A-Infos (en) Australia, Arc Up! - Why we stand with people, not states (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Why do parts of the left butt heads on Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine and 
most recently Iran? Some leftists are supportive of resistance against 
both state oppression and imperialism. Others come out in vocal support 
of state bureaucrats and their right to repress protests, conflating all 
local resistance with the activity of the CIA or Mossad. For the latter, 
the implication is that people in these countries and in the diaspora 
can have no credible grievances-at least not grievances that can be 
resolved while dominant imperialist interests pursue agendas in those 
countries. How do we understand why parts of the left see these nation 
states as a part of the resistance to global capitalism? And how does it 
point to antagonistic strategies pursued by different parts of the left 
today?

On internationalism
Anarchist Communists, like many Marxists, believe that workers hold the 
power to enact systemic change. Once upon a time, workers in 'Australia' 
were protected by financial regulations and tariffs that prevented 
capitalists from moving production overseas to undermine wage disputes. 
This allowed workers to bargain for higher pay without risking losing 
their jobs entirely. Since capitalists deregulated finance, capital now 
moves more freely around the world, ending the days of protectionist 
unionism that could afford only to worry about national workers interests.

As the Anarchist Communist Federation explains in their article 
outlining the Anarchist position on internationalism: "Production chains 
are globalised to the point where a product as simple as a frozen meal 
may cross several borders before it's sold. Beans from Egypt, spices 
from Türkiye, and meat from Australia are cooked in factories in 
England, packaged in plastic from China, and sold in a supermarket in 
Ireland."

To account for globalised capitalism, any workers movement must be 
global as well. This means adopting an internationalist orientation to 
struggle, that seeks to coordinate strikes or bans at economic 
chokepoints across continents to realise demands. For example, to end 
Israel's genocide in Palestine, workers internationally would need to 
execute a labour boycott to halt all possible supplies Israel requires 
to commit genocide. An international workers movement would also ensure 
the lack of strong unions in one context can't be used against workers 
in other contexts. In an imperialist world, where capitalists operate 
globally, we too must coordinate workers activity globally to create the 
leverage we need to win.

Understanding Campism
There are some on the left that propose a path diametrically opposed to 
internationalism-a project of state-building. To understand what this is 
about, we have to look at where this strategy arose in history, and what 
it entails. After the 1918 German Revolution failed and left the Russian 
Revolution isolated, the strategy of the USSR leadership pivoted from 
internationalism to a project of building 'socialism in one country'. 
This meant the Russian state moved to operate capitalism, seeking trade 
and military support with other allied states. In other words, not 
socialism at all. Under Stalin's control, the USSR would attempt to 
build an 'anti-imperialist' camp of allied nations that could rival 
dominant imperialist powers like Britain, France, the US, and 
Japan-forces that might destabilise the USSR. Hence the term 'campist'.

This strategy wasn't considered seriously before that historical moment. 
To survive their isolation, many felt that the Russians had chosen to 
abandon the revolutionary goals of communism altogether. While campists 
prefer to be called 'Marxist-Leninists', some on the left contest that 
moniker. Though Stalin took cues from Lenin's work 'Imperialism, the 
highest stage of capitalism', some maintain that Lenin's position was 
that workers movements must collaborate globally to fight imperialism, 
not that states should form permanent power blocs and operate capitalism 
until they can eventually muster the military might to defeat dominant 
imperialists. If the German revolution hadn't been a near miss, we might 
live in a timeline where this strategy never existed.

With control of the USSR, Stalin set out to industrialise Russia, open 
the markets to international trade, and buckle down to survive economic 
sanctions imposed by America and its allies. He would offer conditional 
support to the governments of Mongolia, China and Eastern Europe, though 
Stalin always sought subservience to his leadership. As the torch-bearer 
of world 'socialism', Stalin brought the world's communist organisations 
under his directive through the Communist International (Comintern). 
From the top-down, Stalin enforced obedience to Moscow over local 
realities and needs of the working class around the world. From the 
early days of the Communist Party of Australia, their members would take 
action influenced by USSR directives, as well as having their party 
reorganised and leadership groomed by the USSR. When Moscow sneezed, 
communists in the West really did blow their noses.

