MT II. Theses on Mexicanism, Feminism, and the Indigenous Reconquista

Mexicanism as the alchemical union of the Americas

1.

The Mexicanist position has declared itself. Would-be revolutionaries need no longer decry “proletarian patriotism” as though it were bad “in itself”. That has not ever been a tenable position. If you wish to critique an error, you do not begin by establishing yourself in the muck of a second error. Critique, when opportune, should direct itself at the inadequacies of the Americanist form of proletarian patriotism. There is another nation coming into birth, which has been coming into birth for several centuries. It is to this nation that we owe our allegiances. It is our task to identify this nation, to call it by its true name, and to raise up its organizational and ideological superstructure on the already-existing historical and material foundations. Revolution is not itself the goal, but rather the midwife of a new society. That society is the goal, and revolution the means.

The birth pangs of this “other” nation are not found in the “revolution” of 1776, which is nothing other than an adaptation of the system manufactured to repress its birth, but in the slave revolts of North America, in the revolutionary war of Haiti, in the union of indigenous nations under Tecumseh, in the Cuban Revolution, in the Mexican Revolution (the first great revolution of the 20th century) and in the contradictory career of Simón Bolívar, to name only a few examples. The Americanist cannot distinguish between the nation travailing to be born, and the prison bars constricting its freedom of development. These things all seem of one piece to the Americanist, as though the prison bars were fused with the very flesh of the people.

2.

Not only must the revolutionary construct a new, plurinationalist history of North America, but he must have a strong grasp of Americanist historiography in order to set it up as the racialist, “hygienic” foil of his own plurinational vision. Mexicanism is none other than the plurinationalism of North America.

3.

Every scientific socialism has its origins in utopia. Science takes its first impetus from imagination, and only thence does it approach the threshold of material concretion—chemistry begins in alchemy, and astronomy in astrology. Scientific socialism defines itself in reference to its early utopian origins, finds its rudimentary form in it. Mexicanism, which is a species of scientific socialism, also has its utopian roots. Thomas Morton, for instance, an early American utopian, can be thought of as a utopian Mexicanist (that is, an early form of North American plurinationalism), the first plurinational utopian experiment within North America, though not the first communist one (which can be found in the “primitive communism” of various indigenous communities). In this capacity, his relation to the new, “scientific” Mexicanism that is coming into birth is parallel to the relation between the utopian socialism of the 19th century and the scientific socialism developed by Marx and Engels: a source that is drawn on for inspiration, an influence acknowledged, but also something to be superseded through rigorous method applied to the “premises now in existence”. It is worth noting here, as a cautionary, that the utopian tendency has had a nefarious history, in many respects—whether we consider the close links between Saint Simonism and French industrialism and banking, or the Fabians of the British Isles. The utopian characteristics of Mexicanism must be disciplined through instruction in revolutionary science in order to forestall such negative developments (the “hippy” movement, for instance, can be considered an undisciplined outgrowth of North American utopianism).

4.

If in Thomas Morton we find our beginning and utopia, then in Salvador Allende we find our science and the clearest expression of our opposition. The chief value of Chile's tragic story does not lie in the apotheosis of Allende as a socialist martyr, but in its ability to secure a foretaste of the difficulties involved in revolutionary struggle, especially those that pertain to an electoral route. One can only begin to imagine the hell that reactionaries would turn this country into before allowing a left wing government to take power. Assuming that the military does not organize a counter-revolutionary coup on day one (an excessively optimistic assumption), it can be taken for granted that reactionary sectors of society would do everything within their power in order to bring all socialist initiatives to a halt. Reaction's social base rarely stops to consider whether their particular allegiances are really within their best interest. Fear incarnates itself in monstrous ideological forms, and it moves society half with imaginary enticements and half with a real whip. Under such conditions, a clear perception of interests is generally lost sight of.

The cliche that we learn more from our failures than our successes definitely holds in the example of Chile. Lenin, too, considered the revolutionary defeat of 1905, and the years of reactionary resurgence that followed, to have been the most valuable educative experience undergone by the Russian proletariat, without which the revolution of 1917 would not have been possible. The host of dangers that follow in the wake of revolutionary struggle were also clearly on display in these Chilean events. One is almost tempted to call the Chilean coup, and everything that led up to it, one of the most instructive events in socialist history, perhaps even more than the Russian and Chinese revolutions, precisely in its capacity as a failure. Resounding successes often make things seem too easy, in retrospect. Historical failures are a needed antidote for naive optimism, but as long as we maintain a merely tragic pathos and a mood of “if only” or “what if” to this event, we will learn very little from it. Crucially, it is our failure, and in a double sense—“ours” in the sense that North American imperialism ultimately bears responsibility for this crime, and “ours” in the sense that for all the masses of the Americas, North and South, this tragedy is the tragedy of their own, collective, revolutionary history. Its value, as an event, however, is not poetic but scientific. This is educational material, but for the education of militants, not of academics. Chile was not a historical tragidrama whose retelling serves for our own personal, emotional catharsis, but a sobering lesson in just how much can go wrong when advancing the socialist cause, in just how precarious socialist struggle can be.

Communists should, therefore, have a revolutionary optimism, but they should not be naive. Americanist socialists are naive. They believe that the very forces of reaction are already "incipiently" socialist, and only need some populist phrasemongering to set them off in the right direction, that the masses dwell in a sacrosanct domain that wards off reaction, that the masses cannot also serve as a bolster for reaction if the conditions are ripe for it, that reaction is countered not through combat, ideological and concrete, but through coddling and condescension. They are in for some very rude surprises.

5.

There seems to be something of the stamp of destiny in the fact that California is both the locus of a new fascism (what some have called “Silicon Valley Fascism”), the home of the media apparatus that disseminates its ethos (Hollywood), and at the same time one of the most Hispanic (and generally immigrant) populated states. This is the site of Mexicanism's first-order struggle against Americanism. As the west of the West and the east of the East, and the center of the global techno-media complex, California is the axis mundi of the 21st century imperial world order. A “social network” of clandestine connections has its junction here, a noxious, festering coagulation of scum is germinating here—Hollywood, Scientology, Silicon Valley, NGO's, the Esalen Institute, the New Age movement, Ronald Reagan, Beverly Hills, Kamala Harris, the Church of Satan, Charles Manson, "influencer" culture, a prison population of over one hundred thousand, a police budget in the billions. California is an ideological hotspot: a New Age brotherhood, united in the spirit of platitudinous, feel-good reaction, presiding over industries characterized by unusually intensive forms of class collaborationism (chiefly, high tech and Hollywood, or “media” generally); the state of police-loving "liberals". Ask anyone from Beverly Hills how they feel about the homeless—they sound no different from European bigots complaining about the Roma.

