the spook that still haunts
By NLD Editorial Board
Maoism of a True Type
Maoism in the imperialist centers is run by those from the white oppressor nation who use it as an identity, obscure the essence of internationalism by treating it dogmatically and subordinate revolution to the interests of the oppressor nation. To be sure, there are many oppressed nation Maoists within the u.s. empire; however, the neo-colonial relationship within the centers of imperialism gives the oppressor nation leadership over the Maoist movement. This is a revisionist tendency of Maoism. All the while, Maoism is a leap in the understanding of proletarian nationalism and applies to the era of imperialism in general and, as the book “False Nationalism, False Internationalism” (FF) explains well, the u.s. empire in particular.
The Black nation and all oppressed nations within the u.s empire carry the revolutionary initiative and, in this way, the primary contradiction in the u.s empire is imperialism between oppressor-oppressed nations. This understanding was hard fought for by the oppressed nations' communists in contradiction with incorrect theory that manifested within the 1st to 3rd Internationals. Many Black people caught in the 2020 rebellion without a vanguard found themselves coming into sharp contradiction with the oppressor nation and their vision of “allyship” from the liberals, “solidarity” from the anarchists and “internationalism” from the white communists.
It all amounted to the same thing; neo-colonialism, because it meant the subordination of the Black nation's struggle to the leadership of the white nation. Without a correct analysis of this contradiction, the Black immediate vanguard was caught falling into bourgeois nationalism that neglected class distinction and thus the leadership of the proletariat or into blind/false internationalism welcomed by the oppressor nation; both alienated them from the revolutionary Black proletariat. The Editorial Board speaks from a place of practice and we are sure Black people who have engaged seriously in communist struggle will feel us when we share our line on the need for true nationalism and true internationalism a.k.a proletarian nationalism. This understanding first came into sharp focus when a couple of us revisited FF and found that its analysis on the historical significance of nationalism to internationalism and how this dialectic has manifested within communist practice-theory within the u.s empire. Here we are calling for Black Maoists in particular and Black radicals in general to read the introduction to FF1 because we see how important it is for Maoism to recapture a revolutionary path within the u.s empire and struggle against a revisionism that plagues every sect of Maoism; negating the internal decisiveness of nations within the era of imperialism and thus the need for proletarian nationalism. The first piece we are publishing in our journal is a summation that utilizes the above understanding, applying it to revolutionary practice and coming to a correct analysis on the significance of proletarian nationalism. First we would like to layout what proletarian nationalism is, its development through the Internationals, the significance of FF to an understanding of the dialectic between nationalism-internationalism, and a much needed critique of white Maoism.
The Development of Nationalism and Internationalism: In continuity and rupture from Marx to Mao
Right from the start of the 1st International there was a theory for the future that has been proven incorrect through revolutionary practice. From Marx to Lenin there was a particular stagist application of historical materialism where it was theorized that the oppressor nations, being advanced capitalist countries, would have the most advanced proletariat. The proletariat of oppressor nations like Britian, France, Germany, and the Tsarist Russian empire2 were expected to have socialist revolutions first that would ultimately lay the ground for the resolution of the national question, preserving the positive aspects of capitalism with its productive forces being used towards socialist aims and imperalist relations being overcome through proletarian internationalism. Given this theory, the revolutionary initiative was placed in the hands of the oppressor nations' proletariat. They became the primary aspect of socialist revolution, with the oppressed nations playing a secondary role and expected to gradually move towards socialism with the assistance of the oppressor nations. Although Lenin developed nationalism and internationalism through assessing his material conditions in Russia and in struggle with the social chauvinists of the 2nd International, he still preserved this theory within his application of scientific socialism. Lenin made great contributions to the importance of the complete (yet conditional)3 self-determination of oppressed nations as well as the difference between the nationalism of oppressor-oppressed nations, and he fought vigorously against the chauvinism within his nation and other oppressor nations.
However, because Lenin preserved the theory from Marx in regards to the primacy of the oppressor nations' proletariat, even within the 3rd International and despite great effort, chauvinism flourished and oppressed nations' revolutionary potential was subordinated to the reactionary oppressor nations. It must be understood that the decline of imperialism was not clear to Marx or Engels in their era, and this is why they misunderstood the revolutionary role of the oppressed nations and the reactionary role of the oppressor nations entire class structure. This is why they were unable to fully grasp national structure in its most developed and thus declining stage; imperialism. Lenin was able to understand imperialism, but was still in continuity with Marx in regards to the principal role of the oppressor nations. Lenin himself thought that revolution would first take place in the capitalist oppressor nations as well, only to be surprised by his backward oppressor nation being at the vanguard of socialist revolution. The Chinese Revolution was a battleground itself for the struggle around reversing this theory to see to it that the advanced oppressor nations will lose their reactionary and chauvinist orientation when the oppressed nations save them by destroying the exploitative foundation of the advanced countries economic life; radically changing it.4 Maoism was where nationalism and internationalism ruptured with this particular incorrect theory and advanced scientific socialism in this regard (among many others).
Maoism and the Universal Principle of Proletarian Nationalism
The Chinese Revolution implemented and further developed dialectical materialism into the law of contradiction; the unity-struggle of opposites, its primary and secondary aspects, and the important understanding that the internal is decisive. One such application of this law is on the contradiction developed through the Chinese Revolution; between nationalism and internationalism. Through Mao’s experience of dealing with imperialism as a semi-feudal oppressed nation which was also dealing with the external force of the USSR giving incorrect leadership through the Comintern5, he was able to more fully develop the theory of proletarian nationalism;
Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions.6
Mao explains that the patriotism of oppressor nations means bringing about your own nations defeat, while patriotism for the oppressed nation means defeating the oppressor nations through proletarian nationalism;
For only by fighting in defense of the motherland can we defeat the aggressors and achieve national liberation. And only by achieving national liberation will it be possible for the proletariat and other working people to achieve their own emancipation. The victory of China and the defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries. Thus in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism."7
This isn't some quick quote from Mao that is being exploited by us to meet some bourgeois nationalist end. It can be seen throughout the Chinese Communist Party's revolutionary practice internally and externally, nationally and internationally; and was decisive for their victory. The significance of the internal being decisive is primary in the reasoning for nationalism. It is a matter of dialectical materialism. Here is a great leap in scientific socialism developed within Maoism; proletarian nationalism. The application of the theory and practice used by the CPC to the conditions of various oppressed nations who built genuine proletarian nationalist movements is what consolidated into what we now understand as Maoism; through past revolutionary movements like those of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Communist Party of Peru.
The founding of this universal principle was hard won going all the way back to the 1st International and the struggle to understand nationalism in relation to internationalism. Proletarian nationalism isn’t revolutionary nationalism or third-worldism, but the application of scientific socialism that can be seen today in the revolutionary movements of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of the Philippines. This principle is something completely lost to the white Maoists of the imperialist centers because it does not benefit their dogmatic application of scientific socialism that serves to continue their neo-colonial relationship with the oppressed nations under them in the u.s. empire. Lenin would have identified and described the white Maoists of today by saying that we need to,
declare that a socialist of an oppressor nation who does not conduct both peacetime and wartime propaganda in favour of freedom of secession for oppressed nations, is no socialist and no internationalist, but a chauvinist.8
White Like Mao?
The essence of the error of white Maoists is that they utilize Lenin's work on the national question dogmatically and one-sidedly, while Mao's advancements on nationalism are not touched at all. Lenin was clear in describing the conditions in which internationalism was possible and defined distinct responsibilities of the oppressor and oppressed nations proletariat. They treat Lenin as gospel when he states the need for the unity of nations under one party within a given state, while completely ignoring Lenin when he says,
The proletariat [of the oppressor nations] must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and for the nations that 'its own' nation oppresses. Unless it does this, proletarian internationalism will remain a meaningless phrase; mutual confidence and class solidarity between the workers of the oppressing and oppressed nations will be impossible9 (our emphasis).
They take the incorrect line of the primacy of oppressor nations over oppressed nations and ignore its historical irrelevance while only half-listening to Lenin on the things he was actually correct about; thus implementing internationalism in a way that is intended to dominate oppressed nations. Proletarian nationalism shares the desire and goal of "integrating" with other nations in order to move towards communism. However at this stage in imperialism integrating the Black and white nation requires secession to make that possible; as Marx understood the same need existing between Ireland and England.10 Maoism is then utilized by some white "revolutionaries"11 as an identity where their subjective beliefs and adherence to communist ideology is supposed to somehow negate their objective position within the imperialist contradiction. What distinguishes white Maoists from other communists sects whites engage in is the former uses the Maoist identity to "integrate with the masses" and "organize the advanced" in order to "massline" and find the proletariat; which just so happens to be the masses of the oppressed nations. History has shown that movements within the u.s empire have been most revolutionary when nationalist and most reformist when "internationalist." FF is a book that clears away the neo-colonial stain these white Maoists attempted to place on scientific socialism; it's a book that brings proletarian nationalism into sharper distinction. The u.s oppressor nation Maoists think they can "avoid the difficult challenges within its own non-revolutionary society by becoming political parasites on the oppressed nations."12 They refuse to implement what Mao defines as "patriotism" on the part of the oppressor nations and bring defeat to their own nation; this being their role.
False Nationalism, False Internationalism: The correct theorization of proletarian nationalism applied to over a century of communist struggle
The people behind "False Nationalism, False Internationalism" are still a mystery, but there is no question as to the correctness of their theories and the conclusions they come to; paving a way forward through a vigorous summation of the past. Within the u.s empire this book tackles Black revolutionary organizing going from the African Blood Brotherhood in the early 20th century all the way to the logical endpoint of the incorrect lines of the 1960's that manifested in the insanity that was The Revolutionary Armed Task Force of the 1980's.
The through-line throughout this time for the Black nation within the u.s empire was its dialectical engagement with false nationalism and false internationalism and how this fits into the broader two-line struggle between socialism vs neo-colonialism. False nationalism is defined as a
trend of nationalism that prioritizes nation over class. These politics are only concerned with making sure that an organizing space has a body of people who are all the same race and/or national identity. The absence of class politics will always result in a bourgeois deviation.13
While the current main form of false internationalism is “[t]his view that white people are the answer to the problems of the oppressed nations”14 which is neo-colonial and Eurocentric. Going further FF explains;
While false internationalism involves deception, it is more than a trick. It is a class alliance between petty-bourgeois and lumpen opportunist elements from both oppressor and oppressed nations. Misleadership and continued dependency on the oppressor nation is promoted, against the interest of the oppressed. And the collaboration is concealed under the label revolutionary 'solidarity' or internationalism.15
All this immediately becomes palpable to any serious Black revolutionaries who attempt to analyze and summarize their practice within sites of rebellion and revolutionary organizations.
SouSou: Sharing a summation and a call-to-submissions
Here we would like to share a summation by a group named BAR that takes proletarian nationalism as a theoretical departure from tired white Maoism of the u.s empire, along with the developed understanding from FF, coming forth with an insightful summation of 2+ years worth of Maoist organizing experience. Called "What Nationalism? A Critical Analysis and Summary of the BAR experience” the summation shows how the insights from FF continue to remain relevant today and will remain so until we correctly apply Maoism in general and proletarian nationalism in particular. If you see some theoretical gaps within this here document from the Editorial Board, they may be filled when reading BAR's summation.
We encourage readers to take FF and use it to theorize and make a summation on your practice in the past years, as BAR has done. See for yourself if its insights bear theoretical clarity; all this internet squabbling will only be squashed through revolutionary practice. It is up to Black Maoists to use the theories developed in Maoism in general and FF in particular vs. the white Maoists theories and other forms of revisionism; and apply it to history, their material conditions and practice in order to identify what is correct. We will share the introduction to FF as we find it a good entry point into understanding proletarian nationalism. And if any Black person or organization takes this call on, please send us your summation; we are interested in unity and struggle on the subject.
Footnotes:
1 The introduction to False Nationalism, False Internationalism can be found on our website.
2 There is a fundamental difference that can explain why Russia had a socialist revolution and the Western European oppressor nations didn't; the difference was between backward oppressor nations and advanced oppressor nations. Between those nations that hadn't yet had a bourgeoisie democratic revolution that consolidated capitalism and those which did. The Russian Tsarist empire was unable to mitigate the contradictions within its own nation unlike the advanced oppressor nations. Lenin's application of internationalism must be understood through this lens; Lenin himself was always speaking of applying scientific socialisms to your conditions. In a later piece this and the theory-practice of nationalism and internationalism will be given a more thorough historical materialist analysis with quotes abound. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button dudes.
