There we have it. A second term of President Donald Trump. On the surface, his vulgarity and personal qualities make a lot of people feel miserable and hopeless for the future of the country. While a weakened USA is not strictly a bad thing, this result is the culmination of decades upon decades of stupefying content that the bourgeoisie pumps out to intoxicate the public. Now the people have “democratically” voted to elect a felon to head their country in the hopes of turning things around by “shaking things up.” The masses’ calculation is simple and understandable: Career politicians have proven themselves time and again to be useless and/or self-serving, so let’s try something different. For the masses, businesses seem to be the lifeblood of America; Trump is a businessman and a “wild card”; therefore, lives will perhaps be better under him. Everything else (nationalism, ego, and buffoonery) can be overlooked. Now, none of the promises that Trump had made before his first presidential term came true because the real players of the economy are the entire bourgeois class. Needless to say, the masses will surely be disappointed again when Trump removes laws to allow the rich to become richer at a faster rate than a President Harris. Social programs that bourgeois reformers have fought for to stabilize society from the degrading effects of capitalist accumulation will also be cut back. The true face of capital that reformers try to hide will reveal itself more clearly once again, while bourgeois academics and the masses alike are endlessly perplexed and confused that one person like Trump can somehow embody everything wrong with American politics.
In addition, the so-called “educated” liberals seem to think that his opponent, Kamala Harris, would have been “much better.” Even before the election, they said to me, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good!” Some more honest ones simply say that the important thing is to stop Trump. In fact, this has been the general argument to vote for the Democratic Party for decades–to prevent the “much more awful” Republicans from gaining power to reverse “social progress.” So called scientists in universities also hold this same unscientific opinion as these run-of-the-mill liberals as the masses seek political solutions largely by trial and error. Because the “scientists” themselves are engaged in pseudoscience and are not interested in learning Marxist science in order to offer something truly progressive to the masses, we are left with the political circus that we have now.
In this article, I will take the opportunity to concisely explain some of my views on a few selected issues and see what scientifically-minded people should do in the long-term, instead of being led by the nose by general ignorance and short-sightedness. Please keep in mind that the author has neither the time nor the need to exhaustively sift through all the unscientific drivel that the bourgeois media/academia pump out to delude themselves and the masses.
- The Democratic Party, like all other BOURGEOIS parties all around the world, is an enemy of the proletariat – There are two bourgeois political parties in the United States that answer to two factions of bourgeoisie, but they are loyal to the entire bourgeois class and capitalism. These are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The political ideologies of both parties are not based on social, economic, and political science, which is a common feature of all bourgeois political parties all around the world. These two parties only disagree on how many bread crumbs capital should throw to the proletariat. As a result, the two parties rely on demagoguery and mud-slinging in order to secure positions in government while capital accumulation and inequality continues to grow inevitably as it is set up to do, as was elucidated by Karl Marx in Capital more than 150 years ago. Then, there are a multitude of bourgeois socialist groups that refer to themselves as “progressives” or “democratic socialists,” which are your modern-day Mensheviks, opportunists, and tailists of every stripe. These Democratic Party/liberal spin-offs engage in a slightly more sophisticated form of demagoguery for bourgeois democracy by claiming that we need more “workers’ voice” in a bourgeois government. Finally, right-wing groups are a waste of time and space because they think capitalism is just great as a rule or that poor immigrants are the main problem, so the author will not spend time discussing them here.
Naturally, since the Democratic Party has lost the presidency and both chambers of congress to the Republicans, some people have put the blame on the Democratic Party, who supposedly had had the working masses in mind at some point and then somehow apparently lost the working class base because of “neoliberalism.” Accordingly, the Democratic Party could have simply chosen not to support capital (presumably retaining a more “reformist” party stance instead) because they could somehow be free of the influence of capitalism and capitalists. In reality, the capitalists have bottomless pockets with which to buy out the masses, academics, and politicians. How could the Democratic Party be free of this influence even when we somehow stupidly accept the idea that the Democratic Party is there to help working people in the first place?
