“How are you today Fred? I’ve been looking over Fung Yu-lan’s exposition of  Xuanzang’s thought. It’s pretty complicated.”
​
“You’re telling me? Nevertheless, we should have a go at it. I’ve read over Chan (Source Book In Chinese Philosophy) and am ready to give it the old college try.”

“Let’s go.”
​
“I’ll start with a background based on Chan’s introductory remarks. Xuanzang (596-644) was quite a character. He entered a Buddhist monastery when he was thirteen. Then moved around China studying under different masters. Finally he went off to India to study Buddhism at its source and with Sanskrit masters. He spent over ten years in India, wrote a famous book about his journey, and returned to China with over six hundred original manuscripts. He spent the rest of his life with a group of translators rendering seventy five of the most important works into Chinese. All of this work was sponsored by the Emperor of the newly established Tang Dynasty (618-907).”

“Sounds like he had an interesting life.”

“He certainly did, but too short. He died in his forty eighth year. He created what Chan calls the ‘most philosophical of Buddhist schools.’ It is called the ‘Consciousness-Only School’ and is based on the Indian Buddhist school, founded by Asanga (c.410-500) and his brother Vasubandhu (c.420-500), known as Yogacara (way of Yoga). What Xuanzang did, among other things, was to take a major work of Vasubandhu, Treatise in Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only (Vijnatimatratrimshika), plus ten commentaries on it, including that of Dharmapala (439-507), add his own views, stir all this together and come up with his own concoction called  Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only. This work was in Sanskrit , Vijnaptimatratasiddhi, but was translated into Chinese by his student Kuiji (632-682) who wrote sixty chapters of commentary based on his translation notes. This is the Notes on the Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only. Chan says we couldn’t really understand Xuanzang without it.”

“Great. Now we are going to try to understand him based on our own notes from Chan, Fung (Short History of Chinese Philosophy)and a few others.”

“That’s how it goes Karl.”

“Well, finish up on Chan’s intro so we can get to the text.”

“OK. In outline, it goes like this. Humans have eight forms of consciousness which are (1-5) the different senses, (6) a concept forming ‘sense-center’ which organizes the raw data of the senses into ordered ideas, (7) a willing and reasoning consciousness or ‘thought-centered’/ self-centered one, and finally (8) one called the “storehouse” or alaya consciousness.”

“What’s that last one? Is it ‘memory’?”

“Much more than that. It's not memory in any conventional Western sense which would be in number seven.”

“So why is it called alaya?”

“It's called alaya because all the other ones are ‘stored’ in this one. All these eight consciousnesses are in constant flux. Chan says, ‘It is so called because it stores the “seed” or effects of good and evil deeds which exist from time immemorial and become the energy to produce manifestation. This storehouse consciousness is in constant flux, constantly “perfumed” (influenced) by incoming perceptions and cognitions from external manifestations. At the same time, it endows perceptions and cognitions with the energy of the seeds, which in turn produce manifestations.’”

“Let me chime in here with some Fung. He says, ‘According to the teachings of this school, all sentient beings suffer from two erroneous beliefs: that in the subjective existence of an ego or atman (wo), and that in the objective existence of external things or dharmas (fa). The purpose of the [Consciousness-Only] or Wei-shi school is to destroy these two beliefs by showing that both are equally unreal (empty or shunya). Thus the Treatise maintains that what we call the “ego” and “things” have “only a false basis and lack any real nature of their own”; their manifestations are “all mental representations dependent upon the evolutions of consciousness.”’”

“Very interesting. Is that it?”

“No, Fung also gives Kuiji’s comment, which is a good gloss on your quote from Chan. Namely: ‘From this (it may be seen that) the inner consciousness is not, in its essential nature, non-existent, whereas the ego and things, considered as external to the mind, are not, in their essential nature, existent. In this way we exclude the heterodox doctrine which clings to the additional reality of objects aside from the mind; we also exclude the erroneous view which, because it wrongly believes in “emptiness,” sets aside consciousness itself as non-existent, thus reducing (everything) to “emptiness.” Equally to avoid (the dogmas of) “emptiness” on the one hand and “being” on the other: this is what the School of [Consciousness-Only] teaches.’”

“That’s great. So we know the alaya is the fundamental consciousness. The other seven are ‘in’ it. Now we must note the three transformations that are always going on as well. The first is just the alaya-vijnana (storehouse consciousness) itself. The second is the transformation brought about by the ‘thought-centered consciousness’ which objectifies the alaya-vijnana as the ‘self’-- specifically as a personal self ‘always accompanied by the evils of self-interest.’ The third is the result of the actions of the senses and the coordinator of the senses (the sixth consciousness) constructing out of the alaya-vijnana (unconsciously) an external world (illusory as ‘external’). ‘Because these six consciousnesses,’ Chan says, ‘ have external things [he means so called ‘external’ things] as their objects, they are conditioned by them and are therefore crude, superficial and discontinuous.’”

“Let me interrupt here Fred. This is the place, I think, for me to jump in with my notes from the Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion as they clarify much of what you have said.”

“Go ahead. I welcome the relief.”

“In Chinese this school is called Fa Xiang or ‘Marks of Existence School.’ Remember the Chinese use ‘fa’ for ‘dharma.’ Let’s take up with the ‘thought-centered’ consciousness, number seven. This is the go between the first six and number eight-- the alaya-vijnana. The ‘self’ arises in this interaction so I’m just going to refer to this seventh type of consciousness as the ‘Ego.’ For this school, the task is to overcome the Ego, recognize the ‘illusory nature of the world’ and thus gain enlightenment -- that is to become bodhi (‘awakened’) so it is suggested that awakening is a better term to use.”

“Awakening to what? To the ultimate ‘Truth’?”

“That is correct Fred. There are three levels of ‘Truth.’ Namely, 1) The Parikalpita level: ‘that which is imagined or conceptualized.... that which people take to be the “objective” world is imagined or conceptualized; i.e., this world is illusory and deceptive; it exists only as a semblance but not as a true reality.’”

“So this is like Kant I suppose-- the noumenal world and the phenomenal world of appearances. I think we can sort of accept this, Karl, if we think of the everyday world on the one hand and the worlds explained by science on the other. What is the second level?”

“The Paratantra level: ‘The level of “contingent nature”.... on this level dharma enjoy only temporary existence, since everything that arises contingently (i.e., interdependently) possesses neither self-nature nor “reality”....’”

“This is a special use of ‘reality,’ I guess.”

“Yes, somewhat like Plato’s. The ‘real’ is self-subsistent and eternal as well as external-- the objects in the realm of the ideas (the forms) for Plato. Everything in our empirical world is in flux and change, so by this definition ultimately unreal. I think we can accept this level also.”

“What’s the last level?”

“The Tathata (suchness) level: ‘central notion of the Mahayana referring to the absolute, the true nature of things. Tathata is generally explained as being immutable, immobile, and beyond all concepts and distinctions. “Suchness” is the opposite of “that which is apparent”-- phenomena.’ This is the Absolute Reality.”

“Very similar to Kant in many respects, Karl.”

“I think so. The noumenal realm is beyond our ability to comprehend (Kant)-- pure reason breaks down. Buddhists can become mystical here but they really don’t know what they are talking about. I don’t say that disparagingly but as a consequence of their own doctrines.”

“Well, this is all very interesting, but Chan points out this school did not have much of a future in China.”

“And why is that?”

“For two reasons. First, it was too ‘Indian.’ Chan says both it and the Three Treatise School we discussed last time were simply Indian schools transplanted into China where they ultimately didn’t mesh with the Chinese ‘psyche,’ if I can put it that way. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the school didn’t believe that all people were capable of salvation! As Chan says, it lost prestige ‘because it advocated that some people, being devoid of Buddha-nature, can never achieve Buddhahood, thus clearly betraying the Mahayana ideal of universal salvation.’ This was a really big objection.”

“Are we ready to hit the texts?”

“Yes. I’m going to quote from eight selections from Xuanzang’s Treatise.”

“So what’s the first selection?”

“Its called The Nonexistence of the Self and in it Xuanzang says: ‘Both the world and sacred doctrines declare that the self and dharmas are merely constructions based on false ideas and have no reality of their own.... On what basis are [the self and dharmas] produced. Their characters are all constructions based on the evolution and transformation of consciousness....’”

“Is there a comment?”

“Yes. Chan says: ‘The denial of the ego is the starting point of Buddhist philosophy in general and the Consciousness-Only School in particular. The idealism of Berkeley (1685-1753)  and that of this school are very much alike. But while Berkeley’s philosophy is built on the assumption of individual minds and therefore finds itself in an “ego-centric predicament” — you only know the ideas in your own mind so how do you get to things external to your own mind- e.g., an external world.Buddhist idealism rejects the ego to start with and is therefore able to be free from solipsism.’”

“Fred, we should note that Berkeley also escapes from solipsism as he has more than just individual minds. He rejects ‘matter’ and thinks things only exist as objects of mentation-- esse est percipi- to be is to be perceived- but everything is perceived by the mind of God. Even for Xuanzang there is an ‘ego’-- it's just not the ultimate reality which is the alaya-vijnana.”

“Here is the second selection: The Nonexistence of Dharmas. I’m not going to quote from this selection. You remember the comment I quoted from Chan previously when we discussed Jizang, I mean his point on the ‘Four Points of Argumentation.’”

“You mean all that ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘yes and no.’ ‘neither yes nor no’ type of argumentation. I remember.”

“Well, in the same way Jizang used the Four Points to refute our ordinary conceptions of causality, Xuanzang uses them to argue for the nonexistence of dharmas. The point is, of course, not the absolute nonexistence of dharmas -- but rather that they are phenomenal, not noumenal. Chan says, ‘The Four Points of Argumentation are ... employed to refute the doctrines of existence of dharmas. Whether the logic is sound or not, it cannot be denied that Buddhist thinking is rational and methodical, absolutely contrary to the common belief, even among some scholars, that the only mental activity of the Buddhist is intuition. It is significant that in a school chiefly concerned with the thinking process, the rationalistic and methodical elements are so strong.’”

“An interesting point Fred. The rationalistic aspect of Buddhist argumentation is often neglected.”

“Time to move on to selection three: The First Transformation of Consciousness. Here is a quote: [I]t is clear that the self and dharmas separated from consciousness conceived by the heterodoxical and other schools are all unreal.... From this we ought to know that there is really no external sphere of objects. There is only inner consciousness which produced what seems to be the external sphere....’”

“This is Descartes’ Evil Demon with a vengeance!”

“And without the demon. “The characters transformed by consciousness are infinite in variety, but the consciousnesses that transform can be divided into three kinds. The first is the consciousness where fruits ripen at a later time. It is the eighth consciousness. [It is so called] because it possesses in abundance the nature to ripen at later times. The second is called deliberation. It is the seventh consciousness. [It is so-called] because it is continuously in the process of deliberation. The third is called the consciousness that discriminates spheres of objects. It is the same as the first six consciousnesses (the five sense-consciousnesses and the sense-center consciousness. [It is so called] because it discriminates gross spheres of objects....’”

“Vasubandhu called this first (the eighth) the ‘storehouse consciousness’ (alaya-vijnana). This is the fundamental root of all consciousness and it contains the ‘seeds’ of all that we will later experience as the ‘external’ world. The other consciousnesses are responsible for our conception of an ‘external’ world by the way they interact with the alaya-vijnana and cause as it were the germination of the seeds. This process is called ‘perfuming.’”

“That seems to be what is going on Karl. Xuanzang says, ‘The act of enabling the seeds that lie within what is perfumed (the storehouse consciousness) to grow, as the hemp plant is perfumed, is called perfuming. As soon as the seeds are produced, the consciousnesses which can perfume become in their turn causes which perfume and produce seeds. The three dharmas (the seeds, the manifestations, and perfuming) turn on and on, simultaneously acting as cause and effect....’”

“I wonder how much the hemp plant had to do with this. At any rate, this is a perpetual transformation.”

“Yes it is and from it arise what we experience as the four realms of existence, the five stages of transmigration, and the four kinds of living beings.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is the medieval or ancient Buddhist world view-- their pre-scientific outlook on reality. Here, this will make it clear. This is how Chan puts it in a footnote. ‘In Buddhism, there are four realms which constitute the substances of all existence: earth, water, fire, and air; the five stages of transmigration: the hells, those of ghosts, animals, human beings, and heavenly beings; the four kinds of beings: those produced from the womb, from eggs, from moisture, and through metamorphosis. The Consciousness-Only School, because it denies the reality of the self and dharmas, regards all these as constructions of consciousness.’”

“Well, indeed, I agree this is a construction of consciousness! The ‘four realms’ are the same primary elements of the Greeks (Empedocles). Today we have the Periodic Table. We can’t take transmigration seriously from a scientific point of view, and hells, ghosts, and heavenly beings are definitely out in any case. The ‘four kinds of beings’ is also a group to revise in the light of modern biology. But even then, the modern scientific world view will be considered as only a ‘construction of consciousness.’ I think this would require that the alaya-vijnana be the universal first principle of the world.”

“Lets see. Xuanzang says, ‘By “transformation” is meant that this consciousness [the alaya], from time immemorial, comes into and goes out of existence every moment and changes both before and after, for while it goes out of existence as cause, it comes into existence as effect, and thus is neither permanent nor one.... Being like a violent torrent, it neither comes to an end nor is eternal. As it continues for a long time, some sentient beings will float and others will sink. It is the same with this consciousness....’”

“And I have no idea what that would be like.”

“I don’t think anyone has. Here is an interesting comparison to Hume (1711-1776) made by Chan. ‘The theory that consciousness is a constant stream of ideas inevitably reminds one of Hume. The comparison between him and the Consciousness-Only School has been made by Fung Yu-lan among others. Both that school and Hume hold that the mind is nothing but a stream of ideas, that ideas are governed by a causal relationship, and that the external world is ultimately unreal [this may be too much of a claim as to what Hume says]. But Buddhism is free from the skepticism of Hume, for Nirvana is realizable through spiritual cultivation. Furthermore, in Buddhism, but not in Hume, the source of ideas is known and can be controlled.’”

“Fred, I don’t think this is quite right. You can’t really say that Hume held to the unreality of the external world. That’s too positive for a skeptic. What he holds is that all our ideas come from impressions of sense but he doesn’t claim to know where these originate-- externally or internally. This is a far cry from claiming that the external world is unreal.”

“Now I’m going to turn to selection four, The Second Transformation of Consciousness.”

“OK.”

“Here Xuanzang explains how the thought-centered consciousness interacts with the alaya-vignana. He writes: ‘...Spontaneously this thought-centered consciousness perpetually takes the storehouse consciousness as an object and is associated with the four basic defilements. What are the four? They are self-delusion, self-view, self-conceit, and self-love. These are the four. Self-delusion means ignorance, lack of understanding of the character of the self, and being unenlightened about the principle of the non-self. Therefore it is called self-delusion. Self-view means clinging to the view that the self exists, erroneously imagining certain dharmas to be the self that are not the self. Therefore it is called self-view. Self-conceit means pride. On the strength of what is being clung to as the self, it causes the mind to feel superior and lofty. It is therefore called self-deceit. Self-love means a greedy desire for the self. It develops deep attachment to what is clung to as the self. It is therefore called self-love.... These four defilements constantly arise and pollute the inner mind and cause the [six] other transforming consciousnesses {the five senses and the self-centered consciousness}to be continuously defiled. Because of this, sentient beings are bound to the cycle of life and death and transmigration and cannot be free from them. Hence they are called defilements.’”

