When I was growing up the divisions between communism and capitalism were pretty simple ones. And they seemed simple for one obvious reason-the Cold War. The existence of the Cold War gave the world a binary choice, and it was a choice that inherently favored the capitalist West.
Everyone, even people living in nations where every thought and utterance was subject to the approval of secret police forces, could see that the Soviet Union represented tyranny, repression and stagnation, and that the West represented freedom, self-expression and growth. The Soviet Union would police your thoughts. The West never would. The Soviet Union might decide to apply electrodes to your genitals. The West never would. The Soviet Union might enact some insane vast policy that creates a famine. The West never would. The communist Soviet Union would have bare shelves and people queuing up for hours for the miracle of one rotten cabbage. The capitalist West had so much food that they built up mountains of it that was never used, and they built giant supermarkets where every shelf groaned under the weight of a thousand products.
Plus the West had rock and roll, pop music, sexual liberation, short skirts, and big bold Hollywood movies. The West had sex and glamour, night clubs and strippers, James Brown singing ‘Living in America’ and Rocky flattening Ivan Drago. The Soviet Union still had some pretty big missiles and lots of men in uniform, but it had all the soft power appeal of a weekend in a caravan near Scunthorpe with no money in your pocket and constant rain for the whole bloody time.
The economic and the cultural fact was, and it was a fact visible to almost everyone except the most radical student fringe and a few nutjobs in stinking cardigans, that the capitalist West represented success and the Communist bloc represented failure.
One of the other obvious things that virtually everyone agreed on was that Capitalism and Communism were mutually exclusive. You could not have both in alignment. You could not have them working together. They were opposites. One would win the Cold War, one would lose. If the Soviet, the Marxist, side won, then it was curtains for the capitalists. When the Soviets took over Russia, it was a conquest suffused with a simple class struggle narrative. The rich, especially the super rich, were the enemy. They would be the first to be lined up against walls and shot.
And this was exactly what they did. They eliminated the old Tsarist nobility, of course. All the palaces of St Petersburg were seized and redistributed. They did things like going through the membership lists of tennis clubs and killing everyone they could find who appeared on that list. Tennis is a rich man’s sport, after all. They included the children on that list, by the way. You might survive if you hurriedly gave up everything and mouthed the indoctrinated rhetoric in the correct pleading tone. On a good day.
They did the same to the wealthier peasants, that anomalous class that had bucked Tsarist snobbery and hierarchy to accumulate a reasonable store of wealth and success despite peasant origins. These kulaks were the target of a class based genocide.
The message of early Soviet power was clear. You would have to be completely ignorant or suicidal to be a member of the wealthy elite and back this sort of thing, because these people were going to kill you.
Now of course all of this is something of a simplification. We know that the West had poverty too. We know the West had ghettos and race riots. And we know that there were people in the West throughout the whole Cold War who backed the Soviets and who despised capitalism. There were western intellectuals and western unionists who referred to Stalin even after proof of atrocities as ‘Uncle Joe’. Some still active writers and correspondents today, of a slightly older generation than mine, have spoken about coming from such backgrounds. The British columnist Julie Burchill, for example, has described coming from a family that felt like this.
The western intelligentsia was extraordinarily amenable to Communism throughout the Cold War, and its in the halls of academia that Communism primarily thrived and survived in the West during the long slow death of its Russian Soviet sponsors. Almost unnoticed and certainly unpunished by conservatives, it became normal for Marxism to be regarded, not as an opposed and totalitarian ideology linked to an enemy nation, not as an extremist viewpoint that justified mass murder, but as a perfectly respectable academic discipline. Just a way of questioning things. Just a mode of enquiry.
Eric Hobsbawm became the grand master of British history as an avowed and proud Marxist, writing the textbooks that told everyone else how to study history. That study was through a Marxist lens, as if that was normal and acceptable. Hobsbawm was one of the two or three most influential British historians of the 20th century shaping how other historians went about their work, and how their work diffused out their attitudes to society as a whole and to State educated children and young adults. Hobsbawm had direct political influence as a personal friend of successive Labour Party leaders, and was particularly closely connected to the Miliband family that would supply in David Miliband a British Foreign Secretary during the Blair years and in Ed Miliband a leader of the Labour Party in the post-Blair period.
