Class,race,and Great Replacement: The return of Lenin

Abstract

Influential rightist opposition to neoliberalism currently takes the form of populism, a significant component of which is Great Replacement theory which counters labour market competition by means of racist ideology. Contrasted here are two different kinds of leftist response to this sort of populism. One involves fighting on the same ground as its opponent, a problematic convergence since the focus of mobilizing discourse is ethnic/national identity, an ideological domain that historically is the traditional stronghold occupied and consolidated by the political right. The other builds on Marxist theory about class and class struggle, a path followed by Lenin, at the centre of which is not just the threat to worker solidarity of the reserve army, now increasingly a global resource available to capital, but also a transition to socialism.