist labour process through the establishment of a socialist society, which is a formidable task. Failure to resist the further erosion of wages and conditions on a practical level will invalidate the trade union’s anti-capitalist programme. Time and again, the union and workers’ organization must prove themselves to the worker. In this way, the union must be present within the daily struggles of the working class for sanitation, clean water, electricity, housing, and education, in addition to developing opposition against employers and the state. In the absence of a reliable and dependable working-class organization, workers will distrust organizers and refuse to accept the organization in leading a resistance and general mobilization against employers. In each case study in this book, workers respond to the ebb and flow of labour organizers. Sustained mass unrest will only come about where there is strong and determined labour organizational support. This tremendous task can only be achieved with the support of a detachment of the working class which is sympathetic to the needs and aspirations of workers, and which has the capacity and resources to wage a sustained organizing campaign, demanding improved conditions in the specific struggle while maintaining a programme for the empowerment of the working class. If we are to modernize Lenin’s critique of working-class spontaneity and economism for the contemporary working class, unions and labour organizations must have a detailed revolutionary plan for overcoming the hegemony of capital and must build confidence by challenging oppressors every day.

Beyond question, it is necessary that the workers should lead and actively participate in collective action. However, the spontaneous activity of the working class must not be the major force for change. To achieve tangible gains, workers must have discipline, knowledge of political economy, and an analytic grasp of revolutionary anti-capitalist theory. In this way, what has been referred to as an advanced detachment of the working class must lead and guide workers, rather than trail the disruptive spontaneous movements. This leadership must be situated within the working-class organization in advancing demands and inspiring workers to cast doubt on the capitalist system which exploits them. Without this leadership drawn from revolutionary leaders of the workers, the struggles will fail to meet their short- and long-term goals.

Part 2: Case Studies: Rural and Informal Labour Struggles

Chapter 3: Primitive Steel Manufacturing for the Global Consumer Market: Capital, Super-exploitation, and Surplus Value in Wazirpur, India

Unquestionably, neoliberal reform has expanded India’s urbanization, but the ambiguous capitalist development from 1990 to the present has not created large Fordist industry, but has had a propensity towards small and medium-sized enterprises (SMSEs), impeding unequivocal development of an industrial working class with a predisposition towards intense labour militancy comparable to the metropolitan and settler economic models of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or even late industrializing states. As political economist and activist Abhinav Sinha observes, ‘capital has scattered the 93 percent portion of the working class in terms of the work place’, and approximately 80 per cent of all industrial units in India are SMSEs employing fewer than 50 workers. Job stability is not the norm in the 20 per cent of India’s factories with more than 50 labourers, as the vast majority are employed on a contingent basis as contract workers for labour brokers.

Indisputably, India’s urban working class is expanding as a consequence of urban migration, yet, at the same time, the rural peasantry endures as a salient socio-economic demographic force, as the country’s population continues to grow, though at a slower pace, and a substantial share of the urban working class residing in slums return regularly to rural areas when regular work is unavailable, to till their small plots of land. Contrary to common outlooks promoted by global development organizations and scholars, the rural population is growing in the world, global South, and India. The major region which has experienced rural population decline is the developed states (see Figure 3.1).

Walking through Wazirpur today, the conditions prevailing in Dogra’s description 30 years ago remain pervasive. Without exaggeration, Wazirpur conjures impressions of what it may have been like as an industrial worker in Manchester, London, or Birmingham in mid-nineteenth-century England. In the same way as the Irish or rural English worker Frederick Engels describes in The Condition of the English Working Class of 1844 or a figure in a Charles Dickens novel, in full view one immediately encounters numerous ramshackle small-scale steel mills on dusty roads with young men pulling rickshaws piled with dozens of sheets of flattened steel from a small hot-rolling mill to a cold-rolling mill, or from a cold-rolling mill to a utensil fabricator. Today, as 30 years ago, illegality prevails. While the area is known as a stainless steel utensil producer, many of the mills and operations operate illegally or in open violation of all laws intended to protect labour rights and prevent the abuse of workers.
Who are the workers of Wazirpur, and why are they important? The workers are almost entirely migrant labourers from the nearby states in northern India (Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) who have been forced to relocate to New Delhi due to economic despair and the deteriorating living conditions in their rural villages, to which they send home remittances to family members unable to survive without such support. Marx’s distinction of Britain’s labouring population into three sectors (well paid, badly paid, and the ‘nomadic population’) is especially apt in conceptualizing the status of the industrial workers of Wazirpur:
"We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural, but whose occupation is in great part industrial. They are the light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its needs, now to this point, now to that. When they are not on the march, they ‘camp.’ Nomad labour is used for various operations of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burning, rail- way-making, etc. A flying column of pestilence, it carries into the places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its camp, small-pox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, etc. In undertakings that involve much capital outlay, such as railways, etc., the contractor himself generally provides his army with wooden huts and the like, thus improvising villages without any sanitary provisions, outside the control of the local boards, very profitable to the contractor, who exploits the labourers in two-fold fashion – as soldiers of industry and as tenants."

The unorganized industrial workers in Delhi waged an unprecedented challenge for higher wages and ending the contract labour system, but were unsuccessful in achieving immediate wage gains upon completion of their strike. CITU leaders and workers maintained their pressure into 1989, when 12,000 workers mobilized on the streets and held a rally demanding a wage increase and regularization, otherwise the struggle would be escalated. In April 1989, the government acceded to an unprecedented 33 per cent increase in the minimum wage from Rs 562 to Rs 750 (US$58 at the time). In addition, the government agreed to give minimum-wage workers an increase of 85 per cent of the biannual increase in the consumer price index. CITU’s efforts to register as an independent union were unsuccessful, and over the years the union federation withdrew its organizational presence in the four districts. One year later, in 1990, India’s liberalization reforms were implemented, and over the following three decades wages have declined to 1987 levels. While weekly wages increased dramatically in 1989, over the next 30 years minimum weekly wages have barely kept up with inflation. In 2017, the minimum wage hovered at US$45 per week, and in many cases, given that employers are often unregistered with the government, many workers do not even earn the minimum wage. Many unregistered employers failed to pay workers even the mandated minimum wage. Despite the failure to maintain and expand wages and workplace rights in the ensuing years, the 1987 strike is a testament to the capacity of workers in the jhuggis and squatter settlements to mobilize across shops in a single action. CITU did not have the power to transform the conditions of these slums, but workers recognized that mass mobilization with the support of allies could lead to improved conditions. Periodic efforts have been waged over the decades since by workers and Left political organizations, most notably in the worker insurgency of 2013–14 led by Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, an independent Marxist Leninist organization that has the dominant presence in Wazirpur and has organized unions among contract labourers throughout Delhi and beyond.

The political and labour organization Bharat Mukti Dal (BMD) mobilizes among workers most unions have disregarded beyond Wazirpur. The union’s major affiliates in the NCT of Delhi are: (1) domestic workers, (2) cleaners and service workers employed as subcontractors for the Delhi Metro, which began operation in December 2002, and (3) informal auto workers who lack job security in the hub of Gurugram, southwest of New Delhi. Significantly, Bigul Mazdoor Dasta engages in direct organizing among each community of workers to build an organic relationship of trust and confidence. Organizers in each community educate members in practical scientific knowledge: for example, theories of evolution, the humanities, music, and art. Most importantly, Bigul Mazdoor Dasta introduces members and their families to political education, focusing on the classical works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao Zedong to build class-consciousness grounded in scientific socialism. This method has educated the workers and their families while establishing an organizational base in each community, serving the function of galvanizing the power of workers. Notably, unlike many other organizations, BMD does not accept money from NGOs, and thus does not have the taint of other NGOs and labour-based organizations such as the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) and SEWA. All three organizations (BMD, NTUI, and SEWA) have recognized the significance of organizing among impoverished workers in the informal economy. Timothy Kerswell and Surendra Pratep, in Worker Cooperatives in India, have characterized SEWA as an extension of ‘imperialist funding agencies’. In contrast, BMD is among the very few Indian labour organizations which maintains autonomy from foreign NGOs and is untarnished within working-class communities. In this way, BMD retains strong ties to communities and workers without outside interference. In Wazirpur, workers have publicly stated their confidence in BMD, which maintains a long-term presence within working-class communities based on a highly focused and clear materialist understanding of the significance of workers within specific communities that are linchpins to the Indian political economy.

Chapter 4: The Enduring System of Global Agricultural Commodity Production and First World Commodity Extraction: The Case of Mindanao, the Philippines

On agribusiness MNCs pushing cost pressure onto small suppliers, use of contractors, etc:

Consequently, the banana GCC [global commodity chain] is a hierarchical network dominated by the MNC agribusinesses which establish and preserve consumer markets and thrive by controlling and regulating production and distribution. MNCs garnered significant advantage through the partial land reform of the 1980s–2000s by shifting accountability from business to labourers. The need for economies of scale in a capitalist commodity chain forces farmers to rely on the costly resources and supplies of MNCs to produce and coordinate the distribution of bananas through the network. Even rural cooperatives rely on MNCs for these means of production and distribution. Thus, in a capitalist supply chain dominated by MNCs, landless peasants must work in the fields and packaging plants, where surplus labour is extracted from workers and the largest share of value transfer occurs, but value added is concentrated by the MNCs at the point of consumption in the global North. The suggestion by economists that formerly landless peasants with small plots of land can thrive in this process is illusory.

Low-cost production is achieved through the subcontracting of the production process to local growers. It is unnecessary to directly control the managerial system of production. By withdrawing from the direct ownership of plantations and packing houses which employ agrarian workers in the fields and packing houses, fruit companies gain advantages by detaching themselves from the production process. Instead, producers must ensure that production costs are reduced by setting wholesale prices, which direct producers must accept and secure if they are to gain access to the markets. Thus, the primary focus of corporate banana, pineapple, and papaya companies is the sourcing, direct and indirect production, shipment, and sale of fruit in affluent overseas markets.

As most trade unions train their organizing and mobilizing efforts toward the urban working classes, the KMU is also distinctive in its recognition of the significance of rural labour. In contrast to practically all other trade unions in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the world, the KMU considers agricultural workers in the countryside as a focal point of its organizing campaign.

In an extensive interview, Dizon points out that the cooperatives are set up as a ploy to pretend that workers have a direct stake in the production and distribution process when, in reality, the cooperatives are labour brokers providing non-union workers to the MNCs:
"Contractors and cooperative administrators are entitled to a minimum of 10 per cent of the total amount of the labour contract as administrative fees. In name they are cooperatives, but they are used by Sumifru to circumvent the labour law. Under Philippine law, if you are a member of a cooperative, you do not have to join a union because you are the owner of the cooperative. But before the workers could get a job with Sumifru, they were obligated to have a capital share of the cooperative. Since most workers do not have the capital, they borrow the funds from the cooperative managers, who operate as labour brokers."
In effect, the worker cooperative model in the Philippines abolishes worker rights. At the same time, workers must join these labour cooperatives, which are the only agencies permitted to secure labour to work in the Sumifru banana packing plants. In addition to the fees rural workers must pay cooperatives for the right to work at Sumifru, they must pay other fees for insurance and other requirements. Any workers who do not join the cooperative are detached from the GCC for bananas. Dizon explained that Sumifru is directly responsible for organizing the labour cooperatives and contracting their principal leaders. These principals enlist workers both in the plantations and packing plants of the Compostela Valley. As labour brokers, multinational banana firms only supply cooperative managers with fertilizer, chemicals, bagging materials, and packing materials necessary for harvesting and shipping bananas. Dizon notes: ‘NAMASUFA views the cooperative managers as contractors for Sumifru in the same way as labour agencies secure labour for large firms. In this case, the labour cooperative managers do not operate any differently from the principal companies.

Chapter 5: Global Capitalism: Corporate Restructuring, Labour Brokering, and Working-class Mobilization in South Africa

Discusses the split of NUMSA away from the main trade union federation, challenging the ANC, etc.

As a result of South Africa’s dependence on foreign MNCs, as we have seen in the case of Sumitomo in the Philippines in Chapter 4, multinationals like ArcelorMittal hold the power to discipline global South states, and their working classes who seek to improve the conditions of workers, by selling off stakes, retrenching, closing facilities, and withdrawing investments. To preserve strategic industries that are integrated into the global supply chain, the government and union had to concede to the demands of the MNC. In this way, the long struggle of workers and union to end labour broking in South Africa was successful in changing the neoliberal policies of the government, but multinational capital extracted gains by compelling states and workers to ensure the expansion of profits and capital accumulation.

While the dominant order is discredited, the new socialist force has been deliberate in forming a counter-hegemonic bloc to challenge the ANC. The formation of the SRWP as a vanguard party has completed the development of a popular front capable of challenging capital in labour struggles, but does not have the power to counter the Tripartite Alliance. It is necessary for the fledgling new socialist force to stay committed to the practical application of a socialist system. If successful, the SRWP and its allied social and workers’ movement will have a social base which mobilizes the broader working class outside established organizations. This was not evident in the 2019 elections, but building the party will require nurturing and time.

Chapter 6: Conclusion: Labour Struggles and Political Organization

A major contention of this book is that the rural and informal sector is the key driver of economies in most states of the global South, encompassing the vast majority of the world’s population. The majority of global demographers and economists at the United Nations, the World Bank, and other multilateral economic organizations view the world as urbanizing, while neglecting the fact that the rural regions have also expanded dramatically over the last 50 years. Moreover, urban areas are often rural zones that are engulfed by growing metropolitan areas, lacking basic services: running water, electricity, sanitation, and roads. Elsewhere in the global South, rural workers engage in circular migration to urban areas, returning home when their work is complete. As Breman shows, footloose labour is a predominant characteristic of workers in South Asia, where workers have no stable employment, but are employed in a range of occupations throughout the year. This form of precarious labour is unique to the global South. Thus, the unstable nature of labour in the global South has implications for working-class organizing because workers are employed in a multiplicity of jobs and zones in the urban–rural frontier. As Karen Rignall and Mona Atia assert, capital mobility has blurred the boundaries between rural and urban zones.

This book has attempted to demonstrate that workers are always engaged in political opposition in response to oppression. Autonomous unions and workers’ assemblies spring up continuously under capitalism. It is palpably clear that the working classes and rural peasant labourers in the global South are in motion today as they face neoliberal globalism and capitalist supply chains. Mass movements of workers are expanding dramatically in the contemporary period of neoliberal capitalism. The evidence of this can be seen in the numerous social protests that occur in the Global South on an increasing basis.
Workers often rise up and mobilize to defend and improve their wages and working conditions, yet this book shows that successful transformation requires organizational and political sustenance to survive and grow beyond protests into powerful movements.

Part One: Perspectives

Chapter 1: Theorizing Revolutions

Foran first introduces his methodology (boolean analysis using a set of 5 factors), and briefly surveys previous theories on why and where revolutions occur.

He introduces his borrowed definition of social revolutions (the primary focus of the book as compared to solely political revolutions) here:

"Social revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below . . .
What is unique to social revolution is that basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion. And these changes occur through intense sociopolitical conflicts in which class struggles play a key role."
This definition, which I shall adopt in full as my own, represents an advance in linking political and social changes and in identifying the importance of large-scale participation. In this we find an echo of Trotsky’s famous formulation: “The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events . . . The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.” The salience of these three factors – political change, structural transformation, and mass participation – allows us to dissociate revolution from violence per se and to explore the revolutionary potential of such strongly reformist democratic movements as those of Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Michael Manley in Jamaica, and Salvador Allende in Chile, each of whom aimed at serious transformation of their society.
Skocpol’s definition has the drawback of not telling us how much political and social transformation is required to qualify a case as a social revolution; nor does it define “rapid”; nor, finally, does it stipulate how long a revolutionary government must remain in power to constitute a “successful” case. These are judgments for which observers will have different answers.

Briefly presents some prior theory, and notes the drawbacks of an entirely mechanical approach:

The problem of agency is posed by its conceptual absence in the structural approaches of Skocpol and others. Skocpol, in particular, was reacting to theories that relied too much on revolutionaries’ conscious control of events, arguing instead that revolutionary crises are not the product of intentional activity and that outcomes were often quite unintended in their consequences. While valid and useful observations in themselves, the claim that “no successful social revolution has ever been ‘made’ by a mass-mobilizing, avowedly revolutionary movement” errs in the opposite direction, leaving a gap at the center of revolutionary events. Teodor Shanin cautions us against neglecting this moment of subjectivity and agency:
"Social scientists often miss a centre-piece of any revolutionary struggle – the fervour and anger that drives revolutionaries and makes them into what they are. Academic training and bourgeois convention deaden its appreciation. The “phenomenon” cannot be easily “operationalised” into factors, tables and figures. Sweeping emotions feel vulgar or untrue to those sophisticated to the point of detachment from real life. Yet, without this factor, any understanding of revolutions falls flat. That is why clerks, bankers, generals, and social scientists so often fail to see revolutionary upswing even when looking at it directly.
At the very centre of revolution lies an emotional upheaval of moral indignation, revulsion and fury with the powers-that-be, such that one cannot demur or remain silent, whatever the cost. Within its glow, for a while, men surpass themselves, breaking the shackles of intuitive self-preservation, convention, day-to-day convenience, and routine."
As Trotsky admonished, “Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, though they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking and acting man, but explains him." Social structure may illuminate both crises and outcomes, but past human actions, however much conditioned they may be, also help explain social structures, as Karl Marx argued in The Eighteenth Brumaire, and Michael Taylor has reiterated. Neither individualism nor structuralism is the “ultimate” (only) cause of social change.

Introducing his 5 factors for explaining a revolutionary success, and his concept of "dependent development":

Elsewhere I have argued that five inter-related causal factors must combine in a given conjuncture to produce a successful social revolution: 1) dependent development; 2) a repressive, exclusionary, personalist state; 3) the elaboration of effective and powerful political cultures of resistance; and a revolutionary crisis consisting of 4) an economic downturn; and 5) a world-systemic opening (a let-up of external controls). This model is represented schematically by Figure 1.1, with the addition of repressive colonial and non-repressive, open polities to the type of state that is vulnerable. Let us briefly examine each of these factors in turn.
We begin with a conception of Third World social structure as the complex result of both internal and external developmental dynamics. The world-system, as theorized by Immanuel Wallerstein, generates the external pressures – economic, political, and military – that emanate from the powerful capitalist core nations to the Third World periphery. Here they encounter the pre-existing modes of production of Third World societies, a process which creates over time a new complex of pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production. I am not here arguing that “The West caused everything,” but rather, following F. H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, that Third World social structures are the products of the complex intermeshing of internal and external dynamics. The result, in many Third World countries, is an accumulation process which can be called one of dependent development, essentially one of growth within limits. This refers to the fact that certain Third World economies, at certain moments in their history, do undergo both rapid development – as measured by increases in GNP, foreign trade, and industrial or agricultural output – combined with the negative consequences of this process in the form of such problems as inflation, debt, growing inequality, or overburdened housing and educational infrastructures, among many social ills. This historically specific process defines in each case a changing social structure that creates social and economic grievances among diverse sectors of the population, ranging from the urban working, middle, and underclasses, to rural peasants, farmers, and workers, and crossing gender and ethnic lines as well. The argument, then, is that a country’s historical insertion into the world economy on dependent terms vis-a-vis core powers significantly shapes its social structure, a view shared with Wallersteinian world-system analysis

His view on which types of states are more vulnerable to revolution is quite narrow, but includes what he calls an "open democratic polity", which the reader may have some doubts about:

Conversely, collective military rule, or rule by the military as an institution, especially when given a veneer of legitimation through regular elections, however fraudulent, tends to elicit more elite support and provide a less vulnerable target for cross-class social movements. Similarly immune to revolution are what William Robinson terms “polyarchies” – elite-controlled, formally democratic polities which effectively exclude radical challengers but are open enough to channel grievances into electoral channels and dissipate them. A much rarer regime type is the truly open democratic polity, where left parties are allowed to organize and elections are not completely controlled by elites. It is a major – and paradoxical – finding of this study that such states, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from dictatorships, are equally vulnerable to revolutionary challenge through the election of revolutionary parties, as happened in Chile in 1970, or more recently, in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Revolutionary political cultures can be created from many different sources and ideological viewpoints, but in his view the most successful cultures are those that hold cross-class appeal (at least in carrying out the initial capture of state power):

To move toward revolution from the structural determinants of the grievances produced by dependent development and the repressive, exclusionary, personalist and colonial state (or channeled into electoral success in the open polity), broad segments of many groups and classes must be able to articulate the experiences they are living through into effective and flexible analyses capable of mobilizing their own forces and building coalitions with others. Such political cultures of opposition may draw upon diverse sources: formal ideologies, folk traditions, and popular idioms, ranging from ideas and feelings of nationalism (against control by outsiders), to socialism (equality and social justice), democracy (demands for participation and an end to dictatorship), or emancipatory religious appeals (resistance to evil and suffering).

Finally, his concept of a world-systemic opening:

This let-up of external controls adds to the crisis of the state, and creates an opening for the activity of revolutionaries. I consider it world-systemic in that it tends to originate in the relation between core and peripheral states or the impact of war or depression on both.

Part Two: Revolutionary success

Chapter 2: The great social revolutions

This chapter surveys various social revolutions of the 20th century and tries to fit them to the 5 factor model already established. Notes here are taken on interesting revolutionary variants or modifications to his basic theory.

On the Mexican revolution:

What did the revolution accomplish, and how should we evaluate it? In many respects, it is debatable whether it was fully-fledged social revolution, and the most radical workers and peasants (not to mention the women and indigenous fighters in the popular forces) were without doubt defeated. This thesis of defeat is argued most cogently by Ramon Eduardo Ruiz: “Mexico underwent a cataclysmic rebellion but not a social ‘Revolution’.” Womack concludes: “The difference the so-called Revolution made to the country’s modern history was . . . not a radical transformation but simply a reform, accomplished by violent methods but within already established limits.” Other eminent historians from Arnaldo Cordova to Jean Meyer and Francois-Xavier Guerra concur in various ways, with emphases on elites as the main actors and the continuity of post- and pre-revolutionary regimes.
Yet it was something more than a political revolution that removed the Diaz dictatorship. Knight and Hart, in many ways at odds with each other, agree that there was a social revolution, with tremendous mass participation that had consequential impacts on the lives of those who made it. The 1917 constitution, though not anti-capitalist, was “the most progressive law code of its time.” A strong and broadly legitimate state arose in the 1920s and 1930s. Though far from democratic, it claimed significant peasant and worker support in its institutions, and forged a single party, eventually and tellingly titled the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Two decades after the revolution, Lazaro Cardenas made good on the promise of oil nationalization in 1938 and distributed significant land back to the communities. It was only after 1940 that this state was definitively turned to the elite project of national capitalist development, resuming the rhythms of dependency that would lead to a new revolutionary movement in 1994.

On the weakness of the Chinese Nationalists and their state:

The GMD ruled through the coercion of execution, assassination, arrest, threat, and censorship. Lloyd Eastman concludes that the hold on power by the GMD “depended almost wholly on the army. It was, in fact, a political and military structure without a social base, inherently one of the least stable of all political systems.”

