A writer named Don Hamerquist, who appears to be a Marxist-Leninist with left-communist or autonomous Marxist leanings, has a new three part essay on the “antifascist” blog Three Way Fight that is considerably more insightful that what I usually find coming from that milieu. The essay is available here, here, and here.

The essay makes the following arguments.

1) The difficulties that global capitalism has experienced over the past decade have generated a backlash against neoliberalism in the forms of populist movements from both the left and right.

2) The “capitalist class” in the Western nations has attempted to co-opt left-wing populism by pitting it against right-wing populism in a supposed battle for “democracy” and “liberalism” against “authoritarianism” or “fascism.” Hamerquist also recognizes that Russia is a player within the framework of global capitalism, not a genuine opposition nation, but one that is being used as a scapegoat or whipping boy by Western liberals.

3) A likely effect of this will be the successful co-option of left-populism in a way that stabilizes global capitalism, and which pushes the populist right in an even more extreme direction, and possibility toward fascism (which Hamerquist correctly defines as revolutionary anti-capitalism from the right).

4) A preferable alternative would be a revolutionary anti-capitalism from the left (i.e. Marxism).

My thoughts.

1) is obvious enough, and I was predicting as much as far back as the anti-globalization era in the late 1990s, a decade before the 2000 recession.

2) is precisely what I have been saying for years as well, although the capitalist class co-option of the Left has escalated in the era of Trump. Hence, the liberal sectors of the media are now aligned with elements of the intelligence services and military that are only interested in budgets and job securitym and both of these have an interest in presenting Russia as the new headquarters of world fascism. Interestingly, some supposed “far left” or “antifascists” such as Alexander Reid Ross’ “anarcho-MSNBC” school of politics are now taking this line as well.

3) is true in that sense that the left will likely continue to join the establishment and become co-opted in the future (hence, the ongoing incorporation of “political correctness” into the elites’ ideological superstructure), while the “radical right” may become more extreme and violent as the right-wing continues to lose ground due to cultural, generational, demographic, and economic trends.

4) is a joke when it is considered that the Western Left is hardly a “left” at all. I don’t think a Marxist revolution would be a desirable thing, but even if it were there is hardly anything even remotely resembling a revolutionary left in the West today. There are some individual thinkers like Caleb Maupin and Jason Unruhe that bring a serious Communist analysis to the current world situation, but these kinds of perspectives seem to be the smallest sectors of the Western Left at present,and are generally unpopular.  The absurdity of present day “Resistance” types, Social Justice Warriors and Antifa storming the equivalent of the Winter Palace ought to be obvious enough.