Any socialist movement situated here must take these factors into account and direct itself explicitly against them. This state is the main front in an ideological war.

6.

Americanist socialists almost invariably direct themselves with hostility toward those sectors of society they deem to be “lumpenproletariat”. There is no question that this hostility verges on outright bigotry, a supercilious contempt pronounced through gritted teeth. Contempt toward the “lumpenproletariat”, however, particularly in the United States, is a form of historical ignorance. The “lumpenproletariat” have a radically divergent historical meaning within this context. It is a term which, when used derisively in the context of United States, is undoubtedly racially charged. To use this term uncritically (and, especially, to use it pejoratively) is to transpose a theoretical reflection meant for the situation of 19th century Europe onto 20th and 21st century America, and the only conceivable ends of such a transposition are opportunist ones. This necessarily produces the most grotesque mismatch between theory and practice. The history of radical organization in the United States already disproves any low estimation of “lumpenproletariat” elements in this context (e.g. Young Lords, Black Panthers, attempts at brokering peace between Bloods and CRIPs etc). The revolutionary potential in this sector is tremendous, and it is precisely for this reason that secret service and police entanglement in it has been so extensive. In order for this completely idealist (since it is transhistorical) stance on the “lumpen question” to take root, one must, as a matter of course, ignore the entire history of CIA involvement in the drug trade, infiltration of radical organizations, infiltration of the music industry, in brief, the entire history of colonial institutions that persist up to the present day. The task of reconciling street gangs and radicalizing them politically, undertaken by the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, Tupac, and others, can form one of the bases for establishing the first Mexicanist “worker’s pueblos” (i.e. soviets). This work of radicalizing street gangs must be resumed, supplementing and supplemented by other forms of struggle and organization. It is not the task of communists to choose the site of struggle. History, the development of social and material conditions, determines the critical junctures of class struggle, the places in time and space where masses and vanguard fruitfully encounter one another. The forces of reaction (e.g. the police and intelligence agencies) have already designated the “lumpenproletariat” as the battlefield of contemporary social struggle. The enemy has gathered its forces here and, unless we opt for cowardice, this is where we will have to meet them.

7.

Racism is not a separate issue from patriarchy. It is a form of patriarchy. It is the paternalism of race—the “white man’s burden”. The “father race” has a responsibility to oversee the “child races” (and, in that respect, there is no question that the so-called “founding fathers” of the United States are “fathers” precisely in the mold of such a, predominately Anglo-Saxon, racial paternalism). “Master” and “Father” mean the same thing in this antique way of thinking. This is not to denigrate fatherhood but rather that antique conception of it, as embodied, for instance, in the Roman “pater familias”, the absolute master over wife and children, which has been smuggled into the present day, well past its expiration date. If patriarchy is not challenged then the precondition for racism’s reemergence will always remain in place. This is why feminism must constitute a non-negotiable element of any “vanguard” organization, everywhere but especially in the United States, as it was for the Young Lords Organization. Americanism is just such a paternalism of race. In this sense, it becomes obvious that radical liberalism is just another face of Americanism, along with “patriotic socialism”, the one a covert Americanism that subjects certain aspects of American history to criticism but only in order to inaugurate a more “progressive” vision of American imperium, and the other an overt one that self-consciously attaches itself to every idiotic myth that forms the backbone of the American ideological beast.

In this respect, it may prove instructive to contrast Plato, who neither took the Greek claim to preeminence among the races seriously, nor allowed men a superior position within his Republic simply for being men, with Aristotle who affirmed the superiority of Greeks over other races, and who cautioned that to allow women influence was ruinous to states. These two propositions are quite obviously linked for him—women cannot be allowed prominence in statecraft for the same reason that a barbarian cannot. When an ancient or Medieval thinker wished to denigrate another race of people, it was a common recourse to compare them to “women and children”.

The white race, therefore, was the developed race, the mature race, and hence a “father race”. The other races were child races, undeveloped races, and hence could not take responsibility for themselves. The “child = woman” equation takes a disturbing twist here, in the rape of foreign races. It is certainly no accident that the United States has exorbitantly high rates of pedophilia and child pornography, and that it even exports these practices to the lands it suffocates under its imperial boot, such as Afghanistan. In the United States, paternalism attains its most intensively pathological form, somehow as distant from traditional forms of paternalism as it is from revolutionary feminism. Even traditional paternalism, the ancestor of contemporary American patriarchy, cannot recognize itself in this distorted mirror.

8.

Capitalism is the bastard child of colonialism, born out of the rape of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Capitalism and racism are twin-births, just as patriarchy and class society “as such” are twin-births, the latter prefiguring the former.

9.

There is a need for open, explicit forms of women’s organization, because men are already implicitly, often unconsciously, organized in league against women. Man is everywhere organized in conspiracy against woman, whether visibly, in overt institutional forms, or invisibly, through more subtle, “cultural” channels. To those inclined to scoff at such insinuations, especially in reference to the latter, I can only repeat Christ's words in the Gospel of John: “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”.

Society is still, on a basic level, the organized marketplace of women. The acquisition of women, as an object of male consumption, is ubiquitous and, with the help of modern technology, as streamlined as possible. Services like “Onlyfans”, far from representing any sort of progress toward female emancipation (because it is somehow putatively “less harmful”), only represents an extension of that marketplace, and greatly facilitates the acquisition of women. All one has to do is boot up the computer from comfort of one’s own home and one can acquire a woman with a click of the mouse. It’s the stock market of women. This degradation of sexual relations does not represent a departure from patriarchal values, but its contemporary extension. Indeed, patriarchy is the most degenerate thing there is. Patriarchy is men paying money to sniff women’s underwear. Patriarchy is foot-binding, prostitution, pornography, pedophilia, and rape—in brief, every form of appropriative sexuality, in which the subject's satisfaction demands the private acquisition of, and domination over, one's object.

