For a Free and Socialist Dixieland and the World Revolution
Only a few years ago, there was nothing like a significant body of true democratic socialists in the South. There was indeed a sizable number of well-meaning self-misidentified “democratic socialists", of proponents of welfare capitalism who had been involved or aligned with the 2016 presidential campaign of the world’s most famous faux democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, and had themselves come to identify as “democratic socialists", but there was little more than that. True democratic socialists were, outside of humanities department faculties and a few metropolitan areas, very few and far between.
And then, with the worldwide surge of interest in socialism and leftward broadening of the popular Overton Window at the end of the decade (something which lagged slightly behind the popular broadening of the popular Overton Window into overt bigotry in the middle of the decade), something happened. For the first time in generations, small, but significant numbers of young Southerners, including a sizeable minority of the aforementioned self-misidentified “democratic socialists”, began to read the socialist greats, develop materialist perspectives of history, and embrace actual democratic socialism. Thousands came to recognize that our home’s ancient problems could only be addressed by a serious international democratic socialist movement, locally led by its greater working class. Dozens of democratic socialist groups with immediate and maximalist programs sprung up across Dixie. Numerous democratic socialist podcasts and meme pages with explicitly Southern foci were launched.
But while most of these new organizers and activists have a vague conception of the South’s status as a backwater of the “Developed World" and understand the need for a democratic socialist movement of the Southern people capable of taking on the specific problems Capital presents here and hitting Capital’s vulnerabilities here, with few exceptions, neither these organizers and activists, nor democratic socialist organizers and activists outside the South, have yet developed a thorough understanding of the situation here and its significance to humanity at large- Most of them have yet to develop a thorough understanding of what we are faced with, the South’s position in the world, or what the Southern greater working class’s duty is, what its specific crucial mission in the socialist revolution and the realization of international democratic socialism would be. They all understand the need to win over the majority of the Southern people under Capital’s lash, but as of yet, few have developed agendas, historical understandings, and sets of arguments that could, even if spoken and disseminated by an organized and disciplined movement, win over the millions of the South’s social reactionaries and otherwise non-class conscious.
Most of them have yet to develop theses demonstrating international socialism as something that can help Dixielanders as Dixielanders. Most of them have yet to fully appreciate the importance of socialist patriotism and the importance of the opportunity for non-reactionary Southern identity and expression of such identity, or the importance of an explicitly stated notion that we Southerners deserve what all others do and can and must contribute to humanity just as all other peoples can.
And while, once again, a majority of them recognize the South as some sort of economic backwater, while a majority of them see the South’s conspicuous and often extreme economic stratification and poverty, while most of them acknowledge Capital’s runaway plagues of race to the bottom economy, gentrification, displacement, cultural genocide, ecological destruction and sprawl, and imperialist cannon fodder recruitment upon the South, few of them have pieced everything together and developed a coherent understanding of the South’s unique position (contemporary Hawaii, with its statehood status and impoverished indigenous community, in some sense occupies a similar position on a much smaller scale) as an economic colony of Western Capital and historical component of the Global South fully legally incorporated into the metropole of the principal Western imperial power. Not many yet appreciate the South’s near unique position as a sort of “banana republic", complete with a native comprador bourgeoisie, directly under the insurance policy of Uncle Sam’s sovereign whip. Not many of them fully recognize that the Southern greater working class’s revolutionary duty is, in part, a national liberation struggle capable of challenging Western Capital’s most powerful tool. Not many yet fully realize that we, the people of the South, are a natural component of the vanguard of the Socialist Revolution- that we, an Atlantic Creole people and people of a Global South heritage both incorporated into the metropole of and under the sovereign whip of the American Empire, have a unique ability to challenge Capital’s legitimacy and reign.
Most of them do not yet understand the need for international democratic socialism to break out of the embryonic stage of movement building and begin to coalesce into serious and disciplined organizations, and most of them have yet to realize the general need for a coherent, independent, and unified Southern organization within the coming international of revolutionary democratic socialist parties. Most of them have yet to see that there must be formed a coherent movement organized into a party and attached labor union bloc for the bringing of the Southern greater working class to a class conscious revolutionary consensus and the completion of the work of the World Revolution in the Southern context.
A party which recognizes the South’s position in the world, revolutionary potential, and World Revolutionary duty.
A party which recognizes that the South is a nation with a Global South heritage and, like the West Indian nations and the majority of “mainland" Latin American nations, and unlike America (a Greater/Neo-European nation with a foundational industrial “free labor" and peasant proprietor heritage), an Atlantic Creole nation.
A party which recognizes the American state, Dixieland’s colonial sovereign, as Western Capital’s most powerful tool for the legitimization of its reign.