3 The conditions Lenin placed on whether or not nations are correct in asserting their self-determination ranged from its contribution to the international proletariat to whether it was merely a proxy for imperial interests. Suffice it to say the Black nation within the u.s empire fits the bill.
4 This is counter to what Lenin theorized when he said, "These prejudices are bound to die out very slowly, for they can disappear only after imperialism and capitalism have disappeared in the advanced countries, and after the entire foundation of the backward countries’ economic life has radically changed. "
5 There is a reason the CPC didn't create a 4th International (Trotsky's attempt aside), as it didn't want to recreate the mistakes of the Comintern among other reasons. An International is still needed, but one that must develop in line with proletarian nationalism so as not to engage in false internationalism.
6 Mao Tse-Tung, "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National Wars" in Mao Collected Works: Vol.2, (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 196.
7 Ibid.
8 V.I. Lenin, "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination," in Lenin Collected Works: Vol.21, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 412.
9 V.I. Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination," (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2022), 141.
10 A quote from Marx on the question of Ireland can be found in V.I. Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination," 107. "I have done my best to bring about this demonstration of the English workers in favor of Fenianism...I used to think separation of Ireland from England impossible. I now think it inevitable, although after the separation there may come federation." Marx and Lenin also understood that even the oppressor nations revolutionary movement is held back by their possession of oppressed nations.
11 For an example of identity politics in Maoist garb, look no further than the vanguard of this type; the journal "Kites." Their most recent publication that is supposed to be "summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States" makes it clear that if that publication is looking to the past in order to understand the present, they are unable to accurately assess the past and even more so interpret what should be the task of the present. An example is them being unable to understand that the nationalist sentiment of the Black nation that galvanized the Garveyite movement was not a hindrance to communism, but actually an organizable force for revolution through the right of nations to self-determination as defined by Lenin and further a case for proletarian nationalism. If the Black nation could have they would have voted to secede; their sentiment proved their position as a nation. Lenin understood the communist party must take national sentiments seriously and that oppressed nations fighting national liberation struggles was a strength for socialist revolution. Instead they decide to make nationalism and proletarian revolution incompatible.
Those behind Kites refuse to explain what nations they belong to as they seem to see no point in it or that it is divisive or they will say it's for security reasons; whatever to get away from the matter. But in what they write, their class-nation commitments come through loud and clear; they are WHITE, white as hell. Their incorrect approach to national liberation struggles tells us they don't have proletarians from oppressed nations within their organization, save those they have selected to represent the oppressed nations in a false internationalist manner. They do have many good theoretical insights that seem to come from seasoned practice, but it all falls apart when applied using their false internationalism.
12 E. Tani and Kae Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” 11.
13 As defined by the summation we are excited to publish; "What Nationalism? A Critical Analysis and Summary of the BAR experience”
14 Tani and Sera, "False Nationalism, False Internationalism," 3-4.
15 Ibid., 5.
False Nationalism, false inter-nationalism
INTRODUCTION
by E. Tani and Kaé Sera
Political events of the last twenty-five years have shown that the revolutionary movements born in the 1960s still believe that white people (i.e. the US oppressor nation) are the answer to the problems of the oppressed nations. The decline of these old movements has also shown that these beliefs lead to bitter defeats, both militarily and politically. This view that white people are the answer to the problems of the oppressed nations is neo-colonial and Eurocentric, and is one of the main forms of false internationalism.
On a world scale, neo-colonialism as a stage of imperialism has proven to be very dangerous because of its flexibility and powers of camouflage as compared to colonialism. Even people who are opposed to imperialism can get misdirected by neo-colonial influences.
REVIEWING NEO-COLONIALISM
So there are not misunderstandings, right at the beginning we want to take the time to spell out what certain key concepts are. Neocolonialism (literally “new colonialism”) is a more sophisticated, disguised form of the classic capitalist colonialism. Originally, the European capitalist nations and their settler off-shoots (“u.s.a.,” Canada, Northern Ireland, etc.) militarily seized oppressed nations, which they ruled and looted as national property. However, to deflect anti-colonial revolutions the imperialist powers found it expedient to grant “flag independence” to the new governments representing the oppressed nation petty-bourgeoisie.
So Kenya before independence in 1960 was an outright British Crown Colony, where the economy was owned by major European corporations and settler plantation owners, and where political dissent and rebelliousness were brutally put down by Britain’s puppet “native police”. Today, Kenya is a British neo-colony, governed by a well-paid Afrikan elite who are in alliance with imperialism against their own people. The same European and U.S. corporations and the same settler planters dominate the economy, while the same puppet troops repress the masses. So the “flag independence” is democratic only in outward form, a change of faces, but in essence the Kenyan neo-colony is still a nation oppressed by another nation (and by imperialism as a system).
Implicit in everything we say is the communist understanding that the imperialist stage of capitalist development is characterized by the complete division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations. By the start of the 20th century, the imperialist powers of Europe, the “u.s.a.” and Japan had divided among themselves claim to every square inch of the earth’s surface. Every person was supposed to be owned by one imperialist nation or another. While today we generally think of oppressed nations as Third World or non-European, there have been numerous exceptions—Ireland (oppressed by Britain), the Basque (oppressed by Spain), Albania (oppressed by Italy), and so on.
Neo-colonialism uses a facade of democracy (“native rule”, “one man one vote”, etc.) to conceal continued domination. This need not take the form of independence, but can also take the form of phony citizenship in the oppressor nation. French imperialism gave “democracy” to its small New Caledonian colony in the Pacific, for example, by annexing it into France. All Kanak people, the true inhabitants, were involuntarily given paper French citizenship with “voting rights”. Of course, even in Kanaky elections the garrison of French settlers on the island outvotes the Kanak “minority”, while assassinating or imprisoning those who get too militant. New Caledonia is a “democratic” neo-colony, in the same way as Puerto Rico or New Afrika. New Afrika was originally a colony of chattel slaves, but was converted to a neo-colony in 1865 when New Afrikan colonial subjects were involuntarily given phony U.S. citizenship as a pretense of democracy, a substitute for independence as a nation.
While neo-colonialism is a phenomenon of imperialism, that does not mean that only the capitalism class practices it. Neo-colonialism is a part of the general relations between oppressor nations and oppressed nations. Often noble sentiments and concerns are twisted or exploited, in the same was that “democracy” or “voting rights” are used to deny real democracy through independence. For example, in 1985 one of the major events in the U.S. was the popularity of aid to Afrika campaigns. While preventing starvation in drought areas is humanitarian, the campaigns were also clearly neo-colonial propaganda. The implicit message was always put out that Afrikans are too savage and too stupid to feed themselves, so that their survival depends on white people. It is our point that in many ways neo-colonialism has pervaded relations between revolutionary movements in the U.S. Empire, however masked by lofty words like “solidarity” and “internationalism”.
There is a relationship between neo-colonialism and class, just as there is between false internationalism and class. Genuine proletarian internationalism between revolutionaries of different nations is based on our class stand. We recognize that the oppressed and exploited masses of the world, led by the proletariat as the most modern and revolutionary class, not only have common interests but are remaking the world through socialist revolution. False internationalism is a pretense of this, in the same way that neo-colonialism is the pretense of true independence. When we think about it, examples are easy to find.
In the late 1960s Euro-Amerikan radicals and liberals raised tens of thousands of dollars, walked picket lines in front of courthouses, and helped make a big public issue of the defense trials of Black Panther Party leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Newton and Seale were projected by the media and the white Left as the most revolutionary leadership of the New Afrikan movement. Was that campaign an example of genuine internationalism? No. Many Euro-Amerikan students may have been subjectively sincere in a desire for internationalism, but objectively what took place was the reverse. Because at the same time that the Euro-Amerikan Left was promoting Huey and Bobby, they were also ignoring—and thus implicitly condoning—imperialism counter-insurgency against real revolutionary nationalists, such as Fred Ahmed Evans in Cleveland or the Republic of New Afrika 11 in Mississippi. In other words, no solidarity with those explicitly fighting for New Afrikan independence. What passed for “solidarity” was really a settler Left attempt to once again pick Black leaders more suitable to them. Not internationalism but false internationalism.
While false internationalism involves deception, it is more than a trick. It is a class alliance between petty-bourgeois and lumpen opportunist elements from both oppressor and oppressed nations. Misleadership and continued dependency on the oppressor nation is promoted, against the interests of the oppressed. And the collaboration is concealed under the label of revolutionary “solidarity” or internationalism.
THE ROLE OF CLASSES IN FALSE INTERNATIONALISM
At this point we want to break down the class question. Classes are social groupings of people that occupy a common role in economic production and distribution, and therefore share a common way of life, a common position in society, common political interests and common social goals. In general we recognize four main world classes, two of the laboring classes and two of the non-laboring classes: the bourgeoisie (capitalists), petty-bourgeoisie (small business owners, managers, intellectuals and other privileged middle-persons), proletariat (workers), and peasantry (small farmers). We say “in general” because in each nation the actual class situation reflects that nation’s own particular historical development.
It is necessary to keep in mind that class structure can be very different from nation to nation. It is not true that every nation has the same classes, based on the European 19th century model of Marx and Engels’ day. For example, although the New Afrikan nation has a very large proletariat and a small petty-bourgeoisie, it has no bourgeoisie. There is a New Afrikan pseudo-bourgeoisie, made up of a handful of individual millionaires, car dealers, entertainers, politicians, funeral home owners, etc. That is, while there are individual New Afrikans who are wealthy or own businesses, they do not make up a real capitalist class of their own. The reason for this is that the position and role of the capitalist class in the New Afrikan oppressed nation is taken up by the U.S. oppressor nation bourgeoisie. The handful of wealthy New Afrikan pseudo-bourgeoisie, while they can buy stocks, sports cars and yachts, do not employ the New Afrikan proletariat, do not own any significant capital, and do not control in any way the economic activities of their own nation. All that is done by the settler bourgeoisie. In other words, the pseudo-bourgeoisie are wealthy individually, but do not own their nation’s means of production and distribution (steel mills, airlines, chemical plants, utilities, etc.) So the class structure itself has been shaped by the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nation.
Conversely, on the other side of the same national contradiction, there are many individual Euro-Amerikan workers but they do not make up a genuine proletariat. That is, settler workers are a non-exploited labor aristocracy, with a privileged lifestyle far, far above the levels of the world proletariat. They might be called a pseudo-proletariat, in that individual settlers do work in factories and mines, but as a group they do not perform the role of a proletariat. Settler workers neither support their society by their labor, nor is their exploitation the source of the surplus value (or profit) that sustains the U.S. bourgeoisie. The lifegiving role of the proletariat in the U.S. Empire is relegated to the proletariats of the oppressed nations, which is why “nations become almost as classes” under imperialism. The shrinking number of settler workers actually live as part of the lower petty-bourgeoisie, and have no separate political existence. Classes in the U.S. Empire themselves reflect the primary contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations.
The petty-bourgeoisie (literally “little bourgeoisie”) is an in-between class, that neither owns the means of production and commands society, as the bourgeoisie does, nor sustains society by its labor as the proletariat does. Nor can this class successfully make revolution itself. Politically the petty-bourgeoisie is a vacillating and intermediary class, shifting its position back and forth between imperialism and socialism. Like other classes it is divided into sectors. There are, for instance, social and political differences between the small retail-shop owning sector and the intellectuals. Yet, there is even more in common.
There was a tendency in the ‘60s movements to glorify the pettybourgeoisie (and the lumpen). Some folks even said that in the New Afrikan nation the intellectuals (teachers, lawyers, doctors, college students, etc.) were national revolutionary as a whole. When we examine the political careers of people from this class, however, we can see that while some committed class suicide within the Revolution, many other Black intellectuals, whatever their rhetoric, only had the ultimate goal of “equality” with their settler class-mates—foundation grants, professorships, government positions, neo-colonial reforms that benefited them as a privileged sector.
The main political ally of the petty-bourgeoisie in the the old ‘60s-’70s movements were the lumpen (lumpen-proletariat). There has been much confusion about the class or semi-class. Classically, the lumpen have been described as the “rag-tag” grouping of individuals uprooted and dislocated from the main classes, and who consequently no longer have any relationship at all to productive society.
The lumpen have many different origins. In pre-Nazi Germany many of the lumpen came from the bankrupted petty-bourgeoisie while others came from the peasantry and lower proletariat. Their primary political expression was in the paramilitary “Brown Shirts” (Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers) of the Nazi Party, and they were the class base for the “radical” wing of that party (which sought to terrorize and rule over both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). After the “Brown Shirts” were purged in a 1934 bloodbath by Hitler, many of the lumpen survivors became exiles from Germany. In that stage the ex-Storm Troopers became the main element in the Ernst Thaelmann Brigade, the German Communist Party unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists. We can see that the lumpen should not be carelessly characterized without social investigation in the individual case.
