If you spend any amount of time on leftist social media, then it is possible that you may have encountered the American Communist Party (ACP). Their members constantly share images of themselves at strikes and performing community work. They also utilize the hammer and sickle along with other left-wing aesthetics. Based on their own statements, the ACP is proudly and unapologetically communist with a program for a revolutionary future. Yet a closer look at the ACP gives rise to serious doubts regarding their communist credentials.
The founders of the ACP include the “undefeated tankie warlord” Haz Al-Din (AKA Ali Hammoud), who fancies himself their “Executive Chairman.” A law-school dropout, Haz has devoted himself to streaming full-time. On his streams, which often run for more than four hours, he projects an image of both a macho bully and a wise philosopher. Yet Haz’s statements range from the idiotic to the absurd — including claims that the United States is already socialist, that the homeless are the lords of the sidewalk who treat pedestrians like serfs, or that McDonalds is culturally communistic.
The most famous figure associated with the ACP is Jackson Hinkle, who has over three million followers on Twitter. Hinkle is a former Bernie Bro turned online media personality who claims to be a Marxist-Leninist and an American patriot. Based on his own confession, there is reason to believe he has no firm political convictions at all, but merely wants fame and fortune: “I do everything for the clout. You’ve never seen me do something not for the clout. That’s the only way I operate.”
The ACP does not organize workers, nor fight for the oppressed. Rather, their main activity consists of online bullying and tailing the most backward elements of the Republican Party.
Even more, the ACP does not engage in the type of activities that one would expect from a self-described communist party. They do not organize workers, nor fight for the oppressed. Rather, their main activity consists of online bullying and tailing the most backward elements of the Republican Party. The reality is that the ACP is not a communist party at all. After investigating their ideological influences, it becomes clear that the ACP is a reactionary, if not an openly fascist, organization.
Strasserism
One of the most important historical predecessors of the ACP can be found in the politics of the “Third Position.” This refers to a branch of fascist thought that claims to reject both Western-style capitalism and proletarian communism. Third Positionists believe that they are “neither right nor left,” but aim to combine elements of both. For our purposes, the most important example of Third Positionism as a precursor to the ACP can be found in Strasserism.
Strasserism takes its name from the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, who made up the “left wing” of the Nazi Party. The Strasserite program provided a revolutionary veneer that appealed to the de-classed workers and petty-bourgeois elements who made up the rank-and-file of the Nazi brownshirts. Their political program included “anti-capitalist” demands for the nationalization of industry. Yet their particular variant of “socialism” was anti-materialist and anti-communist, emphasizing the spiritual values of the German Volk.
One major element of Strasserite “anticapitalism” that the ACP draws upon is their producerism. Producerism is a doctrine that prioritizes the so-called productive elements of society such as farmers, industrial capitalists, and manual workers. The producers are framed as those who make genuine wealth and are viewed as the backbone of society. In opposition to the producers are the unproductive elites such as bankers, speculators, financiers, and lazy immigrants who are parasitic upon society. The Strasserites used producerism to champion an “economic antisemitism” in which Jews were portrayed as “money grubbing” bankers who leeched off the German Volk.
It should be emphasized that Strasserite “anti-capitalism” is not equivalent to Marxist anti-capitalism. Strasserite anti-capitalism is set up as a clash between an authentic national community and a parasitic elite, not a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This enables the Strasserites to easily substitute racial struggle for class struggle with the bourgeoisie now portrayed as “international Jews.” In their producerist narrative the “Jew” becomes the evil puppet master pulling all the strings.
Strasserite “anti-capitalism” is not equivalent to Marxist anti-capitalism. Strasserite anti-capitalism is set up as a clash between an authentic national community and a parasitic elite, not a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This enables the Strasserites to easily substitute racial struggle for class struggle with the bourgeoisie now portrayed as “international Jews.”