“I can see the benefit of trying to overcome these ‘defilements’ Fred. Not because of any imaginary ‘transmigration’ but just in terms of living a calmer and happier life here and now. If you want to take the cycle of life and death and transmigration in a philosophical way-- in this case metaphorically-- we can say that these defilements of an individual are spread about things (s)he comes into contact with and this perpetuates the cycle. ‘Transmigration’ is just a poetic way of talking about how we can transmit influences from our own lives to those of others. If my self-love influences your self-love then, in a manner of speaking, a little bit of me is ‘reincarnated’ or has transmigrated to you. Let us not, as do hoi polloi, take these images literally.”

“I agree, Karl. We must transcend the literal meaning to get any insight from this way of thinking. I would also maintain this has to be done with all religious writings-- not just Buddhism.”

“What a world of misery would be overcome if people only understood this.”

“Now I’m going on to the fifth selection, The Third Transformation of Consciousness. This is the relation of the five senses plus the sense-centered or coordinating consciousness. Xuanzang puts it this way: ‘The root consciousness is the storehouse consciousness because it is the root from which all pure and impure consciousnesses grow.... By ‘causes’ are meant rising activities of the mind, the sense organs, and spheres of objects. It means that the five consciousnesses arise and manifest themselves, internally based on the root consciousness and externally as a result of a combination of the causes like the rising activities of the mind, the five sense organs, and spheres of objects.’”

“This is fairly confusing, especially when he says the ‘causes’ behind the activities of the mind are both ‘internal’ and ‘external.’ If you hold to consciousness-only there is no ‘external’-- only an apparent external. The external should be an illusion produced by the sense-centered consciousness.”

“You think Xuanzang is confusing? This comment by Chan is just as confusing. ‘[T]he primary concern of the school has always been on characters of dharmas. In accepting them as real, is not quite Mahayana and has therefore been regarded as quasi-Hinayana which, generally speaking, accepts the external world as real. One wonders if the Chinese refusal to regard the world as illusory did not have something to do with the school’s position.’”

“But Fred, this is an Indian school transplanted into China. Chan has already established that this is one of the reasons it failed to ultimately catch on. I don’t know about calling it ‘quasi-Hinayana.’ The problem has to do with the concept ‘real.’ If ‘real’ means ultimately reducible to the alaya-vijnana, then the dharmas are ‘real’ and one doesn’t have to say the world is illusory. The same as with Berkeley. There is no matter. The tree is a percept. Everything ultimately exists because it is a perception in God’s mind. That doesn’t make the things illusory, just non-material. I think the same thing goes for what Xuanzang is saying. Maybe Chan is so confusing because he too is a victim of the ‘Chinese refusal."

“Lets look at selection six then: Consciousness-Only. This section begins with a quote from Vasubandhu: "Thus the various consciousnesses transform and change. Both discrimination (consciousness) and the object of discrimination Are, because of this, unreal. For this reason, everything is consciousness only." This is explicated thusly by Xuanzang: ‘”The various consciousnesses” refer to the three transforming consciousnesses previously discussed and their mental qualities. They can all transform and appear as the perceiving and the perceived portions. The term “transformation” is thus employed.... Therefore everything produced from causes, and everything seemingly real or unreal, are all inseparable from consciousness. The word “only” is intended to deny that there are real things separated from consciousness, but not to deny that there are mental qualities, dharmas, and so forth inseparable from consciousness. The word “transform” means that the various inner consciousnesses transform and manifest the characters which seem to be the external spheres of the self and dharmas.... Therefore everything is consciousness only, because erroneous discrimination in itself is admitted as a fact. Since “only” does not deny the existence of dharmas not separated from consciousness, therefore true Emptiness [mental qualities--Kuiji] and so forth have the nature of being. In this way we steer away from the two extremes of holding that dharmas are real [although they have no natures of their own] or holding that dharmas are unreal [although they do function as causes and effects], establish the principle of Consciousness-Only, and hold correctly to the Middle Path.’”

“These quotes, Fred, clear up the issue we just discussed about the confusion between ‘internal’ and ‘external.’ There really is no ‘external.’ It also clarifies that Chan comment about the dharmas being ‘real.’”

“The next selection concerns several objections raised against the Consciousness-Only School. I’m not going to go over all of them, but since, as Xuanzang says, ‘One’s own principle cannot be established by demolishing those of others,’ I will point out some of his responses to criticisms.”

“I for one am interested in the ‘Two Levels of Truth’ doctrine.”

“His discussion of this point comes from the criticism that if everything is ultimately ‘Emptiness’ then his philosophy of Consciousness-Only is also Empty. He rejects this view. ‘Empty’ is not the same as ‘Nothing.’ It just means the view of hoi polloi that dharmas have real external being is wrong. But consciousness is real. He says, ‘If there were no such consciousness, there would be no worldly (relative) truth, and if there were no worldly truth, there would be no absolute truth, for the Two Levels of Truth are established on the basis of each other. To reject the Two Levels of Truth is to have evil ideas of Emptiness, a disease the Buddhas consider to be incurable. We should realize that some dharmas [which are imagined] are empty and some [which depend on something else, i.e., cause, to be complete-- Kuiji] are not....’”

“So why do we think that some dharmas are external?”

“His answer is that, ‘At the time the external spheres are realized through immediate apprehension, they are not taken as external. It is later that the sense-center consciousness discriminates and erroneously creates the notion of externally. Thus the objective spheres immediately apprehended are the perceived portion of the consciousnesses themselves.’”

“So, ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Awakening’ is when we realize that, just as our dreams in sleep, the so-called world of independent reality is really a creation of the mind.”

“Yes. Xuanzang says, ‘This is why the Buddha spoke of the long night of transmigration, because of our failure to understand that the objective spheres of color [and so forth] are consciousness only.’”

“So, is there one big mind-- an ocean of consciousness-- or just individual minds?”

“There appear to be many individual streams of consciousness. I think the best view is that the alaya-vijnana of each person is always an endless stream. Individuals are perfumed seeds that develop from the other seven consciousness interactions with the alaya as temporary aggregates. They dissolve eventually back into the stream. Then a new ‘Ego’ is perfumed. Reincarnation may be that the new aggregate contains reperfumed seeds from the old aggregate-- but there is no permanent ego or self. I have to agree with Chan when he says, ‘In the final analysis, Buddhism is mysticism and a religion. All speculation is but a way to Nirvana.’”

“That’s it?”

“More or less. There is a final section which is just a lot of quotes from Vasubandhu but we have basically covered this philosophy.”

Well, we have finished our agenda Fred. Remember, we wanted some background in classical  Chinese thought and we have covered the foundations of Confucianism. Daoism, and Buddhism so we could understand better what are the “Chinese characteristics” that may be at work in the Marxism of present day China. I think we can read Fung Yu-Lan’s A Short History of Chinese Philosophy for the Medieval  and early modern period leading up to the Chinese Revolution.

OK, Karl, and we still have Chan”s Source Book as well and we have a good foundation for self-study.

To read the Confucius Dialogue click here.
To read the Mencius Dialogue click here.
To read the Xunzi Dialogue click here. 
​To read the Mozi Dialogue click here.
To read the Laozi Dialogue click here.
To read the Zhuangzi Dialogue click here.
To read the Gongsun Dialogue click here.
To read the Great Learning Dialogue click here.
To read the Doctrine of The Mean Dialogue click here. 
To read the Book of Changes Dialogue click here.
To read the Dong Zhongshu Dialogue click here.
To read the Wang Chong Dialogue click here.
To read the Philosophy of Liezi Dialogue click here.
To read the Guo Xiang and Neo-Daoism Dialogue click here.
To read the Jizang Dialogue click here. 

​Tim Russo’s article “Socialism worldwide needs American patriotism” contains certain contradictions. He writes that the repudiation of American patriotism is built on the “complete erasure of American socialism’s leaders, thinkers, writers, artists, organizers, agitators, even freers of slaves”. Without the remembrance of this history of radicalism, he remarks, “you have no movement, no mass line, no cultural hegemonic change, no revolution, nothing.” While Russo shows admirable acquaintance with the historico-cultural specificities of USA’s socialist tradition, he fails to theorize these details from the politico-strategic logic of hegemony. 

In my previous write-up which Russo critiques, I noted, “While traditions of patriotic socialism are present in imperialist countries, they don’t constitute a proper historical memory to function as the full-fledged scaffold for a mass movement.” Let me elaborate this statement. A nation is not a mere idea, it is a material force; it is a historical, cultural and political process which is consciously lived and shared by a group of people who identify with a particular community of interests. In metropolitan countries, nationalism was originally used by the proto-bourgeoisie of the early modern age as an ideological tool against monarchic-aristocratic rule. 

The growth of market production and the proliferation of exchange values (as opposed to pre-capitalist use-values) came in direct contradiction with the political domination of purely landed property and the existence of the Absolutist state. As a result, the nascent bourgeoisie adopted the banner of nationalism to press forward for the creation of spatial units wherein political power could be centralized and dispersed according to the demands and exigencies of the emerging capitalist system. In other words, the internal mechanisms of the market economy came to structure and constitute the bases of national identity in the core countries of the world system. 

Metropolitan national ideologies coalesced around reactionary values in four phases: a) imperial chauvinism arose in the mercantilist period in those states wherein internal colonialism facilitated the state formation essential to independent capital accumulation; b) racial chauvinism arose in the classical capitalist period, which witnessed the functional preponderance of overseas and settler colonialisms in the extension of metropolitan industry; c) social chauvinism arose in the imperialist era, when the convergence of monopoly capitalism and colonialism enabled the distribution of super-profits amongst leading sections of the Global North working class; and d) First Worldism arose in post-WWII period, in which the oppression of the Third World allowed for the maintenance of divergent living standards between the metropolitan and peripheral working classes. 

USA - as the imperial heartland - oversaw the tight interlocking of nationalist-patriotic discourses with conservative forces. This fundamentally impacted counter-hegemonic politics. By the 1940s, the label of “communist” in mainstream language came to embody the entirety of anti-Americanism, becoming one of the most powerful weapons to impose a dimension of otherness upon citizens. The red scare against radical labor organizers became a more political version of anti-immigrant rhetoric, associating the idea of foreignness with the revolutionary traditions of socialist groups. These anti-communist narratives continue to heavily circumscribe the field of nationalism in USA. 

Taking into account American patriotism’s historical status as a social force determining political relations, it becomes evident that there are certain limits to the construction of counter-narratives that stress the working class’s role in a nation’s history. The nation is not a homogeneous and cohesive formation which provides an even and consensual cultural field provides for hegemonic struggle. In “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”, Paul Gilroy explains: 

“Nationhood is not an empty receptacle which can be simply and spontaneously filled with alternative concepts according to the dictates of political pragmatism. The ideological theme of national belonging may be malleable to some extent but its links with the discourses of classes and ‘races’ and the organizational realities of these groups are not arbitrary. They are confined by historical and political factors which limit the extent to which nationalism becomes socialist at the moment that its litany is repeated by socialists. The intention may be radical but the effects are unpredictable, particularly where culture is also conceived within discrete, separable, national units coterminous with the boundaries of the nation state.”

Thus, a proper analysis of nationalism needs to highlight the question of the institutional locations from which the ideology originates; the actual class practices, concrete social sites and systems of hierarchical-conflictual relations in which it is instantiated, of the agents who produce it; the material circuits through which it travels the totality of any historical bloc and the class fractions who substantiate it with the structures of power; hence the objective determinations of nationalism itself by the co-ordinates of its production, not considering the individual’s personal stance towards this matrix. 

Consequently, it does not matter how leftist patriots conceive of American nationalism; what matters is the fact that the presence of national pride within the boundaries of the American empire is strongly tied to the hegemonic logic of racist imperialism. In a metropolitan country like the US, the arena of the nation is dominated by the bourgeoisie which - from the start - gives patriotism an imperialist, exclusionary and supra-class character. In the Global South countries, in contrast, the foundations of anti-colonial nationalism - internationalist solidarity with movements for national liberation and the incorporation of both workers and peasants - continue to ensure the persistence of elements of progressivism in the ideological battle for nationalism. 
​
Insofar that nationalism mirrors the motion of the contradictions between imperialism and oppressed nations on a world scale - in the dominant imperialist nations, the reactionary character of nationalism determines the overall shape of the movement; in the subordinate nations the revolutionary character is principal, propelling the anti-imperialist struggle - the American Left needs to move beyond the national discourse. Since the ruling class has established nationalism as a jingoistic instrument, left-wing patriotism can have deleterious effects, degenerating into demands for a more lucrative social contract between monopoly capital and the labour aristocracy. Thus, what we need is a genuine politics of anti-imperialism which remains committed to the abolition of the US in its present-day form as an illegitimate state built on imperialism, racism and native genocide. 

​”You look lovely ...,” Corporal Peter Marks muttered in his sleep, “...in purple...,” head turning back and forth on his haversack in the tent on Babylon Farm a mile east of Uniontown, MD, about 4:30 am., Wednesday, July 1, 1863. His tent mate, Private Rasselas Mowry, was sick of hearing Marks talk to himself.

“We know, we know,” Mowry said, packing up for a day’s march ahead. To wake Marks, Mowry yanked the haversack out from under his head, dumping its contents onto his chest, including Millie’s purple handkerchief. Marks still murmuring, Mowry hit Marks with a slap from the purple hanky across his face. “Hey! We’re marching soon!” Marks rubbed his eyes.
“Where’s my saber?” Marks mumbled into the ground.

“In St. Paul where you left it in pieces two years ago,” Mowry laughed. “You remember nothing, do you...get up!” Marks stirred. A hangover announced itself like a knife through his head. He began trying to piece together where he was.

“Were we at a dance last night?” Marks asked.
“Ha ha!” Mowry chuckled, “you thought you were! Here, drink some water.” Marks propped himself onto his elbow to chug down half his canteen in one go. Then he fell back to the ground.

“Coffee,” Marks moaned. Mowry grabbed a tin cup jumping out of the tent to Company A’s campfire, learning there from woozy half dressed comrades the march was delayed. Breakfast could proceed calmly. Thus began the First Minnesota’s 20 mile march to immortality the next day at Gettysburg, interrupted by frustrating stops and starts punctuated each time by the attendant urgency to brew coffee for hangovers. At one of those coffee brewing stops, two and a half miles north, a lady couldn’t sleep in her abandoned mansion, called Trevanion.

Louisa Shorb was born in 1824 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Mark Shorb and Anthony Shorb, Jr., a grandson of John Shorb, who came to America with his two brothers from the Catholic Alsace Lorraine region bordering France and Germany. They arrived in Philadelphia on two ships, one called the Priscilla in 1749, the other called the Halifax in 1754, settling in Hanover, Pennsylvania, just a few miles across the Maryland border from where Louisa was losing sleep at Trevanion over a century later. The three Shorb patriarchs were typical of the German immigrant wave that would become known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, farming the land at first, then starting businesses, the succeeding generations restless and thinking bigger.

