In the United States, the word “communist” is flexible among the population. For example, if you want kids to have free school lunches, you’re a communist. If you want senior citizens to have a home, and adequate food and medicine provided to them by the state, you’re a communist.
If you don’t want immigrants deported to another country, or if you don’t want the wealthy using your money to sail their yachts around the world at your expense, you’re a communist.
This is why it’s so difficult to define communism in the US, because anything to the left of Ronald Reagan is seen as blatant, godless communism, and it’s so frustrating, because it requires nearly zero effort to actually learn what communism is, and what it isn’t, but then we have people who haven’t the foggiest idea of what capitalism is and what it isn’t, let alone an ideology they don’t even live under.
So let’s get that out of the way.
What is communism? What is a communist?
In the most basic sense, a communist is a person who wants the material conditions of the people met, by empowering the workers who create the goods and services we need, to have decision making power in the government.
More to the point, the end goal of communism is a stateless, classless society where everyone’s needs are met, and we are at parity with the people and environment around us. Communism is pro-environmentalism, pro-feminism, pro-choice, and pro-liberation. It is anti-fascist at heart.
Now, you might point to your history books and say “that’s not how it turned out” and, to a point, you are correct. It is essential, however, that you separate fact from fiction, and not rely on the propaganda you were taught growing up, which brings us to the second point:
What is capitalism? What is a capitalist?
Capitalism is the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. It is designed to funnel material goods and services from the workers, who create them, to the ownership class, who use them to control the state to their own ends. Capitalism requires infinite growth or it collapses. It is only in favor of human rights as long as those rights can be used in the service of capital. It is fascist at heart.
A capitalist is a person who supports this process, but who is also directly benefiting from that process. You are not a capitalist if you don’t own capital, which is property and resources (money is a resource), that is used to create more capital.
For example, if you’re a doctor, and make $200,000 a year, you are not a capitalist.
If you are a billionaire who owns multiple hospitals, and extracts the wealth created by those hospitals, and uses that wealth to create more wealth for yourself, you are a capitalist.
You might say you’re a capitalist, but if you don’t control the means of production to build your wealth, you’re just a capitalist sympathizer. Until you own capital, you are just as expendable as every other worker under capitalism.
Capitalism is NOT markets. Markets, trade, commerce, these are separate from capitalism. Capitalism does not mean “I go to the store to buy food,” or “I bought an iPhone.”
Capitalism is a far more recent creation, not even 400 years old, and is a descendant of Feudalism.
We are currently living in what is known as “late stage capitalism,” where the capitalist forces have lead to imperialism, which is what happens when you have an economic system that requires infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.
Okay, so I’ve given you quick and dirty examples of communism and capitalism, and there is so much more (I will leave some reading recommendations at the end of this blog post), but I want to move on.
I am a communist. Now, for those of you who don’t know, communism comes in many flavors, it’s not just one monolithic entity. Just like any ideology, economic, social, or otherwise, there are always going to be people who think there’s a better way to approach something. You see a lot of infighting in the leftist community because people are always trying to find new and better ways to do something.
Communism uses something called “dialectical materialism” to guide it. Essentially, communism sees the contradicting shifts in society, and analyses them to find the best approach to resolving them. It generally looks past the aesthetic, or easily observable qualities that are unrelated to the issue, to get to the heart of the problem.
That’s why that I, as a communist, don’t focus so heavily on whether or not a presidential candidate is a man, a woman, black, white, because I’m more concerned with their policies. Do I want to see a black woman as president? Hell yeah, but their policies are more important, because at the end of the day, what good is electing a black woman as president if she’s only going to hold up a white supremacist system?
And that’s where I usually lose people, because they become so focused on the appearance of progress, they don’t realize that underneath the surface, it’s the same old white, wealthy, land owning men pulling the levers.
This creates a disconnect between myself and many liberals, because while liberalism is certainly geared toward progress, it unfortunately tends to stop at the aesthetic, and embraces the rule of law, rather than dismantling the oppressive systems that keep us in this position of voting for the “lesser evil.”
Those liberals often mistake my disagreement as an endorsement of conservatism, and that’s wholly untrue. It’s like how I despise Donald Trump. Why would I, as a person who is against inequality and exploitation, back a man who is the modern embodiment of capitalism?
I read a lot of black liberation theory from authors like Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Assata Shakur, Audre Lorde, Harry Haywood, Malcolm X, and they lay out the white supremacist foundations of the United States, built upon the oppression and labor of slaves, and how those foundational actions echo through history to get us where we are today. I hold these truths to my heart. I believe in them.
