It's the Production, Stupid!

What distinguishes actual devotees of Marx, including Labour Zionists, from mere ‘leftists,’ ‘democratic socialists,’ and even some (not all) ‘Western,’ or ‘Cultural’ Marxists themselves is our focus on what and how we produce - how we collaboratively construct our material lives, in ways that could, but still don’t, give expression to our real inner genius and creative autonomy. 

There is of course no real tension between such a focus, on the one hand, and devotion to carefully developed institutional design and revolutionary strategy, on the other hand. Quite the contrary: to paraphrase Kant, theory with no thought to practice is apt to be empty, and practice with no grounding in (understood!) theory is apt to be blind.

Marx of course ‘got’ this as few before or since have. Unsurpassed as a theoretician, he also did more than probably anyone to organize a materially emancipatory productive-republican movement and widely disseminate the frame of full theoretical understanding of what this entailed - including in popular presses (he was a favorite newspaper correspondent in the US) and union halls. 

The Marx of the 20th century, in turn, was of course Rosa Luxemburg. Other than Marx, no one was theoretically deeper than Rosa where the productive foundations of social relations - including, thus, culture - are concerned. Yet at the same time no one surpassed her where thinking-through and delivering on action are concerned. 

These characteristics are precisely why my closest Comrade and I tend to admire Rosa and Karl above others - even though not, of course, without admiring much in many others as well - including in particular Moses Hess, Nahum Sirkin, Ber Borochov, Golda Meier, and the pioneers of the kibbutz movement - in effect the prophets of the 'Startup Nation' that Israel is celebrated as today.

Sad to say, I used to think we had countless compatriots here on the (now clearly nominal) ‘left’ who ‘got’ all of this too. 

For a brief decade till recently, I as an old-school Labour Zionist and Karl and Rosa devotee was thus able to feel legitimately hopeful and even enthusiastic about some political leaders. For it seemed that after howling unheard for years I was now gaining ears of some people ‘in power.’ 

The Accountable Capitalism Act I helped put together for Warren in 2018, the Corporate Democracy Act I did for Bernie in 2019, and the Green New Deal Resolution (GND) and then Finance Plan for AOC in 2018-19 were all about this. They were ENTIRELY about at last putting in place better modes of, and bearing better fruits through, actual productive activity. 

 ‘identity politics’ and ‘intersectionality’ obsessions - Lenin’s ‘infantile disorder’ - went into remission during this time. We were able to talk more about what we would make and how we would make it than about who owed whom what based on who once did whom how. And we worked accordingly.

When Biden took office, this continued for a bit. ‘Build Back Better’ was in large measure simply a superior rebranding of the GND, now rendered more politically feasible by Biden’s past ‘centrist’ status. The foregrounding of ‘building’ was especially welcome - production placed ‘front and center.’ 

But Biden seemed to die in late 2022 - his breaking the railworkers’ strike was the end for me - and my erstwhile colleagues and self-styled ‘progressives’ AOC, Bernie, Warren and others, who supported the railway decision, all seem to have degenerated since then back into mere ‘liberal’ identitarians incapable of so much as even thinking about production. Especially since October 7 of 2023.

Their top two ‘causes’ now are in this sense entirely fitting and emblematic. 

One of those ‘causes’ is simply ‘taxing the rich,’ with little, when any, talk of what end this means is to serve, thereby inviting the thought that punishment of some sort is the end itself. 

The other ‘cause’ is simply to sh-t on the single most progressive, forward-looking, creative and productive society on earth - yep, the selfsame 'sartup nation' mentioned above, Israel - on the putative behalf of the single most narcissistically regressive, bigotedly backward-looking, indolent, and destructive. 

Few things could ‘suck’ more than this. The cherry on top, I suppose, is that today’s self-styled American ‘conservatives’ seem to be no more about conserving anything than these ‘progressives’ seem to be about progressing anywhere. 

It’s all backward religion and useful idiocy on ‘both sides’ now.