​Iron ore and coal deposits in central Pennsylvania formed the backbone of industrial capitalism not long after the Shorbs arrived from Germany, so that’s where Anthony went. After service in the army during the War of 1812, Anthony realized that being Catholic, like his ancestors, wasn’t good for business. So at 27 years old in 1815, Anthony married 18 year old Elizabeth at a church combining Lutheran and Reformed congregations, the Tabor First Reformed Church in Lebanon, PA, built in 1792, where services were said in German every two weeks. By the time their second daughter Louisa was 4 years old in 1828, Anthony was co-owner of one of the largest ironworks companies in America, Lyon & Shorb Co. of Pittsburgh, a sprawling empire of mines, boats, furnaces and forests. Three generations removed from his family’s arrival in America, Anthony Shorb Jr. rose to such power, the town where he first began working in iron, Tyrone, PA, was first known as Shorbsville.

Little Louisa thus grew up in Pittsburgh a very pampered, pretty princess. Her mother Elizabeth dutifully kept the home of an iron baron, bearing him three daughters. The girls loved traveling with their mother to visit the old uncles and aunts back in Littlestown near Hanover, or to her father’s partner, Mr. Lyon’s towering mansion called The Cedars in Tyrone, made of pure limestone nestled in the central Pennsylvania hills. When Louisa learned around age 10 that little boys her age made up much of daddy’s workforce, it didn’t bother her much, because as it turned out, she didn’t particularly like boys anyway. Louisa  excelled in all the ladylike matters, loved art and music, always punctual and polite, a precious darling of a girl. Courting disinterested her as Louisa grew to a teenager, but her father, ever on the lookout for more ways to get more rich, had long ago begun seeking the perfect family into which to marry his daughter, which was duly accomplished when at age 20, Louisa Shorb became Louisa S. Dallas, her maiden name reduced to nothing but a middle initial in 1844 by an heir to a slave fortune.

​William W. Dallas, was born in Pittsburgh in 1823 into more and better placed generations of landed gentry privilege than Louisa; a long line of imperial colonizing British, then American, slavers. His great grandfather Dr. Robert Dallas first brought the Scottish family name across the sea to Jamaica around 1730. There, the good doctor accumulated 91 slaves on 900 acres, then began breeding, like a bull out to stud, at a castle named after himself. One of Dr. Dallas’s illegitimate children born of the slave women he impregnated he named Robert Charles Dallas, who settled into his inherited slave wealth as a man of letters, writing many books about the Caribbean wars fought to expand slavery, and also a lovely book about the poet Lord Byron. Robert Charles mortgaged the entire slave plantation into a trust for the benefit of the family heirs, one of whom was his brother Alexander J. Dallas, William’s grandfather, born on the Jamaican slave plantation in 1759. The Welsh name “Trevanion” first enters the Dallas family by way of Alexander’s wife, William’s grandmother Arabella Maria Smith, a great great granddaughter of Sir Nicholas Trevanion of the Royal Navy, who helped settle Newfoundland, in Canada. Alexander and Arabella married in England while Alexander studied law, then moved back to the family’s slave plantation in Jamaica in 1781 where Dr. Dallas arranged for his son to be admitted to practice law in the courts of His Majesty King George III.

​Sadly, tropical climes did not agree with Alexander’s delicate flower Arabella’s Welsh constitution, so the newlyweds moved to Philadelphia in 1783, the year America won independence. There, Alexander cobbled together a rather common racket of the time - government printing contracts. While living off his slave built trust fund, Alexander got himself admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania in 1785, then began printing Pennsylvania and U.S. Supreme Court decisions using his own slave money, the very first court reporting in America. Of course, being a slaver having never actually worked a day in his life, Alexander’s four volumes of court reporting between 1790 and 1806 were riddled with errors, inaccuracies and incompletions, reporting decisions so late one very important early case, Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), had already prompted the 11th Amendment to the Constitution voiding the ruling by the time Alexander reported it five years later.

In Chisholm, the Supreme Court ruled states could be sued in federal court by individuals. Alexander Dallas immediately understood Chisholm as a deep threat to slavery, as practically all American jurisprudence would prove to be in one way or another for the next 70 years. So, being the only court reporter in America, Dallas duly sat on the Chisholm decision those five years to keep anyone with any power from reading it, creating a void of information in which states could swiftly ratify the 11th Amendment granting constitutional immunity to states in federal court, no one the wiser. As with every early American slaver, it all propelled William W. Dallas’s grandfather Alexander to his next act failing upward, the towering heights of American government as President James Madison’s Secretary of the Treasury from 1814 to 1816, during which he double dipped as acting Secretary of War in 1815.

​Into these generational layers of slave built privilege was born to America’s first court reporter William’s father, Trevanion Barlow Dallas, in 1801. Trevanion’s older brother George, born in 1792, would stay in Philadelphia to become mayor in 1828, climbing the slaver’s preferred route to power through the Democratic Party all the way to Vice President under James K. Polk in 1845. Trevanion Barlow studied law at Princeton until 1820, then followed another landed gentry slaver heir’s career path of the time - going west, to Pittsburgh. There, in 1822, he married William’s mother, Jane Stevenson Wilkins, born in 1802 to yet another powerful family, daughter of John Wilkins, Jr., who George Washington appointed as Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army from 1796 to 1802. Wilkins then became president of the Bank of Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh branch. Banker’s daughter and slaver’s son in no time were centers of Pittsburgh high society by the time their first born son, William W. Dallas arrived in 1823.

​The trust fund in Jamaica kept William’s childhood just as comfortable as child labor produced iron kept Louisa, while both daddies climbed the ladder in Pittsburgh. Cultured as any ambitious aristocratic family would be, the Dallas family especially loved to hob nob with Pittsburgh’s leading music publishers, the William Smalling Peters family, who were the first to publish the sheet music to Thomas D. Rice’s foundation of black face minstrelsy Jump Jim Crow in 1831, when William was 8 years old. Thus, as a little kid in black face, William grew up dancing to America’s first popular music. By 18 years old in 1841, William’s father had became a prominent county judge in what was then the very wild west boomtown of Pittsburgh, population about 30,000. Looking west, as slavers always did, Judge Dallas’s musical friends the Peters family had become partners in a syndicate granted permission in 1841 to settle northern tracts of a brand new country, a breakaway portion of Mexico dedicated to defying Mexico’s attempt to end slavery, calling itself the Republic of Texas. Judge Dallas’s friends called their slice of this new country the Peters Colony. When Judge Dallas died unexpectedly that April, his bereaved slaver friends honored him by renaming their Peters Colony, built on the money of black face minstrelsy for the sole purpose of expanding slavery, Dallas, Texas.

​Louisa’s iron baron father had been seeking to arrange this very convenient marriage well before William’s very useful father, the judge, kicked the bucket in 1841. Sadly, neither was attracted to the other before William’s father died, because neither was attracted to the opposite sex, at all. What attracted them both after Judge Dallas’s death was money and power. One summer between William’s law studies at Princeton, they finally met at a minstrelsy show in Pittsburgh in 1843. A particularly rousing rendition of Jump Jim Crow set the crowd to dancing, so the two awkwardly joined in for appearances’ sake. When Louisa learned that night William’s family not only had political power reaching to the very pinnacle of American government, but also a trust fund his dear departed daddy had left him, the question was settled, and they wed in 1844 before William returned to Princeton. The marriage was never consummated. Instead, William finished his law studies, then sulked. After three years of unconsummated marriage, William wondering what he’d gotten himself into, he traveled to Europe in 1847 to find his bliss, whatever it might be, staying over a year. It was then Louisa knew her marriage was a lie. Thanks to his trip to Europe, William already knew it.

They bought Trevanion in 1854, a 200 acre plot home to a very successful grist mill and distillery straddling Big Pipe Creek just northwest of Uniontown, first built in the 1790s by local Germans the Kephart family. David Kephart Jr. expanded the business in 1817, naming it Brick Mills. George Kephart sold to Dallas, who re-named it after his father, then pumped his and his wife’s trust fund wealth into the existing mill business to become a leading aristocrat in western Maryland as quickly as possible. The first thing William did was buy four slaves. The second, William needed the house to become a mansion, so hired one of Louisa’s cousins, architect and carpenter Joshua Shorb, to transform his home with the Parisian and Italian architecture William fell in love with while searching for his bliss in Europe. Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were immediate sensations in Carroll County, the housewarming ball upon completion of the new mansion the event of the decade, not just in Carroll County, but across the border in Pennsylvania. William tossed money around for a local railroad extension, to sit on boards, for charities, the works. Word went out among slave owning glitterati everywhere that a new socialite couple held the finest affairs at Trevanion, burst to overflowing with gowns and top hats. Costume balls, New Years Eve, the first day of summer, afternoon teas, Sunday brunches for the dozen or so house guests who couldn’t make it to their carriage the night before, any occasion at all, the lord and lady of Trevanion kept Western Maryland begging for more, delighting in plantation gallantry constantly. For a few years, the lie of their marriage, and the looming civil war over the slaves they owned, seemed not to matter to Mr. and Mrs. Dallas. It didn’t last long.

​On the morning of July 1, 1863, Louisa was alone, her husband gone, the world around her crumbling, armies surrounded her cavernous home now filled with cobwebs, her (now) five slaves the only people in the empty mansion. Her husband had deeded it all to her a year ago, and was somewhere else, Louisa knew not where. She spent that year alone questioning, searching, poring through his papers and diaries, especially those he wrote in Europe from 1847 to 1848, learning only that her worst fears weren’t nearly adequate. Louisa got out of bed that day for the final great event of Trevanion’s short life - to watch the Union Army march by on its way to Gettysburg.

Two and a half miles south of Trevanion, the Second Corps was supposed to begin marching from Uniontown before dawn July 1, but the whisky soaked night before, the paper on which marching orders arrived from headquarters ended up in a muddy wad at the bottom of a shoe. The two hours it took to get new orders kept that morning mercifully slow. Uniontown would get one last opportunity to celebrate the 11,000 men of Hancock’s Second Corps, this time on their way out under the rising sun Wednesday, through the little town they entered after sundown Monday night at the end of 33 miles marching. In between, Uniontown poured 36 hours of whisky and feasting onto them at Babylon Farm, throwing a fancy ball for their officers, as full a day of rest anyone could hope for. A bit too full for many.

​Being German, during the day of rest Corporal Peter Marks tried to moderate the whisky with lager brought to camp in barrels by the town’s Germans, a terrible mistake. None of the regiment had had so much as a sip of alcohol in months, or a year, and only when snuck into camp against orders. Some managed the whisky deluge better than others, as Private Mowry did, but mostly, livers in the Second Corps were sitting ducks. Especially those who needed the most rest, like Marks, his feet raw from marching, chaffed and covered in sores from wet boots plodding across streams. Marks spent June 30 alternately passed out in the tent, then sick to his stomach bent over the creek running through Babylon Farm, then refilled by the town folk with liquor. It was all a blur.

“Go back to sleep,” Mowry said as Marks took a first sip of coffee from the tin cup.

“I didn’t go to a ball in town?” Marks asked.

“Only in your dreams,” Mowry said, tossing himself to the ground, “which you spoke of constantly while having them. When you were awake, you were very upset you weren’t invited.”

“Please tell me I didn’t make a scene of any kind,” Marks begged.

“Corporals are officers!’ you kept yelling, ha ha!”

“Oh dear.”
​
“I thought you Germans could handle your booze,” Mowry joked. Marks put down the coffee to sit up, the purple hanky falling from his chest to his lap. He struggled to stand, grabbed the hanky and the coffee, then wobbled out the tent flap to find the creek. Marks stumbled through Company A’s tents, strewn with men as disheveled as himself. Above, a setting, nearly full moon and pre dawn stars mingled with passing clouds, heat of a long summer day already looming. At the creek, Marks bent down to dip the purple hanky in the water, wringing it out over his head, wiping his face with it, and in the wet cloth before his bloodshot eyes, he saw Uncle Monty, remembering the night he first met Millie, in her purple dress.

Marxist ideology is one of the most potent weapons the working and oppressed classes have, a weapon that our class can and has used to not only win reforms but to build revolutionary societies where the people, and not profits, are in control. As the PSL identified at our 3rd Party Congress in 2016, one of our primary tasks is to mend the “break in ideological continuity” that emerged after the overthrow of the Soviet Union by reestablishing “the theory of revolutionary Marxism and the entire vision of workers’ power” as a dominant guiding pole in people’s struggles [1].

To correct for the ideological break, it’s helpful to have a concrete understanding of ideology and the different forms it takes. Although the word ideology is used frequently, it’s commonly used in a pejorative sense to refer to something that’s not factual, that’s unscientific, or that’s devoid of substance. It’s also used by those hostile to socialism to present a distorted view of Marxism. What exactly is ideology? What is the difference between bourgeois and Marxist ideology? What significance does this have for organizing today?

To address these questions and help repair the break in the ideological continuity of revolutionary socialism in U.S. social movements, this article outlines Marx’s understanding of ideology. It traces his historical-materialist approach to investigating the relationship between ideas, material reality, and modes of production through several of his works. This allows us to take in the theory’s nuances about life and consciousness, as well as to draw out examples that are still relevant and applicable today. In particular, we focus on the theory of commodity fetishism and the function of the wage in producing the bourgeois ideological conception of the atomized individual.

Proposing a move from “true/false” to “correct/incorrect,” the end of the article returns to the importance of popularizing and promoting Marxist ideology to understand and transform the world today, as revolutionaries have done throughout the socialist struggle to break the chains of exploitation and oppression.

​One of the widely used definitions of ideology sees it as a form of “false consciousness.” Here, ideology carries inherently negative connotations. Although Marx never used this term, Engels did in a July 1893 letter to Franz Mehring, a German communist. Yet it’s important for us to understand exactly what he meant by this. Addressing Mehring’s latest book, On Historical Materialism, Engels writes [2]:

“Ideology is a process which is, it is true, carried out consciously by what we call a thinker, but with a consciousness that is spurious [mit einem falschen Bewußtsein, also translated as “false consciousness”]. The actual motives by which he is impelled remain hidden from him, for otherwise it would not be an ideological process. Hence the motives he supposes himself to have are either spurious or illusory” [3].

The process of developing ideology in this sense is one in which the thinker is fully conscious while simultaneously being unconscious of the forces actually driving their thought. These forces are external to thought itself and form the real basis of the material existence of the thinker. “False consciousness” thereby refers to the dialectic by which consciousness is conditioned by the material world while also under the illusion that it is not conditioned as such. In other words, it is the idealist assumption that the origin of one’s thoughts is purely conceptual. As Engels explains, the thinker ensnared within ideology of this sort,

“works solely with conceptual material which he automatically assumes to have been engendered by thought without inquiring whether it might not have some more remote origin unconnected therewith; indeed, he takes this for granted since, to him, all action is induced by thought, and therefore appears in the final analysis, to be motivated, by thought” [4].

The material relationship between classes is not based on a rational arrangement for all parties involved or an intellectual agreement between the ruling class and the working masses [5]. It is a concrete relationship of exploitation that needs to be imposed and maintained, both physically and intellectually.

