According to Losurdo (2014,
365-367), Marx and Engels were aware that even the Jacobin period of the French
revolution, the June days of 1848 and the Paris Commune contained important
elements that went beyond class struggle. The “indignation at the incapacity of
the French government to contain the advance of the Prussian army” figured
prominently in the events of 1871. Support for the defense of national
sovereignty also crossed class lines during the French revolution.
Anti-Imperialism and Re-Periodization::
A Commentary of Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism
Barbara Foley
As
is suggested by the subtitle of Western Marxism—"How it was born,
how it died, how it can be reborn”—Losurdo’s book is polemically directed at a wide
range of twentieth- and twenty-first century philosophers and theorists whose
“fetish of purity” and “messianic” idealism have, in his view, led them to
abandon the transformational commitments at the heart of Marxism. Although he
claims that the term “Western Marxism” is defined not by geography but by
political orientation, the vast majority of the exemplars whom he gathers under
its rubric are from the USA and Europe. In antithetical contrast, Losurdo holds
up what he calls “Eastern Marxism,” whose proponents have shunned their Western
counterparts’ distaste for the real world and have instead undertaken the hard
work of constructing, under less than ideal circumstances, societies that would
repair the ravages of centuries of colonial domination. Although he died in
2018, Losurdo’s works are increasingly influential in current debates over North/South
imperialism, BRICS, and the political economy of the People’s Republic of
China. Hardly confined to the groves of academe, Losurdo’s assessment of the
historical and political trajectories of global movements identified with Marxism
warrants careful scrutiny.[i]
One
of Losurdo’s most cutting criticisms of the figures he associates with Western
Marxism is their insouciance toward—if not outright contempt for—national
liberation struggles in what was once called the Third World. Displaying an
idealist utopianism fixated on the urgency of abolishing the state; increasingly
focused on the alienation of labor rather than the class struggle; and seemingly
allergic to such mundane practical affairs as organizing political parties and aiming
at the seizure of power: Western Marxists from Trotsky to Hardt and Negri and
beyond have sneered at the revolutionary movements that by 1970 ended up
liberating two-thirds of the world’s population—at least formally—from the grip
of colonialism. Indeed, Losurdo argues, in their covert or overt acceptance of various
racist or Orientalist assumptions about the reasons for uneven global
development, many Western Marxists have confirmed the dominant ideologies they
ostensibly oppose. Losurdo’s frequent references to the monstrosities enacted
by US and European regimes, from the Jim Crow US South to Indochina to Algeria,
reflect not just moral indignation but a keen understanding of the extent to
which racism, as both economic super-exploitation and its ideological
justification, has been at the core of Western empire-building from the time of
Columbus to the present.
This
insistent focus on Western assumptions about racial hierarchy underlies Losurdo’s
call for re-periodizing modern global history. Citing Ho Chi Minh’s ironic
comment that 1914 meant nothing special to Indochinese peasants for decades oppressed
by French colonialism—1917 was, for them, a far more important historical
marker (47)—Losurdo proposes a reconfiguration of the notion of world war. Why
should World War II be seen as beginning not with the Italian invasion of
Ethiopia, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, but with the Nazi invasion of
Poland? And why should Nazi Germany’s attempted overrunning of its European
neighbors to the East, accompanied by the doctrine of ubermensch and untermensch,
not be seen as marking “the greatest colonial war in history” (156)? Viewed
from a Third Worldist standpoint, indeed, the Bolshevik Revolution can be
described as the first anticolonial turning point of the century (156), and the
Chinese revolution of 1949 as the second—a “turning point in the turning point”
(82). For Losurdo, re-periodization
does not just move the historical goalposts; it calls for ideological
reconfiguration of the terrain under review. Indeed, it calls for reconsideration of the
main contradiction shaping global modernity: Part II of Western Marxism
is titled, “Socialism versus Capitalism, or Anticolonialism versus
Colonialism?” (73). The question answers itself.