Like Third Positionists, the ACP claims to transcend traditional politics. The Infrared media collective founded by Haz describes itself as “Marxist-Leninist analysis beyond the visible spectrum.” In another case, Haz claims that a communist “partisan” (a concept from Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt) will transcend the left-right dichotomy:
The partisan comes from bellow [sic], resolving the apparent contradiction between left-and-right by introducing an entirely new dimension of political alignment. It does not ‘unite’ or ‘synthesize’ left and right, it rather displaces the contradiction between them into a radically new form. It displaces the ‘left and right’ distinction by articulating that distinction into an entirely new continuum of counter-hegemonic political space.
The ACP also views the struggle against capitalism in terms of rescuing producers from parasitic monopolistic elites. In the “Rise of MAGA Communism,” Haz claims:
Communists do not want to ‘socialize’ people’s actual belongings or even businesses… what Communists seek is the overthrow of the monopolists, the bankers, big pharma, big agriculture, big tech, and others – which have hijacked the American republic in the name of the”‘sacred institution of private property.”
Hinkle also advocates a variant of Strasserite “communism” that protects private property: “Communists today don’t support the eradication of private property. What we support is more growth, more wealth, more businesses for the people.”
Nor is producerist antisemitism foreign to the ACP. For example, Hinkle views the Jews as sinister elites who “killed Jesus.” Elsewhere on the Alex Jones Show, Hinkle claimed that a cabal of “Trotskyites” (a euphemism for Jews) are secretly controlling the world: “The world is run by Trotskyites… These are the most evil sick human beings on the planet. It’s the Clintonites, the Bushites, the World Economic Forum, and Klaus Schwab. It’s everyone who stands opposed to the American working class.” Considering that Hinkle shot to fame on Twitter by claiming to support Palestine, his open antisemitism makes it imperative for all genuine anti-Zionists to thoroughly repudiate him.
Martin Heidegger
In addition to Strasserite producerism, the ACP also draws upon Völkisch thinkers such as Martin Heidegger. In a long Twitter post entitled “Why Marxism is not Woke,” Haz claims that “Marxist theory in the West is meaningless without the aid of [Aleksandr] Dugin and Heidegger’s thinking.” Let us discuss the influence of Heidegger first. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. As a dedicated member of the Nazi Party, Heidegger also saw his thinking as contributing to the revival of the German Volk.
For Heidegger, an authentic Kultur of the Volk was rooted in the countryside which was the source of tradition, life, and spiritual energy:
And the spiritual world of a Volk… is the power that comes from preserving at the most profound level the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a Volk, the power to arouse most inwardly and to shake most extensively the Volk’s existence. A spiritual world alone will guarantee our Volk greatness. (“The Self-Assertion of the German University” in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin 1998, 33-34)
By contrast, modern Zivilisation with its cities stood for the spiritually barren world of universalism, individualism, atomization, and rootlessness. This was represented above all by the cosmopolitan Jew. In other words, a true Volk was rooted in the countryside while city-dwellers such as the Jews were not part of the people since they were rootless and lacking a true soul. Therefore, Heidegger believed it was necessary to eliminate these carriers of universalism since they were enemies of the authentic Volk:
An enemy is each and every person who poses an essential threat to the Dasein [being] of the people and its individual members. The enemy does not have to be external, and the external enemy is not even always the more dangerous one… The enemy can have attached itself to the innermost roots of the Dasein of a people and can set itself against this people’s own essence and act against it. The struggle is all the fiercer and harder and tougher, for the least of it consists in coming to blows with one another; it is often far more difficult and wearisome to catch sight of the enemy as such, to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor no illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack, to cultivate and intensify a constant readiness and to prepare the attack looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation. (Martin Heidegger, Being and Truth 2010, 73)
The entire strategy of MAGA “Communism” is premised upon Heideggerian ideas that the rooted American people are fighting cosmopolitan elites. According to Haz, the true source of resistance to the globalist system can be found in the American heartland which is the base of MAGA. Therefore, communists must fuse with the authentic American people who compose MAGA: “Rurality is the site of counter-hegemony. Hegemony solidifies in the urban centers. To build a counter-hegemony, one most [sic] go to the base, the basis — and that is the rural hinterlands. That is where counter-hegemonic organization is truly possible. That is what MAGA basically is.”
