Por Paul Street
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Image by Philippe Bout. |
A recent small but instructive example is a social media post by a leftish literature professor with a taste for “theory” and long, enigmatic sentences. After putting up a New York Times headline reporting that “[California Governor Gavin] Newsom Regrets Remarks Comparing Israel to ‘Apartheid State,’” the professor wrote this:
“I really cannot stand social media posts of the kind I am about to make, you know, the kind that tell other leftists what they should do, so apologies for the grandstanding in advance. But I do sincerely feel like if the left, all the progressives, taxers-and-spenders, rad-libs, miscegenationists, commies — all the good ppl out there being gay and doing crimes – have one job this year, it is to make Newsom’s statement disqualifying for a Democratic Party nominee (to say nothing of Hairgel’s transphobia, opposition to the ‘billionaire’s tax,’ war on the homeless, and vetoing of universal health care).”
Talking About What is to be Done is Not “Grandstanding”
I applaud the professor’s refusal to be ne-O-bamanized by “Hairgel” Newsom, but where to begin with how tepid and unradical this is? What’s wrong with a radical intellectual holding forth on “what other leftists should do”? Leadership is essential and attempts to exercise it should not be shamed in advance as “grandstanding.” A serious Left thinker should make recommendations on conduct. Lenin’s great 1902 pamphlet is titled What is to be Done? for good reasons: the Russian intellectuals and activists of his time were far too caught up is disorganized and non-revolutionary activities, potentially squandering the historical moment in which they lived. As the young Karl Marx pointed out, in words that are inscribed on his grave: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Were Marx and Engels just “grandstanding” when they called in The Communist Manifesto for “the left” of their time to build a revolutionary communist movement for the abolition of all forms of exploitation and oppression, denouncing utopian and other forms of conciliatory (bourgeois, petit-bourgeois, and even feudal) “socialism”?
“The point” has never been more urgent than it is in 2026, as the underlying capitalist-imperialist system is pushing humanity to the brink of extinction through climate catastrophe and/or nuclear war.
“The Left…All the Good People Being Gay and Committing Crimes”
Then there’s the professor’s oddball and eclectic definition of “the left.” “Rad-lib” is a hopeless contradiction in terms (kind of like the title of one of the prolific liberal economist and political commentator Robert Reich’s many books: Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.) Only in some hyper-“woke” identitarian fantasy land is it meaningfully “left” to have sex with people of your own gender and/or across racial lines (nothing at all against either of those activities).
There’s nothing radical about “committing crimes” (at least not without specifically political acts against the ruling system) or, on a more serious matter, about taxing the rich to pay for reforms so ordinary folks can sometimes tenuously do a little better when it comes to getting in on the spoils of America’s parasitic and imperialist capitalism.
The only potentially revolutionary tendency the professor mentions is “commies,” whatever that word means to him. And real “commies” fight for new revolutionary socialist system that does away with the rich by abolishing the capitalist order, not for taxing the rich.
“The Left’s Top Job This Year”
But the worst and most telling and significant part of the professor’s post is the notion that “the left’s” top “job this year…is to make Newsom’s statement disqualifying for a Democratic Party nominee.”
Read that again. Let that sink in.
Not funny! Here we are now under the terrible, potentially consolidating reign of a fascist and exterminist regime atop the most lethal superpower in history, a regime that is moving to deep-six previously normative bourgeois electoral democracy and rule of law in the “homeland” while waging an insanely reckless and criminal war that could expand to include nuclear weapons and other superpowers in the Middle East. The Trump fascist regime is making it abundantly clear that it will not tolerate election outcomes it doesn’t like and is moving in numerous ways to undermine, subvert, intimidate, suppress, and perhaps suspend or cancel the 2026 midterms. It is already using its deadly war on Iran as a tool for the project of cementing fascist rule and locking down American society inside the United States. The moment cries out for what Refuse Fascism has been calling for since early last March:
‘NOW IS the TIME WHEN WE MUST RISE UP and ACT to STOP the CONSOLIDATION of TRUMP MAGA FASCISM. For the lives of people here and around the world we must refuse unlawful and inhumane orders… we must fill the streets and town squares in non-violent protest—not stopping until we become millions — not relenting until this regime is no longer able to implement its program or maintain its hold on power….The hour has come for each of us to ask: If we do not act to stop this, what kind of people will we become?” We stand up and fight for a future in which no human being is enslaved, subjugated, or deemed “illegal” … a future in which the planet can heal and people can be fit caretakers of the earth…We can and must create a political crisis in which the Trump regime cannot govern and implement their fascist program or even maintain his hold on power….Waiting for the next elections will be too late. We cannot rely on the Democratic Party’s leadership who complacently rely on the very norms and processes that the Trump regime shreds by the hour….Let it not be said that when there was still a chance to stop an unprecedented threat to the future of humanity, we did not rise to meet the challenge of our time.”