Despite
its provocative implications for a non-Eurocentric rewriting of modernity, Losurdo’s
argument contains some serious flaws. For one thing, he uses far too broad a
brush in portraying the pantheon of “Western Marxism,” which is represented by
an extraordinary hodgepodge of philosophers and theorists from the Bolshevik
era to the present: Trotsky, Bloch, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Deleuze, Zizek,
Badiou, Harvey, Colletti, Della Volpe, Hardt and Negri, and more; whole schools
of thought, such as postcolonial and decolonial theory, are summarily dismissed
(Brennan). Using the time-honored polemical strategy of grouping together a range
of presumably dissimilar figures to illustrate their identity on a more
fundamental level, Losurdo’s use of scattershot and lop-sided quotations frequently
misrepresents various figures: an entire thesis about Togliatti’s internationalist
antiracism hinges on a single, oft-repeated phrase, while the young pre-Marxist
Bloch is represented by an avalanche of quotations (Brody). Meanwhile, other figures who do not fit into
his schema, such as Lukács and Gramsci, are relegated to the margins. Moreover,
Losurdo draws into his discussion a raft of anomalous thinkers, from Arendt to
Agamben to Foucault, whose connections with Marxism are nonexistent. The
figures who best fit into his critical schema are perhaps those associated with
the Frankfurt School: Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer. (Horkheimer’s 1942
chastisement of Stalin for strengthening the Soviet state when the Nazis were “at
the gates of Leningrad and Moscow” [111-12] exemplifies a particularly troubling
instance of the “purity fetish.”) But the
Frankfurt School’s substitution of critique for action and long-standing antipathy
to the project of proletarian revolution hardly reflect a disappointed yearning
to reach the communist horizon. Readers familiar with various figures in
Losurdo’s long list may thus find themselves wondering exactly what qualifies
someone to be a Western Marxist. Losurdo’s
strategy of cherry-picking quotations and then lumping together wildly diverse philosophers
and theorists makes for powerful rhetoric; but it undermines his argument’s credibility
if readers find themselves thinking, “Yes, but what about ___?”
Although
Losurdo’s critique of Western Marxism will raise various hackles, it can serve as
a useful corrective to the abiding academic Marxist preoccupation with reification,
abstract labor, and the increasingly opaque webs being woven around the notion
of value theory. His full-throated defense of the key role of communists in
struggles against fascism and imperialism, moreover, is a welcome antidote to
the Cold War-inflected discourse that continues to underlie much historical
scholarship on the past century. For all the sympathy
one might have with a number of Losurdo’s premises, however, his highly
selective approach to the tradition he most admires, namely, that of Eastern
Marxism, remains bothersome. Marx cannot
be left out of the discussion, of course; Losurdo frequently cites Marx’s thundering
denunciations of capitalist rapacity around the globe. Because of their
near-complete focus on the exploitation of free labor through the wage
relation, however, he finds Marx’s writings lacking in explanatory power in
relation to colonialism. Moreover, he finds problematic Marx’s “messianic” tendency,
preferring to focus upon Marx’s alternative definition of communism as the
active process of engaging with the here and now (223). Losurdo draws more inspiration
from the writings—and actions—of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, as well as Ho, Cesaire,
and other prominent figures in anti-colonial national liberation movements that
were faced with the challenges of making revolution in largely pre-capitalist
social formations historically underdeveloped by colonialism. [ii]
Even
when describing the core principles of Eastern Marxism, however, Losurdo’s
tendency toward simplification and homogenization persists. He correctly
describes Lenin’s insistence on the importance of colonial rebellion to the
project of world communist revolution, as well as his early 1920s chastisement
of those Bolsheviks who spurned participation in the urgent but messy realities
of post-insurrectionary state-building: Trotsky comes in for particularly harsh
critique. But Losurdo neglects the full
implications of Lenin’s statement, as early as 1922, that the New Economic
Policy had been a temporary measure, a “retreat” to which “on behalf of the
Party we must call a halt . . . [because] the purpose pursued by the retreat
has been achieved” (Lenin 1922). In Losurdo’s telling, NEP was not just a
pragmatic policy, one that would be largely negated and transcended by Stalin’s
left turn and ensuing socialist construction, but the first in a series of communist-led
state-building initiatives focused on increasing production. The Lenin who in The
State and Revolution theorized the state as “a product of the
irreconcilability of class antagonisms” and the dictatorship of the proletariat
as the necessary dialectical means to the state’s withering away: this Lenin fades from view (Lenin 1917). In addition, Losurdo’s definition of the Bolshevik
Revolution as “anti-colonial”—in its essence, and not just its effects—means
that Lenin’s crucial distinction between colonialism and imperialism, as well
as their common origin in the imperatives of monopoly capitalist accumulation, ends
up being blurred (Lenin 1916). Socialism,
for Losurdo, has first and foremost entailed—and continues to entail—the development
of productive forces guided by a state capable of resisting the predations of
Western capital. The question of
communism is of necessity to be deferred to a distant future. [iii]
Since
It is China that serves as Exhibit A in Losurdo’s account of the achievements
of Eastern Marxism, however, his highly selective treatment of PRC history is particularly
disturbing. Losurdo cites Mao’s 1940
essay “On New Democracy” as proof of Mao’s full support of capitalist development
in building the economy of the new Chinese nation (Mao 1940). Classes previously
locked in sharp opposition could now be seen as positioned in non-antagonistic contradiction.