Workers Power?
For 'socialism in one country' to be successful, workers power simply 
couldn't exist. Except of course in the rhetoric of state bureaucrats 
and from the obedient mouthpieces of world Communist Parties. Stalin's 
five-year plan to industrialise Russia led to worker coercion, wage 
suppression, forced labour, criminalisation of strikes and absenteeism. 
Worker opposition was labelled counter-revolutionary, and trade unions 
became tools of labour discipline not workers power. All Stalin 
established was that a nation state can survive times of economic 
isolation and industrialise. But this cost the complete political 
agency, and in the case of purges and invasions, the lives of large 
numbers of Russian and Polish working classes, as well as other regional 
and ethnic groups.

Similar to Stalin, Mao's project of industrialisation required the 
decimation of the Chinese working/peasant class. To build the power of 
the nation to survive economic isolation, they needed exports to 
survive. While peasants starved, they were denied the grain they grew, 
leading to a catastrophic famine and tens of millions of deaths. People 
working long hours coupled with poor nutrition made hard labour and 
production quotas deadly. 'Struggle sessions' were framed as forums for 
self-criticism, but led to public humiliation, beatings and murders. 
Moreover, the CCP leadership authorised the 1950-51 "peaceful 
liberation" of Tibet, and a "punitive expedition" to invade Vietnam in 1979.

In 1960, the USSR allied with Fidel Castro, who submitted the Cuban 
working class to a similar project of hyper-exploitation in the name of 
economic development. In this case, the 'ten million ton harvest' of 
sugar cane for export. The anarchists that were a dominant force in the 
workers movement before Castro took power were cast out, exiled, 
imprisoned or killed with other dissident workers as the unions came 
under state control. The claim that nearly all workers were unionised 
was a neat piece of rhetoric, repeated by Communist Parties worldwide to 
signal a healthy workers' democracy in Cuba. In practice, however, the 
unions functioned as sites of control and subjugation, facilitating the 
rapid socialisation process undertaken by campist leaders. Castro also 
personally sent Cuban troops to Angola in 1975, and there is evidence of 
Cuban involvement in the 1977 Angolan MPLA purge with death counts 
ranging from 15,000 to 90,000 of mainly poor, Black Angolans.

The violence, domination and tyranny under these states was bad enough 
for the reputation of communism around the world. But the dishonesty, 
denial and selective focus of propaganda coming out of the international 
left cost communism yet more credibility amongst the working class 
internationally. When Stalin's purges were broadcast by his inner circle 
in 1956, it resulted in mass exoduses from communist parties around the 
world. The Soviet mode of organising was so mistrusted that it 
contributed to creating a new era of the left, not only of 
anti-communism but anti-organisationalism as a whole. An era we're 
arguably still living through, and an era that can't be undone with more 
vicious lies, denial and narrative control. The cruel legacy of campism 
cannot be put back in the bag, it can only be abandoned wholesale.

The role of propaganda
While the original purpose of the Comintern was to coordinate 
international communist activity toward a global working class 
revolution, its role was reduced to being a mouthpiece for repeating 
USSR propaganda. Organisations that deviated were disciplined. Communist 
Parties were given directives to justify Stalin's purges, deny famines, 
explain away show trials, attack critics and dissidents as imperialist 
agents or fascists. When Stalin invaded eastern Poland, it was to be 
propagandised as a defensive necessity and a 'march of liberation'.

Even in the face of undeniable violence and death, communists were 
taught to set aside Stalin's actions, because weakening the USSR would 
only help its enemies. This included Nazi Germany until Stalin allied 
with Hitler in 1939, leading to communist parties defending Stalin's 
allyship with Hitler as strategically necessary to protect the socialist 
project. As you might imagine, the move to ally with the Nazis was a 
hard sell for the parties actively involved in campaigning against 
fascism at the time. After Stalin's pact with Hitler ended, and the USSR 
entered World War II, the Communist Party of Australia supported 
increased industrial output for war and adopted a no-strike policy. 
Stalinist union officials accused members striking of 'helping Hitler'.