Georg Lukács developed this point in important ways. Reflecting on Engels’ words to Mehring, he notes that Engels is emphasizing that “the dialectical method does not permit us simply to proclaim the ‘falseness’ of this consciousness and to persist in an inflexible confrontation of true and false” [6]. Put differently, another essential aspect of ideology as false consciousness is that it actually contains an important kernel of truth. Although it is false in the sense that individual subjects do not apprehend the material forces driving their ideas, it is “true” in the precise sense that—for historical materialists—it reveals something real about the operative forces behind ideology.

This dialectical understanding of false consciousness—which is thus never simply “false” but contains elements of truth—means that it does not simply amount to a set of haphazard ideas held by individuals that happen to be incorrect. On the contrary, false consciousness is a determined condition that is rooted in a particular mode of production. It is therefore anchored in a specific set of class interests within the overall organization of social production. Far from simply pointing out false ideas of individuals, Marxist practice requires a materialist analysis of class society and the ways in which it necessarily produces very specific sets of ideas and ways of thinking. This is what Marxist ideology reveals through the practice and theory of class struggle.

One example of the distinction between false consciousness and Marxist ideology is in the third volume of Capital, where Marx explains why the capitalist might not understand the source of their profits because they remain at the superficial level of the legal contract. They pay a certain sum of money to the worker for their labor, the landlord for their factory, the banker for their loan, their suppliers for their raw materials and means of production, and after the commodities produced by workers are sold, the capitalist ends up with more money than they had at the start of the process. The banker lends out money only to have more money returned to them. The entire cycle looks like money breeds more money.

For the capitalist, “capital appears as a relationship to itself” and that how surplus-value is created “is now mystified, and appears to derive from hidden qualities that are inherent in capital itself” [7]. As workers, on the other hand, we not only see but experience and suffer the expansion of value and the source of profit as we literally expend our energy and life for the production of surplus value. However, this doesn’t happen organically and requires theoretical reflection and generalization, which can lead to Marxist ideology.

​Various trends and Marxist revolutionaries use different definitions and words for Marxist theory, with some preferring “science” to “ideology.” Lenin, in his foundational text on communist organization, wrote that,

“the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course” and “hence, to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology” [8].

All ideology has a class basis, and Marxist ideology “can only represent the class whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production” [9]. When we use ideology, we refer to a political framework and worldview of our class in order to understand and overthrow exploitation and oppression.

The origins of Marxist ideology can be found in The German Ideology, a series of manuscripts written between 1845-1846, where Marx and Engels formulated their break with the “Young Hegelians” with whom they were previously affiliated. As Engels later wrote, the manuscripts, which weren’t published until 1932, were written “to clear our own minds” of the idealism they previously endorsed [10]. They represent a major breakthrough in Marxist theory. Most significantly, they construct the groundwork for the method of historical materialism.

One major line of attack is that the Young Hegelians considered “conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute[d] an independent existence, as the real chains of men” [11]. In other words, Hegelians believed that ideas prevent historical progress and that new ideas drive historical change. Yet they never questioned or examined the relationship between their own ideas and the material conditions of their lives in Germany because they assumed that the life of the mind is independent from the actual world. This is perfectly in line with Engels’ critique of “false consciousness” that we discussed above because it is a form of consciousness that ignores its own concrete conditions of existence.

Moreover, the Young Hegelians presumed that the struggle against incorrect ideas was only to be fought out on the terrain of ideas themselves, meaning that something like “true consciousness” was the antidote to “false consciousness.” Marx and Engels polemicized against this belief and the Young Hegelians’ assumption that we just need to change “present consciousness to human, critical… consciousness” [12]. Such an approach reduces critique to fighting words with other words rather than “combating the real existing world” [13]. It isn’t “criticism but revolution,” Marx and Engels insist, “[that] is the driving force of history” [14].

This elucidation of the Young Hegelians’ false consciousness—meaning their misrecognition of the material forces driving history and their own worldviews—is an opportunity to articulate the fundamentals of the historical materialist method. “The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination” [15].

The materialist method begins with how people “produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation” [16]. This varies according to different modes of production. The “mode of production,” they write, “must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals” but “a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part” [17]. In other words, the mode of production encompasses the productive forces and the relations of production, which are not confined to a “purely economic” realm but encompass all of society.

​Marx and Engels state that “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of life” [18]. The first step, then, is directly opposed to Hegel and his followers who begin with ideas and proceed to the world. Marx and Engels, by contrast, explain that “[we] do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive… we set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process” [19]. This is the paragraph in which the famous line appears: “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.”

What do Marx and Engels mean when they declare that life determines consciousness? The terminology of “determination” figures frequently in Marxist analysis, and it’s an object of superficial criticism for those who want to discredit it. Some say it deprives people of agency because it’s deterministic or reductionist. Yet without understanding what determines what and why, no theory has any explanatory or transformative value whatsoever. “The root sense of ‘determine,’” as Raymond Williams points out, “is ‘setting bounds’ or ‘setting limits’” [20]. It doesn’t mean that something mechanistically and unilaterally causes something else to happen. Determined limits also evolve and change based on the class struggle, which can push it in new directions and erect new limits.

For example, individual consumers have a range of choices under capitalism, but our ability to choose is determined by multiple factors, like our income. Capitalism determines what we can and can’t buy, which in turn sets limits on the quality of our lives. Relative to ideology, material conditions, the productive forces, the economic and social reality of our world pushes our thoughts in certain directions rather than others. It makes it easier to think and imagine in certain ways and much harder to do so in other ways. Fighting for concrete reforms is crucial to the socialist movement because if we win, we improve our material conditions and show that we have the power to determine new limits and exert our own pressures. As a result, it’s easier to imagine that we can ultimately determine our existence collectively and establish a socialist society.

If it was only a matter of changing material conditions, why would Marx and Engels develop a theory and fight tooth-and-nail against other competing theories in the workers’ movement? Ideas and material life are in a dialectical relationship in that the mode of production sets limits and exerts pressures on our ideas, beliefs, and even feelings, tending to direct them in certain ways. Yet working and oppressed people can, when we’re organized, push back against those limits and pressures.

Speaking of ideology in general, Marx and Engels write that it makes people “and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura,” which itself “arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process” [21]. This metaphor is apt, as Jennifer Ponce De León and Gabriel Rockhill note, because “a camera obscura does not simply misrepresent the world outside” but rather “perfectly captures key features of it, and this is part of its pernicious power of sense-making” [22]. Ideology frames the world in a particular way within a given social reality.

Representations are always partial, which doesn’t mean that all representations or ideologies are equal. Representations and ideologies are, rather, always partisan in that they guide our understanding of the world, allowing us to see certain things and not others. The difference between bourgeois and Marxist ideology turns on what and how much of the world we can see and understand. Bourgeois ideology remains at the level of appearances, while Marxist ideology expands our understanding to show us what makes things appear like they do, how they change over time, and how we can change these underlying structures. Marxist ideology could be called “scientific” in that it poses and answers the fundamental and structural questions that bourgeois ideology can’t.

​“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” [23].

These ruling-class ideas are not independent of social production but are “the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.” The class that dominates society “rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age” [24]. Bourgeois ideology takes many forms, but they’re united by their basis in the capitalist world system as a natural system and, therefore, as the most superior one. The ideology of the ruling class is not only reflective of its interests but also, and as a result of that reflection, is severed from its material basis, so capitalism appears as independent and eternal. Another key point is that bourgeois ideology doesn’t come from outside the system, but—as we hinted with the earlier example of the capitalist—emanates from within the very inner logics and workings of the capitalist system.

A few examples might help illustrate both how bourgeois ideology is built into the structure of capitalism and how Marxist ideology shows us what the capitalist can’t see.

The first example is what Marx refers to as the “fetishism of the commodity.”  In Capital, Marx notes that the “commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood” [25]. We walk into the grocery store and see before us a host of commodities. We are not confused. Each has a price, a weight, a size, a package, a list of ingredients, a brand, a category, and so on. We think we have all of the information that we need about the products. Upon further inquiry, however, Marx finds that the commodity “is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” [26]. What is it that is so queer and metaphysical about a loaf of Wonder Bread? What the bread contains is human labor-power; commodities are literally the congealed form of a particular socially-necessary form of labor. Workers produce commodities, yet under commodity fetishism:

“the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour” [27].

Stated differently, commodity fetishism is the way in which relations between people take on the appearance of relations between things. At the grocery store we think we’re exchanging our money for a commodity, but in reality, we’re interacting with the relations that enable commodity production under capitalism—between workers and bosses, unions and CEOs, politicians negotiating trade deals, immigration and customs officials, and so on. There is no label on Wonder Bread stating that it was made by exploited labor, that the profits go to the ruling class, that its process of production relied on ecologically destructive bio-industries, that the technologies that produced it were developed through class struggle—to name just a few social relations that produce the particular commodity.

It’s the same with the money–or our wage–that we exchange for the bread. As Marxists, we know that there’s a difference between the value we’re paid and the value we produce for the capitalist [28]. For whatever period of time we work, part of the time goes to reproducing our wage and part of it goes as surplus to the owner. Yet when we get a paycheck at the end of a shift, a gig, a week, or month, it looks like we’ve been paid for the entirety of our time.

We work for an hour, we get paid an hour. Where’s the exploitation in that? Bourgeois ideology is content to look at the contract between the worker and capitalist and declare an equality between the two. Marxist ideology reveals that the worker and capitalist are anything but equals, and that in reality the wages we’re paid come from our work and go to the capitalist, who then pays it back to us after siphoning off what Marx called surplus value.

This leads to a second example of the limits of bourgeois ideology and the revolutionary potential of Marxist ideology: the wage and the atomized individual. Through the form of the wage, bourgeois ideology mystifies exploitation while Marxist ideology explains how the form of the wage reinforces the idea that we’re all equal individuals being paid for the entirety of our working day [29].

Bourgeois ideology holds up the individual as the cornerstone of the world and as a form of the human that’s natural and timeless. Marx later wrote that, “Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-century individual… appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as history’s point of departure” [30]. Humans have for most of history not thought of themselves as individuals, nor have we related to others as individuals. “Production by an isolated individual outside society… is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other” [31]. Why is it that we think of ourselves as individuals or that we think of society as a group of individuals? Marx locates the individual with the rise of “civil society” in the 18th century and as the real basis for German ideology.

As the atomized and independent individual solidifies as the basis of civil society and capitalism, real humans become ever more interdependent as trade, commerce, and divisions of labor expand and intensify. One of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism is that it necessarily creates a collective and international working class, the class that can overthrow it. The ideology of the individual attempts to smooth this over while also dividing the global working class and pitting workers against one another as atomized competitors.

The bourgeois ideology of the individual works on different scales, from the mass media and public schooling to everyday interactions. We constantly have to prove that we’re “unique” individuals, such as every time we log into an account, verify our social security number, or answer a special security question.

Whereas bourgeois ideology describes what it sees, Marxist ideology probes beneath the surface to uncover the real mechanisms that create exploitation and oppression so we can act to change them. Marxist ideology is the generalization of the working-class struggle because only through the proletarian movement can we see the real operations of capitalism.

Revolutionary ideas can only come from a revolutionary class in its struggle for power, from the communists (which they define at one point in the The German Ideology as “the follower of a definite revolutionary party”) [32]. The Party is the vehicle through which the working class produces socialist ideology, as the Party removes “all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals” [33]. In the Party, as Lenin wrote, workers produce our class ideology “not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians” [34].

One of the goals for any struggle is to build collective unity, to show how we’re not independent and atomized but deeply interdependent on others; how we’re not “Americans” but members of an international working class.

Communism overturns this relation of individuals, denaturalizes the ideas and relations of capitalist society, “and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals” by transforming “existing conditions into conditions of unity.” Communists take existing relations of production as “inorganic conditions” [35]. Marx and Engels can understand and explain why bourgeois ideology is the way it is because historical materialism reveals that our current reality isn’t eternal or preordained, but one that is always changing—and that our class can overthrow.

Rather than what is true or false, however, it’s more helpful for Marxists to concern ourselves with what is correct and what is incorrect. Whereas “truth” denotes an objective or neutral “fact” or “state of affairs,” and has a sense of permanence, what is “correct” is always only correct from a partisan standpoint and from within a certain time and social situation.

An example of the distinction between the true and correct comes from David Backer’s analysis of the struggle over the length of the working day, where Marx stages a dialogue between the worker and Mr. Moneybags [36]. The capitalist, as the buyer of labor-power, is within their rights to extend the working-day as much as they want, as they, like the purchaser of any commodity, are free to use it as they wish under the laws of capitalist exchange. Yet as workers, we’re within our rights to reduce the working-day, as the labor-power purchased is literally our bodies and lives. There is, as Marx says, “therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges” [37]. The worker says “the working-day is eight hours!” as the boss says “the working-day is twelve hours!”

Both statements can be true but only one can be correct, and this will be determined by the class struggle, by which group is able to force their position to establish a new truth and, ultimately, a new mode of production.

We have to fight bourgeois ideology with Marxist ideology, a dynamic ideology that—because it’s rooted in social production and the perspective of the working and oppressed classes—explains the reasons why we’re poor and oppressed and provides a framework for overthrowing the structures that produce these conditions. Marxist ideology not only explains oppression and exploitation but provides weapons for transforming the social order to eliminate both. This transformation isn’t potential but actual: the oppressed have and continue to wield it in order to abolish exploitation and combat all forms of oppression. Bourgeois ideology has brought neither understanding nor progress. Marxist ideology has and continues to generate both.

While “material force must be overthrown by material force,” by developing, popularizing, and applying Marxist ideology to our organizing, we can help make “theory become a material force” [38].