Overlooked in Losurdo’s account, however, are numerous statements by Mao from
the late 1940s onward in which he declared New Democracy to have been merely
transitional (Mao 1949). Even on the cusp of the seizure of state power, he
wrote that the state was an instrument of oppression and in need of abolition. By
mid-1952 he was writing that the contradiction between the working class and
the bourgeoisie had emerged as the principal contradiction in the PRC (Mao
1952). By mid-1953 he proclaimed this contradiction to be
"antagonistic" and characterized as "Right Deviationist” those
party members who were "pushing their 'New Democracy' instead of socialist
transformation” (Mao 1953).
From
the era of the GPCR (Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), moreover, all we
hear from Losurdo’s Mao is an uncontextualized slogan, attributed to Mao, declaring,
“Grasp revolution, promote production.” The
entire upsurge of mass class struggle during the GPCR— from Mao’s famous
statement that “it is right to rebel” and his call to “bomb the headquarters”
to the revolutionary workers councils of the Shanghai Commune—all this antagonistic
conflict, both physical and ideological, is dismissed by Losurdo as “anarchy”
(133). For Losurdo, the truth of
the GPCR is contained in Lin Biao’s statement that “The enthusiasm of the broad
masses of the working people both in revolution and production has soared to
unprecedented heights. Many factories, mines and other enterprises have time
and again topped their production records, creating all-time highs in production.
The technical revolution is making constant progress. . . . ‘Grasp revolution,
promote production’—this principle is absolutely correct” (quoted p. 131). Forgotten
are Mao’s passionate anti-revisionist diatribes against Liu Shaoqui and Deng
Xiaopeng—and, for that matter, Lin Biao—where he accuses them of plotting
capitalist restoration.
Indeed,
in Losurdo’s view, Deng simply inherited the mantle of Mao; with some
unfortunate but ultimately unimportant interruptions, the productivist lineage
beginning with New Democracy achieved its further development through Deng’s
“opening up” and, by extension, in the “harmonious” regime of Xi Jinping. For
that matter, when Deng’s “reforms” are construed as reenactments of the USSR’s
New Economic Policy—now viewed not as a temporary expedient, but as the first
phase of a long-term strategy for state-led socialist construction—the narrative
of continuous progress is more seamless still. An alternative narrative,
invoking a different periodization, would stress the defeat of
the left in the GPCR as a qualitative turning point in the history of class
struggles; in this narrative, the restoration and expansion of capitalist social
relations constitute a form of primitive accumulation based on the seizure of
the Mao-era socialist forces of production. By contrast, Losurdo’s
periodization of the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Eastern
Marxism, especially in China, stresses continuity and effaces contradiction. Or,
to be more precise, this periodization displaces contradiction from the class conflict
internal to the PRC to the conflict between the PRC—now construed as the leader
of global “anti-imperialism”—and the imperialist West.
Losurdo’s
account of the opposition between Western and Eastern Marxisms accounts in
large part for his rising star among present-day defenses of China’s claim to
being a socialist nation—with “Chinese characteristics”—and of BRICS as the front
line of global anti-imperialism. Losurdo’s influential role is suggestively
reflected in the frequent usage of the pejorative terms
“purity fetish” and “messianism” by commentators responding to criticisms of
the PRC’s turn to capitalism (Boer; Garrido; Ponce De Leon and Rockhill). But
the enthusiastic embrace of productivism as the force that will liberate the
oppressed peoples of the world has trouble accounting for the vast polarization
between the billionaire elite and the vast toiling masses of the PRC—and also, for
that matter, between the ruling and laboring classes in the member nations of
BRICS. While it is clear that the BRICS
alliance poses a real threat to Western-led imperialism, it would also seem
that China’s emergence as a global power has if anything consolidated the hold
of capital—and capitalism—on the workers of the world.
