Singing the Communist Internationale
Singing the Communist Internationale
Days Two and Three of Marxism Conference 2023 were illuminating. Here’s my report.
Just before Easter I posted the overview and agenda of Marxism Conference 2023.
During Easter I posted my impressions of Day One content.
This post is on the remaining two days.
Again Im attempting to accurately report Marxist’s positionings as the Marxist’s themselves explain. I’ll leave comment to a later day.
Themes explored on this second and third day shook up some of my preconceptions about what Marxists think, plus introduced new and, for me, unexpected themes. In this article I cover here two major themes,
(1) war and imperialism and
(2) Identity politics.
I found this second theme particularly challenging to understand.
The big finale to the event was a gathering of the 1,000 or so participants in a large Melbourne University theatre. The hoopla was genuine, noisy, with the crowd revved up by talented speakers, pretty much like a revivalist meeting. The general theme was ‘Comrades we are glorious in our struggle.’ I left just as the throng started singing the communist ‘Internationale’ in roaring unison. I’ve included this famous rallying refrain at the end of this post.
To keep perspective, I reiterate that Left politics in Australia (and globally) operates on a spectrum. There are hardcore Marxists beliefs through to many modifications tempered to economic and political realities and personal socialist views. Marxism Conference 2023 arguably presented the purest of Marxist positioning.
On war and imperialism
Marxists are vehemently anti-war. But according to the Marxist belief system, war is exclusively a consequence of the capitalist system. Throughout the conference this theme, that capitalism is the cause of all problems, is the constant and around which all analysis rotates. Their account of war goes something like this.
Capitalism so is all-pervasive that the nation-state is subjugated to it and not above or separated from capitalism. The state is incapable of controlling or limiting capitalism; instead the state does the bidding of capitalism. The outcome is that nation-states, as capitalist enclaves, are inevitably drawn to imperialism, the process of extending a nation’s capitalist power and influence through colonisation, and inevitably through war.
The Marxists at this conference draw heavily from Lenin’s description of Imperialism as the highest and most advanced stage of capitalism. They treat this proposition as a biblical-style truth.
Explaining this theme in more detail: capitalism leads to the concentration of capital. Successful firms become large and dominant thereby squeezing out small operators. These capitalist monoliths discipline the state any time they want to by withdrawing capital and crashing the economy. This seems to be a Marxist explanation of economic downturns—namely, capitalists teaching the state who’s the boss. As a current example, much criticism was repeatedly directed at the Albanese government and The Greens for selling out to the capitalists on the recent gas and coal legislation. This, Marxists say, is government doing the bidding of the capitalists to which they are beholden.
Wars occur, Marxists say, because nations manoeuvre to give their capitalists power over the capitalists of other nations. Nations are effectively blocs of capitalists fighting other blocs of capitalists.
Individual capitalists cannot do anything about this. Likewise, individual politicians are captured. All are subject to the dictates of capitalism.
On this view, free markets are a myth and do not in reality exist. In other words, that globalisation, the operations of markets globally, does not stop war. Globalisation’s defenders argue that cross-nation trade and investment remove the ‘capitalist’ trigger for war. Apple, for example, does not want the US to go to war with China because Apple has too much invested in China and China is a massive source of profit for Apple. This was brushed off by the conference Marxists who instead asserted that capitalists take a long-term view and wear short-term losses for larger market share and profits in other nations. That is, that Apple would willingly forgo profits in China if war creates the opportunity to secure larger market share and profits in other nations.
Against the backdrop of current global tensions, these Marxists view China, Russia and even Iran as imperial, capitalist powers. Each seeks to advance its own imperial ambitions against the imperialist ambitions of the USA and Western powers. This is what causes war: state capitalism versus state capitalism. Again, the Marxist view of war is reduced exclusively to a problem of capitalism.
War, therefore, can only be removed by abolishing capitalism. And to do this what needs to occur is that the people, the workers, revolt and refuse to participate in war. The primary example of this that was cited was the 1917 Russian revolution, where Russian workers refused to continue participation in World War I and were joined by soldiers who also refused to participate. Speakers also drew on the Vietnam War where the US lost (they argued) because the working class (broadly defined) revolted against the war and US soldiers in Vietnam openly defied orders to participate in fighting (preferring instead drugs, drinking and loafing). More complex understandings of history are not included in the analysis.
In essence the belief expressed at the conference is that war can be stopped by ‘the people’ refusing to participate. This leads Australian Marxists, for example, to oppose the AUKUS pact.
On the politics of identity
Perhaps of greatest surprise to this Marxist ‘student’, is the hatred of identity politics, or in more general parlance, wokeism (a term not used by the Marxists). Essentially the Marxists at this conference conducted a tirade of sarcastic abuse at capitalist, institutional giants for appropriating the cause of the oppressed classes into their marketing and promotion. Think of Qantas being LGBTQIA+ friendly, police marching in gay pride parades, corporate support for indigenous causes (Rio Tinto, Gina Rinehart and all miners) and so on.
