Socialism with US characteristics

Based in the founding principles of the American Republic

      On December 10, 2022, the Friends of Socialist China and the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sponsored an online seminar on the theme of “The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and its World Significance.”  One of the presentations at the event was made by Dr. Hugh Goodacre, Managing Director of the Institute for Independence Studies and lecturer in the History of Economic Thought at University College London.  His speech, “On the application of Xi Jinping Thought in an imperialist country,” was subsequently published on December 23 on the website of the Friends of Socialist China. 

       Goodacre focuses on the question of the implications of Xi Jinping Thought for the United Kingdom.  I take his comments as a point of departure for my commentary today, in which I address the characteristics of socialist revolution in the USA.

     Goodacre observes that Xi Jinping Thought considers the cultural and intellectual diversity of socialism in the world today to be one of its most important characteristics, which is as a consequence of the fact that socialism has emerged in a variety of social and cultural environments.  The diversity of socialism was foreseen, Goodacre notes, by Marx as well as by Lenin, who wrote that “all nations will arrive at socialism—that is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way.”  Goodacre quotes James Connolly, leader to the 1916 uprising in Ireland, who stated that “each and every country must set socialism up in the way most suitable for its own people.”

      China, with its ideology of socialism with Chinese characteristics, exemplifies the phenomenon, Goodacre observes.  And it is an important example, because China is a source of inspiration to socialist governments and movements in developing countries, demonstrating the real possibilities for true independence and economic development through an anti-imperialist road; while imperialism itself can only offer continued injustice, structural inequality, and political and social crisis.  In addition, Xi Jinping Thought includes study of the 5,000 year history of Chinese civilization, thus demonstrating the importance of developing in each country a form of socialism that is rooted in reflection on the nation’s history and culture.

     In applying Xi Jinping Thought to the UK, Goodacre observes that the minority members of Britain’s working class are naturally open to anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist ideas.  The ethnic minorities of the British working class, therefore, have invaluable potential for establishing a mass anti-imperialist base within the imperialist metropolis.  

The necessary characteristics of socialist revolution in the USA

     How can a socialist revolution in the USA be made?  In addressing this question, I would like to focus on the particular characteristics of the immigrations that have made the American people and the American political culture.  And I would like to begin with a question suggested by Goodacre:  To what extent is there anti-imperialist consciousness among the peoples who migrated to the USA from nations that are the objects of imperialist aggression?  In reflecting on this question, we should recognize objective conditions, and not be influenced by idealist notions.  Voluntary migration to the United States from a semi-peripheralized or peripheralized zone of the world-economy is an implicit political act, in which the migrant seeks to take individual advantage of the economic benefits of the core-peripheral relation established by colonialism and sustained by Western imperialism.  If it turns out well for the individual migrant in economic terms, the political decision is reinforced by the economic situation of the migrant, who is materially benefitting in the core nation from the economic benefits of the core-peripheral relation.  Thus, for migrants to the USA from peripheralized zones, anti-imperialist consciousness is inconsistent with their actual political and economic situation. 

     As a result, there is little in the way of anti-imperialist consciousness among immigrants to the USA from the peripheralized zones.  This can be seen in the case of Latin American migrants to the United States.  These migrants come from nations with strong traditions of anti-imperialist consciousness, strengthened in the last two decades as a result of the negative consequences of the global neoliberal project.  Yet in the United States, their orientation is toward the protection of their rights in the United States, leaving behind the anti-imperialist political culture of their native lands.  They seek to secure their situation in the United States, and their relation to their country of origin involves primarily the sending of financial support to their families and maintaining familial relations.  They are supported in this accommodationist political project by many white leftists, whose ethnocentrism leaves them with limited consciousness of the anti-imperialist movements of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

      Similar conditions of economics and consciousness existed among the immigrants to the United States from Europe in the nineteenth century.  The great majority of these peoples, called “white ethnics” before falling into invisibility, did not migrate from the European countries that benefitted most from core-peripheral economic exploitation.  Rather, they migrated from Ireland (colonized and peripheralized by Britain), Eastern Europe (countries that were peripheralized and exploited on a basis of what Wallerstein called “coerced cash crop labor”), and Southern Europe (countries that were not strategically positioned to benefit from the British and Western European domination of the world).

      Like their counterparts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the nineteenth century European migrants to the USA, overwhelmingly peasants with limited global consciousness, took the political option in support of colonialism and the core-peripheral economic relation as a personal solution to economic difficulties.  By the middle of the twentieth century, they were for the most part assimilated and benefitting materially from the core-peripheral relation, although they experienced subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination.  (It is perhaps historically accurate to say that no one was ever cancelled for telling a Polish joke).  In spite of such slights, they tended to be highly patriotic toward the USA, recognizing the economic benefits of their migration, especially during the course of two or three generations.

