Every four years, when the ruling classes of the U.S. Empire start up their political theater to choose a new executive leader, militant “Communists” across the empire forget their revolutionary commitments. We start to hear arguments about voting as “harm reduction.” Heated debates erupt over which of the imperialist candidates we should support, despite the fact that our movement is so scattered, shattered, and disunited that we cannot realistically support any candidate for federal office and retain our independence and identity as Communists.
To deny, however, that the candidates are different — to simply and blankly shout at the masses that they should ignore the imperialist elections — is to make a different kind of mistake. We must analyze and consider the positions of each candidate, determine what class-forces they represent, and articulate actual responses to their policy considerations. To stop our argument a stage short, to argue flatly that the political system is worthless without explaining in detail why and how, is to surrender the entire battlefield to the liberals, who will do their best to rehabilitate it in our absence.
There are also those who call themselves Communists who believe that, first and foremost, the duty of a Communist to achieve real reforms, now, for the working classes, the poor, the nationally and sexually oppressed. They are wrong. Winning reforms is not an end in itself. This debate was already fought, many times, in the past two centuries — from Bernstein’s initial betrayal all the way up through the economists blasted by Lenin. We will fight it again now. Winning reforms is a goal only insofar as it assists the organizing of the revolutionary classes and prepares them for the final battle with their intractable enemy, the capitalist bourgeoisie. So, our question should never be, “how can we win reforms,” but must always be “how does this or that action further the cause of organizing the people for revolution”?
The political crises of the last decade have dealt sledgehammer blows to the legitimacy of the U.S. electoral system. Debates over the Electoral College began as angry mutters from the Bernie supporters and took on new life after the 2016 general election when the Clinton dynast, Hilary, won the popular vote but lost the election. This breathed new life into the debate from 2000, in which Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election through the interference of the U.S. Supreme Court. We must not let up in our criticisms of the U.S. electoral process. Having shed its democratic disguise, we can’t afford to give the ruling class time to craft a new one.
In 2024, there are two “outliers” — candidates who have been thrown up by the “crisis in democracy.” These third-party candidates will run against the big machines, although in this case, like Bernie, one will run from “inside” the Democratic party. On the right flank we see another political dynast from a ruling house, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., our own little American Hitler; on the left flank, Bernie Sanders’ one-time vocal supporter, Cornel West.
How should we Communists treat the campaign of Dr. Cornel West? Our guest contributor, P. D. Goselin, wrote that Dr. West’s candidacy may “bring clarity on a wide range of political issues to millions of working-poor people.”
Dr. West is a bourgeois academic. West enrolled in Harvard in 1970, entering the social ranks of the ruling class, rubbing shoulders with the big, the “haute,” bourgeoisie. From Harvard, West went on to his graduate studies at Princeton. He is firmly ensconced in the world of ruling-class academia, and has worked as a professor at various Ivy-league institutions. That being said, he remains a left-wing public intellectual, and not a genuine progressive force. He was at one time an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and has claimed to be a socialist, although it’s not quite clear what trend of socialism he claims to follow. Materially, he appears to be another in a long line of imperial socialists or Revisionists, seeking minor social reforms to the domineering U.S. Empire.
He began his candidacy by a call for a “united front” strategy against fascism. This was a self-conscious reference to the United Front strategy of the 1930s Comintern. It’s not clear exactly what West wants to unite in his united front, since he has publicly recognized the Democrats as “milquetoast neoliberals,” but the sentiment is that all democratic elements, all radical elements, and all progressive elements — those bourgeois and capitalist forces dedicated to democratization, all anti-capitalists, and all socially progressive forces, regardless of class — must combine to stand against the encroachment of the Trumpist clique into mainstream politics.
Even since beginning the draft of this article, West has revised his campaign goals. Those he lists on his campaign website are Dismantling the Empire, Unleashing Democracy, and Saving the Planet, which sound vague and hopeful.
In a previous iteration of his website, he listed a goal to End the Wars, which included disbanding NATO. This version of his anti-imperialist platform was manifestly more politically advanced than the one that is now contained under Dismantling the Empire. Although his call for the dissolution of NATO and the end of the U.S. global military presence remains unchanged, he has added “increasing humanitarian aid to poor and vulnerable peoples,” which all Communists recognize as a neo-colonial stratagem in the U.S. Empire’s strategy of global domination.
Unleashing Democracy reads like a litany of late 1920s social-democratic programs: quality education, housing, a living wage, paid leave; curbing inflation, supporting unions, expanding social security, forgiving all student debt. These are all obviously desirable elements of a program, but on their own, again, do nothing to advance the cause of revolution. Still, they are political goals that Communists can, with some reservations, generally support. For our purposes, the most exciting part is the brief line that he will democratize unaccountable monopolies and oligopolies “with workers’ control.”
Lastly, there is a somewhat meaningless Save the Planet plank, which promises “invest[ment] in clean energy” and ending fossil fuel subsidies. Even if keeping such promises was possible, West’s demands are far too minor in the face of mounting ecological catastrophes.
In only a few days, West has reduced his demands from their previous iteration, which amounted to a meager but passable socialist minimum program, to nearly completely writing out any mention of economic justice. Further, West has no corresponding maximal program, a commitment to Communism, or any kind of socialist construction. This is no surprise, as he is not a Communist, nor, really, any kind of socialist. He has, in the past, made a number of anti-Communist remarks. In these things, Dr. West is not significantly different from the non-Marxist advanced masses — those workers who profess some degree of Marxist education or self-education, such as the membership of the DSA — of workers in the U.S. Empire.
To that end, if his candidacy attracts a widespread following in the intermediate working masses — the not-yet-Marxist but class-conscious — it would not be correct to ignore it. Because his minimal program has some policies with which Communist organizations can present principled, limited agreement; because his positions are not significantly different from the non-Marxist advanced masses who must be educated as to the correct, Marxist positions; because West can bring these issues to the forefront of public discussion, if West’s campaign is at all successful, it would not be incorrect for local and regional Communist organizations to support those initiatives while maintaining their revolutionary commitments. That is to say any truly Communist organization should not endorse him. To do so would be to join forces with our bourgeois class enemies. But we may loudly proclaim those parts of his program with which we agree — and just as loudly denounce those parts with which we disagree.
Of course Dr. West is not “correct” in any of his policies or positions. But if those policies and positions become topics of widespread discussion among the intermediate working masses, this will present an opportunity for Communists to explain the correct positions — so long as we: 1) are not seen as unduly pessimistic, 2) maintain operational and formal integrity apart from any campaign, and 3) maintain, at every turn, a commitment to a maximum program and never stray from explaining the necessity of revolution. It is not, therefore, that Dr. West can lead the masses. It is, rather, that Dr. West can be instructive for the masses. Through Dr. West, Communists can teach and help the proletariat and working classes to achieve that basic consciousness which they currently lack in the United States: consciousness of their class-in-itself, of their shared commonalities, of their shared economic, social, and political interests. Were our movement more developed, Dr. West would represent a regressive element that we would otherwise clearly shun, and clearly demarcate ourselves from. As it is, should a genuine connection between Dr. West and the masses manifest, and we have little reason to believe it will not, we should be prepared to make use of that connection and publicly state our agreement such as it is with his program. We should be preparing for the hour that Dr. West betrays the people or is betrayed by the bourgeois political class and be ready to make use of it to further help instruct the people.
