The Kids Are All Communists

Students, Left-Collapse and Left-Resurgence
The US left has, for decades, been silent. Since the turmoil of the late 70’s and early 80's, only occasional glimpses of anti-capitalist activity have seen the light of day. The majority of these activities, minus a few key labor strikes, have been the work of young people — primarily students. As the old adage goes, “if you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no head.” And so it seems, as the student population appears to be the only portion of the left wing unhindered by capitalist hegemony.
The collapse of the left in the United States, brought on by the removal of union rights, the end of the anti-war movement, the failed insurrection attempts of the Weathermen, the assassinations of MLK, Malcolm X and Fred Hampton and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and end of the Soviet Union, was the result of direct action on the part of the US government. Limiting access to communist literature, removing political figures, restricting human rights and using police violence was successful in defeating the left at home.
It is unsurprising, then, that the majority of people who march today for the rights of workers and minorities are the people who have never experienced the wrath of the state. It is also unsurprising that, since the left has declined in political prominence in the last few decades, this new movement is less communist and more socialist-lite.
As Lenin put it: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” Indeed, the events of recent years have massively accelerated the political development of the masses. Three large movements have led us to this point: the financial collapse of 2008, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the controversial 2016 elections. I contend that these major moments in our history have guided us to the point where we are seeing a major return to the political talking points of socialist politics.
Collapse, Bail-Outs and Obama
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was heralded by many liberals as a return to the “normative” politics of the Clinton era. After two terms of Bush, the country was tired of war-mongering, austerity measures and the growth of patriotic nationalism in American life. Obama ran on a center-left, “progressive” campaign that, at the time, seemed promising to those few-and-far-between leftists still interacting with politics. He was young, black, well-spoken, supported an expansion of social services (including a palatable precursor to the Medicare For All program) and he won the support of most labor unions and even the Communist Party (CPUSA). He also brought a significant number of new, young voters into the voting booths.
Obama’s victory against Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney was seen by pundits as the end for the status quo. It was, however, just a continuation (and in many cases, a deepening) of the same old problems.
The same year that Obama swore in to office, 2009, the US was on the brink of complete economic collapse. Many economists suggested that the Great Depression of the 1930’s was due to return if we did not change course. Several banks, automotive companies, and many more vestiges of capital and bourgeois power filed for bankruptcy, signaling the complete halt of profit in the richest nation on Earth. The collapse itself was, as highlighted by economists like Richard Wolff, the product of shady loan lending and unemployment. The collapse of capitalism in the US should have been a moment of socialist power, but the under-developed left could not offer the strength and guidance needed to seize power. Instead, the masses had to turn to their new president, someone who (seemingly) wanted to bring something new to the table.
Instead of nationalizing the automotive industry, shutting down the banks or bringing any sense of democracy into the market, Obama and his cabinet moved to bail out the failing businesses. He propped capitalism back on its feet, and the market slowly, but surely, returned to order. Crisis was averted for the rich while millions of working people faced unemployment, drowned in student and medical debt, and lost their homes due to foreclosure. In short, the system failed them.
Emerging from the wreckage of economic collapse was a loose, decentralized movement of protesters demonstrating against the abandonment of the working class. Occupy Wall Street was dedicated to rejecting the Obama-era response to the crisis, positing instead that the state should serve the people, not the market. Occupy was massive, taking place in cities across the country, inspiring solidarity protests in other countries, bringing countless Americans out onto the streets. Public spaces became zones of occupation. The attitude of cold economists was outmatched by cries for a left (if unprincipled) populism. The youth finally had a movement that addressed the core issue of society — the state worked for the rich at the expense of the poor, and Occupy called for that to be reversed (again, even if it was unprincipled).
We all know how this turned out. With no formal structure, no agreed principles or demands, and no concrete analysis of the situation, the movement petered out as the occupiers were driven off public spaces. It echoed the failings of the so-called “New Left” , which Jodi Dean describes in her 2016 book Crowds and Party. But the resurgence of the left in the public sphere is vital nonetheless, and the debates between leftist tendencies were necessary, even if they were hindered by the generally anarchist trend of the movement.
Prison Abolitionism, Police Brutality and “Unrest”
As the first black president saved capitalism and drone-struck another nation unpronounceable to the average person, a different social ill was coming into the forefront — the oppression of the black masses. Many white Americans are taught that slavery ended during the Civil War, and many more are taught that racism was ended by the Civil Rights Movement. Following this teaching, most assumed that black poverty and crime rates were the products of black culture and were largely self-afflicted.
This assumption was challenged when, over the course of a few years, multiple videos were uploaded online that demonstrated the racist, violent nature of police when interacting with black citizens. And as the black community again began to bubble with rage towards the state, many white people began to sympathize immensely.
Race riots have always been a part of US history, and always used as a way to insert fear into the white imagination. Rarely was it imagined that, for once, white people would actually support black direct action — as was the case when cities around the country began to catch on fire as black people rejected the state’s continual violence towards their communities.