A party which recognizes the South’s struggle against Capital is a national liberation struggle. Which recognizes that the South is, at present, a colony of Western Capital at large. That recognizes our home provides a low wage, low tax, low and lax labor and ecological regulation, “right to work" environment for Western Capital- that understands our home, with its numerous sui generis attributes, is regarded and treated as perhaps the safest destination for the export of race to the bottom finance capital. That recognizes we must bring an end to this economic imperialism, this imperialism that economically ghettoizes us and uses our home as a weapon against the vestigial economic security, labor standards, and freedoms of the relatively empowered greater working classes of the world -which recognizes that the South, in its capacity as a race to the bottom destination, has been used as a weapon against the relatively empowered proletarians of the world, including those of Western Europe and America proper. A party which is not content with the South’s role as a sweatshop and the exploitation of the Southern greater working class as a tool for the depreciation of the value of the labor of other sections of the world’s greater working class, that seeks to break these toxic imperialist relations and build a post-imperialism world of global mutual aid and advancement towards economic parity.
A party which, along with opposing economic imperialism, rejects without ambiguity the alternative of national chauvinist autarkism.
A party which recognizes the need for especially close cooperation with other colonial peoples under the sovereignty of the American state- in the metropole, namely the American Indian nations under its sovereignty and the indigenous peoples of the states of Alaska and Hawaii (peoples, like us, with access to federal democratic levers), as well as the peoples of the island territories without access to such levers.
A party which recognizes the fact that the South and the other nations of Uncle Sam’s empire aside from America proper are disproportionately represented in the military forces of the empire and serve as its backbone. A party which recognizes and unapologetically stands against the targeted recruitment of impoverished Southerners and impoverished members of the other colonial nations into the military of the American State and the disproportionate garrisoning of Southern, other colonial, and American proper troops in our home and the other colonial nations.
A party which appreciates the progressive roles the American state has played at different times in earlier epochs, including its emancipation of a third of the Southern people from chattel slavery, but recognizes its present role as a reactionary one.
A party which strongly and bluntly criticizes all of the historic Capitalist regimes over the South- the Antebellum Plantocracy, the brief era of Yankee bourgeois rule commonly referred to as “Reconstruction”, brought to a close by the Yankee bourgeoisie’s abandonment of partnership with heroic freedman’s radical liberal democracy in favor of alliance and joint rule with the old Antebellum Plantocracy, Young “Redeemers”, and Gradyites, the “New South" joint rule of the Neo-Plantocracy, Gradyite industrial compradors, and Gradyite-partnering Yankee capital, or the “Sunbelt" era of today, the general reign of Western Capital and its compradors beginning in the middle of the last century- from a Marxian historical materialist perspective.
A party which recognizes all members of the Southern greater working class, irrespective of race and gender, as victims of Capital and aggressively reveals to them their common class interest. A movement that shows how working class White Southerners and working class Black Southerners, the respective “Shudras" and “Dalits" of Southern society, alike have been economically oppressed and disadvantaged by the regime of White supremacy that has kept poor Black Southerners under the heel of the boot of the local appendage of Capital, of the local appendage of "the Man", and poor White Southerners under its toe, that has only privileged the White proletarian relative to his or her Black neighbor and has kept both from class consciousness, that has kept both from banding together for radical reforms and eventual revolutionary expropriation of their oppressors and concealed the identity of the grand oppressor and enemy of all greater working class Southerners.
A party which recognizes both the necessity of the unity of the global greater working class and the expression of non-reactionary Southern identity capable of inspiring the self-emancipation of the Southern greater working class and the contribution of the Southern greater working class to the World Revolution at large. A party that works to destroy the incorrect correlation of socialism with some sort of ethnic self-flagellation or surrender to “the other” and properly addresses the absence of a revolutionary Southern pride that serves as an impediment to the embracement of democratic socialism by, and continues the embrace of racially divisive reactionary Southern symbology and pride by, large sections of the Southern greater working class.
A party which stands for humanist environmentalalism, red environmentalism, as opposed to anti-human and green primitivist environmentalism. A movement which recognizes the South’s essential role in combatting the ecological crises facing humanity at large and a movement opposed to the imperialist ecological despoiling and destruction of the South and the imperialist decimation of the South’s natural spaces from a humanist, socialist patriotic, and internationalist position.
A party which unabashedly calls out the transformation of greater working class Southern communities and Southern natural landscapes into ritzy tourist traps and literal and figurative gated communities for the Carpetbagger bourgeoisie and the Southern comprador bourgeoisie for the travesty that it is. A party which recognizes this trend and the general plague of cultural genocide against greater working classes of Dixie and the commodification and ritzification of Dixielander folk culture as intricately related phenomena and components of the imperialist exploitation of our home.