Losurdo’s
homogenization of Eastern Marxism, epitomized in his effacing of the class
struggle embodied in the GPCR, is problematized, however, by the presence of
voices in present-day China that call attention to the nation’s abandonment of
socialist principles. Wu Xuangong, for instance, has proposed that “it is
hundreds of millions of workers working with high labor intensity at low
salaries who create the world’s great economic achievements and feed the
regenerated capitalists growing up quickly with huge amounts of surplus value”
(Wu 5). Li Peilin has contended that “the three major contradictions of
Chinese society are the contradictions between rich and poor, labor and
capital, and cadres and masses” (Li ). Xu Zhun has argued that Deng’s
“reforms” have directed the nation’s economy “from commune to capitalism” (Xu).
Surely such Chinese critics of the current regime cannot simply be dismissed as
Western Marxists anomalously inhabiting the PRC. A key principle of
dialectics—whether of the Hegelian or the Maoist kind—is that contradictions
never go away. They may take their time in moving toward resolution; but sooner
or later, unless they are simply destroyed by an external force, they move
toward sublation, either through crisis or through the guidance of a process
leading to a higher level. The struggle is ongoing.
Works Cited
XX Boer, Roland. 2021. Socialism
with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners. Singapore: Springer.
XX Brennan, Timothy. 2024.
“Western Marxism is not a Monolith.” Jacobin 4 November 2024.
XX Broder, David. 2017.
“Eastern Light on Western Marxism.” New Left Review 107.
XX Garrido, Carlos. 2023. China
and the Purity Fetish of Western Marxism. Midwestern Marx Publishing Press.
XX Lenin, Vladimir. 1917. The
State and Revolution.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm
XX _____ . 1922. “Eleventh
Congress of The R.C.P.(B.).”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm
XX _____ . 1916. Imperialism:
The Highest Stage of Capitalism
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch06.htm
XX Li Peilin. 2018. “China’s
Class Structure: Changes, Problems, and Policy Suggestions—A Study of Class
Development since 1978.” International Critical Thought, 8:4, 574-595,
XX Losurdo, Domenico. 2017. “Has
China Turned to Capitalism?--Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to
Socialism.” International Critical
Thought, 7:1, 15-31.
XX _____ .2023. Stalin:
History and Critique of a Black Legend. Iskra Press.
XX Mao Zedong. 1940. “On New
Democracy” https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm,
XX____ .1949. “On the People's
Democratic Dictatorship. " https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm
XX _____ . 1952. “The
Contradiction between the Working Class and the Bourgeoisie Is the Principal
Contradiction in China." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_21.htm
XX _____. 1953. "Refute Right Deviationist Views
That Depart from the General Line.” https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive//mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_28.htm
XX Ponce De Leon, Jennifer,
and Gabriel Rockhill. 2024. “Introduction” to Domenico Losurdo, Western
Marxism. 9-34.
XX Wu Xuangong. 2019. "Achievements,
Problems, and Directions of China's Reform and Opening." International
Critical Thought 9, 1: 3-12.
XX Xu Zhun. 2018. From
Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained
Urban Poverty. Monthly Review Press.
.
COMMENTS
ON BARBARA FOLEY’S ESSAY ON WESTERN MARXISM
Steve
Ellner
In
her essay on Western Marxism, Barbara Foley correctly points out that Domenico
Losurdo’s interpretation of Mao, and to a certain extent Marx, is skewed. In
these passages, Losurdo highlights anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist
struggles and actually existing socialism’s battle of production, which he sees
as an imperative in the struggle against imperialism. At the same time, he plays
down both proletariat-based class analysis and the advance toward a higher
stage of socialism. As Foley points out with regard to anti-colonialism, “Losurdo
frequently cites Marx’s thundering denunciations of capitalist rapacity around
the globe.” But the Italian philosopher focuses less on Marx’s writings on the
proletariat at the point of production which he finds (in the words of Foley) “lacking
in explanatory power in relation to colonialism.” Foley also points out that
for Losurdo, “the question of communism is of necessity to be deferred to a
distant future.”