The USSR's repression of the Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution in 
1936, and its later crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution with tanks 
(hence 'tankie'), resounded internationally. To principled communists, 
it demonstrated that independent working-class uprisings had no place 
within a campist reality. It was subservience to the singular world 
leader of communism, or it was death. This could not have been more of a 
departure from communist ideals and strategy. Yet there were still 
Communist Parties defending and sanitising these actions, which resulted 
in more and more revolutionaries hanging up their party membership and 
abandoning hope in communism altogether.

While Mao didn't enforce his political line quite like Stalin did, it 
was treated as gospel by eager authoritarian communists toeing the 
Beijing line. These communists dutifully blamed deaths under the party 
on natural disasters like floods, droughts or bad weather. While grain 
was forcibly requisitioned during periods of starvation, any talk of 
famine was labelled 'anti-socialist'. When information couldn't be 
denied, some would claim that Mao didn't intend for people to starve, or 
that his party withheld information from him.

The Cuban anarchist exiles also endured a protracted and deep-pocketed 
propaganda/smear campaign established with USSR support and training. 
This was to discredit the working-class militants not loyal to the 
party. Frank Fernandez outlined much of the brutality under Castro in 
his book. He speaks about how strikes were crushed, leaders jailed, 
deported or killed. Even Anarchist groups like the FAU in Uruguay 
supported the Cuban government as it was exiling and disappearing 
anarchists due to its successful propaganda campaign. But even the most 
well-crafted campist propaganda campaigns are a bubble doomed to burst 
with survivor testimonies and documentation, demonstrating another 
element of the folly and futility of authoritarianism and the campist 
strategy.

The US has supported anti-communist governments, proxy conflicts and 
engaged in covert CIA operations and direct wars to stave off the spread 
of 'communism'. Related anti-communist propaganda has been prolific in 
its fabrications. Cuban biological weapons threats, Chinese mind-control 
techniques, overblown USSR missile numbers, to name a few. Unfortunately 
for the campists, their legacy of violence speaks independently of US 
attempts at counter-insurgency. They have historically viewed the denial 
of their own violence and strategic missteps as crucially important in 
fighting imperialism. While the US hate is justified, continuing the 
Cold War tradition of deflecting all responsibility just obscures the 
flaws in the campist strategy-that the working class, and its economic 
leverage, is expendable, while capitalist states are not.

Campism today
While avoiding criticism of non-western states typically remains in 
service of not manufacturing consent for the US to invade, what's 
missing is a convincing analysis of whether the current US 
administration is engaging in the same processes of manufacturing 
consent as in the Bush era or during the Cold War. The left today has no 
meaningful sway over the stance of the global working class that would 
make Australia or the US take pause at all. We have no real power in the 
unions, even the political parties created to represent working-class 
interests are indistinguishable from the far-right parties today. The 
power the left has to green light invasion appears vastly overstated.

At the very least, policing small left-wing group articles/social media 
posts in 'Australia' and elsewhere seems unlikely to have been the 
difference between Trump invading Iran or not. But if this logic was 
applied in reverse, are campists manufacturing consent for the Iranian 
military to mow down protestors when they insist grievances are raised 
not by Iranian people but solely Mossad or CIA agents? 'Colour 
revolutions' are easier to carry out when the working class has 
widespread grievances already. Brutal governments just make 
destabilisation easier-to blame Iranian protestors for their own fate is 
beyond putrid.

