Critical response to: https://www.cpusa.org/article/wokeness-and-the-struggle-for-black-liberation/

This is a genuine and principled criticism for author Dom Shannon of CPUSA org columns section. In their article on Black Liberation & Wokeness, they made a grave dialectical error that leads to an opportunist line if taken into material practice. This picture contains a reversal of the correct Marxist position on the class struggle and subordinate struggles (also known as struggles of additional oppression, struggles of groups within Class—henceforth: sub-class struggles).

The idea that Black liberation, women’s liberation, queer liberation, and Indigenous liberation fights advance the whole working class to socialist liberation is opportunist with respect to taking the easier and subordinate struggles; is a long-advanced agenda of bourgeois recuperation of class struggle as a whole. Communists also do not control these so-called liberations and their movements. They are abstract and suspended in free air. Effectively, these movements are spontaneous. Therefore, Author’s claim is a direct advocacy for khvostism. This in-deed (even if not in-word) fetishizes the power of spontaneity above conscious efforts for class struggle. My criticism here is not a factual disagreement on wokeness but of a theoretical blunder. Class struggle is the foundation of socialist liberation and all subordinate struggles follow this, as the bourgeois class is the progenitor of the existence of these subordinate struggles historically. It is not the reverse. No amount of gradual progress toward class struggle through subordinate struggles equals the whole of socialist liberation.

Regarding that spontaneity, Lenin said:

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

V.I. Lenin Collected Works Vol 5, What is to be Done, Part II, §A

Therefore, it is imperative that correct theory be applied to develop the proletariat beyond (now reactionary) trade-union consciousness.

Intersectionality

Author Dom Shannon states: “Black women serve as the benchmark for the oppression of all workers.”
I am aware of the source for this line, Toward a Soviet America by William Z. Foster. But the quote was not used in the same way for the point within the book. Foster’s point was for extra-exploited workers to unite with the whole so that they may be “able to defend themselves in the class struggle”. But under this author’s use, it has been turned into its opposite: a tool of division of class into its sub-class groups.

The practice of reversing the direction of struggle on the basis of class to a basis of sub-class groups is the application of intersectionality to class struggle itself; it is to multiply the divisions within the working class.

There is a problem of using the intersection of groups within workers to define the whole of worker oppression: The dialectical materialist way is to use the SUM of the parts (The whole of X plus Y plus Z…) of the series to reach the whole unity.

Intersection (The condition of X and Y and Z…) is a formula of narrowing—atomizing directly to the individual in the final analysis. Put to practice, it is absolutely counter to a general principle applicable to revolution. Intersection is multiplicative intensification of existing division of the parts. If we practice this in class struggle, and somehow evade the resulting chauvinism of the one group being “better” than the rest, the sum of the working class would reject it while only the target group (the and…and…and…) along with their supporters could accept it.

We can look to the most exploited classes and groups to understand the current state of capitalism’s decay. We cannot take the resulting analysis and apply it directly to the general motion of the whole society or whole working class. What works for one sub-class does not suit the interests of the whole working class. The objective existence of this truth in reality is the very foundation of the false consciousness brewed up by the bourgeoisie to keep workers fighting over their sub-class interests.

“Intersectionality” even in a Marxist sense, can only be a tool of investigation to the particular but must make its return to the general, as is required for practice and science.

An incorrect theory can only lead to an incorrect practice. If we are to apply the practice of the group intersection, then we require the blessing of the general masses. If the theory does not grip the masses, then it does not become practice. But then problem of intersection is its inherent basis of dividing the masses along their sub-class interests, rather than uniting them in class.

So what reason do the NOT-most oppressed members of society have to participate in these smaller, subordinate, group-centric struggles? How should the whole masses be gripped by the interests of one sub-class group, when they each are now taught to struggle for their own sub-class group interests? The answer to these questions is currently blowing in the wind.