So no, I’m not pro-Trump. I despise that fucker. I despise the system that boosts him up, the mindset that gives him credence and power, but it’s also why I despise someone like Joe Biden, because he also contributed to, and upheld that system. His legislative history is rife with bigotry, racist, exploitation, and oppression.
Some people talk about the Overton Window, the shifting of ideas leftward or rightward, and the United States has certainly shifted rightward over the years. Don’t believe me? Let a man like FDR run today, and watch how he is treated like a filthy communist by the Democrats, or how he’d be seen as a dreamer wanting a pink pony.
Ronald Reagan is the Republican standard, but even he would be seen as liberal today with many of his policies. Hell, Joe Biden’s policies were often to the right of Reagan, and he was upset with Reagan for not going far enough on crime and immigration.
So even a liberal will be called a communist in our modern political discourse, and while that would be awesome as hell if there were 80 million communists in this country, that’s simply not the case, and many people are center right/right wing who also fall under the liberal label.
I love my liberal friends, I do. I know their hearts want what I want: freedom, peace, the right of all people to live together without racism and hatred.
We just differ on the methods. Liberalism, in general, sees capitalism as something that can be tamed, while communism insists that capitalism is, from the very root, exploitative and uses the discord between classes and identities as a means to entrench itself.
It’s why I will make connections to things that, from a liberal perspective, don’t seem to make sense together, and that’s because I’ve spent a lot of my time tracking down these threads that connect to everything else. Some people think it’s delusional, cultish behavior, to try and hunt down these connections, but then these same people will say “vote blue no matter who” without a drop of analysis on where they’re casting their vote aside from the color of their party, so I don’t put any stock in accusations of cultish behavior.
We are all biased, we are all slaves to our perceptions, and it takes time to break out of old propaganda and conditioning. How many of us questioned the pledge of allegiance we said every day in school before our classes started? How many of us just did it because we were told to, and it became normalized despite being a pledge to a flag for a country we didn’t yet understand?
I am of the opinion that conditioning and propaganda is a neutral tool, that can be used for good or evil. We’re awash in it every day, and humans do exceptionally well at learning and following propaganda, whether for good or for bad. Like a nursery rhyme, propaganda can be used to share basic information in easy to understand bites that our brains process more readily than other complex concepts.
“Loose lips sink ships.”
“Click it or ticket.”
“God Bless America.”
We’re inundated in it, and it is said that the people of the United States are some of the most propagandized people in the world. If your first thought is “what about China or North Korea?” then congratulations, you make my point. Think about that.
So anyway, for those of you following along, let’s take a quick refresher at what I’m saying:
Communism is not tanks and gulags. You’re thinking of the United States, which has the largest army in the world, and the largest prison population in the world.
Communism is not where the few control the will of the many. You’re thinking of the United States, where a handful of billionaires influence our government to the point where 95% of constituents needs are ignored.
Communism is not “no food.” You’re thinking of the United States, where a significant percentage of the US population is currently at or near poverty levels, and are food insecure. That’s at least 17 million households, 45 million people.
The United States is a capitalist, late state empire.
It is not full of commies, it is full of people who want to make the world better, but their government has decided that they only owe allegiance to the powerful and wealthy who influence their policies. It’s why they allow cultural shifts to take place, to increase the friction between oppressed classes. It allows them to keep running the store while the two wings of the partisan government fight over who gets to oppress whom and to what degree.
This is why fascists despise communists so much: we know what they are, and what they’re doing to keep people oppressed. Nazis were fascists. Communists beat the ever loving shit out of Nazis. It’s a bit simplistic, but if someone tells you they’re anti-communist, you should think about what they support a communist wouldn’t. If we want freedom, justice, peace, liberation for all, an end to exploitation, and push for a humanity focused system, why are they angry?
I’m sure I’ll talk more on this in the future, but I was just damned tired of seeing so many people say “that’s socialism!” or “you’re a communist!” when someone mentions doing the barest minimum to keep other people from dying.
So good day to you for now, comrades. Hopefully we’ll speak of this again in the future, assuming there is one.
A recommended reading list:
“State and Revolution” by Vladimir Lenin
“What is to be done?” by Vladimir Lenin
“Black Bolshevik” by Harry Haywood
“Assata” by Assata Shakur
“The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin
“The End of White World Supremacy” by Malcolm X
“Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti
“Democracy for the Few” by Michael Parenti
“Ain’t I A Woman” by Bell Hooks
“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House” by Audre Lorde
Read these in good health. If you want a good understanding of communism and how it has been mangled in history, I strongly recommend “Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti be read first.
.Red
