Eugenics 2.0: How Dialectical Materialism can end the Nature vs. Nurture debate - COSMONAUT

Race “science” has not disappeared, and with the rise of xenophobic nationalist politics, it is making a comeback in the form of vulgar genetic determinism. The classic nature vs. nurture debate is returning, with right-wing ideologues firmly on the side of “nature”. Nafis Hasan argues that through dialectical logic we can overcome the nature vs. nurture debate and understand the human species in a way that doesn’t bow before genetic reductionism.

2018 seems to be the year when fetishism around genetic determinism has returned to vogue. From the bitter fights over the CRISPR gene editing technology patent and its alleged use in editing human embryos that were carried to term signaling changes in the ethics of reproduction and a potential wave of “CRISPR babies” in the future, to US politicians embracing direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits to uphold identity politics, and white supremacists embracing genetics as another avenue to display their superiority and the idea of intellectual superiority of whites over Blacks in the US becoming more acceptable in the US white population, it appears that this has really been the year when the Nature vs Nurture debate, always simmering in the background, has jumped out in the foray of politics and society. In some cases, scientists have clearly tried to separate themselves from the use of genetic data for political use, e.g. when the American Society of Human Genetics “denounced attempts to link genetics and racial purity”, although it did not recognize that in the public mind, race and genetics are intertwined. But in other cases, scientists called for more research into the link between genetics and racial differences in sociological and behavioral parameters, going the full spectrum between cautious interpretation of genetic association studies advocated by David Reich, to the ultimate victory of Nature over Nurture as concluded by Robert Plomin in his new book “Blueprint.”

The debate on race, genetics, and intelligence is not a new one — after eugenics was supposedly put to rest, it appeared that this ideology had taken refuge in the shadows of evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics. It is not surprising that the latter field, built on the Nature vs. Nurture duality, is a hotbed of debate and sensationalism, given the sociopolitical implications and our collective obsession with genetic determinism. Over the years, the question of whether differences in intelligence are due to environmental factors or genetic factors has been repeatedly raised. In 1994, Charles Murray co-wrote the notorious book, The Bell Curve, in which he argued that blacks are less intelligent than whites because of genetic differences. While the book was criticized by the evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould in his summary analysis & rebuttal The Mismeasure of Man (revised ed., 1996), the idea that there are inherent genetic differences in intelligence across races stuck around in other forms. Once the human genome was sequenced, and genetic determinism again became fashionable in its technological reincarnation, billions of dollars of public money was funneled into studying the genetic basis of complex traits, including behavioral and psychological ones, and their differences across racial and ethnic boundaries. The belief that the answer lay in the genes nurtured the idea of eugenics along with it.

Current day eugenics, Eugenics 2.0, takes the form of hyper-rationalism, scientific racism, race realism, and the misleading idea of “human biodiversity.” It is not surprising, then, that the alt-right and white supremacists have taken up Eugenics 2.0 behind the shield of “Science”, just as they espouse their bigoted views from behind the mask of Free Speech. For example, earlier this year, a secret conference on eugenics and intelligence was hosted at University College, London, featuring white supremacist speakers like Toby Young. Sam Harris recently hosted Charles Murray on his podcast under the title “Forbidden Knowledge”. This was after Murray was protested against at a lecture at Middlebury College, the underlying premise being that Murray’s ideas were being restricted due to the “college PC culture” (Murray was recently awarded a hefty prize from the Bradley Foundation and is regularly invited to give talks on conservative platforms). The cautious approach advocated by Reich is naive at best, since as geneticist Razib Khan’s case shows, white supremacists can use such studies as evidence for racial superiority, and they are increasingly leaning towards genetic testing for validation.

This is not to say that Eugenics 2.0 hasn’t faced its own share of resistance in academia — much has been written against the idea that inherent genetic differences explain the variable performances in IQ tests along racial lines. The scientists that championed the environmental causes of such differences in IQ test outcomes have put forth socioeconomic status (SES) as the primary cause. A seminal study by Turkheimer et al in 2003 showed that genetic differences could only explain differences in intelligence among kids from high SES background. For the kids from lower SES, environmental factors were the primary cause for variation observed in IQ. A more recent critique of the paper showed that the differences observed between the two SES groups were not significant along racial lines. A paper by Figlio et al, published in 2017, was the largest study to test the idea that “genetic influences on cognitive abilities are larger for children raised in more advantaged environments”, found no evidence to support their hypothesis. However, they do admit that “articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.” A host of scientists across disciplines have accused Reich of conflating the implications of modern behavior genetics research, and one scientist even questioned Reich’s expertise in understanding evolutionary biology and whether he is a racist. Academia is not without rebuttals, as evolutionary biologist Michael Eisen took to Twitter to criticize the above-mentioned rebuttal op-ed to Reich, asking whether social scientists understand genetics themselves. Beyond the discussion of study design and other scientific details of contradictory results, the question has attracted other meta-analyses. Some of these include a sociological perspective on whether race is a biological or social construct, the limitations of IQ tests, whether the term “Race” should be used in the context of genetic differences between population groups, and whether this debate belongs in the realm of Free Speech.

In his defense, Plomin (author of Blueprint) argues that he’s focusing on the differences between individuals rather than groups and that genetic data provides a probability on where an individual’s cognitive ability lies on a normalized distribution of the population. He concludes that 50% of the differences between individuals, in personality, mental health and illness, and cognitive abilities can be explained by inherited DNA differences. These differences can come in the form of single nucleotide changes in the DNA, otherwise known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and it is using this parameter that variability among individuals is determined. Of course, in the 3 billion bases that constitute human DNA, it is very possible to have a wide array of SNPs and therefore, modern-day behavioral genetics uses an outcome known as polygenic score, a statistical tool that incorporates variations at particular genomic locations that carry different weights in terms of phenotypes; the polygenic score, therefore, provides a risk estimate, a probabilistic score. However, as James Freese writes in his well-balanced review on the use of genomics in social sciences, “polygenic scores are purely predictive scores,” and they only explain only a portion of complex human behavior such as cognitive outcomes, which are still influenced by environmental effects.

