One way anti-imperialist working-class leftists in the U.S. can begin to rid themselves of the foundation-subsidized middle-class folks who are responsible for the political ineffectivenes of the U.S. left is to demand that the grant-hustlers either rely solely on individual donations of less than $200 to fund their left activist work or stop speaking in the name of anti-imperialist U.S. working-class people.

The acceptance of (as Eugene Debs described the philanthropic money given by Andrew Carnegie to build libraries) “blood money” by U.S. left managers from foundations was seen as unethical by most U.S. left activists prior to the 1980s. So it’s not inevitable that people in the United States who want to see radical anti-imperialist change have to passively accept being led by folks who see nothing morally and politically contradictory about groups that claim to be against the U.S. Establishment accepting money from either their “socially progressive” corporations or their tax-dodging foundations.

Regarding the “self-censorship” induced by acceptance of foundation grants, I think the main issue is that the U.S. left grant recipients block information about the significant historical impact on politics in all countries that foundations like the Ford Foundation have had and still have from reaching their grassroots left audiences, for fear of offending their foundation sponsors (much the same way corporate media workers block uncomplimentary information about their advertisers from reaching their audiences). Consequently, the vast majority of U.S. anti-war activists and protesters that tune in to the various foundation-sponsored left media outlets still have little consciousness as to how much special influence foundations like the Ford Foundation still have on world historical developments.

For more info about the role that foundation funding plays in the U.S. left subculture, you might want to check out the leftgatekeepers site at the following link:

http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/

We had 8 (eight!) labor strikes in 2007 with the total of 1200 striking workers. And all of them were HUNGER STRIKES - the most shameful form imaginable. And this is the least of our problems with the imperialist labor movement and Western leftists. Thanks to the last, the Russian Left today is just as vague and deceptive a word as it is in the West. What happened is that together with all other wonders of monopoly capitalism, like sex shops, Derrida, MTV, hired killers, Hannah Arendt, pulp fiction, Holliwood marriages and the like, we have been awash with the full assortment of “left” wares — the old wives’ tales of the “New Left”, Stalinophobia, anti-Sovietism, the left brands of Russophobia (usually maskerading as struggle against Russia imperialism, the London Left is especially keen on that, anti-Slavophilisn , and even anti-PanSlavism), the ATTAK and the “human rights” crowds, the Swedish anarchists types, the Internet revolutionaries from the Netherlands, the entire gamut of “Western Marxism” theories, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, financed by the revolutionary German Governments of Kohl et al., — in short by all the riches of the Western Left, accumulated over the last seventy years of reaction, class compromise, “entryism” and outright whoring. And all this garbage was dumped on us precisely at the moment when the post-Soviet middle-class youth was most vulnerable to everything Western and eager to swallow all this exotic rague, wrapped in nice, 100% world-revolutionary colored wrappings. Man, we have “Trotskyists” who preach that the occupation of Russia by NATO will be a “progressive” and highly welcomed event. We have “internationally known leaders of the Russian Left” who have openly associated themselves with Western TNCs, Western intelligence agencies and their agents of influence. I mean we are fucked up. We don’t want no Zuneses to tell us what is “progressive” and what is not. We don’t need left SOBs from London, helping Ukrainian security services to create the Banderovite Left. We are fed up with French trotskyists who infiltrate into the international labor movement Atlantist agents of influence from Ukraine. That’s why the only thing we ask people like Gowans in the West — expose the whores who in left disguise and under the cover of Western foundations and NGOs subvert our countries and corrupt our leftists on the dough of their imperial masters. Just do what comrade Michael Parenti does. Under the circumstances you cannot make any difference in the belly of the beast, but at least you can expose its left boot.

I agree with this point.

I believe that the Western Left–despite its radical posturing and progressive veneer–is an imperialist Left in the final analysis.

This is ultimately because they are citizens of the imperial center, as opposed to the periphery.

And the Western Left’s politics reflect its relatively privileged position in this global hierarchy.

This also brings up an issue that you rarely hear addressed by the Western imperialist Left: Labor imperialism/Labor aristocracy.

