Medway Baker calls for uncompromising faith in the cause of communism in the face of a capitalist civilization that is destroying humanity. 

Hurricanes ravage shores and flatten communities. Floods sweep away people and submerge houses. Plagues decimate families and destroy solidarity. Famines devour the young and the old. The sun scorches the earth, the creatures of the land and the sea are driven into extinction, children waste away, the elderly are cooped up like livestock to wait for the end. This is the world that the liberal order has wrought. 

Liberalism will lead us all to death. But at least we’ll be free. 

We are living in the end times. The opportunity for compromise and reform is long over. All that’s left to us is to struggle for a new world, for the kingdom of heaven on earth. Without the struggle for the final aim, we may as well consign ourselves to hell. So let us struggle.

Life versus Liberalism

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.¹

The COVID-19 crisis is a tragic, but highly visible example of the crisis of liberalism. While “illiberal” countries such as China, Vietnam, and Egypt have managed to contain the virus and take care of their infected in a humane manner, the so-called “free” liberal democracies were shamefully slow to react. The United States epitomises the liberal approach to the crisis: downplaying the virus, failing to contain the spread until it’s too late, refusing to care for the sick, all in the name of keeping the economy running, until panic seized the population and it became necessary for the state to step in and salvage the situation. This approach was always unsustainable, but the short-sighted liberal bourgeoisie is able to see only one thing: immediate profits. 

When it was already too late, Donald Trump banned travel between the US and Europe, deepening the economic crisis while failing to effectively address the problem of the virus’s spread within the US. The working people of America have been left for too long with no answers, no tests, and no treatment. Hundreds of thousands are sick, many without even knowing it, and the virus is being transmitted to thousands more day by day. Thousands are already dying, and many more will continue to die. And liberal capitalism will do nothing to stop it, except what’s necessary to protect profits. 

The result, paradoxically, is an increasingly authoritarian response, which nevertheless fails to establish limits on individuals’ activities in such a way as to prevent the spread of the virus. Nationalist, militarist rhetoric and the expansion of the police state will continue to rise alongside liberal individualism. All state action is undertaken in the name of defending profit. Protecting the people is not only secondary—it is only a concern insofar as it’s required to keep the economy running. This is the essence of liberalism: freedom for the ruling class, oppression and death for the people. 

Individual freedoms are paramount! But not the freedom of humane care, the freedom to self-quarantine without fear of penury, the freedom of staying alive. We will be free in death—we may not survive, but at least commerce won’t have been restricted. At least we’ll still have the freedom to go out into public, to get infected and infect others; bosses retain the freedom to fire workers for staying home, landlords the freedom to evict tenants who can’t pay their rent. This is the meaning of freedom under liberalism. Liberal freedom is death. 

The types of crazed individualistic responses we’ve seen, with people buying truckloads of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, are symptomatic of the hegemonic liberal consciousness. It’s everyone for themself in this world: hoarding has spiked, leaving the poor and the vulnerable with nothing; people are buying up hand sanitizer in order to resell it for quadruple the price. Young, healthy people seem not to care about getting the virus, because their risk of death is so low; they don’t care that they might infect the old or the sick, that they might bring about another human’s death. Liberalism is alienation. It is the veneration of the self above all, and the destruction of a harmonious society which cares for its members. In the words of the arch-liberal Margaret Thatcher: 

“There is no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business…”²

The essence of liberal freedom is not democracy, not the rule of the people, but the freedom of the slaveholders, the landlords, the financiers.³ Personal liberty, according to the logic of the market, requires dominance over others. The ultimate freedom-through-dominance is, of course, condemning others to death in the name of your personal wellbeing, in the name of your own enjoyment and profits. Whether this is manifested in hoarding and thus preventing others from accessing the goods they need; or in choosing not to self-isolate during a pandemic and thus infecting the vulnerable; or in waging imperialist war in pursuit of profit; or in destroying the biosphere in the name of capitalist accumulation—the result is the same: murder in the name of personal liberty. 

