The sea is too salty: Understanding the failures of post-Marcyism

 

The Center for Political Innovation (CPI or CPIUSA) is a marginally interesting group of the Stalinist-populist-nationalist variety. While they are (of course) leftist, unkind people might call them "Strasserite". The CPI seems to be a split from the late Sam Marcy´s Workers World Party (WWP), something as peculiar as a pro-Stalinist Trotskyist group (complete with heavy doses of identity politics). The article linked below, written by CPI leader Caleb Maupin, explains the group´s basic perspectives. I have also read some other items on their website. 

My impression is that the CPI wants to combine recruitment of left-radicalized youth with an orientation to right-wing populism, somehow identifying the latter with "the working class" (or at least a substantial portion of it). "Populism" and "patriotism" are used as positive buzzwords, and the perspective could be described as nationalist. The goal is to save the United States from societal collapse, not to smash it or let it rip. The reformed America will then join the new geopolitical order, which CPI believes is dominated by Russia and China. Even Jesus and the Bible (and sometimes the Torah and the Quran) are appealed to. It´s probably unintentional, but CPI at times sounds like a more "Marxist" version of the LaRouchians, who also call on the US to join with Russia and China, and has a similar combination of apocalypticism (new Dark Age/societal collapse) and cornucopian optimism (re-industrialization, no Green limits). It´s also interesting to note that the CPI sound anti-vaxx and anti-Big Pharma. 

Some of the formulations in Maupin´s article are surprising, to say the least. Here is a central paragraph: "Trump is not Hitler. The USA is not Weimar Germany. Furthermore, the crowds of middle-class CNN college liberals being mobilized to defend the wildly unpopular Biden administration do not represent the proletariat. The BreadTube/Young Turks/DSA cult that mesmerizes its recruits with infantalizing corporate-style “Wokeshops” rooted in scientology practices, while calling for concentration camps for the unvaccinated and equating “Tankies” with Nazi holocaust deniers, is not where serious revolutionaries should be attempting to recruit. While conservatives and right-wing dissidents often appear open to conversation despite their backward views, the vile, hateful entity called “the movement” looks a lot more like fascism to those who understand what the term actually means."

Thus, the CPI regards the radical-liberal left as completely bankrupt, a process that started already during the Cold War, but has accelerated in the last couple of decades. The "movement" (the rad-libs and their nominally Marxist hangers-on) is completely pro-imperialist, indeed, a creation of the "liberal" faction of the imperialist establishment, and therefore lacks any progressive significance whatsoever. Still, it´s astounding to see a formulation like this on a Communist website: "While conservatives and right-wing dissidents often appear open to conversation despite their backward views, the vile, hateful entity called “the movement” looks a lot more like fascism to those who understand what the term actually means." Does this mean that the CPI are willing to bloc with Trump´s supporters against the Democrats and the radical-liberal left? How do you fight "fascism" in America? 

Personally, I don´t think CPI will succeed very well, certainly not in their current political incarnation. Their politics are still too leftist to appeal to right-wing populists. For instance, their support for LGBT rights. And what about immigration? There are no visible articles on the border crisis at the Center´s website, but they certainly don´t sound anti-immigration or anti-immigrant (unless I missed some code words). But the main obstacle to said orientation is their open identification with Russia, China and the former Soviet Union. This can be clearly seen in the bizarre pageantry I linked to in my previous blog post, where CPI activists even hold up the Czarist-inspired banner of the Donetsk People´s Republic. Now, that´s an interesting popular front, if I ever saw one! It´s possible that the broader populist current in the US doesn´t care about Russia and Ukraine, but they are certainly anti-Chinese, seeing the PRC as both unreliable Reds and globalist stooges at the same time. This sentiment won´t be easy to shake off, since China in a sense *does* threaten the jobs of American workers, even if Russia doesn´t. 

I have no idea what will happen to the CPIUSA, nor do I particularly care, but I suppose they could recruit from other left formations with a (supposedly) "populist" orientation, say the newly minted People´s Party? But eventually, I think the CPI project will fail, since few people would want to join a pro-gay, pro-trans, and pro-immigration group of "nationalist" pro-Russian sycophants...  

The masses are the water: understanding the failures of late-Marcyism