No Wonder

The neoconservative website Harry's Place, in particular, is a linear continuation of Straight Left, the unyieldingly pro-Soviet faction of the old Communist Party of Great Britain and its fellow-travellers in the Labour Party (mirroring the supporters of apartheid South Africa, treasonable Rhodesia and Pinochet's Chile on the Tory side - also now neocon stalwarts).

Whereas the American parent body is strictly Trotskyist in its roots, British neoconservatism includes both old Trots and numerous old CPGB hands or hangers on (David Aaronovitch, Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, John Reid, the Miliband brothers, and on, and on, and on).

Of course, neoconservatism is wholly Marxist. Only the ending has been changed, so that the bourgeoisie wins. But the Marxist dialectical materialism remains intact. So does the Leninist vanguard elitism, "democratic centralism", and identification of religious and other interests as "Useful Idiots". So does the Trotskyist entryism and belief in the permanent revolution.

And so does the Stalinist belief in the creation of the dictatorship of the victorious class in a superstate from which to export it throughout the world, including by force of arms, while vanguard elites everywhere owe their patriotic allegiance to that superstate instead of to their own respective countries.

Compared to most variations on Marxism in practice (in North Korea, say), neoconservatism is strikingly orthodox. Which makes it no wonder that that is where Straight Left has ended up. And no wonder that the neocons as a whole, by opposing President Putin, support the only alternative: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.