Of course, actually existing socialism’s drive to
increase productivity (which Losurdo emphasizes) and the struggle to achieve
socialist goals in order to reach a higher stage of socialism (which he
deemphasizes) are not divorced, and indeed Losurdo makes an effort to bridge the
two. Thus, for instance, he argues that the Chinese success in boosting
productivity is a major step toward achieving the more advanced socialist goal
of economic equality by lessoning “global inequality” (251; Losurdo, 2017).
There
are two fundamental issues underlying Foley’s critique. One is whether the priority
struggle in the world today is anti-imperialism or anti-capitalism. Losurdo
argues that it is anti-imperialism, and has been since 1917. Foley, in her
objection to Losurdo’s periodization, implies that she prioritizes class
struggle around “capitalist social relations” and not anti-imperialism.
The
differences between Foley and Losurdo, which go a long way in explaining current
divisions on the left, can be traced back to Mao’s On Contradiction
(1937). Maoists who reject the thesis that imperialism is the “principal
contradiction” point out that “the proletariat also existed in the oppressed
countries” and thus class struggle at both national and international levels is
as fundamental in the Global South as it is in the North (CWA, 2017, 73).
Anti-Maoists who defend the Marxist principle that the primary contradiction
lies at the point of production criticize Mao’s writing on the multiplicity of
contradictions for straying from the concept of totality inherent in the
thinking of Marx and Hegel (Wolf, 2017).
A
different reading of Mao may lend itself to the view that objective analysis of
the Global South needs to place both anti-imperialism and class struggle at the
center of discussion, even though a dual focus on contradictions is rejected by
the above-mentioned Maoists (CWA, 2017, 74-81). Mao 's 1937 essay posits that
throughout the modern history of China in situations of war, anti-imperialism became
the principal contradiction while class differences were “relegated temporarily
to a secondary or subordinate position” (Mao, 1953, 35). Although there is only
one principal contradiction, Mao observes that “sometimes there seems to be a
balance of forces,” although he adds that this “is only a temporary and
relative state” (Mao, 1953, 36). Furthermore,
Mao points to the complexity that often characterizes the identification of the
principal contradiction and the fact that contradictions are in constant flux.
To identify the principal contradiction, it is necessary to follow Lenin’s
call for “concrete analysis of concrete
conditions” (Mao, 1956, 30).
These
assertions suggest that the formulation of a political strategy for the twenty-first
century Global South needs to go beyond a simplistic structure-superstructure
dichotomy with regard to proletarian class struggles and anti-imperialism,
which need to be prioritized on equal terms. Two major developments, as they
relate to the Global South, shed light on why this is the case. One is the “Third
Worldism” and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which emerged from anti-colonial and
anti-imperialist struggles beginning with the Bandung conference and the Suez
Canal conflict in 1955 and 1956. The phenomenon of Third-Worldism created great
expectations for socialists but proved disappointing in much of the Global
South, including three of the NAM’s five founders which subsequently moved far
to the right: Egypt, Indonesia and India. Add to this the fact that Venezuela’s
charismatic Carlos Andrés Pérez, a leading Third-World spokesman in the 1970s,
became a discredited neoliberal in the 1990s. These cases and others demonstrate
the flaw of prioritizing anti-imperialism at the expense of domestic class
struggle.
A
second major development having to do with geopolitics, however, rules out the
validity of the inverse, namely prioritizing class struggle in the Global South
over anti-imperialism in the twenty-first century. The formidable political and
military hegemony achieved by the United States, in the absence of the
countervailing power represented by the Soviet Union before 1991, makes the
case for highlighting the importance of anti-imperialism especially compelling.
The epicenter of progressive governments over the recent past has been Latin
America, where the interventionism of the U.S. represents a major obstacle to the stability of those governments and their efforts to
achieve socialist transformation.
In
short, anti-imperialism in the twenty-first century cannot be subordinated to
class struggle, and vice versa. The practical application of this duality goes
counter to the thrust of both Losurdo’s thesis and that of his staunchest
detractors on the left. On the one hand, progressive Global South governments which
confront imperialism have nothing in common with those on the right; the destabilization
and regime change campaigns against them orchestrated by the imperialists have
to be placed in the center of analysis. On the other hand, leftist analysts like
Losurdo who overemphasize anti-imperialism assume that the world is in a
situation similar to that of World War II, when the immediate interests of the
working class were subordinated to the more urgent cause of fascism’s military defeat.