Today David is the CEO and President of the International Rescue Committee (the IRC). An organisation controlling a little under a billion dollars of annual revenue, engaged in education, healthcare, social services, ‘empowerment’ and disaster relief spending. All the impeccable ‘good causes’ we see from trans-national bodies and Super Rich philanthropy. The IRC was born out of another organisation partly formed by internationalist Communists purged by Stalin for following the teachings of Nikolai Bukharin. So in the sense being led now by a man who was raised on Hobsbawm’s Marxist lectures is a coming home party. It’s also another example of how the vast bureaucracies ‘doing good’ and integral to the current World Order (and aligned heavily with Super Rich oligarchs and their ‘doing good’) after the fall of Communism often have Communist roots.
Ed, meanwhile, struggles along as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, a position he has held since 2021 and which would, in the likely event of a Labour Party victory in the next British General Election, see him in charge of all the lunatic and very, very expensive things (with very, very fat government contracts to interested Super Rich oligarchs also concerned about the way cow farts and reliable heating are destroying the planet) Britain will do for Net Zero.
Net Zero, of course, can best be understood as the kind of policy that comes direct from the alignment of Marxists and the Super Rich. A Five Year Plan for enormous wealth transfer, backed by the UN, Bill Gates and just about every half-witted woke butterfly emerging from the warm cocoon of gullibility that is the modern university system.
When the political links between the Milibands and a lifelong Marxist were discussed in a few still rightwing media sources some years ago, the normalization of Marxism as just a slightly eccentric affectation, an idealistic vision, or a standard component of academia, had been engrained for so long that it was talking about these links that was criticized. And it was criticized on the beautifully middle class grounds that it was simply not the done thing to talk about who a chap’s father had been best friends with, or who that chap had listened to from the crib to the Houses of Parliament. This was boorish, and uncouth. Purely family business. The fact that Hobsbawm as a firm and committed Marxist had on public record in interview stated that he agreed with any number of deaths to achieve a Marxist Revolution was neither here nor there. You can’t hold that against a fellow, not when he’s respectable.
But Hobsbawm of course wasn’t unique, and the problem of academia normalizing Communism and Marxism went unaddressed in the US as well as the UK. After the destruction of Senator McCarthy and the Leftist success in framing attempts to prevent Communism as far more dangerous than Communism itself, with far more innocent victims, it became virtually impossible to deal with Communist sympathies as a society intent on its own protection really should have. A whole academic and entertainment class acquired a free pass to busily set about spreading a certain kind of extremism, and the West started to pretend to itself that whilst Russia was very, very naughty all those hardcore leftists on campus or in Hollywood were just loveable Ivory Tower eccentrics. Hobsbawm was typical of an established academic type given carte blanche to spread Marxist nonsense under the false belief that none of this stuff was really dangerous if it came with tweed jackets and a smoking pipe.
In other words, if you were of a certain class, if you were comfortably middle or upper class and speaking from an exculpatory position of status, if you delivered your extremism from a lectern instead of on the street, if you could be pictured in a leather armchair in a gentleman’s club, you were not an extremist. If you knew the right people, you were not an extremist. It is a glaring irony of history that opponents of Communism came to be considered vulgar and low class, whilst supporting Communism came to acquire respectability based on signals of middle and upper class identity. The very rareness of pure Marxist sympathy in the actual working class, their innate social conservatism, gave being a Communist the cachet of rarity, a hint of exciting rebelliousness and non-conformity, as appealing to a certain type of snob as rare wine vintages are to another type of snob.
Orwell of course spoke about this group and their tendency to excuse Communist atrocities, but really their grip on the academic world gave them a kind of respectability that made Orwell’s clear sighted condemnation something of a rarity, especially his psychologically astute linking of a tendency in the upper class in Britain to gravitate towards ideologies that on the surface they should instinctively oppose.
Orwell was the clearest in recognizing that Communism could become a form of snobbery, and an outlet for the sense of superiority possessed by the already ruling class.