The practice of further intersection of the masses is Liberalism and serves only capital. Inter-sectioning groups, does not lead to a whole understanding of the motion of the working class and how these sub-class groups interpenetrate and interconnect, how they are mutually interdependent, nor how goes the internal motion of the working class.

Instead, it gradually divides the class along non-class lines, “killing” the class in the analysis of only its lower, cellular parts! And the result of omitting the interconnection within the working class, for intersection, is other members who do not have extra sub-class oppression to unite instead stay divided and the intensity of the division is increased toward unification with the bourgeois position. It is opportunism.

But a focus on drawing the working class together along class lines, with interconnectivity and interdependence of other sub-class groups is absolutely a correct dialectical practice. Only this practice first sets the working class to see itself as a class, as already united against its opposite class, and thus to struggle through any lingering sub-class divisions. Through closely working with one another on a higher unity, these currently feuding sub-class groups become entangled and struggle internally and externally along the lines of class, race, gender, and land reform.Class and, for example race, are therefore mutually interpenetrating arenas of struggle; class liberation is not to be made a consequent prize that race struggle leads up to. Michael Parenti said:

Racism is presented as essentially a set of bad attitudes held by racists. There is little analysis of what makes it so functional for a class society. Instead, race and class are treated as mutually exclusive concepts in competition with each other. But those who have an understanding of class power know that as class contradictions deepen and come to the fore, racism becomes not less but more important as a factor in class conflict. In short, both race and class are likely to be crucial arenas of struggle at the very same time.

Michael Parenti Black Shirts and Reds, ch 8, p133

The dynamic of class goes beyond what we can see immediately, on surface-level investigation. It is all-permeating and even determinate in how we pursue our sub-class group interests! This is why I must insist Author’s pet liberation struggles be referred to as “sub-class groups”. It is class that sets the agenda and it is class that informs our very consciousness about our identity throughout the history of American class.

History of American Class

When the United States was divided into the industrial North with a growing proletariat, its other half was the then-agricultural South. In the non-industrialized South, slavery took root as it tends to do prior to a feudal civilization coming into being. The particularly brutal United States enslavement of black (and later Chinese) people in the chattel slavery system was a historical period that was overthrown in the Civil War, replaced with a uniquely American feudal-like system. But because the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle, these “freed” black slaves were now converted into serfs for the semi-feudal system in the US. Because the burgeoning Capitalist and weaker semi-feudal systems existed alongside one another and in tension with one another, those same black serfs were able to struggle with white proletariat, and northern black proletariat to gain access more and more to Liberal liberation, i.e. to become proletarianized, and to industrialize the South. Only at that time did the shackles of the most brutal class exploitation finally come off in the general case, but the marks were left to be passed down for generations.

This is the historical class struggle of America. It is the struggle of the unification of vastly anachronistic classes to a whole proletarian class, now set against the bourgeoisie. Yet we all carry the marks of a long history in our family, wealth, lands, homes, work, and even our bodies; and to some Americans, a further component of oppression along racial, cultural, and gender lines. These extra oppressions always take on a class genesis and a class character, their purpose being to serve the bourgeois class in the final analysis. It is the bourgeois class that has always devised this scheme to create division and false consciousness in the working minds that they are “white” and must be against the “black”, or that they are “straight” and must oppose the “gay”, or “men” and must be superior to “women”, etc.

These false consciousnesses take on an entirely synthetic reality when the bourgeois class power is given full play to rearrange society along these lines. The purpose of cultivating the division of workers into this kind of chauvinism serves capital internally to the country and externally to the imperialist’s colonies.

Nowhere in the above history do racial, gender, or other group struggles have primacy, have superiority, or have higher levels of power than the class struggle. At all points in American history when unification of workers along the lines of class was most imminent, the bourgeoisie have used this inter-worker division to postpone proletarian power until this very day. Under NO circumstances should Communists degrade the destiny of the whole people, to act as cats that chase the laser of bourgeois distraction.