In the 1960s-1970s movements within the U.S. Empire the lumpen were glorified, sometimes to the point of proclaiming them as the leading or even the only revolutionary class. This was widespread. A misunderstanding was pushed which falsely identified the lumpen as the poorest and unemployed. As we shall see, this was no an accident. Most of the folks whom the old movements called lumpen were really from the bottom, most-oppressed layer of the proletariat.
In general under capitalism roughly 50% of the proletariat are unemployed, forming the reserve army of the unemployed. This was true in England in 1848 and Watts in 1985. Mass unemployment is a normal, fixed situation for much of the real proletariat (unlike the EuroAmerikan labor aristocracy). Capitalism needs the reserve army of the unemployed to give them more choice in hiring workers, to help push down wages and maintain competition for scarce jobs, and to be there ready-at-hand when economic expansion creates an instant need for more labor. Marx referred to them as the proletariat’s “Lazarus-layers”, after the Biblical character revived from the dead by Jesus. In the same way the bourgeoisie, when it needs more labor, suddenly revives the “Lazarus-layers” into economic life. That millions must there live lives of desperation, lives fragmented with chaos and cut short by the conditions of the streets, is only a regular feature of capitalist “civilization”. So the poor and unemployed are not per se the lumpen, although lumpen may be poor and unemployed.
What characterized the lumpen as a class or semi-class is their individualistic separation from both the class and society they came from. They have no loyalty to the oppressed, although they may hate the oppressor. To merely be poor and unemployed still leaves one within the working classes, but to be lumpen is to see your life as preying on the working classes. The individualism, political vacillation and subjectivity that characterize the petty-bourgeoisie are only more so for the lumpen, although we can see how these classes can work handin-hand with each other.
The political rootlessness of the lumpen is one of their main attributes. In pre-Revolutionary China some former peasants, forced off their lands and hence out of the farming communities they came from, took part in anti-landlord rebellions and formed secret societies for mutual selfprotection. But in most cases these initially righteous secret societies— the Triad society, the Green Band, the Big Sword Society, and many others—quickly evolved into armed gangs preying on the people, and then became mercenary gangs doing the dirty work for the imperialists.
It was only in militarily beating the mercenary gangs and puppet army units, both mainly lumpen, that the Chinese Red Army could remold lumpen, proletarianizing them as part of the Revolution. We can see this rootlessness and alienation from their people in the careers of lumpen who were former leading figures in the ‘60s Black Movement, but who turned to drug dealing, petty hustling or fronting for the C.I.A. once things got difficult. The street force or what was called the lumpen was a mixture of classes, with lumpen elements within a primarily proletarian mass.
It is not a question of the lumpen being “good” or “bad”. Many lumpen fighters, as everyone knows, played a militant role in the revolutionary movements. But to falsely glorify the class as such is to undermine the necessary understanding that the Revolution requires lumpen to transform themselves, to become proletarian. No lumpen can successfully serve their people without committing class suicide. In Revolutionary China the Red Army gladly recruited lumpen bandits or mercenaries, but systematically assisted them to adopt a proletarian outlook—in putting collective interests first, in learning scientific military practice, in doing productive work instead of living off of others, and in serving the oppressed. When the 1960s-1970s movements here mistakenly glorified the lumpen and glorified criminality as such, they were rejecting the task of helping the lumpen become true fighters for the people. False praise just covered up for slighting the legitimate political needs of these rads.
As a class or semi-class the lumpen in the old 1960s-1970s movements became pawns in neo-colonial alliances with the white Left. That is, the politically active Black lumpen, Puerto Rican lumpen, and so on, were allied to the Euro-Amerikan petty-bourgeoisie.
This produced distortions and set-backs for the oppressed nations. In 1969-70 some groupings within the Euro-Amerikan New Left, most notably the National Office of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society), began promoting a Chicago youth gang as the leading Puerto Rican revolutionary organization in the U.S. An alliance was formed, with S.D.S. activists providing political guidance. This gang, the Young Lords, made and impressive sight when they turned up in berets and jackets at radical demonstrations, on occasions hundreds strong. The Young Lords’ early actions, such as building takeovers to protest gentrification, won them respect and much publicity.
But while they were being heavily promoted by the white Left, internally the youth gang was becoming preoccupied with heroin use. The top leaders, then public figures in Chicago supposedly representing Puerto Rican independence and socialism, were themselves slaves to their drug habit. And in the community too many gang members were abusing people while committing petty crimes to support heroin addiction. Soon the “Organization” just fell apart. In retrospect, the Young Lords (who initially inspired but were separate from the Young Lords Party in New York) as a revolutionary leadership were the artificial creation of the petty-bourgeois white Left and the imperialist media, out of an alliance with the lumpen elements leading oppressed youth. False theories glorifying the lumpen as the most revolutionary class were no accident, emanating from the radical Euro-Amerikan petty-bourgeoisie and the like-minded class-mates in the pettybourgeoisies of the oppressed nations.
FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW
We are in the transition period between the old revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the new movements that are coming into being. The remnants of the old movements, unable to face their crippling weaknesses, try to hold things together by denying the reality of defeats. Their practice has been reduced to repeating what hasn’t worked before, over and over. Now, the two-line struggle between socialism and neo-colonialism is manifested in the struggle to find and overturn the sources of those defeats.
False internationalism had been a factor in the leadership crisis within the revolutionary movements. This can be seen just in the effect of maintaining the idea that white people are the answer to the problems of the oppressed nations. We maintain that this backwards idea had a strangle-hold on the old revolutionary movements.
Simultaneously, the inevitable corollary to that idea also became dominant: that the U.S. oppressor nation Left could avoid the difficult challenges within its own non-revolutionary society by becoming political parasites on the oppressed nations. “Allies” is a noble word that has, like “democracy” and other fine words before it, taken on a sour taste in Babylon.
There is a direct connection between the defeats suffered by the old 1960s-1970s movements on the one hand, and neo-colonial relationships that have existed between revolutionaries of the oppressor and oppressed nations on the other hand. It is necessary to understand this connection scientifically.
Also, it is true that genuine internationalism is invaluable for us, and that anything that undermines this must be viewed as a danger. We are fighting in the continental U.S. Empire, the “prison-house of nations”, a very center of world imperialism crowded with nations and peoples. Alliances between revolutionaries and movements of different nations are not only positive, but are in practice inevitable. Therefore, these alliances must be consciously built in a correct way, in both word and deed.
This study sums up experiences from the development of the 20th century communist movement: that is, of world communism in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution. It deals with both past and present. In the first half of the study examples of revolutionary alliances both false and genuine are examined. To start with, we see how Finland, a small oppressed nation, played a key role in the overthrow of the Czarist Empire. The genuine alliance between the Finnish nation and the Bolsheviks enabled that young party to survive and build the armed struggle from 1900 onwards.
Following the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in the new Soviet state built the Communist International, the most ambitious experiment in international alliances we have yet seen. Out of this, for reasons we shall explain, came episodes of false internationalism that severely tried the first generation of oppressed nation (colonial) communists: the China-U.S.S.R. alliance in the 1920s-1930s; the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) relationship with Asian nationalities in that same period; finally, the role of the CPUSA’s Black cadres in the 1935 New Afrikan solidarity movement with Ethiopia.
While it is sometimes hard to study earlier revolutionary experiences, these struggles prove that false internationalism is not a brand new problem nor one unique to the “u.s.a.” It is especially useful to see the full meaning of national movements succeeding or failing to overcome false internationalism. The seriousness of what is at stake should impress itself on us. Armies, parties and entire national movements suffered setbacks and in cases complete defeats. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The second half of our study deals with false internationalism in the U.S. Empire during the 1960s-1970s. It particularly examines the relationship between the New Afrikan National Liberation Movement and the Euro-Amerikan New Left on the terrain of armed struggle, the highest and most decisive form of struggle.
This study is not in itself a new, higher level in our understanding of the world. But is is more evidence that we need to reach for such a new stage. Recent crisis not only in movements within the U.S. Empire, but within world socialism is pushing us relentlessly to change. Cabral’s accurate prediction of “neo-socialism” as a higher form of neocolonialism in Afrika, the Capitalist Road in China, are just cases in point. Imperialism can no longer hold power, but we have no been able to always build socialist power. Imperialism loses but then sometimes retakes countries. Confusion about communism in the U.S. Empire mirrors and is part of the world two-line struggle in peoples’ movements between socialism and neo-colonialism.
GROWING CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN THE CONTINENTAL EMPIRE
This is a time when changes are taking shape that will eventually shatter this Empire and break up the “u.s.a.” itself. Our basic understand of the “u.s.a.” is that it is an illegitimate nation. This was summed up in SETTLERS: Mythology of the White Proletariat, which is the historical-materialist analysis of the Euro-Amerikan masses:
“We all know that the ‘United States’ is an oppressor nation; that is, a nation that oppresses other nations. This is a characteristic that the U.S. shares with other imperialist powers. What is specific, is particular about the U.S. oppressor nation is that it is an illegitimate nation.
“What pretends to be one continental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific is really a Euro-Amerikan settler empire, built on colonially oppressed nations and peoples whose very existence has been forcibly submerged. But the colonial crime, the criminals, the victims, and the stolen lands and labor still exist. The many Indian nations, the Afrikan nation in the South, Puerto Rico, the northern half of Mexico, Asian Hawaii—all are now considered the lands of Euro-Amerikan settlers. The true citizens of this U.S. Empire are the European invaders and their descendants. So that the ‘United States’ is in reality not one, but many nations (oppressor and oppressed).
“We see the recognition of Amerika as a ‘prison-house of nations’ as the beginning—no more, no less—of the difference between revisionist and communist politics here. We hold that once this outward shell of integration into a single, white-dominated ‘U.S.A.’ is cracked open—to reveal the colonial oppression and anti-colonial struggle within—then the correct path to a communist understanding of the U.S. Empire is begun.
“We hold that settlerism is the historic instrument created by the European ruling classes to safeguard their colonial conquests with entire, imported populations of European invaders. In return for special privileges and a small share of the colonial loot these settler became the loyal, live-in garrison troops of Empire...”
The primary contradiction within the U.S. Empire is between imperialism and the oppressed nations. National and class contradictions, which are not completely separate but interrelated, continue to grow sharper within the U.S. Empire. Indeed, the ebbing of the ‘60s protest movements could not stop or even slow the growth of national contradictions.
what Nationalism?
A Critical Analysis and Summary of the BAR Experience
By a Former Bar Member
Before writing this summation, we had about 2+ years of prior experience together that culminated in our most advanced organizational endeavor yet. Our camaraderie started in the collective experience of BAR, a mass organization, and its leading organization, Paramount. A collective of former BAR members took the time to look at the entirety of BAR’s organizational history and defined many mistakes, pitfalls and shortcomings. We also found some good practices and theories to continue – just not as many as the theories and practices with which we should rupture. In this document, I will be using the philosophy of dialectical materialism to explain the motion of contradictions in our previous work. The process of summation is of vital importance in revolutionary culture. Summation allows us to collectively engage in the scientific process by turning our previous practice into theory. The goal of summing up the BAR experience is to purposefully rupture with incorrect tendencies and continue correct tendencies to further aide the development of our struggle. Without further ado, let’s start with our primary contradiction.
Dawn of Contradiction: False Internationalism vs. False Nationalism
We must start here at the root. False internationalism is the rotten seed that planted our weeping willow of organizational theory and practice. As mentioned before, BAR was a mass organization underneath a parent organization called Paramount. Paramount was an explicitly Marxist organization that existed as a parent organization to various mass organs throughout the city. This main organizational goal was never fully carried out nor even fully understood by Paramount’s membership. Every Paramount meeting was filled with confusion, frustration, disagreement, disorganization and occasionally a migraine headache. Before Paramount dissolved, it was briefly transformed into a “Party building organization” which never got off the ground due to a lack of general ideological consolidation and unity. Paramount’s ideology was based in something that we would identify now as false internationalism. This is generally the bourgeois idea that instead of focusing on your own nation, communists must organize under an all-inclusive multinational proletariat.
