Allan Sekula, from the series Aerospace Folktales, 1973.
What does the current crisis in Ukraine tell us about the state of left politics in Europe and North America? The crocodile tears shed by liberal-left pundits about the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 23 and this same liberal-left’s full-throated support of anti-war protesters inside Russia is in some ways the obverse to its near indifference to the fact that crippling sanctions against Russia – like those imposed on Afghanistan and every other nation that the U.S. interferes with – are only going to increase the suffering of those same citizens and weaken their chances of advancing democratic aims.1 So far, they have shown more concern for the 2000 or so protesters who have been arrested in Russia than the 14,000 people killed in the Donbas. Because they believe that socialist radicalism will not get them anywhere in today’s capitalist hegemony, their politics are better expressed in post-disaster vigils than in left militancy. It is as though these people have woken up in the middle of the third act and are only concerned with how the story ends. They want to know where the zeitgeist is going. And they want to know this because they are more concerned to be on the right side of power than they are with holding to account those who are the most at fault. One instance of this is the capitulation of eleven MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group to the demands of the U.K. Labour Party that they withdraw their names from a February 16 statement published by the Stop the War Coalition.2 It is worth citing the updated February 24 Stop the War Coalition statement in full:
“Stop the War condemns the movement of Russian forces into Ukraine and urges that they immediately withdraw. We call for an immediate ceasefire alongside the resumption of diplomatic negotiations to resolve the crisis. / This dispute could and should be resolved peacefully, and that remains the only basis for a lasting settlement, rather than the imposition of military solutions. That it has not been resolved is not, however, the responsibility of the Russian or Ukrainian governments alone. / The conflict is the product of thirty years of failed policies, including the expansion of NATO and US hegemony at the expense of other countries as well as major wars of aggression by the USA, Britain and other NATO powers which have undermined international law and the United Nations. / The British government has played a provocative role in the present crisis, talking up war, decrying diplomacy as appeasement and escalating arms supplies and military deployments to Eastern Europe. / If there is to be a return to diplomacy, as there should be, the British government should pledge to oppose any further eastward expansion of NATO and should encourage a return to the Minsk-2 agreement, already signed by both sides, by all parties as a basis for ending the crisis in relations between Ukraine and Russia. / Beyond that, there now needs to be a unified effort to develop pan-European security arrangements which meet the needs of all states, something that should have been done when the Warsaw Pact was wound up at the end of the Cold War. The alternative is endless great power conflict with all the attendant waste of resources and danger of bloodshed and destruction. / We send our solidarity to all those campaigning for an end to the war, often under very difficult conditions, in Russia and Ukraine. Stop the War can best support them by demanding a change in Britain’s own policy, which can be seen to have failed.”3
What is it that drives the attitude of compromise on the left? One could learn as much about problems of nationalism and internationalism as one does from more parochial debates about identity and class. Consider in this respect Asad Haider’s discussion of Adolph Reed’s criticism of the disavowed neoliberal allegiances of the anti-racist professional-managerial class, titled: “Class Cancelled: The class reductionism debate continues to go nowhere.”4 Haider summarizes Reed’s stance as follows: the discourse of racial disparities construes race as an autonomous force that acts outside of historically specific situations; the reference to race substitutes for political analysis; anti-racism is a class politics and part of the PMC worldview, a top-down model of identity brokering that is antagonistic to the working class; minority members of the PMC justify their upward class mobility by leaving behind those people they are said to represent. Haider takes what seems like a Marxist tack against this “functionalist” and sociologically “reductionist” version of social democracy. While it may seem that he is rehearsing the criticisms made by Ellen Meiksins Wood of New Left politics, what Haider is actually doing is replacing Marxism with a Marxism-inflected discursive historicism that reduces Marxist theory to an eclectic materialism that is sometimes class-oriented and at other times diversitarian, a kind of theoretical opportunism that is typical of today’s non-left, anti-left and post-left postmodernism and social constructionist post-structuralism.5 The fact that all of the latter non, anti and post options are available to scholars and activists is part of the problem with the current praxiological disorientation.