References
[1] Becker, Brian. (2016). Theory and revolution: Addressing the break in ideological continuity.” Liberation School, September 28. Available here.
[2] Mehring, Franz. (1893/1975). On historical materialism (London: New Park Books).
[3] Engels, Friedrich. (1983/2010). “Engels to Franz Mehring in Berlin.” In Marx & Engels Collected Works (Vol. 50): Letters 1892-1895 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), 164.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ideology defined as false consciousness not only rests on the incorrect belief that ideas have an independent existence, but it also assumes that they are the primary terrain of struggle. The struggle against injustice would thus amount to a purely intellectual task of pointing out the incorrect thoughts of one’s adversaries, based on the assumption that the establishment of true ideas would correct things. Truth, in other words, would simply amount to a correct intellectual formulation. If this were the case, then we would simply have to form the best arguments in order to fight and win.
[6] Lukács, Georg. (1971). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics, trans. R. Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press), 50.
[7] Marx, Karl. (1894.1981). Capital: A critique of political economy (vol. 3): The process of capitalist production as a whole, trans. D. Fernbach (New York: Penguin Books), 139.
[8] Lenin, V.I. (1902/1987). “What is to be done?” in Essential works of Lenin, ed. H.M. Christman (New York: Dover Publications), 82.
[9] Marx, Karl. (1867/1967). Capital: A critique of political economy (vol. 1): The process of capitalist production, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: International Publishers), 25-26.
[10] Engels, Friedrich. (1888/1941). Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of classical German philosophy (New York: International Publishers), 7.
[11] Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. (1970). The German ideology: Part one, with selections from parts two and three and supplementary texts, trans. C.J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers), 41.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 49.
[15] Ibid., 42.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., 47.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Williams, Raymond. (1977). Marxism and literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 84.
[21] Marx and Engels, The German ideology, 47. A camera obscura was a predecessor to the photographic camera. It consists of a dark room with a small hole that lets light in. The result is that an inversion of the outside is projected on the opposite wall.
[22] De León, Jennifer Ponce and Gabriel Rockhill. (2020). “Towards a compositional model of ideology: Materialism, aesthetics, and cultural revolution.” Philosophy Today 64, no. 1: 99.
[23] Marx and Engels, The German ideology, 64.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Marx, Capital (vol. 1),76, emphasis added.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid., 77.
[28] See Ford, Derek and Mazda Majidi. (2021). “Surplus value is the class struggle: An introduction.” Liberation School, March 30. Available here.
[29] One exception is piece-wages, when we’re paid according to each individual service or product we produce. Here, it’s easier to tell the difference between what we’re paid for producing and what the capitalist sells it for. For a personal example, I used to work at a gym as a personal trainer, and I could see what my boss charged my clients and what he paid me for each session. There wasn’t any mystification there.
[30] Marx, Karl. (1939/1973). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy (rough draft), trans. M. Nicolaus (New York: Penguin), 83.
[31] Ibid., 84.
[32] Marx and Engels, The German ideology, 60.
[33] Lenin, What is to be done?, 137.
[34] Ibid., f1.
[35] Marx and Engels, The German ideology,  86.
[36] Backer, David I. (2016). “Toward an activist theory of language,” in Truth in the public sphere, ed. J. Hannon (Lanham: Lexington).
[37] Marx, Capital (vol. 1), 255.
[38] Marx, Karl. (1927/1977). Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of right,’ trans. J. O’Malley and A. Jolin (New York: Cambridge University Press), 137.

Every form of scientific socialism has adapted to the unique circumstances and material conditions of the country it has been in. In the USSR there was the soviet system, in China there is Mao Zedong thought and socialism with Chinese characteristics, in the Vietnam there is Đổi Mới (innovate or renovate), the name given to economic reforms, and so on. Likewise, in the current-day United States there will be a form of socialism that will be adapted to its material conditions.
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The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) envisions this unique approach to socialism in the US as what it calls Bill of Rights Socialism. There have been excellent works on this, such as this piece by Roberta Wood and Dee Miles and this piece by Brad Crowder, and here I would like to start an investigation and development of the idea as well. My goal isn’t to explore the subject too deeply on a philosophical or theoretical level, but to propose what a socialist-oriented economic Bill of Rights might look like — not necessarily Bill of Rights Socialism in its entirety — and express it on a level that could be used as an accessible, appealing mass political platform.

One of the core ideological foundations of U.S. culture and political consciousness is that of freedom, particularly those such as free speech, freedom of assembly, and others enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights and the ideas within it play a major role in American political discourse generally, and in the minds of many Americans they are the very foundations that allow for political discourse.

What I propose here is an “economic” Bill of Rights. In doing so, I draw from three sources in particular: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights, W. E. B. Du Bois’ application for membership in the Communist Party, and the CPUSA’s current Party Program.

The popular idea of an economic Bill of Rights traces back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights,” if not further. In his State of the Union Address in 1944, he recommended a second Bill of Rights, saying the following:

This republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights — among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact, however, that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
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In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, or race or creed.

​Among these are:

1. 1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
   2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
   3. The right of farmers to raise and sell their products at a return which will give them and their families a decent living;
   4. The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
   5. The right of every family to a decent home;
   6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
   7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;
   8. And finally, the right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
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America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

​It’s unfortunate that we’ve yet to make good on any of these ideas, and many even seem beyond the scope of contemporary American political discourse. Nonetheless, drawing from this source not only grounds us in existing American politics and history but also provides a good list of demands that are still applicable today. While FDR wasn’t a socialist, the rights listed in his Second Bill of Rights would arguably go a long way in freeing many Americans up from various hardships and allow for increased political activity and potentially involvement in the socialist movement.

From there, we then look to Du Bois’ application for membership in the Communist Party, written in 1961. In it, he discusses what the Communist Party would call for to make the United States truly democratic. He says:
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The path of the American Communist Party is clear: It will provide the United States with a real third party and thus restore democracy to this land. It will call for:

1. 1. Public ownership of natural resources and of all capital.
   2. Public control of transportation and communications.
   3. Abolition of poverty and limitation of personal income.
   4. No exploitation of labor.
   5. Social medicine, with hospitalization and care for the old.
   6. Free education for all.
   7. Training for jobs and jobs for all.
   8. Discipline for growth and reform.
   9. Freedom under law.
   10. No dogmatic religion.

These aims are not crimes. They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citizens to work for these ends.

While Du Bois’ list is more explicitly socialist, we see similarities with FDR’s Second Bill of Rights as well as in some of the popular demands of today. Du Bois’ list goes beyond reforms that a capitalist government might make (whether or not they actually uphold them) and actually demands the nationalization of natural resources and capital as well as the call for the end of exploitation of labor. Some of the demands, however, are more political than economic, and the goal at the moment is to craft a Bill of Rights specifically targeting economic issues.

Finally, we come to CPUSA’s current Party Program. In it we find the following:

The anti-monopoly people’s coalition will put forward a program of public policies and government practices as the coalition grows and strengthens. A developed anti-monopoly program will build on the many struggles and issues already begun and won in the fight against the extreme right. As part of that coalition, the Communist Party will propose radical democratic demands aimed at curbing the political, economic, and ideological power of the monopolies. Unless they are already won at an earlier stage, our demands will include

• • The building of a mass people’s party capable of contending for governmental power, a party free of domination by any monopoly interests.
  • Removal from the electoral system of the financial contributions of monopolies, to be replaced by public funding and guarantees of honest elections where each vote counts and all votes are counted.
  • Full restoration and expansion of the Bill of Rights and all democratic rights; the complete separation of church and state.
  • Full legal protection from hate crimes and racial profiling, the institution of police accountability by civilians, an end to police violence, and the outlawing of oral and written racist propaganda.
  • No discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or disability and against other protected groups. Employers must provide equal pay for equal work. Employers must prove performance-based non-discrimination.
  • Implementation of affirmative action and compensatory programs to achieve actual equality for the racially and nationally oppressed and women.
  • Prevention of the “freedom” of monopolies to move assets in ways that harm workers and communities without full compensation; the guaranteed right to a job at living wages through public works and public service jobs or full income; the growth of public ownership of industries; nationalization of “too big to fail” banks.
  • The right to form and join a union free from interference or retaliation; guarantees that corporations must fulfil their contractual obligations of providing pensions and other benefits.
  • Full funding for public education, affordable housing programs, day care, Social Security, and a universal health care program, youth job training and recreational and cultural programs.
  • Accelerating the transition to a green, carbonless economy, as part of a massive public works jobs program
  • Creation of a social fund to make up for past and continuing wrongs and to help achieve equality in facilities and infrastructure for communities of the racially and nationally oppressed and women.
  • No taxes for low-income people; progressive taxation of the wealthy, for-profit corporations, and taxation on financial transactions such as purchases and sales of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other investment instruments.
  • Replacement of the imperialist foreign policy of preemptive strikes and dictating to the world in the interests of U.S.-based transnationals by a policy of international cooperation to solve problems of war and aggression, poverty, education, environment, health, and development.
  • Military budget slashed to a fraction of current spending with funding transferred to social programs.
  • All media to be free of monopoly corporate ownership.

Later on in the Party Program, we see an explicit outlining of what a Socialist Bill of Rights might look like:

Our vision is of a humane socialist USA, which can be achieved in part by enshrining more freedom and democracy in a Socialist Bill of Rights:
​

• • Where working people run the country on behalf of the needs of all, where people, peace, and planet come before profits;
  • Where all can participate, no matter their religion, race, or nationality;
  • Where immigrants have the same human rights as the native born;
  • Where the strength of our multinational, multiracial, multigenerational, gender-diverse working class can solve the problems we face in the interests of all people;
  • Where creating a sustainable, demilitarized economy takes priority over profits;
  • Where the supposed “right” of companies to pollute is outlawed;
  • Where working people are guaranteed union rights;
  • Where women have full rights and actual guaranteed equality;
  • Where all ethnic, national, gender, and racial groups have full guaranteed equality and civil rights, implemented through an immediate and urgent program of compensatory measures;
  • Where fully funded quality education from pre-school to university is the highest priority;
  • Where fully funded universal health care for all is a right;
  • Where a job and a superior standard of living are a right.

​Here, between the political and economic demands, we see common themes once again. Spread out over the course of almost 80 years, we see certain economic demands arise over and over. Though each time these demands have been iterated slightly differently, they’ve all been simple and easy to understand. Going back to the 1940s with FDR’s Second Bill of Rights up through to Du Bois’ list of demands and then to the current CPUSA Party Program, we can see the need for a succinct yet comprehensive economic Bill of Rights, something that might be the foundation for making Bill of Rights Socialism a widespread, powerful movement in American politics.

​Between these three sources we have quite a number of potential rights and policy proposals that could constitute an economic or socialist Bill of Rights, but part of the appeal of the existing Bill of Rights is that it captures American political values in just 10 amendments. The number 10 is a round, satisfying number and has also been used to outline other key principles, such as the Ten Commandments and the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program. A short, succinct list can act as a rallying cry and can be remembered and repeated by its proponents.

While there are so many things that need to be addressed, we want to create something that even those less interested in politics can hear and agree with without having to remember an extensive platform. Drawing from the three aforementioned sources and adapting them to modern times to some degree, I recommend the following 10 amendments (or some variation of them):

• The right to a useful, well-paying, and meaningful job, complete with the right of free association in such a job, shall be guaranteed to every United States resident.
• The right to adequate housing, food, clothing, and recreation, the necessities of life, shall be guaranteed to every United States resident.
• The right to equal pay for equal work regardless of sex, race, religion, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or legal status shall be guaranteed to all United State residents. In concordance with this, the phrase “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” shall be removed from the text of the 13th Amendment.
• The right of every resident of the United States to work and do business in an atmosphere free from unfair competition, domination by monopolies, and unfair financial practices shall be guaranteed.
• The right of every resident of the United States to the enjoyment of the natural resources within the territory of the United States and its various States, and any revenue thereof, shall be guaranteed. The territory of any federally or state-recognized Native American tribe or nation, unless otherwise agreed upon by the government of the tribe or nation, shall be exempt from this provision. All land protected under past treaties with a Native American tribe or nation and the guarantees within, whether made by the United States or one of its States, shall be recognized as specified in the given treaty unless renegotiated with the tribe or nation.
• The right to healthcare and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health shall be guaranteed to all United States residents.
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment shall be guaranteed to all United States residents.
• The right to a good education, at all levels, shall be guaranteed to every resident of the United States.
• The right to modern and efficient communications and transportation shall be guaranteed to every United States resident.
• The right of communities both at home and abroad to reparations for the actions and policies of the United States both present and past, and a fair, formal process by which such claims can be brought against the United States.

Each of these would be followed by a clause similar to those found in a number of other amendments giving Congress the authority to enforce the amendments through legislation, such as, “The Congress shall have the power and duty to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The wording of each would have to be honed by specialists, and it’s likely that certain changes and compromises might be made, but my hope is that this can be a starting point.

If we were to whittle the economic Bill of Rights down to slogans, we might see something like:

• The right to a good job and the right to unionize.
• The right to the necessities of life.
• The right to equal pay for equal work and full abolition of slavery.
• The right to be free from unfair business and financial practices and monopolies.
• The nationalization of natural resources and Indigenous peoples’ right to their land.
• The right to healthcare.
• The right to retirement.
• The right to a good education.
• The right to modern communications and transportation.
• The right to reparations.

This economic Bill of Rights not only provides all Americans with key economic rights but has the potential to unite wider popular forces, oppressed groups, and potential allies within the country under a common cause. The economic Bill of Rights isn’t socialism, nor will it inherently bring about socialism just through its passage, but the goal of this new Bill of Rights is to create a general platform that will benefit the masses and further enable a more thorough socialist revolution. In the struggle for such a Bill of Rights, we would have to create extensive alliances, work within our communities to create bodies of political engagement, and lay the groundwork for a more democratic system capable of defeating capitalism independent from existing political institutions.

Furthermore, if the passage of such an economic Bill of Rights were successful, the government would be legally bound to enforce it lest they openly delegitimize themselves. To fulfil their duty in upholding the newly amended Constitution, the government would have to move left, opening up new avenues for class struggle and the fight for political and economic democracy. There very likely would be a reactionary push by the ruling class to revoke these new rights and maintain their heavy-handed dominance over American society, but the people would be unlikely to accept such an attempt without fighting back.

Of course, just an economic Bill of Rights would still leave much to be desired, given the various other issues and forms of oppression seen in American society. We would likewise need a social or civil rights Bill of Rights to address these issues. As seen in both Du Bois’ application and the CPUSA Party Program, there are certain democratic and social guarantees beyond the economic that are needed to make the country truly free.

Bill of Rights Socialism and a socialist-oriented economic Bill of Rights wouldn’t just be static “things” — they would be ever-evolving processes. Only in a socialist society can any rights in an economic Bill of Rights be completely fulfilled, and the same goes for many of the values espoused in our current Bill of Rights. Socialism is the only path to the freedom that the United States claims to strive for, and it’s what we must fight for if we truly want to be free.

Original article was first posted on June 9, 2021, in M. P. Britt’s blog

Organizing students and the youth overall is a “waste of time.” At least that’s what I’ve been hearing recently in some of the leftist organizing circles I belong to. When I push back on this narrative, those who initially took this position modify their stance: “Well, let’s focus on organizing young workers. They can be radicalized and tend to be more reliable than students.”

Now, I was a college student at one time. I worked three jobs, two at Asian restaurants and one in a retail store, to pay rent and tuition. I hardly had time to study, but, somehow, I managed to get good enough grades to get through college and even get accepted at graduate school. But never once had I not considered myself a worker. Had someone asked me at the time, “are you a worker or a student?,” my logical and obvious answer would have been, “both.” Come to think of it, my more precise answer would have been, “I work full time and study full time.”

According to a survey from December 2020 (in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic), almost 70% of college students also worked. So there is no need to differentiate students from workers, since they are often one and the same. And students who do not work while in college eventually go on to join our workforce after graduating, often doing so in a field of work which has nothing to do with what their college degree focused on: 41% of college graduates, in fact, end up working in a field different from the one they studied.

So writing off students as “not able to be organized” is to dismiss a significant portion of our working class.
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Now, to the next claim that “students are not reliable.” The same could be said for workers without a college degree. People are people. In the Communist Party and Young Communist League, it’s often like pulling teeth to get certain members to attend meetings, whether they are 20 or 60 years old. It’s true that a 20-year-old may have more commitments due to family, school, work, etc. But that’s not to say that a 60-year-old comrade does not have those same commitments to their children, grandchildren, work, and so on.