Marxists know that the issue is deeper than this. Under the capitalist mode of production, everyone is kept ignorant by the bourgeoisie who direct all cultural production. Voters are trained to follow either one of the major parties in largely pointless elections that the bourgeoisie control under the backdrop of an all-encompassing and long-term cultural brainwashing by the bourgeois media, schools, and elsewhere which are blatant or subtle, but constant. The fact is that the masses as a whole have no chance to shake themselves free of this influence on their own. Importantly, like the masses, the Democratic Party itself is also a product of capitalism, operating inside of it; it cannot “fix” capitalism because it won’t and can’t touch private property. It does not even have the philosophy to see beyond capitalism. All the perceived “faults” of the Democratic Party have been determined by capitalism’s death stage in its “life cycle.”
“Educated” gasbag pundits who place the blame on the Democratic Party in one form or another act as if the Democratic Party is supposed to “represent” the working masses. In actuality, our present capitalist mode of production has the growth of capital as our social way of life, and it functions by parasitizing the proletariat’s labor. Because they support capitalism, how can any bourgeois party be truly on the side of history and the workers when the mechanism of the system is to impoverish and create social problems?
The origin of inequality comes from social class, whereby one class owns private property with which to exploit. Once a person truly understands this basic socio-political-economic fact, all talk of supporting one bourgeois party vs another becomes demagoguery in essence and distracts from the task of doing away with this system. Instead of science, bourgeois academics of America and elsewhere have offered the many “solutions” that are, in truth, deceptions, like ranked choice voting or electoral college reform. To believe even a little bit that the Democratic Party is supposed to “represent” the working masses and to “serve” them is a fundamentally unscientific, cowardly, and myopic political position. The working masses should not see the Democratic Party as their party (and even less the Republican Party, which is even more openly dominated by the bourgeois class).
A final interesting type are the people who talk about starting another party (which the Greens for example have already done and has led nowhere). What is the party’s ideology? Why do we need an ideology? What is the relationship between science and ideology? Who will comprise this new party? What is the new party going to do that is different? How can it overcome the overwhelming power of bourgeois propaganda, clarify and convince the masses, earn their trust and rally them under its authority, and run society according to science and social needs? It will take years and decades to create such a new party and so these are important questions. So far, there are no clear answers from the people who are still mentally enslaved by the prejudice of serving bourgeois democracy/capitalism in general and the Democratic Party in particular. There is no breakthrough at all, just the same old academic drivel while the Democrats and Republicans take their turns in government. That’s right! When the Democrats take office in the next election cycle, these people will be paying lip service to that party and demagogue about the need to “keep politicians honest,” putting the idea of the creation of a new party back into the 4th+ dimensions where angels and demons frolic.
These people will not stumble on the correct answer. Even in bourgeois scientific research, one must educate themselves before any experimentation is performed, yet nobody does this when it comes to social change. Indeed, the entire world historic revolution led by the Bolsheviks has ZERO RELEVANCE to these people. Any reader of the official text History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would come to learn of the many different groups in pre-revolutionary Russia and how all these groups ended up turning against the workers at one point or another–except the Bolsheviks. Now, what am I to think of those who speak of social change but then do not take the time to learn about the greatest change in human history!?
In summary, bourgeois parties in general and Democratic Party in particular are servants of the bourgeoisie. No worker should look to them for political leadership. After all, it makes no sense to say that a party has betrayed you when it never wanted to remove your chains in the first place! On the other hand, the current economic crisis is simply capitalism progressing naturally to its death, as it accumulates more and generates social abuse, as scientifically predicted. It can even be said that leftists have the same essence as liberals, who are themselves very similar to conservatives.