The climate crisis is another, though less obviously pressing, example of liberalism’s death drive. Even as they proclaim a moral commitment to sustainability and protecting the environment, liberal leaders, such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, continue to buttress fossil fuel industries, even going so far as to exercise military force to protect these destructive extractive projects. Liberalism’s moral commitments matter for nothing if it continues to drag us all into the hell of climate apocalypse, in the name of freedom and compromise. Down with liberal freedom! Down with compromise! 

Death versus Communism

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.⁴

The people will judge the wicked. The righteous, the labourers, those who built the world and who will save it from destruction, will destroy our enemies and cast them into the eternal flames. This is the only way to preserve life. We have seen that liberalism—capitalist freedoms and the principle of compromise—will lead us all into the apocalypse. The world will be born anew, but only after a long, hard struggle. We must go to war. War against liberalism, war against compromise, war against death. 

“Revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies,” said Robespierre, that great fighter for the people. “Revolutionary government owes good citizens full national protection; to enemies of the people it owes nothing but death.”⁵ In order to secure life and liberty for the people, we must bring death to our enemies, who would rather the rule of death than the rule of the people. The time for compromise is long over: as Bukharin said in 1917, on the battle for Moscow in October, 

“Those who call for a compromise are like Metropolitan Platon in Moscow, who came to the soviet and with tears in his eyes implored us to stop the bloodshed. We think firm measures are necessary…. This is the epoch of dictatorship and we shall sweep away with an iron broom everything that deserves to be swept away.”⁶  

In order to win the war against the apocalypse, we must refuse all half-measures, all compromises, all popular fronts with liberals and “progressives”. These people are not prepared to take the necessary steps to protect life and liberty. At best they are unreliable allies who will desert at the first sign of trouble; at worst, they are our deadly enemies. They will be judged for their betrayal, and they will be destroyed. “Our problem,” as Trotsky elucidated in 1920, “is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life…. The enemy must be made harmless, and in wartime this means that he must be destroyed.”⁷

Are we not at war for our very survival as a species? Even the bourgeois politicians and press no longer shy away from comparing the COVID-19 crisis to war. But we communists take this principle even further: we are not only at war against the virus, we are at war against the destruction of our planet, against the suicide of our species—against death itself! 

The revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, while in mourning following Lenin’s death, wrote that “‘Lenin’ and ‘Death’—are foes. / ‘Lenin’ and ‘Life’—comrades.”⁸ This is not mere poetic flourish, but rather distils the essence of the communist mission. Similarly, the architect Konstantin Melnikov, who designed Lenin’s sarcophagus, proclaimed that “the revolutionary Russian people… possess the power of resurrection and will exercise it by endowing their leader with immortality.”⁹ 

Of course we don’t propose that communism will bring about literal, personal immortality. But it will defeat death in a far more profound, truly liberatory fashion: “In communism,” said the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga, 

“the identity of the individual and his fate with their species is re-won, after destroying within it all the limits of family, race, and nation. This victory puts an end to all fear of personal death and with it every cult of the living and the dead, society being organised for the first time around well-being and joy and the reduction of sorrow, suffering, and sacrifice to a rational minimum”. 

He admired ancient civilizations such as the Inca, who, he claimed, 

“recognised the flow of life in that same energy which the Sun radiates on the planet and which flows through the arteries of a living man, and which becomes unity and love in the whole species, which, until it falls into the superstition of an individual soul with its sanctimonious balance sheet of give and take, the superstructure of monetary venality, does not fear death and knows personal death as nothing other than a hymn of joy and a fecund contribution to the life of humanity.”¹⁰

The freedom of communism is the joy of contributing to something greater than oneself, to a greater human cause, to life as a whole. The freedom of liberalism is the murder of humanity in the name of personal gain. Under the guise of upholding individual liberty, capital will sacrifice countless individuals on the altar of profit. Our liberals are all too happy to let millions die if it means keeping the market afloat—indeed, they not only leave the poor to the mercy of the virus and the catastrophic effects of climate change, they actively destroy other nations in order to maintain their position in the global hierarchy! 

