Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Free Boris Kagarlitsky and all anti-war political prisoners in the Russian Federation!
GREETINGS AND MY profound thanks for the honor of participating in and addressing today’s conference, celebrating the work of comrade Boris Kagarlitsky and acting in solidarity with the comrade in his fight for freedom. A fight, I should say, not only for his own freedom, but a fight for freedom against the forces of authoritarianism and 21st century fascism.
In twenty minutes, it is impossible to address all or most of the features of Kagarlitsky’s The Long Retreat. Let me start by saying that this work is brilliant, sobering and, in some important respects, problematic. It is written out of a different political tradition than I share, i.e., his is a neo-Trotskyist framework, and mine from a different orientation. Yet the different traditions did not, fundamentally, affect my view of the book. &I read it twice and may read it a third time. It is one of the most thought-provoking works I have read in some time and I do not have the time to identify every point of agreement I share with Kagarlitsky or every point that I wish to reaffirm.
Though tempted to start by addressing Kagarlitsky’s analysis of the Soviet experiment and the Comintern, I shall, instead, address: politics and the socialist project; imperialism; race/racism; and revanchism.
Central to the tasks of 21st century socialists, and a theme running throughout the book, is found on page 163 when Kagarlitsky states in part: “…the need is for the reconstruction of the working class (as a ‘class for itself’) through practical activity and political struggle for its most general interests.” [emphasis in the original]
Much of the socialist and non-socialist Left has abandoned or blinded itself to the difference between the political and the ideological struggle. In part as post-modernism crept into the body of the socialist Left, a fixation developed on the personal, on abstraction-as-ideology, away from seeking truth from facts, and away from the battle for power (toward a dimensional plane referenced as winning without taking power). The battle for power, both for what can be referenced as “governing power” within the context of democratic capitalism, and state power in the context of the socialist transition to a classless society, must be rooted in social bases. Further, as Kagarlitsky notes, the task of politics is to form the historic bloc.
What is sobering in this book is a recognition not only of the need to unite various subaltern classes against capital, but Kagarlitsky’s blunt recognition of the fissures that exist—and have always existed—within the working class! Far too many leftists are trapped in the idealist notion of a united working class. Kagarlitsky raises the point that would have once been heretical, calling into question whether one, specific socialist party can be THE party of the class.
The central question emerging from this portion of his analysis is, to borrow from a tradition other than Trotskyism, from the masses…to the masses. In other words, our politics must address, through the prism of a Marxist analysis, the needs, concerns and realities of the subaltern classes which come to be rearticulated in a manner that is democratic, progressive—if not revolutionary—and focused on the altering of power relationships. Our approach cannot be one of self-obsession to the point of narcissism, and the abandonment of the masses as being hopelessly lost, if not reactionary. And, as Kagarlitsky notes, our politics cannot be premised on the expectation of perfection on the part of mass, progressive social movements. Movements will, by definition, prove to be uneven and contradictory.
Let me shift gears. The Long Retreat enters into the realm of the problematic in several ways. I shall only have time to sketch out the elements of my concern.
Historic imperialism is not a particular focus of the book. While Kagarlitsky does address the contemporary economic situation with the emergence of globalization and the role of the transnational corporation (though he does not address what I believe to be a particular feature of this era with the growth of a transnational capitalist class), he misses something that I believe to be critical when appreciating the crisis of the welfare state system and the inability to reimplement this in the current moment. As the late Samir Amin once noted in a moment of candor and humor: “The welfare state would not have been possible in the absence of cheap oil.”
It is impossible to disconnect the ongoing crises within the working classes of Europe and North America from the question of imperialism. It is not only that the living standards in the so-called West are directly related to the question of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the failure of European and North American working classes and their organizations to consistently address matters of national self-determination and the international solidarity of the oppressed that have undermined the ability of these classes—and their organizations—to make a strategic breakthrough in the fight for power. This matter rearises in my last section on revanchism.