“Marxism”, taken in its most vulgar sense, does not suffice to account for this organized oppression, (though, optimally, it should) because, all too often, it is ushered in as the Trojan horse of economistic hand waiving of feminist concerns. “Historical materialism”, however, can, and must, come to include an account of this oppression. How can one call oneself a “historical materialist” and deny one of the most concrete and consistent historical continuities of all?

10.

It is as absurd to suppose that men will placidly and willingly part with what, socially speaking, amounts to a second-class species that exists for their own convenience and pleasure, as it is to suppose that the slaves of Saint Domingue could have won their freedom by simply asking politely. Women must organize, and present their demands forcefully.

11.

To identify “biological essentialism” as the primary site of misogyny is an error. Misogyny long antedates any developed notion of biology (the scientific discourse or “logos” pertaining to the processes of life). Effacing biological essentialism is not a sufficient condition for subduing misogyny, though perhaps a necessary one. If misogyny is taken out at the root, whatever that “root” might be, biological essentialism cannot harm. Likewise, by ridding ourselves of biological essentialism, we will not have succeeded eo ipso in subduing misogyny.

12.

“The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male” - Engels

Marxism and feminism have this in common—they disprove the “intersectional” thesis. Oppression is not a neutral field of aggrieved groups, each sui generis and abstractable from the rest, but a field with a definite historical charge and context, and that context is class. The ur-context of that context, in turn, is the division of the sexes into man as the dominant sex and woman as the oppressed one. Marxism cannot understand itself without feminism, and unless it adequately understands itself it can never mobilize its forces toward any secure and final victory.

13.

The plane on which identities collide, in “intersectional theory”, is a transhistorical one. If intersectionalists had actually traced the historical genesis of these contradictions, they would have necessarily arrived at the historical priority of the class-sex contradiction. These identities are not atoms colliding in a void, but entangled historical threads with a common origin.

14.

The fundamental flaw of “intersectionalism” is that it posits various “identity groups” as individual quantities situated on an ahistorical plane together with class, rather than as being historical trajectories entangled with class. Intersectionalism is the paradoxical and highly abstractive “individualism of collectivities”, which treats mere classifications as possessors of social agency, not living and historically entangled forces but discursively apprehended categories of sterile analysis. This entanglement with class begins already in prehistory, in the division of society between men and women. The logic of this division, which is simultaneously one of class and identity (gender, in this case), extends itself (through history) to the other “identities” with which intersectionalism concerns itself, e.g. race. The woman question, therefore, is a class question, and that means one cannot treat woman as a separate quantity apart from class, such that, for instance, women would be considered a unified block across class lines. A bourgeois woman is almost always a traitor to feminism to the same degree that she is a class enemy. Likewise, a black banker can, in most cases, be considered a “race traitor” to the same degree that he is a class enemy. Class and “identity” do not take priority over each other, neither are they balanced one against the other, nor are they kept at arm’s length—they are dialectically and historically entangled already from their genesis in prehistory. They are the same and not the same, at one and the same time. They are, in other words, a single (albeit dialectically polarized) historical trajectory, not ahistorical classifications.

Moreover, the social division of man and woman in prehistory is only one instance of the genesis of a class-identity entanglement. These entanglements have had many births. The birth of capitalism, specifically, shares this same feature. Together with capitalism was born the modern and “scientific” species of racism. The new classes, born out of capitalism, were already from the beginning entangled in racial contradictions by virtue of colonialism, just as class society as such was already, from the beginning, entangled in sexual contradictions by virtue of patriarchy. This is why it is absurd to treat class and race as separate issues—the very classes characteristic of our period were born out of the fires of racial contradictions. Capital comes into the world, to paraphrase Marx, drenched in the blood of colonialism.

To the extent that one “element” in this historical vortex can be prioritized, it must be the dual element of class-gender. These were a twin-birth, and from these twins all other categories of oppression have their origin, through an extension of their original twin-logic. They are the foci of the social spheroid. Any attempt at solving racial contradictions without pushing both class and gender contradictions to the fore, is necessarily bound to fail in the long term. Sexists, no less than racists, can be considered class enemies to the cause of liberation, just by virtue of being sexists and racists.

There must also be an element of “class subjectivism” in this. That is what differentiates those who view identities as forming isolated blocks (such that these identifies almost invariably acquire a class-collaborationist character), and those who view them in terms of their origin in the original class-gender division. The former, at best, become reformists. The latter have liberation as their objective, and therefore cannot tolerate class enemies any more than they tolerate sexism or racism.

15.

“The barbarians are like women and children—and therefore the Greeks have a right to rule over them”. In this formula, the original logic of the class-gender unity is extended to race. “Woman”, as a class category, means “that which can rightfully be ruled over”, and “subjugated class” means “that which is akin to woman”. The proletarian class is a subjugated class because they are “like women”, and to be “like women” is to be worthy of subjugation, from the standpoint of paternalistic class relations. Classism is second-order sexism. Let the proletariat only deign to recognize in their own subjugation the image of a far older one—indeed, not only an image, but the concrete root that has continually given birth to new forms of oppression, and will continually birth new ones unless it is decisively plucked out. The twin-birth of gender-class, like the birth of all twins, was sequential. One twin, gender, preceded the other, class, by the fraction of a metaphysical second.

16.

Class society is the analogical stratification of sex, the transposition of sexual polarity onto political structures (e.g. between the masculine ruling class and the submissive and feminine ruled). The proletarian class is subject to a reproduction, “by analogy”, of the same oppression which woman originally was (and still is) subjected to at the hands of man. In the condition of the proletarian class we encounter another strata of this primordial form of social oppression. Class relations, then, are analogized male-female relations (e.g. male king ruling over passive and feminine masses), and, due to the historical entanglement of these categories, male-female relations are also class relations, e.g. woman owned as a “means of reproduction”.

One can even speak of the social and historical development of classes as the fractalization of the original male-female divide. The chief of the tribe becomes male with respect to the “femaled” tribe, and the individual male of the tribe retains his masculinity with respect to his wife. This dynamic is repeated across institutions and practices in highly complex ways, particularly in more advanced societies.

17.