The idea that oppressed nations should organize multi-nationally and not engage in independent political organizing (that is, each nation having their own separate Party) is a bourgeois idea because it ignores the historical development of nations as well as how that history has shaped nationhood today. It says that all nations should work together to build socialism without addressing the fact that some nations have dominance over others – hence, it is false internationalism. The material existence of various nations all in one country and the white supremacist identity of being “American” has convinced the radical left that we need one singular class struggle, regardless of nationality, to build socialism in this country. This idea completely ignores the proletarian philosophy of dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism generally follows that ideas are a reflection of the material world and that knowledge comes from practice. As dialectical materialists, we need to derive our theory from practice, from the concrete development of the material world. In other words, we need to come to conclusions based not on how we wish things to be, but on how they actually are. Using dialectical materialism further, we know that capitalism was founded and developed around the creation of oppressed and oppressor nations. These nations still exists today within the United States. Therefore, we have to look at the development of each of those nations, the class structures within those nations and the specific struggle between oppressed nations and oppressor nations in order to make correct analyses. White people belong to the oppressor nation that is the United States. Whether they are poor or billionaires, Italian or Irish, they are first class citizens of this oppressor nation. It is their dialectical unity with the oppressed nations that strips the white nation of a proletariat. The way this presents itself within the U.S. empire is the accumulation of capital from the surplus-value of oppressed nations within and without the empire and their dispossession for the sake of capital. The capital distribution goes overwhelmingly towards the oppressor nation’s development amongst all their classes. This can be seen even in the poor white rural areas, where an influx of immigrant labor leads to economic growth where there was once stagnation; the white pseudo-proletariat develop not through their own labor, but rather the exploitation of oppressed nations. As defined in the book False Nationalism, False Internationalism, “Classes are social groupings of people that occupy a common role in economic production and distribution and therefore share a common way of life, a common position in society, common political interests and common social goals.”1
It is clear that when we look at nations in their oppressor vs. oppressed dialectic that the entire oppressor nation has a completely different role in economic production and distribution that relies on oppressed nation(s). In fact we could go further and note how most workplaces are diverse in the population of their workers, however, the positions within that same workplace won’t be. Usually, the lowest paid positions belong to Blacks, Mexicans and other oppressed nationalities primarily. The higher paid positions that have more decision-making power are mostly white and the highest paid positions with the most decision making power are all white. As False Nationalism False Internationalism states, “Nations become almost as class.”2
There are certain conditions that oppressed nations have to address within their class struggle that are completely different from and, in fact, directly impacted by the oppressor nation to which white people belong. So why then would they be organized into the same organization or Party? It became clear to us just how many problems arise when people from oppressed nations organize alongside the very people from their oppressor nation (as we did in Paramount and eventually BAR). We ignored the relationship of oppressor nation to oppressed nations. It was organizing as we wished the world to be, not as it currently is.
Paramount’s membership was very small but very diverse. There were some Black nations represented and some non-Black nations as well. The organization was multi-national, including not only the various oppressed nations who were from the neighborhood but also white gentrifiers. The idea was that there was a basis to organize in this way because everyone, even the gentrifiers, could unite broadly against the landlord class. This was a fundamental error because we were treating white people and people from oppressed nations as if they have the same class interests. It followed the common idea that, “Hey! White gentrifiers aren’t the enemy. The landlords are the enemy! Gentrifiers are not the cause but simply the result of gentrification.” This idea is correct in placing the landlord and real estate class as the primary antagonistic factor in the motion of gentrification, but it is incorrect in its assessment of the objective conditions. Gentrifiers, mainly those who are white, are needed for the development of gentrification. Where there are oppressed nation gentrifiers, it is as a nation that cannibalizes itself, contributing only to their own nation’s position as oppressed; dispossessing their own, and at best benefiting as individuals. Whereas for the white nation, gentrification always stands as a net positive for their entire economic base through the circulation of capital and reinforces their superstructure by way of allowing the state to subjugate the oppressed nations. For the entire oppressor nation, a rising tide lifts all boats. The landlord class needs the gentrifier class as their main consumer base. The new housing developments, retail stores, gyms, supermarkets, etc. are all for the gentrifier class. They are really the only ones who can consistently afford the lifestyle, while the working working-class and other oppressed classes grip tight trying to withstand a few more months or years in the economic whirlwind of rising prices.
Even if the oppressed classes, along with the gentrifier class, were able to successfully reverse the development of gentrification, most gentrifiers would leave. They would have no reason to be in certain neighborhoods if they weren’t made palatable to them. Therefore, we can make the conclusion that there is a dialectical unity between the development of real estate and the gentry class. A genuinely proletarian movement will always and only start from the section of society that creates and sustains capital as well as those who are dispossessed by the motions of capital.3 Those people (in our city) would be the people from oppressed nations who have already spent generations here. False internationalist ideas manifested socially and politically in the work, and we ended up recruiting both members who were from the area and some who were white gentrifiers. We invited those with opposing interests within our ranks and gave them ample space to cause problems in our organizing.
In practice, organizing with false internationalists from the oppressor nation meant that any form of nationalism was seen as narrow nationalism. For example, there was an instance of a white member criticizing another member for wearing a black-nationalist shirt while doing food distributions. The reasoning behind this criticism was that we, a mass organization, should not display any “narrow nationalism” since we might be organizing folks that were not Black. In reality, there would have been no harm to other oppressed nations just by displaying pro-black politics. This was just an example of a white person from the oppressor nation trying to prevent an oppressed nation from displaying a simple form of their nationalism because they deemed it “exclusive” or a sign of disunity. While this is preposterous, unfortunately, this is something we’ve seen all too often in history as well.4
This same white member also held the belief that they couldn’t organize white people. The rationale was that “it just couldn’t be done.” If white people are indeed also victims of the oppressor nation (as white people so often like to claim), why can’t they be organized by members of their own nation? And if oppressed nations are to be organized, why do white people feel that they should be internal to that organizing? The fact is, we keep seeing that white people refuse to organize their own people because they understand their position as an oppressor nation in the realm of imperialism. The different classes within the white nation will always work toward keeping their status as an oppressor nation in tact. This is why the white working class does not and will not constitute a proletarian class. White workers want to 1) create the conditions to become more bourgeois themselves and 2) further the development of white supremacy. This can only happen at the expense of oppressed nations as we have seen historically. Given these interests, the white nation cannot be primary in revolution. Therefore, the oppressed nations are primary because they cannot benefit from white supremacy and the development of bourgeois society in general. At best, the white working-class would be a secondary aspect tailing the revolutionary struggle for national liberation. Our white “comrades” take their understanding and join/create multi-national organizations, simultaneously making the claim that white people need to be internal to oppressed nations’ organizing and also that white people do not need to be organized as a nation. Ergo, white people need to organize not be organized. They need to organize Black and Brown nations and not themselves. Through this line of thinking, the false internationalist notion that the revolution cannot be handled independently by oppressed nations is exposed.
The white oppressor nation is already the most developed because of its relationship to oppressed nations. The fact that there are oppressor and oppressed nations is proof that the development of nations throughout the world is uneven. Oppressor nations’ societies have developed by expropriating labor and controlling non-white nations in particular. Just because multiple nations organize together under one Party, does not mean that this relationship of oppressor nation controlling oppressed nations suddenly dissolves. This dynamic surfaced in BAR, where we ended up relying on white people and their resources for daily organizational needs. Printing, meeting spaces and money were all things we depended on from the white people in our organization, effectively preventing us from building on our own. Some white people also had more time (due to bougier jobs, financial help from family, etc) and so were able to take on more tasks. It shouldn’t be confused, however, that Black people in the organization were doing a great deal of work and pouring a stupid amount of energy into the organization, not only administratively but also the difficult work that is meeting with people, making connections in the community, setting up meetings, creating educational discussions and recruiting. Still, at one point because of white people’s time-capacity and organizing experience, the number of white people in leadership outnumbered those from oppressed nations. While this may seem like a very obvious red flag, we ultimately comforted ourselves by saying it was a temporary measure so that we could build up the capacity and training of Black and Brown folks to lead the organization within a year.
It is clear now that white people became a barrier to the Black organizers developing their own capacity, using their own resources and relying on their own people to organize. If our organization’s goals could not be accomplished without white leadership then our goals couldn’t have been that great in the first place. Even on a daily level, instead of using a white comrade’s office access for a meeting space, could we not have met at a local Black church? Rather than using a white member’s bougie nonprofit job for printing could we not have asked a local tenant who was a schoolteacher? Or the many Black students with access to university printing? Working with white people staved off even thinking about ways to develop self-reliance and, by extension, self-determination – a false internationalism.
In our organizational recruitment, we first focused on recruiting anyone who lived in the area of work with an emphasis on recruiting the natives. Guided by false internationalism, this led to the colorful melody of BAR’s organizational body. These politics yet again came into contradiction with what we would now identify as false nationalism. False nationalism is, from our understanding, a trend of nationalism that prioritizes nation over class. These politics are only concerned with making sure that an organizing space has a body of people who are all the same race and/or national identity. The absence of class politics will always result in a bourgeois deviation. We had begun to recruit more Black people (who weren’t from our area of work, but were from the city which, in my humble opinion, is also identity politics as it focused on their Blackness as opposed to class or familiarity with the area).
Most importantly, we didn’t do much investigation to figure out a person’s class or class politics. There were really no standards for recruitment outside of identity. We never took into consideration how a person moved or thought before recruiting them. We had no measures to see how they took up tasks, responded to struggle, thought about themselves or the world or any other significant characteristics that are conducive to serious revolutionary work. Currently, my opinion is that if you don’t take your recruitment seriously enough to purposefully recruit people based on political criteria and the ways that you’ve seen them move, you do not take revolutionary work seriously.
Furthermore, having white people in positions of leadership and even just in the organization itself was off-putting to some potential recruits from the oppressed nations from the neighborhood. In fact, we once asked for feedback after one particular meeting with potential members and a comment was that one white member (who, embarrassingly, we allowed to co-lead the presentation) was taking up too much space at the meeting. Although similar comments that we got throughout the years from potential Black members were often rooted in identity politics as opposed to a true understanding of Black self-determination, the masses were still correct that white people should not have a role, much less a prominent role, in the anti-gentrification movement in their neighborhood. On the other hand, some potential recruits from the masses were actually happy to see white people in leadership and took it as a sign of legitimacy of the organization because of their own internalized racism. Even if we wanted to push back against that notion, it would have been pretty futile with nearly all of our leadership being white people. The primary issue was that having white people in the organization allowed no room for us to struggle out the Black nation’s varied ideas about Black self-determination.
This kind of organizing work will never produce socialism. Therefore, oppressed nations must struggle for national liberation to develop the economic, political and social basis for socialism. If we aim to organize a broad proletarian struggle with the world’s various nations without addressing the national question, then we are just reorganizing white supremacy.
Nationalism: An Identity Crisis
Most of the time, the unrelenting racism is what pushes Black people to the correct conclusion that they need to participate in more nationalist organizing. The BAR experience was no different. Naturally, Black members were realizing that organizing with white people was failing and therefore tried to figure out how to resolve that contradiction. However, because we continued to organize without a proletarian ideology, our false internationalism could only develop into false nationalism. Again, false nationalism is characterized by organizing for an oppressed nation without a focus on class politics and proletarian leadership. Without class politics, any movement is bound to become bourgeois and only wage struggle within the confines of white supremacist-capitalist logic and thought. This was directly seen in the BAR experience when it was decided that BAR needed to be a predominantly Black organization to rid itself of white chauvinism and also reflect the city’s predominantly Black population. There was no mention of the primacy and the leadership of the proletariat in the Black nationalist struggle. These politics are completely opposed to our philosophy as communists. Dialectical materialism shows us that the economic base (productive forces + relations of production) is the foundation of society and all class relations stem from it. To engage in organizing without addressing class politics is to make the same error previously exposed in the false internationalist tendency. We would be yet again working in the confines of the capitalist system and ultimately failing to address the root of our oppression.
After about two years of false internationalism, BAR decided to remove all white members and created a Black Action Committee. The goal of the Black Action Committee was to rid the organization of anti-Blackness (though we had no united understanding of what that entailed) and transition the space into a “Black led, Black centered organization”, all while keeping the membership of BAR, in general, multi-national. Within these [false] nationalist politics, there was the corrosive element that is post-modernism and identity politics. Today’s postmodernist thinking assumes that Black people always have the most correct ideas because they are the most oppressed in America. Furthermore, there was the idea that Black women, being the most oppressed section of any Black nation, should be centered in any/everything that has to do with the organization. This led to petty bourgeois Black opportunists coming into leadership and the petty bourgeois non-black membership directly aligning with them simply because they were Black women. This highlights how false internationalism and false nationalism work in dialectical unity.