This endless debate, however, is spurred on by a major epistemic flaw in understanding the Nature and Nurture equation. In his detailed analysis of the behavior genetics field in the post-genome sequencing era, sociologist Aaron Panofsky writes, “Behavior geneticists’ focus on environmental factors and interactionism has involved looking at different parts of the nature versus nurture equation, not a rethinking of the presumptions of that equation or the notion of the analytic separability of genes and environment.”1 Something perceived to be a change in the paradigm ended up being just a shift towards one variable or the other. The individual focus on genes or environment as separate entities have resulted in much contradictory evidence so far, allowing the white supremacists to weaponize scientific evidence to their favor and change public perception (for years, Nicholas Wade misrepresented scientific data to make racist claims as a science writer for the New York Times). However, Panofsky doesn’t provide an avenue to escape the quagmire that behavior geneticists find themselves in.

The promised paradigm shift can be achieved through a shift in how we view the relationship between us and our environment. And turns out, Marxist ideas can help us do exactly that. Engels first proposed the idea of using Marx’s dialectical materialism to examine this relationship is his unfinished book Dialectics of Nature (1883). Marx, in his revision of Hegel’s dialectics, asserted that dialectics should deal with the “material world” of human history and activity rather than the metaphysical world or the world of ideas. As Ernest Mandel describes in his introduction to Capital (Penguin edition, 1976), “when the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality.” Dialectical materialism allows for studying the interactions between phenomena in an empirical manner. Engels’ intention in his unfinished book was to employ this philosophy to understand the ever-changing relationship between Man and Nature.

Biologists such as J.B.S. Haldane and others had tried to keep this tradition alive through their writings over the years. But the pseudoscience practiced by Trofim Lysenko and the misuse of dialectical materialism by Stalinists resulted in a shunning of this approach in Western philosophy and scientific understanding. However, in its unadulterated form, dialectical materialism can provide a solution to the nature vs nurture debate, as Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin outlined in their book The Dialectical Biologist (1985). Levins & Lewontin write:

“an organism does not compute itself from its DNA. The organism is the consequence of a historical process that goes on from the moment of conception until the moment of death; at every moment gene, environment, chance, and the organism as a whole are all participating….Natural selection is not a consequence of how well the organism solves a set of fixed problems posed by the environment; on the contrary, the environment and the organism actively codetermine each other.”

The central premise of Levins & Lewontin’s argument is that because the relationship between an organism and an environment is reciprocal (and hence dialectical) it is this relationship that should be the subject of empirical study rather than either the environment or the individual organism. Additionally, they argue that this relationship cannot be studied outside the context of evolution, echoing both Marx and the famous biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky who proclaimed “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Lewontin went on to further solidify the necessity of using a dialectical approach to studying evolution and development of an organism. In his book The Triple Helix (2002), he writes “the ontogeny [development] of an organism is the consequence of a unique interaction between the genes it carries, the temporal sequence of external environments through which it passes during its life, and random events of molecular interactions within individual cells. It is these interactions that must be incorporated into any proper account of how an organism is formed”, establishing the organism as a site of interaction between the environment and genes. Therefore, under dialectical materialism, the Nature vs. Nurture debate is replaced by how Nature AND Nurture contribute to the development of an organism.

It is therefore interesting to note that while Plomin admits that “we select, modify and even create our environments in line with our genetic propensities”, he chooses to label environmental effects as “largely unsystematic, unstable and idiosyncratic” even though they account for the rest of the 50% of differences among individuals. He goes as far as to argue that while environmental factors may have temporary effects, these effects are largely erased in the course of reproduction. This argument, in fact, should be discarded in the face of mounting evidence from laboratory studies using rodents and from human studies that show transgenerational heritability of phenotypes. Epigenetics, long heralded as the connection between the environment and the genome, shows that genomic imprinting (the phenomenon by which genes are expressed in a strictly parent-of-origin pattern), has been observed in approximately 75 genes in humans and around 150 genes in rodents. Endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment that mimic hormones and interfere with their physiological functions have shown to transgenerationally affect multiple disease states in humans and rodents that range from cancer, diabetes and obesity to neurological disorders such as ADHD, despite not being classic mutagens (chemicals that alter the DNA). More recently, it has been shown that male offsprings of male mice exposed to stress exhibit symptoms of social anxiety disorders, and this effect is carried through changes in microRNAs carried by the sperms. The microorganisms that inhabit our bodies are gaining a more central role in our development, and affect our physiological as well as our neurological functioning to the point that the individuality of the organism has been brought under question, leading to the concept of the organism as an ecosystem, a “holobiont”.