A party which is not self-righteous or arrogant, which strives toward the building of thorough class consciousness and a concomitant destruction of reactionary ideology, but does not expect those who have spent their lifetimes under capitalist cultural hegemony to instantly become thoroughly class conscious. A party which seeks to win over the non-establishment forces of ultra-reaction, recognizing their search for a just alternative to neoliberal hegemony and neoliberal reductionist identity politics, while being fully opposed to the ideology and bigotry they have developed and has been inculcated in them.
A party which loudly acknowledges that greater working class rule can only be established and socialism can only be developed through supermajoritarian class conscious greater working class seizure of state power. A party which loudly denounces Blanquism, Tankieism, and so-called “anarchism”.
A party which recognizes that socialism can only be built with honesty and intellectual integrity, a party that is fully opposed to ideological dishonesty, positing of falsehoods, “sneaking, and Trotskyist entryism.
A party which admires large elements of the February and October Revolutions, but views Leninism and the Leninist experiments of the 20th Century as Blanquist projects that were doomed to develop into despotism and fail to build economic democracy and production for use economy.
A party which recognizes that while democratic socialism in the South is for the moment an almost exclusively Gen Y and Z phenomenon, it will need to win over members of older generations and not simply write them off.
A party which opposes both veneration of the reactionaries of history and general iconoclasm.
A party which supports the formation of party group learning and study institutions for the building of class consciousness and political, historical, and environmental literacy, such as socialist night schools and discussion circles.
A party which supports the formation of party institutions for recreational activity and the study and practice of greater working class Southern folk culture.
A party which recognizes the importance of the arts and the crucial role of the arts in the democratic socialist struggle.
A party which supports the formation of scholarly party institutions for the socialist and historical materialist study of Southern history, natural history, culture, contemporary environmental reality, and contemporary economy and politics.
A party which recognizes the need for establishing, printing, and distributing a popular party publication, as well as the printing and distributing of pamphlets and posters. That recognizes the power and place of physical media.
A party which recognizes it must be able to defend itself from violent harassment, but which also recognizes that socialist revolutionary action can only be carried out by supermajoritarian consensus of the masses, and opposes Blanquist and so-called “anarchist" violence, violent harassment of state and non-state opponents, and general pre-Revolutionary violent outburst.
A party which fights for radical reforms that can raise consciousness and sense of class agency, and values the radical reforms it wins, but never shifts its primary focus away from the maximalist program of ultimate realization of production for use economy and economic democracy.
A party which considers its affiliated labor union struggle to be, and carries its affiliated labor union struggle out as, a radical reform struggle.
A party which recognizes that, with the rapid growth of capacity for automation of labor, as well as the ramping up of ultra-authoritarian state activity and the growth in automation and artificial intelligence-driven ultra-authoritarian state capabilities, we are in a race against time. A party which recognizes that Capital is proceeding towards its end game- towards a consolidation of all power and wealth into its hands and towards a devaluation of the labor of the workers and reduction of their power to challenge those who have lorded over them to nothing. A party which recognizes the need to build a class conscious consensus by the end of the decade.
A party which recognizes that to save and keep our home free in the long run, the whole of humanity must be saved and kept free by the cooperation of the whole of humanity.
A party and attached labor union bloc for the emancipation of the Southern greater working class and the completion of the work of the World Revolution within the Southern context.
In all likelihood, the South will wind up as one of two things- the world’s greatest bulwark of reaction, or one of the principal components of the vanguard of the Socialist Revolution.
Our home, with its old demons, racial divisions, and poverty, could be used by Western Capital to contain and roll back the forces of socialism across the Western World. Social tensions could be inflamed to create scenes of racial and “cultural” warfare and undermine unity of the greater working class against Capital across the world. Anti-socialist anxiety could be employed and the Southern people, White and Black alike, used as anti-revolutionary auxillaries. The South could be used as a safe redoubt of popular support for American Empire and Capital. The South could be used as a showcase for the supposed irreconcilability of racial, ethnic, and other social antagonism.
But the Southern people have an opportunity to stand at the vanguard of the World Revolution. We have an opportunity to make our civilization one of the shining revolutionary lights leading humanity and eviscerating the miseries of the past and the present.
The tragedies of our history- tragedies of Capital’s making- do not doom us. We, as Southerners, can proudly set an example. We can play a role in emancipating and saving humankind and live one of the greatest stories in human history.
Destiny is calling upon us. We have something we must realize and something we must contribute. It is time we establish a program, movement, and party for a free and socialist Dixieland capable of carrying out its world revolutionary duty.
-Strom McCallum