The working class in the imperial center–while subordinate to their own ruling class–is comparatively privileged compared to the workers of the developing world or periphery.

This working class has been traditionally bought off with a cut of the superprofits exploited from the periphery by the West.

As such, they comprise a Labor imperialist class/aristocracy. And their politics, worldview, and values are powerfully shaped according to this global socio-economic status.

This is not to say that specific Western groups or movements can’t break from this ideological matrix, however.

Steve: On the contrary, I said their view of what the left’s strategy and goals ought to be coincide. That’s hardly the same as saying their interests coincide.

Social democrats think social democracy is the right strategy and goal for the left. If there’s going to be a left opposition, capitalists would rather it be social democratic, or the kind of left that foundations promote: fragmented and focused on single-issues and identity politics. Agreeing on what a good strategy for the left is (but for different reasons) doesn’t mean that capitalists and social democrats think their interests are the same, and certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve said they’re the same.

Zorin: “Only bad-tempered and morally suspect individuals can accuse Zunes and his ilk in them wishing to help the imperialists.”

Steve: Your view seems to be that there is no false consciousness; that everyone is aware of belonging to a class and what their class’s common interests are, and that what some would call false consciousness is actually dishonesty and corruption.

Zorin: “To put it briefly: There is such thing as “progressive imperialism” and the imperialist left.”

Steve: Who said there was no such thing? You might recall that I wrote of “foundation-connected progressives as pro-imperialist, not in intentions but in its effects.”

Zorin: “Let me quote you: Zunes is saying what he would have said all along, even if he hadn’t forged foundation ties. That Zunes has found a community of interest with Ackerman, who is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of Freedom House, simply reveals how mildly left Zunes’ views really are.”

Isn’t it just the other way of saying that Freedom House … and the CFR of the Rockefellers is a “mildly left” organization?”

Steve: No. It’s a way of saying (a) the CFR and Freedom House are not leftwing and (b) the reality that Zunes can find himself at home with someone connected to these two organizations shows how mildly left he is. While he presents himself, at times, as vaguely radical, his politics are liberal (i.e., mildly left.)

Zorin: “After reading you first two articles I thought the point was to draw the dividing line between the left boot of imperialism and the antiimperialist left. I thought the issue was to politically and morally expose and condemn those pretending to be anti-imperialist’s instead actually working for them. Was I wrong?”

Steve: There were only two articles? I thought there were more, and that everyone was getting pretty sick of them. But no, you weren’t wrong. The point of the current article was to go beyond the previous ones to explore how the left boot of imperialism comes to play the dominant role in the proletarian camp. You can say they’ve been bribed, if you wish, but you can also say there are pro-imperialist leftists who don’t need to be bribed. Zunes may be among them, or he may not be. But I can be pretty sure there are some who don’t need to be bribed who are ready to take Zunes place should he ever decide to step down. Where there’s one cockroach, there will always be more, especially where someone is establishing the conditions for them to thrive. You say, “To rule ideologically over the hearts and minds of the working class, capitalists buy the services of those intellectuals who sell the right stuff.” I agree. But many intellectuals who sell the right stuff happen to believe it’s the right stuff.

Zorin: “You describe Zunes et al doing “humanitarian but conservative tasks” — another feat of “nebulous” language and politics.”

Steve: I don’t believe I described Zunes specifically as doing humanitarian tasks, but it is certainly true that many foundation-funded NGOs do humanitarian tasks. It was to NGOs generally that I was referring.

Zorin: “To rule ideologically over the hearts and minds of the working class, capitalists buy the services of those intellectuals who sell the right stuff. To challenge the ruling ideology, “the left” should not put any blame on these intellectuals who just honestly and “incorruptibly” sell their wares.”

Steve: When you have a cold do you put the blame on your runny nose?

Zorin: “Don’t touch Zunes, destroy the system!”

Steve: Who said don’t touch Zunes? If I said the blame for your cold is a virus, does that equate to: “Don’t blow your nose”?