Foley’s
second basic criticism of Losurdo is more explicit than her first. She argues that
“it would…seem that China’s emergence as a global power has if anything
consolidated the hold of capital—and capitalism—on the workers of the world.” The
statement, in my opinion, is accurate to a large extent, but leaves out an
essential element. The Chinese model is hybrid and in flux, and certainly
cannot be placed in the same category as capitalist nations at any stage of
development. Its foreign policy in no way resembles that of capitalist nations elsewhere
and even less so emerging capitalist nations. Historically, emerging capitalist
nations, in accordance with the law of uneven development, are characterized by
extreme bellicosity abroad, as was the case with Germany and Japan. China’s
foreign policy is based on respect for national sovereignty and the absence of
military deployment, other than in border areas. Foley’s last sentence is
especially relevant with regard to the transformations underway in China: “the
struggle is ongoing.” It certainly is – including within the state – and the
final outcome, be it socialism or capitalism, is at this point hard to predict.
REFERENCES
CWU
(Communist Workers’ Union – Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). 2022. “The ‘Leftism’ and
Fight for Unity: The Communists.” Negation of Negation. https://www.bannedthought.net/Colombia/UOC-MLM/Negacion/nn6-eng.pdf
Losurdo,
Domenico. 2017. “Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition
from Capitalism to Socialism.” https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/
Mao Tse-tung.
1953. On Contradiction. New York: International Publishers.
Wolf, Antonio.
2017. “Left of Wreckage: Critique with A
Sledgehammer” (September 24). https://leftofwreckage.wordpress.com/2017/09/24/theory-review-maos-on-contradiction/
Re-Thinking Anti-Imperialism: A Response to Steve
Ellner
By Barbara Foley
Steve Ellner’s thoughtful and
lucid evaluation of Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism raises several
important questions. I agree with some of Ellner’s points and disagree with
others. Our conversation is an important one, touching upon key considerations
in Marxist assessments of past strategies and current possibilities for social
revolution.
Ellner and I both argue that
Losurdo cuts far too broad a swath in his dismissal of the tradition that he
calls “Western Marxism,” since he draws together figures as diverse as Benjamin
and Badiou and features centrally such anti-Marxists as Foucault and Arendt.
Ellner usefully points out that Losurdo’s argument is skewed by his
near-exclusive focus on “two dissimilar categories: leftist theoreticians
(Western Marxists) versus leftist political movements (Eastern Marxists).” I would add that Losurdo not only commits a
category mistake but also fails to explore the extent to which the shortcomings
of various intellectuals—including even those apparently remote from the realm
of political strategizing—have in fact reflected various shortcomings in
contemporaneous left parties and political formations. Losurdo’s lambasting of the operaismo
embraced by such Italian Marxists as Tronti and Negri, for instance, does not adequately
connect their theoretical idealism with the revisionist policies of Eurocommunism.
What could have been a productive contrast between comparable entities ends up as
a false opposition between “messianic” and “puristic” ivory tower Western
academics on the one hand and pragmatic roll-up-the-shirtsleeves Eastern practical
revolutionaries on the other.
While Ellner and I agree that
Losurdo unduly homogenizes the tradition of Western Marxism, we differ in our reactions
to his treatment of Eastern Marxism. In
my view, Losurdo equally homogenizes a significant range of Global South
movements and political figures, starting with the era of the Bolshevik
Revolution. There is little room in his schema, for instance, for a
consideration of the debates between Lenin and Roy about the national question
(Haithcox), or of Mariátegui’s back-and-forth with the Comintern about the
meaning of self-determination in the Andes (Becker). In Losurdo’s telling, the
politics guiding Third World opposition to the imperialist West (now Global
North) have been essentially contradiction-free, even if external necessity has
to one degree or another—at least until the rise of China--impeded their full
enactment.
Compounding Losurdo’s tendency
to minimize significant rifts among Eastern Marxists about the meaning of
national liberation is an inadequate discussion of the meaning of “actually
existing socialism.” Does the phrase signify a nation that threw off the
colonial yoke under the leadership of a communist party? Does it describe a
nation that is on the road to socialism, and eventually to communism? Does it
signal the primacy of productivism to contest colonial underdevelopment, and
thus necessity for “accepting private production and markets,” as Ellner puts
it? Or does it simply refer to a country or a region that, by virtue of its membership
in a bloc contesting the power of Western imperialism, can be adjudged
socialist? Untangling these conflicting meanings is important, insofar as the unproblematic
acceptance of a presumably transparent meaning of “actually existing socialism”
would seem to be, at least for Losurdo, a defining mark of Eastern Marxism. Ellner
is more cautious in assigning teleology to the term, since he acknowledges that
the collapse of the Soviet Union illustrates the ever-present threat of
capitalist restoration. Nonetheless, the
phrase “actually existing socialism” occurs several times in Ellner’s discussion
of Losurdo, leaving the reader wondering exactly what its referent might be.