Campists will often beat around the bush, talking about how serious they 
are, how they're not idealists or liberals like the rest of the left. 
They will cite the horrors of a world under the totalising control of US 
interests, but in their fervour they fail to put forth a strategy truly 
capable of preventing this. Instead their strategy relies on huge 
sections of the working class living and dying under authoritarian 
states as a defense against imperialist encroachment. If the working 
class revolts in a way they don't like, they'll get to work sanitising 
state violence and ignoring statements by working class organisations on 
the ground. But to what end, besides gaining the mistrust and supporting 
the decimation of the same working-class communities that must be 
organised to shut down economic chokepoints against imperialists? Peel 
back the rhetoric and PR-speak and a rotten strategy reveals itself.

Campism is unprincipled
Campists today are either too lost in the sauce to realise their radical 
culture is based on lying for dictators, or they realise that they are 
lying and they've justified why it's important. Either way, this 
behaviour should've been left in the Cold War. It is not the behaviour 
of principled revolutionaries pursuing a strategy capable of convincing 
the masses to adopt communist ideas.

Even if we were to concede that now isn't the time to critique 
executives of countries being invaded by the US, surely it's 
counter-productive to talk about the 'sovereignty' of fascist leadership 
or to deflect testimonies about state violence and executions with 
whataboutisms and strawman arguments. The campists of yesterday caused 
irreparable damage to the prospects of world communism, but their heroes 
were at least draped in red. Today's campists are left to defend Assad 
or the Iranian state that engaged in the mass executions of communists 
and trade unionists. If these are the players on your 'team', you might 
want to revisit the rules of the game.

A basic analysis of capitalism demonstrates that there would be no 
shortage of ruthless imperialists to fill any void left by the defeat of 
US imperialism. Just look at the imperialist legacies of some of the 
campist leaders. The fact campists spend so much time justifying why 
Russia invading Ukraine isn't imperialism, or how China has no 
imperialist/neocolonial aims in Africa says so much about their 
ideology. What a cruel fate to have to defend and bend reality to run PR 
for capitalist nation states that clearly don't share your goal of world 
communism.

While the US ruling class are rabid imperialists that must be smashed, 
and while we maintain a revolutionary defeatist position regarding our 
own government's imperialist endeavors, it should go without saying that 
imperialism will never be defeated with a strategy that preserves and 
strengthens capitalist modes of production and suppresses working-class 
resistance wherever it shows up. After the Sino-Soviet split, the 
dissolution of the USSR, an undeniable legacy of violence, invasion, and 
mass exoduses from communist parties worldwide, for campists to still 
act like they are the sole defenders of world socialism is as pathetic 
as it is mistaken.

Internationalism is the only answer
For Anarchists and other revolutionaries interested in building an 
international workers movement capable of smashing global capitalism, 
we'd first need to accept that other peoples' struggles actually exist 
and aren't reducible to CIA operations. Critically, an international 
workers movement capable of defending against imperialism will not be 
built by systematically destroying independent workers organisations 
around the world, for the purpose of building the power of capitalist 
states run by a handful of bureaucrats seeking self-preservation. 
Similarly, expecting that sections of the global working class would 
take one for the team and tolerate violent dictatorships, either 
'communist' or fascist, for some poorly conceived promise of a future 
world should be discarded as a literal impossibility.

For internationalists, of Marxist and Anarchist varieties, the axis of 
resistance cannot be capitalist, fascist or theocratic states, and for 
Anarchists, it can't be the state at all. Resistance and power to fight 
imperialism is born of the free organisation of working and oppressed 
peoples. If we want to resist capitalist exploitation, imperialist 
intervention or clerical fascism, workers need to be empowered, highly 
organised, in control of their unions and able to coordinate action 
internationally. This is the program of Anarchist Communists today. 
Enabling, justifying, ignoring, erasing or carrying out the oppression 
of the working class anywhere takes us down a road directly opposed to 
this goal. While campists may call us CIA operatives or idealists, the 
true counter-revolutionaries and idealists are those that believe the 
decimation of the working class could ever give way to a communist future.

Arc Up welcomes all those who are questioning campist ideas to explore 
alternatives in our education series on class struggle anarchism. Click 
here to sign up. https://arcup.org/join/

https://arcup.org/blog/2026/03/17/campism
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