With the rise of observations in developmental plasticity, such as the examples mentioned above, it would appear that Lamarckian concepts of transmission of heritability are quickly gaining traction in Western science. While fetishism around the gene as the central identity has been the key ideology of the neo-Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins and has propagated a reductive “DNA as the blueprint of life” ideology, neo-Lamarckian systems of transmission of inheritance as proposed by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb (1995) can be used to argue against such ideas.2 Jablonka and Lamb argue that short-term evolution does not depend on new mutations in the DNA, but rather on epigenetic modifications that uncover genetic variants already present in the population. Additionally, genes undergo “shuffling” through recombination during cell division, thus giving rise to further variation within the population. They also argue that the structure of the chromatin (the condensed version of chromosomes in cells) affects changes in the DNA sequence and therefore “highlights the complexity of the role of the environment in evolutionary change, the environment is not the just the agent of selection. Through its effects on genes phenotype, ti also biases the direction, rate, and type of DNA changes at the locus.” Jablonka and Lamb also propose group selection rather than individual selection and counters the neo-Darwinian idea of the gene as the unit of selection by proposing groups of cells as units of selection instead. Cognizant of the fact that inheritance at the social and behavioral level is different compared to genetic and epigenetic level, Jablonka and Lamb (2005) describe four properties of Behavioral Inheritance Systems (BIS) that are founded on a fusion of collective-individual activity devoid of genetic hierarchy. They argue that:

“with variation transmitted by the symbolic system, there is a quantum leap in social complexity with families, professional groups, communities, states, and other groupings all influencing what is produced in art, commerce, religion and so on. Construction plays an enormous role in the production of variants, yet because symbolic systems are self-referential, the rules of the systems are powerful filters. The ability to use symbols also gives humans the important and unique ability to construct and transmit variants with the future in mind” (Evolution in Four Dimensions, 2005).

In his analysis of evolutionary theory using dialectics, Julio Munõz-Rubio3 further argues that this mechanism of inheritance is essentially a dialectical one since Jablonka and Lamb’s work implies the evolutionary process to be a synthesis between the genetic information and the environmental influences, which Lewontin (1983) had described to be conceived as “two opposed, active, and mutually selective elements”, thus forming “a dialectical Aufhebung of the organism-environment.”4 Munõz-Rubio extrapolates his analysis to social interactions and human evolution:

“In this case it is a synthesis resulting from actions of self-aware beings: human beings, the only species that evolves at this level, the only species that does not cease being Homo Sapiens and which, consequently does not shed its biological condition in its evolution. This evolution emerges as what is defined as self-relation, of a negative nature, that is, an internal relation of societies (or of populations within them) that leads to self-negation, to a movement in which humans shed their previous nature, they deny it in their next stage, in which they self-assert themselves.”

Current scientific rationale employs the neoliberal and capitalist ideology of individualism to champion the cause of genetic determinism, and in turn, scientific racism. While scientists (both geneticists and sociologists) have acknowledged that both the environment AND genes play a role in the development of cognitive functions, their study designs are flawed because of this reductionist, individualistic approach. Modern technological advances have done little to end the debate despite promises; scientific evidence generated using a reductionist view will only continue to be co-opted by chauvinists and white supremacists. Scientists cannot afford to ignore the sociopolitical impact of their work. It is time for a more encompassing understanding of our biology and our relationship with the environment, and dialectical materialism, as Marx and Engels had intended, and Levins & Lewontin have applied theoretically, is poised to do so.

1. From Behavior Genetics to Postgenomics, Postgenomics, Duke University Press, 2015, pg. 150
2. Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension, OUP, 1995
3. Dialectics and neo-Lamarckism against the fetishism of genes, The Truth is the Whole. The Pumping Station, 2018

The failure of the German left to unite against Hitler is often used as a warning to those who fail to build unity with liberals in order to stop the far-right. Why did the German Communists and Social-Democrats not unite against the Nazis? John K argues not all blame can be placed on the Communists for their failure to build a proper united front, as their uneasy relationship with the Social-Democrats was based on the treacherous behavior of the Social-Democrats themselves. We publish this despite believing that the reductionist and ultra-left politics promoted by the Stalin-dominated Comintern deserve heavy critique and that ultimately the party made major strategic and political errors in leading the working class with its lack of democratic flexibility and exercise.

Meeting of the Roter Frontkämpferbund, or Red Front, a Communist paramilitary group in Berlin 1928.

On the night of February 27th, 1933 in Nazi Germany, not even one month after Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor, the Reichstag, home of Germany’s parliament, was destroyed in a fire. This fire, an act of arson, was a pivotal and tragic moment for the German left. In Hitler’s “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State,” issued the following day “as a defensive measure against Communist Acts of violence endangering the state,” the Communists were blamed for the terrorist act.1

With this decree, Hitler began a process that effectively crushed any and all potential political resistance to the Nazi regime. The left, not just the German Communist Party, but also the German Socialist Party which had enjoyed national prominence during the Weimar Republic years, was silenced. In a matter of months following the decree, Germany’s political left was assaulted by the Nazi state, and its leaders sent to Concentration Camps or into exile. In the months and years leading up to the Nazi triumph over the left, a unified right developed in Germany while the left remained divided. In particular, the Communists ( the Kommunistiche Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) was never willing to work in an alliance with the Social-Democrats ( the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD). While both parties drew on Marxism for their ideological platform, the more radical KPD considered the SPD to be a social fascist enemy. Thus, while the right was unifying behind the Nazis during the 1928-1933 period, the KPD devoted its resources to fighting both the Social-Democrats and the Nazis.