In line with Völkisch thought, MAGA “Communists” view the cities as centers of “woke” leftist values such as women’s and LBGTQ+ liberation, anti-racism, and internationalism. These are alien to the working class who respect values such as family, race, country, and traditional gender roles. Finally, Haz states that leftists act as a new fascist vanguard on behalf of the globalists:
Leftism is the ideology of American unipolar imperialism, the highest stage of bourgeois political modernity, which seeks to formalize not only all politics, but all culture, society, etc. under the principle of universal formal equality… The true heir of fascism, is none other than Leftism itself.
As an aside, this hostility to the cities and intellectual “glasses wearers” helps explain the ACP’s extreme anti-intellectualism and Haz’s sympathetic remarks regarding Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
Aleksandr Dugin
The Russian fascist and National Bolshevik Aleksandr Dugin has also heavily influenced the ACP’s thinking. In the 1990s, Dugin’s fascism took on the shape of “National Bolshevism” which he believed would transcend both left and right by combining ultranationalism and revolutionary communist élan. Dugin’s attempt to forge a “red-brown” alliance in the Russian National Bolshevik Party prefigured later efforts by the ACP to align “anti-imperialists” with the MAGA movement.
The ACP also frames their understanding of global affairs through the prism of Dugin’s understanding of multipolarity or Eurasianism. In his 1997 book, The Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin argued that there was a conflict between the liberal-Atlantic bloc led by the US and Eurasia led by Russia. He believed that Russia was destined to dominate Eurasia (roughly the territories of the former USSR). He also claimed that the US was homogenizing the world by spreading global capitalism. By contrast, Dugin said that Russia represented traditional and national-rooted peoples who are resisting cosmopolitan elites.
In Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory (2009), he claims to advance the foundations for an entirely new political ideology. He states that the twentieth century was dominated by the ideological struggle between three political theories: liberalism, communism, and fascism. Now that liberalism stands triumphant, he argues for a fourth political theory that combines elements of communism and fascism in order to combat liberalism. Yet after all the theoretical obscurantism is swept away, it becomes clear that Dugin is merely rebranding fascism as part of a wider anti-democratic and anti-liberal coalition that brings together left and right.
The ACP follows an approach of denying open antisemitism, preferring dog whistles such as “globalists” and “the deep state,” along with singling out “finance capital” and Jews such as George Soros and above all Leon Trotsky (the epitome of a satanic cosmopolitan Jew who rejects all traditional values).
The influence of Dugin is readily apparent upon the ACP. For example, both Haz and Hinkle have met with Dugin multiple times. Haz praised him as “one of the most powerful minds of our era.” According to Hinkle, Dugin is “one of the greatest men alive today” and encouraged his followers to buy Dugin’s books from the Nazi publisher Arktos. In particular, Haz believes that the “Fourth Political Theory” is identical with Marxism: “However, what if this ‘Fourth Political Theory’ is none other than Marxism-Leninism itself?” Haz also claims that Dugin’s insights align with Mao Zedong Thought: “Mao was a ‘Duginist’ before Dugin was ever even born. Mao was already well-acquainted and deeply immersed in the geopolitical, literary, civilizational, traditional, unconscious, demotic, national, even mystical etc. realities that had to be scandalously exhumed by Dugin.”