The West was able to build itself and rebuild itself—after two World Wars—precisely due to the colonies and neo-colonies. Though the Russian Empire created a colonial relationship as it expanded east, an empire the USSR largely inherited, it did not offer Russia, specifically, the resources and opportunities to grow in any way close to that of the West, particularly in light of the weaknesses of pre-1917 Russian capitalism.
A second weakness in the book is the absence of the appreciation of so-called race and racism, both in the context of understanding capitalism, but equally, in understanding the crises facing the working classes in Europe and North America. In fact, Kagarlitsky comes very close to minimizing what he sees as other “oppressions” as if these are simply matters of identity and a reflection of the postmodern infection of the Left.
Racism is deeply connected to colonialism and imperialism. It is not an identity question but a matter of both a system of domination (racist and national oppression) as well as a system of social control over subaltern classes, and particularly over the working class. Racism has created the most successful system of class collaboration within capitalism—with sexism running a close second—as can be seen in the experience of the British domination of Ireland, and racialization of the indigenous population, and its impact on the consciousness of the British working class. It evolved, directly and indirectly through the slave trade in Africans, the invasion of the Western Hemisphere, and the colonial plague over most of the planet. Imperialism and racist oppression not only justified the savagery of colonialism (settler and non-settler) but convinced the working masses in the colonizing powers that they were, to varying degrees, partners in the colonial empire.
Racism as a system of oppression and social control, with the latter fully operationalized as a means of creating an economic and noneconomic differential in treatment between populations, does not appear to factor into Kagarlitsky’s analysis. This apparent absence is both noteworthy and curious. I believe that it leads him to misunderstand the movements against racist and national oppression, believing them to be primarily identity movements. It also leads him to derive incorrect conclusions about the nature of some of the anti-system protests we have witnessed over the last several years, most especially those in connection with the Covid pandemic.
Before exploring the implications of these two absences, let me hasten to add a third: an underappreciation of the danger and reality of revanchism as at the core of the reemergence of rightwing populism and contemporary fascism.
“Revanchism” is a political sentiment and practice that became noticeable in the aftermath of World War I and, again, after World War II. In the post-Cold War world of hegemonic neoliberal globalization, it has again become significant.
Revanchism represents the politics of revenge, victimization, and resentment. It is the politics that argues that something was taken from the allegedly legitimate population and provided to someone else; someone supposedly less deserving. Revanchism was central to German nationalist movements after World War I including, but not limited to the Nazis.
The impact of neoliberal globalization on working classes, particularly in the global North, is well-identified by Kagarlitsky. Job loss, downward living standards, the reorganization and relocation of work, and demographic changes in the working class have all contributed to immense confusion and precarity. Yet it is the choice in direction for responses which need to be noted.
Let me give an example. When studying the Donald Trump/MAGA phenomenon and the working class, there has been attention to white workers and white working people generally, who have been drawn toward, or galloped towards his ranks. Many sincere people have tried to explain this through addressing the impact of globalization on them. This is further explained as a feeling of betrayal allegedly carried out by the Democratic Party.
There are a couple of problems with this analysis, however, before one goes too far down that road. First, and with respect to whites leaving the Democratic Party, this phenomenon was identified as beginning almost immediately after the passages of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Right Act. None other than the non-Marxist President Lyndon Johnson noted that the passage of the 1964 Act probably would result in the loss of the South by the Democratic Party for at least a generation. It turns out he was optimistic.
Second, if the impact of neoliberal globalization explains the attraction of white workers to Trump, why is it that millions of African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans are not flocking to Trump? After all, neoliberalism has disproportionately hurt our populations far greater than whites.
It is not just racism in the abstract but revanchism that we see playing out. In the USA, and in much of the global North, there is immense resentment among so-called whites that there is no cushion beneath them from the ravages of capitalism. A side note, revanchism in Russia has different roots but nevertheless needs greater attention since we see it playing out in the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
This is not as simple a question as white workers—and some others—gravitating to the Right because of the failure of the Left to address their concerns. At a minimum one can see countless examples of the broad Left and progressive movements waging valiant defensive battles against this or that ravage by capitalism. In the USA we have the example of Senator Bernie Sanders speaking loudly and forcefully, not to mention eloquently, about the impact of capitalism on working people. Why is it that we do not have a movement of equal size to MAGA around Sanders?
