On the American "Communist" Party, "MAGA Communism," and "Mass Immigration"

Last week marked another L for the #AmericanCommunistParty as two of its followers prominently helped to spread right-wing lies about “the Springfield, Ohio situation” (the anti-immigrant fake news about pet-eating), causing #ACP co-founder Infracel to attempt damage control by distancing himself from and trying to correct the other ACP-supporting posters while preserving the framing of “mass immigration” as a problem that communists such as he eventually will deal with.

The A”C”P’s co-founders have a consistent history of misrepresenting Marxism to anyone who’ll listen, but assuming for a moment that it’s a real party trying to do real work instead of the obvious psyop that it appears to be, this is exactly what the #MAGAcommunism approach was always likely to produce. When you try to appeal first and foremost to the most backward, capitalist-captured workers with the least class consciousness while praising fascists like Alexander Dugin, you’re unlikely to make much of a dent against the far-right, but you’re very likely to muddy the waters for communism.

A more efficient strategy, used by communists the world over, is for the Marxist vanguard to appeal to the more advanced masses, who can help to bring around the middle masses and contain the backward masses. Doing it in reverse as they are, the A”C”P can be expected to have much more of the same in its future: loads of energy expended in flailing denunciations and distancing from its grifters-in-chief against its deeply reactionary supporters whenever their fascism becomes too visible. However, as the A”C”P’s true political mission is most likely to try to confuse and distract from actual communist organizing efforts, such ongoing PR struggles may just be one of their costs of doing business.

To any workers in the advanced capitalist countries who’ve been riled up against immigrants, the communist message is simple: workers immigrating to your country are not your competitors; they are your class allies. The catch is that you have to get off your ass and organize with them against the employing class — and reject attempts by capitalist media to poison relations between you by sowing racism and other bigotry.

Communist internationalism on this topic is made clear in Marx’s 1870 letter in which he discussed England’s oppression of Ireland:

“But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labor market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.

“And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial center in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

“This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.”

source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm

How does the organized proletariat break this power of the capitalist class, according to Marxists? By organizing across all the artificial lines the capitalist class tries to draw and accentuate between the workers. As Lenin wrote in 1913:

“Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries.

“Hundreds of thousands of workers thus wander hundreds and thousands of versts. Advanced capitalism drags them forcibly into its orbit, tears them out of the backwoods in which they live, makes them participants in the world-historical movement and brings them face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners. […]

“The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realizing that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organize their fellow-workers from the backward countries.”

source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/oct/29.htm

Lenin was very clear about opposing immigration restrictions in the advanced capitalist countries, writing the following in 1915 against the USA’s Socialist Party, accusing them of buying into bourgeois nationalism:

“In our struggle for true internationalism & against “jingo-socialism” we always quote in our press the example of the opportunist leaders of the S.P. in America, who are in favor of restrictions of the immigration of Chinese and Japanese workers (especially after the Congress of Stuttgart, 1907, & against the decisions of Stuttgart). We think that one can not be internationalist & be at the same time in favor of such restrictions. And we assert that Socialists in America, especially English Socialists, belonging to the ruling, and oppressing nation, who are not against any restrictions of immigration, against the possession of colonies (Hawaii) and for the entire freedom of colonies, that such Socialists are in reality jingoes.”

source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/09.htm

And again in 1922, Lenin was clear about opposing immigration restrictions in the advanced capitalist countries, stating that the only solution to the importing of cheaper laborers from the less-advanced countries is to organize the incoming workers into the existing labor unions so that their pay would be higher and therefore could not be used as a weapon against the existing workers in those countries:

“The task facing the Communist Parties of the colonial and semi-colonial countries bordering on the Pacific is to organize an intense propaganda campaign that will make the approaching danger clear to the masses, will call them to an active struggle for national liberation and will insist on an orientation to Soviet Russia as the bastion of all the oppressed and exploited masses.

“In view of the coming danger, the Communist Parties of the imperialist countries — America, Japan, Britain, Australia and Canada — must not merely issue propaganda against the war, but must do everything possible to eliminate the factors that disorganize the workers’ movement in their countries and make it easier for the capitalists to exploit national and racial antagonisms.

“These factors are the immigration question and the question of cheap colored labor.

“Most of the colored workers brought from China and India to work on the sugar plantations in the southern part of the Pacific are still recruited under the system of indentured labor. This fact has led to workers in the imperialist countries demanding the introduction of laws against immigration and colored labor, both in America and Australia. These restrictive laws deepen the antagonism between colored and white workers, which divides and weakens the unity of the workers’ movement.

“The Communist Parties of America, Canada and Australia must conduct a vigorous campaign against restrictive immigration laws and must explain to the proletarian masses in these countries that such laws, by inflaming racial hatred, will rebound on them in the long run.

“The capitalists are against restrictive laws in the interests of the free importation of cheap colored labor and with it the lowering of the wages of white workers. The capitalists’ intention to take the offensive can be properly dealt with in only one way — the immigrant workers must join the ranks of the existing trade unions of white workers. Simultaneously, the demand must be raised that the colored workers’ pay should be brought up to the same level as the white workers’ pay. Such a move on the part of the Communist Parties will expose the intentions of the capitalists and at the same time graphically demonstrate to the colored workers that the international proletariat has no racial prejudice.

“To put this into practice, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the Pacific countries must meet together at a Pacific conference in order to work out the correct tactics and the best organizational methods for securing the real unification of the proletariat of all races in the Pacific.”

source: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/eastern-question.htm

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