WHY DO WE FIGHT STRONGEST AGAINST CHAUVINISM?

You see us all on here every day struggling against the chauvinism that cripples Western Marxism. This is the same chauvinism that did so much damage to the USSR in its formation, that crippled the Yevsektia, and so forth.

While we

all agree that capitalism is the monster that must die, we do not all agree on the how or the why. The movement, in order to find success, cannot first attack its most powerful enemy, the world capitalist-imperialist order. We are not yet in a stage when direct confrontation in

the west is possible. This is tragic, and it is certainly a failing of western Marxism itself. Why are we weak, divided, disunited, unable to confront the capitalist enemy here in the "belly of the beast"? The beast itself deploys its most dangerous counteragents abroad, not at

home. So where is the revolution in the heart of the empire?

Chauvinism has choked and strangled it in its cradle. The revolution will always be stillborn, so long as the movement includes imperial, white, and male chauvinists.

WHAT IS CHAUVINISM?
It is important to distinguish

the realities of chauvinism from the myths. Racism and imperial hubris are no the results of "incorrect ideas" alone, but rather the predictable, necessary results of material conditions inside the empire. To deny this is to deny materialism itself, and to fall prey to idealism.

Chauvinism holds that oppressions other than those that arise directly as a result of productive relations are secondary and dissolve when productive relations dissolve. But productive relations are NOT THE ONLY FORM OF CLASS OR CLASS-LIKE RELATIONS.

The brilliant theorist

Domenico Losurdo illuminated this in his work Class Struggle. Class-like relations do not only include the productive relations of capitalism, feudalism, etc. Firstly, those class relationships are not limited to the three industrial classes (proletarian, petit-bourgeoisie,

bourgeoisie) but encompass class-fractions (industrial bourgeoisie, financial bourgeoisie), non-capitalist class relations (peasants, slave relations), and class-like relations (sex, nationality).

Imperial chauvinism is produced through blindness to other class-like relations

and the insistence that *all that needs to be done* is address the contradictions of the three industrial classes. This is a mechanical form of Marxism that cannot bring about liberation because it does not recognize the material basis of the other class-like (let us call them

quasi-class) relations.

SO WHY AGAINST CHAUVINISM FIRST?
It is the poison in the well, the flaw in the design, the rot at the heart of western Marxist movements. Until we have purged ourselves of chauvinists, isolated or re-educated them, we do not stand a chance against capital

The rot of chauvinism capitulates always to capital; Bernstein, Kautsky, Browder, are all cut from the same cloth. Chauvinism is born of capitalist productive relations, and always tends to reinforce them. Only by doing away with the chauvinism in our movement can finally get

our footing steady enough to attack. While we maintain chauvinists and chauvinism within our movement, we remain weak to imperial blandishments, to offers to buy us off with concessions, to the degradation of our militancy, in short: to defeat.

MUST WE DESTROY THE CHAUVINISTS?

In a sense, yes. In another, no. It is our duty to join with the most progressive elements of the revolutionary classes, educate the middle elements, and isolate the reactionary elements.

There will be chauvinism among the middle and even

perhaps, among the advanced elements. This chauvinism must be destroyed in them, but they themselves are required to carry the fight forward. To purify this strata, the advanced proletarian elements must themselves be *as free of chauvinism* as practicably possible. Procedures,

techniques, and re-education efforts within that most advanced of the advanced elements must be ongoing. There is no one in the empire totally free of chauvinism.

The rearguard elements of the revolutionary class, who do the covert work of capital, must be actually isolated and

destroyed, physically or organizationally. This includes chauvinists who profess a belief in communism but refuse to surrender their chauvinism or examine its inevitable sources.

For, productive relations and quasi-class relations throw off ideology like iron shavings on a

grinder. We are not under our own control, and ideas emerge naturally from material relationships. This is why we must pluck out the bad, and nourish the good, in ourselves and others.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.