Imperialism not only had an impact on the economies in the global North, but an impact on the consciousnesses of entire populations, including but not limited to the working class. None of this is to argue that the working classes in global North ceased to be oppressed, let alone exploited. And none of this is to disregard the struggles of the working classes for justice. But it is to say that, literally and figuratively, there was a wage difference between the white worker and the colonized and racially oppressed worker. In the US context, W.E.B. Dubois referenced this as the psychological wage of whiteness. Lenin addressed this in part, following from Marx and Engels, in appreciating the rise and importance of the labor aristocracy (though the labor aristocracy was not solely a racial phenomenon). The linkage of imperialism, racism and revanchism is demonstrable.
Revanchism helps us better understand the rise of irrationalism and rightwing authoritarian movements, including movements where Kagarlitsky appears to offer critical support. I want to focus, for a moment, on the response to the Covid pandemic.
I am in total agreement with Kagarlitsky that the Covid crisis illustrated the literal and figurative bankruptcy of the healthcare systems in the capitalist world. It was not only the lack of preparedness—which to some extent could be excused in light of the fact of this being a virus—but it was the nature of the responses, including levels of repression that were used hypocritically, against various movements.
Kagarlitsky seems to diminish the extent of the plague, however. In the USA, the Center for Disease Control estimates that approximately 1,197,470 deaths, and confirmed cases, 103,436,829. Worldwide, as of April 2024, 7,010,681 have died. I lost six friends and had Covid at least once. I never lost a friend or loved one to the flu.
Governments were faced with a crisis but much of the response/opposition, generated by the Right, was one of irrationalism. Denial; refusal to take precautions; demonstrations against vaccinations; conspiracy theories, etc. Interestingly, the protests were not mainly coming from communities of color, certainly in the USA.
Kagarlitsky’s focus on the trucker caravan in Canada, in this respect, is quite interesting. It felt like an effort to create lemonade out of lemons. Yes, people were angry about restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic. Got it. But what was being proposed in opposition? What was being proposed in response to the very real problem of dealing with a virus?
An almost humorous response from the US Right came from the Lt. Governor of Texas who argued that we should be willing to sacrifice our lives in defense of the economy. Turn away from masks and vaccines. Contract Covid in the name of almighty capitalism! I was looking forward to the Lt. Governor being the first sacrificial lamb. You cannot make this up!
The response to Covid that was led by rightwing authoritarian forces was coded rightwing libertarianism, rhetorizing about freedom. It was a strange combination of collective suicide and genocide. In other words, there was nothing here with which to offer critical support. And this movement has now expanded to address an alleged right to refuse other vaccinations in the name of self-control over one’s body, a hideous use of the call of the prochoice movement.
Revanchism makes use of a distorted view of history, particularly colonialism and imperialism. In the case of western Europe, for instance, the antipathy towards immigrants and the articulation of neo-racist notions of racial and religious incompatibility is used to justify walls, fences, and detention centers, allegedly to protect the legitimate population. And this takes place while there remains open denial about the impact of colonialism carried out by many of these same countries.
The impact of neoliberal economic reorganization which has been devastating for the working classes of such countries is, however, not recognized as being the result of a capitalist project but is linked to Jewish machinations, by the antisemites of the Right, and/or linked to demographic changes in the population. Blame is sought where there is no blame to be found.
Revanchism is also introduced into myth. Take, for instance, they myth of the people standing on the long line, a myth repeated here in the USA time and again. The myth goes like this: let’s suppose you are on a long line waiting for something and you have been told that you have to wait your turn. Suddenly some people cut in front of you.
The idea behind this story is that we are supposed to understand that is how marginalized white people feel about minorities of different stripes allegedly jumping ahead of them while they—white people—are playing by the rules.
The problem is the myth has no relationship with history or reality. There never was one line. And to the extent that lines existed it was more like what they would call in the longshore industry, the “shape up,” i.e., a system where people show up for work and the foremen get to pick who works. It was precisely this system that Harry Bridges of the ILWU led the revolt against and replaced it with a democratic system for job allocation! It was also the case, certainly in the USA, where people of color were driven off the line and there was a mass pretending that we had never been there in the first place!