Compare this clarion call for mass action without electoral illusion or childish faith in the fascism-enabling and capitalist-imperialist Democrats with what the professor says is “the left’s” number one priority right now: “disqualifying” Gavin Newsom from becoming the imperialist dollar Dems’ presidential nominee in 2028! RF channeled Dr. Martin Luther King’s plea for good people to grasp “the fierce urgency of now.” The professor’s counsel mired those people deeper in the paralyzing quicksand of capitalist America’s savagely time-staggered, corporate-crafted, candidate-centered, major-party presidential politics.
It’s nice that the professor dislikes Newsom’s knee-bend to Israel, but this really takes seduction by the siren song of US bourgeois-electoral politics to a depressing extreme. Turning “the left’s” attention to which candidate one of the two imperialist parties puts up in a capitalist-imperialist election that may not even be held in two-plus years is highly problematic! It’s like telling someone in the middle of a heart attack to make sure to go to their regularly scheduled check-up two years from now with a couple of really bad doctors — the US electoral process (already terrible before the current and ongoing fascist assaults) and the dismal Weimar Democratic Party of inauthentic opposition. These lousy physicians are themselves very sick and may well not be alive in two years.
I’m all for telling Newsom to get lost but the notion that doing so is the “the left’s” top priority right now is seriously messed up.
Some Critical Background
For some historical background to understand left-identified academics and intellectuals who promote non- and anti-revolutionary thinking under a deceptive radical guise, see the Marxist philosopher and historian Gabriel Rockhill’s new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? — an important study of how the US State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and ruling class foundations cultivated and sponsored an un- and indeed anti-revolutionary, anti-communist, imperialism-compatible “left” professoriat after World War II. “Drawing on extensive archival research to pull back the curtain on ruling class machinations,” the book’s publisher notes, Rockhill, “elucidates how the intellectual world war on the socialist alternative has sought to shore up and promote a ‘compatible left’ intelligentsia while misrepresenting, maligning, and trying to destroy the revolutionary left.” (Oh, the stories I could tell about misrepresentation, malignancy, and attempted destruction – another time.)
A Forgotten Gabriel
Speaking of actually radical academics named Gabriel, would anyone like to reflect on the remarkable, if all too predictable, extent to which the Trump regime’s reckless war on Iran is evidence for the great radical historian Gabriel Kolko’s thesis on the limits of US power? As Kolko showed in his classic volumes The Roots of American Foreign Policy (1969). Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (1985), Century of War: Politics, Conflicts, and Society Since 1914 (1994). and Another Century of War (2002), America’s imperial masters have “consistently misunderstood and underestimated the wars they have set into motion,” relying on “military technology” that “cause conflicts to be much longer and more destructive to civilians than ever.” America “responds to the complexity of world affairs with its advanced technology and superior firepower, not with realistic political response and negotiation” – a recurrent imperial habit of military hubris and futility that works to make the world and America less, not more, safe and livable. And on that note, this from yesterday’s New York Times:
“Iran’s Attacks Force U.S. Troops to Work Remotely: Iran has severely damaged several American military bases in the Middle East, officials say. Iran has bombed U.S. bases across the Middle East in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war, forcing many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region, according to military personnel and American officials. So now much of the land-based military is, in essence, fighting the war while working remotely, with the exception of fighter pilots and crews operating and maintaining warplanes and conducting strikes….Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has urged people to report these new locations as it hunts for the dispersed troops. There were close to 40,000 U.S. troops in the region when the war started, and Central Command has dispersed thousands of them, some to as far away as Europe, American military officials said. But many have remained in the Middle East, although not on their original bases, military officials said…The result, according to current and former military officials, is a war that is much harder to prosecute. ‘Yes, we have the ability to set up expedient operation centers, but you’re absolutely going to lose capability,’ said Master Sgt. Wes J. Bryant, a retired Special Operations targeting specialist in the U.S. Air Force. ‘You can’t just put all that equipment on the top of a hotel, for example. Some of it is unwieldy.’ A U.S. military official said that troops are not working from the roofs of civilian hotels…Iran responded forcefully to the joint American and Israeli strikes, targeting not only U.S. bases but also embassies and oil and gas infrastructure throughout the region. With its supreme leader and dozens of other leaders killed, the Iranian regime has retaliated by launching hundreds of drones and missiles into neighboring countries and largely shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route, making sure the war would be felt by people across the globe…Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable…”
But no worries – Mein Trumpf is sending in the 82nd airborne, which Trump expects to fix things in time for it to return to help him cancel the 2026 midterms in response to terror attacks caused by his criminal war!
Paul Street’s latest book is This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America (London: Routledge, 2022).
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