Let me clarify, any revolutionary Black organization should always aim to uplift and empower Black women as leaders in our movement. The problem is that this should be done for all Black people. It’s incorrect to take ideas as correct just because they come from Black women. Black women are still colonized, like Black men and Black non-binaries and other genders. We all have to remold. A correct idea is correct because it has been proven in practice, not because it comes from a particular identity. While we acknowledge that capitalist patriarchy exists and that it isn’t correct to discriminate against Black women and non-men, we also know it also isn’t correct to discriminate and vilify Black men. The state is already doing that work. As Anuradha Ghandy says in Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement, “In effect postmodernism is extremely divisive because it promotes fragmentation between people and gives relative importance to identities without any theoretical framework to understand the historical reasons for identity formations and to link the various identities.”5 It focuses on identity alone and not on the political and economic forces that create and uphold these identities. We need a Party that allows us to organize and deconstruct our colonial relationships to each other. The revolution needs a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, not postmodern ideas that were obviously engineered by the imperialists.
The postmodernism began to rapidly develop almost immediately after the creation of the Black Action Committee. This committee was given authority over all the nations in the organization and any directives that were deemed necessary to make the organization more Black-centered were implemented without any input from other nations. This included non-Black nations being put into their own separate committee, each non-Black person’s membership being subject to Black Action Committee’s approval, having these members go through a mandatory anti-Blackness training, having all social media posts go through the Black Action Committee for approval and changing the language in all of our educational discussions and organizational guides to be Black-centered. As a result of this, our code of conduct in BAR had changes favoring Black women such as, “prioritize and materially support the political participation of Black members, and especially Black women.”
We also had the postmodern problem in our organizational structure. People began to be elected into leadership positions mainly because of identity. Now, to be honest, this is actually a materialist reason to elect someone – it just shouldn’t be the primary reason. It was actually important for the leadership of BAR to at least be from the city and of oppressed nations. However, what should have been primary is their politics, organizational skills and commitment to the organizational work. For example, we elected a fairly new member to be the chair of the BAC and she eventually became leader of the postmodernist opportunist clique.
BAR’s culture around criticism suffered because of the false nationalist ideological contradictions. Before then, criticism-self-criticism sessions seemed principled. There were genuine attempts to rectify the individual and collective errors in the organization. They weren’t just random attacks and they weren’t based solely on identity. However, as false nationalism strengthened, we started to see more criticisms come up from the opportunist clique, in essence, based on identity politics and wielding power in the organization. These baseless criticisms came from members who thought that Black women were always correct. Any struggle against these criticisms were seen as misogynoir, or the hatred of Black women. There was no actual basis for these accusations, only a clique who claimed this was true. At the head of this clique was really just a narcissist who had no real goals aside from getting her own way and utilizing false nationalism as a method for this.
For example, just after being elected, the head of the BAC repeatedly accused a non-Black member of anti-Blackness without giving any material basis. Later, she also accused Black men members of misogynoir without giving any material basis other than feeling slighted when she wasn’t given final approval over publishing an article. Rather than struggling earnestly, non-Black members were used as pawns to try and mediate between the Black women and Black men and/or be convinced to side with the opportunist clique. Again, this highlights how false internationalism actually works to uphold false nationalism through a dialectical unity because none of it is grounded in proletarian ideology. This clique and this trend of idealist criticism did a lot of damage to the development of BAR. There was really no way to continue the work and there was also no way to hold this clique accountable. There were several calls by the opportunist clique to “take a break [from organizing] to heal” after a criticism-self-criticism session and other such nonsensical ideas that concretely stopped the work from continuing. Also, during a study on gender, the opportunist clique put forward several harmful and incorrect generalizations about Black men such as that they always try and emulate white men and they don’t face violence unlike Black women.
These politics consolidated in the organization due to 1) the lack of development on a proletarian Black nationalist line, 2) the fact that these postmodern politics are the mainstream politics of our current leftist era and 3) the fact that members used identity politics to consolidate a following around false internationalism to continue down a false nationalist line. Ultimately, in many instances we played into the postmodernist politics because we were not developed and consolidated. There was a very loose understanding that proletarian politics were primary and therefore this line wasn’t very effective in competing with the dominating postmodern politics. Had there been any proletarian ideology, the opportunist clique could have been handled and removed from the organization.
While the lack of class politics in the nationalist line was the primary contradiction and the root problem, the secondary aspect (which stemmed from the primary error) was the narrow nationalism that existed in this line because we didn’t see the need to organize the various nationalities that existed within our area of work. Our neighborhood is predominantly Black, but there are still sizeable populations of other non-black oppressed nationalities that could have and should have been organized by BAR. Without any attempt at concrete analysis, it was thought that organizing Black people was primary. As Black people ourselves it was correct that we sought to organize Black people primarily. However, we could have used BAR as a vehicle to promote true internationalism by having an organization that was open to multiple oppressed nationalities being equally involved in the movement of the organization. Outside of the mass organization, we could have built a Party to address the Black National Question and other nationalities within BAR could have done the same. Our practice could have been to organize in BAR on an internationalist basis and use a Party formation to further recruit and consolidate the most advanced Black masses. That way we would address the need for proletarian Black nationalist organizing, push back against postmodernism and false nationalism and engage in true proletarian internationalism in our mass organizing.
The Scourge of Identity Politics and the Defeat of Mass Line
In BAR’s endeavors into tenant organizing, the fundamental error was in identifying which tenants to organize. Going into this project, there was a fixation on older Black women (See: False Nationalism) who had been in the building the longest. There was little investigation into their politics, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors or class position. We also thought that their past history in organizing a tenant association (that literally went nowhere) was so valuable. BAR made the correct suggestion that the tenants should hold an election and decide on a leadership structure. These aforementioned older Black Women and some gentrifier tenants made up the TA’s steering committee as a result. In practice, this leadership committee consolidated the most petty bourgeois tenants in the buildings and gave them enough political power to stop any proletarian class politics from developing in their struggle. They (the steering committee) did little work in organizing and mobilizing the tenants and they voted a white oil tycoon as the president of the TA. This same oil tycoon attempted to do backdoor deals with their landlord and none of them really cared to remove their landlord as the owner of their buildings. BAR’s mistake here was 1) not doing enough initial investigation into the most proletarian section of the tenants in both buildings, 2) not fostering the development of these sections into the leadership of their struggle and 3) doing the work (flyering, recruiting, facilitating meetings, etc.) for the tenants instead of guiding them to do it themselves. If we applied the mass line, there would have been thorough investigation of the tenants to pinpoint the most proletarian sections among them and there would have been development of this section to lead and delegate tasks and work among themselves, while we would plan to move on to other buildings. Instead of the mass line, we engaged in commandism and tailism. Commandism in doing the work that tenant leaders should have been doing and tailism in following the most petty bourgeois section and not developing the proletarian section.
Imitation or Struggle? The State Problem
Throughout the organizational life of BAR, we engaged in politics that specifically imitated the current capitalist state organization. Our current state exists as the organ of power that maintains the power of the ruling class in society. In our conditions, the state uses organized violence, employment, distribution and other various functions to maintain bourgeois power within our living arrangement. From this, we can conclude that “state imitation” politics have a general and a particular. Our particular error was mimicking this distribution factor of the bourgeois state. These politics are akin to what Kwame Nkrumah described as the welfare state. Mr. Nkrumah said that the economic development of imperialist countries allow for this welfare state to exist. The function of this welfare state is to provide a stable basis of living to the oppressed classes within that country. It provides shelter, food, medical assistance and a plethora of other resources to ensure that the oppressed classes see no other solution than the capitalist economy. Here we see that the state not only exists to pacify the oppressed masses. Ultimately, it gives the masses the idea that there is no need for a new society and that the capitalist class will always protect them. The welfare state also shows the masses that they don’t need to take part in the work that sustains them. For example, the oppressed masses aren’t eager to sign up to work in a food pantry because there will always be paid staff and volunteers to do that work. One of our main ways of organizing was food distributions. Embarrassing, I know, but let me continue. Every two weeks we spent our time huffing and puffing to pull off a successful food distribution that we never had to do. We were correct in pinpointing a specific block to do distributions on because it was near buildings that had the most deplorable conditions in the area. However, that didn’t mean that we had to do distributions. We could have just gone straight into those buildings and started organizing, but no, we chose bureaucracy :). We were also correct in having consistent educational discussions on a variety of topics from revolutionary theory to the history of the city, though we only did the educational discussions with our own membership and never with the masses we were trying to organize. Furthermore, the education was not tied to a political program based on mass struggle nor would it have been helpful given our ideological shortcomings. The distribution form of organizing left us depleted, constantly burned out, attracted the attention of postmodern allies and therefore postmodern recruitment and organized no one from the community. This type of work made sense given that postmodernism was so prevalent in the organization. Postmodernists are engaged in this type of organizing because 1) it can be outwardly seen as virtuous and morally correct, 2) postmodernists tend not to see the big picture and spend too much time on particularities and 3) it promotes stasis and not change. Postmodernism is very concerned with the most basic social units (small communities, individuals, tight-knit organizations).6 Therefore, food distributions make sense. It fills the need for basic necessities and focuses on very particular aspects of life under capitalism without linking them to other particularities or even to a general system.
The state imitation politics allow no room for the masses to see themselves leading the work. This is because there is already “staff” that shows up and its ready and willing to do the work. Also, there is no way to actually confront the actual political ideas and political readiness of the masses. Our women comrades were constantly harassed and we constantly had to figure out how to get food and resources plentiful for a distribution in the next two weeks. We really ended up just trying to mitigate the many contradictions of capitalism in one small organ. These food distributions themselves also grew to be more petty bourgeois in nature as time went on. First, these distributions became politically about “economic relief” and nothing else. Second, The SICA (social investigation and class analysis) that we got from this action became more limited as we focused on just the act of giving out food. Third, the distributions played no role in helping or advancing the tenant work at all. As petty bourgeois ideology consolidated in the organization, another problem in our work came about: event based-organizing. This took shape in the many events that we organized ourselves or took part in. These events proved to be completely random and fit under an umbrella of organizing work that was deemed necessary by the petty bourgeois elements in the organization. The events also did not help us achieve any goals for recruitment, consolidation, tenant work or even the food distributions; the main effect it had was that it burnt people out. All of these politics ultimately culminated in idealism. It is idealist to think that we could have turned these food distributions into an organ of political power capable of organizing the masses or fighting the state and capitalism at large. It’s idealist to think that we could be doing random events to organize the masses. It is materialist to talk to people directly to find out the issues and arouse them to fight as leaders in our common struggle.
Structures Ideal and Material
First, I want to point out that BAR operated initially with no structure, which is incorrect. Leadership will always exist and arise from material conditions whether we like it or not. As revolutionaries and dialectical materialists we understand that it is necessary to have structure to 1) have accountability in the organization 2) to effectively organize the functions of the organization and 3) to keep the organization safe. After not having any structure, we eventually adopted a structure in line with our organizational needs but it was not based on any formal assessment, therefore it was idealist. Furthermore, while the committee system did improve the delegation of tasks, it did not advance the work of the organization because the ideological contradictions remained unaddressed. Whatever ideological contradictions are not solved are guaranteed to permeate into the organizational structure. A political committee is not helpful if our political work is grounded in false internationalism. An educational committee is not helpful if the studies are filled with postmodernism. And just because we created a Black Action Committee does not mean the organization was able to ground itself in Black nationalist politics. The proper solution in BAR would have been a materialist structure created after properly assessing the ideological and political contradictions in addition to the organizational contradictions.
Conclusion
In conclusion: we fucked up…….............. a lot. The logical conclusion of BAR’s petty bourgeois politics met its end with the dissolving of the organization. The organization had to end so that this document could be produced. However, in thoroughly assessing and going over our past organizing the future of the Black liberation movement will be able to move forward in its ultimate task. As the BAR chapter closes, the proletariat will open new ones filled with better ideas and better practice, but, there will be more struggle and more fuck ups! That shouldn’t deter them in any way, shape or form because we know that this road ahead toward socialism is lifelong and full of learning. Just as we looked at our errors in BAR the proletariat will look at their errors going forward and gain a better and clearer understanding. This process will continue……forever……and, uh…..ever.
Footnotes:
1 E. Tani and Kae Sera, False Nationalism, False Internationalism: Class Contradictions in the Armed Struggle (Seeds Beneath the Snow, 1985), 4. This book and its exploration of nation's dialectical relationship to class was the largest contribution to our understanding of internationalism as well as influenced our analysis of our time organizing in BAR.
2 Tani and Sera, False, 17.
3 As explained in “The Spectre that Still Haunts” by Kenny Lake, we cannot mechanically classify the proletariat as only the workers who create and sustain capital. While some see “proletariat” and think “working-class”, we should instead look at the essence of what Marx and Engels laid out when they defined this class. Being proletarian is not just about being exploited, but about being dispossessed by the motions of capital.
