It’s as close to an iron-clad law of the internet as anything could be. Anytime a person makes a critique of capitalism on social media or the comment section of a blog or news post, someone else will respond thusly: “Capitalism isn’t perfect but it's the best system we have, socialism just doesn’t work.”
I just read this essay, having found my way here after reading your book review of Blair LM Kelly's 'Black Folk: The Roots of The Black Working Class' for Jacobin, both very much worth the time. Thank you.
I think this observation is spot on:
"When it comes to arguing about communism and socialism on the internet, or anything from trans rights to Black history, context is vital. The left largely recognizes that out of necessity but it also means the most compelling counterarguments to conservative simple affirmations are buried under hours of theory and history, which doesn’t help any of this go viral."
My view is that any effort to 'combat conservative simple affirmations' is not directed at dissuading any who would embrace those simple affirmations in the first place. We're not here to win debates with fascists, who are only engaged in an absurd pantomime of reasoned arguments in any case-- we're here to expose fascism and fascists in all their guises, and alert all those who are natural allies to the urgent threat fascism poses to the cause of pluralistic democracy.
A just, equitable society will necessarily be socialist, predicated on the dismantling of transnational capitalism.
It is no coincidence that transnational capitalism is the medium in which, and mechanism by which, fascism is expressed. I wrote about this functional and historical relation between capitalism and fascism a few years back here, focusing on work by W.E.B. DuBois and Samir Amin:
'Capitalism and fascism share the same roots in colonialism, and their modern home is the GOP.' (Nov. 23, 2020)
"Before his death, political economist Samir Amin elucidated the attempts to obscure how capitalism and fascism are symbiotic:
'The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism'
Samir Amin/ Monthly Review' Sept. 1, 2014
"Political movements that can rightly be called fascist were in the forefront and exercised power in a number of European countries, particularly during the 1930s up to 1945. These included Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Spain’s Francisco Franco, Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar, France’s Philippe Pétain, Hungary’s Miklós Horthy, Romania’s Ion Antonescu, and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic. The diversity of societies that were the victims of fascism—both major developed capitalist societies and minor dominated capitalist societies, some connected with a victorious war, others the product of defeat—should prevent us from lumping them all together. I shall thus specify the different effects that this diversity of structures and conjunctures produced in these societies.
Yet, beyond this diversity, all these fascist regimes had two characteristics in common:
(1) In the circumstances, they were all willing to manage the government and society in such a way as not to call the fundamental principles of capitalism into question, specifically private capitalist property, including that of modern monopoly capitalism. That is why I call these different forms of fascism particular ways of managing capitalism and not political forms that challenge the latter’s legitimacy, even if “capitalism” or “plutocracies” were subject to long diatribes in the rhetoric of fascist speeches. The lie that hides the true nature of these speeches appears as soon as one examines the “alternative” proposed by these various forms of fascism, which are always silent concerning the main point—private capitalist property. It remains the case that the fascist choice is not the only response to the challenges confronting the political management of a capitalist society. It is only in certain conjunctures of violent and deep crisis that the fascist solution appears to be the best one for dominant capital, or sometimes even the only possible one. The analysis must, then, focus on these crises.
(2) The fascist choice for managing a capitalist society in crisis is always based—by definition even—on the categorical rejection of “democracy.” Fascism always replaces the general principles on which the theories and practices of modern democracies are based—recognition of a diversity of opinions, recourse to electoral procedures to determine a majority, guarantee of the rights of the minority, etc.—with the opposed values of submission to the requirements of collective discipline and the authority of the supreme leader and his main agents. This reversal of values is then always accompanied by a return of backward-looking ideas, which are able to provide an apparent legitimacy to the procedures of submission that are implemented."
//
We agree that "context is vital".
In that vein, I can imagine few resources more valuable than the writing of Prof. Cedric Robinson, whose historical and philosophical work I wrote about here:
"If we learn to see the pervasive presence of these philosophical pretenses and maneuvers, and how they perpetuate systems of inequality, how they are a crucial element of white male heterosexual dominance in society, we arrive at another conclusion: to dismantle systems of inequality and dominance, we must dismantle the intellectual edifice upon which they are constructed.
Cedric J. Robinson sets about to do just that in 'Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.'
Robinson explicates the intent of his book this way in his preface:
This work is about our people's struggle, the historical Black struggle. It takes as a first premise that for a people to survive in struggle it must be on its own terms: the collective wisdom which is a synthesis of culture and the experience of that struggle. The shared past is precious, not for itself, but because it is the basis of consciousness, of knowing, of being. It cannot be traded in exchange for expedient alliances or traduced by convenient abstractions or dogma. It contains philosophy, theories of history, and social prescriptions native to it. It is a construct possessing its own terms, exacting its own truths. I have attempted here to demonstrate its authority. More particularly, I have investigated the failed efforts to render the historical being of Black peoples into a construct of historical materialism, to signify our existence as merely an opposition to capitalist organization. We are that (because we must be) but much more."