In addition, Haz and the ACP utilize Duginite concepts to frame their understanding of multipolarity. One tagline for Haz’s Infrared media collective is “Find the Vision – Marxism-Leninism in the Age of Multi-Polarity.” In addition, they view the Russian-Ukrainian War as a defense of traditional “civilization” by Putin against globalist elites. Elsewhere, Haz has voiced support for Eurasianism. When he visited Russia in 2024, Haz met with Pavel Kiselev from the Eurasian Youth Union (the youth wing of Dugin’s Eurasian Party) to discuss their common political ground. Furthermore, ACP members have pursued a Duginite strategy by bringing together the forces of “left” and right to oppose the “deep state.” For example, Hinkle was one of the keynote speakers at the 2023 Rage Against the War Machine Rally that brought together libertarians, fascists, cranks, and “leftists” in opposition to the Ukraine war.
Lastly, Haz utilized Dugin’s ideas to recast communism as a defense of American “civilization”:
In a certain sense, I regard communism as America’s own ‘manifest destiny,’ – where America will finally confront itself as a definite, specific, and particular civilization – rather than the universal ‘exception’ of all humanity. American communism means America as one country among others, rather than the center of the world. Finally, the concerns, interests, needs, and reality of our own people can be addressed, instead of trying to act as the world police.
In addition, the ACP program expresses Duginite ideas by highlighting the need to restore American culture and tradition:
The Communist Party stands for the cultivation and discovery of a national-continental American culture on the basis of the unique history, geography, and ethnic makeup of the American peoples.
The Communist Party stands for the promotion of language, autonomy, economic development and culture of American tribes.
The Communist Party stands for the construction of a unified American historical, national, and cultural identity to overcome all racial and social antagonisms.
In the end, Dugin’s philosophy provides the core of the ACP’s “Marxism–Leninism” where the class struggle and internationalism are replaced with multipolarity and “civilizational politics.”
Lyndon LaRouche
A fourth major influence on the ACP can be found in the cult leader Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019). LaRouche was originally a Trotskyist who turned to the far right in the 1970s. In this shift to the right, LaRouche’s cadre physically attacked members of both the Communist and Socialist Workers Parties during “Operation Mop-Up.” LaRouche also cultivated ties to intelligence agencies and a wide range of conservative groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time, LaRouche developed increasingly elaborate and unhinged conspiracy theories in which the Jews, through the medium of the British Empire, have dominated the United States.
LaRouche’s use of the “British” as a stand-in for Jews was part of a deliberate rhetorical strategy. He often promoted his antisemitic conspiracism with euphemisms or code terms as “an artificial mechanism to avoid the moral shock of facing bestiality in its most degenerate forms.” (Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism 1989, 271) In the 1970s, LaRouche used this approach in order to instill far right ideas amongst his then left-leaning followers since open antisemitism was considered beyond the pale.
LaRouche developed increasingly elaborate and unhinged conspiracy theories in which the Jews, through the medium of the British Empire, have dominated the US.
The ACP follows a similar approach of denying open antisemitism, preferring dog whistles such as “globalists” and “the deep state,” along with singling out “finance capital” and Jews such as George Soros and above all Leon Trotsky (the epitome of a satanic cosmopolitan Jew who rejects all traditional values). Haz has also repeated LaRouche’s conspiracy theories that the British Empire secretly rules the US:
The [American] Republic was founded on the basis of seceding from the Empire. It has become [an empire] also because we have allowed the British intelligence to conquer our country. The British ruling class conquered our deep state and our country and became our ruling class. So yeah, we became an empire.
As we shall see later, conspiracism is ever-present in how the ACP views protests against Donald Trump.
The direct influence of LaRouche upon the ACP is not hard to find. For one, the cult-like structure of the ACP feels like a cheap copy of LaRouche’s method of organization. In other places, ACP members have also praised LaRouche as a great political thinker. In one stream, Haz said: “Even for those who might disagree with LaRouche’s philosophy, they must at least concede that he is one of the most — if not the most — profound theorists and thinkers of policy in the modern age.” Both Haz and Hinkle have organizational connections to the LaRouche movement. They are both acquaintances with Daniel Burke, one of the most prominent figures in the LaRouche movement. Haz himself has also interviewed Burke on his stream. Alongside Burke, both Haz and Hinkle were speakers at the “Build the New Paradigm, Defeat Green Fascism” conference hosted by the LaRouche-affiliated Schiller Institute in October 2022. As dedicated producerists, the LaRoucheites want nothing to constrain the productive capacity of the US. This means both the ACP and the LaRouche Movement are adamantly opposed to the environmentalist movement, viewing it as a harbinger of Malthusian fascism.