On CPC political culture, which was able to almost "start from scratch" under the leadership of Mao, as opposed to other revolutionary political cultures which may have older roots or a greater amount of ideological diversity:

But in the process Mao had emerged as the undisputed communist leader and the party had deepened its relationship with the peasants of China and fashioned a strong political culture of opposition out of elements of nationalism and anti-imperialism, popular participation (or at least mass mobilization) in politics, and social and economic justice. Skocpol maintains this successful match of revolutionary leadership and the peasantry had “little to do with revolutionary ideology and every- thing to do with the ‘peculiarities’ (as seen from a European perspective) of the Chinese agrarian sociopolitical structure.” By this she means that peasants, lacking land and other resources, had no alternative but to respond to the communist overture. Such a view accords little agency to either party, and gives no credit to the skill of the Red Army and CCP in articulating a message of hope that was readily understood and embraced by a considerable part of the rural population. Let us pause then and look at the political cultures of opposition that helped make the revolution a possibility. Political cultures of opposition were just starting to develop by 1911 (and were largely confined to middle-class urban circles), and communist thought did not exist, but by 1949, Mao’s army and party had won the battle for ideological hegemony with Chiang’s GMD, especially in the countryside, having wrested from them the mantle of nationalist defenders of the country during the world war. In at least two senses, the CCP quite literally created its own political culture of opposition, more so than in most revolutions: that is, the Long March itself and the subsequent experience in Yanan (termed the “Yenan Way” by Mark Selden) formed the content of a founding legend, and Mao articulated an ideology – Mao Zedong Thought, or more loosely, Maoism – that represented an astute Sinification of classical orthodox Marxism.

A sharp picture of dependent development in Cuba:

Underlying this social structure and shaping its dynamics was another almost textbook case of the process of dependent development. It is not always recognized that Cuba in the 1950s ranked as “one of the four or five most developed nations in Latin America, and the most developed tropical nation in the entire world.” Numerous indices of this development, based largely on sugar monoculture and a half-century of ties with American capital, can be found. Per capita income at $400–500 a year (depending on the estimate) was higher than all but Venezuela and Argentina within Latin America. Seventy pounds of meat were consumed annually per person, twice the level of Peru. Industry, which employed 22 percent of the labor force, had embarked on a proto-import substitution phase after 1927 during the Machado regime, and had grown by 47 percent from 1947 to 1958. Cuba ranked fifth or sixth in Latin America in generation of electricity and production of cement, key items for industrial development. In terms of quality of life indicators, Cuba was second in hospital beds per person to Uruguay, had the lowest death rate in the Western hemisphere, and was fifth in literacy in Latin America. The key to this growth, of course, was sugar: Cuba had been the world’s largest producer since the early 1900s, and provided more than half the world market in sugar, amounting to 80 percent of Cuba’s exports. The health of the sugar sector determined the pace of development in industry, transport, banking, and trade, and the state of the economy generally.
Among the most developed of Latin American nations in conventional terms by the 1950s, Cuba was at the same time a society marked by enormous disparities of wealth and power, for behind the positive statistics lay the dependent aspects of Cuban development. The United States had $1 billion invested in Cuba in 1958 (up from $657 million in 1952), second only to its investments in the Venezuelan oil industry and representing one-eighth of all US investments in Latin America. American companies employed 160,000 Cubans, owned nine of the ten largest sugar mills (and twelve of the next twenty), produced 40 percent of the sugar, held one-quarter of all bank deposits, ran the telephone system, refined all oil, and (with the mafia) controlled much of the hotel, gambling, and drug businesses. The US Congress determined how much sugar Cuba could export to the US (around 60 percent of Cuban output). The US provided 80 percent of Cuba’s imports, at low tariffs. This sweeping control was the legacy of fifty years of expansion following US intervention in the 1895–98 Spanish-Cuban war, control of the party system into the 1920s, and support for Batista’s rise in 1934 and 1952. The notorious Platt Amendment in 1900 had given the US the right to intervene in Cuba’s politics, external borrowing, and foreign affairs
The internal impact of this dependent development was likewise dramatic. Estimates of income inequality suggest that the poorest 20 percent got between 2 and 6 percent of income, the richest 20 percent taking 55 percent. In terms of land tenure, the largest 9 percent of landowners had 62 percent of the land, while the bottom two-thirds had only 7 percent. In the countryside, as a consequence of land concentration and proletarianization of the labor force, two-thirds of the population lived in thatched huts, 42 percent were illiterate (versus 12 percent in the cities), 60 percent were undernourished (this was 30 to 40 percent in urban areas). Only 4 percent of farm workers ate meat regularly, 2 percent ate eggs, 11 percent drank milk. During the “dead season” in the countryside, which could stretch to eight or nine months, “families ate roots and bark to stay alive, hunted locusts, lived in woods, in caves.” Unemployment affected one-third of the population at some point during each year, reaching much higher in rural areas.

The lack of visible communist leadership in the July 26 movement helps create world-systemic opening for Cuba (this has interesting implications for communists - what would have happened if they had won leadership of the revolutionary movement earlier?)

Meanwhile, the July 26 Movement was well-financed by exiled, local, and American sympathizers, with some help from the Venezuelan interim revolutionary government of 1958, and US diplomats saw no conclusive evidence that it was “Communist-inspired or dominated . . . if we had had conclusive information to this effect, our attitude towards the Cuban situation would have been altered considerably.” An eleventh-hour attempt to convene Latin American governments in the Organization of American States in December 1958 met with a lukewarm reception around the continent (with the exception of dictatorships in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic): Latin American public opinion favored Castro and governments wanted no outside intervention. Though American weapons continued to reach Batista through Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, loss of support from the country with the greatest stake in Cuba crippled his ability to survive in office, providing a world-systemic opening for the July 26 Movement, whose swift final victory took the United States by surprise. This aspect of events suggests that perceptions of withdrawal of support loom large on all sides (regime, revolutionaries, and the various US actors) and that even slight shifts are significant, because the usual state of affairs is a relatively unproblematic, strong support from the core power (almost always the US).

Cuba as a case of revolutionaries managing to create their own economic opportunity (downturn), exacerbated by the outsized role that sugar played in the economy:

But, 1956 – the best year for the economy since 1952 – was not a good moment for Castro to launch a rebellion, and most economic indicators were satisfactory in 1957, at least by Cuban standards. However, 1958 started with large losses to tobacco and banana crops due to storms. The progress of the guerrilla war thereafter created its own political-economic dynamic. In the spring of 1958, US losses due to the destruction of the sugar crop by the rebels amounted to $1.5 million. Rail transport began to be interrupted in Oriente province. World conditions now turned unfavorable too, as recession hit the US market and the price of sugar dropped 20 percent. The failure of the April 1958 general strike provided a temporary pick-up through the summer and Havana, in particular, was kept relatively insulated from the turmoil. In the early fall, though, the economy went into an irreversible free fall as the rebels opened new fronts; industry, mining, sales, transport, and tourism all felt the effects of political disruption. By December, economic activity outside Havana had come to a virtual standstill and the coming sugar harvest was in serious jeopardy. Havana itself now was affected by inflation and unemployment, and tourism collapsed. The US embassy reported: “In effect, Castro is creating a general strike in reverse. By playing havoc with the economic life of the country, he is forcing business and industry to shut down and thus shove workers into the streets.” The downturn, in the case of Cuba, was unique in that the sugar economy was vulnerable to political unrest. As rebellion spread this meant that the rebels could in some measure create the downturn needed to destabilize the government and enlist the population in a struggle for change (this situation was seen to a degree also in China and will be again in Nicaragua and Iran, but in these cases there were prior downturns as well). The theoretical implication is that rebels may start an uprising in the absence of an economic downturn, but popular support and success follow only with its eventual presence.

A picture of the cross-class revolutionary coalition Foran sees as necessary for initial revolutionary success, in Nicaragua:

The Sandinista social base ultimately came to include a wide spectrum of aggrieved social groups and classes, then, spanning small-holding peasants, rural wage earners and squatters, the urban underclass (including recent rural migrants), artisans, students, and radical Christian activists. That they were centered in rural and urban zones where Sandino had been most active and popular in the 1920s and 1930s and where memories of his struggle were kept alive is further evidence of the significance of political cultures of opposition. The Nicaraguan revolution, in sum, reposed on a vast national multi-class coalition of social forces created or adversely impacted by dependent development from the 1950s to the 1970s, unified by Sandinista values and leadership into a broad-based opposition to the Somoza dictatorship.

In Iran's case, a somewhat subjective factor (Jimmy Carter's purported concern for human rights, but also friendliness with the Shah) creates instability:

Jimmy Carter would upset this alliance in subtle ways after 1976, providing the world-systemic opening for revolution. As a candidate he criticized American arms policy toward Iran. As president, he announced his intention to base US foreign policy in part on respect for human rights abroad, instructing the State Department to work with human rights organizations to moderate the shah’s repression. The shah took all of this quite seriously, reportedly remarking to an aide, “It looks as if we are not going to be around much longer.” Despite this, Iran was too important strategically and economically for the special relationship to be abandoned. The flow of arms continued despite some obstruction by Congress. Improbably, Carter developed a strong personal rapport in his meetings with the shah, toasting him in Tehran on December 31, 1977, just one week before serious clashes broke out: “Iran under the great leadership of the Shah is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you.” As late as May 1978 US Ambassador William Sullivan cabled home that Iran was stable and there were no serious out- standing issues between the two countries. In September, Carter himself made a much publicized phone call of support to the shah right after the Bloody Friday massacre of demonstrators. The shah, however, now ill with cancer, continued to doubt that he had full American backing in the crisis.
[...] Carter was ultimately paralyzed by this conflicting advice and his feelings toward the shah, lending “moral” support long past the point of no return (and thus inflaming the opposition), but not enough clear counsel or material support to the shah to deter the revolution.
This non-action of the key world power in the Iranian equation opened the door to the full play of the internal balance of forces, and this helped the revolution from its earliest to its final phases, just as the special relationship of America with the shah from 1953 to 1978 undermined his legitimacy in the first place. The world-system conjuncture, therefore, was favorable to the success of the revolution in the sense that the core world power did not aggressively intervene to prevent it. One may plausibly contend that the revolution would have succeeded regardless, but the cost in human terms would surely have been higher, and unforeseen historical alternatives might have opened up (coup, intervention, different internal coalitions, and so forth).

Foran turns to the leaders of the Iranian revolution and their wide-ranging appeals (different ideas or aspects appeal to different social classes):

Ayatullah Ruhullah Musavi Khumaini (1902–89) emerged as the leader of the revolutionary movement in the course of 1978. He had made his reputation as a critic of the government during the agitation over the shah’s land and other reforms in 1963, speaking out against “the political and economic exploitation by the West on the one hand . . . and the submission of the regime to colonialism on the other . . . The regime is bent on destroying Islam and its sacred laws. Only Islam and the Ulama can prevent the onslaught of colonialism.” From exile in Iraq he issued his 1971 work on Islamic government, an ideological bombshell in that it challenged the legitimacy of monarchy and advocated direct rule by qualified Islamic jurists. Much better known than these ideas were his many criticisms of royal corruption and dictatorship, Western domination, and the economic problems of Iran. Khumaini’s militant brand of Islam may also be characterized as populist since it combined progressive and traditional elements and appealed to diverse social strata. With a primary social base among lower-ranking ulama, theology students, and sectors of the bazaar, Khumaini’s anti-imperialist bent attracted secular intellectuals, leftists, and workers as well, while his religious idiom appealed to the marginal urban and rural populations whom he extolled as the mustazafin (the dispossessed masses). He had the organizational support of a fiercely loyal network of students and ulama in and outside of Iran, including the clerics who were members of the Ruhaniyuni Mubariz (Organization of Militant Ulama), many of them rising to prominence after the revolution. Together with his uncompromising opposition, personal integrity, and political astuteness, these advantages helped Khumaini emerge as the leader once the movement began.

In Iran, small, effective armed groups were complementary to the revolution but did not necessarily make the revolution:

More radical and effective in the anti-shah struggles of the 1970s were the left-wing guerrilla organizations, most notably the Islamic Mujahidin and the Marxist Fada'ian. The Mujahidin grew out of the Liberation Movement in the 1960s, dissatisfied with peaceful methods. Linking Islam and revolutionary activity, they declared their respect for Marx- ism in 1973 and split over this issue in 1975, with the Islamic wing influenced by Shari’ati retaining the name Mujahidin. Engaging in assassinations and bombings, severely repressed by the regime, the Islamic Mujahidin lost seventy-three members killed after 1975, and the Marxists thirty, including almost all of the original leadership. The Fada’ian was a Marxist-Leninist counterpart that left the Tudeh and like the Mujahidin was based among university students. It too split in 1975–77; it too lost many leaders, and 172 members in all, at the hands of the regime. It was influential in the Iranian Students Association in the United States and had some 5,000 members and many more supporters on the eve of the revolution. Through the Mujahidin and the Fada’ian, many students and intellectuals, and some workers, came to embrace revolutionary and socialist ideas, and provided a small nucleus of armed fighters to staff the final uprising in February 1979.

Chapter 3: The closest cousins: the great anti-colonial revolutions

Foran turns to another set of revolutions, this time uprisings against external colonizers, which he sees as being explained by the same basic factors.

His first task to explain how dependent development still applies in the colonial context:

I believe, however, that in a certain sense, colonialism – especially settler colonialism – produced a distinct variant of dependent development: namely, development for the colonizers, dependency for the colonized. It thus resulted in a segmented society, one part resembling nothing so much as a wealthy, urban, industrialized First World nation, the other nothing more than an impoverished, rural, agricultural Third World one. The two societies coexisting in such close proximity – particularly in the urban shantytowns that arose as pre-colonial social structure was dislocated in the countryside – generated an explosive potential as time passed.

On the class makeup of the Algerian revolutionaries:

Who had made the revolution? Kielstra has done one of the most carefully reasoned analyses of this question, concluding:
"Both logical inference and the available evidence point to the fact that the Algerian Revolution was initiated and led by a political network of people of urban (lower) middle class origin, while it was fought mainly by young, unemployed men from the rural proletariat."
Thus, in his view, the Algerian revolution was not a “peasant war,” but drew on the fact that “in the colonial period at least, about half of the population proletarianized,” some in the cities (but with links to the countryside), some in the countryside itself. Lyotard notes that the urban strikes and demonstrations involved “on the one hand, all the wage earners (domestics, blue- and white-collar workers in the private and public sectors, functionaries, teachers, etc.) and, on the other hand, the shop- keepers and artisans – consequently, the quasi totality of the Muslim population of the cities.” The FLN forces included 10,000 women, some as fighters, some as couriers, most in support roles as nurses, cooks, and launderers. The first great anti-colonial social revolution of the twentieth century was built on these powerful social bases and it triumphed by virtue of the same causes as had the great social revolutions.

Discussing Portuguese defense of their colonies, Foran points out the ultimate futility of military superiority in solving a the colonial political problem:

Unlike the French in Vietnam, whose lessons (and mistakes) they studied, the Portuguese state fought an effective counter-insurgency war, based on recruitment of Angolan troops, astute use of intelligence, and flexible tactics. Portugal’s problems were more political and economic than strategic: “while Portugal fought an imaginative campaign to retain its colonies in an anticolonial era, no amount of military verve could overcome the political problem of Portugal’s legitimacy in Africa.” This brings us to the nature of the world-systemic opening that occurred in the mid-1970s.

The rebellion involved the British government more directly in the affairs of the colony, now called Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes. The Africans were pushed onto poor land, and European settlers moved in to take the best farms; there were thus significant numbers of whites – including working- and middle-class people – settling in the country, as in South Africa, a pattern different from most of the rest of colonial Africa, administered by far fewer white bureaucrats, businessmen, and soldiers. In 1922 the settlers voted not to become part of South Africa, but rather to be a self-governing British colony, a sign that the white settler population of Rhodesia would hang onto its privileges fiercely, against both the African population and the British government.

Revolutionary cultures which are more flexible and incorporate important prior cultures triumph over "orthodox" Marxist groups:

ZANU ultimately emerged as the leading nationalist party, in large measure because of the appeal of its vision of a revolutionary political culture. Its army, ZANLA, recruited more effectively in the rural areas than ZAPU’s army ZIPRA, which drew its rank and file from more urban working-class groups and had a more rigid, Soviet-inspired structure and approach. ZANU’s forces astutely tapped the historical currents of resistance in Zimbabwe, including the use of Shona spirit mediums and shrines to fashion a cultural nationalism based on an indigenous spirituality.

An extreme example of dependent development in Vietnam:

Land reform came belatedly in 1969 when the US and the Thieu regime (1965–75) finally concluded that southern peasants were supporting the communists because of this issue: Duiker judges the “Land to the Tiller” program a success by 1975, yet the war and strategic hamlet campaign had already driven four million peasants – one quarter of the south’s population – to urban shantytowns. The ravages of war and urban poverty fed each other and rose in tandem; Stanley Karnow observed the two societies created by dependent development in the 1960s: “For grotesque contrast, no place to my mind matched the terrasse of the Continental Palace Hotel, a classic reminder of the French colonial era, where limbless Vietnamese victims of the war would crawl like crabs across the handsome tile floor to accost American soldiers, construction workers, journalists and visitors as they chatted and sipped their drinks under the ceiling fans.” As Le Minh Khue, a journalist and novelist from the north said after the reunification of the country: “People in the North always thought the cities in the South must be big and well equipped and luxurious, but when I walked around Danang I soon realized it was merely a consumer city. It lived on goods, so when the products were gone, it was just another impoverished city.”
In sum, under the US condominium, the social structure of the south was riven by a new phase of dependent development, no better in its mitigating effects than earlier ones. As Bernard Fall put it early in the 1960s: “without American aid to Vietnam’s military and economic machinery, the country would not survive for ten minutes.” In LeVan’s well-turned phrase, all the US aid succeeded in creating was “an appearance of prosperity in the southern cities.”

In the Vietnamese case, the incorporation of the upper classes into the colonial state (which may have initially been an advantage for the French in governing effectively?) precludes development of a less radical nationalism:

The new upper classes, meanwhile, were too identified with the French and later the Americans to inspire such allegiance, and no non-communist nationalism could take root. Of those that tried, the strongest was the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDD), which utterly lacked peasant backing, and was crushed ruthlessly by the French after a 1930 uprising. When the Indochina Communist Party faced a similar level of repression, it survived, and indeed, attracted new adherents among workers and peasants.

On world systemic opening for Vietnamese victory:

Duiker notes that the north consciously adopted the strategy of influencing international public opinion, as it had earlier in the struggle against the French; the “objective was not to win a total victory on the battlefield, but to bring about a psychological triumph over its adversaries, leading to a negotiated settlement under terms favorable to the revolution.”

Equally importantly, China’s support for the north probably deterred US policymakers from a course of total destruction, lest the US find itself confronting China, or even the USSR. Finally, since South Vietnam had become completely dependent on US aid to keep going, we see how the economics of dependent development and the geo-politics of the world-systemic opening can be conjoined, and turn into the economic downturn that followed the peace accords and the phasing out of US aid.

Part Three: Revolutionary Failure

Chapter 4: The greatest tragedies: reversed revolutions

Foran introduces "fully democratic polities" as revolutionary targets, although the explanation of what he considers "fully democratic" is somewhat lacking:

Jeff Goodwin, for example, explicitly argues that “neither open, democratic polities nor authoritarian yet inclusionary (for example, ‘populist’) regimes have generally been challenged by powerful revolutionary movements.” In my view this is a mistake, for each meet Skocpol’s criteria for social revolution: these governments were engaged in radical projects of political and economic transformation, supported by mass movements from below. That they came to power through elections does not make them less revolutionary than our previous ten cases (or the three others in this chapter): violence is definitely not a feature of the definition of social revolution used in this study. To include these cases enriches the sociology of revolution, for they allow us to discern a third type of vulnerable regime; in addition to the exclusionary, repressive, personalist and colonial states of Chapters 2 and 3, we now have four cases of fully democratic polities in which progressive forces had a fair chance to come to power through elections. The emphasis on “fully” democratic polities is important: Goodwin’s claim is true of what Robinson calls “polyarchies” – those imperfectly democratic governments that are the norm. The “fully open democracy” is a much rarer type. These cases also suggest the existence of another modality of struggle, for one might even argue that the extremely rapid takeovers of power in Bolivia and Grenada constituted the functional equivalent of an election in the sense that they did not involve the organization and maintenance of an armed struggle, with its inevitably clandestine means and hierarchical command structure (nor, for that matter, did Iran in 1978–79).

Part One: the rise to power of revolutionary movements

I would argue that this constellation of a liberal political system and strong left oppositional parties paradoxically constitutes in causal terms the “functional equivalent” of a repressive state and effective underground political cultures of resistance. That is, a truly democratic polity undergoing the changes wrought by dependent development is open to revolutionary electoral strategies, and constitutes its own variant of the type of regime that is vulnerable to revolution, even though it is the diametric political opposite of a repressive, exclusionary state.

The above statement is interesting in that it posits the fully open state as open to revolution, even though the revolutions in question were all reversed by extra-legal power (in essence other parts of the state that cannot be conquered with electoral victory).

Summarizing the reversal of fate on each factor:

In terms of social structure, dependent development, once set in motion, cannot be done away with overnight: each government ran into the constraints this posed even as reforms brought about some gains. In this sense, the daunting resilience of dependency acts as a break on the revolutionary impetus to development. Six of the seven governments ruled democratically, and the seventh, Bishop’s in Grenada, was widely popular and likely would have won elections in the period of its rule. Progressive political cultures thrived everywhere, but at the same time, internal right-wing oppositions grew in the space opened up by democracy and societies polarized politically. Conjunctural factors also worked against the new regimes: all experienced economic difficulties as the programs they put in place dislocated previous production and distribution systems, while the unleashed demand for consumption and the need for productive investment worked at cross purposes. In the end, all faced serious overt or covert intervention from the United States, designed to create counter-revolutionary governments. This was the outcome in all seven cases, through violent CIA-sponsored coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, direct and indirect military intervention in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Grenada, and the election of Edward Seaga’s Labour Party in Jamaica. In some sense, then, the persistence of the same factors that brought revolutionaries to power worked in reverse to unseat them, a process whose causes we now set out to investigate.

Part Two: falling from power

Bolivia here is an interesting case of the US using the "carrot" of international aid to reverse a revolution, instead of coercive pressure. When is this strategy employed vs that of coercion/sanctions/isolation?

Phase two of the reversal of the revolution came when the MNR concluded that it had to seek aid from the United States to weather the economic crisis. As Klein puts it: “The Bolivian government astutely obtained massive assistance, despite the existence of a hard-line anti- communist government in Washington, but they had to pay a heavy price for it.” This reliance on the US closed the world-systemic opening of the early 1950s. The first $9 million in aid came in late 1953, and by 1958 the US had provided $78 million and accounted for as much as one-third of the government’s budget, with Bolivia the largest per capita recipient of US aid in Latin America between 1952 and 1964. With unusual foresight, the US saw this aid as the best mechanism to reverse the revolution, challenged as it had been by the Guatemalan revolution in the early 1950s and the Cuban to come at the end the decade. Conservative scholar Robert Alexander noted “that more could be gained by going along with the Bolivian regime, and trying to convince it of the necessity of modifying policies considered extreme in Washington, than by opposing it.”