It is also important to acknowledge that feminism provides a whole new dimension to the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and therefore into the essence of Marxism itself. That this dictatorship becomes the site of equality for men and women “automatically”, as it were, is not a foregone conclusion. The struggle of woman and her oppression is an ancient one. Its ruts run very deep. The dictatorship of the proletariat, once established, cannot simply “abolish” this most ancient of oppressions over night—and, if it cannot abolish this most ancient of social oppressions, then it cannot definitively abolish any oppression, for this is their root, the original image of which all other oppressions are the reproduction. The feminist struggle is a momentous one for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its success hinges on the outcome of the struggle waged on this front. The dictatorship of the proletariat is, therefore, also a feminist dictatorship.

18.

Feminism demands a reconfiguration of the categories man, woman, and patriarch. This, in turn, requires that we cease conflating men, “as such”, with the patriarchal privileges which have accrued to them. That is, we must reconfigure these categories. Thus, feminist dictatorship, which is necessarily the same thing as “authentic” proletarian dictatorship (given the “twin-births” of class and gender), does not consist in the oppression of men (a risible notion), but in the expropriation of patriarchal privileges—it uncovers, through practice, the differences between the categories “man” and “patriarch”. In other words, one cannot even know what a “man” is until feminism has completed its task. Until that time, man and patriarch are bound to be entangled and conflated with one another. Those qualities which are fundamental to the patriarchal function have, in course of time, come to be considered purely and simply “masculine” qualities, and those qualities which characterize submission to the patriarchal function have received the corresponding attribution of “feminine”. It is part of the preliminary task of feminism to untangle these categories, and in doing so discover the primordial proximity of the categories man-woman prior to their scission through the category “patriarch”.

However, by the time feminism has completed its task—will there still really be either male or female? (This question is not meant rhetorically!)

19.

We have had anti-royalist revolutionary terror, through the French Revolution, and we have had communist iterations of revolutionary terror, through the Great Purge and and the GPCR, but we still have not had feminist revolutionary terror. This task still calls to us from out of the future, a revolutionary furnace that we must pass through, one way or another, at some time or another.

20.

In a manner of speaking, communism needs feminism more than feminism needs communism. Communism, which directs itself at the class divisions of society, cannot even account for itself without feminism, that is, without addressing the original division which birthed all subsequent class divisions and after which they modeled themselves. If the proletarian class is woman vis a vis the bourgeoisie, then the subjugated nations are woman vis a vis the colonizing nations. The “father races” of Europe and the United States have wed the globe as its pater familias—and to “wed”, in the original sense, is to acquire woman and the fruit of her womb as one's property. Very far from implying a denial of communism or a departure from it, this point of view is the precondition of its affirmation. I affirm the priority of feminism because I am a communist, because I am fervently communist, because I do not merely want to acquire “communist” as a label but desire to see victorious and triumphant communism, of which feminism is a precondition. Class society begins in misogyny, and communism begins in feminism.

21.

Communism is none other than the reconstitution of the primordial androgyne and the storming of heaven, as recounted by Aristophanes in Plato's “Symposium”. Thus, very far from constituting a distraction or hamper for “the movement”, feminism is a precondition of the excess of power which makes even gods tremble with fear at humanity's overweening might. Without woman’s participation, this is not possible.

In the sphere of the Americas, this reconstitution is instantiated in the union of the subjugated (hence, “female”) South America with the subjugating North America, through the dissolution of the latter’s patriarchal function.

22.

The reactionaries have already abolished gender. It only remains to fulfill what they have half-started. The reactionaries say, of whatever and whoever they do not like: “he thinks like a woman, that is womanly”. What, then, is woman? It is anything and everything. It loses its sense. It is, in effect, abolished.

23.

It is precisely an Anglo colonial prejudice that the “white majority” of the United States are indelibly “white”, that they must constitute their own isolated grouping. Mexicanist plurinationalism, as a concretely developing reality, remedies this ideological construct of surgically precise white-black-brown-indigenous racial classifications, an inheritance of Anglo-Darwinism. The racial contradictions of Latin America, on the other hand, were of a “metaphysical-aristocratic” variety. Racial contradictions in Latin America manifested as a gradation of racial categories, a hierarchy of elements occupying the same spaces—negro, mestizo, morisco, coyote, zambo. This is a metaphysical conception of race, comparable to that of the “Law of Manu” found in India, a caste based society. Thus, in constituting an antiquated, a “medieval”, arrangement, they lend themselves to dialectical overcoming precisely because they acknowledge the possibility of syntheses and transformations. American race relations are “scientific”. They are a bulwark against development because they present themselves as the product of scientific development, as “knowledge” (or, rather, in this case, “pseudo-knowledge”). An early example of the “hygienic” character of racial contraindications in the Anglo colonies can be found in the “Laws Divine” of Jamestown, which forbade the free intermingling of the general population of colonists with the indigenous, allowing only specially selected representatives to do so when deemed necessary. This is in stark contrast to the policies of the, already mentioned, utopian Thomas Morton and his colony of Merrymount.

24.

If Marxism is a “retvrn to tradition”, then Americanism can never terminate in communism, for it has no (medieval or archaic) tradition to “retvrn” to. Marxism developed, initially, in order to address the contradictions produced by the transition from the European society of the middle ages to the European society of bourgeois modernity, though, toward the end of his life, Marx began to extend the scope of his analysis to a concrete examination of the “archaic” societies of the Americas (in his “Ethnological Notebooks”), and considerations related to colonialism also play a crucial role (via the concept of “primitive accumulation”) in his magnum opus “Capital”. The task of addressing the contradictions produced within the colonized societies of the Americas is still incomplete, though it has been partially undertaken by Marxists such as José Carlos Mariátegui of Peru. Just as Europe’s social future was situated with reference to its own medieval past, so must the American future be situated with reference to its own past, and to the contradictions produced in the violent termination of that past by European colonialism. Socialism in North America cannot consist in the seamless transition from 19th century European conditions, somehow skipping over the colonial past (and the colonial present), into the sort of socialist political conditions considered consonant with projected European development. This is, more or less, what partriotic socialists propose, though with theoretical ambiguity and discursive obfuscation—a socialism which emerges out of a European past, skips over the colonial present (a theoretical inconvenience that must be ignored), and heads from there into a European future. Critical patriots, which in the context of North America will be “Mexicanists” (or something like that), propose a socialist trajectory that takes both the pre-colonial and colonial past, as well as the colonial present, as points of reference in its striving for the socialist future. In other words, they demand a map consistent with their territory.