Why did the KPD adopt such a course of action? Many scholars, such as Beatrix Herlemann argue that the KPD had evolved, by the late 1920s, into a Stalinist party whose interests were subservient to the orders of the Communist International. As Herlemann argues, the KPD “followed without reservation the Comintern’s political line – namely the “social fascism” thesis launched in 1928 to 1929, by which the KPD directed its entire force toward the fight against social democracy and enormously neglected the growing danger of National Socialism.”2 The view taken by Herlemann is not without merit. The KPD leadership did advocate action against the SPD, and even reached out to Nazi rank-and-file workers for an alliance against the SPD Union leadership.3

It is wrong, however, to assume that the KPD devoted all of its resources to a fight against the SPD and neglected the Nazi threat. On the contrary, most of the political violence practiced by the KPD during 1928-1933 was directed against the Nazis, not the Socialists. It is also incorrect to assume that the divide between the KPD and the SPD was entirely motivated by the orders of the Comintern. Certainly, the Comintern heavily influenced the KPD’s course of action, but deep divisions had existed between the KPD and the SPD from the very day that the KPD became a political entity. Further, the differences between the two parties were not merely ideological. KPD and SPD membership came from different economic spheres, they lived in different neighborhoods, and they experienced the Weimar Republic in different ways. The SPD, for much of the Republic’s existence, was one of the main parties of government. When the KPD accused the SPD of Social Fascism, they were not targeting another radical left party; they were focusing their criticisms on one of the most powerful political entities in the Republic. Related to this, the SPD had in its position of power pursued repressive tactics against the KPD. Thus, the KPD’s view of the SPD as social fascists was not merely the result of ideological dogmatism but was in fact shaped by the actual experience of the KPD in the Weimar Republic.

To fully understand the schism between the KPD and the SPD, one must turn to the fall of Imperial Germany at the end of the First World War in 1918, and the revolutionary period that followed, before turning to the formation of the Weimar Republic in 1919. Before the First World War, the Marxist left was united as the SPD. By the time the Great War began, the SPD was the most popular political party in Germany and had gained more seats than any other political party in the Reichstag. The unified SPD, however, was internally divided between those who wanted to achieve the party’s ideological goals through participation in the government and those who wanted to actively pursue Revolution. The tension between these two groups erupted after SPD delegates to the Reichstag, representing the more moderate wing of the party, voted unanimously in favor of Germany entering the First World War. The more radical elements of the party that opposed this action, who were eventually cast out of the SPD in 1917, became the genesis for the KPD.

As Revolution erupted in Germany once it became clear that the war was lost, the more radical group of Marxists, calling themselves Spartacus League, issued their November 26th Manifesto declaring that “the revolution has made its entry into Germany. The masses of the soldier, who for four years were driven to the slaughterhouse… and the masses of workers… have revolted.”4 While the Spartacus League declared a revolution, the majority of the SPD continued to work with the crumbling German State. The split between Germany’s left, apparent with the issuance of the Spartacus Leagues Manifesto, became final when Marxist leader Rosa Luxemburg authored the “Founding Manifesto of the Communist Party of Germany, [KPD].” In the manifesto, Luxemburg declared “that it is time to shake ourselves [the KPD] free of the views that have guided the official policy of the German social democracy down to our own day, of the views that share responsibility for what happened on August 4, 1914.”5 Luxemburg further asserted that “what passed officially for Marxism [in the SPD] became a cloak for all possible kinds of opportunism, for persistent shirking of the revolutionary class struggle, for every conceivable half measure.”6

As can be seen, it was not simply the orders of the Communist International that spurred the KPD into opposing the SPD. The Party’s very birth came as a result of profound disagreements within the German left: disagreements that were not simply theoretical, but deeply political in the form of the more moderate elements of the SPD’s support for German involvement in the First World War. During the revolutionary period and the early Weimar Republic years, the KPD also experienced oppression and violence as a result of SPD actions. Historian Eve Rosenhaft notes that after the Weimar Republic was established, the radical left, including the KPD revolted, “demanding… socialist programmes…. Freikorps and paramilitary police under Social Democratic administration put down the disturbances in two months of bloody fighting.”7 Historian Eric D. Weitz similarly notes that “the SPD’s alliance with the police, the army, and the employers undermined its popular support, which redounded in part to the benefit of the KPD.”8 Of equal importance is Rosenhaft’s assessment that “the political division between the Communists and the Social Democrats that had emerged between 1917 and 1919 was reinforced by increasing divergences between the interests of different sections of the working class.” 9 The wealthier, more skilled proletariat joined the SPD while semi-skilled laborers became the rank-and-file members of the KPD. Thus, when one examines the later actions of the KPD’s declaration of the SPD as Social Fascists, one must understand that the reasoning did not suddenly develop as a result of the Comintern’s policy directives, but that the KPD had actually experienced oppression from the SPD. The KPD had evidence of the SPD working with the right and conceding fundamental goals of socialism, whereas it had yet to experience the far more brutal repression of the Nazis.

The 1929 Program of the Communist International, issued as the Nazis were beginning to gain significant national prominence, outlined the Social Fascism concept that would prevent the KPD from uniting with the SPD in opposition to the Nazis. The program detailed the attempts of the Proletariat to ferment revolution in the wake of the First World War, which led to the creation of the USSR but also the defeat of the Communist left in a number of other countries, such as Germany. The program declared that “these defeats were primarily due to the treacherous tactics of the social democratic and reformist trade union leaders” as well as the fact that Communism was just starting to become a popular political ideology.10 The Comintern further argued that “Fascism strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most backward strata of workers to its ranks by playing upon their discontent, by taking advantage of the inaction of social democracy.”11 The Comintern also asserted that “in the process of development social democracy reveals fascist tendencies which, however does not prevent it…[in other situations from operating as] an opposition party [to the bourgeois].”12

To further understand the position taken by the KPD against the SPD, Ernst Thälmann’s 1932 speech “The SPD and NSDAP are Twins” reveals how the KPD leadership envisioned its struggle against fascism in all forms. Thälmann’s incendiary speech declared that “joint negotiations between the KPD and the SPD… there are none! There will be none!.” 13 This was not to say that the KPD did not recognize the Nazi threat, as Thälmann articulated that “KPD strategy directs the main blow against social democracy, without thereby weakening the struggle against Hitler’s fascism; [KPD] strategy creates the very preconditions of an effective opposition to Hitler’s fascism precisely in its direction of the main blow against social democracy.”14 It is imperative to recognize, though, that the KPD only advocated the blow against the SPD leadership. As Thälmann argued, The KPD’s policy envisioned, the creation of a “revolutionary United Front policy… [that mobilized the masses from below through] the systematic, patient and comradely persuasion of the Social Democratic, Christian and even National Socialist workers to forsake their traitorous leaders.”15

KPD leader Ernst Thälmann gives a speech.