Foran discusses the Chilean case and the weaknesses of Allende's coalition:

Politically, Allende did not control the entire state machinery – he did not have a majority in Congress, the support of the judiciary, the loyalty of the entire civil service, nor that of much of the army high command, which had been trained in the United States. The upper classes owned most of the mass media, and used it against him (the CIA also gave money to conservative newspapers and radios to do a vicious smear campaign playing on fears of communism).

Faced with these difficulties the UP convened a high-level strategy conference at Lo Curro in June 1972 to try to elaborate a strategy capable of maintaining the momentum of the revolutionary process. At this meeting, a significant difference of opinion emerged, underscoring the weight of political cultures for the success – or failure – of revolutions. The Communist Party, Allende’s wing of the Socialist Party, and the Radical Party wanted to slow things down and try to rebuild an alliance with the progressive wing of the Christian Democrats, thereby regaining the support of the middle classes, a strategy known as the “consolidation line.” This group wanted to dampen the pace of nationalizations, especially the spontaneous ones that were going on in some factories, in order to rebuild trust with the private sector; maintain payments on the foreign debt to appease the United States; and call for a “battle of production” appealing to workers to hold down wage increases in order to reduce inflation and shortages. Politically, this meant rebuilding an alliance with the progressive wing of the Christian Democrats, to bring the middle classes back into support for the process of change, and to win a stronger electoral plurality, or even a majority. Once this political base was consolidated, it was argued, the transformation of Chilean society could proceed on a more solid footing.
Against this view, much of the Socialist Party, the MAPU, and the MIR called for more activism and mobilization of the working class (since the MIR was not formally part of the UP coalition, it was not directly represented at Lo Curro). This “mobilization line” wanted to enlarge the Area of Social Production both legally and by encouraging worker and peasant seizures of factories and land; to suspend payments on the foreign debt to retaliate against the blockade; and to implement rationing of basic goods to fight speculation and combat the shortages. Politically, this meant mobilizing the working class and peasantry for even more radical (but still largely constitutional and legal) changes. By building a deeper base among the working classes of Chile, both electoral gains and the political will for radical changes could be preserved.
One other option also hung over the deliberations – the MIR’s proposal for sharp class confrontation and eventual armed struggle against the right and the repressive forces of the army and police. According to this logic, the whole process was in grave danger because the right-wing opposition would not play by the rules of the constitutional game. Therefore, the left should prepare for a direct seizure of power, and above all, take away the army’s ability to end the revolution with a coup.
Although the formal outcome of the meeting at Lo Curro was the adoption of Allende’s “consolidation line,” in practice, both strategies were carried forward at the same time – the government tried to build bridges to the Christian Democrats and the middle classes, while grassroots activists carried out land seizures and factory occupations.

The lack of political repression on the part of Allende provides an opening for the right:

This outcome meant that the UP’s enemies could not get the two-thirds vote needed to impeach Allende and remove him legally. The rightwing opposition therefore hardened its tactics. In May the copper miners – at least those organized by the Christian Democrats and the white collar sector of the work force – went on strike against the government, a somewhat incongruous situation of workers opposing an elected socialist government. On June 29, 1973 there was an attempted military coup with assistance from the fascist, or extreme right-wing civilians of Patria y Libertad, which failed when part of the army remained loyal to the government (again, showing perhaps the residual strength of a hard-won democratic political culture, even within the army). On July 29 came the second truckers’ strike, combined with much rightwing terrorism against people and trucks, buses, gas stations, pipelines, and trains. Chile’s inflation rate for the period from October 1972 to October 1973 peaked at over 500 percent. Amidst an intense economic downturn, Chile’s population was bombarded by anti-communist messages in much of the media, perfectly free to say whatever it wanted.

The army was the main maker of the coup, and certainly the US gave ample encouragement, material aid, logistical support, and swift diplomatic recognition to the junta. Inside Chile there was support from fascist and anti-communist groups, large landowners, industrialists, and owners of the mass media. But all of these groups together would not have had much of a social base despite their material resources. A key social force behind the coup, then, was Chile’s middle classes, economically hard hit by inflation and shortages, and politically close to the Christian Democratic Party, the centrist party that ultimately chose the extra-legal right over the parliamentary left. Groups like professionals, small shop owners, truck drivers, and others, who all had their own associations much like workers have labor unions, provided an atmosphere of public support for the military coup.

On Nicaragua and the US strategy towards it:

The reasoning behind US pressure was that the Sandinistas probably could not be overthrown in this way, but by embroiling them in the mire of what is euphemistically called a “low-intensity conflict,” the Nicaraguan model could be weakened and made less attractive for other countries. This was indeed the case, on a number of dimensions – politically, militarily, and economically.

Again summarizing the reversal of fate in the revolutionary factors:

The pattern can be interpreted as follows: revolutions have been reversed when they continue to be subject to the effects of dependent development (which is impossible to undo in a short period of time, if ever), when they have open, democratic institutions (see the discussion below on the reasons for and implications of this), when the revolutionary political cultures that brought them about are attenuated due to internal differences of opinion or the difficulties of continuing to effectively engage their broad coalitions (compounded by the fragmenting effects of the opponents of the new government, internal and external), and when the world-systemic window that opened to permit their coming to power closes, as can happen in a variety of ways detailed below. These four factors, in conjunction, are found in all seven cases, and the revolutions were reversed regardless of the presence or not of an economic downturn (in fact, such a downturn was found in five and perhaps six of the cases, so it lent its weight as well).

Our comparison also suggests that there has been a pattern for the reversal of democratic revolutionaries by the United States – a coordinated program of counter-revolutionary destabilization that combines the following factors to bring about either electoral defeat or military coup: 1) a closing of the world-systemic opening that facilitated the revolutions, by a) attacking the political legitimacy of the revolutionary states making full use of their democratic natures in utilizing covert and overt propaganda to undermine the regime in the eyes of the population, and b) giving substantial material aid and assistance to opposition parties, military officers, and/or counter-revolutionary armies, combined with 2) an assault on the economic success of the revolution, playing on both the legacy of dependent development and the potential for economic downturns through a wide variety of actions, including economic blockades, cut- ting off sources of external funding and trade, and working with internal forces to disrupt production and distribution. The combination of these measures goes a long way toward weakening the political cultures that sustain a revolution, leading to internal splits, disaffection of the social bases of the revolution, and the acute political polarization necessary to sustain a coup or defeat a revolutionary government through elections.

The problem was not, therefore, the “unsuitability” of democracy as a form of revolutionary governance, but its vulnerability in the context of the cold war. I would suggest that since this condition no longer obtains in the early twenty-first century, we should not draw hasty conclusions that democratic revolutionaries will fail as they ostensibly have in the past, an argument to which I will return in the conclusion to this book.

The suggestion here that the end of the cold war opened up MORE possibility for democratic attempts at revolution seems completely wrong - instead, the largely uncontested power of the Western imperialist countries has managed to choke any democratic attempts at social revolution (eg Venezuela).

Chapter 5: The great contrasts: attempts, political revolutions, and non-attempts

Attempted revolutions

On El Salvador:

While liberation theology played a major role in El Salvador as in Nicaragua in the 1970s, and there were reformist, trade unionist, and other broadly-based oppositional currents, the political culture of the emerging left-wing revolutionary coalition was Marxist, anti-imperialist, and class-oriented, a stance not calculated to mobilize the broadest coalition of social forces. The Christian Democrats siphoned off support among peasants, workers, and the middle classes, while the business sector was solidly on the side of the military. A difference with the Nicaraguan case, then, throughout the 1970s, was the lesser breadth of this incipient coalition in class terms, its more radical socialist orientation, and its separation into various oppositional organizations.

Misery is not enough:

These crisis-like conditions, however, were painfully “normal” throughout the 1970s; a partial difference with successful social revolutions then was the stable nature of crisis in the domestic economy. Conditions, already terrible, may not have perceptibly worsened, although this would provide little consolation to the victims of dependent development.

On the PCP and it's explicit rejection of any collaboration with other class forces:

Far more than the Marxism-Leninism of the revolutionaries in El Salvador in the same period, this ideology was not calculated to appeal to broad segments of the population, and never achieved a hegemonic claim even on the left. Even at its height around 1989, therefore, the movement failed to attract sufficient cross-class support to build a broad populist coalition for revolutionary, extra- constitutional social transformation in Peru. Indeed, it never sought such an alliance, a fatal flaw in its vision. Instead, explicitly targeting the traditional left, represented in the person of President Alan Garcia (and to his left the optimistically named Izquierda Unida, as well as Peru’s other armed revolutionary current, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement – the MRTA), Sendero had alienated its natural allies on the political spectrum by the mid-1980s.

Nor was the regime vulnerable in the classic sense: Peru maintained a functioning democracy in the 1980s under the left-oriented government of Alan Garcia, and while Alberto Fujimori later dissolved Congress, he was careful to obtain military and a surprising amount of popular support. Despite intense military repression and the autogolpe (self-coup) of April 5, 1992 by Fujimori that concentrated unusual (but not unlimited) discretionary powers in his hands, the political institutions of Peru never approximated an exclusionary, personalistic dictatorship.

Foran identifies the same weakness in the Maoist insurgency in the Phillipines (although the CPP seems to have a broader base of support and more cross class appeal than Sendero ever did):

The reasoning is broadly similar to the cases of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru: Aquino represented the most democratic, and hence unassailable, government of all four cases, an image enhanced by the contrast with the Marcos dictatorship that had just been overthrown. The radicals, mean- while, while enormously energetic in organizing many sectors of society in both town and village, and across gender lines, still suffered from the ability of their critics to label their political culture communist, thereby reducing its cross-class appeal.

meaning that despite the presence of dependent development, rebels could not succeed when the states they faced were not repressive, exclusionary dictatorships (or genuine democracies), their political cultures did not facilitate broad cross-class alliances, and outside powers supported rather than abandoned incumbent regimes. These factors cluster together logically as well, for regimes that allow some political participation make it difficult for cross-class alliances to coalesce and can often attract outside military and economic support, which is even more likely to be forthcoming from the United States when the oppositional culture is, or can be labeled, Marxist-Leninist.

A look at political revolutions

On Haiti and why it did not go beyond the political revolution that overthrew the Duvaliers:

In development terms, the island is more a case of sheer dependency and underdevelopment than dependent development, as it has ranked at the very bottom of all countries in the Americas on most indices of development and social welfare. On the other hand, the state under the Duvaliers, pere et fils, was a quintessentially repressive, exclusionary, and personalistic police state, its stability guaranteed by the feared paramilitary known as the tontons macoutes. Under these conditions, the opposition had little chance to organize more than a very rudimentary resistance culture, drawing on relatively weak liberal democratic and liberation theology currents. Crisis economic conditions brought out largely unorganized street demonstrations against Jean-Claude Duvalier between 1984 and 1986, and the regime’s crackdown led the United States to withhold further aid and to encourage conspirators in the army to stage the February 6, 1986 coup that ended the Duvalier dynasty. The outcome, however, was a new elite-military alliance that stymied further attempts at reforms, radical or otherwise, marked by the political turmoil of the 1990s and the 2004 US-backed removal of democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As in China, the limits to social revolution seem to lie in the combination of a less differentiated class structure than that of a mature dependent development and the formidable difficulties of organizing a political culture capable of social revolution in a highly repressive polity (while this was accomplished in other places, such as Nicaragua, the effects of dependent development facilitated the presence of the types of social actors necessary to bring this off).

On the ANC turn away from socialism:

In analytic terms, the conditions favorable for a social revolution were dependent development and a repressive, exclusionary state (both of the colonial type), powerful political cultures of resistance articulated through and around the ANC with democratic and social justice strands, a relatively biting economic downturn, and eventually a world-systemic opening brought about largely by political pressure on Western governments to withdraw support from the regime.
Why, then, the political outcome? In part, this followed from an inter-national conjuncture after the collapse of the East Bloc that rendered the ANC’s socialist economic alternative decidedly unfashionable by the time it took power. Related to this was the shift in the nature of the white minority state from exclusionary and repressive to genuinely open to the election of its opposition, the ANC. This required the ANC’s transformation from guerrilla movement to political party, and had a dampening effect on its program once in power, as did the end of the socialist model after 1991 and the internal guarantees of white privilege tied up in quasi-colonial dependent development.

A summary of why some revolutions do not go deeper:

The two reduced expressions that cover all five cases can be factored to the Boolean equation Bce (a + d), suggesting that social revolutions did not occur in these cases due to the limits of their political cultures of opposition and lack of a world-systemic opening conducive to far-reaching change, combined in the cases of Zaire, China, and Haiti with very limited development, and in the Philippines and South Africa with relatively less severe economic downturns. Political culture and world-systemic opening thus act as powerful deflectors of revolutionary movements and brakes on social transformation after they take power.

No attempt: the reasons why

Strong political culture or non-personalistic states as protection against (counter)-revolution:

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, itself the product of a revolution against the shah (see the analogy with revolutionary Cuba below), the political economy remains as definite an instance of dependent development as it was under the shah since the early 1960s: the country has been and remains a regional economic giant with heels of clay. Urbanization, rising GNP, and oil-fueled growth continue to produce only hardship for much of the urban and most of the rural population. The regime, however, has created a set of sturdy political institutions that have successfully outlived the charismatic Ayatullah Khumaini, who even as supreme religious authority from 1979 to his death in 1989 could not qualify as an exclusionary personalist ruler. The political system opened further in the 1990s, permitting the election of liberal-minded Islamic reformer Muhammad Khatami as president in 1997. The rules of the political game restrict wider ideological competition, at the same time involving enough of the population in the process to make widespread extra-legal opposition difficult.

The question today, and the one on which the future of the Cuban revolution would seem to hinge, is how much remains of this effervescent support for Castro and Cuban socialism inside the country, and how well it will outlive his inevitable passing from the scene and the inexorable spread of capitalist globalization from above? Somehow, Castro retained a basic level of public support through the crisis of the 1990s, though how much is difficult to say. As one grocer put it: “To put up with things is a national custom.” Economic change has come in the form of increased tourism, biotechnology, joint ventures with foreign companies, and the ebb and flow of small private enterprises, but the very intensity of the US animosity toward Castro institutionalized in the successive tightenings of the embargo undertaken by US politicians Robert Torricelli, Dan Burton, Jesse Helms, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush has been turned thus far by the regime to political capital, as it taps the wellsprings of Cuban nationalism and pride in their revolution. To date, Cuba showcases the advantages of political culture for sustaining revolutions (and thereby preventing counter-revolution), even in a globalizing world.

Concluding thoughts on the failure of revolutions

That is, attempted revolutions and political revolutions failed to become full-fledged social revolutions as their political cultures were limited in some way and the world-systemic opportunity was not present, and one further factor – a vulnerable state, economic downturn, or dependent development – was absent. We may note the similarity with societies in which revolutions were not attempted, even with some of the factors present, as long as powerful political cultures were not sufficiently articulated and no world-systemic opening was present

We might interpret this result as suggesting that the causes of failure were the combination of problematic political cultures, an unfavorable international conjuncture, and any one of the other factors in the model. Among the conclusions to be drawn from this exercise is a further demonstration that all five factors are needed for a social revolution to occur and succeed, and that the absence of any of the five factors is sufficient to block a social revolution from succeeding. Most notably, two of the five factors – political cultures of opposition and world-systemic opportunity – may be the single most salient reasons for failure, underlining the sheer weight of the world system, and the wisdom of our return to the subjective realm of culture.

Part Four: Conclusions

Chapter 6: The past and future of revolutions

The author offers his thoughts on how his theory might be used to predict future revolutionary outcomes, as well as how changes in the world system might change the possible routes to revolution. He also summarizes his analysis up to this point, and discusses the Zapatista model briefly.

This pattern suggests a possible theory for reversals of revolution: revolutionaries fall from power when political fragmentation and polarization, economic problems (often, though not always, including economic downturns), and outside intervention occur together. The apparently negative causal role that was played in the reversal of revolutions by fashioning or maintaining democratic institutions was a troubling finding that opened up a discussion of the relationships between democracy and revolution that will be resumed later in this conclusion.

The use of Boolean techniques to simplify the patterns yielded the formula Abce as the common pattern in the movements’ failures, meaning that despite the presence of dependent development, rebels could not succeed when the states they faced were not repressive, exclusionary dictatorships (or genuine democracies, if the movements were mainly non-violent in nature and/or pursuing an electoral route to power, as in China, Algeria, and Chiapas), their political cultures did not facilitate broad cross-class alliances, and outside powers supported rather than abandoned incumbent regimes.

To the question, why do most attempts fail, or not result in social revolutions, and why do most countries not experience revolutions at all, we have found several answers. The reversed social revolutions in Iran, Guatemala, Bolivia, Chile, Jamaica, Grenada, and Nicaragua suggested that the continued effects of dependent development and an economic downturn, coupled with schisms in the unity of the revolutionaries (at least in part due to political cultures), the vulnerability of relatively democratic revolutionary regimes, and external pressures have combined to overturn revolutions in progress. This is a contribution to a theory of revolutionary outcomes, for it identifies at least some of the factors which have undermined revolutionaries even where they have achieved a firm hold on power.

We should perhaps therefore not rush too quickly to conclude that the classic revolutionary goal of seizing state power is no longer relevant or viable. For Jeff Goodwin, “Rather than uniformly diminishing states, in fact, globalization has been just as likely to spur attempts to employ and, if necessary, expand state power for the purposes of enhancing global competitiveness . . . There is no reason to believe, in any event, that in the future people will accept the depredations of authoritarian states and shun revolutionaries on the grounds that state power ‘ain’t what it used to be’.” At the same time, new revolutionary movements like the Zapatistas have questioned this goal, reflecting their subtle understandings of the workings of political power in conditions of globalization: that creating democratic spaces for the free discussion of political, economic, and cultural alternatives to globalization is a more suitable goal for revolutionaries than direct seizure of state power, and that linking the national liberation struggle to both local needs and global concerns might be the most effective – if an even more daunting – coalition-building project for deep social transformation. The global diffusion of democratic polities since the 1980s means that at least some Third World states will be genuinely open to the rise of the left through elections.

The "global diffusion of democratic polities" does a lot of work here - especially since elsewhere, Foran refers to "polyarchies" as formal democratic states that are in reality controlled by a small ruling elite (but he does not seem to subscribe to the full Leninist explanation of bourgeois democracy and its illusions).

How might the revolutions of the future have better end(ing)s?

Our theoretical and empirical study of the origins of Third World social revolutions suggests some of the lessons that lie hidden in the revolutionary record. Let me try stating a few in propositional terms:
◦ revolutions have usually been driven by economic and social inequalities caused by both the short-term and the medium-run consequences of “dependent development” – a process of aggregate growth by which a handful of the privileged have prospered, leaving the majority of the population to suffer multiple hardships
◦ they have typically been directed against two types of states at opposite ends of the democratic spectrum: exclusionary, personalist dictators or colonial regimes, and – more paradoxically – truly open societies where a democratic left had a fair chance in elections
◦ they have had a significant cultural component in the sense that no revolution has been made and sustained without a vibrant set of political cultures of resistance and opposition that found significant common ground, at least for a time
◦ they have occurred when the moment was favorable on the world scene – that is, when powers that would oppose revolution have been distracted, confused, or ineffective in preventing them – and when economic downturns internally have driven a critical mass within society to seek an alternative
◦ finally, they have always involved broad, cross-class alliances of subaltern groups, middle classes, and elites; to an increasing extent women as well as men; and to a lesser degree racial or ethnic minorities as well as majorities.

Once in power, a series of related difficulties have typically arisen, which result from the continued significance of the patterns above for revolutionary transformation:
◦ dependent development has deep historical roots that are recalcitrant to sustained reversal, however much the material situation of the majority can be improved in the short and medium run
◦ truly democratic structures have been difficult to construct following revolutions against dictators, while those revolutionaries who have constructed democracies have been vulnerable to non-democratic opponents, internal and external
◦ the challenge of forging a revolutionary political culture to build a new society has generally foundered rapidly on the diversity of subcurrents that contributed to the initial victory, compounded by the structural obstacles all revolutions have faced
◦ few revolutions have been able to withstand the renewed counterrevolutionary attention of dominant outside powers and their regional allies
◦ given the above, the broad coalitions that have been so effective in making revolutions are notoriously difficult to keep together, due to divergent visions of how to remake society and unequal capacities to make their vision prevail; meanwhile women and ethnic minorities have consistently seen at best limited reversal of patriarchy and racism after revolutions.

Lauesen divides the book into three principal parts. The first recounts a brief history of imperialism, nationalist and internationalist currents in the global socialist movement, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements of the 20th century, and modern theories of imperialism. Lauesen also discusses his life-long work as an activist and the organizations he contributed to. Part Two examines the rise of neoliberalism, uses theories of unequal exchange to explain the current world economy, and sketches out a picture of the class divide between Global North and Global South countries. The final part consists of examining the current political situation, the current state of the institutions that could lead to change (trade unions, communist parties, social movements, etc.), a discussion of strategy for Global North activists, and what Lauesen sees as the principal possibilities for the future.

For activists in the Global North hoping to develop an effective anti-imperialist practice, the relatively few words on strategy do not provide much of a blueprint. Learning about Lauesen's activist history is interesting, but he does not attempt to draw generalizable lessons from his experiences and suggest specific organizational forms or tactics. He gives at-times vague prescriptions about supporting Global South struggles through solidarity work or balancing heirarchical, Leninist-type organization with more horizontal, participatory democratic principles. It may be too much to expect a handbook for doing anti-imperialism in the Global North, but even a few more examples of what Lauesen sees as successful experiments or organizations would be helpful. Most communist groups in the U.S. can hardly turn out 50 people to a rally - they are certainly not at the point of doing the kind of mid-to-long-term planning that Lauesen focuses on in his discussions of practice. The lack of more specific ideas for activists is disappointing given that Lauesen has clearly taken his activism very seriously and faced very serious consequences for it. Meanwhile, most other advice for Western activists is penned by academics or hobbyists.

Regardless, this is a valuable book for understanding the basics of modern imperialism, the political actors that have the potential to challenge it, and the possibilities that lie ahead. Lauesen's "realistic optimism", grounded in decades of activism and study, is also refreshing.

Preface by Zak Cope

The present work examines how imperialism has impacted societies in the Third World or Global South, that is, the former colonies of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as how it has shaped social relations and popular perceptions in the First World or Global North countries of Europe, North America, and Japan. It describes imperialism’s evolving means of international wealth transfer and reveals how returns derived from unequal exchange, accumulation by dispossession, and capital export (none of which can treated in isolation from the other) have come to form the very taproot of the global profit system.
Today, the nations of the Third World face imperialist invasion, occupation, proxy war, embargo, extortion, starvation, assassination, genocide, fascist repression, corporate plunder, and grinding superexploitation. The contrast with the consumption, leisure time, and social peace that imperialism has afforded the nations of the First World could not be clearer. In spite of this, we have reached the point where authors such as Torkil Lauesen are forced to not only explain but to plainly state the obvious, even (and especially) to alleged Marxists. In these bleak times, it is often hard to discern how we can possibly work towards a better future. On an intellectual level at least, we can only begin to do so if we adopt the perspective of the world majority struggling for a better life.