25.

Radical liberalism positions itself against the “white majority”, Americanism takes this “white majority” as its basis, and Mexicanism attacks the very ideological preconception that makes this “white majority” into a “white” majority. That is, of the three, Mexicanism is the only stance which attacks this ideological edifice by tracing it to its root. It begins by attacking the very sources of Anglo ideology that renders this surgical racial classification possible—empiricism, Social Darwinism, eugenicism, positivism, and so on.

26.

Americanism (through its bulwark, the United States) is the katechon preventing the spread of progressive forces in the Americas, in general, and not only within the United States itself. Americanism has to die in order for the Americas to live.

27.

Just as the breakup of the Roman empire was integral to the rise of a new feudal order in Europe, just so the break up of the United States will signal the end of the global imperialist (i.e. capitalist) order and the beginning of a new one. It is useless to desire the continued existence of a United States, even of a “socialist” one. Doom is already inscribed on heavenly tablets as the destiny of this nation.

28.

Capitalism can be identified both at the level of a “system”, and in terms of its concrete, historical representative. The United States is that representative, is the historical bulwark of capitalism in the present, an office which it inherits from the British Empire, an empire which was recognized by no less an authority than Karl Marx as the preeminent example of capitalist relations and development, so much so that his seminal text, “Capital”, takes the British example of capitalist relations as the benchmark for capitalism as such. Today, the United States is the benchmark for imperialism “as such”. Thus, for all intents and purposes, capitalism in its present stage flies the star spangled banner as its personal emblem. Therefore, today, Americanism is opportunism “as such”. Americanism, whether in its social patriotic form or its obverse, radical liberal form, constitutes the chief bourgeois and petty-bourgeois deviation of the era. Opportunism, tailism, left-communism, social chauvinism—every deviant tendency can find its home under the umbrella of “Americanism”. Americanism is the ideological egregore of capital, and it says to every petty-bourgeois wandering son in search of new political fads or pseudo-revolutionary hobbyhorses: “Uncle Sam needs YOU”.

29.

Americanism is a form of opportunism, and the essence of opportunism is the prioritization of short-term rewards over long-term conquests. Effective opportunists, like the German Social Democrats in the era preceding and following the first World War, are able to wrest concessions from power, concessions which are not necessarily meager but are always temporary. Americanism, then, is ineffective opportunism, an opportunism that cannot even justify itself in the most rudimentary way. It seemingly exists only to generate “hype” for a very, very limited audience, or, at some later date, to chaperone disaffected leftists toward the right (in crude, American terms: the “Republican party”), or through the “radical liberal” section of Americanism, toward the Democratic party (in crude, American terms: the “left” wing of American power, the “left” wing of the hyper-reactionary, global, imperialist machine).

30.

Americanism is an idealism. It inspires a lot of fervor, but no action. It is not actionable at all, and that is why the proponents of Americanist socialism are all restricted to online discourse, to the narrow “fandom” of “debate bro” culture.

31.

The salient characteristic of “DSA leftism” is its reticence before contradictions. Contradictions are discomforting, and “DSA leftism” is a vessel built only for the smoothest sailing. Everything unsavory must be kept at a safe distance, all contradiction must be reconciled in the ideal heaven of nebulous platitudes (“can't we all just get along?”). Even when they speak, they almost sound as though they were wearing velvet gloves over hands made of pudding. The salient characteristic of Americanist socialism, on the other hand, is a tremendous appetite for the Discourse—that is, an insatiable hunger for only the most superficial strata of contradiction. Ferocious contradictions are eagerly sought out, but it is a puerile ferocity in pursuit of imaginary contradiction, the ferocity of online arguments over the most inconsequential detritus of yesterday's clickbait headlines.

32.

The Americanism of the early 20th century socialist struggle was very different from today’s. It was fundamentally a labor struggle, at a time when the United States was more heavily industrialized. The “Americanist” aspect of this struggle—the stars, stripes, and cult of the “founding fathers”—whatever its shortcomings, was merely an aesthetic fixture intended to galvanize the cause, a viable and materially present cause. Today, only a “purified Americanism” can be preached, an Americanism bereft of any material content. It is an aesthetic fixture in search of material content, rather than the reverse. Mexicanism, on the other hand, is already a material reality. It now must seek out its aesthetic and ideological expressions. The next stage in its struggle is its process of increasing self-consciousness and organization. It does not need to be brought into existence because it is already here.

We must therefore distinguish between Mexicanism as an already-present and concrete reality, and Mexicanism as the tendency which makes this reality conscious of itself and thus capable of organized political mobilization. Both are critical. The latter is still lacking, however.

33.

Mexicanism is a reality in search of form and organization. Americanism is mere form in search of a reality (in the best case, when it is not outright suppressing a reality).

34.

“But the American masses love the Flag and the Constitution and the Pledge etc!”—to our ears, this is the same as saying “but the American people love Coca Cola!”. These are empty signifiers. Why are these things so popular?—because marketing departments are effective at what they do. Not all patriotisms consist in empty signifiers, but this one does. Americanism is Anglo-Saxon supremacy sold to a mass base through effective and manipulative marketing strategies. These empty signifiers either serve to mask or pompously announce (depending on which party makes use of them) the cold, hard reality of imperial power.

35.

“Patriotic Americanists” are precisely those socialists who have shirked the responsibility of articulating a patriotism consonant with the material and social reality of the masses, instead having opted to lazily receiving it ready-made from the same marketing machinery that feeds it daily to the masses along with advertisements for McDonald's burgers and State Farm insurance.

36.

The “radical liberal” faction of Americanism says that our social politics (“activism” is their preferred expression) must support the oppressed minority. The patriotic socialist faction of Americanism says that it must find its supports in the “white majority”. Critical patriotism takes its stand in the middle region beyond these extremes (that is, beyond the poles of the “political horseshoe”). It says: “certainly we must find our supports in the majority—but what does it mean to find these supports? And, moreover, who constitutes this majority?”. It says “certainly we must support the minority—but how shall we support them? What is the best way to provide support for these groups?”. To find one's support in the majority, says critical patriotism, is to ally with their most class conscious elements, to support not only organizational and agitational initiatives, but educative ones. Such educative initiatives do not entail perpetuating idiotic myths about America’s past under the guise of patriotism. Ignorance is not a form of support. At the same time, we must not take for granted that this majority is “white”, not only for “demographic” reasons, but because the category “white” itself must be challenged. To support the minority, says critical patriotism, means to provide tangible benefits, the sort of benefits that only a well developed national industry could supply, the sort of benefits that come with robust infrastructure, the sort of benefits that come with social spending. White saviorism and “centering voices” offers no tangible benefit.