Zorin: “Is there such a thing as a system without men?”

Steve: No. But you seem to think there’s such a thing as men without a system.

“Unless Zoran has a clear alternative political programme for the working class, this sounds to me like a counsel of despair.”

Zorin does not have such a programme. Nor do I think such a program can exit at all. If only because there is no such thing in history as “the working class” pure and simple. There is an imperialist working class, there is a neocolonial working class, there is Canadian working class, Polish, Russian and so on. I am not a charlatan to offer programs for the working class that exists only in the imagination of a proudly independent Western individual of leftist persuasions whatever this might mean. But when I feel a rat I call it a rat.

You write:

The thesis was simple: Foundations channel money to the moderate left (the despicable pro-imperialist legions, in your terms) to overshadow “the principled and militant” voices.

Zorin: 1) Actually, your article does not say that this is the main or even a conscious goal of foundations. Rather this is a byproduct of the complicity between the bourgeoisie and what you call “leftists” and “progressives.” You claim that the interests of U.S. capitalists, represented by their foundations, and the interest of U.S. “leftists” and “progressives” like Zunes somehow–and nothing short of a miracle, I must add–coincide. In other words, both parties act in good faith. Only bad-tempered and morally suspect individuals can accuse Zunes and his ilk in them wishing to help the imperialists. As if Zunes’s subjective intentions was the gist of the matter. You see, your whole argument is twisted from the very beginning as well as your your language. Just compare it with your first two articles on Zunes. What a striking contrast! Now, would you agree with this proposition? Since some of the intentions or goals of Western “progressives” and Western imperialists coincide to the degree that they band together in “foundations” this is possible only because Western imperialism has a progressive side to it. By the same logic another proposition seems to be no less valid, namely: Since some of the intentions or goals of Western “progressives” and Western imperialists coincide to the degree that they band together in “foundations” this is possible only because Western “progressives” and “leftists” have an imperialist side to them. To put it briefly: There is such thing as “progressive imperialism” and the imperialist left. And why not? Aren’t “the left” and “the right” traditional categories of bourgeois politics, beginning with the French Revolution? Why can’t be then an imperialist left? Isn’t Obama a typical right-wing representative of the imperialist left, with US anarchists, defending Tibet theocracy and helping the West to subvert Mugabe, constituting its radical left flank?

Let me quote you: “Zunes is saying what he would have said all along, even if he hadn’t forged foundation ties. That Zunes has found a community of interest with Ackerman, who is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of Freedom House, simply reveals how mildly left Zunes’ views really are.”

Isn’t it just the other way of saying that Freedom House of the former CIA Director James Woolsey (The Project of the American Century) and the CFR of the Rockefellers is a “mildly left” organization? Woolsey and Zumes are left and Steven Gowans is also left. The difference between them is only in degrees of their leftism.

Why do you use this hazy language that masks the dividing line between the bourgeois/imperialist left and the revolutionary anticapitalist and antiimperialist left. Nowhere you define what is Left: who are “moderate leftists” and “progressives” ? There are two types of intellectuals in the modern world: those who clarify ideas and ideals and those make them “nebulous”? In your previous articles on Zunes you spoke from the midst of the first, but in this last you joined the second. What in the world do you mean by “the common sense of the age”? The ruling ideas? What do mean by “the rich” who hire “mild leftists” ? Feudals? Free slaveholding citizens of Athens? The sultans of the East?

2) The real thesis of your article is this: “The point of this article is to argue that were progressives to follow this advice, little of consequence would change.” The advice being “take the money but scrupulously refuse to self-censor, even if it means losing funding.” But the issue is not “freedom of speech.” After reading you first two articles I thought the point was to draw the dividing line between the left boot of imperialism and the antiimperialist left. I thought the issue was to politically and morally expose and condemn those pretending to be antiimperialists instead actually working for them. Was I wrong? I guess I was, because now you describe Zunes et al doing “humanitarian but conservative tasks” — another feat of “nebulous” language and politics.