The scope of the book evokes awe:
"Black Marxism is far more ambitious than its modest title implies, for what Cedric Robinson has written extends well beyond the history of the Black Left or Black radical movements. Combining political theory, history, philosophy, cultural analysis, and biography, among other things, Robinson literally rewrites the history of the rise of the West from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century, tracing the roots of Black radical thought to a shared epistemology among diverse African people and providing a withering critique of Western Marxism and its inability to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism and the civilization in which it was born or mass movements outside Europe. At the very least, Black Marxism challenges our "commonsense" about the history of modernity, nationalism, capitalism, radical ideology, the origins of Western racism, and the worldwide Left from the 1848 revolutions to the present…
… capitalism emerged within the feudal order and grew in fits and starts, flowering in the cultural soil of the West-most notably in the racialism that has come to characterize European society. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of "racial capitalism" dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide. So Robinson not only begins in Europe; he also chips away at many of the claims and assertions central to European historiography, particularly of the Marxist and liberal varieties." (from the foreward, pp. xii-xiii)
But this scope, aside from how it demonstrates Robinson’s prodigious intellect, and the breadth and depth of his scholarly research, is simply what is required to develop what is a complete philosophical framework, one that stands in opposition to ‘traditional Western philosophy’, an edifice constructed by the Greeks, and their European inheritors, and which has no place for people of color or women in its moral or political scheme..."
i loved reading this.... it goes toward the biggest spaces i haven't filled in yet, concerning the vision people on the true left, like you, have for our future way of organizing and governing our economy. it's clear when you give us your analysis of venezuela and norway, and where those countries and ours stack up on the economic freedom index. maybe the heritage foundation doesn't even realize its own blind spot..... you really make clear how deft, really brilliant, the right is in bundling everything they don't like into one package and calling it capitalism, or woke.... all the babies down the tube with the bathwater...(sorry).... i'm really looking forward to knowing more about the mechanics of your vision of how a worker controlled economy would work. that's not what norway is, right? why wouldn't a norway model work for us?
Pretty good text, thanks for writing! And as a south American I sure know how easily it is to become a target from sanctions and coups backed by the US. That’s the difference between Venezuela and Norway. Venezuela and all Latin countries are expect to let foreign market extract the most of our resources as they wish. If we don’t there at consequences. The same doesn’t happen to European countries.
Mr. Vicks,
I just read this essay, having found my way here after reading your book review of Blair LM Kelly's 'Black Folk: The Roots of The Black Working Class' for Jacobin, both very much worth the time. Thank you.
I think this observation is spot on:
"When it comes to arguing about communism and socialism on the internet, or anything from trans rights to Black history, context is vital. The left largely recognizes that out of necessity but it also means the most compelling counterarguments to conservative simple affirmations are buried under hours of theory and history, which doesn’t help any of this go viral."
My view is that any effort to 'combat conservative simple affirmations' is not directed at dissuading any who would embrace those simple affirmations in the first place. We're not here to win debates with fascists, who are only engaged in an absurd pantomime of reasoned arguments in any case-- we're here to expose fascism and fascists in all their guises, and alert all those who are natural allies to the urgent threat fascism poses to the cause of pluralistic democracy.
A just, equitable society will necessarily be socialist, predicated on the dismantling of transnational capitalism.
It is no coincidence that transnational capitalism is the medium in which, and mechanism by which, fascism is expressed. I wrote about this functional and historical relation between capitalism and fascism a few years back here, focusing on work by W.E.B. DuBois and Samir Amin:
'Capitalism and fascism share the same roots in colonialism, and their modern home is the GOP.' (Nov. 23, 2020)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/23/1997759/-Capitalism-and-fascism-share-the-same-roots-in-colonialism-and-their-modern-home-is-the-GOP
"Before his death, political economist Samir Amin elucidated the attempts to obscure how capitalism and fascism are symbiotic:
'The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism'
Samir Amin/ Monthly Review' Sept. 1, 2014
"Political movements that can rightly be called fascist were in the forefront and exercised power in a number of European countries, particularly during the 1930s up to 1945. These included Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Spain’s Francisco Franco, Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar, France’s Philippe Pétain, Hungary’s Miklós Horthy, Romania’s Ion Antonescu, and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic. The diversity of societies that were the victims of fascism—both major developed capitalist societies and minor dominated capitalist societies, some connected with a victorious war, others the product of defeat—should prevent us from lumping them all together. I shall thus specify the different effects that this diversity of structures and conjunctures produced in these societies.
