Communist and American

The emergence of Communism as a trope for the right has been fascinating to watch. Glenn Beck leads the charge, and one performance that often gets mentioned is the one above in which he engages in art criticism. There’s a strong dose of the Da Vinci Code here, transposed into contemporary politics. It gets uglier when Beck is trying to destroy a career, as he worked to do with Van Jones (video here). In the process the word “communist” has become a self-evidently damning label.. as if anyone tied to communism is an enemy of the state. As a non-communist, I want to think through the idea of being a communist and to what degree that is compatible with being an American citizen.

An irreducible part of being a Marxist or Communist is an identification with the interests of the Proletariat or Working Class. That identification would in theory take priority over national identity. Thus we see in many Communist organizations a reference to “international” causes. Workers in all industrial nations share interests and ought to share a common identity.

The website for the Communist Party USA states the following in the first lines of its preamble:

The Communist Party USA is the party of and for the U.S. working class, a class which is multiracial, multinational, and unites men and women, young and old, employed and unemployed, organized and unorganized, gay and straight, native-born and immigrant, urban and rural, and composed of workers who perform a large range of physical and mental labor—the vast majority of our society.

You could say that this is a party for working people who happen to live within the borders of the USA. Indifference about whether workers are native-born or immigrant is part of this class-based philosophy. The issue is oppression of workers by capitalist forces.. not the advancement of a group that is “American.”

Given the way Communists downplay national identification, can a Communist possibly be a good American? I would say absolutely, and make the comparison to a committed Christian. The allegiance of some committed Christians to their faith stands above the state. Yet most committed Christians find a way to make peace with their national context.. even as they discuss and take seriously the idea that at the end of time (which may be soon) the world and its nations will be dissolved and the single real community of believers (the church) stand triumphant before God. For most Christians that true nature of history is hidden as they live in the present.. and they find a place for national allegiance.

Similarly a Communist sees class as the true defining reality for human beings. Yet that hardly means a Communist cannot accept the imperfection of the present reality and function as a citizen of the United States, even as he or she imagines a very different future in which the nation and capitalist system will be abolished. There is nothing essentially different about a Communist as a good American citizen than there is about a Christian as a good American citizen.

One objection might be the place of revolution in the Communist system. If a Communist were by definition committed to the violent overthrow of the state, then that would be a problem. But that is not the case. The concept of revolution is a slippery idea in Communism.. almost as slippery as notions of the Second Coming in Christianity! Here is an interesting examination of Karl Marx’s changing view of the concept.

The book that documents the organization STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) was a primary text for Glenn Beck in his attack on Van Jones (PDF here). It documents the values and goals of the group to which Van Jones belonged. Beck presents a charged caricature of this document and its contents. But note the phrases by which the idea of revolution is dealt with:

To resolve this tension, STORM developed an innovative analysis about the role of revolutionaries in a non-revolutionary historical period. We called it “Moving from Resistance to Revolution.” [53]

They saw themselves as “revolutionaries in a non-revolutionary historical period.” Someday in the indefinite future there may be a revolutionary age.. but for now that’s not a worry. (Again, note parallel to religious modes of thought.) Within that stance is plenty of wiggle room to vote for politicians, root for sports clubs, and buy a house.

The document continues:

We concluded that the current period is one of “resistance,” not one of “revolution.” We thought that the main work of revolutionaries at such times should be to build resistance fights. These fights would build power and consciousness in oppressed communities. but revolutionaries must design and craft this “resistance work” so as to help lay the foundation for the long-term development of a revolutionary movement. [53]

For the foreseeable future, then, Van Jones and his group saw themselves as “resisting” oppression and injustice. This could take many forms, but undoubtedly would mean protests against global capitalism and racial injustice. There’s nothing particularly violent or threatening there. The goal is to create the conditions in the long term when a sufficiently large number of people are conscious of their class and historical place that they rise up in a revolution. That day is far off in the future..

The goal to build “consciousness” is an attempt to make people aware of their class identity and thus the true nature of their struggle. This points to a deep flaw in Communism. Class identity is as much an “imagined community” as the nation-state. If people stop identifying themselves by class because of the rise of other forms of identity, then Communism will lose its appeal. A Communist has to be able to look out on the world and see it as a great conflict of class interests.. and to identify strongly with the international community of the Working Class. We are in an age of the proliferation of group identities, but a strong sense of economic class has not gathered much strength.

Given the commitment to the rights of the Working Class, it’s no surprise that men and women throughout the 20th century were attracted to Communism. Pete Seeger, for God’s sake, was a member of the Communist Party! In the 30s and 40s all kinds of good American citizens identified with Communism. This became problematic during the Cold War as being a Communist (and perhaps loyal to the USSR) could lead one to actively undermine the national interests of the United States. But absent the Cold War, there’s nothing particularly frightening about Communism.. especially of the type represented by Van Jones and STORM, which is apt to do more good than harm in our world.