Haider begins his ratiocination with the usual “bothandism” argument that allows postmodernists to have their class struggle cake and eat identity politics too. He introduces the shibboleth that while class is presented by people like Reed as stable, identity is established as problematic. A more radical version of postmodernism rejects all perspectives on “reality” as pathetically naïve and potentially dangerous. For Reed, we are told, anti-racism undermines class struggle. What we are not told is that Reed is obviously not against anti-racism, but that he disagrees with anti-racism on points of analysis and on what it is that would be politically most beneficial to most blacks in the U.S. That Reed’s socialist concerns are not those of the black middle and upper class is elided. Instead, Haider advances the correct view that class is not a category of identity and that Marxism has as its goal the abolition of class altogether. Where he goes wrong is in using parallel forms of structural analysis to understand class and identity. The fact that anti-racism efforts are adopted and co-opted by neoliberal and corporate elites does not, he argues, allow us to reduce anti-racism to neoliberal and bourgeois PMC politics. His counterpoint is that working-class politics and demands have been adopted by social democratic governments and so society and capitalism do not always progress by attacking unions, for example. He writes: “From this perspective, the idea that antiracism strengthens capital is somewhat beside the point, to the extent that forcing capitalism to make self-strengthening progressive changes is an inevitable part of struggle to ultimately transcend capitalism.” If Haider is right to say that Reed’s social democratic politics limits his Marxism, he is wrong to make this comparison between anti-racism and anti-capitalism. For one, socialism is not against the existence of markets, as Haider suggests. For another, socialism does not require compromises with capitalism but can simply replace it. Haider’s “dialectic” of labour and capital veers in the direction of consumer politics to justify higher living standards, and by extension, more progressive policies with regard to minorities and identity groups. While we wait for revolutionary change, he says, we can attend to race issues. How it is that attending to race issues will advance revolutionary change is not mentioned.
Unlike Haider, people like Reed, Walter Benn Michaels, Lise Vogel, David Harvey, Slavoj Žižek, Vivek Chibber, and others, are more sensitive to the fact that the conflict between labour and capital is not external but internal to cultural conflicts. As Žižek puts it, the culture war is a displacement of the class struggle, which neoliberalism and postmodern post-politics actively suppress. Most of the post-structuralist and new materialism research on how it is that bodies matter present a caricature of Marxism, dissolve its contribution to knowledge and replace it with apolitical and de-politicizing substitutes – as Žižek would put it: decaffeinated politics. Corporate and Democratic Party support for Black Lives Matter, for example, and contrary to what Haider suggests, are not indications of significant social change, but part of a ‘black capitalism’ agenda and critique of ‘institutional racism’ that has been in the works throughout the entire Cold War era. And Haider does not hold a candle to Reed when it comes to historical knowledge of “concrete” struggles. For a Marxist, as opposed to a radical democrat, or some other post-left variant, class and race are not intersectionally interchangeable. It does not help much either to add race considerations onto every conceivable subject like your job or network of activist friends depended on it. Call it conspicuous production. The force of ideas and ideology critique is here more important than discursive materialists allow. Socialism is often not against “homeostasis” in the system, as Haider suggests (speaking of functionalism), but more often against the destructive dynamism of ‘turbo’ capitalism and ‘super’ imperialism. The unity of opposites that Haider appeals to refers less to the identity between corporate elites and anti-racists, than the identity of racism and anti-racism, especially as the latter contributes to authoritarianism by fighting the radical left. Contrary to what Haider asserts, capitalism does not need racism and capitalism does not erase class distinctions.
What are the struggles involved in the case of the conflict in Ukraine? One temptation that has been hinted at in some sectors is the regressive character of social policies in Russia vis-à-vis the rights of women, LGBTQ and minority groups. Along these lines, any opposition to Russia is construed as part of the spirit of democracy traveling East. Hitler traveled East, long after Napoleon, and today’s NATO and G7 powers are not democratic institutions, they are destructive neo-imperialist forces, as are the oligarchic and Orthodox powers inside of Russia. To think that NATO warmongering and sanctions will bring a small measure of freedom to gays and lesbians in Russia is to ignore everything you need to know about this situation. As someone like Hillary Clinton would say: Fighting World War III is great, but it won’t secure rights for women. In the context of war, the conflict between labour and capital is displaced onto the broad categories of trading blocs and nations. In this regard, socialists are to be attacked as anti-patriotic traitors. And anyone slightly familiar with the history of radicalism is aware of how it is that socialists are typically grouped along with women, minorities and foreigners – unless of course they are a part of or want to be a part of the establishment, to the extent that is possible.