Further Points

Although I identify the first criticism as the principle criticism for its absolute surrender to the bourgeoisie; for its use of the playbook of renegade Karl Kautsky; I have further criticisms which are subordinate to the class question but nevertheless revealing of my general and primary claim. The following claims in the article are mere assertions of the author and reflect zero substantiation using a dialectical materialist method that is transparent for anyone to follow:

A fact that goes unacknowledged about this is the bourgeois recuperation of “stay woke”. The phrase is from a genuinely progressive analysis verging on class within black Americans; or rather it organically started that way. “Woke” has been taken by the bourgeois class since 2014 when the fascistic Democrats used their unilateral power to destroy the voice of Americans who wanted a socialist leader. Sanders, despite not actually being a socialist, was nevertheless the pick of the American people on radical grounds, including a vast section of Americans: black workers, white workers, and latino workers. 8 years later, at present time, the most powerful imperialist country on the planet has perverted wokeness into its own opposite and has won that struggle for its practical meaning by calling upon all the powers of propaganda of the media to bear down on the American consciousness. Therefore, when someone is “anti-wokeness” it is effectively a NULL statement and can mean anything. It could mean “A” or the exact opposite of “A”! That is what makes the above unsubstantiated statement so dangerous to class unification, and in fact sows class division over petty-bourgeois politic lines.

Therefore, an “anti-woke” person…

1. Could be against the capitalist media dogs for brainwashing or forcing ideology
2. Could be against an idealist and backward understanding of race as essential rather than socially created, bound to a definite historical phase of production
3. Could be a genuine Marxist opposed on the grounds that it is preferred by the bourgeois to historical class struggle
4. Could be a bigot engulfed in bourgeois-crafted false consciousness rejecting an opposing false consciousness, a perceived change in the winds of favor to their bigotry

Now why are all the anti-woke people being equated exclusively with the last group—the bigots? What kind of ideology, in its conclusion, lumps principled Marxists, genuine progressives, anti-capitalist masses and bigots together, with bigots as the named primary of the whole? Quo bene?

Failure to clarify this claim will have insidiously anti-Communist effects. Communists do not support the Liberal struggle for one side of the bourgeois class’s political supremacy within capitalism against their fake opposing side, and which both generate capital from their spectacle of opposition; on any grounds, including of a worker’s identity. In sum: “Liberal idPol wokeness”. To that point, “Black Lives Matter” and “Land Back” are not just good sentiments; or in some cases edgy, Petty-bourgeois radical sloganeering; BLM and LB are in fact, privately-owned organizations that take money from working class folks (including black and indigenous) and a substantial amount from capital for their own purposes. This capital-compromised scheme gained BLM alone $12 billion in one decade. As they own these intellectual and private properties, and take money from the working class, they are IN FACT the labor aristocracy Lenin decried from the Second International. As a reminder, the history of the fall of the Second International was directly attributed to this same parasitic class of the bourgeoisie “labor aristocracy” by Lenin, along with the nationalists who betrayed the workers of their own countries. Support for these labor aristocracy organizations as members of working-class liberation is a Menshevik and petty-bourgeois radical ideology at its absolute best and imperialist ideology at its worst.

Due to the dual-and-opposite meaning of “woke” I established earlier, “anti-wokeness” cannot be a priori taken to mean far-right or bigoted regardless of what Author believes. This is the same method of argument used by Herr Eugen Dühring, which Engels famously shredded on the grounds of Dühring’s a priori opportunism. As he called it “tautology”, and as I call it “self-insulating statements framed as such so they are always true”.

Furthermore, it is not established except by author fiat that these unnamed, indefinite, anti-woke Marxists have performed ANY bigoted attacks! We are supposed to take it that a shadowy group of class traitors in the midst of our comrades are somehow performing bigoted attacks right under our noses. There is no doubt in my mind that, made indefinite and abstract enough, such attacks could be materialized ad hoc as justification for this line.