A movement began to emerge out of this upheaval, one that challenged the state’s right to shoot black people in the streets for selling cigarettes, running away from police, sitting in cars, or generally doing anything unarmed. It was controversial among the right, but the broader left movement vehemently supported what was called Black Lives Matter. People marched in the streets for dead children in cities hundreds of miles away, and for many young people this was the first mass movement that addressed the now-obvious problems this country has with race.
BLM was an evolution of Occupy, a continuation of the populist politics while adding improvements to the way a mass movement could be carried out. BLM quickly developed into an organization, producing leaflets, graphics, and other media that could be easily disseminated. It called for specific terms to be met instead of vague platitudes. But this newfound sense of organization fell into different pitfalls than Occupy. The organization of BLM sought legitimacy in bourgeois institutions, rejected the rioting that had sparked the movement in the first place, and made demands that were decidedly not revolutionary. It alienated the activists who had started the conversation in the first place.
Questions of police activity beckoned questions of the prison system, and ultimately capitalism itself. How black people were re-enslaved after the Civil War, in both the South and the North, became a common talking point in popular political media. All of these questions about how and why black people were in a position of poverty, and therefore had higher crime rates, and therefore faced more police aggression, and therefore were over-represented in prison populations, and therefore became the single largest population of free laborers (read: slaves) in said prisons, was now at the forefront of discourse. It could no longer be avoided, even by the now-liberal institution of BLM. The youth now had a deeper understanding of the nature of the state as being white supremacist.
Sanders, The Democrats, & You
2016 was the solidification of the return of the left. It was the year that, taking the last decade into the whole account, the left launched itself into the task of rebuilding. And all of this work, this mass resurgence, was done in the name of one old, white Senator: Bernie Sanders.
Sanders launched his bid for presidency to the laughter, or silence, of the mainstream political media. He was not expected to last a month. Instead, he came incredibly close to beating media favorite Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party’s nomination.
For the young, progressive block of largely unregistered voters, the Democratic party was (and to some, still is) the primary vehicle for the left in the US. But few of those young people were even aware of how left the left can truly be, and Sanders represented a door being opened for millions of poor people.
Sanders ran on a campaign dedicated to the nationalization of healthcare and a guarantee of a college education, asserting that proper medical care and schooling were human rights. Sanders pointed out the corruption of the US state by capitalist corporations, returning the politics of Occupy to the mainstream. He supported reforming the police and abolished prisons run for profit, steps that the BLM had called for only a few years prior. He made addressing climate change a stark priority, out-shadowing his opponents’ vague promises of “gradual reduction”.
Despite the immense pressures of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, masses of people, primarily young, registered to vote and volunteered in his campaign. Meetings became hubs of discussion and education. Gradually, the left began to emerge out of liberalism and take shape again.
Sanders inevitably lost the nomination due to an obviously biased and unreasonable system of “super-delegates” — the rich representatives of the liberal class getting a larger share of power than the average voter. Protests broke out at the Democratic Convention. Sanders supporters split on whether or not to support Clinton, many opting not to vote at all. The lack of enthusiasm for Clinton was palpable. The election of Trump, a far-right demagogue, despite him losing the popular vote, further alienated the now-politically active youth to the transparently undemocratic systems they were always told were democratic.
New Movements, Old Patterns
The Sanders campaign was, to the left, more or less a mundane repetition of what came before. Sanders was, and is, a mostly left-of-center liberal with some keenly borrowed socialist talking points and policies. He does not seek to destroy capitalism, despite what the right may claim. His loss in the Democratic nomination process was, to the left, just another example of the capitalist state repressing any mention of the class conflict that controls so much of our lives.
While this is obviously true, it’s also true that Sanders’ campaign, in both it’s positives and negatives, was a point of radicalization for a significant amount of people. And Sanders’ loss in 2016 did not mean an end to left politics — groups like the DSA, PSL and the SPUSA saw massive spikes in membership. Clearly, instead of feeling disenfranchised with politics altogether, those spurned by the US democratic process are just moving further to the left.
This process, of enticing liberals and the apolitical into viewing socialism as a solution to their problems before capitalism removes that possibility, is happening again and again. It happened with Occupy Wall Street, which gathered millions of people together to reject the bailing out of the rich, it happened with Black Lives Matter, where people of all races stood up in solidarity with the black community ravaged by capitalist exploitation, and it happened with Bernie Sanders, when millions of people registered to vote for an self-proclaimed socialist who advocated for addressing class conflict instead of ignoring it.
As capitalism worsens, and economic collapse, poverty, climate change and endless warfare become larger and larger issues, this process will only happen more often. More and more young people, coming into this bland and violent hellscape we call America, will see the cracks in the walls. They will be drawn into new mass movements, like the anti-fascist demonstrations and the climate change activism happening today. Again and again, these movements, failing to be structured and principled communist movements, will end up with people realizing the folly of liberal “solutions” to capitalist problems. And the socialists will be here to welcome them.