- Democracy cannot deliver long-term results for the proletariat – muddleheads of all types are especially confused when it comes to the issue of democracy. As explained above, the bourgeoisie controls all production including culture and education. Therefore, even when one thinks, he/she thinks in terms of the bourgeois worldview inculcated into them by the bourgeoisie from birth. The bourgeoisie not only own all private property, they own all media, which allows them to essentially buy votes outright and drown out all other opinions, even before the Citizen United decision. Therefore, asking the thoroughly bourgeois-marinated masses to decide within a “democracy” constructed, allowed, and restricted by the bourgeois is no better than simply asking the bourgeoisie their preferences on how the bourgeois society should be run. Also,how laughable is it to claim that society can be run well or improved by the masses spending 10 minutes filling in some circles on ballots every few years! In essence, democracy is a means by which the ruling class ensures obedience and draws legitimacy. In modern America, democracy is sprinkled with some referendums, etc to make the game look fair, and most people, even clever ones, swallow it hook, line, and sinker. On the other hand, some people realize it is unfair, but there is no good way to move forward, and so they erroneously follow the bourgeois socialists.
How about the general ideas with regards to our current system from confused scholars? It’s all a muddle! According to them, the masses voted for Trump but somehow it’s not democratic when the result does not match their desire. Some of them may even turn around and say to us that democracy is not possible because of millionaires and billionaires literally spending a trillion USD into the election. Okay, according to that logic then: in order to have “real democracy,” one must at least remove private property so that everyone is on an equal playing field. However, no political party and nobody wants to take that position. Of course, Marxism is much more than eliminating private property, producing more, and eliminating the dead weights; the reformers are nowhere near any of these. Nevertheless, when even the “educated” people cannot figure fundamental things out, where is the surprise when the stupid masses created by stupid capitalism make stupid decisions in general?
The author presently resides in the liberal state of California. How else can one explain that rent control and minimum wage referendums were not only opposed by the Democrats, but the “labor groups”, academia, and the whole establishment of liberal media? The only ballot measure that passed was one that cranks up the cruelty toward petty criminals, which the masses think are the problem rather than symptoms of the real problem–capitalism. Masses and Democratic Party are both “corrupted” by capitalism. You don’t decide against capitalism; capitalism decides against you! The way forward cannot be the unguided masses, let alone the Democratic Party.
In addition, there are pundits out there who claim that we must respect the masses’ will because the masses are “right” for rejecting the Democratic Party. In response to this, the heart of the issue is that the masses have been kept ignorant in general and their views are really just capitalist views. Consequently, just because the voters reject the Democratic Party, it does not mean the voters are correct either, as some smug right-wing pundits claim. Our position is that in general the voters will NEVER be correct when left to their own devices. It does not matter whom the voters choose. The simple reason is that our capitalism derived social malaise cannot be solved with voting. Here is the secret: the correct answer is simply not given in the multiple choice question! Instead, the answer must be produced by a long-term correct (i.e. scientific) approach on the part of the most conscious section of people.
Democracy and science are mutually exclusive. In general, even with training in bourgeois science, the masses rely on personal opinions to make political decisions. Good luck tracking what subjective nonsensical ideas and speculations that the masses have in their heads about the future and the market at any given point! Good luck figuring out whose opinions, in their infinite variations and permutations, happen to match reality at any given moment! Good luck averaging them out using the ballot box to arrive at the truth! Like any other human endeavor, politics/economics/society must be guided by science instead.
In summary, “democracy” does not exist and cannot possibly deliver for humanity even if it did. Furthermore, the voters collectively cannot possibly arrive at the correct positions because they have been and continue to be hobbled by bourgeois society. Naturally, the solution is to leave bourgeois democracy and foster scientific consciousness instead, first among ourselves, then the broad masses.
- Absence of a scientific theory leads to misunderstanding of bourgeois democracy and the inability to move forward – Trump has run both his campaigns under the slogan “Make America Great Again.” On closer inspection, it is the same with one of the Democratic Party slogans, “rebuild the middle class.” For a person who has no clue about political science, the phrase is palpable. Everyone from social democrats to right-wingers can seem to get behind the idea and the difference is how that can be achieved.
However, these slogans encapsulate the lack of scientific understanding because the middle class will not be rebuilt and social crises will only get worse due to the inevitable concentration of capital. Time moves forward and there is no turning back the clock.