As many as 60% of millennials (ages 24–39) agree with some form of socialism as an alternative to capitalism. While this generation has begun to “age out” of the youth category, their sentiment is one we should build on, not ignore. And let’s remember that it was the student movement which led the Civil Rights marches, bus boycotts, and lunch-counter sit-ins. Let’s not forget how the youth led the Black Lives Matter and Abolish ICE movements during the height of the far-right Trump administration in the middle of a global pandemic. Indeed, it was the youth that V. I. Lenin called on to organize independent communist youth leagues and “learn communism” to prepare the future generations for revolutionary tasks needed to further the struggle for democracy and worker power. (To this end, the Party recently organized a successful Marxist school for young people.)
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I think of how the Communist youth led the way for the Party in this last period, from organizing mutual aid drives for the unemployed and impoverished during the pandemic to rising up in defense of the 2020 vote after Trump claimed the election results were a fraud. These young comrades organized rallies in defense of Cuba and were invited to lead BLM marches. Many of these youth cadre are students, while others are unemployed workers or employed workers with or without college degrees. In other words, these young comrades are the product of a radicalization process which brought them to the Communist Party and Young Communist League. Whether they came to the movement on campus, through a book club, or from signing up online, young Communists are finding a role to play in the collective revolutionary process. While all radicalization processes are different, we must not give up on young comrades who for one reason or another do not show up for meetings or events. Keep trying! They have a role to play, and it could be in the form of managing social media, creating artwork or flyers, etc.

In the radicalization process of youth in the 2020s, many young people are being brought to the left through self-education and conversations with other young leftists online, particularly during the pandemic quarantine and self-isolation. While this radicalization process is welcomed by the CPUSA and YCL, we understand that it can be confusing.

For example, a popular narrative going around online is that “white workers cannot be revolutionary because they depend on the exploitation of workers of color in the global South.” To my surprise, it is mostly white “Third Worldist” Maoists who push this narrative after their reading of J. Sakai’s Mythology of the White Proletariat. This position is not only anti-Marxist, given that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were themselves white Europeans and attempted to unite the workers of all lands despite skin color and creed. It also provides a convenient excuse for inaction when it comes to working for political change. In other words, if one is a Black or brown student and is convinced by this book, perhaps they would be reluctant to take up the struggle with an organization such as the Communist Party that seeks to unite all workers; Sakai’s defeatism would might lead them to conclude that since they are in the minority and whites are (presently) in the majority in the U.S., there is no hope for socialism. While Marxists agree that colonization and imperialism must be defeated, we never single out one racial category as “non-revolutionary” or “anti-revolutionary.”

This characterization of whites as anti-revolutionary and not proletariats is part of middle-class radicalism; it has nothing to do with a revolutionary, working-class, Marxist-Leninist analysis. Still not convinced? Imagine telling Lenin that Russians could not be organized during the October Revolution because they were Slavic, and the Slavs historically colonized the Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians south of the Caucus Mountains as part of the Russian Empire. Or, conversely, that only Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians could lead the revolution. Imagine where this mentality would have gotten the Bolsheviks — not very far, I’m sure. Any “revolutionary” position which prevents the unity of the working class is not revolutionary after all.

Another reactionary position that young online “leftists” tend to take is to support immediate (or not so immediate) violent insurrection instead of engaging in the various democratic struggles it takes to unite, radicalize, and organize the U.S. working-class. I have seen young self-identified Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists, and even self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninists” take this position as well. What these groups and individuals have in common is isolation from the masses and, therefore, isolation from reality. Among young radicals who find revolutionary-sounding rhetoric appealing, there is a lack of understanding of our country’s democratic traditions, culture, society, history, and material conditions. After a while, Rosa Luxembourg’s “Reform or Revolution” begins to be understood as “Revolution or Nothing.” This attitude can also provide a ready-made excuses for inaction: “I don’t need to join a working-class organization since our working class isn’t revolutionary yet” or “We can’t do anything until our working-class is armed.”

But the reality is that the working class is not calling for a civil war, nor should we pretend to push it upon them. We meet workers and students where they are, not where we want them to be.
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So instead of sitting around waiting for a violent peasant revolt to break out (as the Maoists wish to happen) in a country with no peasants, let’s encourage these young folks online to pick up the class struggle collectively with their local student organizations, labor unions, CPUSA club, or YCL branch. After all, a “COMMunist” who refuses to work with the COMMunity is not a communist, right?

Democratic struggles take on many forms, from the fight for unions to the fights against the fascist danger, for a livable planet, and for civil rights. These struggles are essential to the overall class struggle for socialism. The struggles for civil rights for women, LGBTQ people, African Americans, and many other oppressed groups, for example, are essential because these groups face special oppression within the wider scope of capitalist exploitation. A billionaire woman CEO can still be discriminated against or sexually harassed just as a working-class woman often faces the same sorts of oppression. That is why the issue of women’s equality goes beyond class. The same goes for racism: there are Black NBA and NFL athletes who face racist oppression on a daily basis, the same as a working-class Black person. As the example of Cuba shows, racism does not disappear after the revolution when working people are in power. The struggle against racism goes beyond class and therefore is a democratic struggle.
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LGBTQ equality is another arena for democratic struggle. Despite socialist countries guaranteeing freedom for all workers, we would be dishonest to ourselves and our movement if we pretended that socialist countries and our own Party have always held a positive track record when it comes to including LGBTQ comrades and the struggle for their rights as workers as well. Again, this is an issue which transcends class. LGBTQ people do not stop suffering discrimination once the capitalist class is overthrown. Therefore, the fight around these issues starts now under capitalism.
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We engage in these democratic struggles whether it be on the picket line, at the ballot box, at a protest, or at a sit-in. The great triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s were won through mass struggle, whether it was the fight for voting rights or the movement to free Angela Davis. Young people who are tricked into isolating themselves from the democratic struggles are being fed anti-revolutionary rhetoric and, at times, even right-wing reactionary rhetoric posing as left-wing radical rhetoric, as is the case with the recent discussion around the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol being “working-class” and “revolutionary.” Further, the second you ignore the struggles for equality for Black and brown people, women, and LGBTQ people is when you begin to give up on entire sections of the working class. Don’t fall for it.

One of the biggest issues facing the youth and student movements in 2021 is climate change. Young people tend to care about the environment more so than their parents and grandparents because we may not be around to reach old age if something significant does not happen to save the planet in the next 5 to 10 years. It is for this reason that the youth have taken up the struggle for the Green New Deal and have led massive youth climate strikes in Washington, DC, New York City, and Seattle. Progressive U.S. congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s own daughter, Isra Hirsi, has been ruthlessly attacked by the right-wing media for her role in organizing climate strike marches and claiming to be a communist online. This is an example of why “identity politics” (democratic struggles) cannot be dismissed. The right-wing attacks on Hirsi represent the overall assault on Black people, Muslims, youth, communism, and the environment. If there is no planet left to fight the class struggle on, then why waste time only studying all this theory? Put it into practice!

Another significant area of struggle that the youth is engaged in this year is around the fight for student debt forgiveness. U.S. President Joe Biden hinted at this issue on the campaign trail at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students and college graduates struggle to make ends meet when it comes to paying rent, paying insurance, and buying food on top of paying off student and credit card debt from school expenses. According to an April 2021 People’s World report, “If Biden canceled $50,000 per person, 84% of borrowers would have their debt wholly eliminated. While the media and critics of cancellation focus on relief for higher earners, 40% of those with debt never received a diploma and often work minimum-wage jobs.” This was just months before August 2021 when Biden cancelled $9.5 billion in student debt with a stroke of a pen. While this is without a doubt a victory for some, it’s still too small to make a difference for the majority of students and former students in debt. This move was made by Biden nearly a month after U.S. House leader Nancy Pelosi lied to the public, stating that Biden did not have the authority to eliminate student debt. Therefore, the struggle must continue until all student debt is forgiven, not just some of it. If we can afford a 20-year pointless war in Afghanistan, we can afford to get our young working class on its feet.
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Young workers and students cannot be written off; we must bring them in and engage with them in our organizing circles. The youth question is central to the overall struggle to defend and expand democracy, thus laying the foundations for a socialist society. Without our revolutionary youth, there is no future socialist USA.

​On July 9, 2021, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by the French energy company TotalEnergies SE and the U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.

Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.

Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.

On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.

On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.

A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.

Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.
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​On Monday, August 30, at 3:29 p.m. Eastern Time, a C-17 transport plane took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, signaling the end of America’s longest war. It was a war that took the lives of at least 48,000 Afghan civilians, 2,461 U.S. service members, 66,000 Afghan national military police, and 1,144 NATO allied service members. The Cost of War Project at Brown University estimates that the post-9/11 wars launched by the United States have resulted in nearly 1 million killed and more than 38 million people displaced, with the U.S. government having spent $6.4 trillion and rising.

For a learned perspective on what has been unfolding in Afghanistan, I turned to interview Dr. Anatol Lieven. Lieven is a senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. From 1985 to 1998, Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus.

James W. Carden: Let’s begin with the people who launched the suicide attack on the airport on August 26. Who are the Islamic State in the Khorasan Province, or ISKP?

Anatol Lieven: They are a pretty motley bunch. The first thing to note is that they’re not Arabs. ISKP was not founded by and their leadership is not made up of Arabs who’ve moved to Afghanistan from the Middle East. So they’re not, in that sense, an offshoot of ISIS. Instead, they’re one of these local movements which has taken the name of ISIS.

They’re made up of three main elements. The first are Pakistani, mainly Pashtun militants belonging to the Pakistani Taliban who were driven over the border back into Afghanistan by the Pakistan Army when it launched its offensive to crush the rebellion in Pakistan in recent years. The second major element are international fighters in Afghanistan, often from the former Soviet Union: Chechens, Dagestanis, Uzbeks, together with some Arab fighters who fled from Iraq and Syria. The third element are defectors from the Afghan Taliban who defected for one reason or another, sometimes because they were angered by Taliban negotiations with the West or by Taliban promises not to support international jihad.

But the main thing you should know about ISKP is that they are committed to continuing international jihad. They’ve always made that absolutely clear, and indeed they have to, because their membership is made up of people who for obvious reasons are committed to continuing the terror campaigns in the former Soviet Union and in Pakistan.

ISKP is also ferociously sectarian and anti-Shia and in recent years launched a string of dreadful attacks on Shia hospitals, schools and markets in Afghanistan and in Pakistan as well. They’re closely linked to sectarian terrorist groups in Pakistan, which have been widely alleged in turn to be supported by Saudi Arabia. So, they are a variety of hard men, if you like, who really want to use Afghanistan as a base for international jihad. There has been a very fierce rivalry between ISKP and the Afghan Taliban for power and major battles between them. And in fact when I was last in Afghanistan, I was told that there had been de facto cooperation between the Taliban, the Afghan government forces and the U.S. Air Force against ISIS.

So that’s where ISIS is coming from in Afghanistan.

JWC: In 2011, you wrote a very well-received book on the region called Pakistan: A Hard Country, so I guess I’d like to understand more about the role that Pakistan has played in the American defeat, and their relationship with ISKP and their continuing role in supporting international terrorism.

AL: Well, the Pakistani role is extremely, extremely complicated. People keep asking me: Why did Pakistan play a double game over Afghanistan? And my reply is they didn’t play a double game. They played a single game, which was a Pakistani game. They pursued what they took to be Pakistan’s national interests, which unfortunately conflicted with our own or what we thought were our own in Afghanistan. What Pakistan has done pretty consistently all these years has been to give shelter to the Afghan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban is made up of Afghans, chiefly of Pashtuns closely related to the Pashtuns of Pakistan, who make up about a fifth of the population and live in the border areas.

And they have been consistently sheltered by Pakistan. And the reason for that is twofold really. The first is that Pakistan wanted a force in Afghanistan that would be responsive to Pakistan’s interests and wishes, and above all would never side with India against Pakistan as previous Afghan regimes had done. This was also based on the analysis, which I have to say has turned out to be accurate, that we would fail in Afghanistan—that the West would not stay the course and that we would leave sooner or later.

So that’s the first reason. The second reason, and this has been totally obscured by most of the Western media. What people there [in Pakistan] kept saying to me is, “look, in the 1980s, an outside Western imperial force, the Soviet Union, occupied Afghanistan. And everybody from our own government to America, Saudi Arabia, everywhere, told us that it’s our duty to support the Afghan resistance against this, in the name of Islam. So we supported them. Now we have another outside, white imperial force occupying Afghanistan. And you tell us that it’s our duty to fight against the Afghan resistance and to support the puppet government in Kabul? Well, frankly, to hell with that, we will do what we always did. We will support our Afghan brothers in fighting against an alien, imperial occupation of their country.”

So what has to be understood is that the Pakistan government, including some within its own ranks and in parts of the army, were presiding over a population—at least in northern Pakistan—which was tremendously supportive of the Afghan Taliban. And when [Pervez] Musharraf, the then-military dictator, in 2003-2004 made a very limited attempt under American pressure to crack down, not on the Afghan Taliban as such, but on international fighters, such as the Arabs, Chechens and others affiliated with the Taliban in the Pakistani border areas, this set off a rebellion which lasted for 15 years.

And it still goes on in the form of ISIS in Afghanistan, and has cost more than 60,000 Pakistani civilian lives, 5,000 military dead, thousands of police, five generals, and so on. Benazir Bhutto, a two-time prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated in 2007, as a result of that. And this illustrates the degree of support for the Afghan Taliban that you also have in sections of society. But then it gets even more complicated because eventually, and after considerable hesitation, the Pakistan Army cracked down very hard indeed on the Pakistan rebels who call themselves the Pakistan Taliban while continuing to shelter the Afghan Taliban.

And one of the reasons why you now have this bitter division between ISIS in Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban is that the Afghan Taliban sided with Pakistan against the Pakistani Taliban. And while they didn’t exactly fight them, they did a great deal to keep certain areas of Pakistan quiet and prevent them from joining the Islamist revolt.

So Pakistan is basically very happy that the Taliban have won in Afghanistan, but expects them to go on fighting hard against ISIS because ISIS are mortal enemies of the present Pakistani state. And all I can say is if that sounds complicated, it is complicated.

I think part of the problem with American and indeed British policy in that part of the world is that if you’re not prepared to study and deal with extreme complexity and with continual changes of allegiance—if you’re not prepared to cope with that—well, then you should not be operating in Afghanistan because it’s a complicated place.

JWC: Is there a difference between the Taliban of 2001 and the Taliban of 2021?

AL: I think with regard to their international behavior, we can believe their guarantees, for two reasons. The first is that they’re not fools. And they’ve said this to me themselves—not the top leadership, obviously, but low-level Taliban have told me, “we’re not idiots; we know what happened to us as a result of 9/11. We were running Afghanistan, we conquered most of the country, we’d set up our state and then 9/11 kind of ruined it all for us. We’re not going to do that again, don’t worry.”

But the second and more important point is that they’ve made this promise, not just to America and the West; they’ve also made it to Russia, to China, to Pakistan, to Iran. And all of these countries have a deep stake in opposing international terrorism.