Trotsky sums up this predicament succinctly: “To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.”¹¹

Placing the needs of the collective over those of the individual, so that each individual can truly be free: this is the meaning of communism. This can only be accomplished with democratic central planning. Even undemocratic planned systems are more capable of mitigating the crisis than the chaos of liberalism. Imagine what could be possible with the full capacities of humanity unleashed, through the power of the Plan, through the harmonious dialectic between the center and the outer nodes, all directed towards the needs of the Social Body. 

Communism means life. Communism means immanentizing the eschaton. Communism means the conquest of chaos, the defeat of entropy, the victory of order and freedom. 

Hope and Revolution

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?¹²

Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary and first People’s Commissar for Education, wrote that “scientific socialism is the most religious of all religions, and the true Social Democrat is the most deeply religious of all human beings.”¹³ Although this seems to resemble a common liberal accusation against Marxism—that it is a dogmatic, scriptural, inflexible ideology of dangerous zealots—Lunacharsky, to borrow a turn of phrase, turned this notion on its head. Yes, he says, Marxism is a religion; but what is the essence of religion? Is it dogmatism, adherence to scripture, inflexibility? No! he says. Then, is it belief in the supernatural, blind adherence to an unprovable notion? No! By religion, Lunacharsky means “rather the emotive, collective, utopian, and very human elements of religion.”¹⁴ 

For Lunacharsky, then, religion is the fundamental belief in something greater than oneself, which drives one to participate in a greater cause. This was a feeling shared by virtually all revolutionaries, although Lenin was highly critical of Lunacharsky’s analysis. For instance, Trotsky proclaimed in 1901: 

“Dum spiro spero! [As long as I breathe, I hope!] … As long as I breathe, I shall fight for the future, that radiant future in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizon of beauty, joy, and happiness!”¹⁵ 

Nearly four decades later, even while proclaiming his staunch atheism, he would reiterate, “I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion.”¹⁶ 

What is this if not that same enthusiasm identified by Lunacharsky, when he said that “religion is enthusiasm and ‘without enthusiasm it is not given to man to create anything great’”¹⁷? Marxism is the religion of the oppressed, the only truly revolutionary religion remaining. It is the religion of collective action for the construction of a new, truly liberated society. “The personal understanding of the value of life only in connection with a grand sweep of collective life—that is the religious feeling of Marx.”¹⁸ 

By contrast, Lunacharsky attributed scripturalism and doctrinal inflexibility to Plekhanov, and by extension to Menshevism. He saw many of the problems of the Bolsheviks, too, as deriving from Plekhanovism.¹⁹ This mechanistic attitude was a distortion of Marxism which ignored the true spirit of the communist mission. 

For Lunacharsky, it is not cold, hard science which motivates communists to pursue the cause. Yes, a scientific understanding of the world, of class, of political economy, of revolution and all the rest is essential to fulfilling the mission which we have assigned ourselves. But it is not the facts which drive us to devote our lives to the cause; it is a spiritual commitment, to humanity and to life as a whole. Communists are motivated by a “deeply emotional impulse of the soul.”²⁰ As Roland Boer summarises, “the key to Marxism [for Lunacharsky] was… a synthesis of science and irrepressible enthusiasm.”²¹

Much like a religious zealot (and in the same spirit as Trotsky), Lunacharsky impresses upon us the inevitability of struggle, of sacrifice, of suffering on the road to liberation; but he refuses to let this stop him, because he knows that at the end of the road awaits the kingdom of God. “Things are hard for us now,” he admits, “we have to go up to the neck in blood and filth, but after our Revolution, as after every great revolution, a wave of creative power will come a new, beautiful, fragrant art will blossom.”²² 

It is this promise that drives us, even though we know that we may not live to see it ourselves. Communists’ devotion is to humanity, not our own persons; our god is the humanity which may yet exist, but which cannot exist under the oppressive condition of class society. This is the essence of his theory of “God-building”. Humanity is not yet divine; it is the future, liberated humanity which we worship, and our worship consists precisely in bringing about this dream of a future society, in taking hold of our own destiny as a species. In Lunacharsky’s own words: 