One should not be surprised at how quickly liberals and postmodernists can switch from attacking far-right anti-vaxxers and Freedom Convoy truckers as pro-nationalist white supremacists to attacking the communist left as anti-patriotic and anti-democratic. There is a good reason for that. The left is internationalist because the class struggle is global. Capitalism does not respect boundaries and borders, except to the extent that money can be made that way as well. As with the former Yugoslavia and Syria, the U.S., the E.U. and NATO powers would like to disassemble Russia into some 20 or more regions, stoking civil war, national rivalries and the kinds of authoritarian regimes that they can more easily manipulate. Since this cannot be stated openly, appeals are made instead to national unity and global solidarity. Anyone who does not go along with this stooge consensus can be tarred as anti-American.
For the global petty-bourgeois PMC, because there is no such thing as America, only ‘Americas’ in the plural, there is no reason to take sides except for the sake of advancing one’s PMC class interests in the creative and knowledge industries, which means making distinctions between the boring old left and the perennially hip post-left. Liberals and pseudo-leftists like for “normative” subjects to be wrong in one way or another. This allows the PMC to justifiably educate, manage, discipline, control, dismiss and step on the other guy. It legitimizes the middle-class professional’s difference from tyrants and from the unwashed masses that demagogues mobilize through their manipulations. When tyrants and mobs are in short supply, they can be manufactured. Push Russian security concerns too far and bingo! Push the working class too deep into poverty or despair and voila! You were right and victorious all along. The same middle-class professionals that allowed the conflict to fester are called in to the rescue: politicians, pundits, police, investors, engineers, psychologists, philosophers, therapists, feminists, rational choice theorists, critical race theorists, etc. This is not an argument against professionalism, expertise or institutions. The attack on the professions that was begun by anti-welfare neoconservatives has now extended to almost the entire “bourgeois bohemian” PMC. It is an argument against the technocracy that today oversees and profits from disaster capitalism. Contrary to what art historian Steve Edwards suggests, this PMC technocracy cannot be conflated with socialist vanguards.6 In order to elaborate this point, allow me to quote from my own forthcoming essay, “The Uses and Abuses of Class Reductionism for the Left”:
“In the era of wokeism, the discourse of anti-oppression is one of the ways in which postmodern academics and activists collude with the neoliberal status quo. As a neoliberal politics, its relationship to Marxism can be defined as a cross-class game of ‘woke baseball.’ This is how the game of woke baseball is played. The game begins as soon as a Marxist or radical leftist makes their first pitch. To get on base, the woke player accuses them of one form of discrimination or other. Accuse them of being racist, sexist and homophobic and you have all the bases covered. Further afield are questions having to do with ageism, sizeism, ableism and so on. The woke player can aim for a home run by comprehensively accusing the Marxist of class reductionism. Various pitches are available from the other side, depending on what league you play in: the privilege theory soft ball, the Eurocentrism hard ball, the hegemonic universalism curve ball, the masculinism fast ball and the phallogocentrism spit ball. To end this game of political relativism and will to power, allies must accuse their leftist comrades of being no different than the right. Woke baseball is unlike most sport, however, to the extent that woke players are player, umpire and fan all at once. You do not even require an opponent. To take one example, Marcie Branco, a feminist with degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Rutgers, who has published in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, worked as editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review and was the winner of the 2016 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists’ Association Excellence in Online Journalism Award says: “If you say ‘working class’ your white supremacy is showing. THE END.”7 Woke baseball has nothing to do with a comrade’s actual social commitments. Like the Holy Inquisition and other forms of terrorism, the burden of proof is imposed on designated parties whose guilt and salvation are irrelevant since the game obeys its own rules.”
There is nothing more American than baseball. This means that woke baseball can certainly be played by accusing people, especially leftists, of anti-Americanism. Xenophobia does not do it quite as well since baseball, like Hollywood stars, rock music and Coca Cola, are universally appreciated. To critique American and NATO imperialism is therefore to go on the offensive, it would seem, against Judy Garland, Snoopy or Beyoncé. There must, from a Cultural Studies point of view, be something wrong with each of these, just as there has to be something wrong about Abraham Lincoln or Adolph Reed. If there was not, the PMC would not be doing its job. However, it is often a short step from American culture and big-league sport to the American Creed, and that is what the fuss used to be about in Critical Theory until it was hijacked by anti-left tendencies. Unless for the sake of the New York Yankees we all wish to live on a planet that is dominated by American power, which is less likely in the years ahead than it was in previous decades, we might consider the class politics that divides the US against itself and the world. It is in that way that we show solidarity with the people in Ferguson, Portland, Donetsk and Moscow.