Thus, KPD invective was not aimed at the average member of the SPD, but at its leaders. The KPD was also not devoting resources to fighting Social Democracy instead of fighting Nazism. Rather, it was pursuing a strategy in which it believed that the defeat of Fascism would only be possible through the unification of the proletariat into one Revolutionary mass. This helps explains the KPD leadership’s focus on attacking the SPD rather than completely focusing its energies on Hitler. The KPD believed that what it viewed as a socially fascist SPD was dangerous because it claimed to advocate socialist policies while in reality, it subsumed a large portion of the proletariat into supporting a political entity that actually benefitted the bourgeois. This prevented the proletarian class from achieving true Marxist socialism. KPD leadership devoted its energies to attacking the SPD more so than the NSDAP because the Nazis were an overtly fascist group, whereas the SPD, in the KPD’s view, furthered fascism under the auspices of a claimed leftist ideology. To the KPD, the SPD was an insidious threat that needed to be exposed to all of the working class to see. The KPD did, in fact, want a united left or unified front to fight the fascists. It just did not want to unite with the leaders of the leftist parties. Instead it envisioned a United Front of the masses that would seek revolution to secure the goals of the proletariat, also termed a “united front from below”.

While the KPD leadership devoted much of its rhetorical attack towards the SPD rather than the Nazis, the same can not be said of the actions of the rank-and-file party membership. Between 1928-1933 the party primarily practiced non-violent opposition towards the SPD while political violence was reserved for the NSDAP and its paramilitary SA stormtroopers. Thus, Hearlmann’s contention that the KPD neglected the growing threat of Nazism only holds true if one relegates themselves to examining the documents of the KPD leadership and the Comintern. The reality is that during the 1928-1933 time period, as Eve Rosenhaft shows in her study of the KPD’s use of political violence during this period, the KPD pursued a “wehrhafter Kampf [against the SA] as a fight to maintain or recover actual power in the neighborhoods.”16 As stated before, the KPD and the SPD attracted different groups amongst the proletariat. In the harsh final years of the Depression-era Weimar, though, the Nazis and the KPD were fighting for the hearts and minds of the unemployed and unskilled segments of the proletariat. In cities such as Berlin, this translated to street-fighting between the KPD and SA over control of the neighborhoods these segments of the working class lived in. As Rosenhaft so eloquently puts it, “the terror of the SA… [was] a threat specifically directed against working-class radicalism, [that] evoked a response with the weapons familiar to the neighborhood [violence].”17 Historian Dirk Schumann largely concurs with Rosenhaft’s assessment of the KPD’s use of political violence, noting that “while Communists and Social Democrat’s hardly ever clashed in physical confrontations, both appeared on the scene as enemies of the right-wing groups.”18 Thus, while the KPD leadership advocated opposition to the SPD and the Nazis. The reality on the streets, where political violence served as a potent form of expression for the proletariat, was that the left devoted its energies to fighting the right rather than each other.

In the end, the policies of the KPD failed. What came about in 1933 was not the revolution of the proletarian masses, but rather the Nazi seizure of power and the twelve-year reign of Adolf Hitler. The united revolutionary front against the fascists never materialized and the KPD, along with the rest of the German left, was subjected to repression, exile, and imprisonment. Ernst Thälmann, when he gave his “The SDP and the NSDAP are twins” speech in 1932, did not have the benefit of knowing that twelve years later he would die in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the final years of the Weimar Republic, the KPD leadership and the Comintern that helped shape its ideology and actions were unaware of what would soon occur. What the KPD did have, however, was the memory of its experiences during the Revolutionary period following Imperial Germany’s collapse, the everyday experience of an SPD that did not pursue revolutionary Marxist goals, and a party membership that was suffering under the hardships of the Weimar Republic, particularly during the depression years.

KPD propaganda poster. Reads “Only Communism saves you”

In hindsight, the Nazis were clearly the greater threat, but the KPD had experienced more than a decade of an SPD that had, from the Communist’s perspective, disregarded and undermined the Revolutionary goals of the party. The KPD may have made a terrible miscalculation in identifying its threats, but that miscalculation was not the result of ideological dogmatism, but rather experience. The idea that the KPD could have simply pursued a unified front with SPD leadership ignores the very circumstances and reasons for the party’s existence in the first place. Furthermore, the KPD did not devote all of its energy to combatting social fascism while ignoring the threat of the Nazis. The reality of the political violence experienced during the Weimar Republics final years demonstrates that the KPD and the SPD practiced violence, not against each other, but against the Nazis and the right.

Ultimately, the one form of political opposition -violence- which both the SPD and the KPD used against the NSDAP, in part led to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic, which allowed for the Nazis to be elected into office. As Dirk Schuman notes, “National Socialism stood in a tradition of bourgeois-national opposition to the Weimar Republic, which it radicalized so successfully against the backdrop of crisis that voters flocked to it in large numbers.”19 If the KPD and the SPD had presented a united front, would it have made much difference in the end? It was not the division between the left that caused the Depression or spurred the political violence of the SA. In light of the fact that both of these conditions would have existed even if the SPD and KPD had presented a truly united front against Nazism, it is worth questioning what this united front would have achieved. After all, the Nazis did not come to power in a violent revolution. Though violence surrounded their rise, the Nazis were democratically elected into office. Because of their ideology, the KPD and the SPD were permanently parties of the working class. A united left might have allowed for the KPD to devote its full energies to attacking Nazism, but in the end, the only ones that would have listened would have been the proletariat. Would this really have prevented the Nazi electoral victory?

