American Marxists Set the Stage for World Fascism

Introduction

President Trump calls Joe Biden a “Trojan horse for socialism.” Biden denies it. The Post defends Biden: “Trump Runs against Socialism without a Socialist Opponent.”

A question in Quora asks: “Why is the Democratic Party defending Marxist ideas like socialism?”

In July 2020, CNN headlines: “Trump is calling protesters who disagree with him terrorists. That puts him in the company of the world’s autocrats.”

What’s going on? Marxists? Terrorists? Socialists? In American politics?

Marxist ideas do cover socialism (ownership by the State), social system syndicalism (workers own enterprises), and violent uprising.

Socialism isn’t our biggest worry. Fascism is.

But socialism isn’t our biggest worry. Fascism is. And it’s more dangerous, and more durable, once it takes root—look at the new Russia and the new China.

Marxist elements do exist in America and the West, and they play a big part in what the mutated Marxists want: Fascism. Not ownership, but effective control.

Let’s see how and why that’s the case.

Internationalizing Marxism

This is Leon Trotsky, famed Marxist proponent of internationalizing the movement to achieve a “permanent revolution,” in an open letter dated November 4, 1932, to “Comrade” V.F. Calverton, then editor of Modern Monthly, titled “Perspectives of American Marxism”:

The vanguard of the American proletariat must learn to base itself on the revolutionary traditions of its own country, too. In a certain sense we can accept the slogan, “Americanize Marxism!” This does not mean, of course, to submit its principle and method to revision.

To Americanize Marxism signifies to root it in American soil, to verify it against the events of American history, to elaborate by its methods the problems of American economy and politics, to assimilate the world revolutionary experience from the standpoint of the tasks of the American Revolution.

The great Trans-Oceanic “porridge” is unquestionably beginning to boil.

It may be that we are not very far away from the time when the theoretical center of the international revolution is transferred to New York.

Trotsky was perhaps a hundred years too early. But his prognosis has come nearer.

Marxism in American Politics

Philosophically, there isn’t really an American variant of Marxism. But its Americanized instantiation is now the most powerful culture-affecting force in the world today, setting the stage for a new world order. How so? Because it is driving the U.S., Marxism’s strongest opponent in power and principle, toward a fascist order, not a socialist or communist one. Why fascist? It’s far easier.

And what is fascism (as against socialism)? Ayn Rand illuminates the distinction with customary precision in “The Fascist New Frontier”:

The difference between socialism and fascism is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it [socialism] brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open.

The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

The dictionary definition of fascism is: “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism.” [The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957]

“Marxism,” “Communism,” and even “Socialism” have all been unmentionable words in America among the political establishment until recently; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) do now call themselves “democratic socialists”—that honesty has twice cost Sanders the Democratic Party’s nomination. But the American professoriate, many of whom are well to the left of Sanders, have changed many a mind at the grassroots level.

Fascism is condemned by all major political parties in the West; however, it’s practiced subtly by all of them, but in vastly varying degrees.

Fascism is condemned by all major political parties in the West; however, it’s practiced subtly by all of them, but in vastly varying degrees. And the so called “center-left” parties in the West globally are continually embracing more of it at an alarming pace.

Subtlety is achieved by influencing the young and mobilizing the indoctrinated youth into positions of power in the “democracy.” Although the indoctrinated first filled out the halls of academe and mass media, AOC is a classic case in politics, a then-unknown newcomer who upset a 10-term incumbent. It did not take her long to introduce the Green New Deal.

But AOC’s is not an isolated case. As the Guardian noted a year ago:

Nearly 100 democratic socialists now hold elected office across the country, from school boards to state legislatures and Congress, where Ocasio-Cortez and the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib have become avatars of an emboldened leftwing insurgency.

Over the course of four days, in a conference room … members, ecstatic over their growing ranks and electoral victories, envisioned a society untethered from traditional capitalism.

In a series of votes, members approved measures to prioritize electing democratic socialists at every level of government.

AOC is also part of a political action committee group called Justice Democrats founded by the alumni of the 2016 Sanders campaign. Call them democratic socialists or “justice democrats,” that group is growing.

Jessica Scarane is a 35-year-old Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member running for Senate in Delaware against Democratic incumbent Chris Coons in 2020. Scarane is running on a platform that includes Medicare for All, Housing for All, a Green New Deal, criminal justice reform, and strengthening the labor movement. She has been endorsed by Rep. John Kowalko (D-DE), and several minor parties including the Brand New Congress (the same party that facilitated AOC’s upset win, and backed Rashida Tlaib and many others into Congress; they have grand plans to contest several more seats in 2020), And of course 350 Action group, the self-styled “progressive climate champions,” is backing Scarane and others like her.