For example, because of the advancement of technology that replaces workers, at some point the number of wage workers exceeds the average needs of capital. More and more people become unemployed without means of subsistence and are driven into a reserve army of labor. This reserve army of labor, although they are not being exploited currently, are still necessary for the capitalists’ private accumulation because they are always available when industry needs them and able to be cast off whenever it doesn’t. (Anti-Duhring 168).
Furthermore, because of the anarchic motions of capital, housing, like all commodities, is not created for the benefit of society and human need but based on speculation by real estate capital. Therefore, in the process of gentrification, real estate capital is able to move into inner-cities, buy up devalued property and displace masses of poor people, mostly from oppressed nations. They build giant unaffordable high rises while more and more people become homeless.
These driving forces of unemployment and homelessness are integral to the bourgeoisie’s capital accumulation, at a certain point even moreso than the exploitation of labor. We argue that those who are dispossessed by the motions of capital, whether in the form of chronic unemployment or homelessness, are also part of the proletariat because they are antagonistic to the bourgeoisie and it is only rational social planning on a massive scale by this class that can resolve these contradictions. Due to their conditions, this surplus population is “most receptive to aims of and immediate need for communist revolution.” (Spectre 25).
4 For examples throughout history, read False Nationalism, False Internationalism by E. Tani and K. Sera.
5 Anuradha Ghandy, Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement (Utrecht: Foreign Language Press, 2016), 100.
6 These postmodernists are often intermediate forces as opposed to advanced. Intermediate forces can be described as those to be won over through the struggle, but who as they stand are likely to engage with what will bring stasis rather than change. As the advanced understand stasis to be relative and change absolute, the intermediate wish this to be turned on its head. They are primarily segments of the classes that have something to materially gain from revolution and the road to communism, (especially as the contradictions of capitalism sharpen and effect them), but may also stand to benefit with the maintaining of the current state. They begin to divide over the course of the revolutionary struggle towards either backward or advanced while not meeting either standard. They may engage in advanced objective factors that push the movement forward while not subjectively (consciously) being advanced and so they remain intermediate. The intermediate, when engaging for the benefit of the struggle, do so primarily to bring a stasis back to things, and so must be analyzed constantly as the contradictions develop further.
when the fire goes out
An introduction to 2020 Division by the NLD Editorial Board.
An Introduction to “2020 Division” and a brief analysis of the George Floyd Rebellions three years later
By No Locked Doors Editorial Board
The George Floyd Rebellions may have rocked the United States over three years ago, but it remains a critical moment of uprising that communists should look into for insight as to how we turn rebellion into revolution. Mainly because we didn’t. Maoists failed to seize this moment of rebellion and transform it into the sustained organizing toward socialism that we know is necessary. As Black Maoists, we need to analyze the George Floyd uprising because this type of uprising will come again soon as the contradictions sharpen in the United States. Tragedy will strike in the Black nation in some form or another and the Black masses will rise up against the state as they always have and always will. However, so will a myriad of contradictions. We are excited to publish a new submission titled, “2020 Division” that attempts to analyze from a Maoist perspective these contradictions that arose during 2020 in one particular city. Many important lessons were learned from these organizers’ experience. In this piece, we would like to more deeply study the general motions of those contradictions because they were broadly applicable across the country.
The George Floyd Rebellions were a powerful time because once again, the Black proletariat was the firm base of the rebellion and they were correctly rising up against national oppression. However, without a Black Maoist Communist Party to push for the principle of proletarian nationalism, the Black proletariat was pushed into false internationalism and false nationalism. This led to the propping up of petit-bourgeois activists and their ideologies, especially that of abolition and anarchism, which was able to take a particularly strong hold because their line is consolidated in our superstructure through propaganda, media and academia. Abolition and anarchism left the Black masses with idealism, without organization and then slowly alienated them from the movement altogether. There is a need for the Black nation to solve these contradictions by treating rebellion and organizing like the sciences that they are, specifically the science of Maoism. There have been many Black rebellions of the past that we could study and learn from. And yet so many continue to treat the past like it has nothing to teach us and refuse to apply lessons we’ve already learned about false internationalism, false nationalism and petit-bourgeois ideology.
A nationwide report by the organization Unity and Struggle (U&S) titled “Big Brick Energy” provides one analysis of the rebellions albeit it from a false internationalist, anti-communist perspective. Although we applaud the organizations’ attempt at summation, something all communists should be doing, there are many ways in which No Locked Doors’ analysis of the 2020 uprisings diverge from theirs. However, because U&S’s report looks at a range of cities during the rebellions, and the fact that they highlight so many of the problems of false internationalism and false nationalism and idealism without even being aware, we make heavy references to the report.
Though there are many negative lessons, as Black Maoists, we look at both sides – the positive and the negative. Once we take away the correct lessons, we will undoubtedly be able to take every future rebellion and use it to grow a strong mass movement (and Communist vanguard that will lead it) toward the socialist future that we know is possible.
False Start: Waiting on the Oppressor Nation’s Signal
The 2020 rebellions served up a generous amount of false internationalism and false nationalism. As mentioned in our earlier pieces, false internationalism is when the oppressor (in this case, white) nation unites with the petit-bourgeois and lumpen folks of the oppressed (in this case, Black) nation and uses its status as oppressor to lead the movement in a bourgeois direction. This relationship consciously or unconsciously upholds the oppressor nation as dominant and prevents the oppressed nation from building its own self-determination. It goes hand in hand with false nationalism which is when the petit-bourgeois and lumpen folks from an oppressed nation use their national identity as a weapon for opportunism to wield power afforded to them by the oppressor nation. These parasites purposefully ignore class distinctions within the oppressed nation to keep the power in their hands instead of the hands of the proletariat where it belongs. “2020 Division” highlights well this very dynamic during the George Floyd Rebellions in one particular city. However, false internationalism and false nationalism was happening during the 2020 uprisings across the country. “Big Brick Energy” provides some insight as to how this was going down at multiple sites of organizing.
But first off, the U&S report analyzes the role of race and not of nation. Though easy to conflate, they are not the same. Nation is part of the economic base and race is part of the superstructure. Mao describes the economic base as the relations of production, mainly who owns the means of production and who doesn’t. The economic base is what needs to be changed to fundamentally change society. This includes class and nation. Because we are in the era of imperialism, the concentration of capital into the hands of a few imperialist countries who have economic control over colonies and neo-colonies means the economic base is not just about the relations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, it is about the economic relation between oppressor and oppressed nations. Imperialism is principally an economic relation between oppressor and oppressed nations, and the principal contradiction in the world today is that between oppressor and oppressed nations.
Mao describes superstructure as “the government, ideology, laws, politics, economics, culture, and the arts.” These are all ideological and political expressions of the economic base and either work to reinforce it or (because of class struggle) work against it. However, even if there are changes in superstructure, society will not be fundamentally changed. It is only when the economic base changes, that is, when the oppressed nations overthrow the oppressor nations, that society can be fundamentally changed. Changes in the superstructure can help to create changes in the economic base, but in the final instance, the only fundamental change is the change to the economic base.
Why does this distinction matter? Simple. Because if we only analyze race relations, we are only analyzing the superstructure and this will not bring us to the fundamental change that is needed in society. We need to principally be analyzing the economic base, which is nation, so that it can lead us to the fundamental change we know is necessary. Nation is defined by Stalin as being “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” [Our emphasis]. Though his definition includes both superstructural and economic features, economic life is the principal feature given that the economic base is determinant and the imperialist contradiction is the principal contradiction in the world today. Race, on the other hand, is a social identity of a group of people based largely on phenotype. We can see in the example of racial oppression of Black people that the superstructure serves to reinforce the economic base – racial oppression reinforces national oppression. Racial violence and racial discrimination, for example, serve to keep the Black nation economically oppressed by keeping them exploited in the workforce, pushed into the reserve army of labor, trapped in the prison industrial complex, etc. However, it is important to understand that solving the issues of racial oppression will not solve the root contradiction that is national oppression. That is, even if we were to fight against racial violence and racial discrimination against Black people in this country, it will not change the root of the problem which is the economic relation between the white oppressor nation and Black oppressed nation. And looking at it dialectically, as long as the white oppressor nation oppresses the Black nation, racial violence and racial discrimination will continue. Therefore, more important than analyzing and organizing along racial lines, we must analyze and organize along national lines and recognize the distinction between the two. More important than fighting for an end to racial oppression is fighting for the overthrow of the oppressor nation that is the US empire and an end to national oppression.
Even though “Big Brick Energy” analyzed race, one can still analyze nation through their report. In fact, U&S described false internationalism to a T when it said of white people, “Eager to position themselves as allies of Black people, they tailed non-profits calling for reforms and denouncing lawbreaking. White leftists also hesitated to put forward ideas about what to do, sometimes ceding space to reformists or opportunists.” It is telling how whether they are eager or hesitant, white people often end up supporting the non-proletariat of the Black nation. Supporting those Black people with bourgeois ideology is what allows the white nation to maintain their dominant position within the movement in general. That is because these petit-bourgeois Black people, or false nationalists, love to talk a big game about Black liberation but always call on the white oppressor nation for “support” of the Black movement in a way that ends up hindering us and keeping us dependent on them. Their “revolutionary strategies” always lead to revisionism and the eternal delay of national liberation and revolution.
False nationalism as a relationship between the petit-bourgeois/lumpen elements of an oppressed nation and the oppressor nation is further described in the text by stating that in many instances a few Black petit-bourgeois leaders’ liberal views were said to be taken as representative of entire communities. The piece also describes how politicians even paid lumpen elements in contracts with the city to put on violence interruption and youth programs. It’s clear how false internationalism and false nationalism live harmoniously – white oppressor nation “support” will be given to those of the oppressed nation who are most willing to lead their people back toward a bourgeois path.
“Big Brick Energy” touches on white “support” many times. For example, one of their key findings says, “Future uprisings may be strengthened by building a small but consistent tendency of non-Black support for Black militancy, and developing autonomous revolutionary organizations in communities of color which can fight on our own terms.” They also said, “Those of us organizing autonomously in Black working class communities should define what kinds of alliances with non-Black leftists are strategic, while also moving independent of the Black elite. Non-Black leftists should find ways to materially support Black working class militancy, even as our activities may become more distinct or our organizations separate.”
By our interpretation, it seems the Black contributors of the report are getting closer to the heart of the matter through their own practice that Black people need to be in their own separate organizations. However, always lingering right behind as a huge source of concern is the question of non-Black support – what do we do about white people in and around our movement? The U&S answer is to continue to cultivate their support even if our organizations are separate. No Locked Doors’ analysis is that we cannot utilize white support unless we have a correct understanding of them as an oppressor nation and ourselves as an oppressed nation. As Maoists, we must use the law of contradiction that gives us the correct analysis of how to understand our nation (internal) and how to accurately relate to other nations (external). The most important thing to understand is that the internal of the Black nation is decisive in revolution and that no support from any nation will be useful unless we are engaged in our own fight as a separate nation (led by our proletariat) for self-determination. This is proletarian nationalism. Secondly, white people hinder our movement with their “support” not because of some moral failing but because they are 1) external to our nation, 2) they are part of the oppressor nation and 3) their material conditions mean they actually have no proletariat class, so they cannot be united with on that basis. The white nation uses the oppressed nations imprisoned within the United States as its proletariat and the white “working class” is a pseudo-proletariat, that is, in reality, just the petit-bourgeois class.1 “Big Brick Energy” does not attempt to make these distinctions, preferring to push for multiracial unity. They go so far as saying the uprisings “create spaces where we can simultaneously recognize our different racial positions and practice transcending them.” However, white people cannot “transcend” their racial or national position simply by participating in illegal street actions or by taking on the social identity of anarchist or communist. If we look at the uprisings in terms of nation and the principal contradiction, we can materially say that the national position of oppressor nation cannot be transcended, only overthrown. Therefore, true support from white communists can only come in the form of revolutionary defeatism, or white people mobilizing their own nation to be defeated by the oppressed nations.2 This is true internationalism and without this understanding, white “support” in practice ends up being nothing more than a relation of dominance and dependence.
False internationalism and false nationalism not only prevents oppressed nations from building self-determination but it also prevents us from dealing with our internal contradictions as a nation. This is expressed in an example in “Big Brick Energy” when it talks about the Wendy’s occupation in Atlanta that excluded white people and how Black people then had to figure out how to deal with internal conflicts once white people were out of the equation. They had to figure out how to “address conflicts within the community” like organization or violence and “respond to overtures or scolding from the Black elite.” These contradictions in the Black nation are primary to resolve compared to the contradictions with the white oppressor nation because the former are internal contradictions and the latter are external contradictions. As Mao says in On Contradiction:
“Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.”