37.

Americanism, in its social chauvinist form, seeks to rally the American social vanguard around the politically backwards sections of the population, the white petty-bourgeoisie and certain segments of the proletariat—and this is in the best case scenario, when they don’t advocate outright abandonment of the advanced sections of the masses, sections that have recently expressed themselves in movements like BLM or the immigrant struggle. Americanism in its “radical liberal” form, on the other hand, tends to apotheosize (and this apotheosis is an expression of “white saviorism”) the advanced sectors and isolate them rather than situate them as a rallying point that can draw the backwards sections of the masses around itself and into greater class consciousness. Mexicanism does not seek to isolate the advanced sectors, to turn them into a private club, but to fashion them into the banner that rallies the backwards sections of the masses out of their backwardness. That is, unlike the “patriotic socialist” faction of Americanism, Mexicanism does not have contempt for the backwards sections of the populace, and, unlike “radical liberalism”, it does not have contempt for the advanced sections of the populace. The “patriotic socialist” contempt of the masses is found in its lionization of their backwardness as somehow constituting the covert emblem of revolution, or in cavalier dismissal of their flaws as “natural” (e.g. “xenophobia and racism are just the way the masses naturally are”—don’t laugh! such statements are not unheard of). “Radical liberal” contempt for the advanced sectors manifests in their overly romantic appraisals, in the way they raise these advanced sectors onto an untouchable pedestal, a sacred “fetish” object. These, then, are two forms of paternalism—paternalism toward the majority, and paternalism toward the minority. In reality, the one faction here is no more “liberal” than the other. The patriotic socialist faction of Americanism is a crypto-liberalism in the “Losurdian” sense of liberal.

38.

These “advanced sectors”, these class conscious elements, are the foundation of the political life of the selfsame class of which they form an advanced sector. That is, a class only enters into public life as fully political actors to the extent that it is conscious of its interests and independent existence as a class. If, under present circumstances, only a portion of that class is conscious in this way, then it is this portion which must constitute the foundation of political action in the present on behalf of that class as a whole, and thus this portion is the seed out of which the political consciousness of the whole class will have to grow. It is there that the columns holding up the political rule of this class are established. The strategy of the “patriotic socialists” consists in all but systematically ignoring the politically conscious elements of the working class, and favoring the politically backward elements to the exclusion of the former. The “radical liberal” left demand the institution of a benchmark for acceptably “politically progressive” beliefs, a benchmark which they not only apply to the politically conscious portion of the revolutionary classes, to the “vanguard”, but equally expect the politically backward, or unconscious, portion of these classes to meet. This, naturally, is precisely the error criticized by Lenin in “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder”. The error of both of these camps, patriotic socialists and “radical liberals”, has an identical structure but an opposite polarity. They both conceive of these groups (i.e. the politically conscious and politically unconscious portions of the revolutionary classes) as opposite camps that must be supported one to the exclusion of the other. However, it is not one side which must be supported, but the entirety, and it is precisely through the arrangement of these elements in relation to each other that such support is effectively rendered. Namely, it is by promoting the leadership of the politically conscious portion of these classes, not by promoting that portion in isolation (the error of radical liberals), that is, not by promoting it as a camp, that the whole class is able to progress toward political power. Critical patriots, therefore, support the leadership of the politically conscious elements as a vanguard of the whole class, not as a self-contained camp into which all members of that class must be converted or else discarded as irredeemably reactionary. From this standpoint, the error of the patriotic socialists is also greatly clarified: for them, the difference between the politically conscious minority and the politically unconscious majority lends to the former the appearance of being “out of touch with the masses”. In this supposition, the patriotic socialists are conflating the radical liberal activists, a minority within a minority, with the politically conscious elements that they are endeavoring to represent. Instead of restricting themselves to correcting the errors of this minority within a minority, the patriotic socialists opt to proscribe the entirety of the politically conscious portion of the working class.

39.

There is a need for cooperation between Latin Americans and the indigenous peoples of North America, not least because Latin Americans are, largely, indigenous to the Americas. That they are not necessarily indigenous to this zone of the Americas is immaterial—we must ask ourselves: how is it that they have come to be here, in North America, so far from their native lands? It is because they have been displaced from those lands, and, moreover, displaced by that very same Anglo-American power which is responsible for the oppression of the indigenous peoples of North America. Objectively, then, Mexicanism is the ally of the North American indigenous struggle. Moreover, this ally is in a singularly unique position—it is not only itself an expression of indigenous struggle, but also the plurinational fusion of a multitude of of streams, chiefly indigenous, European, and African. Such a plurinationalism, already present in Latin America, though generally as an underdeveloped tendency (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is continual intervention by the United States), is precisely the element which is constitutionally lacking in the North American equation. Here, in the land of “scientific” racial segregation, plurinationalism will only come through importation, not through native cultivation—we lack the plurinational soil out of which to cultivate such a tendency. Importation from where? That question already answers itself, at this point. The “melting pot” of the United States, on the other hand, has always been the melting pot of European cultures over the fire of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism—that is our “plurinationalism”. Another one must be sought.

The expression, “the indigenous present”, used by José Carlos Mariátegui in his essay “Prologue to Tempest in the Andes”, almost perfectly encapsulates the meaning and purpose of “Mexicanism”. Within the United States, the Hispanic community are a locus of the “indigenous present”, around which social organization and cross-cultural fertilization can occur. Latin America and its culture represents an indigeneity that has brought itself into the presence of modernity, though with much travail (travails which are far from over), whereas the indigenous populations of North America (as well as many south of the border) represent the colonized indigenous past, still here with us, and still obliged to liberate themselves from that past, because the colonizing force holding them captive has not itself been abolished. Any prospect of their liberation entails, in the first place, not that the “white majority”, as “white saviors”, romanticize them or appropriate their culture, but that this majority, themselves still steeped in a colonial past through their participation in the colonial structures that entrap the Americas, bring themselves up to the level of this “indigenous present”. The Anglo-Saxon current of Americanism has never, to any appreciable degree, proven itself capable of leaving behind its colonial past and rising up to the “indigenous present”. It is therefore incumbent upon us to search out other avenues toward this present American moment. Mexicanism is proposed as such an avenue, and one that does not only exist “hypothetically”, as some thought experiment, but whose foundations are basically already in place, though perhaps in a state of disassembly.

