BOURGEOIS COMMUNISM

The sacred and glorious struggle of the proletariat is no longer sexy and appealing; it has lost its effect on our imagination as the relations of production shifted from the assembly line to technologically operated production and the distribution of services. The ancient temptation of a few to control the lives of their fellow human beings and accumulate the largest possible chunk of wealth and power has not in the least disappeared though. The slogans have changed, the strategy is more subtle and it basically consists in the demoralization of the west; the dismembering of our society and the establishment of a hypocritical farewell state where a handful of enlightened rulers decide where we live, what we eat, which words we must pronounce, and most importantly: what we deserve. The west must be submitted to a state of continuous chaos hinged on a confrontation between the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor, the whites and the other groups. It all must appear as the vindication of the downtrodden masses; trouble is that behind the revolutionary rhetoric said confrontation; real or imaginary, is financed by a handful of magnates that hope to seize absolute power following a different route. They aim at the eventual elimination of the rich, except for them. They aim at eradicating privileges except for theirs. They aim at making all human beings equal, provided that they remain above such equality. In lieu of an ideology they have opted for a new normal; a constant crisis and the demonization of everything western; they plant, irrigate and grow a nagging sentiment of guilt among us; successful is shameful, white is backward, traditional is bigot, religious is obsolete. They strategically place their minions in the media, in academia and tell us tales of the best of humanity only to exacerbate the lowest instincts of the animal within us. When they have their people in power they minimize any alarms and promise us our robust institutions will withstand any attack, when the other group wins they return to mobilization and marches to allegedly save our hitherto bullet proof institutions from an imminent threat. This sordid wannabe philosophy is what I call...BOURGEOIS COMMUNISM 

I coined this term recently and many of my friends in the left cried foul without even stopping to think for a minute; the word communism struck them harder than the word bourgeois. The left flirts with communist methods of mobilization and networking but refuses to be labeled as such. Before we try to define this new phrase we must revisit the different attempts to salvage communism through the years and we may be surprised to realize that those attempts date back to the time when Antonio Gramsci (Leader of the Italian Communist Party PCI) harshly criticized sectarianism in the left and  argued that communists should build social alliances  to secure hegemonic support for social reforms. He didn't call for coalitions to govern but just for alliances in order to gain momentum and "hegemonic" support to activate the reforms they considered necessary; in other words: with more savviness and dropping the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" Gramsci proposed a smart softening of the rhetoric clearly affirming that at the end of the day the communists would piggyback on those lured by their pompous slogans and happily ever after fairy tales and then, when the time were right, thoroughly screw them; so hammer and sickle would give way to dove and olive branch but screwed the poor allies will end up being just the same. 

Gramsci used the category of cultural hegemony to explain how the bourgeoisie managed to maintain,  through culture, the values, or lack there of, and the pillars of capitalism. It is no coincidence that many western communists after him identified culture and ideology, rather than guns and sables, as the effective weapons to be used in order to do away with the old order and establish the new one. After World War II the USSR and the west enjoyed a brief honeymoon. The Yalta agreement sanctified the status quo and basically once a communist always a communist was the new rule. That doesn't mean that the Soviet intelligence service stopped for a minute its plans to undermine the west from within and use the very free world legal system to subvert the laws and create as much chaos as possible. Left on their own the western communist parties, except for occasional visits to Moscow for a few bear hugs, realized that they had to find their own ways of surviving; briefcases filled with rubles helped pay the bills but didn't buy consciences. The uprise in Budapest and the harsh Soviet response made it even more clear: the status quo would not be changed; so what was there to hope for those in the west with communist ideals? Would the Soviet way be the only path to a better future or, as at least in theory it had repeatedly been said, each country would apply the Marxist theory to the specificities of its own reality? the execution of Imre Nagy and the incarceration of thousands of Hungarians did not seem to favor the latter option.

Then, out of the blue, the tiny island of Cuba emerged as a third option. A communist government right in America's backyard. The western hemisphere became restless, the newly decolonized nations of the Third World saw a vivid example of how it was indeed possible to achieve power by violent means, for a moment the Big Bear gave a fatherly nod of approval to arms struggle, but the Ukrainian peasant who knew how to make Stalin laugh much better than how to rule a nation predictably lost control; inebriated with enthusiasm he gave  the apocalyptic bearded Cuban a few atomic missiles and put the world in the brink of nuclear war. A more collegiate regime was imposed on the Soviet people and Castro was reminded that there was a balance to respect. The Viet Nam war was a reason for unrest in the west; protests emerged in cities like Paris and Mexico City; and when it seemed that the we would all move to a more fair state of affairs Soviet tanks were sent to crush yet another attempt of salvaging communism, this time in Prague.

TO BE CONTINUED...