     The diversity of the migrations of the peoples that form the people of the United States presents unique challenges with respect to national identity.   Every nation must have a story or a narrative that provides a meaningful political, cultural, and spiritual context for the definition and pursuit of national goals.  In the case of the United States, the national narrative must somehow connect the different stories of each of the ethnicities without nullifying the validity of any of them.  This reality applies to any national project in the USA, including one formulated by those with the insight to discern the necessity of socialism in the USA and in the world.

      One could tell the story of the USA from the vantage point of any one of its ethnic groups, which can be placed in five categories.  The story could be told from the vantage point of (1) the indigenous nations of the North American continent; or (2) the descendants of slaves of African origin in the United States; or (3) the English settlers that were the primary voice in the founding of the American Republic; or (4) the white ethnic migrants of the nineteenth century;  or (5) the migrations of “persons of color” in the twentieth century and today, which can be divided between those groups that have a median income lower than whites (most Latino groups) and those with a higher income (most Asian groups).  However, even though such narratives could be formulated, all would be historically accurate only with respect to one or perhaps two of the five categories.  It thus would not be able to function as a politically effective narrative.  Unavoidably rejecting the lived experiences of many, it most likely would cause division, and it could be promoted by the power elite with this objective in mind.  This, in fact, is part of what is occurring with respect to the deep ideological divisions in the USA today. 

     There is, however, a politically intelligent way out of this situation of diversity so marked that it threatens to fragment and to make impossible the forming and sustaining of the nation.  The key is a narrative that begins with the actual historic starting point of the American Republic, namely, the American Revolution of the period 1773 to 1789.  During this period, the principle of the democratic rights of all citizens was established as the foundation of the nation, not as a description in practice but as a promise to be fulfilled through the struggles of the peoples that comprise the American Republic.  As the struggles unfolded, each of the ethnic groups, along with women and workers organized on the basis of gender and class, expanded and deepened the meaning of democracy, contributing their own experiences to the national narrative.  On this foundation, the meaning of the American Republic was gradually moving toward mature democratic political practice, in which all citizens are included in the democratic promise, and in which the democratic rights include not only political and civil rights but also rights to education, health care, nutrition, and housing.  This process of gradual yet significant gains in the nation has been dramatically interrupted in the twenty-first century by profound ideological divisions fomented by the nation’s economic and political decadence, which creates new possibilities for socialism.

      If arrival to mature political consciousness does not include consciousness of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of the world, it would result in unawareness that the American economy is built on insertion into global neocolonial structures and is sustained through imperialist policies.  Therefore, the historic struggles of the peoples of the United Sates must culminate in anti-imperialist consciousness, which was introduced into the American political culture by the African-American movement from 1917 to 1988 (without question the most important radical people’s movement in the history of the nation) and by the student anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Anti-imperialism constitutes not only the culmination of the struggles of the peoples of the USA; it also is necessary for U.S. adaptation to the emerging worldwide transition to a new post-colonial and post-imperialist world order.  This worldwide transition is expressing itself in theory and practice, led by real socialist projects in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea and explained by the continuously developing science of Marxism-Leninism, especially in the nations constructing socialism, which are guided by vanguard communist parties.

      In calling the peoples of the United States to participation in the ongoing revolution for the fulfillment of the American promise of democracy and in the worldwide revolution for a more just and democratic world-system, we must convoke the People of the United States, and not the workers or a hybrid formulation, such as workers and oppressed peoples.  Such designations are exclusive, and they are so received by many of the people.  “We the People of the United States” is a sacred phrase in the American Revolution and in the American political tradition, so appreciated by many of the people.  In addition, such reformulation of Marx’s concept of a working class vanguard to American political and cultural conditions has precedent in the evolution of socialist practice in the world, in that Lenin, Mao, Ho, and Fidel reformulated Marx’s understanding of the revolutionary vanguard, adapting it to the economic and ideological conditions in their nations.   

       Thus, socialism in accordance with American conditions involves a conceptualization of a socialist revolution as the culmination of the American Revolution and the promise of democracy of the American Republic, continuously expanding and deepening the meaning of democracy.  At the same time, it involves the patient education of the people in the science of Marxism-Leninism, which makes clear, first, that the USA can no longer sustain its hegemony, in part because of the betrayal of the nation by the U.S. power elite beginning in the aftermath of World War II; and secondly, that the progressive evolution of the world-system requires a transition from exploitative core-peripheral economic relations to cooperation and mutually beneficial trade among nations.

     The socialist revolution seeking political power in the USA ought to put forth and explain a three-point platform.  First, the development of structures that ensure that political power is in the hands of the people and not in the hands of representatives of the elite.  Such reforms would seek the elimination of money from electoral campaigns and the development of habits of reasonable debate with respect to serious alternative proposals that emerge from the breast of the people.  Secondly, an active role of the state in the economy, including the formulation and implementation of a long-term plan oriented toward increasing the productivity of the national economy as well as providing for the needs of the people with respect to education, health, housing, and nutrition.  And thirdly, an anti-imperialist foreign policy that seeks to develop mutually beneficial relations with other nations.  Such a three-point platform would put the American socialist movement on the same page with the socialist projects under construction in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea.

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