The problem is not whether or not bigots generally attack their targets using the latest fad excuse. No, the real problem is how this particularly lazy-bones and weak form of accusation, rarely meaning to cause any real harm, nevertheless is precisely the form of Liberalism Mao warns about and further sows division and distrust of comrades within the Communists. It means any criticism of wokeness, even a principled criticism, gets you lumped in with the ominous ‘they‘, those making bigoted attacks, whether one is bigoted or not.

The author admits some of the ominous ‘they‘ are not “using the same vernacular as the far right” but before, claimed anti-wokeness is a far-right dogwhistle; essentially that anti-wokeness itself is far-right vernacular, a contradiction to this new claim that they don’t directly use far-right vernacular! It is clear from only this contradiction within Author’s very ability to imagine the problem, they have not fully formulated what the problem even is from its definite relationships. Or have we suddenly expanded “bigoted attacks” to mean even those Marxists who are anti-woke for non-right-wing reasons? Clearly that must be the case only if we are to believe class has taken as subordinate position to the struggle of the sub-class groups. By rejecting class struggle as the principle struggle for American socialism, we have automatically promoted all these other incorrect views to the top.

Here is an example of the assumed a priori legitimacy and one-sided approach of “wokeness” in action, in which dear Author ruins a perfectly Marxist question with Liberal poison:

“How do we as Communists build unity for working-class liberation that puts the most oppressed, the working Black woman, at the forefront of our struggle?”

Author Question

A Marxist would ask “How do we as Communists build unity for working-class liberation at the forefront of our struggle?” and then would investigate the matter fully, apply dialectical materialism, reach a sound conclusion with debate among comrade, and practice Leninism by putting feet to concrete toward revolution. That process should even include looking to the most oppressed within society, including black women! An understanding of the particulars can translate to an understanding of the general, after all. But Author does not ask this Marxist question. Instead, they place a mere tool of investigation of a Marxist question, inside the question, so as to narrow (or “intersect”) our very possibility of approach. This is a demonstration of how anti-Marxist this use of intersectionality is.

The liberalism here is fully saturated and the article text is idealist to its foundational core. I argue it must be abandoned in totality and a correct Marxist-Leninist line must be drawn from the bottom-up, and opened for real debate before publication. No longer must party voices outside of the website factions be silenced.

Conclusion

∑ The sum total of my criticism can be stated as follows: “To reverse the series of class struggles for socialist unity to its in-class group divisions, on the grounds that it gradually leads to revolution is opportunism in service only to the bourgeoisie.”

It is the same resulting effect as to change the sum of a series of fractions (½ + ¼ + ⅛ + ¹⁄₁₆…) = 1 (i.e. unity); to an intersection of the those divisions, (½ × ¼ × ⅛ × ¹⁄₁₆…) and claim that product is unity. It is to treat class unity as something we can produce, as labor might produce a commodity from capital, rather than build to unity. This intersectional treatment of The Wokeness Question is in fact, producing commodities of image for capital at the present time. And the laborers on that capital are among those who write in support of bourgeois worker division. The net result is the alienated labor—separation—producing separation itself.

I’ll end this with a passage from Michael Parenti on class struggle to demonstrate its importance.

The feminist revolution that was going to transform our entire patriarchal society has thus far not materialized, yet no progressive person takes this to mean that sexism is a chimera or that gender-related struggles are of no great moment. That workers in the United States are not throwing up barricades does not mean class struggle is a myth. In present-day society, such struggle permeates almost all workplace activities. Employers are relentlessly grinding away at workers and workers are constantly fighting back against employers.

…

Class has a dynamic that goes beyond its immediate visibility. Whether we are aware of it or not, class realities permeate our society, determining much about our capacity to pursue our own interests.

Michael Parenti Black Shirts and Reds, ch 9, p149-150

Sum of the conclusion’s infinite series

…converted to its product.