Fundamentally at issue in both
Losurdo’s book and Ellner’s review is an understanding of what is meant by
“anti-imperialism,” as well as of what it means to declare that the
contradiction between imperialism and anti-imperialism has been the “principal
contradiction” shaping global conflict and change since at least the end of
World War II. [iv]While
Ellner evinces nuanced criticisms of Losurdo’s heavy-handedness, the title of
his commentary on Western Marxism indicates a basic alignment with
Losurdo in this regard: “On A Much-Needed Polemic in Favor of Prioritizing
Anti-Imperialism.”
The elephant in this particular
room, of course, is China and its formative role in BRICS, which are together increasingly
challenging the hegemony, economic and political, of the global North. In
Losurdo’s re-periodization, the Bolshevik Revolution 1949 was the turning point
of the twentieth century, and the defeat of Japanese imperialism and subsequent
construction of Chinese socialism constituted “the turning point within the
turning point” (82): notably, the era beginning with Deng’s “reforms” is not an
interruption, but a continuation, of the trajectory begun in the era of Mao.
Ellner demurs with Losurdo’s “triumphal” narrative, noting that Losurdo does
not take into account the debates between pro-China cheerleaders on the one
hand, and, on the other, observers concerned about the opaque but potentially
troubling connections between and among private capital (including hundreds of
billionaires), state-owned enterprises, and the guiding role of the Communist
Party. Routinely missing in celebrations of China’s skyrocketing rate of
development, however, are references to those Chinese critics of recent and
current trends indicating that China has abandoned the socialist road and is in
fact riven by class struggles, both overt and covert (Chan et al.). Presumably the act of bringing into the
conversation figures such as Wu Xuangong, Li Peilin, and Xu Zhun (mentioned in
my review)— who can hardly be characterized as “utopian,” “puristic,” or
“messianic”—would unduly interfere with the portrait of Eastern Marxism as seamlessly
unified. Finally, also routinely missing in discussions of sharpening
contradictions within China are considerations of whether the super-exploited
masses in the various nations participating in the BRICS project are benefiting
from the presumably “anti-imperialist” economic developments that are advancing
the fortunes of these nations’ capitalist ruling classes (Robinson). The record on this matter is, to say the very
least, mixed (Foley)
Clearly Losurdo, Ellner and I
have some significant differences about strategies needed to abolish racialized
global uneven development and liberate the world’s workers from the yoke of
exploitation. Perhaps it should go without saying in the pages of Science
& Society, however, that we are far more united than divided. I wish that Losurdo were still with us and could
be an active participant in the debates generated by his extraordinary body of
work. I am grateful to Steve Ellner for
his provocative commentary and to Science & Society for hosting this
important conversation.
Works Cited
Becker, Marc. 2006. “Mariátegui,
the Comintern, and the Indigenous Questions in Latin America.” Science &
Society 70, 4. 450-79.
Chan, Jenny, and Mark Selden
and Pun Nagi. 2020. Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of
China's Workers. New York: Haymarket.
Foley, Barbara, Guest Editor. 2024. “Imperialism, Anti-Imperialism, and the Global Class Struggle: A
Symposium.” Science & Society 88, 2. July. 318-367.
Haithcox, John. 2011. “The
Roy-Lenin Debate on Colonial Policy: A New Interpretation” (1963). Rpt. Journal
of Asian Studies. 23 March. 93-101.
Robinson, William. 2023. “The
Travesty of ‘Anti-Imperialism.’” Journal of World-Systems Research. 79,
2. 587-601.
[i] From here on I shall suspend the use of inverted commas around the terms
“Western Marxism” and “Eastern Marxism.” This does not mean that I accept the
terms as neutral or unproblematic descriptors. See also Losurdo 2017.
[iii] In Stalin (2023), Losurdo undertakes a full description of Stalin’s
role in productivist social construction. See also Losurdo 2017.
