In the past few days, Sweet Dreams of Marxist Unity, a polemic by Dani Lotand directed at the Marxist Unity Group,1 has been circulating among communists on social media. I’m sympathetic to the idea of a left critique of MUG, but Lotand’s thesis comes close to a rejection of clear politics completely, exhibiting issues that communists will need to overcome if we aim to develop a strategy fit for revolution.
Lotand critiques MUG with a close reading of their program, arguing that MUG have crafted a narrative of revolution detached from the reality of class struggle in the United States, essentially reading a democratic mandate for communism onto the masses where there is none. While I am not convinced of MUG’s entire program and narrative of revolution, Lotand’s argument seems to be in bad faith—by not giving an extensive critique, and by offering so little as an alternative, this criticism is a bad start to an important conversation.
If the issue Lotand raises was of MUG’s branding and aesthetics, then I would be more or less in agreement. Despite sharing some of their influences, I do find their aesthetic alienating and think it drives away some of their potential audience. MUG leans very heavily on the imagery of the Second International, and at their worst their writing can sound like an old German-to-English translation rather than the work of contemporary American communists.
Lotand, however, seems to be trying to elevate this aesthetic critique into a political one without really justifying or explaining their position. One could make the case that MUG’s reliance on the lexicon of revolutionary social democracy is a symptom of a deeper political issue, but Lotand never really articulates what this issue is, instead arguing for a substitution of social democratic branding with terminology drawn from the Third International and Maoism. In the last paragraphs of the polemic, Lotand begins to tease out an argument that one of MUG’s failings is taking democracy for granted as an inherent moral and strategic good, arguing that “it is as simple as saying that democracy, the property that makes a particular political arrangement good, will deliver the various institutions the Unitarians have realized are good, by dint of its being good.” I don’t entirely agree with this interpretation of MUG’s program—slogans like “winning the battle for democracy” imply to me that MUG believes both in the need for democracy to measure a popular mandate in the first place, and in active agitation and education by communists to create such a mandate. No part of the process is predestined, and certainly no part of it is already here, MUG’s point is more-so that democracy is necessary for the majority to govern, and that communism requires the governance of the working-class majority.
However, instead of making an argument for the limitations of democracy or a counter-argument for another form, Lotand substitutes the taken-for-granted good of democracy with the taken-for-granted good of communism, rejecting “social democratic coattails” for “communism.” Lotand does not articulate an alternative strategy for achieving communism, other than to state that communists are not “content to dream,” leaving the reader to intuit that, for some reason, MUG are content to dream. The only evidence provided is that the author disagrees with the plausibility of MUG’s strategy.
None of this is to say that a critique of MUG from the left wouldn’t be worthwhile. Personally—though this is outside the scope of this letter—I feel skeptical of their commitment to the DSA, their relative softness on the undemocratic structure of the House of Representatives, and the underdevelopment of their vision for merger with the workers movement and mass struggles like the George Floyd uprising.2 It may be useful for both MUG and undecided bystanders watching this debate to hear such a critique. But Lotand never seems to offer one, except that there have been historical limitations to certain aspects of MUG’s proposed strategy in other contexts.
At one point they repeat that “there is not currently a democratic mandate for communism. There is no reason to think this would change were the leading American social democratic pressure group to embrace a litany of proposals to attempt necromancy on the Second International, which it is also not inclined to do. There is no reason to think that were the DSA to make like the PCF that the DSA would find itself on the verge of rewriting the Constitution in the image of a ‘democratic socialist republic.’ There is no reason to think that the Unitarians’ Pure Democracy, commodity production with Marxist values and republican virtues, would find itself oriented towards bringing about communism.” While this is a fine position to hold, it does not engage with the actual reasons the theorists surrounding MUG have offered for why their strategy is plausible, negating them on the basis that their strategy would be wrong if it had no reasoning, rather than arguing against their reasoning itself
MUG’s strategy is based on a fidelity to a specific historical interpretation not just of the failed European revolutions of the 20th century, but of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, citing historical work by Lars Lih and August Nimtz on the role of democracy in Bolshevism, filtered through the experience of mass anti-constitutionalist and anti-colonial movements on the imperial periphery and the failure of communist party-building in the United States, though the latter two unfortunately receive less emphasis in MUG’s official documents than in their core cadre’s individual writing. One can disagree with their narrative of Bolshevism, but to do so you would have to engage with it, which Lotand does not. Left critics have to either grapple with this version of history using equal rigor to Lih and Nimtz, or provide an alternative strategy that goes beyond the limitations of Bolshevism. Lotand does neither, only offering the slogan of communism. This begs the question—if communists are not content to dream, what are we doing instead?
As communists, we have a responsibility to engage with rigor, precision and good faith, providing clear evidence and reason for our interventions. This is not just for the sake of propriety or the benefit of MUG, but for the strength and clarity of the entire movement. While Lotand teases out some issues with MUG’s program, they ultimately fall short of a constructive polemic.
With love,
Marisa Miale (with gratitude to Jean Allen and Renato Flores)
- A newly-announced faction of the Democratic Socialists of America associated with Cosmonaut, with their founding statement available here.
- For critiques from within Cosmonaut addressing the first and second points, respectively, I would recommend What is Stopping the DSA and On Constitutionalism by Renato Flores. On the third point, I would recommend Amelia Davenport’s Organizing for Power, my article The Worker and The Hydra, and again Flores’s What is Stopping the DSA.