Part One: The History of Imperialism, A Personal Perspective

Chapter 1: The Emergence of A Divided World

This chapter traces the concurrent rise of capitalism and colonialism, as well as its effects on class struggle in the major European powers.

While trading colonies were characteristic of the colonization of Africa and Asia, colonialism in the Americas was different. The American colonies were settler colonies, where Europeans came and stayed. The economies of these colonies were often based on plantation agriculture and slavery, the sugar industry of the Caribbean being a prime example. Settler colonies were very profitable for European merchants. At the same time, some settler colonies in North America were different: they were not based on plantation agriculture, but on small-scale farming and modest manufacturing. These colonies were of no particular interest to merchant capital, since they didn’t promise any profits. Eventually, they become rivals.

At first, the English mainly used their Indian trading colonies to export Indian goods to Europe and North America. Of primary interest were finished goods such as cotton clothes and silk. Merchants paid for these with silver and gold. Europeans had few goods of interest to Indians. The result was an accumulation of silver and gold in India, which, in turn, stimulated craftsmanship and manufacturing even more. [...]
During the conflict with France, English policies in India changed. The English were no longer satisfied just trading with the Indians, they wanted to gain control over local production. This shift cannot be understood without considering the interests of England’s clothing manufacturers. Clothes imported from India were competitive on the European market. The protectionist tariffs introduced in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century were an initial response to this. Attempts to force Indians to export raw materials (mainly silk and cotton) rather than finished goods failed, since the English trading companies lacked political influence. There was only one solution: India had to be conquered. [...]
Bengal had benefited from trading with the English and had grown rich. Now, however, the state was systematically ruined. Its treasury was emptied with tons of gold being shipped to England and many of its riches disappearing into the pockets of East India Company employees. The English introduced outrageously high taxes. Within a few years, Bengal’s infrastructure was in tatters and its population brought to the brink of extinction. In 1770 alone, one third of the people living in Bengal starved to death. That same year, the East India Company enjoyed record profits.

The colonies existed to serve the needs of the motherland. This also meant that, wherever the settlers were strong enough, they tried to get rid of the motherland. In North America, the settlers seceded from England in 1776. Most important for the development of the capitalist world system, however, was the ever growing capitalist character of colonization.
In England, powerful manufacturers made the government prohibit the import of finished goods which might compete with their own products on the domestic market. By the mid-eighteenth century, Indian clothes were banned from Europe. The market for English textile goods expanded. The colonies’ role was to supply raw materials. This meant that, instead of competing with goods produced in England, they provided the necessary materials for those goods (while at the same time being turned into overseas markets for them). The conditions for capitalism’s rise could not have been better. What followed was one of the most violent and radical transformations in human history: the arrival of big industry.

Introducing how imperialism was also a "spatial fix" for purchasing power problem:

Purchasing power is also limited by the exploitation necessary for capitalist growth. On the one hand, the capitalist needs to keep wages as low as possible in order to make the biggest profits possible. On the other hand, wages make up a significant part of the purchasing power that is required to generate profit. In other words, the capitalist form of accumulation has a tendency to destroy its own market. If capitalists increase wages, their profits decrease; if they decrease wages, their markets decrease. In both cases, capitalists become hesitant to invest, not because they can’t produce, but because they don’t know if what they produce can be sold.
These structural problems of capitalism came to the surface in England during the first half of the nineteenth century. Capitalists could not meet the workers’ demands for higher wages and better working conditions if they wanted to keep their profit rates intact. The English bourgeoisie could not afford full suffrage and trade unions, because it would have threatened capitalism’s entire existence at the time. This is why Marx opened The Communist Manifesto in 1848 with the words: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”
But, just around that time, capitalism found a solution to its first major crisis: the productive forces underwent a revolution with the introduction of spinning and weaving machines, the steam engine, and railways. Productivity increased multifold. This, however, did not bring better conditions for the working class. On the contrary: the 1840s became known as the “hungry forties,” as millions suffered from starvation all across Europe. During the Great Famine in Ireland, which lasted from 1845 to 1852, roughly one million people died of hunger and related diseases. The famine was not caused by the plant disease that wiped out the potato crop. Potatoes accounted for no more than 20 percent of the country’s agricultural production. During the famine, Ireland was exporting sufficient quantities of corn, wheat, barley, and oats to England, feeding an estimated two million people there. It is simply that Ireland was a food-producing colony, similar to India and the sugar islands of the Caribbean, and its population had to suffer the consequences.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, workers’ wages in England covered the bare essentials necessary for survival. This weakened the domestic market. Internationally, the rapid industrialization of France and the Americas troubled the English. Traditional craftsmanship was no longer the main competition to English industry—foreign rivals were. Competition among English capitalists also grew. Worst of all was the recurring problem of stagnant consumption vis-à-vis ever expanding production. The English industrialists’ profit rates were falling.

As we know, the hangman’s face remains well hidden. The predictions of Marx and Engels proved false. Not because their analysis of capitalism was wrong: the capitalist system, as it functioned until the middle of the nineteenth century, was indeed in the process of running out of steam. It was wracked by regular crises of ever increasing severity. Simultaneously, the strength and resistance of the proletariat grew. The “spectre of communism” materialized with the Paris Commune in 1871. The bourgeoisie was terribly afraid of widespread revolution. What Marx and Engels did not foresee was that the proletariat’s struggle for better living conditions would initiate new forms of imperialist accumulation which would in turn revitalize global capitalism. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, described this in 1933:
“It is said that capitalism managed to prolong its life to our day because of a factor which perhaps Marx did not fully consider. This was the exploitation of colonial empires by the industrial countries of the West. This gave fresh life and prosperity to it, at the expense, of course, of the poor countries so exploited.”
Colonialism was not just a centrifugal phenomenon, it was also a polarizing one. The division of the world into rich and poor countries, into center and periphery, lay the basis for capitalism’s growth and longevity.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the British population had become dependent on a number of goods imported from the colonies for mass consumption. Especially sugar, rice, tea, coffee, and tobacco. The most important raw material, cotton, was imported from the slave plantations of North America before the American Civil War, and from India and Egypt afterwards. Britain’s entire economy had become dependent on the colonies and on control of world trade. Improvements in living standards for British workers relied on colonial profits and the relatively low prices of imported goods. The working class was integrated into what was becoming the first consumer society, and as such played an important role in maintaining the empire. By the mid-1800s tea and coffee were regularly consumed by all classes. In 1850, the amount of sugar imported from the colonies was only surpassed by that of cotton. Tea was number four, and coffee number six. Even the poorest classes spent 6 to 7 percent of their income on colonial imports.

The workers' movement in the West helps strengthen capitalism (Lauesen emphasizes this is not through conspiracy but the natural result of things:

The situation was similar in France, Germany, and other Western European countries. Capitalists resisted the workers’ movement, but the concessions they made, especially in terms of higher wages, did not hurt the capitalist system. On the contrary, they helped solve the crisis of overproduction by strengthening the domestic market. But the capitalist system could only afford improvements to the living conditions of European workers because of the exploitation of the colonies. The economies of the colonies themselves had by now become capitalist. Factories and mines had been established and plantations were run as capitalist enterprises. More and more capital was invested. The profits helped compensate for the decline in the profit rate in Europe caused by the increased wages for European workers. Globally, this promised to provide a long-term solution to the contradiction between production and consumption. Capital flows also changed: more capital, and therefore value, was now flowing from the colonies to the developed countries than vice versa. Prior to this, the export of capital from the developed countries to the colonies had helped balance out some of the differences in economic development. Now, the gap between rich and poor only deepened. This was necessary for the continued expansion of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism needed the best possible conditions for the development of its productive forces.

The new economic conditions changed the political dimensions of class struggle. In Europe and in the European settler colonies, employers could now afford to make concessions to the labor movement. This, in turn, strengthened the workers’ belief in reformism. For the employers, accepting certain reforms was far less risky than provoking revolutionary uprisings. This served both sides. Measured by today’s standards, even the top tier of the English working class, skilled industrial workers, still lived poorly, but their living conditions had improved dramatically within a relatively short period of time and they were far superior to those of the workers in the colonies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, widespread hunger—which we still see in the Global South today—had basically disappeared from England and most Western European countries.
The improved living conditions and political influence of the working class were not the result of some shrewd capitalist plot or a payoff to keep workers submissive. They were a consequence of working-class struggles. Yet, they would not have been possible without imperialism. To speak of “bribes” for the working class—as some anti-imperialist organizations did, KAK included—is an oversimplification. But as a result of improving conditions for the European working classes, the reformist sections of the labor movement were certainly strengthened and the revolutionary ones weakened. Whereas the Paris Commune had been crushed, many reformist campaigns had scored victories. Reformism seemed capable of improving conditions for the proletariat.

One of the reasons for the patriarchal nuclear family model spreading into the working class was colonial profits. The gender roles championed by the workers’ movement in the late nineteenth century corresponded to the development of the labor aristocracy. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the ratio of women to men in the industrial workforce fell by 0.7 percent a year on average. During the 1780s, the percentage of married women in the small town of Cardington who worked for a wage was 67.5. In 1911, in all of England it was 10 percent. This shift was due to factory legislation, the ten-hour work day, rising wages, and the spread of the bourgeois family model within the working class. Maria Mies described this process as follows: “Without the ongoing exploitation of external colonies—formerly as direct colonies, today within the new international division of labour—the establishment of the ‘internal colony,’ that is, a nuclear family and a woman maintained by a male ‘breadwinner,’ would not have been possible.” White men in Western Europe and North America ruled over their own colonies in the form of the nuclear family with a wife forced to stay at home. This was one of the most important factors ensuring that the unpropertied, and formerly dangerous, proletarian would become a loyal citizen.

Mass emigration from Europe strengthened both the labor aristocracy in Europe and the labor aristocracy of European settlers in the colonies. It is important to emphasize the character of the labor aristocracy in the colonies, as Europeans were not the only immigrants. Immigrants from other countries, especially from India and China, also arrived, but under very different circumstances. Most of them were contract laborers, so-called “coolies.” Together with slaves and the indigenous population, they had to do the hardest work for the lowest wage. They built railways and worked in mines and on plantations. Once they tried to better their situation, the European settlers saw them as rivals on the labor market. In the 1880s, the first restrictions on immigration from Asia were implemented. In Australia, European language tests for immigrants were introduced. Soon after, Australia enforced a full stop on immigration from China. The situation was similar in the USA, Canada, and New Zealand. By 1920, immigration for non-Europeans was heavily regulated in all of the English-speaking settler colonies.

Lauesen's explanation for divergent economic success of US vs. Latin America:

Let us compare the colonization of North America in the seventeenth century with that of South America one hundred years earlier. Portugal and Spain were feudal societies. They arrived in armor, intent on conquering and plundering any society they encountered. They built colonial economies based on feudalism, with big estates and plantations. The labor force consisted primarily of slaves. In North America, the early colonists were merchants and plantation owners with an interest in trade. Investments were important. They had a long-term vision for themselves.
In the beginning, the merchants bought fur and agricultural products from small farmers for export. Tobacco was one of the most important trading goods. When big plantations were established, production was also geared toward export. The plantations produced sugar, rice, and cotton. To acquire land—a lot of land—was no problem, but the cost of waged labor was high. Attempts to establish a cheap labor force based on the forced labor of prisoners and the indentured labor of impoverished peasants and craftsmen from Britain failed. Once the latter arrived, they fled the plantations and looked for land of their own. What really made the plantation economy blossom was slavery.
While the merchants and plantation owners of North America had close ties to British merchant capital, the vast majority of European settlers had none. They were mainly displaced peasants and proletarianized craftsmen who had come to America to find land and work. They had not come to return anything to Europe. Many of them had also suffered political or religious persecution. These men and women were determined to stand up for their beliefs. They had no attachment to the countries they came from, neither economically nor politically nor religiously. This was an important factor in the later separation from Britain.

The relationship between the settlers and the European powers was ambiguous. On the one hand, the settlers were agents of the latter, the colonizers on the ground. They administered the colonial territories and brutally crushed any resistance by the indigenous population. On the other hand, their ambition was to become independent. They developed their own national identities and came to see the European powers as forces of occupation that robbed them of their own wealth. In an ironic twist, the settlers themselves became anticolonial. This was not limited to North America; in South Africa, the Boers, settlers who had arrived from the Netherlands, fought brutal wars against the British over the control of the territory and its riches, using the rhetoric of revolutionary republicanism to justify their cause.

After gaining their independence from England, the settlers in the US managed to establish a strong national economy, transforming North America from a periphery within the world capitalist system into its new center. In the early twentieth century, the US had all the requirements for rapid capitalist development: a big domestic market, strong purchasing power, and high industrial profits. The constant flow of value that was required to maintain protectionist policies and a (white) national labor aristocracy was secured by the privatization of the indigenous peoples’ commons, the exploitation of an internal proletariat (formerly, of slaves), and imperialist policies in the West Indies, in Central and South America, and in the Pacific region.
The transformation of the US from colony to imperial superpower marked an overall shift in the power structure of global capitalism. Between 1860 and 1913, the world’s industrial production grew sevenfold. In England it tripled, in France it quadrupled, in Germany it grew sevenfold, and in the US twelvefold. The days of England being the world’s industrial powerhouse were over.

Chapter 2: Nationalism and Internationalism

This chapter tackles the socialist movement's orientation towards nationalism and colonialism, the distorted socialism that arose in the West, and the emergence of a stronger anti-imperialist current elsewhere (Lenin, Comintern and beyond).

The leading ideologue of German social democracy was Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein criticized Marx on several points. In his 1899 book The Preconditions of Socialism , he stated, contra Marx, that capitalism would not lead to a polarization between rich and poor, pointing out that the living conditions of the German working class were improving. For Bernstein, this was proof that the working class could better their situation within the capitalist system. Since they comprised a majority of the population, workers could seize state power by electoral means and introduce socialism without resorting to revolutionary violence. Bernstein’s revision of Marx became the DNA of European social democracy. In the decades to come, the social democratic parties of Europe would repeatedly choose the interests of capital and the nation over socialism.
Bernstein opposed the notion that “working men have no country,” as Marx and Engels had written in The Communist Manifesto . Bernstein conceded that this might have been the case in the 1840s, but claimed it no longer held true. Workers had become citizens of their nation states, equipped with political and social rights, not least due to the efforts of the social democrats. For Bernstein, the social democrats’ task was to reconcile the interests of the working class with those of the nation. Only this would advance working-class politics. This implied that the social democrats had to support colonialism. Bernstein agreed that in order for it to progress, Germany needed to have ready access to raw materials and tropical goods.
The connections drawn by Bernstein between the interests of the German working class and colonialism were logical. Only colonialism made it possible for the situation of European workers to improve. Colonial profits allowed capital to mitigate the social contradictions within the European countries. It helped turn the dangerous classes into loyal citizens. The specter of revolution was contained.
Colonial and racist attitudes among German social democrats were barely concealed. The SPD supported imperialist ambitions in China and was a strong opponent of Chinese immigration, since the “coolies” were seen as a threat to European proletarians. At the SPD’s congress in Mainz in 1900, Rosa Luxemburg was the only member who condemned imperialist attitudes. In the USA, the Socialist Party had already passed a resolution against “yellow immigration” in 1885.
With its reformism, its support for colonialism, and the equation of working-class and national interests, the social democratic parties abandoned the principle of international solidarity and became an integral part of the imperialist system. This was reflected in the official policies of the Second International. When colonialism was debated at the International’s congress in Stuttgart in 1907 (only three years after the genocide against the Herero in South West Africa), Bernstein made the following comment, approved by SPD luminary Ferdinand Lassalle: “People who do not develop may be justifiably subjugated by people who have achieved civilization.” Bernstein added: “Socialists too should acknowledge the need for civilized peoples to act like the guardians of the uncivilized. … Our economies are based in large measure on the extraction from the colonies of products that the native peoples have no idea how to use.”

Interesting view of colonized nations as "proletarian nations" despite lack of a developed industrial working class:

Another interesting figure attending the 1920 Comintern congress was Mirsaid Sultan Galiev, a Tatar revolutionary and proponent of “Muslim national communism.” Galiev, who had participated in the revolution of 1917, wanted the Comintern to focus on anticolonial struggles in the East, arguing that ending colonial plunder was a precondition for revolution in the West: “Deprived of the East, and cut off from India, Afghanistan, Persia, and its other Asian and African colonies, Western European imperialism will wither and die a natural death.” In his view, the communist movement had committed a serious strategic error by “giving … priority to the revolutionary movement in Western Europe” and thereby ignoring the fact that “capitalism’s weak point lay in the Orient.” Galiev conceded that there was no developed working class in what he called the “Eastern nations,” but he considered them to be “proletarian nations,” as they were exploited by the capitalist world system. A similar point was made by Li Dazhao, one of China’s earliest Marxists. He described China as “proletarianized in relation to the world system.”

Revolutionary socialism never gained a strong foothold in North America and largely disappeared from Western Europe in the 1920s. The centers of revolutionary socialism were now to be found in the East and South. Virtually all attempts at socialist revolution during the last one hundred years have occurred in the periphery or semi-periphery of the capitalist world system. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution of 1949 are only the two most prominent examples.

Chapter 3: Anti-Imperialism During the Cold War

After summarizing the pro-imperialist attitudes of Western european working classes (esp interesting in this passage is the AFL-CIO VP's highlighting of military industrial complex's direct employment impact):

In the USA, too, the white working class generally supported US imperialism. The American trade union movement fully supported the government’s anti-communist line and its foreign policy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The protests against the Vietnam War were not carried out by the white working class, but by students, intellectuals, and the Black liberation movement. The latter took an explicitly anti-imperialist stance and condemned the US occupation, domination, and exploitation of Third World countries. Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali famously declared that he had “no quarrel with them Viet-Cong.”
If there were any reservations toward the war in Vietnam among the white working class, it was because many white working-class people died in Vietnam. This, however, did not prevent powerful trade unions from organizing a “Support the Boys” march in New York City in May 1967. As they walked down Fifth Avenue, they brandished signs saying “Bomb Beijing” and “Drop the A-Bomb Over Hanoi.” Later that year, thirteen major trade unions gathered for their annual congresses. All in all, 3,542 delegates participated. Each congress held a vote on the war in Vietnam: a total of 1,448 delegates supported the government’s policy, 1,368 wanted to see more military engagement, 471 less, and a mere 235, that is, 7 percent, demanded a withdrawal of US troops. Some months later, the Nixon government not only intensified military operations in Vietnam, but also invaded neighboring Cambodia. At Kent State, twelve students were shot (and four killed) during an anti-war demonstration, yet trade union support for the war only increased. Joseph Beirne, vice president of the AFL-CIO, explained in a speech why resistance against the war hurt the interests of the American working class:
“Suppose last night, instead of escalating into Cambodia, President Nixon said we are pulling every man out in the quickest manner, with airplanes and ships; if he had said that last night, this morning the Pentagon would have notified thousands of companies and said, ‘Your contract is cancelled’—by tomorrow millions would be laid off. The effect of our war, while it is going on, is to keep an economic pipeline loaded with a turnover of dollars because people are employed in manufacturing the things of war. If you ended that tomorrow these same people wouldn’t start making houses.”
During the big anti-war demonstrations in May 1970, construction workers in hard hats attacked protesters with clubs and steel pipes; several hundred were injured, yet the police hardly intervened. The attackers were not some fringe extremists: in New York alone, trade unions mobilized more than one hundred thousand workers to join a rally supporting Nixon’s Indochina policy. The president expressed his gratitude for this “very meaningful” show of support, at the end of which he received a hard hat with the inscription “Commander in Chief.” For Michael Yates, who has studied the American workers’ movement for decades, none of this is surprising:
“Nowhere was the labor movement more nationalistic and anchored in imperialism than in the United States. While there have been individual workers, unions, and movements devoted to the concept and practice of international solidarity, these have always been a minority and suffered decisive defeats at the hands of their more numerous opponents. The historical record is both appalling and tragic. At every critical juncture labor stood against internationalism.”

The people of the Third World had different experiences with nationalism during decolonization. First, nationalism appeared as a progressive tool to gain independence. It stood for the rejection of colonialism and self-reliance. But the consequences of a successful struggle for independence depended very much on the composition of the nationalist movement (its main actors, their interests, and so on), and on the relationships between the classes: bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, and peasantry. The strength of the anti-imperialist movement in the Third World nourished the hope that, once independent, Third World nations would develop welfare states or even introduce socialism. But people overlooked the fact that the First World’s welfare capitalism required the reckless exploitation of the Third World. Still, the defeat of colonialism was a progressive step and brought material improvement in people’s lives. As Samir Amin has noted: “[I]n thirty years, the horrible regime of Mobutu led to the production of an education capital in Congo forty times higher than what the Belgians achieved in eighty years.” But Third World nationalism was only progressive when it envisaged a clear break with the capitalist system. Otherwise, it was simply a tool to secure the power of a new national elite.
Despite the often radical history of liberation movements, most focused on capitalist development once they came to power. Land reforms were rare, and mines, industries, and banks were not nationalized. This led to a slow erosion of the vision of the Bandung period, and to the decline of liberation struggles with a socialist perspective.
The wave of anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s did have a strong impact on anti-imperialist theory, though. Marxist thought had not developed much since the 1920s, having mainly been preoccupied with defending the Soviet Union; if there was any theoretical innovation it came from the Trotskyist camp. Now, however, people involved in anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles made important contributions: Mao, Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral, Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and others. They laid the foundations for what would later become known as dependency theory.

Nkrumah also addressed the situation in the imperialist center after World War II:
“In the industrially more developed countries, capitalism, far from disappearing, became infinitely stronger. This strength was only achieved by the sacrifice of two principles which had inspired early capitalism, namely the subjugation of the working classes within each individual country and the exclusion of the State from any say in the control of capitalist enterprise. By abandoning these two principles and substituting for them ‘welfare states’ based on high working-class living standards and on a State-regulated capitalism at home, the developed countries succeeded in exporting their internal problem and transferring the conflict between rich and poor from the national to the international stage. … Today the need both to maintain a welfare state, i.e. a parasite State at home, and to support a huge and ever-growing burden of armament costs makes it absolutely essential for developed capitalist countries to secure the maximum return in profit from such parts of the international financial complex as they control. However much private capitalism is exhorted to bring about rapid development and a rising standard of living in the less developed areas of the world, those who manipulate the system realise the inconsistency between doing this and producing at the same time the funds necessary to maintain the sinews of war and the welfare state at home. They know when it comes to the issue they will be excused if they fail to provide for a world-wide rise in the standard of living. They know they will never be forgiven it they betray the system and produce a crisis at home which either destroys the affluent State or interferes with its military preparedness.”