By this measure, we must make the distinction between contradictions because the internal contradictions within the Black nation and the external contradictions with the white nation are qualitatively different and only the contradictions in the Black nation are the basis for change. In plain English, Black organizers are putting way too much effort into what to do about white people as opposed to focusing the majority of our energy on how to unite and build the Black proletarian nationalist movement, the thing that matters most at the end of the day. When white people are involved in Black organizing, our focus is constantly being diverted to these contradictions that are actually external to us and, though they matter and will shape the conditions in which our revolution grows, it is our internal movement as a nation that is primary and that will actually push our revolution forward. It is not that we should not pay attention to the external contradictions with the oppressor nation – i.e. how to defeat the oppressor nation bourgeoisie, how to unite with progressive forces within the oppressor nation, how to exploit the contradictions between the oppressor nation classes, etc. However, no change will occur, no motion or growth will happen, unless we as a Black nation make primary the study and resolution of our own internal contradictions.
In these times of rebellion where white people and other non-Black people will show up and try to offer ‘support” to the Black nation, it is only a correct understanding of the law of contradiction that will put us on the correct path. Understanding the externality of the white nation is what allows us to properly relate to and, when possible, unite with the white progressive petit-bourgeois in an internationalist way and not a false internationalist way. It is the understanding of the oppressor nation and its internal development and contradictions that allow us to know how to struggle to sharpen contradictions within the oppressor nation and who can be united with in order to do so. But most importantly, understanding the internal decisiveness of our nation allows us to correctly assert Black national independence and organize around this.
The Petit-B Industrial Complex
It’s a story we’ve heard before - rebellion and revolutionary potential that is rooted in the Black masses, so promising at first, eventually gets diverted into reforms and a flattened movement. It would be easy to blame the external factors of state repression but Maoists recognize that the internal contradictions of a movement are what truly determines its downfall. In this particular case, without a Black Maoist Party to push a correct line on proletarian nationalism as this uprising against national oppression mobilized people, the false internationalists (petit-bourgeois whites) and false nationalists (petit-bourgeois Black and Brown folks) took hold of leadership in these rebellion spaces – so the level of struggle took on a petit-bourgeois character, i.e. it was limited to reforms and idealism. This is laid out well in the piece “2020 Division.”
More specifically, the petit-bourgeois false internationalist and false nationalist leadership largely extinguished the fiery rebellions of 2020 with the bourgeois concept of abolition. The popularity of abolition is actually an outgrowth of class struggle. Because there has been so much struggle against national oppression especially police brutality and the prison-industrial complex in the past few decades, the ruling class can only use outright violent repression as a tactic for so long before it backfires and drums up more support for proletarian nationalism and revolution. So the oppressor nation will often use its control of the superstructure to deploy other tactics such as the popularization of non-revolutionary ideas in order to maintain the economic base. In this case, the non-revolutionary idea has been abolition – a word that sounds “radical” and “left” but ultimately keeps the oppressor-oppressed nation dynamic in tact. Abolition as a concept has been spread far and wide in petit-bourgeois circles – media, academia and non-profits can’t get enough of it and the white false internationalists that currently dominate these spaces have been and will continue to support Black abolitionists as the vanguard of the movement because it maintains their oppressor nation position.
Abolition is a concept that stems from two different bourgeois ideologies. The first ideology is liberal reformism. It is tricky because so often abolitionists claim to hate reform and call instead to dismantle the whole system. However, the only solution these abolitionists propose to dismantling the police and prisons is to “imagine”, “re-envision”, “reconceptualize” (or some other word that requires only the realm of thought) a society in which prisons are not needed or obsolete and take action based on those imaginations. And what actions do they always amount to? Reforms. This is the idealist nature of abolition.
One of the best examples is Angela Davis’ popular 2003 work “Are Prisons Obsolete?” where she makes the argument that prisons can be abolished if we “imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society.”3 These alternatives include decriminalizing drugs, job and living wage programs, revitalization of education and free mental and physical health care – all of which happen to be reforms. So Davis gets away with looking like a radical because she’s not looking to reform the prison-industrial complex itself but simply replace it with other social reforms under this same system. It’s not difficult to see how this leads folks to fight for policy reform like any other liberal. Any true revolutionary knows that this is idealist and the current ruling class will never allow complete system change in this way.
Not once does Davis mention the only true way of dismantling the prison industrial complex as it stands – waging and winning armed struggle against the US empire. This is what is actually necessary to qualitatively change the economic base that shapes our society. By no means are we Maoists against the fight for social reforms, but we understand that these are merely quantitative changes to the current system and that any reforms must be in service to a revolutionary movement that makes waging armed struggle primary. Davis will never mention this as she is a liberal reformist, but its absence in this piece (and all her many, many aritcles and bestselling books since) makes it glaringly obvious that Davis and those opportunists like her are content to imagine what the future of policing and prisons looks like and just push for reforms until then. They negate revolution and scientific socialism, preferring the idea that social reforms equates to complete system overhaul and that all the contradictions of imperialism can be resolved through collective multi-national imagining.
Another leading abolitionist Mariame Kaba demonstrates the same tendency. In a 2020 op-ed for the New York Times that she wrote in the midst of the George Floyd uprisings, ironically titled, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police: Because Reform Won’t Happen”, Kaba writes:
“Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.”
Amazing! Kaba says we can’t reform the police, but in the same breath says the only solution is to “reduce contact” with them. Not to eliminate contact or sever contact or get rid of the police altogether – but another reform.
Kaba later writes about how attempts to reform policing practices were unsuccessful at preventing police brutality. She says:
“Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.”
And there it is again! Shitting on reform and then in the very same paragraph offering another reform as a solution. A fascinating mental gymnastics that many liberal reform “radicals” have learned how to utilize to sell countless books and grab coveted speaker slots at conferences. Mariama Kaba nor Ruth Gilmore Wilson nor any of their kind mention armed struggle (or even complete overthrow of the current system) and its necessity for revolution. Somehow they’ve convinced a large group of people that pushing policy demands is not actually reformist but a radical demand for the end of the police state as we know it. The only difference between these abolitionist reformists and liberal reformists who more openly don’t want to get rid of the police is that the abolitionists are imagining a different society where police aren’t present. For some reason, that seems to count for a lot.4
Abolition as reform was popularized in the 2020 uprisings by the many non-profits taking over activist spaces. “2020 Division” describes how this happened in one city where one non-profit with their reformist ideology dominated an encampment site because of their plentiful resources, and therefore they had dominant influence over the ideology of the space. But the research of Unity and Struggle suggests that this happened in not just one city, but many across the nation. The text points to how “Liberal organizations also put forward policy proposals that narrowed ‘abolish the police’ to ‘defund’ the police,” as well as said, “As street activity dies down, [establishment forces’] watered down framing of our goals and demands gains a hearing.” Again we see leftists describing abolition being “reduced” to reform, lacking the understanding that abolitionist thought is akin to reform itself.
The second ideology that abolition stems from is anarchy. Anarchists tend to see abolition of the police and the state as a whole happening not through reforms demanded from the state but by building dual power. This quote by William C. Anderson in his book “Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition” explains it well:
“Simply detaching ourselves from the state is not enough. We’re charged with growing our own survival programs, institutions, and survival economies as a means of building a revolutionary movement that can effectively challenge the state. We’ll have to be able to present masses of people with revolutionary options that can actually meet day-to-day needs like food, housing and healthcare.”
While we Maoists understand the importance of building our own programs and institutions to serve our nation and meet their day to day needs, we also know that it is idealist to think it will create qualitative change unless it is in service to waging and winning armed struggle against the US empire. Rather than dual power, Maoists seek to build our movement and army from a position of strategic defensive to strategic equilibrium (and then eventually strategic offensive). Our actual goal is to change the entire economic base of capitalism-imperialism, which is what is preventing us from having control of our own superstructure (government, schools, health care system, etc.) in the first place. We cannot gain control of these infrastructures nor carry out the rational social planning to meet these needs of our nation without changing the relations of production, meaning the proletariat seizing the means of production. While it is important to start building our own infrastructure pending revolution, we have to make sure the revolution is actually coming, i.e. that we are building the armed struggle that will truly make it happen.
We will always run into the limits the state inflicts on us when building anything for the Black nation under this current system. For one, any food distribution or community garden with revolutionary aims that gets too successful (if it doesn’t get outright repressed) will face getting taken over by the NGOs of the state that has way more funds and resources to take their place. But more importantly, food distribution and community gardens can only feed so many until we (violently) seize the land for agriculture, end the exploitation of farm workers and food production workers and grow food not for profit but according to human need.
We saw all of this in 2020. The U&S Report said that during the uprisings, “communities responded with an outpouring of mutual aid projects and by redistributing looted goods. But these efforts still struggled to supply food at scale. In the gap churches and non-profits stepped in – possibly with government funding - to distribute truckloads of free food across the city for months.” Of course, we can see how the state is immediately ready to step in and do local food distributions way better than any radicals in order to lure the masses back into dependence. But even moreso, this is a prime example of how local food distributions have their limits and they should not be an end in themselves, but a means to the end that is seizing the means of production and changing this system as a whole, something that will require armed struggle.
Similarly, the Unity and Struggle report also goes on to describe that “community self-defense groups mushroomed across the city, posing a potential dual power challenge to the local state. But it was difficult for them to learn of each other’s existence, let alone coordinate. This left them vulnerable to paranoia and overtures from local politicians.” Building self-defense teams is necessary under this current system and especially in times of rebellion. But again, without proletarian ideology (Maoism) to guide political and organizational efforts toward revolutionary overthrow of the state, our attempts to defend ourselves remained scattered and prone to infiltration and defeat. U&S itself suggested as the solution “a common platform for autonomous community defense” as well as the “need to define acceptable conduct for these roles and to whom they should be accountable.” Maoism provides all these things and more – an ideology to centralize around that leads to common political goals (aka a common platform) and the correct organizational methods by way of democratic centralism5 (the conduct and accountability necessary for sustaining and scaling up these political projects).
Anarchists tend to imagine that once we start building our own infrastructure that it’s only a matter of our people choosing these “revolutionary options” over the capitalist options in order to build a new society. And even those anarchists who go a step further and mention armed struggle only mention it in the context of armed defense of whatever we build rather than the offensive war that will be necessary to completely overthrow the state and gain control of production. Therein lies the idealism. What should be primary is building our Party-led People’s Army made of the masses of oppressed Black people who are ready to fight to topple the oppressor nation. Any survival programs should be created to feed, clothe, heal, house and educate the Black masses that make up this army, those supporters of this army and the masses who are would-be supporters of this army. This is the true revolutionary option that we must present to the masses that will not only meet their day to day needs but bring us closer toward the revolution.
Do many of the self-described abolitionists mean well? Of course. But if we are going to move the revolutionary masses from rebellion to actually dismantling the current structures of prisons and police, it is going to take a highly organized armed struggle and movement (protracted people’s war) taken up by the broad masses of people that is led by a Communist vanguard. Another important note is that the contradiction of imperialism and bourgeois ideology will still create the conditions for crime (by those outside of our nation and the opps within it). Therefore, there will still be a need for arming our people in militias and having our own justice systems run by the masses in order to protect our nation against counter-revoltuionaries.6 It is idealist to think that the bourgeois class and its ideas will simply disappear after the revolution, and if we don’t have our own institutions and justice system to suppress them politically, they will take over again. This is the line we must be pushing when rebellion rises so the masses can take up practical activity and begin to build the Black nation’s mass movement, Party and people’s army, instead of returning to their lives under bourgeois rule after the protests wind down.7
Science Rulez: The Correct Approach to National Liberation
Anyone who has been organizing for as long as we have could feel the familiarity of the George Floyd rebellions. Of course, every mass uprising has its own unique particularities (and the 2020 uprisings had an especially powerful character with its combination of the global pandemic/the sheer amount of mass power able to be wielded over the police, even if temporarily). Yet, the contradictions from the George Floyd rebellions could be seen in many previous uprisings. The anarchism and encampments (and their lack of sustainability) heavily characterized the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2008 and could have provided lessons for the many autonomous zones that were dismantled in 2020. The false internationalist/false nationalist dialectic were obvious factors in the Black Lives Matter movement of 2014. The three “founders” of BLM and their millions of dollars in endorsements from white supporters drowning out the actual Black proletariat that started the Mike Brown protests similarly echoes the shadow cast by reformists and non-profits over the George Floyd uprisings. And, as a side note, Ben Crump rose as a household name in 2012 with Trayvon Martin and seems determined to profiteer off of Black death for the foreseeable years to come.