If elected, Scarane would be the first millennial in the Senate. When interviewed by Jacobin magazine (“Jess Scarane Wants to Create a Government That Puts People over Profit”), her responses included:

I support eviction moratoriums and cancelling rent and mortgage payments.

This movement can’t just stop at programs and reform. It has to include a push for workplace democracy, because creating an economy where workers have control is really the path to longevity for those couple of goods.

We are losing beaches through rising tides and constant flooding. We have the potential of losing almost 10 percent of our landmass to rising sea levels.

We are a state where people are big believers in the platform that I’m running on.

The DSA cautions its members against classic communism or socialism: “Democratic socialists have long rejected the belief that the whole economy should be centrally planned. While we believe that democratic planning can shape major social investments like mass transit, housing, and energy, market mechanisms are needed to determine the demand for many consumer goods.” [Emphasis mine].

Note: only the “demand.”

In its own FAQs, the DSA illuminates its goal:

Aren’t you a party that’s in competition with the Democratic Party for votes and support?

No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing.

Meanwhile, the 350 Action group is also supporting several Congressional election and reelection bids of people like Jamaal Bowman (set to oppose a 15-term Democrat incumbent in 2020). Bowman says:

The fossil fuel industry has been reckless and negligent, all in the interest of expanding their profit margins. This is unacceptable. They should be held criminally and financially responsible. We should bankrupt them.

I support a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure. I also support a federal ban on fracking.

I also support taxing fossil fuel companies to subsidize the transition to renewable energy.

Indeed, the left-leaning Guardian had admitted back in 2012 that Marxism is on the rise again. Among its snippets:

1. Sales of Das Kapital, Marx’s masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008 [since the global financial crisis], as have those of The Communist Manifesto.
2. The Communist Manifesto is the second-biggest selling book of all the time (the Bible takes the premier position).
3. The key to understanding Marxism’s renaissance in the West is that for younger people, it is untainted by association with Stalinist gulags.

Why Do We Have the Riots?

Mark Thornton, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, has one explanation:

Political syndicalism is direct violent revolutionary action against the institutions of capitalism, such as security forces, property, particularly business property, and the rule of law. This approach is often adopted by Marxists, socialists, and fascists as a means of gaining power. At the root of the chaos and upheaval on our streets is an attempt at disrupting society and taking more control of it by Marxists, socialists, and “anarchists.”

Thornton adds:

“Syndicalism” should not be confused with the better-known syndicalism as a social system, which is an alternative to socialist central planning. This system in theory would give workers control over the industries in which they work. They would make the decisions on things entrepreneurs decide in the market, such as wage rates, benefits, hours, production, etc. The workers can do anything they want at the expense of others. But if everyone is raising their prices and reducing output, how can anyone gain from the arrangement? Both forms of syndicalism ultimately rest on the Marxist notions that entrepreneurs and capitalists exploit labor and have no real purpose worth rewarding. Obviously, each industry would want higher wages, higher prices, shorter working hours …

The reader can take it from there. There are too many lessons from history of what happens when the market’s price system is dismantled.

The rioters do not seek political office. They are hard-core Marxists who facilitate “change.”

The rioters do not seek political office. They are hard-core Marxists who facilitate “change.” In turn, the mainstream Left facilitates their mob violence by defunding the police. The Left is then able to derive from the riots the “climate of discontent” that needs to be addressed, while appearing dignified and peaceful in public, distancing themselves from the lawlessness. Indeed, Democrats in office and their cheerleaders in the media have condemned President Trump for inciting the violence. Joe Biden said he unequivocally condemned violence on all sides, while accusing Trump of “recklessly encouraging” it.

Meanwhile, the “democratic socialists” who are sharply veering the Democratic Party leftward also do not call themselves Marxists.

Marxism has morphed.

Marxism Recoded

Although there were hardly any openly Marxists in mainstream media since the 60s, in academe and prominence, there were quite a few. Indeed, Accuracy in Academia suggests “about 18% of social scientists in the United States self-identify as Marxists, compared to only about 5% who identify as conservatives.” In academe, Marxists are well and truly out of the closet. Yet that 18% number merely includes those that openly self-identify as Marxists, not the recoded ones (the postmodernists).

The real weapon is the mutated Marxism.

The real weapon is the mutated Marxism. This radically rebuilt Marxism no longer requires a violent revolution.

This radically rebuilt Marxism no longer requires a violent revolution. As mentioned before, the ironically named “Antifa” (anti-fascism) will establish the violent “Far Left” as an extreme boundary that lets the “centrists” accomplish their fascist revolution—a government that will dictate to corporations and individuals the official narrative with such heavy sticks and carrots that only a Hong-Kong-protester martyrdom awaits those who will raise their voices.