Stalinism, Browderism, and Marcyism
Despite all its irrationalist and reactionary components, the ACP does not self-identify as a fascist organization. Instead, its constitution declares: “Marxism–Leninism constitutes the official outlook of the American Communist Party.” This immediately raises the question, what exactly does the ACP mean by Marxism–Leninism?
As opposed to proletarian internationalism, the ACP privileges the nationalist outlook of Stalin’s socialism in one country. For example, Haz declares:
Socialism in One Country reflected the precise logic that universal Communism can only be built up within a determinate communal being, not a vain pretension to the entire world, but a concrete, grounded relationship between a specific party and a specific country.
In other words, the ACP wants to purge communism of anything remotely revolutionary and universalist. Instead, they celebrate the Stalinist Thermidor with its revival of the traditional family, social hierarchies, cultural conservatism, and the promotion of material incentives crowned by a despotic bureaucracy as genuine socialism. Yet even more than traditional Stalinism, the ACP is most closely aligned to the “late Stalinism” of the 1950s with its antisemitic campaigns against “rootless cosmopolitans,” the Doctor’s Plot, and the promotion of Russian chauvinism.
In addition, the ACP’s chauvinism has a historical antecedent with the popular front line upheld by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) during the 1930s and 40s. Under General Secretary Earl Browder, the party declared: “Communism is the Americanism of the Twentieth Century.” The CPUSA declared that communism was heir to the patriotic, democratic and radical traditions of the US. Its cadre marched behind the stars and stripes while its mass meetings had banners displaying Washington and Lincoln. In its search for political respectability, the Communist Party became little more than a wing of the Democrats. During the Second World War, the party was second to none in its support for the US war effort. To that end, they backed the internment of Japanese-Americans, broke strikes, abandoned anti-racist struggles, and ultimately dissolved the party. Browderist national chauvinism aligns perfectly with the ACP, with the caveat that they would prefer to tail the Republicans as opposed to the Democrats.
The ACP also adheres to the campist politics of the former Trotskyist and Workers World Party (WWP) founder Sam Marcy. In the 1950s, Marcy developed the perspective of “global class war” where the conflict between the Soviet bloc and American imperialism now superseded the class struggle internationally and within each country. That meant US socialists must uncritically defend the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. Eventually, this Marcyite analysis extended to viewing any government opposed to the US whether Iran, Syria, the Russian Federation etc., as not merely anti-imperialist but as a positive good if not outright socialist. So not only does the ACP fanatically support the Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, but Haz thinks Vladimir Putin is still fighting for communism.
One key linkage between Marcyism and the ACP can be found in the figure of Caleb Maupin. A former member of the WWP, Maupin left the party in 2015 to pursue a career as a journalist for Iranian and Russian state media. Leaving aside Marxism, he has embraced LaRouche, Putin, Dugin, and Trump. While they have since fallen out, Maupin had a long association with Haz and Hinkle. In 2021, Maupin, Haz, and Hinkle shared several streams together in which they discussed various conspiracy theories regarding the “synthetic left” who support imperialism and the need for patriotic socialism. The following year, Haz and Hinkle were major speakers at the Austin Conference held by Maupin’s Center for Political Innovation.
The ACP wants to purge communism of anything remotely revolutionary and universalist. Instead, they celebrate the Stalinist Thermidor with its revival of the traditional family, social hierarchies, and cultural conservatism.