In light of all this, how should KPD actions during 1928-1933 be judged? In terms of preventing fascism, the policy was an unequivocal failure. With regards to the KPD’s fight against what it perceived to be the social fascism of the SPD, though, the evidence suggests that this policy should not be judged too harshly. While it failed to recognize the events that would eventually occur, it was grounded in the KPD experience in Germany and was not simply the result of the dictates of the Comintern. KPD resistance to the SPD was elemental to the very existence of the party. Not only that, but the KPD had actually experienced repression from the SPD. Thus, while the policy failed to recognize the true threat of the Nazis, it should not be viewed as patently ridiculous. The failure of the left to form a United Front also did not prevent the KPD and the SPD from actively fighting the Nazis in the streets. While this political violence only increased electoral support for the Nazis, it was amongst groups such as the Bourgeois-Nationalists, that actively despised the left and everything it stood for.

1. Adolf Hitler, “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State, 28 February 1933” in The Nazi Germany Source book, ed. Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle [London: Routledge, 2002], 135.
2. Beatrix Hearlemann, “Communist Resistance Between Comintern Directives and Nazi Terror,” in Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990, ed. David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz [New York: Berghann Books, 1998], 358.
3. Communist Party of Germany, Open Letter (1931)” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg [Berkely: University of California Press, 1994], 167-169.
4. “Spartacus Manifesto (1918)” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Kaes, Jay and Dimendberg [1994], 37.
5. Rosa Luxemburg, “Founding Manifesto of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) (1918)” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg [1994], 42.
6. Ibid, 43.
7. Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929-1933 [Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1983], 2.
8. Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State [Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1997], 109.
9. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fasicsts? [1983], 5.
10. “Program of the Communist International, 1929” in The Nazi Germany Sourcebook, ed. Stackelberg and Winkle [2002] 96.
11. Ibid, 96.
12. Ibid, 96.
13. Ernst Thälmann, “The SPD and NSDAP are Twins (1932),” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Kaes, Jay and Dimendberg [1994], 328.
14. Ibid, 327.
15. Ibid, 328.
16. Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? [1983], 205.
17. Ibid, 208.
18. Dirk Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War, Translated by Thomas Dunlap [New York; Berghahn Books, 2009] 313.

Border control offers nothing to the working class and must be actively opposed in favor of a roadmap to a borderless society, writes J.R. Murray.

Toward the end of 2018, Angela Nagle, leading partisan of the “anti-identitarian” Left, wrote a piece called The Left Case Against Open Borders, published in the right-wing journal American Affairs. It received a lot of attention, as contrarian takes often do, because it flies in the face of over a century of Marxist theory and strategy. Nagle puts forth the following argument: historically, the socialist Left has been pro-borders and anti-immigration. The Left has only recently adopted it’s anti-border position. We have done so as a knee-jerk reaction to the rise of Trump and the nativist Right, and because the elites have duped us by “wearing a mask of virtuous identitarianism.” Mass migration is an exploitative system which causes brain drain in developing countries, the exploitation of immigrants as cheap labor in developed countries, and is used by big business to drive down wages and attack unions. Since certain sections of the capitalist class support open borders, this means the anti-border Left is tacitly giving its support to and aligning itself with the capitalist class. Mass migration is unpopular for all of the above reasons and if the Left ever wishes to take power it will have to make a choice between embracing popular pro-border sentiment or allying with libertarian capitalists to suppress the masses and open the borders. In the end, immigration and open borders serve the rich elite, and the only way to end mass migration is to end global inequality, anti-labor free trade deals, and the imperialism of both global finance and the Pentagon.

This argument is not a “left case against open borders” but an essay-length dog-whistle written in an attempt to attract working-class elements of the far-right to social democracy. It knocks down straw men, misinterprets the Marxist position on borders, ignores nuance, and falsifies history. What follows is a debunking of Nagle’s claims and an argument for the abolition of borders.

Socialists Internationalism is inherently antagonistic to border walls

Nagle asserts that “the transformation of open borders into a ‘Left’ position is a very new phenomenon and runs counter to the history of the organized Left in fundamental ways.” It’s a bold claim, in that it is barely even a half-truth. The ambiguity of the term “organized Left” allows for Nagle to construct a false narrative of U.S. labor history. What Nagle means by the “organized Left” is unions, specifically anti-socialist unions like the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Unions are a powerful tool that have helped to extract massive concessions from the capitalist class and protect workers from the worst excesses of the capitalist system. But the union movement is ideologically broad. The AFL (now the AFL-CIO), the largest union confederation in the United States, has been anti-socialist since its founding. The Left calls these types of organizations “business unions.” Business unions are run by bureaucrats set on partnering with employers to stave off labor unrest. A major project for socialists in the United States today is to wrest power back from these bureaucrats and/or build entirely new organizations. Nagle’s argument is essentially a defense of the worst politics to come from the right wing of the labor bureaucracy. Despite all the talk of universalism from “anti-identitarians” like Nagle, her argument exists in contradiction to the more universalist approaches to class struggle. She puts forth the domestic American worker as the historical subject of U.S. labor organizing despite a rich history of socialist solidarity with immigrant workers. She erases this history to advance the erroneous claim that the entire left has been pro-border until a misguided turn to identity politics.