To understand what happened with relations between the super rich and the Marxists, to understand where we are today, we have to see academic Marxism as the radical Left’s toehold on respectability, the beachhead that would allow the takeover of other institutions. An academic career gives a reasonably remunerated position (not nearly so struggling as many academics pretend) but is of course still far from the lives of the super rich. But it’s enough for that person (especially if they acquire tenure) to have a more secure social position than most people, a protected little life that gives plenty of leisure and work time for supporting extremism in ways that aren’t dangerous or stressful to the person doing it. And vitally it gives respectability. Kids are told to listen to this person. Society is told they have expertise and knowledge. At the ‘best’ institutions the super rich send their kids there to be instructed. The top university bureaucrats and administrators and ‘scholars’ will come from or acquire connection to the families of the powerful and the rich and to leading politicians. Especially through educational philanthropy and the funding system that sees universities always appealing to former alumni who are rich and powerful for their direct financial support.
The super rich come to own the ‘Marxist’ academics, and the ‘Marxist’ academics come to own the children of the super rich. Or at least their minds. Their social worlds and their ideas and interests cohere, through shared education.
If we take the career of someone like Bill Ayers, we see all these connections starkly made manifest. Ayers begins as a student radical organizing other student radicals. He picks up his own extremism om a campus. But the campus also becomes the perfect recruiting ground for him to spread this extremism to others. He and his friends build up the Weather Underground. It’s a student terrorist movement. They go on bombing campaigns. But these aren’t particularly effective, and they certainly aren’t all that popular outside of an already radicalized student fraternity. But the Weather Underground do two things in the 1960’s that provide a template for similar Marxist groups. They realize that they need financial backing. Where groups like the Black Panthers in the same period try to fund their activities through other crimes (like drug dealing or bank robbery) Ayers and a few others are a bit smarter.
They look for and acquire rich patrons. And they build up legal connections. They recruit lawyers to their cause who can keep them out of jail or get them out of jail. And the third thing they do is reintegrate with the academic hierarchy for renewed legitimacy and respectability.
Ayers becomes one of the leading pedagogical specialists in the US. An expert on….education. The policy of looking for rich backers goes hand in hand with excusing the terrorist crime wave and realizing that its much, much better to spread your radical view through the influence and connections you can develop with the very rich behind you, endorsing you. The Marxists realize that they can recruit the rich and then the super rich and their children and that this works quicker than setting off a few bombs in shifting society your way.
Why plant a single bomb, when you can warp a thousand minds? When you can make a generation who agree with everything the bomb maker believes and who would, should the future ‘need’ for a bomb arise, cheer on the bombing?
Ayers would go on to complete academic respectability. Other members of Weather Underground went on to become leading lawyers. When a young ‘community organizer’ with a very dubious and strangely obscured background came along making connections in the city most notorious for political graft and corruption, the city of Democrat machine politics, this guy from nowhere shares an office for years with former terrorist Bill Ayers. And that guy was of course Barack Obama. Incidentally, what does the moderate, respectable, completely non extremist Obama do in office as President of the United States of America? He basically pardons every 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s Marxist radical still in prison for left-wing terrorism he can find. Including one who bombed the capitol building.
Yes, the capitol building so sacred that a line of Trump supporters following guide ropes like tourists through it represents the worst assault on America since Pearl Harbor or 9/11. That capitol building.
And Obama pardons people who bombed that building or others because he’s such a moderate. Nothing extreme to see here, folks, please follow the guide ropes.
Obama was and is a moderate. Bill Ayers was a perfectly respectable educationalist. Eric Hobsbawm was a loveable and respectable supporter of mass murder. Any attempt to keep Marxist extremism out of our society is McCarthyism, and that’s wicked and evil. Celebrate the bank robbing drug dealing known murders to their name Black Panthers at the Super Bowl. Support Hamas on your Harvard campus. Support the IRA and become the leader of the British Labour Party.
You see just how damn respectable and normal Marxism is when it successfully recruits rich people and super rich patrons? When it does a deal with the super rich and starts talking about racial privilege all the time instead of class privilege? Because the rich patron has to have something out of this deal too, doesn’t he?
What better to get out of Marxism, if you are super rich and start funding it, then the realization that you can divert all that hate, that grievance, that bitterness, that psychopathic narcissism, away from you and your class and your actual and real advantages, say, onto the shoulders of the white working class, the people with no advantages, who you feel just as superior to as your modern Marxist does. What a wonderful deflection from your graft, your corruption, your power and your urge to have even more of it.
What happened is that whilst the Marxist realized that they could get a great deal of what they want much quicker with the support of the super rich, the super rich realized simultaneously that they could get a good deal of what they want with the support of the Marxists.
