MLG Conference: Fight for Communism!

Boston, June 16–Why, at this year’s annual conference of the Marxist Literary Group (MLG), were more people than ever before talking about communism? It’s a sign of the times, the deepening crisis of imperialism and racism and war. It’s also the result of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stepping up our fight for  communism and the Party at the MLG. It’s still the Marxist as opposed to the Communist Literary Group, but by taking the Marxist work of the conference seriously we are putting communism and the question of the party more on the agenda of these mostly younger academics and grad students.

With a lot of support, we proposed for next year’s conference a reading group on revolutionary organization, so that the need for a communist party would be explicitly on the table. On the literature table this year for the first time was a stack of CHALLENGE, and our papers were all taken. Several people wanted to know more about our history, the article on the Cultural Revolution, etc. Not enough radical people know about PLP, and we are taking some simple steps to correct that at the MLG.

The conference focus this year was Capital Vol. 1 and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. To prepare, our comrades took part in three year-long study groups on Marx and Du Bois. Out of this we helped form a panel on Capital and one on Du Bois, and were often able to intervene from the Party’s point of view in the general discussions of both books.

Many people, not only PLP, emphasized that Marx’s book shows in great detail why capitalism can never be thoroughly reformed. The drive to expand capital accumulation through every corner of the world is inevitably reproducing insoluble problems: extremes of wealth and poverty; more masses of wage workers but at the same time masses of the unemployed; constant economic crisis each worse than the last; and capitalist competition leading to imperialist war. An anti-capitalist reader of Marx has to conclude as Marx did that capitalism can never be made to benefit the working class. It’s not usual to point out at the MLG that this conclusion from reading Capital entails a commitment to communist revolution. We made that point.

Racism and imperialism were not often discussed enough, although the Du Bois discussions did show how racism and capitalism are twinned both in the USA and in global imperialism. (Du Bois was an outstanding anti-imperialist voice his whole life long). Capital defines the global market as the heart of expanding capital accumulation, even in Marx’s time; and his book is full of references to the war against American slavery and the parallels between chattel and wage labor. The transition to wage slavery and the missed opportunity of a united Black and white workers’ struggle against capital is Du Bois’s great theme—inspired by Marx—in Black Reconstruction. Other panels did explore capitalist racism: one on Richard Wright, several on the so-called “surplus” (chronically unemployed) population produced by capital, others on colonial land theft. We are friends with many of these presenters and got to know others this year.

If our proposal on revolutionary organization is adopted, we can put more focus on racism and imperialism next year by bringing more Lenin into MLG Marxism, and going beyond Lenin to advocate a single global revolutionary party which summarily banishes nationalism from workers’ struggle. Examples from parties in India, South Africa and the Philippines could make the point that in our day revolutionary communism has to be organized in a single global party. Only such a party form, going further than the Comintern, can fight all the competing imperialist blocs on a global scale, in the process overcoming racism and nationalism in the workers’ ranks. PLP has a lot to contribute in MLG discussions of the theory of the party form, coming out of our analysis in  documents like Road to Revolution IV of the defeat of communism in the Soviet and Chinese parties.

There was, except for us, an eerie silence about the already begun inter-imperialist global war. Perhaps because people feel powerless? Another reason to join the Party. The door is open for us to advocate that at the moment, though we are aware that we will face anti-communism here eventually. [See Box, “The New Liberal Anti-Communism”]

For our part, what we got out of the conference is best summarized by a young comrade: “This is our theory! Marxist theory belongs to us, to the communists, to the working class.” There is a problem with the MLG: theory being divorced from practice. On the one hand, it’s good that the powerful intellectual tradition of Marxism is alive and well among some academics; on the other hand, Marxism does not belong mainly to academics. As Brecht wrote once, “Communism is simple: if you’re a worker you can understand it.” Communism is also complex, but workers trained in a revolutionary party led by workers—a party like PLP where academics too are welcome—can also master its complexity.

We are encouraged by this work among intellectuals, feeling our collective power to mobilize as a class if we can bring our academic co-workers into a worker-led PLP, building the Party to fight for communism as capitalism spins off into racist violence and war.

The new liberal anti-communism
Three comrades on a panel at the 2023 MLG conference called “The New Anti-Communism” showed how anti-communism remains alive and well in new forms, even in the absence of a mass communist movement. Why? Because communism remains the greatest threat to the ruling class, and both liberal and rightist wings of the capitalist parties in the USA and Canada are united in slandering it. In its identity-politics guise, anti-communism helps to recruit marginalized workers to fight in imperialist wars against “authoritarianism,” to subdue white workers who might want to combat racism, and to provide political cover for racist attacks on the whole working class.

For one speaker, the Florida and Texas government attacks on “wokeness” as educational brainwashing (i.e., teaching about slavery, labor insurgency or gender politics) were dog-whistle accusations that recalled McCarthy-era portrayals of Communists infesting the brains of innocent Americans. Another speaker pointed out that it is wrong to point to “the right” as the main danger in such attacks on teachers and their unions, since liberal multicultural identity politics have prepared the ground for the likes of fascist Florida Governor Ron De Santis. Often, antiracist folks are disarmed against these attacks by their allegiance to divisive liberal identity politics which hide workers’ common interests.

The third speaker discussed how the Canadian government has historically manipulated the status of “refugees.” “Good” refugees have been those fleeing from communism, like those from Vietnam decades ago, or Ukrainians today fleeing a capitalist Russia falsely identified as communist through the word “authoritarian.” But refugees from places like Haiti are to be turned away at the border. Propaganda like the short TV ads “Heritage Minutes” falsely feature Canada as a land of freedom from “totalitarian” oppression, while their multicultural imagery helps the liberal ruling class depict marginalized workers as full citizens of a free country. Liberals in Canada, fascists in Florida: both use anti-communism to shatter workers’ unity, attack workers in struggle, and prepare a population of patriots for world war.