Historically, there has been an alternative to business unionism, such as the IWW and the CIO, the former being decidedly socialist and internationalist. Additionally, the working class has not only organized itself through unions but also through a number of different political parties that aimed to bring the working class to power and end capitalism. It is only by ignoring radical unionism and working class parties while narrowly focusing on anti-socialist business unionism that Nagle can make the argument that the organized Left has been anti-immigration and pro-borders. One can trace the importance of internationalism and the abolition of borders from Marx to Debs to Lenin to Luxemburg, American Trotskyist parties, Che Guevara, Fred Hampton, and all the way to socialists today who have fought and continue to fight for immigrant rights. It is not a new phenomenon, and certainly not merely a reaction to Donald Trump.

Political cartoon criticizing immigration restrictions via literacy tests

Nagle wholeheartedly approves of business unions’ perspectives on immigration. She argues:

From the first law restricting immigration in 1882 to Cesar Chavez and the famously multiethnic United Farm Workers protesting against employers’ use and encouragement of illegal migration in 1969, trade unions have often opposed mass migration. They saw the deliberate importation of illegal, low-wage workers as weakening labor’s bargaining power and as a form of exploitation. There is no getting around the fact that the power of unions relies by definition on their ability to restrict and withdraw the supply of labor, which becomes impossible if an entire workforce can be easily and cheaply replaced. Open borders and mass immigration are a victory for the bosses.

Employers often do use undocumented immigrants to break strikes, flood the labor market, and drive down wages, but Nagle completely misdiagnoses the root of the problem. The distinction between legal/illegal labor, only possible through the existence of the border, is a powerful weapon in a capitalist’s arsenal. Undocumented workers live in fear of being arrested and deported. Employers use this fear to bully and threaten these workers into accepting lower wages. If they try to organize for better pay or working conditions, their undocumented status becomes an enormous liability — the workforce can simply be deported and replaced. The ease with which undocumented workers can be exploited by their employers undercuts legal laborers (both organized and unorganized) and breeds nativism in their ranks. It is a wedge used to divide the working class. The solution is not to be against immigration, but to organize all workers, regardless of legal status, and fight for an end to the legal/illegal distinction. Immigration and open borders are not a victory for the bosses; in fact the opposite is true: the abolition of borders would entail the end of the illegal/legal distinction that employers wield to keep workers divided and wages down.

Nagle ignores this common socialist argument and instead chalks up socialists’ pro-immigrant/anti-border stance to a misguided moral impulse:

With obscene images of low-wage migrants being chased down as criminals by ICE, others drowning in the Mediterranean, and the worrying growth of anti-immigrant sentiment across the world, it is easy to see why the Left wants to defend illegal migrants against being targeted and victimized. And it should. But acting on the correct moral impulse to defend the human dignity of migrants, the Left has ended up pulling the front line too far back, effectively defending the exploitative system of migration itself.

Nagle believes the U.S. deportation machine and Fortress Europe are obscene, but she cannot see that ICE, the mass drownings in the Mediterranean, and detention centers are all the direct result of borders and the criminalization of immigration. There is no middle ground here; as long as the border exists people crossing it will be deemed criminals.

She continues this accusation that we are simply bleeding hearts unable to rationally analyze border policy:

Today’s well-intentioned activists have become the useful idiots of big business. With their adoption of “open borders” advocacy—and a fierce moral absolutism that regards any limit to migration as an unspeakable evil—any criticism of the exploitative system of mass migration is effectively dismissed as blasphemy. Even solidly leftist politicians, like Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, are accused of “nativism” by critics if they recognize the legitimacy of borders or migration restriction at any point. This open borders radicalism ultimately benefits the elites within the most powerful countries in the world, further disempowers organized labor, robs the developing world of desperately needed professionals, and turns workers against workers.

Recognizing the “legitimacy of borders” and migration restriction as a way to protect domestic laborers and reserve access to parts of the welfare state, real or desired, for American citizens only, is nativism by definition. If the term “useful idiot” is being thrown around, then it should be applied to Nagle and her cohort who provide cover for far-right nationalists. Socialists support immigrant rights, including demands like open borders, not because the left has abandoned labor for “social justice” issues, but because they must organize the working class, millions of whom are immigrants. The question is not merely one of moralism but of the necessities of class struggle and organizing the working class as a class.

It would be interesting to hear Nagle answer the question “what makes borders legitimate?” To recognize the legitimacy of borders means accepting everything that comes along with that legitimization. If borders exist, then they must be defended. In order to defend the border, force must be used. A closed border is a militarized border, and a militarized border is a place where poor people are terrorized, brutalized, and even murdered. Borders can only be maintained through the use of fences, guns, deportation, and detention centers. By arguing that any call for an alternative to this system is just “moralism” is to ignore the possibility of a world beyond this system of terror.

Nagle consistently refers to mass migration as an “exploitative system” that bleeding heart moralizing leftists are propping up. But mass migration is not a system. It is a social phenomenon, a consequence of imperialism, the creation of a global market in labor, and climate change. Nagle contorts the stance of supporting victims of these consequences into the stance of supporting the consequences themselves. For her, to support open borders means supporting the exploitation of cheap labor by employers, supporting brain drain from the third world, supporting the tragedy of people having to uproot their lives and move to the United States. But we support open borders precisely because we recognize the tragedy and horrors that imperialism, global inequality, and climate change produce. Immigrants leave their homes because they are forced to. We demand that their trauma is not compounded by the violence inherent in maintaining a border.

