An knot that is difficult to untangle: On class analysis in anti-imperialist discourse

It is entirely understandable why we look for shortcuts. Organizing is incredibly difficult. In a fragmented world, it is deeply tempting to attach our hopes to a distant state rather than face the grueling reality of building something at home.

But this exhaustion has created an epistemic gap in the English-language multipolar media space: we are losing the ability to analyze class, replacing it with a state-centric lens.

This has led to a kind of moral hardening. We have adopted a secularized eschatology that functions similar to post-modern identitarianism, dividing the world into rigid categories of the totally clean and the totally unclean. It is an ironic reflex, rooted more in US puritanical traditions than in materialist critique.

We can see the absurdity of this when we look at the very countries being discussed. Inside Iran, China, and Russia (and other countries, I can say this is the case for many Latin American and Caribbean countries), domestic intellectuals, journaists and planners rigorously analyze their own social classes. They trace which factions of their ruling elite are integrating into Western markets and which are pushing for autonomy. Yet, if someone points out these same internal class dynamics in alternative media, one could be called “defeatist”, playing into the enemy’s hand so to speak.

This blind spot is a strategic vulnerability of the highest order, because the US-led security establishment (at least) is paying attention. They are assessing these foreign ruling elites and adapting their strategies of infrastructural capture and denial.

When it is pointed out that the empire is highly adaptive, it isn't "attributing omnipotence" to the enemy but simply acknowledging reality. Seeing and understanding the imperialist structures of the world is the absolute minimum precondition for dismantling it. We cannot overcome this imperial order by denying its capacity; we should attempt to meet it with a clearer assessment, and a much more honest engagement with the actual dynamics of class and power in the world we actually inhabit.