Because we are habituated to conceptualizing indigeneity only in terms of the past, a discarded past, just as the indigenous peoples of North America are a socially discarded remnant of the colonial past, a memory best forgotten, so it is just for this reason that we tend not to recognize the Latin American community within North America as bearers of American indigeneity. We recognize indigeneity only as a relic of the past, not in its temporal presence. Thus, we tend to speak of the Latino community in terms such as “Hispanic”, as though they were Spaniards fresh off the boat from colonial Spain. North America has no indigenous present of its own, aside from this intrusion from the south, because it has kept its own indigeneity physically entrapped within reservations, and ideologically confined to “Social Studies” textbooks. Thus, it is through such an intrusion that, as a rain that makes the earth fruitful, a revolutionary socialist reconquista can blossom on a soil hitherto rendered desolate.

40.

The displacement of Latin Americans from their native soil to North America is symptomatic of contradictions on at least two levels: firstly, the contradiction between Anglo-dominant North America and Latin-dominant Central and South America. This is the broader, geopolitical contradiction of Americanism. It expresses itself as the dominance of North America over Central and South America and, among other consequences, has resulted in this displacement of population. Secondly, this displacement operates within North America, as the contradiction between dominant white society, and subjugated non-white society. This is the domestic and social contradiction of Americanism, dialetically entwined with and mutually dependent on the former contradiction. These displaced populations who, we should recall, are largely indigenous to the Americas, contain within themselves the seed for the resolution of both of these contradictions—the external contradiction between the two Americas and the contradiction internal to North America. These displaced Latin American populations are the seed of a plurinationalism which not only has the potential to reconcile the diverse interests internal to North America, but to reconcile the Americas, North and South, to one another—that is, to effect the alchemical union of the Americas.

41.

Mexicanism is landback, in a general sense, and is the precondition of landback for the indigenous peoples of North America, in a particular sense. It is the general movement of indigenous reconquista, spearheaded by the displaced populations of Latin America, which makes the redressing of particular indigenous grievances possible, those grievances which are particular to North America and its history. Through Mexicanism, therefore, land reform, or “landback”, acquires both its general form and its particular applications. Landback becomes both a real historical movement, which occurs irrespective of our political deliberations and policies, and it facilitates particular political policies, determined on a case by case basis. Restated another way, landback is not only a policy to be instated at some future date, under the leadership of proletarian dictatorship, but an event that is already taking place in front of our eyes. It is the real movement of history which the forces of reaction are currently bracing themselves against. Therefore, it is the site of a crucial historical struggle, a struggle which is already taking place, and therefore a struggle that communists are obliged to participate in or else risk losing all relevance. The radical liberal left have lost their relevance by perpetuating a mode of struggle that can be termed “white saviorism”, a mode of struggle which is not only objectionable theoretically, but is concretely obsolete. White saviorism is an increasingly shrill and farcical sideshow taking place in the midst of an already ongoing indigenous reconquista.

42.

Internationalism is not just an “idea” but, on the one hand, an already-present tendency, and a projected historical state of affairs. The realization of this second sense of internationalism demands “socialism in one country” as its precondition. “Socialism in one country”, in turn, is the internationalist tendency, or a stage in the historical development of this tendency. “Socialism in one country”, like the hero Karna of Hindu legend, is born with its armor fused to its body, and that armor is “proletarian patriotism”. Patriotism grows out of the soil of unified national identity, whether we like it or not. We can either take it in hand as a revolutionary task, the task of cultivating the form that this patriotism will take, or we can allow it to acquire whatever forms it accrues to itself spontaneously, as an untended garden accrues weeds and insects. As Lenin points out in “What is to be Done?”, spontaneity, under a bourgeois political order, will often tend toward reaction. To disregard these national forces which, again, exist whether or not we like it, is a dereliction of duty on the part of communists.

This is why articulating a relevant form of left patriotism is a necessity, and, at the same time, why Americanism cannot constitute a left patriotism. Americanism is already a universalism, a false universalism. Far from constituting an avenue toward internationalism, it cannot even foster unity and communication within its own sphere of the Americas, let alone on an international level. Americanism has always demanded nothing other than the Americanization of the whole globe, not only as an abstract demand, but as a concrete practice embodied in its institutions; through Hollywood propaganda, for instance, or through the intrigues of the National Endowment for Democracy.

43.

Americanism, as a pseudo-universality, is irreconcilable to any attempt at “multipolarity”. Americanism already believes itself to be the meaning of the earth—indeed, has always believed itself to be this meaning.

44.

In a sense, America’s plurinationalism (Mexicanism), is the national particularism which most closely approximates internationalism. This is not only so in terms of analogy (i.e. the fact that plurinationalism resembles internationalism, a sort of “internationalism in one country”), but is also a matter of world historical reality. The success of this particular national struggle within the United States, which demands as its precondition the abolition of Anglo-American empire and its corresponding pseudo-universality, is the historical access point that leads to the realization of internationalism on Earth. In the absence of this Anglo-American katechon, the world can begin its movement toward the concrete realization of the “international ideal”. The significance of Mexicanism in this process verges on the millenarian. For this reason it is necessary to emphasize a scientific Mexicanism, lest we become too intoxicated with these hopes. Nevertheless, this significance is stamped onto the historical destiny of Mexicanism. The realization of this destiny is only left to our cunning and collective struggle.

45.

The “internationalism in one country” of North America is the surest historical path to internationalism on Earth.

46.

Mexicanism is already here, but it is not here ready-made like a commodity that falls into our lap. We cannot simply “merge” into it passively, as it were. It is here, but it is diffuse. It needs a vanguard to gather it up, like the Kabbalist who gathers up the sparks of primeval light dispersed throughout creation. It requires conscious formation and participation on the part of artists, thinkers, activists, revolutionaries, and the broad masses. The material out of which Mexicanism is formed is here, but its institutions and forms have not attained the force of self-conscious expression.