But the myth is strong, and it reinforces the idea that something has been taken away from hardworking white people. This is not about identity politics. This is about a system that has ensured the relative stability and hegemony of capitalism for hundreds of years.
And no discussion of revanchism is complete without a recognition of the centrality of the counterrevolution against women contained in revanchism and contemporary rightwing authoritarianism. There has been a full-blown assault on every victory won by women since the 19th century. This is an assault that seeks to structurally suppress women, reinforce male supremacy, and reaffirm traditional gender roles. This is not, primarily, a matter of identity or gender identity. This element of revanchism appeals to often educated, yet marginalized men; men whose economic prospects have dimmed, in both the global North and global South. Men who are threatened by the implications of the emancipation of women and see in that a threat to those spheres in life that were actively protected as male-only or male-preferred arenas. This element of revanchism is filled with misogyny and, as such, is filled with violence.
Taking on the far Right and, in fact, uniting the working class in the battle for power, necessitates a recognition that this is no sideshow from the class struggle. It is not that the struggle against the racist and male supremacist sides of revanchism are important. It should be the recognition that there can be no unity unless socialist politics are truly emancipatory politics.
The sort of framework I am suggesting here does not appear to be in The Long Retreat, though periodically there are hints at elements of such an analysis. The failure to incorporate these matters of imperialism, racism, sexism, and revanchism into one’s analysis, or to treat some of this, at least, as tangential, means that strategy will be flawed.
Strategy for socialist renewal in the global North, including in the former Soviet bloc, will necessitate significant attention to systems of oppression that parallel and overlap with the exploitation and oppression of workers. This will mean that demands and struggles will have to expand the understanding of the “general interests” of the working class. If we are to recognize, as Kagarlitsky does, the fragmentation with the working class, then socialist politics will need to center the process and struggles to unite the class, not on the basis of silence in the face of racial, national, sexual, etc., oppression, but in ensuring that the working class unites in the context of the battle for consistent democracy.
My optimism about Kagarlitsky’s The Long Retreat, perhaps paradoxically, comes from Kagarlitsky’s commitment to socialist politics, that is, the practice of building a movement for an alternative. A true commitment to critically analyze the challenges facing the oppressed and visualize them in the process of building a new historic bloc, necessitates that one comes to grips with the historic and contemporary challenges presented by imperialism, racism, male supremacy and other forms of oppression that have either been generated by capitalism, or captured and rearticulated by capitalism in ways that help to advance the system.
A final point. I have focused so much on revanchism since it is so very central to rightwing authoritarian movements across the world. It succeeds to the extent to which populations can be successfully divided and one declared to be legitimate, and another illegitimate. To the extent to which our 21st century socialist politics ignores this or treats this as just a perverse, unfortunate though understandable response to neoliberal capitalism and its horrors, we miss one sobering point: there are and will be sections of the subaltern classes generally, and the working class in particular, across the planet who have become convinced they have a place within the framework and organization of rightwing authoritarianism. These are forces who we should understand are lost to us and should not be at the center of our attention.
When the robber baron Jay Gould once said that he could buy one half of the working class to kill off the other half, we should understand that he was only being partially euphemistic.
Let me end by thanking the conference organizers, and especially thanking Boris Kagarlitsky; thanking Boris for his courage not only in struggling against authoritarianism and for socialism, but courage in putting forth his views and engaging in a global dialogue.
I submit this, to borrow from Twilight Zone founder Rod Serling, for your consideration.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a cofounder of the U.S. based Ukraine Solidarity Network and the author of several books: the 2023 mystery novel The Man Who Changed Colors as well as the mystery novel The Man Who Fell from the Sky; co-editor of Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral and Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice; and author of “They’re Bankrupting Us” – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. Follow him on Twitter [@BillFletcherJr], Facebook [Bill Fletcher Jr.] and at www.billfletcherjr.com
The entire October 8th conference can be viewed on YouTube.