Quite contrary to the probable impression of conservative-minded folk that wokeism is the inculcation of Left-wing causes into corporate behaviour, that’s not the Marxist view.
Rather, what the Marxists rail against is their view that identity politics perpetuates a neo-liberal myth—namely, that oppression is an act of individuals against other individuals. Instead, the Marxist view is that oppression is a class action. Individuals do not oppress. Rather, the seemingly oppressive action of an individual—say, bashing a person who’s a member of a minority group—is an act of the ruling class, not of the individual basher. Further, that the person being bashed is only a victim because they are in the class of oppressed persons.
To the Marxists, what they label as identity politics, assaults their ‘truth’ that oppression is a consequence and product of the ‘worker versus bosses’ class warfare inherent in capitalism. For non-Marxists this is quite a challenging concept to grasp as it removes individual responsibility from the assessment of an individual’s social and economic behaviour and any legal consequence as a result.
Another strand of this argument is the rejection by Marxists of a current woke proposition—that only oppressed individuals from oppressed classes can discuss or be involved in the cause of the oppressed class. (For example, that only black people can talk about black oppression.) The rejection of this proposition would seem to be at one with the view of ‘neo-liberals’. But if there is an appearance of commonality, it’s for totally different reasons.
Marxists say that all oppressed classes are at one together because oppression is exclusively the product of capitalism. In other words, LGBTIQA+ people, coloured people, refugees, indigenous and all minorities are subsets of the working class and oppression only occurs because of capitalism. Therefore, any working-class person has common cause and must fight oppression as part of a united class.
On the surface it may appear that neo-liberals seek the outcome of the removal of oppression. But Marxists say ‘no’. They reserve a special venom for such individualism citing, for example, Thatcher’s free-market individualism. Marxists say that markets are just another form of capitalism in which the primacy of the individual is a con, a ruse, a sly neo-liberal trick to cause the fragmentation of social and class unity. Identity politics is a retreat from class consciousness invented by ruling-class capitalists to divide and weaken the oppressed working classes.
The example of the oppression of LGBTIQA+ people draws warm approval from conference participants. The argument is put that in pre-capitalist societies people engaged in all forms of sexual activity. The oppression of LGBTIQA+ has only developed since the rise of capitalism and occurs because of capitalism. Identity politics has enabled capitalism to cleverly absorb LGBTIQA+ individuals into the capitalist system without addressing oppression. The approach that capitalist companies adopt—training their employees to be accepting of LGBTIQA+ people within their organisations—does nothing to stop oppression. In fact, it perpetuates the capacity of the capitalist ruling class to oppress.
Former US President Barack Obama came in for particular attack as being a (black) class denier. He told black men to accept individual responsibility, to go out and work, to create a family and a better life. In this, he was and is a lacky for the ruling class capitalist elite. A sell-out. This was stated to much applause.
Marxists say that your identity is defined by your class not your individuality. The accusation is leveled at the Federal Labor Party that it has succumbed to liberal identity politics, thereby making conservatives of the Left.
As a criticism of the Labor Party, federal Labor is probably a legitimate target for the Marxist’s charge. But it is not quite as obvious, that the same Marxist’s criticism can be directed at the Victorian Labor Party. Marxist’s apparent rejection of identity politics seems to be embraced in the term ‘intersectionality’. This is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage”.
I googled ‘intersectionality’ and found a prominent post on a website of the Victorian government that states their ‘Understanding (of) Intersectionality’ translated into government policy where … “Family Safety Victoria created the Everybody Matters: Inclusion and Equity Statement to build an inclusive, safe, responsive and accountable system for all Victorians.” Whether this is ‘Marxist’s’ I don’t know. I’d leave that analysis to the Marxist’s.
In summary, Marxists reject identity politics because individualism discourages solidarity. They require people to think and work as a collective to further revolutionary activity.
The Internationale
There seem to be several versions of Internationale but here’s one sung by Comrade Corona.
And here one version of the text
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
Refrain:
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.Arise ye pris’ners of starvation
Arise ye wretched of the earth
For justice thunders condemnation
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught we shall be all.
Refrain:
’Tis the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
The International Union
Shall be the human race.
We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgement hall
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all.
To make the theif disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell
We must ourselves decide our duty
We must decide and do it well.
The law oppresses us and tricks us,
The wage slave system drains our blood;
The rich are free from obligation,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we’ve languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws;
"No rights", says she "without their duties,
No claims on equals without cause."
Behold them seated in their glory
The kings of mine and rail and soil!
What have you read in all their story,
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the workers’ toil are buried
In strongholds of the idle few
In working for their restitution
The men will only claim their due.
We toilers from all fields united
Join hand in hand with all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the workers,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the norsome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning
The blessed sunlight then will stay.