47.

In his confrontation with the unique situation of the Americas, Bolívar roundly rejected the Enlightenment notion that political order followed from transhistorical rationalist principles, opting instead to adapt the political institutions of South America to the conditions of development which he actually encountered there. Bolívar's deliberations on the need for constitutions that fit the material and cultural conditions of a society also apply to the North American present. The US state, its ethos, culture, nationalist historiography, and institutions are adapted to an already materially absent Anglo-Saxon supremacist position (absent socially, that is, not institutionally). North America needs Mexicanist institutions, because North America's material and cultural conditions are “Mexicanist”, that is, incipiently plurinational. Plurinationalism is the already-present site of revolution, and Americanism (pseudo-universal nationalism) is the already-present and operative site of reaction.

48.

First and foremost, American dissatisfaction with the current order must be exacerbated to the point of its overturning. All forces which destabilize and undermine the current order must be intelligently confronted through dialogue or, where relevant, viable, and beneficial, through partnership. Communist parties in the United States are too focused on a mere being Communist. Organizing opposition to the current order will mean engaging with non-communist tendencies, as well (as per Lenin's “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder”). This is as true of the Bolshevik experience, as of the Chinese, the Cuban, and the Vietnamese. One does not bring about a Communist order through a mere passive being Communist. Communist credentials do not win revolutions. This is not a call for compromise, but for engagement, engagement with every battlefield that our historical situation designates, not the battlefields that we wish it would designate for us.

49.

It is increasingly clear to me that only “Mexicanism”, as a theoretical framework, and as the reflection of an already-existing situation, can bridge the divide between the most forward sectors of US society and socialist organization. Right now, these two sectors are almost entirely divorced from one another. Socialist organizations and American society, particularly its most “advanced” sectors, its most revolutionary sectors, are operating at a distance from one another. One of the primary tasks of socialist organization in North America is to bridge this divide. Americanism is not up to the task of bridging this divide. It is constitutionally precluded from doing so. “How do we bridge that divide and render these forces conscious and organized, reign in their spontaneity and sharpen them to a point?”—that is the dilemma we are confronted with. That is the primary question we must investigate.

Americanism is not even an attempt to bridge this divide, to give conscious form to an already existing “progressive” tendency, but to steer a regressive tendency toward their desired direction. Americanism is a sales pitch, not a vanguard. They are little more than ineffective entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that cannot even correctly identify their target market. They are trying to capture a customer base with loyalty to a competing brand, not lead and shape a revolutionary social tendency. That is why so many representatives of the Americanist tendency feel like salesmen. They are trying to create hype for a brand—but revolution is not a “brand”. A brand, literally and etymologically, is the mark by which we identify cattle or a slave.

The task of the revolutionary is to identify the directions of competing social forces, and to guide their movement in a manner benefiting a particular class. The Americanist does not observe social forces, but attempts to gauge social fads. A fad is not a social tendency, not the product of a struggle, but a sort of ideological trinket, a commodity that crystallizes around ephemeral enthusiasms. These are the native waters of all those with something to sell. They breathe in this commercial fluid and try to guess at the motion of its currents—for at the end of every current lies a profit to be collected.

50.

I am not suggesting that developing a “brand”, or using marketing is bad per se. These are useful resources for generating a successful “aesthetic”, for generating interest and fervor, but these are meant to supplement the “meat and potatoes” of social action, not to constitute the “meat and potatoes”. The “meat and potatoes” here consists in the task of identifying the already-existing revolutionary tendencies and giving them consciousness, form, and organizational power. When branding is made paramount, this is symptomatic of an attempt at winning over a reluctant “customer base”. When branding is made paramount, the means are turned into an end, the outward trappings are made into the inner essence. That is precisely how a “fandom” is created, and that is as far as Americanism can aspire. That is its own self-imposed limit.

It is “Mexicanism” (though, the name is unimportant—call it “Mexicanism”, or call it “North American plurinationalism”—that is all secondary) that represents an attempt at surpassing mere tailism, whether one is tailing the revolutionary sector (“Turtle Islandism” or “radical liberalism”), and thus contributing nothing to their capacity for a successful capture of power, or tailing the counter-revolutionary sectors (as the Americanist form of “patriotic socialism”), and thus abandoning the very social forces you are supposed to represent in pursuit of an entrepreneur's pipedream. Mexicanism takes the revolutionary tendency and adds something more to it, helping it to extend its reach, unifying diverse tendencies under a single revolutionary program.

51.

Not only do the Americanists err in proposing the wrong form of socialist patriotism, a chauvinistic form of patriotism, but they are social chauvinists precisely because they are wrong in form, and precisely because it is the form that takes precedence for them rather than the substance. They start out by proposing a form of socialist patriotism which consists in empty signifiers, i.e they start with mere aesthetics, as opposed to attempting to identify actual historical and material tendencies that point in a revolutionary direction. The most essential thing, for them, lies in the inessential, in identifying the “authentic aesthetic” of the American people. That this “authentic aesthetic” consists just as much in the iconography of the Coca Cola Company as it does in the red, white, and blue, never seems to enter into their calculations.

52.

I do not, and cannot, know for certain if Mexicanism correctly intuits the real concrete tendencies implicit in North American social struggle, or merely consists in another form of dogmatism imposed from “outside”, which is why I must clarify that it is a preliminary and tentative attempt at identifying the form of left patriotism that can articulate and unify the actual concrete revolutionary tendencies in North America. The intention in forwarding this thesis is not to provoke a wholesale adoption of every proposal I have made herein, but to encourage new directions for discussion and debate. This thesis needs criticism and development. It is the process of criticism and development, the immanent critique of contemporary socialist struggle in the United States.

The main point being argued with the Mexicanism thesis is that there is a need for "revolutionary patriotism", of some kind or another, and that Americanism is inadequate in that respect. That need, and the lack of any infrastructure to satisfy it, is the theoretical point of departure.

“Mexicanism”, or something like it, has already articulated itself on a number of occasions such as the national aspirations of indigenous North Americans, the Black Panther Party, and the Chicano struggle. Those are the sort of tendencies encompassed under the plurinational North American concept. Is it possible to unite all these tendencies under a single movement? That is a question that both theory and practice, working in tandem, will have to answer under the duress of concrete struggles and open debate.