KAK used terms like “parasite state” and “bribing” to emphasize its political perspective. Today, the usefulness of the latter term seems limited. The word “bribe” suggests a conscious motive on the part of both the receiving and the giving end. However, individual capitalists did not hand individual workers any “bribes” to prevent them from making revolution. The working class had to fight for higher wages and to improve their living conditions. These struggles created a dynamic that allowed capital to use the payment of higher wages to expand its markets. Democratic institutions and the welfare state followed, made possible by the exploitation of the colonies. As such, at least the term “parasite state” remains analytically accurate.

Later in this chapter Lauesen moves on to description of the groups he was involved with, and their work (study, travel, material support as the three basic prongs):

In 1971, KAK’s efforts to provide material support for Third World liberation movements increased. Our guiding principle was: “Solidarity is something you can hold in your hands.” We founded an organization with a rather inconspicuous name, Tøj til Afrika (Clothes for Africa, TTA). Its members were all dedicated anti-imperialists, but the goal was not to push ideology. Rather, we wanted to collect as much clothing and other materials for flea markets as possible. TTA had chapters in Copenhagen and four other Danish towns, and during its heyday it had about one hundred members overall. In the 1970s, TTA supported FRELIMO in Mozambique, the MPLA in Angola, ZANU in Rhodesia, SWAPO in Namibia, and the PFLO in Oman. In the 1980s, it also supported a Black consciousness project in South Africa by the name of Isandlwana Revolutionary Effort as well as the New People’s Army in the Philippines. We sent clothes, shoes, and medicine as well as the money we made from the flea markets we held every month. We were able to send hundreds of thousands of crowns every year.
The TTA chapter in Copenhagen stored its donations in an abandoned machine factory. On weekends, we went out to collect whatever was given to us. In the 1970s and early 1980s, people were generous. We had mountains of clothes. On weekdays and during holidays, we sorted and packed them by the ton. They were then transported to Hamburg and shipped to destinations where they could be received by the liberation movements. We had our own offset print shop, producing books, pamphlets, posters, and leaflets, both for the liberation movements and our own use.
This was the legal practice. There was also an illegal one. Some KAK members committed fraud and robbery to get extra money, especially for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). 284 But getting money was far from the only thing we did. We had regular study circles to sharpen our theory and develop a practice that was effective, based on our own circumstances and possibilities. We went on numerous trips to Third World countries to study economic and social conditions on the ground and establish contact with liberation movements. We also had regular discussions with those few organizations in the imperialist countries that shared our perspective.
Political activism was a priority in the lives of KAK members. Some were “professionals” in the sense that they dedicated all of their time to KAK, living off of unemployment benefits. We felt that what we did was meaningful, and that our practice corresponded to our theory. We saw ourselves as a tiny wheel in a big machine that was going to change the world.

As mentioned above, our analysis didn’t help us make many friends within the European left. Our sympathizers consisted of small groups in Sweden and Norway and of individuals scattered across the continent. But we never felt isolated. We regularly met with representatives of liberation movements and had most of our political discussions with them. Appel’s understanding of politics and the role of the revolutionary party was inspired by Lenin and his sense for rigid organization. He was sharp, dedicated, a good speaker, and uncompromising; all of this appealed to the more radical circles of the ’68 generation. Appel managed to gather a small but highly motivated group of militants around him. KAK was a very effective organization. Appel wanted its members to have the knowledge and the experience necessary to make the right moves when socialism became a possibility in Europe again. His strategy was twofold: First, liberation movements in the Third World had to be supported in order to throw imperialism into a crisis, which would lead to a revolutionary situation in Europe. Second, a disciplined and organized party had to be ready to seize the opportunity. Both aspects were closely linked, which was reflected in KAK’s practice.
This also applied to KAK’s illegal practice. Its purpose was to provide Third World liberation movements with material resources. At the same time, it was supposed to familiarize KAK members with illegal work, deemed necessary in a revolutionary situation. We were required to develop secure communications, handle surveillance, set up safe houses, plan actions diligently, and acquire practical skills such as forging documents, picking locks, and stealing cars. We were in it for the long haul and needed to work undercover , not underground . Had our illegal practice been openly political—with communiqués about expropriations and the like—we would have been chased down in no time. Our actions had to look like ordinary crimes. This made it possible for us to operate for almost twenty years. Fraud and robbery were natural choices. The proceeds served the liberation movements well, as they were in short supply of cash. Whatever they got from us, they got unconditionally.
Other leftist groups in Europe which engaged in illegal practice chose different strategies. The Red Army Faction in Germany attacked US army bases to support the anti-imperialist struggle in the Third World. Their actions were openly politically motivated and intended to shake up imperialism’s hinterland, tear what they called the “democratic mask” off the German political system, and serve as an inspiration to the masses. But the Red Army Faction were not “fish swimming in the sea.” They did not have mass support. They were forced into a defensive underground struggle which they were destined to lose. Their strategy was based on a wrong analysis of the ’68 rebellion’s political depth and the possibilities of broad anti-imperialist resistance in Western Europe. This was not a dry prairie where you could spark a fire, but a damp meadow.

Strategy is short-term support for Global South struggles that also builds long-term capacity/skills as a militant organization (contingent on significant change in Global North conditions). Does this model still make sense?

The LSM was a small organization with chapters in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Vancouver, Canada. Its key theorist was Don Barnett, a social anthropologist who, in the early 1960s, had visited Kenya to study the anticolonial Mau Mau movement. He was, like Appel at the time, a Maoist and very charismatic. In 1967–1968, Barnett spent time in Dar es Salaam where he established contact with the Angolan MPLA. In 1967, he wrote the pamphlet Toward an International Strategy , which expressed many of the same views as the articles in KAK’s Kommunistisk Orientering . For Barnett, the Third World liberation movements were in the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle, while the US working class benefited from the superprofits generated by imperialism. In 1972, the LSM formulated three principles as the foundation of its political work:
“To say this [that labor aristocracies existed in the First World], however, is not to say that there exist at present no potentially progressive strata or elements in the metropolitan centers. By ‘progressive’ in this context we refer to those sectors of the metropolitan population which, in serving and satisfying some of their non-revolutionary interests and acquired needs, can be and sometimes are moved to act in ways which objectively advance the practice and interests of revolutionary classes in motion within imperialist society.
These sectors can and should be mobilized to contribute material and propagandistic support for genuine liberation movements and revolutionary classes in the countryside.
“Again, we believe that certain actions—legal and illegal, peaceful and violent—can be carried out in the metropolitan centers which weaken (however slightly in the present stage) the power of the corporate ruling class and its military apparatus. Particular local tactics must, of course, be worked out by revolutionary groups in the light of concrete conditions prevailing in each metropolitan area.
“Given the above position, LSM’s principles of anti-imperialist work can be summarized as follows:
“( 1) To accelerate, through various concrete forms of material support, political education and ideological struggle, that revolutionary process whereby vanguard subjugated classes and peoples in the countryside are fighting their way out of the imperialist system and contributing significantly to the emergence of post-capitalist socialist internationalism;
“( 2) To unceasingly strive to achieve an international socialist content and direction to the various struggles emerging within the metropolitan centers as contradictions there sharpen due to revolutionary successes in the countryside and the resulting decline in imperialist super-profits and ruling-class capacity to sustain ‘peoples imperialism’;
“( 3) To work toward the formation of revolutionary internationalist structures and forms of effective collaboration across national lines, and at the same time fight against those tendencies which, if not checked, might well lead to a post-capitalist world of unevenly developed, internally stratified and competitive (if not warring) ‘socialist’ countries.”
For the LSM, there was no doubt that Third World liberation movements were the most important forces fighting the capitalist and imperialist system. In 1968, LSM members had visited Angola to write a book about the liberation struggle led by the MPLA. They returned with a “shopping list” of technical and medical equipment that the MPLA needed. The practice of the LSM would subsequently focus on two things: First, disseminating information about Third World struggles in North America. Second, shipping clothes, medicines, foodstuffs, radio equipment, printing machines, and other materials to the MPLA, FRELIMO in Mozambique, SWAPO in Namibia, and the PFLO in Oman

From above, where/which are the "potentially progressive strata or elements" in Global North countries today? And how are they to be mobilized?

The Weathermen had to choose between two kinds of actions with different objectives. The first was to target imperialist institutions and interfere with their operations. Examples were attacks on the war industry and military infrastructure. The second was “armed propaganda,” that is, to demonstrate the possibility of militant resistance and expose the system’s weaknesses.
In the end, most of the Weather Underground’s actions fell into the latter category. Their targets were mainly symbolic, for example when a small bomb went off in the toilets of the US Capitol in Washington DC, the “heart of the beast,” in March 1971. In May 1972, they targeted the Pentagon, and in June 1974 Gulf Oil. Every time, the Weather Underground made sure that no one was hurt. Causing maximum damage was not the goal; the actions were meant to send a message and inspire others. It is a mistake to compare the Weather Underground to organizations like the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades in Italy.
LSM member Carrol Ishee wrote a comradely critique of the Weather Underground in the journal LSM News in 1975. He questioned the power of symbolic actions. The LSM did not reject armed struggle in the imperialist countries, but they felt it would be most effective if directly linked to struggles in the Third World. Ishee provided an example from Portugal, where, in April 1973, the Portuguese Revolutionary Brigades (Brigadas Revolucionárias ) broke into the Portuguese army headquarters in Lisbon and made off with numerous documents of great use to the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies.
We never had any direct contact with the Weather Underground. Our approach was different. Our actions were neither direct attacks against imperialism nor symbolic actions. They were not meant to mobilize the working class. Their purpose was to provide material support. Despite these differences, I found some striking similarities between the Weather Underground and our group when I recently read David Gilbert’s autobiography Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond . The significance of the Vietnam War, the urge to fight the imperialist system, the desire to move from protest to resistance—all of this was part of our history, too. There are also obvious similarities in operating undercover and operating underground : both require precautions against surveillance, fake identities, safe houses, etc.

Shift in theoretical perspective from Leninist conception of imperialism to more contemporary theories:

In M-KA, we saw ourselves as KAK’s true heir. We had the same political convictions and engaged in the same practice. The main difference was a change in our internal organization: with Appel gone, individual members had more influence and decisions were made by consensus. There were theoretical innovations, too. In KAK, all discussions had started and ended with Lenin. In 1975, some of us wanted to update the analysis of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. We looked at direct investments and profit rates, and it seemed obvious to us that direct investments in the Third World were much lower than direct investments among imperialist countries. Profits from direct investments in the Third World were a little higher (much higher with respect to oil and certain minerals) than from direct investments in imperialist countries, but not enough to explain the global differences in living conditions. Appel had had great reservations about adding new theorists to KAK’s (very limited) canon. It was only in M-KA that we were able to update Lenin with the help of the new imperialism theories of the 1960s and 70s.

Chapter 4: The Golden Age of Imperialism Theory

Lauesen summarizes the major new theorists of imperialism and their contributions. Specific highlights (not the overall description of their theories) noted here.

According to Emmanuel, the historical basis for unequal exchange was laid by colonialism between 1500 and 1800. Once imperialism engulfed the planet, unequal exchange was brought to new heights.
The unequal relationship between center and periphery had been cemented by the 1880s. While only subsistence wages were being paid in the latter, wages were significantly higher in the former. Since then, the gap has only widened. This is the result of two simultaneous processes: the struggle of the working classes in the center for better pay and living conditions, and the oppression and exploitation of the people in the periphery. According to the theory of unequal exchange, wages are key to assessing a country’s position in the imperialist order. Emmanuel addressed a reality that has been denied in liberal (and neoliberal) theory, namely, that internationally capital is much more mobile than labor. Only restrictions on the free movement of labor can generate the enormous global differences in wages that we see today. With regard to their actual value, goods produced in the Global North are sold for a relatively high price, and goods produced in the Global South for a relatively low one. By value, we understand the amount of socially necessary labor-time used in production. The notion of unequal exchange in trade between the Global North and South is based on a Marxist understanding of value insofar as this trade implies value hidden in the low prices of goods produced by cheap labor.

Another reason why Emmanuel appealed to us was his clarity on the political consequences of unequal exchange, namely the creation of a labor aristocracy:
“When however the relative importance of the national exploitation from which a working class suffers through belonging to the proletariat diminishes continually as compared with that from which it benefits through belonging to a privileged nation, a moment comes when the aim of increasing the national income in absolute terms prevails over that of the relative share of one part of the nation over the other. From that point onward, the principle of national solidarity ceases to be challenged in principle, however violent and radical the struggle over the sharing of the cake may be. Thereafter a de facto united front of the workers and capitalists of the well-to-do countries, directed against the poor nations, coexists with an internal trade-union struggle over the sharing of the loot. Under these conditions this trade-union struggle necessarily becomes more and more a sort of settlement of accounts between partners, and it is no accident that in the richest countries, such as the United States—with similar tendencies already apparent in other big capitalist countries—militant trade-union struggle is degenerating first into trade unionism of the classic British type, then into corporatism, and finally into racketeering.”

Wallerstein adopted Emmanuel’s notion of unequal exchange. But while Emmanuel focused on the economy, Wallerstein focused on the state:
“The concentration of capital in core zones created both the fiscal base and the political motivation to create relatively strong state-machineries, among whose many capacities was that of ensuring that the state machineries of peripheral zones became or remained relatively weaker. They could thereby pressure these state-structures to accept, even promote greater specialization in their jurisdiction in tasks lower down the hierarchy of commodity chains, utilizing lower-paid work-forces and creating (reinforcing) the relevant household structures to permit such work-forces to survive. Thus did historical capitalism actually create the so-called historical levels of wages which have become so dramatically divergent in different zones of the world-system.”

Amin has paid particular attention to capitalist monopolies. He has identified five monopolies of central importance for unequal exchange:

1. The monopoly of technology;
2. The monopoly of global finance;
3. The monopoly of access to natural resources;
4. The monopoly of international communications and mass media;
5. The monopoly of weapons of mass destruction.

These monopolies and the superprofits they generate are what have made it possible for the working classes of the imperialist countries to receive relatively high wages.
A central feature of Amin’s work is the notion of delinking. Amin believes that the only way for Third World countries to reach real political and economic independence is to detach themselves from the capitalist world market. Unequal exchange can only end when the countries in the periphery no longer serve the needs of the core countries. This would break the logic of capitalism and make socialism possible. In the core countries, a crisis would ensue challenging the historical compromise between capital and labor. According to Amin, the future of class struggle in the core countries depends on political developments in the periphery.

Lauesen also turns back to nat-lib struggles and the challenges they faced (reasons for "failure", at least to create socialist states).

We were in close contact with the liberation movements we supported. Their socialist convictions were definitely genuine. In analyzing the legacy of the liberation struggles, it is too easy to simply focus on how power corrupts. There were other reasons for socialism not becoming a reality. Needless to say, each struggle had its unique features, but I will focus on three that affected them all: the structure of the global economy; the question of power in a nation state; and the lack of socialist examples.

Working-class victories in national class struggles always have international significance. But this also poses a problem: the bourgeoisies of all capitalist nations will try to reverse them. The Russian Revolution faced the intervention of several foreign forces; both the UK and the US supported the Whites. The history of the Soviet Union was characterized by outside threats, whether from Nazi Germany or from Ronald Reagan’s crusade against the “Evil Empire.” The situation was the same in China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and all other countries where socialist revolutions succeeded. Many counterrevolutionary movements were sponsored by the US: UNITA in Angola, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Mozambican National Resistance, and others. The Cold War arms race created a claustrophobic, paranoid, and defensive socialism that did not allow for democratic socialist development.
The same circumstances that facilitate communist rebellion—that is, wars raging between nations—also facilitate counterrevolutionary attacks supported by foreign powers. This, in turn, leads to internal oppression and militarization. All revolutions that occurred during the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, had to contend with this. On the one hand, the constant tension between the US and the Soviet Union created openings for Third World revolutions; on the other hand, it severely limited the political options these revolutions had. It was difficult to escape the political playing field defined by the superpowers, even for movements that tried to place themselves outside of it, such as the anticolonial movements of Asia and Africa, the democratic movements of Latin America, or the Black Power movement in the US. In the end, they were all pawns in a game played by the world’s most powerful states—a game dangerous enough to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Actually existing socialism—and, with it, the anti-imperialist movement of the 1970s and 80s—vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The window of opportunity had been opened by the two global superpowers trying to neutralize one another; it was now closed. Material support for liberation movements was no longer forthcoming, and for the former colonies that had become independent countries, it was now more difficult than ever to pursue a socialist course. Neoliberal capitalism set the agenda and integrated the newly independent countries into the capitalist world market on its own terms. To delink and build self-reliant economies was a herculean task that the newly independent countries were unable to accomplish. This also meant that they were constantly drained of resources that would have been vital to building strong national economies; they were destined to remain poor. Any attempt at implementing socialist policies despite the difficult circumstances was met with opposition from the US and, if necessary, simply crushed.
The revolutionary movements of the twentieth century made huge sacrifices in their attempts to topple the dominant order. Still, they failed, being met with brute force as well as cunning strategies of cooptation. It is important, however, to remember that each of these movements forced capitalism to adapt. Capitalism has gone through enormous changes in the past hundred years. The national liberation struggles did not lead to world revolution or even produce individual socialist nation states, but it would be wrong to say that they achieved nothing. They brought an end to colonialism in Africa and Asia. They brought an end to the apartheid regime of South Africa. Dictators in Latin America were toppled. The fate of the Palestinians entered the global consciousness.
What is the situation today? The former colonies have not been able to escape imperialism, despite independence. The ruling elites of the newly independent countries constitute—more or less willingly— a class of compradors. Workers and peasants have largely lost faith in socialism and now put their hopes in either Islamism or liberal democracy. This has extended the life of global capitalism. The crisis of 2007, however, was an early sign that it is nearing its end. The causes underlying the crisis went much deeper than irresponsible financial speculation, and they will not go away. The next thirty years will see many windows of opportunity for radical change. If the 1970s were characterized by too much optimism, then the present is characterized by too much pessimism.

Part Two: Globalized Capitalism

Chapter 5: Neoliberal Globalization

Bringing us from the 70s up to the present, and describing the new modes of economic imperialism.

Transnational corporations aim to lower production costs and increase profits by replacing high-wage labor with low-wage labor. This has led to a new stream of superprofits and a transfer of wealth (in the form of cheap goods) to consumers in the imperialist countries. Neoliberal globalization has strengthened capitalism’s parasitic traits. The relationship between capital and labor has become a global relationship between Northern capital and Southern labor. It represents a “pure” capitalist form of imperialism; that is, a form of exploitation that relies on an economic framework rather than on colonial violence. This does not mean that it is detached from colonial history or that all forms of violence are gone. No economic system will ever be “pure” in that sense.

On the "post-industrial" West, and a clear definition of productive labor:

In the 1980s, it became popular to describe Western societies as “post-industrial.” Immaterial labor, meaning labor related to knowledge, information, communications, service, creativity, and what has been dubbed the “experience economy” became increasingly important. We are a far cry from a “post-industrial” world, however: computers, screens, smart phones, and all the other consumer goods we use in ever increasing quantities are produced by actual people. Globally, there are more industrial workers today than four decades ago, not less. Industrial production has not disappeared, it has only been moved out of sight if you live in the Global North. While the labor is done in the South, it is still controlled by the North, which handles finance and trade, and enforces property rights.
The industrialization of the South goes hand in hand with the rise of unproductive labor in the North. Today, about half of the workforce in the North is involved in unproductive labor. As an article in the Economist put it in 2012: “[F]actory floors today often seem deserted, whereas the office blocks nearby are full of designers, IT specialists, accountants, logistics experts, marketing staff, customer-relations managers, cooks and cleaners.” 352 Economists have characterized the present phase of globalization as one “in which production and the realization of value are more delinked geographically than ever before.”
It is important to remember that everything consumed by workers involved in both productive and unproductive labor comes from the productive sector. Let us look at the security guards hired at factories, as an example to illustrate this. They create a common good, security. But if the number of security workers is rising in relation to industrial workers, then the average production per worker declines. Security workers are reliant on the value produced by industrial workers. Hence, the rise of unproductive labor in the North depends on the increased exploitation of productive labor in the South. Otherwise, profits would fall. Already in 1990, James Devine pointed out that “if the center uses unproductive labor more than the world average … then value will be transferred to the center.”

Labor arbitrage takes two forms: First, production is moved to low-wage countries. Second, labor is imported from low-wage countries. The first is by far the most important because the mobility of labor is strongly limited by migration laws, as the militarized borders of the European Union and the US make painfully obvious. Industries that cannot easily move, for example agriculture, construction, or the care industry, do what they can to import cheap labor. Migrant workers toil in the fields of the US and on European construction sites. Their wages are lower than those of the “native” working class, but they are significantly higher than what they could earn at home. According to the World Bank, each of the 210,000 Bangladeshi immigrants who resided in England in 2013 sent, on average, US$4,058 to their families in Bangladesh. That same year, the average income of a worker in Bangladesh’s textile industry was US$1,380. This means that a Bangladeshi immigrant worker in the UK could save three times more money than what a Bangladeshi worker in the textile industry could earn.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf States have become entirely dependent on the import of low-wage labor. Migrant workers are brought into the country when they are needed, and sent away when they are not. This is particularly pronounced in the construction and service industries. The skylines of Dubai and Qatar have been built by workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Philippines. William Robinson has described their situation: “Neither employers nor the state wants to do away with immigrant labour. To the contrary, they want … its maximum exploitation together with its disposal when necessary.”
Laborers such as these make up today’s world proletariat. There are millions toiling in factories, mines, and plantations across the Global South. The global market for labor is determined by the global labor arbitrage, which is directly linked to both the limited mobility of labor and the vast reserve army of labor that exists in the Global South. According to the World Bank, “international wage price gaps exceed any other form of border-induced price gap by an order of magnitude or more.” Labor arbitrage allows a form of exploitation that is not dependent on political or military oppression and can simply rely on the global labor market. This does not mean, however, that oppression and violence have disappeared. They are necessary to maintain state power, global chains of production, and the division of the labor market. One of the most important functions of the state today is to control the movement across its borders—not of commodities and capital, but of people.