International Sunni Islamic terrorism threatens all of those countries in different ways. The Taliban cannot afford to alienate their entire neighborhood. If they do that, their regime really will not last and they will be totally isolated and not just economically. Remember, they have no access to the sea. But also, you will then have a return to the 1990s in which Russia and Iran will support opposition movements within Pakistan, and within Afghanistan, against them. So I think you can trust them on that.

You can also trust them on cracking down on the heroin trade, which they’ve also promised to do, because they’ve done that before: In 2000 and 2001, they did it with the hope of getting international recognition.

So on those issues, you can trust them. Domestically, however, it’s a much more open question, because there you have really hardline ideologues who are determined to reintroduce the kind of Islamic Emirate that existed before September 11.

JWC: Let’s turn to the American government’s role in the defeat. In a recent piece for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, you wrote that American generals like H.R. McMaster, who served as President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser: “systematically misinformed multiple administrations, Congress, and the American people about the real state of the Afghan forces that they had created… The most important question Americans need to ask in the wake of the fall of Kabul is… what it is about the U.S. system that allowed these lies to pass with too little challenge.”

I’d like your own thoughts on that. How do you think they got away with lying, as you say, systematically for two decades?

AL: Well, this isn’t just a matter of my opinion. Indeed, this is thoroughly documented in the reports of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and as revealed in the Afghanistan Papers, in the Washington Post. So all of this is now a matter of record. I think it’s really two things. First, I suppose we might have some sympathy with the military in that militaries don’t like to lose and they don’t necessarily want to go to war in the first place. And I suppose to be charitable to them, one might say that they were lying to themselves as well as to the rest of us, which is possible.

I think it is also critical to understand military promotion structures as well. This was a campaign carried out in a profoundly, almost dilettantish way by people whose whole instinct was to get back to Washington, to crawl up another rung of the military promotion ladder, and to do that you have to be working on huge weapons programs directed at China or Russia, which are totally irrelevant for Iraq or Afghanistan, but are very relevant indeed to the American military-industrial complex and Congress.

Afghanistan was treated with a profound lack of real interest and professionalism.

One must in no way excuse the American and British publics, the media and Congress, because as one of my colleagues pointed out, if you look at the main American news channels, in the whole of 2020, between them, they mentioned Afghanistan an average of five times on their lead news programs that year. So if the public and the media and Congress are not going to look seriously into what’s going on, then the generals will get away with telling people what they think will cover their own backs.

​In 2005 the French celebrated the 100th birthday of their most famous 20th century thinker – Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). The National Library in Paris mounted a major exhibition dedicated to his life and works.  You can still find online the New York Times article reporting  the event ("To Honor Sartre, France Buffs A Pedestal the Writer Rejected" by Alan Riding). Although Sartre had a rocky relationship with the French Communist Party he considered himself a "Marxist" of sorts.  I can’t say that Riding’s article is always informative. Take this observation, for example, regarding Sartre’s image as a "Left Bank intellectual." "Even for many French people, his embrace of Communist causes placed him on the wrong side of history." This was at a time when a fourth of the French were voting for Communists, so it's also true that many French people (and not only the French) think he was on the right side of history.

Those causes, by the way, were for world peace, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, and freedom for the colonial peoples. Whatever may have happened to Communism – these were (and are) the right causes. As for "causes," we can learn something from Sartre when we reflect on his statement that "if I ask myself ‘Will the social ideal as such, ever become a reality?’ I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing." You can’t be on the wrong side of that.

Riding observed that Sartre’s reputation was approaching that of the great French pantheon  of Voltaire, Hugo and Zola. But Riding showed his true colors when he stated that as "political visionaries," Raymond Aron ( 1905-1983) the conservative pro-US cold war intellectual, and Albert Camus (1913-1960) "stand taller because their view of freedom was untainted by association with Stalinism or Maoism." Guilt by association! While Camus couldn’t bring himself to back the right of the Algerians to throw the French out, Sartre risked his life (he survived a bomb plot) speaking out against French repression in Algeria. So much for standing tall!

Camus died young, while he was still developing, so I don’t want to be too judgmental about him. But Aron was a typical conservative. He supported the so-called "Free World." He is dead so I don’t know how he would think about the "freedom" we tried to bomb the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and others into having.

Riding asked "is Sartre remotely relevant today?" He seemed to think not. But this is a difficult question. He seemed to base his judgment on the fact that Sartre was no longer fashionable or as fashionable as he once had been. This is a different question from relevance. Sartre was both a popular writer and a philosopher. His big philosophical tomes (Being and Nothingness; The Critique of Dialectical Reasoning) were never best sellers. He articulated a philosophy of human freedom known as "existentialism" and tried to hook this up with Marxism. I think as long as there is a struggle to attain a more just and free world, and as long as society is dominated by class struggle and exploitation, serious people will find Sartre’s philosophy relevant even if they do not ultimately accept it.

Riding briefly outlined some of Sartre’s politics but his readers will get the wrong impression from his presentation. He wrote that Sartre played no political role until after the liberation of Paris and that he "cheerfully" produced his plays and books during the German occupation after having been a prisoner of war for "a few months." The implication was that Sartre did not do his duty. Riding failed to mention that Sartre did have a role in the Resistance during the occupation. He ended up with a minor role because the Resistance was practically run by the Communist Party and Sartre was unwilling to commit himself, as pointed out by Thomas Baldwin (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy) to the Party or to the followers of Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970). After the war no one thought Sartre derelict in his duty.

Riding next wished to put Sartre "in the dock." "Placed in the dock today," he wrote, Sartre would face two charges: between 1952 and 1956, he was a fellow traveler of the French Communist Party, albeit breaking with it after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956." The charges should be amended if Baldwin’ article is correct. Sartre was more than a "fellow traveler." According to Baldwin, Sartre was a member of the French Communist Party having joined during the Korean War. While he left the Party over the 1956 Hungary issue, his final break with it did not occur until 1968. [This does not appear to be accurate as most bios of Sartre (and the consensus of Sartre scholars) maintain he was never a member of the French Communist Party--tr]

What about this first charge. Only a typical right-wing anticommunist Know Nothing would want to put Sartre in the dock on this charge. Throughout France and Italy the Communists were extremely popular in the years before the invasion of Hungary. Europeans knew to whom their liberation from Hitler and his Nazi armies was due. We Americans like to say we saved the French, that we defeated the Nazis, etc., and carry on as if we should get most of, or even all the credit.

You would think it was the Battle of the Bulge that decided the war. But 80% of the German forces were in the East confronting the Soviets. That is where the war was won. D-Day was a mopping up operation in comparison. Throughout Europe everyone knew it was the Communists who were the main force in the resistance movements against the fascists. For Sartre, who had committed himself to anti-imperialism, to peace, and to the working class as the most progressive class in society, it was only natural that he should support the Party.

The second charge was that in the years 1970-1974 he "supported French Maoists." This is a bogus charge, and Riding should have known it. It was Voltaire, one of Sartre’s fellow pantheon members, who said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." And Riding said Sartre’s "counsel" could claim "he was defending their right to exist more than their views."

Riding reported on four more of Sartre’s positions – on which "time favored him." Independent intellectuals can often mess up – even with good intentions – and Sartre was no exception. I say this because I think he made errors in two of the four positions mentioned by Riding. But first the positive. One, he was one of the first to support the right of Algeria to independence. This took a lot of courage as French fascists tried to assassinate him for being so outspoken, Two, he was an opponent to the US war against the Vietnamese people. Riding could have elaborated a bit here. Sartre co-chaired (with Bertrand Russell) the International War Crimes Tribunal that exposed the acts of war crimes in Asia by the US (still, as usual, going on throughout the world.)

Now the negative. Three, he went to Cairo in 1967 and made a speech on the right of Israel to exist. That was all well and good but he should have also called for the creation of a Palestinian state.* But this was before the 1967 war and the take over of the West Bank and the true nature of Zionism was not so clear to many European intellectuals. Finally he broke with Fidel and Cuba (1971) over the perennial question of "persecution" of dissidents. I can only say that Sartre was too shrill. He forgot that the full force of US imperialism was (and still is), as far as possible, being directed against Cuba and in order to survive it is only natural for the Cubans to take corrective action against those they perceive as helping the US against them internally. Sometimes Voltaire has to take a back seat until we can create the conditions to seat him front row center.

He had two other worthy actions according to Riding. He stood with the students in May 1968 and, near the end of his life, he supported the demand that Vietnamese boat people be given refuge in France. One should also note that he refused, in 1964, the Nobel Prize in Literature. Riding quotes him: "a writer should refuse to be allowed to be transformed into an institution."

With the collapse of the Soviet Union progressives around the world were forced to rethink the Marxist tradition. Sartre wrote, "I consider Marxism the one philosophy of our time which we cannot go beyond and.… I hold the ideology of existence and its ‘comprehensive’ method to be an enclave inside Marxism, which simultaneously engenders it and rejects it." Whether Sartre is relevant or irrelevant will depend on how interested students of the future are in engaging with his thoughts on Marxism.
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​As a Cleveland Browns fan, love hate relationships come second nature. Pain of indescribable severity is rarely, but certainly, broken by great joy, and the joyous moments while few, redeem it all. Just as in every family, most of us have a few relatives we have to love (a father, mother, sibling), yet truly despise, where the few happy moments make the far more numerous painful ones disappear, a compromise necessary just to carry onward with life. Love is that way; very demanding of forgiveness, in pursuit of redemption. Love of country is no less demanding, no less reliant on forgiveness. No one’s country is perfect.

Makes me wonder if Jackson Hinkle is a Browns fan, or had a similarly detestable relative, or maybe he’s just American, where love of country can only truly exist in the face of great anger and shame. This week, Hinkle made the rather vanilla declaration “I’m a Marxist Leninist. I’m an anti-imperialist. I’m an American patriot”, before being arrested engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience on the steps of the US Capitol Building to advocate rent forgiveness in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. Down came the condemnations from the prancing posing permanently pointless “left”, who can abide neither American patriotism nor nonviolence. 

During Occupy Wall Street (another nonviolent patriotic movement utterly ignored by today’s left), Hinkle’s sort of open patriotism was de rigeur - Occupy was festooned with red white and blue (as was the First International in 1864), even anarchists carried American flags with their own symbols put onto it. Talk of hatred and violence within Occupy was where the FBI set up shop to destroy Occupy, surrounding such dead ender self-loathers with six figure budgets, dozens of agents, NSA wiretaps by the terabyte, and endless patience to wait until violent hate helpfully morphed into violent act, only made possible with FBI money. This trap, where redemption and love are mocked and derided in favor of impotent rage pointing in no discernable direction, is what is known as a “honey pot”, collecting flies who stick to it then end up in federal prison, instead of threatening capital in the imperial core.

Aside from tricking the left into playing the FBI’s game, capital has long been well aware that neutering the American left is always best done by the left itself assuming the posture most guaranteed to isolate it from the American working class - violence and a self-loathing hatred of your own country. Who wants to be around self-loathing haters? Who are violent? No grandmother pushing a baby in a stroller is ever going to support anything like that, ever. Without that grandma, you have no movement, no mass line, no cultural hegemonic change, no revolution, nothing. You only have a petulance the FBI thanks you for providing. Mao would know this, Lenin, Che, Fidel, all of them. More importantly, so would the long line of radical American leftists of whom today’s ultra leftoids know precisely nothing.

Not a single “leftist” condemning Hinkle’s patriotism knows who August Willich was, or Mathilde Anneke, or Franz Sigel, or Carl Schurz, or Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski, or Peter H. Clark, or Paul Robeson. They might (barely) know who Lucille Ball was in order to hate her because she was on American TV, but certainly not that Lucy was a member of the Communist Party. One of American imperialism’s greatest triumphs worldwide has been this complete erasure of American socialism’s leaders, thinkers, writers, artists, organizers, agitators, even freers of slaves. So thorough is this erasure, today’s American “leftist” is nothing more than an aesthetic, not even American at all, a putter on of fancy dress manufactured abroad, only celebrating, meme-ing, glorifying, studying, elevating and following people who aren’t American. This fills capitalists with delight.

Our contributor Yanis Iqbal in his piece condemning Hinkle’s patriotism concludes that “the American identity is completely hollow.” Well, if your understanding of American identity is the same as Joe McCarthy’s or Donald Trump’s, sure. That’s a very hollow America. The gaping hole in global socialism is where patriotic American socialists have been erased. Cancelled, if you will, by “leftists,” who purposefully ignore all that does not fit a caricature planted in their minds by capital. Not coincidentally, this void in global socialism, or “hollow”, is right where capital wants it; in the imperial core.  If there is no patriotic American left, there will be no global revolution against capital in its imperial core. We patriotic American socialists have a special responsibility to fill that gaping hole, with love of our country positioned against capital’s exploitation of it. (Yes, Yanis, the American working class has been exploited, too. If you’d like to see what “hollow” actually looks like, I’ll walk you around Cleveland to show you what capital hollowed out my entire life.)

The good news is we have a towering mountain of radical leftism in American history none of us knew was even there until we dug through the history that American capital made certain we were never taught. Here at Midwestern Marx, we endeavor to fill that hole. Patriotically. Go Browns.

​On September 6, 2021, Jackson Hinkle, a former candidate for San Clemente City Council, said, “I’m a Marxist-Leninist. I’m an anti-imperialist. I’m an American patriot.” A statement like this is based on a number of politico-theoretical errors. Patriotism - and nationalism - is a reflection of a specific material reality; it always appears as a derivative ideology which draws its meaning from the power bloc that appropriates it and deploys it towards its own objectives. In metropolitan formations of advanced capitalism, the concrete content of nationalist ideology was foundationally defined by the Westphalian peace treaties of 1648. 

European nationalism emerged as a non-secular majoritarian concept, invoking Christian tropes and cultivating hatred toward domestic minorities. Externally, it was characterized by colonial conquests. Westphalian arrangements were preceded by Spanish conquistadores’ pillage of the New World’s enormous gold resources. Within months of the Westphalian treaties, Oliver Cromwell’s army confiscated most of Ireland’s territories. Acute inter-imperialist rivalry between major European nation-States resulted in bloody wars, which regularly destroyed distant lands. 

Internal oppression of specific cultural groups and external subjugation of Third World people continues to shape and sustain the imperial idioms of metropolitan nationalism. These influences are expressed in the three types of labor aristocracies which exist in the majority of Global North countries. First, the settler-colonial labour aristocracy is established through the denial of self-determination to those populations residing on indigenous land seized by the settler population. Secondly, the native labour aristocracy is established through systematic discrimination against immigrants, who act as visible targets of colonial and racist discourses. Third, the metropolitan labor aristocracy is established through value transfer from the dependent countries, which helps in co-opting sections of the working class. 

Taking into account First World nationalism’s regressive foundations - imperialism and racism - it is doubtful whether socialist politics can gain anything useful from the utilization of patriotic themes. Left nationalism can easily slide into national chauvinism because multiple layers of workers in rich countries have no objective interest in anti-imperialist socialism; the adoption of a massive policy of genuine redistribution of wealth between the affluent nations and the poorer nations may not seem as monetarily attractive as the prospect of parasitically living off the vast surplus value produced by the super-exploited proletariat of the Global South. Insofar that there is no material basis for robust internationalism in the imperial core, the subjectively practiced forms of leftist patriotism can degenerate into mere demands for the redistribution of imperialist wealth. 