The old enemies, the enemies that traditional Marxists and traditional Capitalists thought could never align and were natural and automatic enemies from the moment the Soviets wiped out everyone who was anyone in the Tsarist regime, became the best of friends. And not just from pragmatism. But from shared qualities they always shared. On finally recognizing themselves in each other, they embraced.
And now it’s a love story. Like Bonnie and Clyde.
The Cold War gave us a simplistic notion of what the Marxist and what the Super Rich have antagonisms over. But there is actually a huge amount of shared ground both in what they want and what they are prepared to do. In many ways these are the same people wearing suits of a different color. The ultimate Uniparty. And we understand that if we think in terms of how they think, particularly about us. It is psychology that tells us, ultimately, why they have against all prior ideological and historical expectation aligned with each other.
So what do they have in common?
They both hold the proletariat, the working class, the average person, in contempt. Marxists have long been disappointed in the working class, frustrated with their conservative instincts and avoidance of Revolution. That frustration turned to hate as the ordinary person stubbornly refused to Rise Up, or worse, actually tended to laugh at their supposed champions. Refusal to be led by their better educated, better informed, just plain better Communist revolutionaries meant that the ordinary person had betrayed the historical determinism Communists believe in. The little people are ‘parochial’ and ‘bourgeois’, they are petty, vulgar, coarse and brutish. They must be crushed and ruled. It is the only thing they understand.
The Super Rich and their agents of course have this same contempt and hatred of the ordinary person. They have the same frustrated sense that everything could be ordered so much better if these little people would just do what they told, think what they should think, and behave to instruction from the better educated, better informed, just plain better Super Rich. The little people are ‘deplorable’ and ‘ignorant’, they are petty, vulgar, coarse, and brutish. They must be crushed and ruled. It is the only thing they understand.
Both the Marxist and the Super Rich are elitists who think ordinary people can only be saved and ruled by a small group who are better than ordinary people. Everything about equality in Marxism is a lie based on the simple fact that they believe a small group of hardcore Communists have the right to force everyone else to do what they say. The Super Rich can understand this, because they feel exactly the same.
Both want to centralize power to themselves. Both see no moral limits on their power.
Both have no respect for ordinary people and no belief that they should be constrained by either the rights or wishes of ordinary people.
Both also want a radical reshaping of society. The Super Rich are not content just to enjoy their riches. Their vast wealth becomes boring if just enjoyed for personal gratification. It is much more satisfying to leave a mark on the world, a legacy, to really change things. This becomes the last excitement of the most jaded, the final vanity of those who have everything. They must have the future too. they must shape it, and people must know that they shaped it. Or else what was the point of all the power and wealth?
And quite often things like Democracy and Borders, Liberty and Sovereignty just get in the way of building power and control beyond a certain point. Things like Democracy and Free Speech and the Nation State are all little caltrops digging in the heels of the Super Rich Colossus. He wants to bestride the whole Globe, uncaring of petty little local interests. He’s got a factory in China and a factory in the US and a factory in South America. Or a hundred. He can’t be bothered with what a beer swilling ordinary little peon cares about from a bar stool in a small town in Texas. Let alone Basildon, wherever the fuck that is.
Who else sees the Big Picture? Who else wants to sweep all the little caltrops away and Shape the Better Future? Well, the Marxist does.
Contempt for ordinary people? They both have it.
A vision focused on the future? They both have it.
A desire to completely reshape everything? They both have it.
A history of ruthlessness and a lack of moral boundaries on what they will do? They both have it.
A belief that they can and should gather all power to themselves, that they should control everything? A pure entitlement? They both have it.
A Global ambition, a belief that the whole world should come under one Authority? They both have it. Internationalism has always been incredibly strong in Marxism. Its equally strong in the interests and ideology of the Super Rich (hence, the term Globalism).
These people have more in common with each other, both psychologically and as specific policies, then they have in common with us. And we, our interests, are the interests both groups either ignore or want to transgress and control.
They came together out of self-interest. They stayed together out of mutual recognition of their shared traits, out of the ‘love’ one psychopath has for another. And they will be together until they are forced apart, until their shared victim fights back.
That’s you, by the way.
Daniel Jupp is a populist writer from Essex, England. His latest book is “Gates of Hell: Why Bill Gates is the Most Dangerous Man in the World.”