Finally, the ACP frames their defense of “actually existing socialism” — particularly in China — as overcoming the “purity fetish” and abstract revolutionism that they believe predominates in Western Marxism. According to ACP Education Secretary Carlos Garrido: “The Western Marxists’ purity fetish makes them immune to seeing socialist construction as a process, one which will, undoubtedly, develop contradictions which will in time be likely overcome.” Garrido also believes that their attachment to the “purity fetish” ensures that Western Marxists remain a controlled opposition who do not fundamentally challenge imperialism. Ultimately, the ACP’s rejection of the “purity fetish” is nothing more than blind worship of the Chinese state for rapidly expanding the productive forces.
It should be observed that Garrido is a cofounder of the Midwestern Marx Institute, a self-described “Marxist–Leninist” think tank founded in 2020. Early on, Midwestern Marx was publishing content on the importance of “proletarian patriotism” in the class struggle and the need for “socialism with American characteristics.” They also have an aversion to anti-oppression politics, viewing the struggle for LBGTQ+ rights as something promoted by corporate liberals and a distraction from the class struggle. Midwestern Marx also tails fascists, believing that they can join together with them on a purely economic basis to fight the ruling class. When the ACP was formed, Noah Khrachvik, Eddie Smith, and Carlos Garrido from Midwestern Marx were all found amongst its leadership.
MAGA “Communism”
Now we come to the final element of the ACP’s ideology which is MAGA “Communism.” Originally a hashtag that went viral on Twitter in 2022, MAGA “Communism” was developed by both Haz and Hinkle. In his defense of the idea, Haz argues that Donald Trump fundamentally changed American politics by reintroducing class struggle and challenging the status quo. At one point, Haz claimed that Trump was more anti-imperialist than the whole western left:
Trump was far far more an anti-imperialist than all the baizuo [white leftist] frauds combined in the history of the American left… I’m not scared to be associated with Trump… [Trump is] not ideologically, but in practice he was far more an anti-imperialist than all the baizuo scum combined.
In addition, Haz claims that MAGA is a genuine proletarian movement: “…And MAGA is irrefutably the only worker’s political movement that exists in America.” Finally, he argues that communism represents the unspoken desire of MAGA: “The unity of Communism with MAGA is nothing more than the unity of Marxism with the worker’s movement… We believe the MAGA movement has the potential to be turbo-charged into a revolutionary movement by, of, and for the American working class.” For Haz, this means that the American left has the choice of either staying with the fake urban leftist milieu or joining up with the only mass working-class and anti-establishment movement that currently exists in America.
Every single claim of MAGA “Communism” is utterly wrong. For one, Donald Trump does not represent a challenge to the capitalist system at any level. His campaigns have espoused various right-wing populist, conspiracist, and racist ideas. As president, Trump has carried out a wholly reactionary bourgeois agenda. The MAGA movement is nothing more than a Trump fan club with an overwhelmingly petty-bourgeois and bourgeois social base. At no moment has MAGA ever supported a picket line, blocked the deportation of immigrants, or shown a trace of proletarian internationalism.
Despite their clear adulation of Trump, MAGA “Communists” have attempted to distance themselves from him. Posts can be found on Twitter that they claim were merely joking or that the strategy was just trying to reach the working-class base of MAGA. As Haz said in one interview: “We have a saying, as Maga communists, which is that when you go to McDonald’s, you don’t go for the clown, you go for the burger… Trump is the mascot of the movement.”
The ACP’s practice can be summed up as a bizarro mass line of “unite the backward, drive away the intermediate, and isolate the advanced.”
All this sophistry aside, the ACP clearly supported Trump’s 2024 campaign. For instance, Hinkle supported Tulsi Gabbard (with whom he is personally associated) for secretary of state, praised Trump for ending wars, and said he had Trump’s back.