The number of migrants moving from the Global South to the Global North today pales in comparison to the number of Europeans who emigrated between 1850 and 1920. As mentioned above, 17 percent of the European population left their home countries during that period. In the last decades, only 0.8 percent of the Global South’s labor force has moved North. That the number is not higher is particularly striking if we consider the circumstances. Europeans moved to countries where wages were comparable to those they were used to. Migrants from the Global South move to countries where wages are often ten times more than what they are used to. Transportation has become faster and safer, and it is much easier today to keep in touch with friends and family. What keeps people from the Global South away despite all this, is easy to identify: economic, legal, and physical restrictions. People who live in a country that is not their country of birth comprise only 3 percent of the global population—and only 35 percent of them have moved from the Global South to the Global North. By comparison, in any given year during the second half of the nineteenth century, foreign-born residents made up 10 percent of the world population.
Capitalism has profited immensely from the hierarchies within the international labor market. The relocation of production to the Global South helped raise profits, which the working classes in the imperialist countries benefited from as well. Their wages remained at least relatively stable and consumer goods became cheaper. Had capital not been able to stop the 1970s decline in profit rates, social unrest and the end of the historic class compromise would have been likely. 381 Capital in the Global North is still in trouble, however, as migration creates enormous pressures for it. Capital has an interest in using cheap migrant labor, but this threatens class compromise. We find this expressed in the skepticism, or even hostility, with which many European workers eye migration. With their own wages and welfare services under threat, they fear increased competition on the labor market.
The political framework of class compromise is parliamentary democracy. Today, an increasing number of working-class people vote for right-wing parties. In response, social democratic parties have adopted right-wing rhetoric and policies. Neoliberal parties find themselves in a double bind: they cannot bring in unlimited numbers of migrants, nor can they alter the economic system that causes migration.
There are few places in the world where the Global South geographically meets the Global North. At these places, mines, walls, barbed wire fences, soldiers, and navy ships are supposed to prevent migration. In the nineteenth century, migrants dreamed of getting their own land. Today, they dream of getting a job. Never have there been so many people wanting to emigrate as today—and never have there been so many determined to prevent others from doing so. Neoliberal states mobilize an increasing number of police and soldiers to keep migrants and refugees from crossing their borders. The Mediterranean sea and the US–Mexico border have been transformed into death zones, as thousands of desperate people from low-wage countries die in their attempts to reach the promised land.

But even if they succeed, fortune is not guaranteed. It has become very difficult to receive citizenship in the countries of the Global North. Few of the arriving migrants will find legal work and access to the institutions of the welfare state. Citizenship has become a biopolitical border. To receive it, you have to work your way up in the migrant hierarchy. There are people with temporary residency, people with permanent residency, people who are allowed to bring their families, etc. Your access to the welfare state depends on the level you have reached.
The immigration system also distinguishes between “political refugees” and “economic migrants”; the latter are sometimes, cynically, called migrants for “personal convenience.” As a consequence, political persecution is seen as an escape route from poverty; it is not only political persecution, however, that entails physical harm and death—poverty does too. Even liberal refugee policies often favor political intellectuals at the expense of poor workers and peasants. Torture justifies refugee status, but starvation does not. Wilma A. Dunaway and Donald A. Clelland write: “In the early 21st century, one of the worst ethnic/racial inequalities of the world-system lies in how the core countries manage the crisis-level flows of refugees. While Western and Japanese media and politicians fuel public fears that their countries are being inundated by these foreigners, the core externalizes this human burden to countries with fewer economic resources to bear the costs.”
Despite the level of exploitation that the countries at the periphery of the capitalist world system are already suffering from, the core countries make them pay for a “refugee crisis” they themselves have created. Military intervention is an important aspect of this. In 2014, more than half of the world’s refugees had left their homes due to the military involvement of imperialist countries in the Middle East and Afghanistan. That same year, 48 percent of the world’s refugees found shelter in countries of the Global South, while the countries of the Global North granted only 9 percent of them asylum.
A majority of the world’s refugees find homes in countries with unemployment rates up to eight times higher than in the countries of the Global North. At least half the world’s refugees reside in countries in which a majority of the population live on less than $2 a day.

With the defeat of Nazism and the era of decolonization, racism based on biology and science was largely discredited. Today’s racism is expressed in terms of cultural norms and values. Almost everyone agrees that all human beings are essentially equal and that the color of one’s skin does not matter. As long as we follow the right norms and values, so the common view holds, we all have the same opportunities in life. In this sense, today’s racism is “post-colonial.” The global wage gap and strict migration laws have seemingly nothing to do with it. Yet, it is with regard to migrants and refugees that the new racism becomes painfully obvious. In its institutional form, it means the exclusion from citizenship. While open racial, or even cultural, prejudice has become unacceptable, the right to citizenship in a country of the Global North remains reserved for a small minority of the world’s population. Race is not an official reason to deny anyone citizenship; the reasons are economic ones. But the result is clear: the vast majority of the people who are denied citizenship in the countries of the Global North are not white. There is even a special word for migrants who pass the economic entry test: “expats.” They can be doctors, engineers, or IT specialists. In any case, they are acceptable migrants. Class, of course, mitigates the exclusion. Members of the Global South’s national bourgeoisies can cross the borders into the Global North without problems. They frequent their homes in Paris, go weekend shopping in London, and send their children to schools and universities in New York.

Lauesen ends the chapter with a very compelling argument for viewing imperialism as a global apartheid:

The situation in the Gulf States resembles the apartheid system of South Africa: a minority of affluent and privileged citizens is being served by the poor and discriminated-against masses. It is also a mirror image of the global apartheid created by the capitalist world system.
There are two reasons why the word “apartheid” is not misplaced. First, the capitalist world system implies racial and national hierarchies as well as legal, physical, and sometimes violent restrictions imposed on the mobility of labor. Second, production and consumption are being divided along the same lines that divide the world into low-wage countries and high-wage countries. Citizenship in a country of the Global North is a reward, citizenship in a country of the Global South a punishment. The question of who is going to be rewarded and who is going to be punished is decided in a birth lottery. Of course, there are also differences between citizens in countries of the Global North: if you are born into a rich family, expect a generous inheritance, and have an influential social network, you will have few material problems in life. But due to working-class struggles and class compromise, there have been political interventions in the form of progressive taxation, access to education and health care, and so on, in order to reduce this inequality and promote social mobility. This is not happening in the Global South. Even a poor US citizen is relatively rich compared with a citizen of Mexico. For the latter, the fastest way to climb up the social ladder is to cross the border into the US—which, in many cases, entails a risk to one’s life.

Chapter 6: Unequal Exchange Revisited

Lauesen goes deeper into UE today.

From a Marxist perspective, some commodities are sold for less than their value and others for more. Price is not the same as value. Price determines the profit rate, but also the distribution of surplus-value, both between capital and labor (in the form of profits for the former and wages for the latter), and between factions of capital with different organic compositions (via the average rate of profit). The transformation of value into price is therefore highly dependent on the political relationship between capital and labor as well as between different factions of capital. The redistribution of value and surplus-value through market prices not only occurs between workers and factions of capital within a single country, but also globally, as a result of transnational movements of capital, trade, and production. Marx’s theory about the transformation of value into price assumed an integrated market for goods, capital, and labor. Such markets tend to form a single price for a single good, balance out profit rates, and pay the same wage for the same kind of labor. This is what we see in the US, the EU, and Japan. The global market is different: it is an integrated market with respect to the movement of capital and goods, but not with respect to labor. Therefore, the wages paid for the same kind of labor can differ widely. This also applies to global chains of production. Depending on where labor is done, its impact on the price of a product is very different. The surplus-value of labor in one part of the world (the Global South) raises profits and consumption in another part of the world (the Global North). The value added in the happy-face smiley’s curve includes not only the value created by a company in its home country but also the value created elsewhere and usurped by capital via the price for which a commodity is sold on the market. Value added is in reality value captured. In short, the basis for the profits made by companies in the North is created in the South.
Value is not only redistributed from the South to the North via price. In a world where prices for most commodities are determined by a common world market price, while the prices for labor are not, there are different ways to redistribute value. The reason for labor in the Global South being much cheaper than labor in the Global North is not that labor in the South creates less value. The reason is that laborers in the South are more oppressed and exploited. The relatively high wages in the North allow workers to consume goods whose value is higher than what they themselves produce. In other words, value is transferred from the South to the North via the profits made from global chains of production and the relatively low prices for goods produced in the South. This is the essence of imperialism today.

Clelland concludes that the total dark value of an iPad, conservatively calculated, is no less than US$472. Producing it in the Global North would almost double the costs of production and therefore also the sales price. Without the dark value gained by production in Asia, Apple would sell less iPads and lose profits. But dark value does not just benefit transnational corporations: the lion’s share is passed on to consumers in the Global North in the form of lower prices. In other words, consumers in the Global North benefit from the exploitation of workers in the Global South. For what they make in one hour of work, consumers in the Global North can buy goods whose production implies numerous hours of low-paid (or unpaid) labor, environmental destruction, and the exploitation of valuable raw materials.

Timothy Kerswell has illustrated this development by comparing the situation in the US with that of China. He chose these two countries because of their importance for the global economy, but also because they engage in so much trade. With respect to the countries’ labor forces, Kerswell relied on national labor market statistics. He concluded that 66.8 percent of China’s labor force belong to the productive sector, while 33.2 percent work in sales, services, and transport (the so-called tertiary sector, or what we could call the consumptive sector). In the US, it is almost the exact opposite: 27 percent work in the productive sector and 73 percent in the consumptive sector. In short, China is a producer economy and the US is a consumer economy.
There are two possible explanations for how a country can have a strong economy when 73 percent of its labor force works in the unproductive sector. Either the 27 percent working in the productive sector create enough value for the entire nation to prosper—or value is created elsewhere. In 2010, the US had a trade deficit of US$497 billion. Imports from China exceeded exports to China by US$365 billion. This confirms that value must be being transferred to the US via the import of Chinese goods, but none of this value is visible in trade statistics or GDPs. It is included, and hidden, in the price that the goods are sold for. If the 27 percent of US workers involved in industrial production were able to create enough value to sustain national economic growth, there would be no reason to import all those goods from China. How the hidden value transferred to the US and other countries in the Global North is divided between capital and labor there depends on power-sharing agreements reached by class compromise.

Some theorists have related the notion of unequal exchange to ecological devastation. They have analyzed the natural resources required in industrial production in the Global South. Stephen G. Bunker has written about the Amazon region. He compares a “mode of extraction” to a mode of production, and has reached the conclusion that “the unbalanced flows of energy and matter from extractive peripheries to the productive core provide better measures of unequal exchange in a world economic system than do flows of commodities measured in labor or prices.” He adds that “the fundamental values in lumber, in minerals, oil, fish, and so forth, are predominantly in the good itself rather than in the labor incorporated in it.”

In above quote we have a new way of seeing natural resource exploitation that would otherwise be discounted by exclusively labor theory of value perspective (e.g. Marx's idea that natural resources have no "value" independent of labor required to extract and bring them to market)

Globalization has eradicated any natural limits on the exploitation of resources, since the people responsible won’t suffer the consequences (at least not right away). Not only do we receive cheap goods from China, we are also destroying China’s environment. But who cares? I live in a city in the Global North, Copenhagen, which aims to become carbon-neutral by the year 2025. It is quite likely that this will be achieved, but doing so will only be possible because we won’t have to deal with the consequences of our consumption. If the carbon emissions from the production of the goods consumed by Copenhagen’s residents were counted in the city’s carbon emissions, it would be utterly impossible for us to become carbon-neutral.

The exponential growth that characterizes capitalism resembles cancer. Sustainability is impossible within a capitalist framework. Competition between countries hoping to attract foreign investment means ecological concerns are pushed to the side. Capital has always looked to externalize the costs of pollution; paying for them would threaten profits and accumulation. In the coming decades, lack of raw materials and clean water and other ecological shortages will have enormous consequences for our societies, yet hardly anything is being done politically to prevent this. If anything, politicians do their utmost to sabotage such efforts. The notion of resilience has replaced that of sustainability. In this context, “resilience” simply means being able to make it through catastrophes, not avert them. But is that even possible? Our survival depends on entirely new approaches to growth, consumption, and the relationship between humankind and nature. This requires new values as well as a critical investigation of capitalist production. At a minimum, we need some kind of “lifeboat socialism,” in which the fair allocation and balanced use of resources will replace individual consumption as the main principle of production and distribution. This is inevitable, and a new world order is quite likely to follow.

Chapter 7: The Global Class Divide

Describing the divergent fates of the Global North and Global South working classes, as well as an outline of the major global classes (proletarians, peasants, middle class in Global South, labor aristocracy in Global North, and global bourgeoisie). This section also goes over several major contradictions (reactionary nationalism vs. neoliberalism in the West, state-directed development vs. capitalism in China) and how they might play out in the coming decades.

Once wages rise above the subsistence level, the formerly clear distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat becomes much less obvious. Workers now receive money that can potentially be turned into capital, or used to acquire means of production. Whether they do this or whether they use the extra money for consumption is their personal choice. They can buy consumer goods, they can buy stocks in a company, they can even start their own company. Whatever they do, they have a chance to accumulate money, and they have access to credit.
To regard everyone who does not own means of production and who sells their labor-power as a proletarian is insufficient if we want to understand social relationships and related power dynamics. In 2006, football players in the English Premier League earned £676,000 on average, plus bonuses. This is, of course, an extreme example, but it reflects a pattern: in capitalism, administrators, managers, academics, and so forth, are all wage laborers, yet they all consume more value than they create. Where we draw the line between those who consume less value than they create and those who consume more value than they create, is not a moral question, it is a mathematical question. The point being: receiving a wage is not enough to define a person’s economic status in any meaningful way. Perhaps most importantly: wage levels impact political consciousness.
[...]
To uphold the notion of two major classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and to apply this globally, masks the enormous differences that exist between workers. This makes it impossible to understand that their interests (at least their short-term interests) are also enormously different. Only when we acknowledge these differences can we develop strategies that help us overcome the difficulties for working-class unity created by imperialism.

In recent years, both academics and journalists have written much about the so-called new middle class of the Global South, created by the process of industrialization. However, the term “middle class” should be taken with a pinch of salt. We are not talking about families with an SUV and two dogs in a suburban home. According to the World Bank, you belong to the middle class of the Global South if you earn US$2 to US$13 a day. Only if you earn less than US$2, are you considered poor. In 2005, about half of the Global South’s population was middle class, according to such standards—in China, it was two thirds. In sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, it was only one in four.
The economist Nancy Birdsall, who worked for the World Bank Group for many years, counts only people who earn at least US$10 a day as part of the Global South’s middle class. If we accept her standard, then only 3 percent of China’s urban population, and only 1 percent of its rural population, are middle class. In South Africa, it would put the middle class at 8 percent of the population, in Brazil at 19, and in Mexico at 28. If the same standard was used for the US, the middle class would be 91 percent of the population.
There does exist a middle class in the Global South that resembles the middle classes of the North. The ritzy shopping malls of Shanghai, New Delhi, or Jakarta attest to this. But this middle class cannot be measured in percentage points, only in fractions of a percent. The reason it has become visible in a country like China is because of China’s huge population. There are as many as three hundred thousand US dollar millionaires in China today. The country has become a very lucrative market for companies like BMW. We also meet the new middle classes of China and India as tourists all over the world. But none of this means that the masses in these countries are on their way to a European lifestyle. First and foremost, the industrialization of the Global South has created a new proletariat, not a new middle class.

Several factors tie the interests of the working classes of the North to global capital. The transnational corporations’ superprofits made from investments in the Global South allow them to pay relatively high wages in the Global North, providing workers there with significant purchasing power. The wages are also high enough to fund an extensive welfare system via taxation (although there are huge differences between, say, the USA and the Scandinavian countries). At the same time, the low wages of the Global South keep prices for goods produced there relatively low. Workers in the Global North benefit from this to the point where they can invest parts of their income into buying their own homes. This makes them concerned about things like the real estate market, interest rates, property taxes, and so on. These are not traditional proletarian concerns.
Another factor that links the working classes of the Global North to global capital is the pension system. Pension systems vary greatly from country to country, and also from industry to industry, but there are some common features. Pension funds and private pensions have become increasingly common. This means that pensions are based on investments in stocks, bonds, and other securities, even real estate speculation. The days when the state alone was responsible for workers’ pensions are long gone.
[...]
We can conclude from this brief survey of the pension system that many workers in the Global North have invested heavily in stocks and bonds via their retirement accounts. In other words, their well-being in retirement is directly linked to the well-being of capitalism. They have much more to lose than their chains. Large parts of the population of the Global North will live as pensioners off their own capital. The concept of the parasite state is far from obsolete.

Almost all countries in the Global South now have very rich bourgeoisies. In 1996, there were no dollar billionaires in either Russia or China. In 2010, there were seventy in Russia and seventy-two in China. According to the Hurun Global Rich List of 2016, 53 percent of the world’s wealthiest people were from the Global South, and, for the first time, China surpassed the United States in the number of billionaires (568 vs. 535). Brazil had more billionaires than France, Canada, or Australia. Both South Korea and Turkey had more than Australia and Italy. The billionaires from the Global South form a particular faction of global capital. Their wealth is closely tied to the export industry. They have no reason to challenge the global division of labor that produces their wealth, even if it simultaneously reproduces imperial and racial exploitation.

In response to above: are there any sections of national bourgeoisies that ARE willing to challenge Western-led order? How does this help to explain "anti-systemic" capitalist states (e.g. Russia, Iran)?

In the Global North, neoliberalism is challenged by right-wing populism, which is strongly supported by the working classes and sections of the middle classes. It is also supported by national-conservative factions of capital. Once again, contradictions in the Global North set the agenda for changes in the world system. But the role of the Global South has become much more important—one need only think of China’s new position in the world order.
The contradictions that were the engine of capitalist development during the last two hundred years mainly emerged in the Global North. Capitalist development was driven by imperialism. Ongoing accumulation would not have been possible otherwise. This has created a polarization of the world that not only implies a permanent risk of war, but also of collapse. The more central industrial production in the Global South becomes for the system, the less central its old center becomes. The new global division of labor has given birth to productive forces in the Global South that have the power to undermine the imperialist order and create socialism. The objective possibilities for the countries of the Global South to free themselves from imperialist domination are much greater today than they were fifty years ago. The question is whether there is enough political will and organization to make this a reality.
China occupies a special position. It has become a significant economic and political power. At the 2017 congress of its Communist Party, Xi Jinping declared that the country was ready to be one of the main actors on the world stage. Today, China appears not only more far-sighted than the US but also more reliable. It is emerging as a leader in the Global South and the main rival to the US for global dominance. While the US is trying to maintain global hegemony by imperialist means, China aims to shed its economic and political dependence on the Global North. Soon, the global balance of power will, once again, be divided between two poles (at least), which will open up new windows of opportunity for radical social change.
If we are trapped in objectivism, we might miss those windows and speak cynically of some “necessary historical processes.” This is reflected in the pessimism that characterizes the left in the Global North today. Given the thirty-year success of neoliberalism and the decline of the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist movements of the 1970s, pessimism is understandable. But it is also grist for capitalism’s mill, since it seems to confirm Margaret Thatcher’s infamous phrase: “There is no alternative.” Resistance seems futile. Perhaps there was less reason for optimism in the 1970s than we thought at the time. But pessimism doesn’t help us. Today’s pessimism has led to a loss of radical perspectives. Reforms within the capitalist system and the institutional framework of the state seem to be the most we can achieve. I firmly believe there is reason for optimism. The ruling system is in crisis and is highly unstable. The objective conditions for social change are good. The problem is the subjective forces—and pessimism is a big part of it.
If we want to develop an effective strategy to change the world, we need to meet two requirements: We must understand the capitalist mechanisms that reproduce imperialism, and we must understand the class tensions that threaten the system’s stability. We must, in the words of Mao, identify the principal contradictions—the contradictions that must be deepened to bring the system to its knees.

We now see why it is unlikely that global capital will continue to generate enough surplus-value to secure profits. It will try, but this will force it to abandon its compromise with the formerly dangerous classes. Environmental problems will also accelerate. It is unlikely that the current structural crisis will be overcome. The next decades will be characterized by strong economic fluctuation, depression, and social conflict.
There have been many predictions of capitalism’s end. It was announced in the 1870s, in the 1930s, and in the 1970s, but, so far, capitalism has always got back on its feet. Why should it be different this time? For example, couldn’t a new labor aristocracy arise in the South and create the new market that capitalism so desperately needs? Sections of the working class and of the middle class, both in industry and management, do occupy privileged positions in the Global South, but their wages are only a fraction of those paid in the Global North. Together with others in the Global South, they will demand a global redistribution of wealth. As we have seen, wages have in recent years risen for Chinese industrial workers. This was directly related to the financial crisis of 2007. China’s exports were falling and the Chinese government had to stimulate the domestic market. This hurt transnational and Chinese capital, but the Communist Party of China prioritizes the strength of the national economy over capital’s interests. In most other countries in the Global South, however, the situation is very different. It is difficult to make political decisions that defy the demands of neoliberalism. Besides, even if a general increase in wages in the Global South would probably create new markets, it would hurt markets and profits in the Global North, and jeopardize the global labor arbitrage necessary for ongoing accumulation.
Another possible option for capital to beat the crisis is to unleash a new wave of proletarianization. This has worked very well over the past two hundred years. The problem is that it no longer works if there is no one left to proletarianize. While peasants still exist, their numbers have been dwindling. 464 The single biggest source of new proletarians, China, will soon have proletarianized the entire nation. The remaining peripheral regions in Asia and Africa do not have the strong state apparatus, political stability, or population size required for another significant wave of proletarianization.
To argue that rising wages in the South will secure the continuation of capitalism as a global system and that China is just replacing the United States as the hegemonic power, overlooks the fundamental contradiction in capitalist accumulation. You cannot have it both ways: low wages which generate profits on the one hand, and on the other hand a flourishing market which ensures those profits can be realized through sales. Capitalism cannot support its own market in full, it requires an extra input of value from the outside in order to run smoothly. Capitalist China will face the same contradiction which Europe and North America solved by imperialist exploitation, yet it does not have a periphery it can exploit in order to escape the problem. China will not prevent the disintegration of the capitalist system as a whole. The best it can do is to try and secure its place in a future world-system, by adopting a socialist path.

It seems that we are on our way to a triple crisis, at the same time economic, ecological, and political.
Economic , because the working classes of the Global South will demand higher wages, while capitalism is running out of new peripheries. The falling profit rate for productive capital will slow down investment and therefore accumulation.
Ecological , because every credible scientific study tells us that we are heading toward catastrophe in the form of natural disasters, droughts, and shrinking harvests. The North has moved much of its industrial production to the South, but no one will escape the ecological and climatic consequences.
Political , because the crisis leaves the main political actors in the North in disarray. Both capital and the working class are divided in their attempts to save the system. There are factions of capital that want to continue with neoliberal globalization and change everything to keep everything the same. Other factions want to return to a nation-based form of capital accumulation, authoritarian rule, and warfare in order to secure the lion’s share of the global spoils. And then there are those factions that have given up on production altogether and focus exclusively on financial speculation. Among the working classes, there are winners and losers of globalization. Unsurprisingly, their reactions to the crisis differ, and there is a strong polarization between nation-based and class-based responses.
All three aspects of the crisis are tightly interwoven and pose a serious threat to the capitalist system. At this point, there don’t seem to be any viable alternatives, but a new world order will emerge from fiery struggles between progressive and reactionary forces.

Part Three: Politics in a Divided World

Chapter 8: A Window for Radical Change

This short chapter summarizes the destabilizing factors that will contribute to structural crisis and open a window for change in the next decades. It transitions to the next chapters which examine the forces or movements which could contribute to that change.

Chapter 9: The Trade Union Movement

Analysis of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as well as the labor movement more broadly.