Nagle assumes that the demand for an open border exists in a vacuum. She lists a set of demands in place of open borders:

Reducing the tensions of mass migration thus requires improving the prospects of the world’s poor. Mass migration itself will not accomplish this: it creates a race to the bottom for workers in wealthy countries and a brain drain in poor ones. The only real solution is to correct the imbalances in the global economy, and radically restructure a system of globalization that was designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. This involves, to start with, structural changes to trade policies that prevent necessary, state-led development in emerging economies. Anti-labor trade deals like NAFTA must also be opposed. It is equally necessary to take on a financial system that funnels capital away from the developing world and into inequality-heightening asset bubbles in rich countries. Finally, although the reckless foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration have been discredited, the temptation to engage in military crusades seems to live on. This should be opposed. U.S.-led foreign invasions have killed millions in the Middle East, created millions of refugees and migrants, and devastated fundamental infrastructure.

In fact the anti-border Left agrees with all of these demands. The hard truth is that the above terrible things are happening and socialists must fight to defend people fleeing the from the resulting poverty and violence. Why would we support the border security apparatus that harms people fleeing from the violence and inequality that we demand an end to? Nagle gives us insight into her reasoning when she states,

But whether they like it or not, radically transformative levels of mass migration are unpopular across every section of society and throughout the world. And the people among whom it is unpopular, the citizenry, have the right to vote. Thus migration increasingly presents a crisis that is fundamental to democracy. Any political party wishing to govern will either have to accept the will of the people, or it will have to repress dissent in order to impose the open borders agenda. Many on the libertarian Left are among the most aggressive advocates of the latter. And for what? To provide moral cover for exploitation? To ensure that left-wing parties that could actually address any of these issues at a deeper international level remain out of power?

Instead of doing the work to convert chauvinist, nativist elements of the U.S. working class to internationalism and socialism, Nagle hopes to harness their racism as a way to build electoral support for social democracy. It is a cynical calculation: if Corbyn or Sanders simply take a right-wing view on immigration, then they will get more votes.

Nagle asserts that a political party wishing to govern will have to choose between accepting the “will of the people” or repressing dissent in order to enact open borders. This is a false dichotomy that must be rejected. Socialists have the responsibility of explaining our position and convincing the U.S. working class of their shared interest with immigrants in fighting the capitalist class, working toward socialism, and abolishing borders. To become a class that can govern in the interests of all humanity, the working class must go through a protracted process of political struggle and education, transforming itself as a class in the process. Chauvinism within the working class is not something revolutionaries should bend to, but fight against. This is not elitist — it is chauvinist ideology that is elitist.

In a particularly cynical move, even by this piece’s standards, Nagle warps Marx’s words in defense of her pro-border position:

Marx went on to say that the priority for labor organizing in England was ‘to make the English workers realize that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.’ Here Marx pointed the way to an approach that is scarcely found today. The importation of low-paid labor is a tool of oppression that divides workers and benefits those in power. The proper response, therefore, is not abstract moralism about welcoming all migrants as an imagined act of charity, but rather addressing the root causes of migration in the relationship between large and powerful economies and the smaller or developing economies from which people migrate.

Here is Marx’s original letter that Nagle quotes. Marx did point out that low paid migrant labor is bad for domestic and migrant workers, but he did not advocate for the legitimacy and maintenance of borders as a solution. Instead, Marx wrote about the necessity of the working class residing within two different nation-states uniting to fight their common oppressor. This would entail the English working class fighting alongside the Irish working class for the end of English colonialism in Ireland. It would also include Irish workers residing in England uniting with English workers to fight for better wages, working conditions, and socialism. This is the same strategy advocated by the anti-border Left today.

“Workers of the world Unite” isn’t just an empty slogan.

Abolishing borders is essential to building socialism. Unfortunately, Angela Nagle and the milieu around her have no intention of building socialism. Their goal is the creation of a reformist electoral party that can win elections and implement social democracy. They dream of universal healthcare and free college tuition for every American citizen while keeping everyone else out through deportation, fences, and an e-verify system that ensures no undocumented worker will find employment. Of course, they pay lip service to ending imperialism and global inequality, but these are essential features of capitalism, which social democracy cannot transcend.

To build socialism we must first build a working-class party with a political program. In our program, we will need to lay out and patiently explain our position on immigration. Our position should not be to maintain borders while we try to end imperialism and global inequality. Our position should be to smash the capitalist state apparatus, replace it with a workers republic, and begin the process of abolishing all borders — not as an idealist fantasy but as a necessary part of building socialism.

At a minimum our program should explain that a workers’ government will immediately:

1. Abolish ICE and CBP
2. Abide by the internationally recognized asylum process
3. Abolish all immigration quotas and limits
4. Eliminate all fees associated with applying for a green card or visa
5. Give amnesty to all undocumented immigrants currently residing within the United States
6. Grant citizenship to any permanent resident living in the United States for at least a year

Additionally, our program should explain our long term goals regarding borders and immigration. Examples include signing agreements with future socialist governments, ending all border and travel restrictions between these countries, and working towards a common citizenship shared by residents of all socialist countries that recognizes universal rights for all humans of the world, working towards a notion of global citizenship as a step toward abolishing the concept of citizenship altogether (which is tied to the sovereignty of the nation-state).

These demands are not, and will not, be made in a vacuum no matter how hard Nagle wishes to characterize them as such. Socialists must organize documented and undocumented workers alike, as well as recognize the special revolutionary potential of migrants, whom Badiou calls the “nomadic proletariat.” Immigrant workers carry traditions of labor activism with them and are often at the vanguard of class struggles. Mass migration is part of what makes the working class a class with no country. The struggle against borders is a class struggle, one that goes beyond mere economic implications. Socialists must make connections and work with workers’ organizations in other countries, end foreign coups and occupations in foreign countries, end funding, training, and arms sales to despotic regimes, appropriate and redistribute money and property from the capitalist class, etc. Fighting for and eventually building socialism will go hand in hand with abolishing borders. It is a unitary process. The moment the two are separated is the moment socialism is no longer a possibility.