Performative Axisship, Part II

Part I
Part III
Part IV

Socialist-Revolutionaries going to war against their own Bolshevik government ostensibly because the Bolsheviks meant their revolutionary defeatist line and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany would be one example. The Allies of World War I were a liberal-fascist alliance, whose interests laid directly counter to the conservative-socialist coalition represented by the Entente Powers' unwieldy coordination with the few socialist parties still loyal to the principles of the International. So engaging in guerrilla warfare against Lenin for the Allies was not the most socialist or revolutionary of acts, the name notwithstanding. But their ultimate reason for doing so was that the Socialist-Revolutionaries represented the class interests of the zemstvos, a sort of educated rural elite that helped the tsar govern the provinces. Lenin and Trotsky both came from these zemstvos, but Lenin actually meant his class treason. Meanwhile, Trotsky only left the Socialist-Revolutionaries for the Bolsheviks when he saw their fortunes rise, and wanted his own to rise along with them.

Because their class treason is as shallow as their perceived self interest at any given moment, the middle class socialists' core ethic remains self interest, and not the dialectical solidarity of the working class. Self interest taken to its logical conclusion looks like fascism in the political sphere, or narcissism in the personal sphere. This is why Leftbook is insufferable; it's just a bunch of middle class kids (and probably a decent chunk of capitalist intelligence agents) using fascistic and narcissistic tactics to demonstrate their personal superiority at socialism at the expense of the workers, in mimickry of the liberals they pretend to hate. Leftbook is performative allyship par excellence. And so the second way that performative allyship monkeywrenches the revolution from the inside is by appealing to the self interest of middle class poser Reds to seek out new justifications to draw attention to themselves by "calling out" someone doing praxis for being a Problematic. Attention is its own currency to narcissists, and so this is the most cost-effective tool these capitalist ghouls have to keep us down.

So if performative allyship is the tool of the idle rich, and it is used to wreck our movement from the inside, we communists should learn how to counter it with performative axisship, to wreck the liberal world order from the inside.

I remark in the upcoming Class Analysis and Revolution that the vanguard party in the United States will be a reborn Radical Republican caucus that will assume power in the GOP. This is because of many different reasons, but one of the important ones is that the working class is mostly either communist (if they know their class interests) or conservative (if they're misled by false consciousness).

Conservatives are known for being stupid, but in a world that refuses to let them know their own class interests, they get by all right. They make dumb mistakes, but rarely the same one twice. They learn from history; what we call the dialectic, they call tradition. Conservatives voted for Dubya and supported the invasion of Iraq. But after enough of their kids came home in bodybags and the only difference was that Halliburton was a lot richer and Iraq was falling apart, they listened to Ron Paul and are now resolutely if imperfectly anti-imperialist.

What I'm trying to say is that conservative theory is just socialism for slow learners. But because socialism has to come from the middle class first, and even devoted class traitors have our blind spots, occasionally conservative theory will have stolen a march on the otherwise more advanced socialists. We should not be too proud to learn from them when they have something useful to teach, because they often do, if we stop and parse it long enough to make greater sense of it.

I like the phrase "performative axisship" because it turns a nitwit shitlib shibboleth on its head. But conservatives have been doing it for a while; it's called "dogwhistling." The idea comes from the fact that dogs can hear sounds at higher pitches than humans can. So a dog whistle is just a normal whistle, but made to produce that higher pitch. Humans aren't bothered, but the dogs are alerted to something of note.

The classic dogwhistle in the political context is "law and order." Approach this phrase like a disinterested liberal and it sounds fine, maybe vaguely good even. No society can function without laws, and without some sort of order to enforce those laws. Even my commie ass would readily concede that theoretical point. Going off of that understanding, it's harmless and unobjectionable. But that's because we are the humans not hearing the whistle.

Continue reading Part III