Anner went on to explain that the Global South’s trade unions have not attained the same status and influence as many trade unions in the Global North. Indeed, this is reflected in the makeup of ITUC. Table II above shows the size of the global labor force, the number of members in trade unions linked to ITUC, and the number of ITUC delegates. It shows that most workers, especially in the Global South, are not organized in trade unions. It also shows that the Global North’s workforce, which makes up 18 percent of the planet’s overall workforce, is represented by 36 percent of ITUC delegates. The reason is that only 3 percent of all laborers belong to trade unions in the Global South compared with 17 percent in the Global North. Workers in the Global South have one ITUC delegate for every 3.26 million workers; workers in the Global North have one for every 1.27 million workers. This imbalance helps explain why ITUC rarely prioritizes the interests of workers in the Global South. One of the most important tasks for the international trade union movement is therefore to get more laborers in the Global South unionized. This, however, is a very challenging task due to the pace of industrialization, the size of the economy’s informal sector, and the massive political repression.

Lauesen's view of China's labor movement (like in other parts of the book, he seems to hedge on China and what system it represents):

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions is closely tied to the government. There has been much international criticism to the effect that the Chinese working class has no independent representatives, yet in recent years the All-China Federation of Trade Unions has supported workers’ demands across the country. Wages in China have risen more than in those countries with independent trade unions.
One of the most important labor struggles in China occurred at Tonghua Steel, which had been a state-owned steelworks in Jilin Province. In 2005, it was privatized and its name changed to Jianlong; 24,000 of its 36,000 workers lost their jobs and related benefits, migrant laborers were hired for half the previous workers’ wages, the new management got big bonuses, and new legislation allowed for an array of sanctions and punishments for unruly workers. From 2007, there was increased unrest among the workers, and in July 2009 they went on strike. When a senior manager threatened to fire the entire workforce, he was attacked and beaten to death. The police, present with thousands of officers, did not dare intervene. After this, there were no more privatizations in Jilin Province.
In 2010, wages in China stopped falling. The relationship between capital and the working class had reached a turning point. The urban working class now had significant bargaining power. The new generation of migrant workers has higher expectations with regard to wages and consumption. They are better educated, more politically conscious, and more likely to take militant action.

We have seen that the workers’ struggles of recent years have brought results. Capitalists were forced to raise wages and benefits, and local and provincial governments were obliged to raise the minimum wage. The monthly minimum wage in Shenzhen, for example, rose from US$150 in 2010 to US$301 in 2014. During the same period, it rose from US$160 to US$303 in Shanghai. Today, average income in China is comparable to average income in the poorest EU countries (all located in Eastern Europe). This trend cannot continue indefinitely, however, within the current political framework. The collaboration between Chinese and global capital is dependent on low wages. This has turned China into the world’s leading exporter, but rising labor costs threaten this position. Minqi Li writes: “In the late twentieth century, China’s capitalist transition created conditions for the global labor arbitrage that turned the global balance of power to the favor of neoliberal capitalism. In the early twenty-first century, as China emerges as the new center of working class movement, will it again fundamentally change the terms of the global class struggle, this time to the favor of the global working classes?”
We must not confuse the current situation in China with that of Europe in the late nineteenth century. Even if the Chinese government’s long-term goal is less dependency on exports and a stronger domestic market, and while working-class demands appear compatible with capitalism and the imperial system, China cannot copy European social democracy. It has no external proletariat to exploit. What we will see are rising contradictions in Chinese society itself.

At the same time, South Africa boasts some of the Global South’s most well-organized and radical trade unions. South African trade unions have the potential to turn workplace struggles into broad political movements demanding systemic change. They have also been pioneers in challenging the dominance of trade unions from the Global North in ITUC. Bongani Masuku, the international secretary of the most important of South Africa’s trade union alliances, COSATU, has divided the trade union alliances of the Global North into four categories:
“Firstly, there is the Big Four: AFL-CIO (US), DGB (Germany), TUC (Britain) and RENGO (Japan)—who are the core custodians of the most conservative policy positions, particularly as regards maintenance of imperialism. … In many instances, the Big Four recite the foreign policy verses of their ruling classes particularly as regards issues such as trade and underdevelopment of Africa as well as the Middle East. The second category consists of the social democratic unions. This is the Nordic plus Dutch grouping. These unions agree with most of our views but are not eager to challenge the Big Four. … They cannot, however, be relied upon for the most deeply profound and fundamental battles, particularly on confronting underdevelopment, trade and anti-imperialism. Thirdly, Southern European trade unions which include the CGIL (Italy), CCOO (Spain), CGT (Portugal). These unions have been historically progressive, possessing an anti-imperialist posture. There are recent signs of retreat. These unions are slightly more confident in challenging the Big Four in certain mild areas, but top toe on some major issues. Lastly, there are progressive individual unions that are part of federations that are not necessarily progressive. This is the case even within the Big Four. … [These progressive unions] share many of COSATU’s perspectives on global matters such as Palestine, trade and Africa’s development.”

The above quote from SA trade union leader is very lucid.

Currently, ITUC’s priority remains defending the capitalist welfare state, no matter how futile this may seem. ITUC criticizes neoliberal globalization, but not capitalism as such. It believes that the way forward for the Global South lies in copying the trade union movements of the Global North. With regard to China, ITUC wants to make the country’s labor movement more independent from the government. It echoes the principles of Solidarność under the state socialist regime in Poland. It seems that its primary motivation is to damage the Chinese regime rather than to support the Chinese working class. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions has proven more effective in improving the conditions of workers than any independent trade union in the Global South.

Chapter 10: Communist Parties and Social Movements

More on China:

From a nationalist perspective, Dengism was a success. Today, China is, once again, one the world’s great powers. From a socialist perspective, Dengism has a dubious record. China has gone from being one of the world’s economically most equal countries to one of the world’s most unequal.
[...]
China’s integration into the global capitalist economy has been very different from that of India, South Africa, or Brazil. The reasons why all these countries attract big foreign investors are the same: low wages, a comparatively well-educated, healthy, and disciplined workforce, and a modern and effective infrastructure. The difference between China and the others is that its integration into the world market is not based on a neoliberal national economy but on state capitalism built around a planned economy. This doesn’t always make a big difference on the ground, however. Low wages and hazardous working conditions in sweatshops and factories do not make the Communist Party’s claim that China is on the road to socialism appear very convincing.
According to the Communist Party of China, state capitalist development has three goals: to establish a highly developed, integrated, and diversified industrial sector, to establish a sound balance with the agricultural sector, and to make a planned national economy (which includes a state-controlled finance sector and state ownership of the land) an important factor in the world capitalist system. The critical question is whether China’s industrialization will indeed create an economic basis for socialism, or whether it will simply turn into a capitalist economy controlled by a national bourgeoisie making any form of socialism utterly impossible.

While China’s rise as a global economic power went hand in hand with the rise of neoliberalism, China’s long-term national interests are not identical with the long-term interests of global capital. China is trying to reshape international politics; it is challenging the hegemony of the Triad and wants to see a polycentric division of global power. The Chinese government increasingly represents the interests of the Global South in international debates. Its influence in Asia, Africa, and South America is growing; it invests heavily in infrastructure projects, implements alternative development banks, and seeks to create a new kind of Bandung Alliance to counter the dominance of the Global North. To be credible, though, it will eventually have to abandon its pragmatic alliance with capitalism and develop an economic model that promises a true alternative to it.

Communist Party officials argued that private enterprise was necessary to avoid the economic stagnation experienced by the Soviet Union. In terms of economic output, China’s state capitalism has indeed brought astonishing results. Over the past twenty years, industrial jobs have been created for four hundred million people (roughly, the population of Europe). China’s economy remains relatively independent but has become very diverse and highly developed. It was just decades ago, that China exported little more than textiles and shoes. Today, machines and consumer electronics dominate Chinese exports, with cars, high-speed trains, and airplanes on the way. China accounts for about 50 percent of the world’s cement production. Within a span of sixty-five years, China has gone from being a poor, primarily agricultural country to being the world’s most important producer of industrial goods. What China’s planned economy remains responsible for are the ongoing, and often enormous, infrastructure projects: housing for millions of new urban proletarians as well as the roads, ports, dams, and power lines required by industrialization.
Only time will tell if the planned economy will survive China’s integration into global capitalism, or whether China will become a neoliberal country like all the others. China’s economic growth certainly can’t be detached from neoliberalism. It was neoliberalism that demanded cheap labor and efficient infrastructure in the Global South, and China delivered. But both the financial crisis of 2007 and increasing unrest on the Chinese labor market have cast a shadow over the success story. The Communist Party now focuses on the domestic market and the development of previously neglected regions such as western China.

A new anticapitalist politics is always possible in China. It might come from social movements or from inside the Communist Party. Seeds can be sown by bottom-up movements like the New Rural Reconstruction Movement and the current labor movement, which organize independently from the state but talk about “changing the social substance of state power.” Any new anticapitalist politics in China will require the mobilization of peasants and workers. The left wing of the Party alone will not be able to revitalize the country’s political life. This can only be accomplished by struggles on the ground. It is crucial to support relevant projects, and to ensure people have a right to organize and express themselves. There must be democratization at the workplace. If the Communist Party wants to play a progressive role in the future, it will have to be involved in these struggles—it needs to “go to the masses” and formulate a new politics.
I believe that a socialist resolution of China’s economic and political contradictions is still possible, the main reason being the militant history of the Chinese working class. A working class fighting for socialism can take control of the economy’s most important sectors. They can enter into an alliance with migrant workers, peasants, and the proletarianized petty bourgeoisie. This requires the organization of trade unions and open conflict with the pro-capitalist wing of the Communist Party. Globally, China could play an important role as an active supporter of the struggles against neoliberalism we are witnessing all across the Global South—akin to the support that the Soviet Union lent to Third World liberation struggles in the twentieth century. This, of course, can only happen if the workers and peasants of China resist the temptations of national chauvinism. The significance of a truly socialist China can hardly be exaggerated. It could tip the global balance of power and create a decisive advantage for the global working class.

Lauesen also discusses the Zapatistas (who he has great admiration for) and the World Social Forum.

Chapter 11: Practice

Lauesen finally turns to the question of what to do, by laying out the factors of revolution and ongoing experiments in the Global South. He also turns again to China.

In the long run, ALBA aims to become independent from the World Bank and the IMF, which have been responsible for implementing the neoliberal agenda across Latin America. The ALBA Bank grants low-interest loans to member countries, invests in industrial production and infrastructure, and finances schools and hospitals.
ALBA can be criticized for being a top-down project. This also makes it vulnerable, as it is too dependent on political leaders. Workers are not involved in any of the major decision-making processes, which contradicts ALBA’s socialist ambitions. The dominant position of Venezuela is a particular problem; ALBA is largely financed by Venezuela’s oil and promoted by its current left-leaning government. The instability of both oil prices and the political situation in the country have affected ALBA negatively. But ALBA has demonstrated that it is possible for Latin American countries to lay a foundation for common and progressive economic development. A project such as ALBA can help the participating countries to partially delink from the capitalist world market and strengthen their national economies. ALBA has proven that economic cooperation is possible between countries whose leaders don’t necessarily share the same political ideology. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have governments committed to socialism (even if they define it differently), which is back on the agenda in Latin American politics. This is also confirmed by many social movements committed to socialist principles. They no longer follow the traditional communist party model of trying to seize state power. Their goal is to, step by step, create the conditions that make a socialist society possible. But ALBA also includes countries whose governments are social democratic and mainly aim to free themselves from US domination and free trade. The US, of course, is strongly opposed to ALBA—but they have to accept that Latin America no longer wants to be their backyard.

China’s integration into the global economy is a conscious national strategy controlled by the government. Faced with the neoliberal offensive after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of China chose neither passive submission nor rigid opposition to the neoliberal project. The Chinese government wanted to catch up with the rich countries and restore China’s global might. In order to achieve this, the nationalist wing of the Party decided to copy the technology and management of the imperialist countries and enter the global market. At the same time, there are still factions within the Party committed to building socialism. This situation has led to the current form of Chinese state capitalism.
China was keen on avoiding an unconditional integration into global capitalism. The government defended its sovereign economic planning and forced global capital entering the country to adapt to it, not vice versa. China’s aim was to develop a strong and diverse industrial sector on the basis of joint ventures with transnational corporations. Conditions in China are, of course, unlike those in any other country of the Global South. Industrialization is controlled by the government. Certain regions are developed first according to a strategic plan. China has strong national banks and a strong national currency with increasing international importance. Agriculture has been modernized, and remains under strict government control. Land cannot be privately owned. Finally, the country is not engaging in an arms race to the detriment of the national economy, as happened with the Soviet Union.
But questions remain. Can the influence of the transnational corporations be contained? Will China develop a strong national bourgeoisie that will seize power and turn China into a regular capitalist country? Will the appeal of consumer society be stronger than socialist convictions? Can state capitalism actually develop into socialism?

Capitalism’s current structural crisis has also thrown the parasite state into crisis. Tensions between capital and the working class have increased in the Global North. Due to the demands of neoliberalism, the governments of the social welfare states are no longer able to distribute power and riches to the satisfaction of both capital and the working class. The welfare state is slowly being dismantled. Calls for a return to the 1970s are short-sighted, since doing so is not an option. Neoliberalism was introduced because that welfare state was no longer sustainable. Besides, calls to reestablish the welfare state of the 1970s often have a strong nationalist bent. Louder even than the demands to limit welfare cuts and outsourcing are the demands to limit immigration. No one, however, complains about cheap goods coming from the Global South. Essentially, the people of the Global North demand a strong nation state to protect the assets of transnational capital. This creates a political climate in which fascist movements flourish. In today’s right-wing movements, protectionist views and racism overlap.
Apart from the moral bankruptcy involved, these are losing strategies. It has become much more difficult for the working class in the Global North to pressure capital, and it has become much more difficult for the state to act as a mediator between classes. The former cohesion of the First World nation state has been eroded by globalization. This is reflected in the only two answers that currently seem available to those worried about their privileges: either they embrace neoliberal parties in the hope that these will produce more riches, or they embrace right-wing populist parties in the hope that these will at least protect the riches they have. Neither answer challenges the system, but they contradict one another and cause much political tension.
There is poverty and oppression in the Global North, too. Migrants in Europe and the Black community in the US face it daily, not least in relation to the police and the prison system. But struggles against poverty and oppression in the Global North easily reach their limits. This is partly because the problems concern minorities, and movements against them can’t garner mass support. More importantly, however, the problems cannot be solved within the current system.

What is Lauesen's opinion on what activists should do about the aforementioned Global North struggles, even if they "easily reach their limits"?

The future will be characterized by two main class alliances among the privileged citizenry of the imperialist countries: one brings together those at the bottom of the hourglass, troubled sections of the middle class, and the national-conservative factions of capital; the other brings together transnational capital, the upper middle class, and skilled workers in niche sectors. The power-sharing agreement between capital and labor will continue to create tensions. The parasite state and the labor aristocracy are far from the final expressions of these tensions, which will intensify with capitalism’s structural crisis. Capital needs to lower wages to secure profits. With respect to class struggle in the Global North, we must distinguish those forces that only want to protect their share of the imperialist cake from those that interact with class struggles in the Global South. If we ignore these contradictions within the working classes of the Global North, our analysis of the parasite state and the labor aristocracy will be incomplete. It is not enough to wait for the workers of the South to overthrow capitalism. We—revolutionaries in the Global North—must contribute to making this possible. I will now, in the book’s concluding chapter, look at how this might be done.

This last assertion about the two main class alliances is a little puzzling - why would the bottom of the hourglass (described earlier in the chapter as migrant workers, the precariat, etc.) join with the national-conservative factions?

Chapter 12: Visions and Strategies

Neoliberalism ushered in a golden age for capitalism. It seemed that we had reached “the end of history.” But we hadn’t. Today, the system is in crisis. The objective conditions for change are good, and change will come. The question is what kind of change. Right now, it is populist right-wing movements that profit from the crisis. Nationalism, racism, fundamentalism, and fascism are on the rise. The problem for revolutionaries is the subjective forces. Pessimism gets in the way of revolutionary hope: “There is no point in fighting,” “Capitalism is invincible,” “Capitalism survives every crisis,” “All attempts to establish socialism have ended in disaster,” “Capitalism is the only realistic option,” and so forth. The result is a cynical, defensive, and toothless critique of capital with no global perspective. Therefore, I choose optimism.
When I say optimism, I don’t mean naiveté. It is not inevitable that history will throw capitalism into the dustbin and replace it with socialism. It is not simply a matter of time until “the masses get it right.” What I mean is realistic optimism, taking into account the structural economic, political, and ecological crisis and instability of global capitalism, as well as the hundreds of millions of new proletarians in the Global South who have “nothing to lose but their chains,” and who are becoming ever more conscious of their own power.
The global chains of production have created new economic contexts and new possibilities for resistance, both in the Global South and the Global North. Anti-imperialism no longer focuses on national liberation, as it did in the 1970s. Today, it focuses on economic liberation from global neoliberalism. This means that anti-imperialist struggles have a stronger anticapitalist profile. The peoples of the Global South want to liberate themselves from neoliberalism’s exploitation by delinking from the capitalist world system and increasing South–South collaboration (or, as in the case of China, by entering into a controlled coexistence with capitalism). Workplace struggles will intensify, which will lead to broad political struggles. The anti-imperialism of the future will have a clear class perspective.

State power is geared toward repression and control rather than toward creation and renewal. It is a useful tool with which to rule but not a very useful tool with which to change people’s norms and values. Since it is used to prevent revolution, it is important to seize state power to enable revolution, but the revolution itself must reach much further, otherwise it will be incomplete. The requirements of revolution are much less centralized and much more complex than state power. The power relations that must be revolutionized are embedded in everyday relations, in customs, perceptions, attitudes, etc. The revolutionary struggle is a struggle over defining what is true and false, what is good and evil. It is a struggle for the hearts of the people. It happens everywhere and can take many forms. To be revolutionaries, we must acknowledge this and be prepared.

Some economic decisions must be made at a central level by representative assemblies; for example, if they concern the general relationship between production and consumption, or the focus of investments. Whether a local, regional, national, or global assembly is required to make the decision depends on the scope of the question. What is important is to consider the needs and interests of those most affected. This is part of a socialist vision. If we want to redeem socialism and turn it into a popular “brand” once again, we must develop concrete and viable ideas about how to govern and produce in a socialist society. We must move from the ideological plane to the practical one.

Medium-term politics consists of developing strategies, practices, and organizations able to bring capitalism’s structural crisis to a positive end. We need to understand the most important of capitalism’s contradictions so as to be as effective as possible in our political work. This requires knowledge, experience, analysis, discussion among militants, ideas with broad appeal, grassroots organizing, and popular alliances. We cannot rely on the top-down organization of the state. We need movements that have enough strength and cohesion to act effectively on their own, but that are still willing to collaborate with others. Short-term politics are characterized by compromise, medium-term politics are not. Their primary goal is not to alleviate immediate problems but to make long-term radical change possible. This does not make medium-term politics less realistic. Their realism, however, is not one of opportunism but of building a different world.
It is difficult to find broad support for radical politics in the Global North. People have too many vested interests in the current system to wish for its demise. Due to their strategic significance for the imperialist order, however, struggles in the “belly of the beast” are of crucial importance. With right-wing populism on the rise, we face a situation where conflicts between imperialist powers might once again dominate global politics. Anti-imperialists in the North will be a minority, but an important one. Members of the labor aristocracy and the middle class can commit “class suicide,” even if this contradicts their objective interests. History provides many such examples. There has been radical First World support for the struggles in Vietnam, Palestine, South Africa, and Chile. We must avoid the illusion, however, that a bit of education will radically change the outlook of the labor aristocracy as a whole.
The coming decades will be characterized by economic instability and military conflicts. In the Global North, if even 5–10 percent of the population end up working for radical change in the world system, it will make a huge difference for the struggles in the Global South. Breaking the chains of imperialism will become significantly easier. Many people in the Global North will regard this as treason against their nation, or even their class. Governments are already criminalizing international solidarity with socialist movements, as support of alleged “terrorists.”

5-10% of the population is huge - again, what are the segments of the population this "militant minority" comes from and what is their practice?

It would be naive to think that the ruling classes will simply accept this. NATO will be a key actor in the coming military conflicts. War has always been tied to imperialism; opposition to it has always been part of anti-imperialism. This concerns both feuds between imperialist countries and aggression against the Global South. Militants in the Global North must weaken imperialism’s home base. This will not be popular with parts of the working class (and, of course, the state), but anti-war campaigns have the capacity to unite different sections of the population. A crucial issue is opposition to NATO bases in the Global South.
The current wave of right-wing populism in the Global North might lead to fascist regimes if the crisis of capitalism worsens. Once in power, right-wing populism controls the military and police; it exerts pressure on courts, media, and educational institutions, forcing them to get in line. Police and intelligence services received more power and human and technical resources during the “War on Terror.” Their priorities and focus can change quickly. We need be prepared to engage a hostile state, practically and organizationally.

In Chapter 11, I discussed the factors that John Foran considers necessary for a revolution to succeed. They included a strong culture of resistance and a window of opportunity for change in the global political system. Unrest in one country often leads to unrest in other countries. This is a consequence of a global political system built on nation states. It means that transnational alliances of like-minded movements will constitute a central factor for effective resistance. Cultures of resistance can inspire others, in the same way that the revolution in Russia, the resistance in Vietnam, and the experiment in Chiapas have inspired others. The impact that a particular culture of resistance can have depends on its ability to build alliances and to develop its own social institutions. Psychological factors such as determination, sacrifice, and courage are also of great importance. Social movements can help each other with material resources and know-how. They can keep the state occupied and create a window of opportunity for change. Such a window appears whenever a superpower is troubled by internal conflict, lacks a proper analysis of the political situation, or loses control of social developments. The result is that its ability to repress revolutionary forces is diminished. A culture of resistance and the opening of a window for change reinforce one another: strong cultures of resistance can force a window to open, and an opened window reinforces cultures of resistance.
Today, ten years into capitalism’s latest crisis, we have numerous movements critical of neoliberalism, but there is no clear common strategy, and certainly no leadership. The motivation for anti-imperialist resistance in the Global North differs from that in the Global South. In the North, being an anti-imperialist is something you can choose, depending on your personal circumstances and political convictions. This results in a high turnover among anti-imperialist militants and in organizations that don’t last. In the Global South, anti-imperialist resistance is directly related to everyday struggles against oppression and exploitation. The struggle in the South must guide and radicalize the struggle in the North.

1. Colonial accumulation
2. Western intervention in developmentalist attempts
3. Debt peonage for global south countries, resulting in governance by IMF/World Bank
4. Illicit outflows / tax havens
5. Unequal exchange
6. Unfair terms of trade / imperialist intellectual property rent through WTO enforced free trade agreements.

His proposed solutions to these problems range from technocratic fixes (democratizing the WTO) to radical economic shifts (degrowth for the West!). The book neglects the question of how to build the political power needed for these reforms, and also strangely sidesteps past socialist economic experiments, in only presenting the basics of Western capitalism and global south attempts at developmentalist (but still capitalist) projects. Also little indication about how the author views China and its development model, besides hinting that it "escaped" IMF enforced SAP and managed to bring hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Part 1: The Divide

Hickel describing the problem.