Yet, beyond this diversity, all these fascist regimes had two characteristics in common:
(1) In the circumstances, they were all willing to manage the government and society in such a way as not to call the fundamental principles of capitalism into question, specifically private capitalist property, including that of modern monopoly capitalism. That is why I call these different forms of fascism particular ways of managing capitalism and not political forms that challenge the latter’s legitimacy, even if “capitalism” or “plutocracies” were subject to long diatribes in the rhetoric of fascist speeches. The lie that hides the true nature of these speeches appears as soon as one examines the “alternative” proposed by these various forms of fascism, which are always silent concerning the main point—private capitalist property. It remains the case that the fascist choice is not the only response to the challenges confronting the political management of a capitalist society. It is only in certain conjunctures of violent and deep crisis that the fascist solution appears to be the best one for dominant capital, or sometimes even the only possible one. The analysis must, then, focus on these crises.
(2) The fascist choice for managing a capitalist society in crisis is always based—by definition even—on the categorical rejection of “democracy.” Fascism always replaces the general principles on which the theories and practices of modern democracies are based—recognition of a diversity of opinions, recourse to electoral procedures to determine a majority, guarantee of the rights of the minority, etc.—with the opposed values of submission to the requirements of collective discipline and the authority of the supreme leader and his main agents. This reversal of values is then always accompanied by a return of backward-looking ideas, which are able to provide an apparent legitimacy to the procedures of submission that are implemented."
//
We agree that "context is vital".
In that vein, I can imagine few resources more valuable than the writing of Prof. Cedric Robinson, whose historical and philosophical work I wrote about here:
'Black Marxism': To fight economic inequality, fight systemic economic racism (long read).' (Nov. 1, 2017)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/1/1708243/--Black-Marxism-To-fight-economic-inequality-fight-systemic-economic-racism-long-read
"If we learn to see the pervasive presence of these philosophical pretenses and maneuvers, and how they perpetuate systems of inequality, how they are a crucial element of white male heterosexual dominance in society, we arrive at another conclusion: to dismantle systems of inequality and dominance, we must dismantle the intellectual edifice upon which they are constructed.
Cedric J. Robinson sets about to do just that in 'Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.'
Robinson explicates the intent of his book this way in his preface:
This work is about our people's struggle, the historical Black struggle. It takes as a first premise that for a people to survive in struggle it must be on its own terms: the collective wisdom which is a synthesis of culture and the experience of that struggle. The shared past is precious, not for itself, but because it is the basis of consciousness, of knowing, of being. It cannot be traded in exchange for expedient alliances or traduced by convenient abstractions or dogma. It contains philosophy, theories of history, and social prescriptions native to it. It is a construct possessing its own terms, exacting its own truths. I have attempted here to demonstrate its authority. More particularly, I have investigated the failed efforts to render the historical being of Black peoples into a construct of historical materialism, to signify our existence as merely an opposition to capitalist organization. We are that (because we must be) but much more."
The scope of the book evokes awe:
"Black Marxism is far more ambitious than its modest title implies, for what Cedric Robinson has written extends well beyond the history of the Black Left or Black radical movements. Combining political theory, history, philosophy, cultural analysis, and biography, among other things, Robinson literally rewrites the history of the rise of the West from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century, tracing the roots of Black radical thought to a shared epistemology among diverse African people and providing a withering critique of Western Marxism and its inability to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism and the civilization in which it was born or mass movements outside Europe. At the very least, Black Marxism challenges our "commonsense" about the history of modernity, nationalism, capitalism, radical ideology, the origins of Western racism, and the worldwide Left from the 1848 revolutions to the present…
… capitalism emerged within the feudal order and grew in fits and starts, flowering in the cultural soil of the West-most notably in the racialism that has come to characterize European society. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of "racial capitalism" dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide. So Robinson not only begins in Europe; he also chips away at many of the claims and assertions central to European historiography, particularly of the Marxist and liberal varieties." (from the foreward, pp. xii-xiii)
But this scope, aside from how it demonstrates Robinson’s prodigious intellect, and the breadth and depth of his scholarly research, is simply what is required to develop what is a complete philosophical framework, one that stands in opposition to ‘traditional Western philosophy’, an edifice constructed by the Greeks, and their European inheritors, and which has no place for people of color or women in its moral or political scheme..."
Best regards,
IDR
i loved reading this.... it goes toward the biggest spaces i haven't filled in yet, concerning the vision people on the true left, like you, have for our future way of organizing and governing our economy. it's clear when you give us your analysis of venezuela and norway, and where those countries and ours stack up on the economic freedom index. maybe the heritage foundation doesn't even realize its own blind spot..... you really make clear how deft, really brilliant, the right is in bundling everything they don't like into one package and calling it capitalism, or woke.... all the babies down the tube with the bathwater...(sorry).... i'm really looking forward to knowing more about the mechanics of your vision of how a worker controlled economy would work. that's not what norway is, right? why wouldn't a norway model work for us?
Pretty good text, thanks for writing! And as a south American I sure know how easily it is to become a target from sanctions and coups backed by the US. That’s the difference between Venezuela and Norway. Venezuela and all Latin countries are expect to let foreign market extract the most of our resources as they wish. If we don’t there at consequences. The same doesn’t happen to European countries.