It should be noted that the ACP has described movements against Trump such as the June 2025 anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles as a “color revolution” sponsored by “finance capital.” According to Hinkle: “The riots in LA are a DEEP STATE COLOR REVOLUTION attempt. Trump is deporting FAR LESS migrants than Biden, but now faces WAR. Trump is also taking FULL ADVANTAGE of this crisis to wield unchecked authority & surveillance. Finance capital are the only winners here.”
As an aside, it is worth noting that the ACP also defends other Republican presidents. For example, Haz described Richard Nixon as a “counter-hegemonic” leader who was ousted by the CIA with the Watergate break-in.
Fighting the culture war
Since the ACP tails the Republican Party, they view contemporary politics through the same culture war lens as the GOP. This means that the ACP sees the urban Democrats and their “leftist auxiliaries” with their “woke agenda” as the main enemy. Due to their culturalist framing, the ACP adopts a narrow definition of the working class that excludes anyone outside of a stereotyped male industrial factory worker from 1850. This means Haz views most unions as integral parts of the Democratic apparatus, meaning that they need to be destroyed. Naturally, he cheered the first Trump administration for carrying out a working-class agenda by attacking unions. Or as Haz succinctly says: “fuck union organizing.”
Perhaps nothing better exemplifies the ACP’s culturalist view of the working class than their condemnation of barista service workers. In contrast to masculine factory workers, baristas are disparaged as effeminate and “unproductive.” This is a moralistic view of “productive” versus “unproductive” labor that is opposed to a Marxist understanding. For Marx, productive labor generates surplus value for the capitalist. By contrast, unproductive labor does not directly generate surplus value for the capitalists. The key insight here regards the definition of “productive” from the point of view of the capitalist class. This is not a moral judgement on the labor carried out, but an objective analysis of the role labor performs for capital. As Marx said in Capital Volume One:
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.
As we can clearly see, Marx does not condemn unproductive labor while praising productive work. Morals do not play into his scientific analysis.
Even more, a barista is actually performing productive labor from a Marxist point of view. Baristas may not be growing or picking the coffee that they serve. Yet capitalists do not just sell beans and milk to every customer at Starbucks. As service workers, baristas produce a commodity by assembling the ingredients of coffee to generate surplus value for the capitalist. What Marx says in the Theories of Surplus Value about hotel cooks could just as easily apply to baristas:
The cook in the hotel produces a commodity for the person who as a capitalist has bought her labour—the hotel proprietor; the consumer of the mutton chops has to pay for her labour, and this labour replaces for the hotel proprietor (apart from profit) the fund out of which he continues to pay the cook. On the other hand if I buy the labour of a cook for her to cook meat, etc., for me, not to make use of it as labour in general but to enjoy it, to use it as that particular concrete kind of labour, then her labour is unproductive, in spite of the fact that this labour fixes itself in a material product and could just as well (in its result) be a vendible commodity, as it in fact is for the hotel proprietor. The great difference (the conceptual difference) however remains: the cook does not replace for me (the private person) the fund from which I pay her, because I buy her labour not as a value creating element but purely for the sake of its use-value. Her labour as little replaces for me the fund with which I pay for it, that is, her wages, as, for example, the dinner I eat in the hotel in itself enables me to buy and eat the same dinner again a second time. This distinction however is also to be found between commodities. The commodity which the capitalist buys to replace his constant capital (for example, cotton material, if he is a cotton printer) replaces its value in the printed cotton. But if on the other hand he buys it in order to consume the cotton itself, then the commodity does not replace his outlay.
The ACP’s opposition to “unproductive” baristas cannot be justified in terms of Marxist political economy. Rather, their position is based entirely on culturalist terms. For the ACP, a “barista” signifies decadent cosmopolitan urban values along with representing marginal groups whom they detest such as women, LBGTQ+, and racial minorities. Yet the ACP believes that when they are fighting the “woke” baristas they are actually defending the traditionalist working class.