Chapter One: The Development Delusion

Hickel begins the book by telling a tale of what he terms the "Development Delusion" - the standard liberal NGO/World Bank/USAID story, that poor countries can be raised up to the level of rich countries through economic "development" and aid from the West. Presents the Western public as somehow duped by this tale, which is a weak point of his reading overall - he consistently sells short the amount that all Westerners benefit from the current order of things, and instead speaks in Occupy style generalities about large corporations, the ultra-rich, etc.

He also introduces here his basic arguments for the rest of the book, in brief, and summarizes the stagnation of progress on poverty and other measures of global inequality.

Chapter Two: The End of Poverty.. Has Been Postponed

Focuses principally on the use/manipulation of poverty statistics by global agencies/NGOs in order to sell the aid narrative. Mostly technical discussion on statistics like the num. living in poverty, poverty line, etc.

That was just the beginning. Shortly after the Millennium Declaration was adopted, the UN rendered it into the Millennium Development Goals that we know so well today. During this process, the poverty goal (MDG-1) was diluted yet again – this time behind closed doors, without any media commentary at all. First, they changed it from halving the proportion of impoverished people in the whole world to halving the proportion in developing countries only. Because the population of the developing world is growing at a faster rate than the world as a whole, this shift in the methodology allowed the poverty accountants to take advantage of an even faster-growing denominator. On top of this, there was a second significant change: they moved the starting point of analysis from 2000 back to 1990. This gave them much more time to accomplish the goal, extended the period of denominator growth and allowed them to retroactively claim gains in poverty reduction that were achieved long before the campaign actually began. This backdating took particular advantage of gains made by China during the 1990s,3 when hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of extreme poverty, and deceptively chalked them up as a victory for the Millennium Development Goals.

How did the World Bank’s poverty numbers change so suddenly from a rising trend to a falling one? To put it simply, they changed the international poverty line. In 2000, they shifted it from the original $1.02 level to $1.08. While the new poverty line looks slightly higher than the old one, in reality it was just ‘rebased’ to new purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations, which are updated every few years to compensate for depreciation in the purchasing power of the dollar. If the purchasing power of the dollar goes down, people need more dollars to buy the same stuff as before. So the poverty line needs to be periodically ‘raised’ to account for this. But in this case they didn’t raise it quite enough to account for purchasing power depreciation. So the new $1.08 poverty line was actually lower in real terms than the old $1.02 line. And lowering the poverty line made it appear as though fewer people were poor than before. When the new line was introduced, the poverty head-count fell literally overnight, even though nothing had actually changed in the real world.
This new poverty line was introduced in the very same year that the Millennium Campaign went live, and it became the campaign’s official instrument for measuring absolute poverty. With this tiny alteration, a mere flick of an economist’s wrist, the world suddenly appeared to be getting better.
The IPL was changed a second time in 2008, to $1.25. The World Bank’s economists claimed that this new line was roughly equivalent to the earlier one, in real terms, but watchdogs like Yale professor Thomas Pogge and economist Sanjay Reddy at the New School in New York pointed out that the data was simply not comparable.12 Once again, the number of absolute poor changed overnight, although this time it went up – by 430 million people. At first glance this seems like it must have been shockingly bad news – a decisive blow to the good-news narrative. But there was a bright side, as far as the World Bank was concerned: the poverty reduction trend started to look significantly better, at least since the baseline year of 1990. While the $1.08 line made it seem as though the poverty headcount had been reduced by 316 million people between 1990 and 2005, the new line inflated the number to 437 million, creating the illusion that an additional 121 million souls had been saved from the jaws of poverty. Once again, the Millennium Campaign adopted the new poverty line, which allowed it to claim yet further gains.

There is yet another sleight of hand at the centre of the poverty story that is often overlooked. Remember that the Millennium Development Campaign moved the baseline year back to 1990, which allowed them to claim China’s gains against poverty. What happens if we take China out of the equation? Well, we find that the global poverty headcount increased during the 1980s and 1990s, while the World Bank was imposing structural adjustment across most of the global South. Today, the extreme poverty headcount is exactly the same as it was in 1981, at just over 1 billion people. In other words, while the good-news story leads us to believe that poverty has been decreasing around the world, in reality the only places this holds true are in China and East Asia. This is a crucial point, because these are some of the only places in the world where free-market capitalism was not forcibly imposed by the World Bank and the IMF.13 Everywhere else, poverty has been stagnant or getting worse, in aggregate. And this remains evident despite the World Bank’s attempts to doctor the figures.

Hickel here and elsewhere lumps China and East Asia together as an economic outlier block - contention here that free-market capitalism was not imposed, is that true for all of East Asia, and why.

What if we were to take these concerns seriously, and measure global poverty at a minimum of $5 per day? We would find the global poverty headcount to be about 4.3 billion people. This is more than four times what the World Bank and the Millennium Campaign would have us believe. It is more than 60 per cent of the world’s population. And, more importantly, we would see that poverty has been getting worse over time. Even with China factored in, we would see that around 1 billion people have been added to the ranks of the extremely poor since 1981.42 At the $10-a-day line we see that 5.1 billion people live in poverty today – nearly 80 per cent of the world’s population.43 And the number has risen considerably over time, with 2 billion people added to the ranks of the poor since 1981.

This story has the benefit of feeling intuitively right. After all, we’re aware that countries like China and some East Asian economies have made dramatic leaps towards industrialisation, and have produced large and growing middle classes. And indeed that is exactly the key point. As it turns out, the trend towards greater global equality has been driven entirely by China and East Asia. Take China out of the picture, and the good news narrative melts away. In fact, the economists Sudhir Anand and Paul Segal show that if we take China out of the Gini figures, we see that global inequality has been increasing, not decreasing – up from 50 in 1988 to 58 in 2005.45 This is important, because – once again – China and East Asia are some of the only places where structural adjustment was not imposed by Washington.46 Instead of being forced to adopt a one-size-fits-all blueprint for free-market capitalism, China relied on state-led development policies and gradually liberalised its economy on its own terms. It is disingenuous, then, for commentators like Charles Lane and the Cato Institute to build an inequality-reduction narrative that rests on gains from China and chalk it up as a win for Washington’s approach to free-market globalisation.

Again "China and some East Asian economies" early in the paragraph vs just China addressed later.

Part 2: Concerning Violence

Chapter Three: Where Did Poverty Come From? A Creation Story

Hickel's chronicle of colonialism and the basis it laid for modern imperialism. Borrows heavily from Open Veins of Latin America for description on LatAm colonization and its impact on development of global capitalism.

Before colonialism, Europe no further ahead in living standards than China, other civilizations.

What happened to all of this silver and gold from Latin America? Some of it went to building up the military capacity of European states, which would help secure their political advantage over the rest of the world. But most of it lubricated their trade with China and India. Silver was one of the only European commodities that Eastern states actually wanted; without it, Europe would have suffered a crippling trade deficit, leaving it largely frozen out of the world economy. The silver trade allowed Europe to import land-intensive goods and natural resources that it lacked the land capacity to provide for itself. We can think of this as an ‘ecological windfall’ – a transfusion of resources that allowed Europe to grow its economy beyond its natural limits at the time, to the point of catching up with and surpassing China and India around 1800. China and India, then, provided a kind of ecological relief to overstrained Europe. Outsourcing land-intensive production also allowed Europe to reallocate its labour into capital-intensive industrial activities – like textile mills – which other states did not have the luxury of doing.

Concept of "ecological windfall" here is interesting but not explored more - just as capitalism decouples processes of agr. production and consumption (rural production, urban consumption), colonialism/imperialism decouples any connection btwn imperial state's ecological/natural resources and its economic might.

But their most potent tool was the use of one-way tariffs, which protected Britain’s markets from India’s exports while ensuring easy access for Britain’s goods into India. It worked: India, once self-sufficient and famous for its exports, was remade into ‘the greatest captive market in world history’.
The economic transformation was dramatic. Before the British arrived, India commanded 27 per cent of the world economy, according to economist Angus Maddison. By the time they left, India’s share had shrunk to just 3 per cent.

The treaties that followed granted sweeping trade privileges to Europe but conceded nothing to China in return. According to these ‘unequal treaties’, as they came to be called, Europeans could sell their manufactured goods on China’s markets while protecting their own markets against Chinese competitors. The consequences were devastating. China’s share of the world economy dwindled from 35 per cent before the Opium Wars to an all-time low of just 7 per cent. What is more, China’s loss of control over its grain markets led in part to the famines that China suffered during the same droughts that hit India. And, as in India, 30 million people in China perished needlessly of starvation during the late 19th century, after having been integrated into the London-centred world economy.

Successive colonial administrations introduced policies designed to do exactly that. As early as 1857, they began forcing Africans to pay taxes, which compelled African households to send family members to the mines and plantations for work. Those who didn’t pay taxes were punished – so there was always the threat of violence lurking in the background. On top of this, they began to systematically push Africans off their land in a process that mimicked the enclosure movement in England. The Natives Land Act of 1913 restricted African land ownership to a series of ‘native reserves’ or ‘homelands’ that totalled only 10 per cent of the country’s area. The division was brutally enforced: Africans were gradually and systematically forced off their land and into the reserves. And because the reserves were on marginal, unproductive land inadequate to support the population, Africans had no choice but to migrate to European areas for wage work.

The story in Latin America unfolded somewhat differently. Three centuries of European colonialism came to an end in the early 19th century with revolutions led by liberators such as Simón Bolívar, who, after a long period of struggle against the Spanish Crown, won independence for Venezuela in 1821, Ecuador in 1822, Peru in 1824 and Bolivia in 1825. But these and other independent nations that emerged in the wake of decolonisation tended to be controlled by autocratic local elites who were quite happy to maintain the economic arrangements that their European counterparts had imposed.

Interesting footnote here about autocratic elites which is not discussed further - what impact does this different model of development/colonialism have on present day LatAm vs. other regions.

Chapter also discusses English enclosure (primitive accumulation) and the model it provides for understanding how poverty spread to rest of the world.

First discussion of "Unequal Exchange" as Hickel defines it:

The system had two built-in features that generated increasing inequalities between the West and the rest. The first was that the terms of trade of developing economies deteriorated over time.54 In other words, the prices of their primary commodity exports gradually decreased relative to the prices of the manufactured goods they imported. This meant that they had to spend more to get less, which translated into an outward net transfer of wealth.55 The second was that the wages that workers in developing countries were paid for the goods they traded remained much lower than in the West, even when corrected for productivity and purchasing power, so the South was undercompensated for the value they shipped abroad. Together, these two patterns lie at the heart of what economists call ‘unequal exchange’ between the core and the periphery.

Chapter Four: From Colonialism to the Coup

A brief history of Third World Developmentalism (although somewhat uncritical of it), as well as Western attempts to halt or reverse it via military intervention, covert action, etc.

Also recapitulates Keynesian social policy in the West (pre and post WWII) as the basis for these developmentalist attempts.

This was the era of ‘developmentalism’. Latin America’s Southern Cone – Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and parts of Brazil – became an early success story. The epicentre of the developmentalist movement was the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, based in Chile. Founded in 1948, the Commission was headed by the progressive Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch, one of the thinkers who developed the theory of dependency and unequal exchange.11 Prebisch argued that underdevelopment and global inequality were the result of the way that colonialism had organised the world system, limiting the countries of the global South to exporting primary commodities and preventing them from building competitive industries.12 And because the value of primary commodity exports was constantly declining relative to the manufactured goods they imported from the West, they were continually losing ground.
Drawing on Prebisch’s ideas, Latin American governments began to roll out ‘import substitution’ strategies – a bold attempt to industrialise and produce the very commodities they had been made to import from the West at such great expense.

All of these strategies relied on relatively high trade tariffs on foreign goods, restrictions on foreign capital flows and limits on foreign ownership of national assets. Land reform was often a central part of the package. And in many cases, governments sought to nationalise natural resources and key industries in order to ensure that their citizens benefited from them as much as possible.

What set off the crisis of stagflation? Most scholars point to a few key events that happened during the Nixon administration. For one, Nixon was engaged in expansionary monetary policy – in other words, he was effectively printing money.52 On top of this, government spending on the Vietnam War at the time was spiralling out of control. As international markets worried that the US would not be able to make good on its debts, the dollar began to plummet in value and contributed further to inflation. And while all of this trouble was unfolding, another crisis hit. In 1973, OPEC decided to drive up the price of oil. The price of consumer goods suddenly shot up too, because the energy required to produce and transport them was more expensive. And because production became more expensive, economic growth slowed down and unemployment began to rise. It was a perfect storm.
The crisis of stagflation was the direct consequence of specific historical events. But the neoliberals rejected these explanations. Instead, they insisted that stagflation was a product of Keynesianism – the consequence of onerous taxes on the wealthy, too much economic regulation, labour unions that had become too powerful and wages that were too high. Government intervention, they claimed, had made markets inefficient, distorted prices and made it impossible for economic actors to act rationally. The whole market system was out of whack, and stagflation was the inevitable consequence. Keynesianism had failed, they claimed, and the system needed to be scrapped. In the end, this argument prevailed. Not because it was correct, but because it had more firepower behind it – and when it came to swaying public opinion it helped that Hayek and Friedman had both won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their ideas along these lines, in 1974 and 1976 respectively.53 The argument held a great deal of appeal for the wealthy, who were looking for a way to restore their class power, and they were more than happy to step in to support it.54 The crisis of the 1970s became a perfect excuse to dismantle the social contract of the post-war decades.

Is Hickel's explanation above adequate? Was it only an unlucky confluence of events that undid Keynesianism, or was it a crisis in the rate of profit as others have argued?

Hickel also ignores completely the relation of socialist block to developmentalist projects (he barely touches socialist economies at all for that matter).

Part 3: The New Colonialism

Chapter Five: Debt and the Economics of Planned Misery

In Hickel's story, as coups and direct political interventions became too unpopular/costly to enact, Western leaders concluded that other means would serve better to crush the developmentalist project. However, his explanation of how debt specifically came to be a primary tool relies on the 70s oil crisis and the resulting influx of petrodollars to US banks after the agreement between Saudi Arabia and the West - this created enough capital to start a global sovereign debt market which had not existed before. Deals with IMF structural adjustment, other ways debt is used as leverage by the imperialist powers.

In the early 1980s, the G7’s goal was to use the World Bank and the IMF to cripple the South’s economic revolution and re-establish Western access to its resources and markets. On this point, they certainly didn’t fail. But there was another, deeper purpose that the World Bank and the IMF served, and that was to save Western capitalism itself. We know that from time to time capitalism bumps up against limits to the creation of new profits. There is the market saturation limit, for instance: when consumers have more than they need, buying slows down and businesses can’t turn over as many products. There is the ecological depletion limit: when natural resources run low, the cost of essential inputs begins to rise. And there is the class conflict limit: as workers bargain for higher wages, the cost of labour becomes more expensive; and if you deny their demands, or indeed if you try to push wages down to increase your profits, you risk sparking social instability. All of this makes it increasingly difficult for firms to extract big profits. When capitalism hits these limits, investors find themselves with fewer options for investing their capital, since nothing gives an acceptably high return. They can’t just put it into savings because interest rates on savings accounts are typically lower than inflation, and that means losing money. This is what economists call a crisis of over-accumulation.36 In a crisis of over-accumulation, capital begins to lose its value – and according to the driving logic of capitalism, this cannot be allowed to happen. In order for capitalism to carry on, crises of over-accumulation have to be solved; someone needs to step in to provide a way to mop up the excess capital, to funnel it into some kind of profitable investment. It is an iron law.

The race-to-the-bottom effect triggered by structural adjustment and globalisation is one of the main drivers behind this ever-widening gap. In the 1960s developing countries were losing $161 billion (in 2015 dollars) each year through what economists call ‘unequal exchange’, the difference between the real value of the goods that a developing country exports and the market prices that it gets for those goods. We can think of this as an expression of undervalued labour. If workers in the developing world had been paid the same as their Western counterparts for the same productivity in the 1960s, they would have earned an additional $161 billion per year for their exports.48 This disparity was largely the result of colonial policy, which had maintained wages at artificially low levels. But structural adjustment made this system even more inequitable. The German economist Gernot Köhler calculated that annual losses due to underpaid labour and goods rose by a factor of sixteen, reaching $2.66 trillion (in 2015 dollars) by 1995, at the height of the structural adjustment period. In other words, developing countries would have been earning $2.66 trillion more each year for their exports if their labour was paid fairly on the world market. The best way to think of this is as a hidden transfer of value from the global South to the North – a transfer that, in 1995, amounted to thirty-two times the aid budget, and outstripped total flows from the OECD by a factor of thirteen.49
But another major driving force behind the growing inequality gap is the debt system itself. Not only because it paved the way for structural adjustment, but also because of the plain fact of debt service, which constitutes a river of wealth that flows from the periphery of the world system to the core. During the first decade of structural adjustment, the South sent out an average of $125 billion each year in interest payments on external debt. This flow stayed roughly steady through the next two decades, but has shot up to an average of $175 billion annually in recent years. Altogether, since the debt crisis began in 1980, the South has handed over a total of $4.2 trillion in interest payments to foreign creditors, mostly in the North. If we include payments on principal, we see that developing countries made total debt service payments of $238 billion per year during the 1980s, rising dramatically through the 1990s to $440 billion per year in 2000, and then to more than $732 billion per year by 2013. Altogether, during the whole period since 1980, the South has made debt service payments totalling $13 trillion.50 The graph on the next page illustrates the scale of these payments.

Chapter Six: Free Trade and the Rise of the Virtual Senate

Discusses the modern free trade system and the inequalities engineered into it. Technical discussion of WTO trading rules, etc. Discussion of intellectual property provisions of free trade treaties ex. copyrights on medications/vaccines (imperialist rent extracted from global south).

Chapter Seven: Plunder in the 21st Century

The less-than-legal aspects to contemporary imperialism: tax evasion, trade misinvoicing, land grabbing.

Part 4: Closing the Divide

Chapter Eight: From Charity to Justice

Hickel introduces his ideas for a "fairer global economy":

Perhaps the most important first step is to abolish the debt burdens of developing countries. This move is crucial in a number of respects. It would roll back the remote-control power that rich countries exercise over poor countries, and restore sovereign control over economic policy at the national level. It would also free developing countries to spend more of their income on healthcare, education and poverty-reduction efforts instead of just handing it over in debt service to big banks. This will be a difficult battle, of course, since creditors stand to lose a great deal. Some that are overexposed to debt in heavily indebted countries might even go bankrupt. But that is a small price to pay for the liberation of potentially hundreds of millions of people. If we abolish the debts, nobody dies – the world will carry on spinning. Debts don’t have to be repaid, and in fact they shouldn’t be repaid when doing so means causing widespread human suffering.

Of course, it is unlikely that existing lenders – like the World Bank, for instance – will go along with such a plan, as it would mean relinquishing their authority over debtors and would weaken their ability to enforce debt repayment. Instead of battling the World Bank, we could create alternative institutions altogether. The New Development Bank, founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in 2015, might provide just such an alternative. So too might the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, founded by China in 2016. If these banks choose to give finance to other developing countries at zero or low interest, and without structural adjustment conditions, they would help liberate the global South from the grip of Western creditors. That explains why Washington has been less than pleased with their emergence. At the same time, they might not be so benevolent: just as the World Bank has facilitated Western imperialism, so these new banks could end up projecting the economic and geopolitical interests of their founding nations over other regions of the global South. In other words, they might function as a tool of sub-imperialism.

The second crucial step towards creating a fairer global economy would be to democratise the major institutions of global governance: the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. Allowing global South countries – the world’s majority – to have fair and equal representation in these institutions would give them a real say in the formulation of policies that affect them.

A third vital step would be to make the international trade system fairer. As we have seen, one of the major problems with the WTO is that it demands across-the-board trade liberalisation from all member states – the so-called ‘level playing field’. This is theoretically supposed to increase trade flows and improve everyone’s lives, but it almost always benefits rich countries at the expense of developing countries. Developing countries lose control over the policy space they need to ensure that they gain from trade. Instead of requiring across-the-board tariff reductions, trade could be conducted with an intentional bias towards poor countries, for the sake of promoting development.7 One way to do this would be to have all WTO members provide free-market access in all goods to all developing countries either smaller or poorer than themselves (in terms of GDP and GDP per capita). This would allow developing countries to benefit from selling to rich-country markets without having to liberalise their own trade rules in return. This is not unheard of. In fact, we already have a system of special preferences for poor countries – but it is limited, and the WTO has been trying to phase it out since 1994.

If we are going to have a global labour market, where companies can roam the planet in search of ever-cheaper workers, it stands to reason that we need a global system of labour standards as well. This is where a fourth intervention might lie: putting a stop to the global race to the bottom for cheap labour by guaranteeing a baseline level of human fairness. The single most important component of such an intervention would be a global minimum wage. On the face of it, this might sound problematic. For one, it wouldn’t make any sense for workers in Tanzania to earn the same as workers in Britain, for example, since the cost of living differs markedly between these two countries. Plus, what if raising wages in cheap-labour countries ruins their competitive advantage and causes businesses to flee, increasing unemployment and poverty?
The current recommendation for a global minimum wage would deal with these difficulties by setting the bar at 50 per cent of each country’s median wage, so it would be tailored to local economic conditions, costs of living and purchasing power. As wages increase across the spectrum, the minimum wage would automatically move up. For countries where wages are so low that 50 per cent of the median would still leave workers in poverty, there would be a second safeguard: wages in each country would have to be above the national poverty line.

The fifth step would be to deal with the three mechanisms of plunder that I discussed in the previous chapter: tax evasion, land grabbing and climate change – all of which have to do with reclaiming public resources and protecting the commons.

On the whole, some somewhat technocratic fixes mixed in with larger proposals but no discussion of the overall political/state power needed to achieve these things, aside from references to some NGO coalitions or other loose global networks of organizations.

Nine: The Necessary Madness of Imagination

The final chapter, where Hickel indicates his support for degrowth/moves beyond the standard "developmentalist" model.

So the problem isn’t just the type of energy we’re using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100 per cent clean energy? Exactly what we’re doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement and heap up more landfills with waste from the additional stuff we would produce and consume, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless exponential growth. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.

The Degrowth Imperative
If we peel back the false promises of dematerialisation and carbon capture, it becomes clear that the problem is much deeper than most are willing to admit. Our present economic model of exponential GDP growth is no longer realistic, and we have to face up to this fact. This presents us with a very difficult conundrum when it comes to development and poverty reduction. How can we eradicate poverty if we’re already bumping up against our ecological limits?

He considers several alternatives to GDP, seeming to fall into the trap that GDP growth is something the capitalist world has stumbled into as a key metric instead of a necessary representation of capital's need for further accumulation. Also blames corporations focus on "shareholder returns" (again, rejecting more basic need for rate of profit)

Proposals for how to actually do degrowth involve job-sharing in the West, getting rid of the advertising industry, even UBI.