You write:

“To define the common sense view, all you have to do is make sure those whose view of the common sense is compatible with your own interests, get heard. Challenging the virtual monopoly of the corporate rich to define the ruling ideas or to define what constitutes a desirable set of views and values for the left to hold cannot be done, therefore, by urging individuals to be incorruptible, most of whom are not corrupt now and are incorruptible anyway. ”

Put in a plain language, it means: To rule ideologically over the hearts and minds of the working class, capitalists buy the services of those intellectuals who sell the right stuff. To challenge the ruling ideology, “the left” should not put any blame on these intellectuals who just honestly and “incorruptibly” sell their wares.

“The challenge is a systemic one, whose solution lies in changing the system, not individuals.”

Don’t touch Zuneses, destroy the system! But aren’t Zuneses a part of the system? Doesn’t the system reproduces itseft in part by systematically bribing intellectuals, by creating demand for a certain type of “left” wares, for a certain type of “left” whoring? Is there such a thing as a system without men?

You conclude:

“So long as major productive resources are privately owned, the wherewithal to define the common sense will lie within the grasp of private owners. They will use foundations to raise the visibility and voice of left intellectuals who hold desirable views to weaken left opposition and divert its energies to humanitarian, but conservative, tasks which pose no threat to the interests and continued domination of the corporate rich. The left intellectuals who rise to prominence will do so, then, not because their arguments are more compelling, their approach more realistic, or their orientation more leftist, but because they’ve been handed a platform their militant left competitors are denied.”

So what’s your point if not to whitewash the incorruptible Zuneses and find excuse for the impotency of other incorruptible leftists like yourself who happened to sell tougher leftist wares?

Me too. Gowans is clearly NOT siding with those who join the foundations.He is merely saying that people like Zunesare not being hypocrites and to argue against them on the basis of their supposed hypocrisy is to miss the point.

Zorin seems to be making the broader point that US society is corrupted by imperialism from top to bottom. Unless Zoran has a clear alternative political programme for the working class, this sounds to me like a counsel of despair.

At no point did I intend “a retreat from a prinicpled and militant position” and nor did I intend to argue that the left “should not separate itself from the despicable legions of US leftists engaged in the imperialist warfare against the peoples oppressed and threatened by US imperialism.” The thesis was simple: Foundations channel money to the moderate left (the despicable pro-imperialist legions, in your terms) to overshadow “the principled and militant” voices. Suggesting, as some have done, that the left shouldn’t take money from foundations misses the point: the militant left isn’t offered the money (and wouldn’t take it anyway) and the moderate left sees nothing wrong in taking money to publicize views neither they nor foundations oppose. In any capitalist society, the moderate left, or petite bourgoisie socialists, to use orthodox Marxist terminology, will be strentghened by conservative forces as a means to weaken the militants and steer left opposition into safe, non-revolutionary directions.

Frankly, I’m baffled at how you have arrived at your conclusions, but perhaps I failed to take sufficient care to make my points clear. Could you please point to specific parts of the article that led you to these interpretations? If they’re unclear, I wish to rectify.

Steve

“Challenging the virtual monopoly of the corporate rich to define the ruling ideas or to define what constitutes a desirable set of views and values for the left to hold cannot be done, therefore, by urging individuals to be incorruptible, most of whom are not corrupt now and are incorruptible anyway.”

What a strange, evasive, grammatically compromized languge and with what gusto Lenin would mock it! Gowans is saying that if US Left hopes to “challenge” “the rich” if only by “defining” the ideology of US capitalism and the Left’s own “desirable set of views and values” it should not separate itself from the despicable legions of US leftists engaged in the imperialist warfare against the peoples oppressed and threatened by US imperialism! Or to put it plainly, Gowans argues that a political movement cannot be conscious of its society and itself and at the same time purge itself from those who went over to the side of the class enemy. But isn’t the entire history of North American Left replete with arguments like this? Comrade Gowans, why don’t you simply confess that the power of bourgeois opinion is just too strong for you and your friends? We’ll perfectly understand this. As Russians say, on the battlefield one is not a warrior.