Contrary to popular belief, the main duty of the president of the United States, or any of the elected leaders of capitalist democracies of the world, is to placate the masses while the capitalists and the dog-eat-dog capitalist social order continues. In rare times when powerful external factors align, like during the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt, they may even succeed in reining in some of the worst excesses of the market to slow down capital’s inevitable decay. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie still holds the proletariat on the ropes with ACTUAL control of capital and private property. Along with this, the general political trends in the United States are that of unfettered capitalism in the case of the Republican Party, or a so-called “regulated” capitalism or “mixed economy” favored by liberals and all the different stripes of bourgeois socialists, who are fundamentally supportive with regards to our essentially exploitative market relations that enrich a few at the expense of the many as a general rule.
On the other side, the out-and-out rightwingers also placate the masses, but the higher irrationality of the right-wing base generated by the right-wing media, evangelical Christianity, and trash television for decades, as evidenced by the Trump cult, means that they will happily support their magical candidate. True to our estimation, liberals, conservatives, and the few bourgeois socialists are united by their common ignorance of capitalism and science, their lack of authoritative leadership, and their lack of meaningful solutions and clear objectives for the long-term.
Capitalism had concentrated money and power even before the bourgeoisie reigned supreme. As soon as feudalism was overthrown, the bourgeoisie has always been the ruling class with private property in its hands to exploit labor power to grow capital indefinitely. Capitalism is set up such that one group of people get to ride the growth of capital ad infinitum while the workers toil. An oligarchy is simply unpreventable. This is a fundamental understanding that one must have in order to even approach social issues, yet no bourgeois socialists, let alone bourgeois parties, have this understanding. If even the basic ideas about reality are wrong, how can any of them do the correct things when there are infinite ways for one to be wrong about anything in the material universe?
Krushchev et al betrayed the USSR, finally culminating in the historic defeat of the USSR in 1991; the bourgeoisie of the West now increasingly see no need to bribe the workers with concessions. Today, older workers see the the days when USSR and the USA competed as the “golden age of capitalism,” but they don’t understand the concessions were the result of cataclysmic events of the rise of the USSR and the world communist movement, when the capitalists themselves only offered workers the bloodiest war in human history–WWII. This is kept out of the textbooks by teachers and professors in order to keep the population ignorant, so the masses can smash their heads against the wall repeatedly with bourgeois democracy that legitimizes bourgeois dictatorship and private property and disarms them by deception. A door can hold something in as much as it holds something out.
The bourgeoisie and bourgeois “historiography” have overwhelmingly crushed any voices of reason and have created a fictional version of the USSR, so that the masses are intellectually bullied by mercenary bourgeois scholars into equating communism with fictionalized indiscriminate state violence. As to the fact that all nations of the USSR loved the USSR, “historians” must explain on the one hand, how non-Americans are somehow easily propagandized into supporting this supposedly devilish CPSU, and on the other, how Americans are uniquely not susceptible to any “propaganda.” In this regard, Krushchev et al did the proletariat a world historic disservice by mismanaging and then smashing the USSR, discrediting communism by running it like capitalism, which reminds us painfully that traitors are the worst kind of enemies of communism.
In this section, I have exposed some prominent myths of our political system, so that we can make sense of our ostensibly incomprehensible system. I have also exposed that the ineffectiveness of people’s political actions come from a lack of scientific understanding. Only the scientific approach of Marxism allows one to understand, whereas other approaches can only make a person even more blind and waste his/her efforts.
- What is important and what should we do – In the previous sections, it is made clear that politicians, voters, pundits, and academics have been shown to be incorrect in understanding the nature of our social/economic/political problems, so their actions are incorrect as a result. Importantly, their stupidity is based on their common ignorance of dialectical materialist science. Their theories not only do not explain the real world, they do not offer solutions. Below are some baby step considerations for communism in the modern American society:
- There are infinite things one can do in response to any situation. There is only one set of correct things that one must do, and it necessarily comes from scientific understanding. Before anyone accuses others or even oneself of not acting, realize that the world does not need more people who act just because one perceives that it is necessary to act. To understand is also to act. To misunderstand and to perform incorrect actions does not solve a problem. Only Marxism allows us to see the entire chessboard and even beyond it, whereas modern politics is all about the different pieces on the chessboard arguing with each other as to which one of the pieces is correct. As with all other endeavors, we must avoid doing work that amounts to nothing but an empty sack at the end. The little pigs have built their houses out of straws and sticks, yet only a brick house would work against the wolf. Therefore, the pig that knows science must build a brick house, no matter how strenuous the labor and the derision from the other pigs.