Allan Sekula, from the series This Ain’t China: A Photonovel, 1974.
Notes
1. See for example the nuanced coverage in The Rational National, “Russians Protest Putin’s Invasion | Ukrainian Woman Yells At Russian Soldier,” YouTube (February 24, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYX_twjk4ro; Democracy Now, “Yanis Varoufakis: Europe Must Stand with Ukraine, Condemn Putin & Roll Back NATO to Restore Peace,” YouTube (February 24, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcpCGWoTA0. Even more nuanced coverage was presented on Secular Talk, “Will Russians REJECT Putin’s Imperialist War? | Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast,” YouTube(February 25, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC7579ZPnu0. Unfortunately, there are few Western commentators who can fill the shoes of the late Stephen Cohen. Among the more comprehensive comments during the period February 19 to 25, see the interviews with Lawrence Wilkerson and Richard Sakwa at Ralph Nader Radio Hour, “Twenty Dollars and Change,” YouTube (February 19, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1wY0pf3Ok and The Grayzone (Pushback with Aaron Maté, “Rejecting NATO expansion, Putin recognizes forgotten Donbas civilians,” YouTube (February 23, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqVCMZdnb3k.
Incidentally, with regard to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour episode, the comments by host David Feldman and guest Clarence Lusane on the possible removal of statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, not to mention Lusane’s tepid effort at criticism of Barack Obama, were as lily-livered as the recent discussion of the legacy of George Washington with popularizer Nathaniel Philbrick on the Chris Hedges show On Contact. See On Contact, “George Washington and the Legacy of white supremacy,” RT (February 25, 2022), https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/550319-george-washington-genocidal-colonist/.
2. Robert Stevens, “Johnson government announces ‘ferocious’ UK sanctions against Russia, steps up war preparations,” World Socialist Web Site (February 24, 2022), https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/24/ukru-f24.html.
3. Stop the War Coalition, “Stop the War Statement on Ukraine 24/02/22,” Stopwar.org (February 24, 2022), https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/stop-the-war-statement-on-ukraine-24-02-22/. My emphasis.
4. Asad Haider, “Class Cancelled: The class reductionism debate continues to go nowhere,” Substack (August 16, 2020), https://asadhaider.substack.com/p/class-cancelled?utm_source=url.
5. For a critique of anti-humanist new materialisms that covers many of the same intellectual dilemmas as the Marxist critique of identity politics, see SunYoung Ahn, “Magic, Necromancy, and the Nonhuman Turn,” Monthly Review(February 1, 2022), https://monthlyreview.org/2022/02/01/magic-necromancy-and-the-nonhuman-turn/.
6. See Steve Edwards, “White-Collar Blues: Allan Sekula Casts an Eye on the Professional-Managerial Class,” Nonsite#37 (December 8, 2021), https://nonsite.org/white-collar-blues-allan-sekula-casts-an-eye-over-the-professional-managerial-class/. With regard to the failures of the ‘New Communist Movement’ in the U.S., Edwards writes: “this vanguard perspective might be viewed as a displaced version of the PMC’s technocratic vision in which they assume leadership based on their special understanding of the road to socialism. The failure to confront the nature of Stalinism, particularly in colonial social formations, proved fatal to the NMC.” For a critique of this anti-vanguardist post-politics, see my discussion of Henri Lefebvre’s Position: contre les technocrates in Marc James Léger, Don’t Network: The Avant Garde after Networks (Brooklyn: Minor Compositions, 2018). In addition to being an interesting extension of PMC theory to the realm of Marxist art theory, Edwards’ essay is a bizarre case of Gen-X nostalgia for the Cultural Studies of the 1980s. On the subject of petty-bourgeois politics and culture, see my essay “Welcome to the Cultural Goodwill Revolution” in Brave New Avant Garde: Essays on Art and Politics (Winchester: Zero Books, 2012).
7. Cited in Dan Kovalik, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture (New York: Hot Books, 2021) 26-7.