Defeatism: Is it in you?
Introduction to Defeatism Series
There isn't a single revolutionary struggle that didn't have to deal with defeatism, and the revolutionary struggle of the Black nation within the u.s empire is no different. Those in our nation who speak it range from the petit-bourgeois that hope to benefit from it, to the most exploited among us who have been beaten down so long that defeat seems akin to logic. It comes in all forms; from whispers to loud pronouncements. Its content is even more wide ranging. Cries of logistical impossibilities, claims of inferiority, promises of an alternative to revolution; defeatism brings out the creativity in the part of our brains rotted with bourgeois ideology. To be fair all of us think it; it is part of the two-line struggle within us that jumps between a visceral desire for liberation and the perceived hopelessness of our current situation.
Defeatism for the Black nation is the subjective belief that we cannot win a revolutionary struggle against the u.s empire and establish our own socialist state. It can manifest as simply as the very common belief that “Black people just can't get along with each other.” What it amounts to is the internalization of the oppressor nation’s bourgeois idealism that says the world will stay the same; them at the top and us at the bottom. Yet this mentality turns into its opposite all the time; when the Black nation rises up in rebellions or even sometimes as simple as smacking whitey up side the head with a folded chair.
No Locked Doors presents the series “Defeatism: Is It In You?” to bring an objective materialist understanding of the lines of defeatism that circle our heads and stop us from uniting with our nation towards national liberation and socialist revolution. We present them in no particular order.
Defeatism #23
“That violent stuff’ll get you killed.”
We hear often from the masses of what happens when you try to organize and fight for Black liberation; you get MLK'd or Malcolm X'd. This is spoken as if the only way towards victory requires a sole leader who openly goes across the world promoting Black liberation. Although this type of agitation and propaganda is needed, a successful revolutionary strategy of Maoism requires three things that should squash this form of defeatism. 1) Revolutionary leadership requires centralization not in the hands of one individual, but in an entire vanguard party of the proletariat. 2) This vanguard party is to organize clandestinely given the very real danger of organizing against a powerful enemy. 3) The entire Black nation must be mobilized towards revolution within a united front against the oppressor nation.
This means given the consolidated vanguard party, we don't have a situation in which you kill the head and the snake dies because we got many snakes ready to strike the enemy. With the entire nation mobilized against the oppressor nation, revolutionary forces and the vanguard party can swim like fishes in the sea of the masses. Clandestinity means that we are not openly placing our head on the chopping block for the enemy to strike a murderous blow.
Death is inevitable in general and within revolution in particular, however we can in no way make it easy for the enemy. In fact we should make it as hard as possible while we continue to strike at the enemy at every turn; here the theories around protracted people’s war becomes vital for the Black nation under the u.s empire.