- Truly progressive individuals must think about the long-term and start hacking away at the decade(s)-long labor of building a party of authoritative scientists with the goal of leading the masses towards communism. When the author engages in conversations with slightly more forward-thinking individuals, the idea of communism, science, the formation of a party, or non-parliamentary political actions are called unworkable and too far-flung. It is not uncommon to give into despair when so much is seemingly wrong with the world. However, despair and defeatism is exclusively the result of scientific illiteracy. Properly reading Marxist classics will fill one filled with endless hopes and possibilities. As it happens, these long-term political actions only make sense when one has a scientific (i.e. dialectical materialistic) understanding of nature in general and society in particular.
On the other hand, some ignorant people often engage in denial of the science of Marx. Others claim that Marxism is outdated or that the masses are too comfortable in general to engage in anything else other than parliamentary politics. The bad students don’t realize that the general philosophy of dialectical materialism that Marx elucidated has also been true all this time; Marx’s analysis of capitalism is also solid as a rock: capitalist accumulation generates more and more misery over time. There has been no remedy to this and there can be no remedy under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Like other social orders before it, capitalism also has its own expiration date already built into itself. One does not need to know the specifics to realize the general inevitable outcome in the future, although he/she needs to deal with the specifics as they come up. There will come a time when a courageous vanguard party of political scientists is needed. Scientists, if they are truly worthy of the title, must work to understand dialectical materialist laws of nature, use them, live by them to creatively prepare for and speed up the arrival of the future.
In contradistinction, even leaving the two mainstream garbage parties aside, electing bourgeois socialists (i.e. leftists) of different stripes always leaves one with an empty sack when society at large is capitalistic in nature. As for communism, It will be a damn shame if and when more opportunities arise, but the human material isn’t there to take advantage of them. What if there are advanced workers who start asking questions, but there is nobody to make sense of it all in the clearest manner and introduce them into an UNDILUTED scientific worldview of Marxism? What if some other workers only need us to clear out the erroneous historiography of the bourgeoisie about the great achievement of the USSR under Stalin? Procrastination and under-preparation are some things that progressive people must overcome. To be sure, the primary reason for this is inadequate scientific understanding.
In America, convincing so-called “educated” people the science of Marxism requires knowledge of Marxist science, communication skills, even charisma, etc. We have a lot to do in improving ourselves in these aspects, and these skills can be learned at least partially from various “bourgeois” sources and may be raised to a scientific level with a general dialectical materialistic worldview.
While the bourgeoisie have rendered the population at large unable to think and act scientifically, it also has very “clever” conformists in academia and elsewhere who favor the status quo and argue using myriad excuses to justify acting like spineless cowards and selling out to the bourgeoisie in defense of capital. It is the duty of Marxists to demolish their unscientific theories and to show that it is correct to move in the direction that we propose. It is inevitable that one needs to practice navigating the minefield laid down by the bourgeois-trained people in academia and even come up against the theories that they preach directly. Our group will publish articles in this regard to provide examples and to show how to counter the modern unscientific theories and philosophies with which the bourgeoisie hobble our thoughts to protect the status quo. Still, as Engels said, debates may be much less about convincing others, but to clarify one’s own position. Through independent study of the classics, reading our articles, and thinking things through independently, the reader should be able to assimilate the Marxist (i.e. scientific) worldview over time.
Bourgeois democracy is a deadend. Indeed, if mastering Marxism, creating an authoritative party, linking the masses with such a party is the way forward, then it is clear that mainstream politics is nowhere near correct. The proletariat’s only chance of avoiding rampant misery as capitalism decays is communism. To convince the advanced workers and the masses, communists’ greatest weapon is our words. It is essential then to have correct ideas in the first place in order to formulate our words to honestly tell the people the truth to earn their trust and respect.
-Huoshan Hong