What is to be done? (From the perspective of a Marxist living in the imperial core.)
Despite the many divisions and disagreements across the modern anti-capitalist Left in imperial core nations, the one thing we can all unanimously agree on is that it doesn't feel like we're winning. It feels like we're perpetually on the defensive and continuing to progressively lose ground. Not only that, but the longer we stay politically attuned the more we notice our own views, ideas, and critiques becoming neutered and commodified by capital into theoretical or cultural commodities consumed by an ever more reality-detached intelligentsia.
I'd like to speak directly to my fellow anti-capitalist Leftists living in imperial core nations...
Let's get down to brass tacks here... we lack power and no realistic means of acquiring it.
Organizing the working class in our imperial core nations into effective communist movements has proven to be impossible. The barriers against effective communist working class organizing are far more resilient and thorough than those faced by imperial core communists in the past. Primary among these barriers is the geographic decentralization of capitalist firms (due to suburbanization), making it prohibitively expensive to recruit a substantial proportion of new workers into unions as they came of age into the labor force. This caused unions to progressively represent a smaller and smaller share of the labor force, thus reducing their material base to maintain political power in communities and society as a whole. Ultimately, this allowed the bourgeois to squeeze out pro-labor influence in the court systems and legislatures of our societies. This ultimately allowed the bourgeois to engage in overt union-busting activities without any meaningful institutional opposition, thus further marginalizing the power of the proletarian class.
The primary problem determining our failure to build political power isn't our political strategy, our rhetoric/messaging, etc. The primary problem is a material, structural one: all major institutions in our societies are at the mercy and control of the bourgeois and we have no realistic pathway to challenge this institutional power within our imperial core nations. This control is so thorough it even extends into our very ideas themselves. It has corrupted even Marxist theory itself within the West (see Gabriel Rockhill's book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, which shows decisively how much the CIA funds, shapes, and promotes Western Marxist theory in imperial core countries). Not only are our society's institutions thoroughly vaccinated against Communism, so too are the very ideas that circulate within anti-capitalist circles in imperial core countries!
Trying to politically struggle and agitate to try to change the character of these institutions or build our own institutions within our imperial core nations is certain to be a fruitless endeavor. We will inevitably end up wasting precious years of our life achieving nothing in attempting to do so. And when we realize we have done nothing but waste years of our precious lives, we will likely give in to nihilism, hedonism, or other forms of escapism to cope with this realization.
Instead, I propose that we are more likely to make a meaningful contribution in the struggle for Communism by contributing our time, skills, knowledge, talents, etc... to the benefit of China - the only Communist regime left in our world with the geopolitical, economic, and military strength to oppose and eventually defeat bourgeois imperialism and the tyranny of international finance capital.
China is seriously threatening the West's economic hegemony, which can be visualized in the diagrams below depicting China's dominance over global trade relative to that of the USA:
China has not betrayed Communism. Rather, the CPC correctly realized in the latter half of the 20th century the following insights:
1.) further development of the productive forces was necessary in order for the Communist movement to succeed (this is in-line with Marx's understanding of economic modes of production progressing in historical stages, with each stage involving a different level of development)
2.) making use of international capital through strategic allowance of foreign capitalist investment was necessary to achieve #1.
There is an abundance of evidence in favor of China still being a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. For example, if China were simply a bourgeois dictatorship that has betrayed Communism, they would not have made it illegal for companies to lay off workers by replacing them with AI/robots just to increase profitability (Chinese court rules firms can’t lay off workers on AI grounds | Fortune). Also, if China were simply a bourgeois dictatorship... it would not be engaging in reciprocally beneficial development projects (How the Belt and Road Is Driving the Global South’s Development – China Focus) with Global South nations, rather than simply expropriating resources through debt-trap schemes like what Western nations have done to the Global South. In fact, China has generally partially forgiven debts, temporarily waived payments, or allowed relatively generous re-financing (Belt and Road Initiative - Wikipedia) of development loans given to Global South countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (contrast this with the West which tends to use the IMF/World Bank to pressure Global South countries to sell off their resources or privatize their social welfare systems to enable repayment of development loans)
>A March 2018 study released by the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, remarks that between 2001 and 2017, China restructured or waived loan payments for 51 debtor nations, the majority of BRI participants, without seizing state assets.^([263]) The study concluded that in most cases, it was unlikely that there would be severe problems with debt.^([9])^(: 87) In September 2018, Gyude Moore, a former Liberian public works minister and senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, stated that "[t]he language of "debt-trap diplomacy" resonates more in Western countries, especially the United States, and is rooted in anxiety about China's rise as a global power rather than in the reality of Africa."^([264]) He also stated that "China has been a net positive partner with most African countries."^([265]) According to Pradumna Bickram Rana and Jason Ji Xianbai of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, although there is a number of implementation issues confronting the Belt and Road Initiative mostly due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, China's alleged debt-trap diplomacy "more myth than reality".^([266]) While they acknowledge that various countries are facing difficulties in paying their debts to China, they highlight China's willingness to help these countries restructure their debt through forgiving policies, such as partial debt relief.^([266]) In eleven cases, China postponed loans for indebted countries, one being Tonga.^([261])
There is also a material basis for how the CPC has maintained its character as a dictatorship of the proletariat rather than degenerating into a bourgeois dictatorship through the process of development. Namely, the CPC has retained control of the commanding heights of the Chinese economy and maintains CPC cadre units within every major private corporation. These two major mechanisms of control enable the CPC to subordinate Capital to its will.
China has achieved some impressive feats, including lifting 800 million people out of absolute poverty, having a 90% urban homeownership rate, eliminating homelessness, providing universally accessible healthcare for all, and impressive technological innovation that has the potential to (under communism) eventually liberate humanity from work, etc...
Today imperialism remains the primary contradiction globally, upon which capitalism continues to thrive. The most impactful thing we imperial core Marxists could realistically do is personally contribute to helping China defeat the West's global political economic hegemony over the course of the 21st century.
How should one go about contributing to China's victory against the imperial core? There are many possible ways, depending on your circumstances, skillset, and inclinations:
- Contributing your labor into the Chinese economic system: China would benefit from foreigners with expertise in various STEM fields (e.g. Quantum Computing, green energy engineering, decentralized ledger technology, etc.), foreigners who could teach European languages (particularly English), foreign experts in marketing, (counter)propaganda, etc...
- Contributing your consumer and behavioral data for Chinese predictive AIs/algorithms to develop the skills for optimal macroeconomic planning.
- Contributing politically through intelligence gathering/adjacent services to the benefit of China against the West.
- Contributing theoretically by offering the useful aspects of Western theoretical insights (e.g. Lacanian psychoanalysis) to be repurposed by Chinese Marxism in a manner useful to progressing the materialist dialectic toward Communism.
etc...
I am sure there are more ways as well. But the main point is that we should invest our time, labor, and cognitive bandwidth toward helping China against the West rather than investing it in fruitless endeavors trying to build communist movements in imperial core countries directly. It makes sense to try to throw in our lot with the only powerful force left that is opposing the primary contradiction of imperialism and the tyranny of global finance capital.
Apart from contributing, imperial core Marxists would probably benefit theoretically from immersing themselves more with modern Chinese political/economic theory to further progress their own understanding of the world from a Marxist perspective. (This could be rewarding for us on a personal level as a way to grow intellectually.)