While traditions of patriotic socialism are present in imperialist countries, they don’t constitute a proper historical memory to function as the full-fledged scaffold for a mass movement. Third World nationalism, in contrast, assumes a primarily popular character because its originary conditions were marked by a liberatory fight against the state of subjugation imposed by bourgeois nationalism. Unlike Euro-Atlantic patriotic cultures, nationalism in the colonized countries was unifying, inclusive and secular as it identified a common enemy in colonialism and promised to end the poverty, hunger and misery unleashed by it. Since the imperialist opponent was extremely powerful, a strong emphasis was laid on the crucial need to forge ties with other national liberation movements. Thus, international solidarity emerged organically from the difficult realities of struggle. 
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Instead of superimposing patriotic tinsels on the socialist agenda, leftists in the Global North should try to develop a revolutionary praxis which makes their fellow citizens aware of their role in perpetuating the system of imperialist capitalism. As the direct and indirect beneficiaries of imperialist capital accumulation on a global scale, First World people should be the last ones to erase the devastating ravages of neo-colonial robbery. They can and must recognize that their primary responsibility, by virtue of their situatedness in imperial territories, lies in challenging the role of their governments in undermining the development of the Global South. Americans, as people who live in the imperialist heartland, carry an even greater responsibility for initiating a politics of anti-imperialism. However, such a political programme can be realized only when it is understood that the American identity is completely hollow, structurally built on native genocide, racist oppression and imperialist destruction.  

Free Peru lawmaker Kelly Portalatino on Sunday filed a motion of censure against Congress President Maria del Carmen Alva, accusing her of creating political instability by promoting a coup against President Pedro Castillo.

​"I filed a motion of censure against Alva because of her repudiable, anti-democratic statements asserting that 'The streets ask for a presidential vacancy.' This aims to delegitimize the Executive Branch and justify a coup,” said Portalatino.

The leftist lawmaker warned that the Congress president is leading a smear campaign in which extremist and fascist groups are taking part.

“In these moments of crisis, a cordial, intelligent, and democratic coordination is needed between the Executive Branch and the Congress to achieve laws and public policies that can help the millions of Peruvians who are living in poverty and extreme poverty. The current Congress president, however, does not guarantee that,” Portalatino said.

​Although Alva denied she is calling for a coup, the Free Peru lawmaker Guillermo Bermejo stressed that her statements have precisely that sense if one considers the actions that the Peruvian far-right has been deploying to obstruct the work of the Castillo administration.

"Without the slightest embarrassment, she says that the streets are asking for a presidential vacancy. No ma'am, the streets ask you to let us rule and make changes. The streets ask the coup plotters disappear," Bermejo tweeted.

He also urged the political opposition not to demand that the ruling party solve "in one month the disaster that 30 years of neoliberalism left" in Peru.

​Ivan Acosta is Nicaragua’s minister of housing and public credit, with responsibility for key aspects of government planning. In July, he presented the country’s new “National Plan for the Fight against Poverty and for Human Development.” This builds on the achievements of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government since it returned to power in 2007 and sets out how they will continue if Daniel Ortega’s government is returned at November’s elections. Ivan Acosta is currently subject to personal US sanctions, along with many other Nicaraguan government officials and their family members.

Codepinks’s Teri Mattson spoke to the minister in a Zoom call and asked him to explain the plan and its background.

​We need to remember what state the country was in at that time, something largely ignored in public debate.  The truth is that when President Ortega returned to the presidency on January 10, 2007, he took charge of a country of blackouts, with electricity cut off daily. Nicaragua had turned its back on its rural communities and on its Caribbean coast, on its indigenous people and its people of African descent.  There was no public acknowledgement of the autonomous peoples in government policies.  Campesinos (peasant farmers) and other producers had been left behind due to the privatization of the National Bank. No funding was being provided, no credit. There were no rural roads. In many places there was no energy and no drinking water; social indicators such as infant mortality and maternal mortality rate were terrible.

Those 16 or 17 years of neoliberalism in Nicaragua after 1990 brought privatization of public services.  In terms of education, the country was reduced to having only four grades in primary school.  The healthcare system was also privatized.  It was a country with no social programs, a lack of public investment and only 50% of the country with electricity, and even then with frequent blackouts because capacity to generate electricity was so limited.  Out of the 2,000 kilometers of roads only 30 percent were in reasonable condition.  There was a great deficit in telecommunications.

The country’s poverty figures became the worst in Latin America.  Just from 2002 to 2005, general poverty rose from 45 to 48.3 percent and extreme poverty reached 17 percent.  This small country was heading in the wrong direction.  Poverty was worsening and the neoliberal government was proud because they said that this would bring foreign investment.  But there were not enough jobs and public investment barely reached $270 million annually.  There were no government resources, not even to provide primary school children with a glass of milk.  So, the neoliberal model was a disaster and we put an end to that on January 10, 2007.  Fortunately, we didn’t face a pandemic in 2005 or 2006 because it would have been very difficult to deal with such a situation given how public services had been destroyed.

​It’s important to talk about what the government of Nicaragua, under the leadership of President Comandante Ortega, has done to change the country’s situation.  So, in the first place, all social and public services have been de-privatized, to ensure free education and health care.  Then, public and economic policies need to center on the poorest.  The main priority has been the fight against poverty and extreme poverty.  Successful public policies are not only those which make the economy grow or the foreign reserves grow or which ensure macroeconomic stability, but also those which ensure that most people’s situation improves on a daily basis.

Comandante Ortega’s government has more than doubled the kilometers of new road that have been built, vital for access to rural areas.  But we also ensured that 85 percent of roads are in good shape and we are now the country with the best roads in Central America, even though we have the smallest economy.

From 2007, we began to build the most modern health care system in Central America by investing in technology, hospital infrastructure and physicians and healthcare staff.  We also made rapid progress in providing water and sanitation.  We went from 60 to 91 percent in urban sectors in terms of drinking water services.  And we went from 30 to 57 percent, in terms of sanitation.  Those are issues which are relevant for people’s lives, not only for the political and business minorities, but for the large majority.

I think that the most important change in direction by Comandante Ortega was making public education free at the primary, secondary and university levels. As from January 10, 2007, we ensured that 100,000 students went back to school by providing free education.

We also invested in rural communities: we created 275,000 bonos productivos for women members of families in rural areas (the process by which they were helped to raise chicken, cattle and pigs). We developed the zero usury program and granted more than 1,300,000 credits to women to help reduce the gender equality gap. The government also had extraordinary success in reducing the maternal mortality rate: it fell by 67 percent.  We went from 95 women who died per 100,000 births to 35.

Those were huge challenges; by tackling them, the country became more equal.  There was greater economic participation.  We managed to increase livestock production by 75 percent and agricultural production by 85 percent. The size of the economy went from $6.5 billion to $13.7 billion in the span of ten years. But what’s most important is how this growth was employed.  We reduced general poverty from 48.3 to 24.9 percent and extreme poverty from 17.6 to 6.9 percent.  These are extraordinary figures.  This was achieved with social and political stability, consensus and dialogue, in a decade characterized by social, political and economic progress that benefitted everyone.

​We concluded that 2018 was an expression of hate by some minorities given the progress the country was experiencing. The failed coup d’etat had an impact that was equivalent to 52 hurricanes like Hurricane Iota that hit us in November 2020.  The damage was so great that the failed coup attempt caused Nicaragua more severe damage than the global pandemic has done. Take a look at the figures:  $24 billion damage against $4 billion. So, it’s been six times more damaging and it especially hit the country’s poorest people.

So, that was the context for how we developed The National Plan Against Poverty & To Promote Human Development.

​The aims are summarized this chart. We have 12 objectives which basically express our hopes to fill the remaining gaps in our social and economic program.  We’ve made progress, but we still need to reinforce our efforts to fight against poverty and to eradicate extreme poverty.  No society should have extreme poverty (people living on less than $1.25 per day).

​Well, definitely macroeconomic stability, something that we have to continue working on.  We are a country that has managed to develop solid and sustainable public finances, improving our balance sheet, reinforcing our reserves, having sustainable public debt, and laying the groundwork to attract more private investment to create the jobs that the country needs.

We also aim to improve the basic conditions for development by providing people with electricity, by building roads and bridges, by accelerating the provision of water and sanitation to the population, by ensuring strategic investment for the ports in the Caribbean, by attracting investment for a new railroad (and we hope that it can be electrical), with investment in tourism in the Pacific coast. We are fostering the agricultural livestock industry to create jobs, and at the same time we continue working on healthcare and education and to strengthen our gender equality strategy.

​We are proud that this year the country is among the world’s top five countries in gender equality – according to the World Economic Forum. Only four Nordic countries did better but we need to invest even more in bridging the gender equality gap and strengthen women’s role because the country needs it. Women are 52 percent of the population and if they do not have equal participation then it will be more difficult to develop the country.  Also, we need to tackle the rural-urban gap and the gap between the minorities and the majority. We need to bridge all these gaps and create equality so that the country can develop faster and to do it in a balanced way.

​Another strategic aim is tackling climate change.  We believe that we need to better manage our water resources, and we need to reforest as this is vital for the country’s future.  But we have to do this intelligently because the change agents are the more than 300,000 rural producers.  We’ve noticed that positive effects in tackling climate change derive from successes in fighting rural poverty and in transforming the agricultural and livestock sector. If the rural sector becomes wealthier than that will be harmonious with nature because they can produce more in better ways, and that translates into better water, better forests, more diversification so that the rural economy can work better. That is essential.

​I am from the Caribbean Coast myself. We have a strategy to make the Caribbean Coast a special development area given that it has always aspired to be the connection point between North America, South America and Europe.  But we are one of the few countries which have a Caribbean Coast with no ports.  So, we are planning the construction of a port near Bluefields that will allow for the development of a region almost twice the size of El Salvador. We have recognized 23 indigenous territories and the Caribbean region is receiving investment it has never seen before: electricity, road connections, airports, hospitals to serve remote municipalities, rural energy (mainly solar) and water and sanitation to all municipalities.  I think this is a great act of historic justice by the country towards the ethnic minorities who had been excluded for a long time until the 1979 Sandinista Revolution.

​The country has taken a leap forward in the design, management and implementation of projects from bilateral and multilateral development financing, to the point where Nicaragua is the most recognized country by multilateral banks in terms of its accountability and use of funds. We’ve had enormous results. You can see them in reports by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and the European Investment Bank.  We have an incredible record.  If a country manages well, designs well, uses money well, and is accountable, then the number of projects grows rapidly. One example is that it has only taken eight years to bring electricity to the remaining half of the country, and it was the hardest job because we’re talking about remote rural areas. We’ve made similar progress in terms of roads, investment in production, and drinking water.

This creates a virtuous cycle because if a country performs well and creates a positive impact this is very important for foreign direct investment. If a business person comes from Australia or New Zealand, he or she doesn’t know the country so they look at the most important economic indicators and the level of competitiveness of the country:  whether the roads are in good condition or not, whether taxes are competitive or not, and if the country and the government are investing enough resources to make the country more competitive and attractive.  So probably the business person takes a look at the IMF for central bank indicators, takes a look at the macroeconomic stability, fiscal discipline and the sustainability of economic and financial policies.  He or she will also, surely, look at the legal safety and investment safety of any project they are contemplating.

​In this way we’ve achieved important investments in mining and renewable energy as well as general investments in the agricultural sector. We also have one of the most successful systems of free trade zones in Latin America.  It has doubled the number of jobs in the last few years, so we think that public investment together with macroeconomic stability and good economic indicators help investors to trust Nicaragua.  But there is another variable in Central America: the Northern Triangle and on into Mexico is probably the most violent region of the world which is not at war.  So, in Nicaragua you find a place that’s good for investment, with low crime rates and the safest country in Central America.

​The decision to keep the economy working back in April 2020 was the result of several different factors.  In the first place, Nicaragua is a country which has a large, dispersed rural community, where the risk of infection is low, in many places with no dense urban areas. The second factor is a social and economic one. There is a large popular or informal economy in which people live on a daily basis from what they can earn in the markets, farms or in the transport sector; therefore, closing the economy would paralyze their livelihoods.  The third element had to do with the fact that if 99.9% of countries decided to close then we didn’t have to because we wouldn’t receive people from abroad, and the fourth element had to do with the fact that we had strengthened the healthcare system.

You can take all the necessary measures:  social-distancing, hand washing, wearing masks, but if your healthcare care system is not strong (something seen in many developing countries) it can collapse.  Since 2007 we had invested enormously in new hospitals and extra staff working in health care. People had access to healthcare at their doorstep.  Great changes were made.  A voluntary health network was formed which made five million household visits to the country’s 1.3 million homes when the pandemic began.  We made sure we had the ICUs, the ventilators, but also made sure that the country, apart from not getting the virus, could get the resources needed to continue working.

We were ready and we probably have the best family and community healthcare model in Central America.  There are Caribbean countries with great healthcare systems, but we have the best one in terms of its response because our healthcare system centers on the epidemiological issues that many countries have ignored.  There may be good hospitals which are great at treating strokes or cancer, but they have left their epidemiological policies aside as if it were something from the previous century.

Apparently we were right because a few months later all the other countries started opening their economies bit by bit.  So, we managed to reduce the loss of GDP forecast by the IMF of between 11% and 14% to only two percent.

We’ve had extraordinary results. We’re probably the Latin American country with the lowest number of virus cases and with the lowest fatality rate. We are quickly reactivating our economy.  We are now recovering by five percent more than what was forecast for 2021.  I think that the producers linked to agricultural exports should be given credit because we continued to export coffee, sugarcane, meat, seafood and beans to Central America. If the economy doesn’t work we won’t have resources to continue reinforcing the healthcare system.

​Our production policies reinforce exports, food security and making progress towards food sovereignty.  In Latin America, even though many countries have an agricultural industry, Nicaragua is one of the countries in which most of what’s on the table is produced nationally.  Nicaragua is similar to Mexico in the sense that people eat rice, beans, meat and chicken in large quantities. Plantains as well.  All of that is produced here: 80% of consumption is produced nationally.  But what’s important is to increase productivity so that we can fulfill the needs of the local market and also reach the markets in neighboring countries as is the case of our beans, our milk, and our cheese because that is what creates wealth for the rural producers and for the country.

We are the biggest meat producer in Central America and I think that in the future Nicaragua will be one of the benchmarks due to the quality and the safety of our meat. The southern United States, specifically Florida, is a great consumer of Nicaraguan meat. If we increase productivity, if we provide good technical assistance, that will ensure food sovereignty but also allow us to reach more markets in Central America, Mexico, the United States and Canada.  That’s why we talked about a Caribbean port because we don’t sell much to Europe. We’re also on the Pacific and we don’t sell much to Asia. We also don’t export much to South America.  Therefore, we want to achieve greater productivity in the agricultural sector, ensuring food security and sovereignty.

You can watch the entire conversation with Minister Ivan Acosta here:

​WTF is Going on in Latin America:  Nicaragua Alleviates Poverty  HYPERLINK “https://youtu.be/yabonl-motM”& HYPERLINK “https://youtu.be/yabonl-motM” Promotes Human Development