This redefined Marxism is “postmodernism”—a non-violent revolution that violates individual souls. Apart from spreading economic class conflict into a variety of “oppressed v oppressor” wars, its key weapon is to diminish the power of the mind.

Brian Duignan, a senior editor in philosophy at Britannica, defines postmodernism as “a late 20^th century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.”

It’s largely a reaction against the 18^th century Enlightenment tenets that were taken for granted, the key one being:

That there is an objective natural reality independent of human minds, their culture, and how society is organized. This is a quintessentially Aristotelian perspective.

Postmodernists, on the other hand, are mystics, descendants of Plato. They argue that reality is just a concept, an artifact of what’s scientifically taken as true in that era.

But the overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of the scientific method says otherwise. If reality was fluid, and amenable to pure mental constructs that no doubt would differ among individuals, it could not have become predictable by natural laws established by the rigors of science over millennia. Humans would not even have reached the stage of beings that knew how to use stones, spears, and fire for cooking, let alone land on the moon, and create skyscrapers, cruise ships, airplanes, and smartphones.

The idea that the natural world is not objective, and therefore cannot be amenable to scientific discovery and invention, ought to be summarily dismissed as the rant of a raving mystic.

From the rejection of the idea of an objective reality, however, come the inferences that:

1. Logic and reason are invalid as arbiters of an argument.
2. Astrology and witchcraft have the same standing as science.
3. Language is self-referential, rather than necessary to specify objective truth.
4. All aspects of human beings are largely determined by nurture. Genes count for nothing, even for sexuality, race, and gender.
5. History is merely a record of how we choose to interpret it.

Inferences 4 and 5 come in particularly handy for widening the scope of “class conflict.”

Science has been assaulted by subverting its own stronghold against fakery and aggrandizement—the peer-reviewed journal.

But few would admit to championing witchcraft. Science has been assaulted by subverting its own stronghold against fakery and aggrandizement—the peer-reviewed journal.

This is how the science of economics was ruined. By promoting the idea in academe that a capitalist economy is prone to busts and that government intervention was necessary to correct the business cycle. Government interference in legal tender, interest rates, and regulations actually causes the business cycle.

This is also how the climate fraud was first perpetuated—academic journals. See “It’s Time to Confront the Climate Racket Head-On” and “The Reason ‘Green Ideology’ Can Light Catastrophic Fires.” And an infinite amount of misguided tirades against “big corporations” fill out the pages of the leftist newspapers and websites; yet the limited-liability corporation device is a visionary invention of the modern economic era.

But there is one more poison arrow in its quiver that an anti-scientific creed needs, to cripple individual sovereignty and a chance of a peaceful flourishing: the undercutting of free speech.

The 21st Century Fascist Frontier

Despite the First Amendment fortress at law, America has become vulnerable via its campus speech restrictions, no doubt brought about by the Marxist and postmodernist professoriate.

And today’s digital “public square”—Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, etc.—operates across multiple jurisdictions that dutifully block “hate speech” and “fake news” as defined by the leftist cultural hegemony.

Regulation against “hate speech” and “fake news” is a leftist ploy against free speech.

“Hate speech” and “fake news” are concepts now armed with criminal penalties and heavy fines in multiple (especially European) jurisdictions. They have become the twin grenades launched against all who dare disagree with the postmodernist narrative on climate change, big bad corporations, COVID, transgenderism, Black Lives Matter etc. Businesses comply in order to stay in business and make profits.

Regulation against “hate speech” and “fake news” is a leftist ploy against free speech. Impeded by the redoubtable First Amendment in the U.S., the new Marxism has found new devices to block well-reasoned and scientific opinions that oppose its orthodoxy. The devices have been deployed in legislation and regulation internationally, and across campuses in the U.S.

The State has become the watchdog over the fourth estate, which itself is supposed to serve as a watchdog over the State. This is fascism.

As Ayn Rand remarked:

Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government—and nothing else.

With free speech undermined by “Fact Checks,” young hearts won over, a major political party deeply infiltrated, the United States stands at a crossroads—if it’s induced into complete fascism, the rest of the West will follow suit.

Karl Marx is laughing in his grave, Ayn Rand turning in hers. We are in for a rough time.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For a deeper look at the malaise of postmodernism and the road out of it, see Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds.
 
 
 

Related Posts:

1. Has Australia become “Authorataria?” (An Audio Podcast)
2. Freedom in a Global Context: What Japanese Individuality and American Groupism Tell Us
3. Ayn Rand’s Aristotelian Philosophy of Human Flourishing

   

About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar

Vinay Kolhatkar is a freelance journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and finance professional. He is the Chief Editor of The Savvy Street. Vinay has authored a TV pilot screenplay Undercover: The Story of Jamila, and two literary thrillers A Sharia London and The Frankenstein Candidate.. He is also the co-author of Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds. More about Vinay is at the Founder page.