The American Communist Party
On July 21, 2024, the American Communist Party was formed by Haz, Hinkle, and others from the Midwestern Marx Institute and (allegedly) from dissident chapters in the CPUSA. Since its launch, the ACP has proven to be incredibly disorganized. It took four months before they held a founding conference and adopted a hastily written constitution. In terms of their day-to-day activity, the ACP has done minor charity work such as picking up trash and have taken selfies at picket lines. In terms of their class base, the ACP seems composed of macho petty-bourgeois young men with incel attitudes and no artistic talent among them (hence the ACP’s reliance on AI slop for their propaganda). While they don’t consider baristas to be workers, the ACP doesn’t have much of a problem when it comes to working with the police.
Yet the bulk of their activism occurs online. For the ACP, it is imperative to control the social-media narrative which means all their real-life actions are predicated on gaining likes and retweets. In order to increase their online clout, the ACP has exaggerated their party membership and actions, and falsely claimed Haz was almost assassinated while visiting the Donbas region of Ukraine. Carlos Garrido believes lying is acceptable since it works by bringing recruits into the party.
According to former members, “the ACP is a cult of personality, with the top ranks filled by narcissists, cowards, and self-interested grifters, shrouded in a veil of legitimacy by the rank-and-file membership and their well intentioned but woefully unskilled and disconnected work.” While one should genuinely question how “well-intentioned” anyone is who joined the ACP cesspool, the rest is well said. Moreover, Haz is an incompetent and disorganized Führer who runs the ACP as his own little fiefdom. During meetings, he threatens and verbally abuses members by shouting homophobic slurs. To build the organization, Haz wants the ACP to act as a business in which chapters will unleash their entrepreneurial spirit by becoming landlords. It should also go without saying that the ACP is filled with rampant misogyny, homophobia, racism, antisemitism, and chauvinism.
Right in form, right in essence
To return to our opening point, the ACP is only communist in name. In everything else, the ACP is a sewer of reaction, irrationalism, and anti-communism. It is led by narcissistic bullies and conmen who preach fascist nonsense dressed up as Marxism. Beyond all the verbiage, MAGA “Communism” means not only supporting Donald Trump, but also tailing the most reactionary elements in society. The ACP’s practice can be summed up as a bizarro mass line of “unite the backward, drive away the intermediate, and isolate the advanced.”
The ACP represents a deranged movement of fascists who should not be welcomed in our spaces. We do not wish them well. We do not want to work with them. We want to defeat them.
Despite the clear reactionary nature of the ACP and MAGA “Communism,” there seems to be confusion among some leftists on how to deal with them. In an uneven article about the ACP published in Cosmonaut Magazine, Soldier of Love stated: “I wish the best for the ACP and I hope that they focus more on on-the-ground activity, and that we might even get a chance to work together to help our communities.” Other writers have stressed the need to “engage” those attracted to the ACP in order to win over their supporters.
All of this is precisely the wrong approach to take toward the ACP. These are not wayward but otherwise well-meaning leftists in a different organization whom we can do joint work with. Contrary to an old saying, the ACP are not “left in form and right in essence.” They are just right in form and right in essence. The ACP represents a deranged movement of fascists who should not be welcomed in our spaces. We do not wish them well. We do not want to work with them. We want to defeat them.
We must adopt diametrically different politics than the ACP. Revolutionary communists must aspire to be, as Lenin proclaimed, “tribunes of the people” who fight against all forms of exploitation and oppression. Unlike the ACP, we do not tail backward ideas such as nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and antisemitism. At the same time, it should not be surprising that many workers enter political life with these ideas. However, it is possible for communists to “meet people where they are at” without politically adapting themselves to outworn prejudices and notions. Rather, it is our task to lead the masses to correct conclusions and effective action against the bourgeoisie without adapting to backward ideas. As history has proven, this is the only path that leads to communism. What the ACP offers is not a short cut to communism, but the highway to hell.
Illustration by James Radek