“Our ideal is the image of man, of man like a god, in relation to whom we are all raw material only, merely ingots waiting to be given shape, living ingots that bear their own ideal within themselves.”²³

Communists are defined by our faith in a dream. Our dream is life, liberated from the shackles imposed on it by nature. Our mission is to materialize this dream, and this can only be accomplished through the struggle against the conditions which shackle us. Our mission is war, war waged in the name of peace, freedom, harmony, life—“holy war”, as Trotsky described it.²⁴ It is our faith which allows us to get up every morning, despite the hardships we face, and to struggle for our dream. Without our dream, we have nothing to accomplish except cold, dry analysis. Without our faith, we have no means by which to make our dream come true.

Conclusion

The liberals have proven themselves incapable of solving the crises that face us today, from climate change to COVID-19. On the contrary, they more often than not exacerbate the crises, due to the anarchic nature of the market and the antisocial profit drive to which they are enslaved. The only way out is to mobilize for war, and the only way to accomplish this is by breaking with the liberals, those suicidal maniacs who would sooner drive us into extinction than cut into their profits. Only the workers, impelled by their faith in the communist future, can deliver humanity from the death spiral to which the liberals have condemned us. 

Neither can the illiberal right deliver us from our impending extinction. While they may succeed in subordinating the profit drive to the needs of “the nation” or “the family”, they cannot resolve the fundamental crisis which is leading us to the slaughter. That would require overcoming capital entirely, and this is not something that they are willing to do. In our fight against liberalism, we must steadfastly refuse to cede ground to the right. Given the chance, they would destroy us without a second thought. We must show them the same treatment.²⁵  

What is necessary to deal with the crisis is a fully international response. The peoples of the world must unite in action, and this is not a step that the bourgeoisie is able to take. They are impelled by the logic of capital to pursue national, imperial interests. We must break with the bourgeoisie to build international solidarity, and respond as a species to our impending doom. 

Liberalism offers us freedom in death. The right offers us bondage in life. Communism offers us salvation and godhood. 

Let us unite, workers, across the world! Let us mobilize for war! Let us go to battle against the virus, against the climate crisis, against the anarchy of the market! Let us decapitate capital, defeat decay, and destroy death! 

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1. Apoc. 8:7-11 (KJV).
2. Interview for Woman’s Own.
3. See Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History (London: Verso, 2011); and Mike Macnair, Individual liberty and class power.
4. Apoc. 20:12-15 (KJV)
5. Maximilien Robespierre, Virtue and Terror (London: Verso, 2017), 151.
6. ohn Keep, ed. and trans., The Debate on Soviet Power: Minutes of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets; Second Convocation, October 1917-January 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 98.
7. Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (London: Verso, 2007), 54.
8. Vladimir Mayakovsky, Komsomol Song
9. Quoted in Nina Tumarkin, “Religion, Bolshevism, and the Origins of the Lenin Cult,” The Russian Review 40, no. 1 (January 1981): 45.
10. Amadeo Bordiga, In Janitzio Death is not Scary.
11. Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, 63.
12. Rom. 8:18-24 (KJV).
13. Quoted in Tumarkin, “Origins of the Lenin Cult,” 42-3.
14. Roland Boer, “Religion and Socialism: A. V. Lunacharsky and the God-Builders,” Political Theology 15, no. 2 (March 2014): 194.
15. Leon Trotsky, “On Optimism and Pessimism” (1901).
16. Leon Trotsky, “Testament” (1940).
17. Quoted in Boer, “Religion and Socialism,” 194.
18. Quoted in Roland Boer, Lenin, Religion, and Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 74.
19. Boer, “Religion and Socialism,” 193, and passim.
20. Quoted in Boer, “Religion and Socialism,” 194.
21. Ibid,
22. Quoted in Boer, Lenin, Religion, and Theology, 100.
23. Quoted in Boer, “Religion and Socialism,” 196.
24. Keep, Debate on Soviet Power, 188.
25. For more on this, see my and Debs Bruno’s recent article, The End of the End of History: COVID-19 and 21st Century Fascism.