But as scientific socialists, we know that history does not repeat itself in circles. And on the other side of the coin, recent organizers claiming that their activism is new or somehow cutting edge are equally wrong. The George Floyd uprisings are part of a long tradition of Black rebellion that is part of our nation’s internal development. All the gains and defeats of our nation’s liberation struggles add to the material conditions and experiences that have led to the correct position on the Black nation’s needing to internalize Maoism. The revolutionary nationalism and the bouts of false internationalism by way of mechanical Leninism has led us to this point.
Treating revolution as a science means that after each instance of class struggle, we must study it, assess our errors, take lessons from them, create theory and then apply it to our future practice – scientific experimentation. However, as we can see from “Big Brick Energy”, organizers from any ideology can sum up experiences and it won’t necessarily give us the correct lessons or put us on the correct path toward liberation. Maoism is the highest development of the science of revolution (and we know it to be correct because its theories in philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism have been proven correct in practice by other historical revolutions). It is only by understanding and creatively applying Maoist principles to our own concrete conditions that we can advance our revolutionary movement.8
Though the Black nation in the US has completely different conditions from Russia, China or any other nation, the universal principles from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism carry a general essence that are applicable to our particular fight for national liberation. The theory of false nationalism and false internationalism, for instance, is a great example of creatively applying the philosophy of dialectical materialism and Mao’s theory of proletarian nationalism to our material conditions. Armed with the principles of Maoism, we can correctly assess the mistakes of our past and learn from them so that when rebellion against national oppression pops off again, we will be even more ready.
To Be Continued
To be sure, there were many positive outcomes of the George Floyd Rebellions. As Lenin once said, the spontaneous rebellion of the masses “represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form.” Seeing these sparks of rebellion of the Black masses against national oppression and joining their struggle fuels the fire in any revolutionary’s spirit. But when the fire goes out, the negative lessons must be learned. If we are able to recognize and combat false nationalism and false internationalism with true proletarian nationalism of the Black nation, combat the petit-bourgeois ideology that stems from it in whatever fashion it ends up presenting itself (abolition or otherwise), and continue to analyze and sum up our experiences of rebellion using Maoist principles, we will be able to see rebellion grow into sustained revolutionary mass movement toward socialism.
Footnotes:
1 Whereas the workers of the oppressed nations in the US have truly nothing to lose but their chains and therefore trend toward revolutionary outlook, white workers throughout US history have always been able to be elevated above this strata into a petit-bourgeois class precisely because of their position in the white nation and, therefore, consistently have a vacillating or straight up reactionary outlook. This is seen materially in white workers historically and currently earning higher wages or holding higher earning positions than oppressed nation workers (a surplus they are able to receive because of the exploitation and super-exploitation of oppressed nation workers in the US and across the world). We also see their outlook manifest historically by noting that in every labor movement since the dawn of the US white workers as a class have embraced racism and refused to unite with the nationally oppressed. Time and time again they refuse to take a stand that goes beyond trade union economism and denounce the domination of oppressed nations because their elevated material conditions depend on this very domination. As J. Sakai says in Settlers, we must see this racism not as simple chauvinistic prejudice that has yet to be educated out of the backwards white masses (which, tellingly, no labor movement has ever been able to do) but as “an outward manifestation of a class ‘alliance’ with the imperialists.” Source: J. Sakai, Settlers, (Morningstar Press, 1989), 53.
2 Mao speaks about this when he said that true communists of Japan and Germany in the time of World War II would “bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means...and the more complete the defeat the better. This is what the Japanese and German Communists should be doing and what they are doing. For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming their own people as well as the people of the world.” Source: Mao Tse-Tung, “Patriotism and Internationalism” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 182.
3 Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, (New York, Seven Stories Press, 2003),107.
4 It’s worth noting that Kaba and other abolitionists also always say things like “This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately” or “This work will take generations, and I’m not going to be alive to see the changes.” (NYT). It’s incredible how all these people do is imagine and they can’t even imagine change happening within their lifetime. Probably because they’re only pushing reforms so they know they truly won’t see change in their lifetime.
5 A lot of these organizations were ultra democratic and lacked centralization. To a communist, the correct way to approach this would be democratic centralism – a principle that guides how an organization advances in unity. An organization should be democratic in that everybody is freely working toward constructing the goals of the organization and participating/making decisions that move toward those goals. An organization should be centralized in that individual interests are subordinate to those overall goals of the organization and decisions are made by majority vote and followed by all with utmost discipline, even if the minority disagrees. This centralism concept conflicts with anarchists coveted notions of individual “autonomy” which they feel should never be subordinate to anyone, but in practice it is so clearly necessary for any organization to move forward. This tenant of centralism and anarchists’ desire to stay as far away from it as possible is what was lacking for many of the efforts that needed coordination during the 2020 organizing. However, democratic centralism can only be achieved when using Maoist ideology and principles, so the anarchists were fucked.
6 Anarchists often argue that building another state to replace the current bourgeois one will replicate the same problems even in socialist society. However, a new state is necessary (as paradoxical it may seem) in order to move toward a stateless society. Concerns about creating new institutions of police/army/prison post socialist revolution can be addressed with what we learned from China and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in that we will need democracy and the masses to keep the leading Party in check. For example, Mao theorizes there is no need to construct a completely consolidated, organized and professionalized military apparatus as this can lead to the army getting over the people but rather there is a need to turn over the role of the army to the masses by arming them. Ajith writes in Against Avakianism, "The challenge before the Maoists is to deal with the problems caused by the institutionalised leading role of party, while fully realising the class reality that makes such an institutionalisation necessary."
7 Needless to say, these are efforts that should be primarily clandestine.
8 Although we will often be in continuity with Maoist principles, it is possible that we may rupture from them. But we will only know to rupture these principles by first being in continuity with them, following the scientific process of applying them and correctly assessing our practice after their application.
2020 Division
A Black Maoist summation of the 2020 rebellions
By No Locked Doors Editorial Board
George Floyd’s murder on May 29th, 2020 set off a powder keg of protests and direct actions within the United States. In different cities across the country, many groups were encouraged to organize in response, though they ultimately failed to germinate their goal of abolishing the police that was at the forefront of their rhetoric. To say nothing of their failure to make any progress in addressing the essence of why such murder at the hands of capital occurs in the first place. This text takes a closer look at an autonomous zone that was founded in one of those cities during this period, the failures of its original nonprofit organizers, designated here as NG1; and the subsequent failures of the anarchist collective, designated here as NoCops, and its auxiliaries that spun off from the zone after it collapsed. Using Dialectical Materialism (DM), this text will explain the motion of contradictions, primarily those of false nationalism and false internationalism, within these groups; why the flaws in their ideology and organization rooted to their founding doomed them to failure, even relative to their incorrect goals; and how those flaws remained consistent even across the membership splitting up and coming back together. We will see how, although some proper understandings developed from their failures, a lack of understanding of Maoism and its principle of proletarian nationalism lead them to keep making the same mistakes over and over, trapping them in cycles of false nationalism and false internationalism and making it impossible for any of their actions to engage the Black Nation in the liberating movement they claimed they wanted to start. Through DM, we will contextualize the primary or determining forces (i.e. the forces in power) as well as the secondary (i.e. the contributing but non-determining) forces that are out of power that can work to seize power and become the new primary. It is through these motions that qualitative change within a contradiction occurs, allowing what was once secondary to become primary. By understanding these motions, we can direct the contradiction to change in a way favorable to the proletariat. Through summation, the practice of the past can inform the theory of the present, helping us avoid the mistakes made in the past via the theory from this analysis informing the practice of the future in true scientific socialist fashion. A future where our revolutionary goals are achieved via proper application of Maoism so that we are not left to flounder in a desert of post-modernist posturing.
The Masses Lost in the Cross Fire
After Floyd’s murder and the circulation of its video recording, spontaneous rebellion emerged as primary, with the most militant of the masses expressing their outrage against the more blatant subjugation of the state through riots, property damage, and violent confrontations with the police. This more militant wave of actions consisted of a diverse collection of the masses, but was ultimately lead by anarchists1; who were willing to engage in such activity against the police despite lacking a concrete path to qualitatively changing the conditions of their dominance through annihilation of the state. They instead sought to pressure the government to make quantitative reforms through confrontations where they demonstrated their “ungovernability”2. These consisted mostly of academics and college students, many of whom had been active in “radical movements” within the city for years prior, including a series of marches against increased police presence in the public transit system for the past year that operated under the same principles of ungovernability described above. The leadership of the anarchists in the beginning of the riots was soon supplanted by Black reformists, a collection of professional non-profit workers, academics, and public figures. Like the anarchists, their end goals were quantitative instead of qualitative, and were to be met by appealing to the state, but such appeals were to be accomplished through peaceful demonstrations that were less directly opposed to the police. Their goals were ultimately less oppositional and more restrained when addressing police brutality, refusing to question the structural intent behind the violence the police repeatedly directed at the Black nation. They called for reforms to the police wherein they would carry out their oppressive duties more gently, whereas the anarchists were calling for the dissolution of the police. Both still expected the state to cave to pressure to enact these changes, with the reformists expecting to do so with peaceful protest and direct cooperation with state agents, while the anarchists expected their explicitly violent confrontations to generate pressure. Both made the mistake of orienting their movements around forcing the present capitalist state to change, rather than working towards its qualitative dissolution into a machinery run by the proletariat. As the reformist leadership became primary over the anarchist leadership of actions prior, they shifted from focus on property destruction and avoiding police to frequently cooperating with the police and discouraging property damage. Attempts to burn cop cars that would get support from crowds were now actively discouraged by action organizers, often in concert with the police supervising the action. In addition to highlighting the Black reformists’ own distance from mass desires, the nature of this contradiction also highlights a failure of the anarchists to properly consolidate their cadre and political line, or to offer a concrete alternative to the reformists reliance on peacefully pressuring the state. The reformists’ ideology was nakedly regressive, but it was consolidated with all involved understanding what their (incorrect) political line was and how to advance it. The anarchists involved in the actions had much less political consolidation, often moving independently with a vague sense of a shared goal that was never explicitly stated, nor did it differentiate itself from the state demands of the reformists in a way that would properly highlight their failures. Some applied the line of ungovernability to pressuring state reform, while others believed the line would eventually lead to mass resistance that would topple the state as the masses spontaneously accumulated power. The only consistent, growing ideological line of police abolition3 within this anarchist faction that opposed the reformists still saw no consistent connection to the general struggle against capital applied. If a group of Maoists, with a consistent line for opposing the state to ultimately destroy it and build a new one run by the proletariat in its place, had operated in this sphere instead of reformists and anarchists relying on the current state to make ultimately quantitative changes or spontaneously wither away, they would have had a much better chance at rallying the masses around organized militancy towards the state’s destruction so that the essence behind the police brutality being opposed would have been addressed. Unfortunately, the only factions that formed were different flavors of reformist ideology, making their eventual fall all but inevitable.
Black reformists remained primary throughout various actions within the city into the month of June, when much of the city’s protest activity focused around an encampment built in a park near the city's center. The encampment was established by a long-standing local, mostly-Black non-profit reformist organization called NG1, which was demanding a large amount of money be cut from the city’s next police budget. They intended for it to last until the budget vote was held, holding teach ins, meeting up with other marches, and providing free food and PPE resources to all who passed through the space. The mostly Black nature of NG1 helped to suffuse their organizing with a false nationalist character, which presumes that organizing within your own nation should be done without properly understanding the essential role of the proletariat directing it in order for it to succeed; much less understanding class relationships within a nation or relations between oppressed and oppressor nations in general. NG1 would regularly use the Black identities of their leadership to justify their particular reformist ideas, claiming that they were beneficial to Black people just because they themselves were Black and advocating for them. Given the orientation of those who ran the camp, the contradictions between the non-profit petty bourgeoisie in charge of the encampment continued to intensify against the more anarchist united front of classes within the camp; which consisted of young-petty bourgeoisie students, academics, homeless people, journalists, and service workers of an explicit multi-national character.
The Black masses gathered had the potential to be organized by a Maoist vanguard party. One that could consolidate the Black proletariat present into a national vanguard, organize alongside other nations and classes present to build a genuine united front against the general contradiction of capitalism. Such a united front could have been built around the contradictions of imperialism that the oppressed nations were facing, which the present struggles against police repression had sharpened. Unfortunately, the ideology that was circulated the most aside from that of NG1 was the incorrect one of police abolition. This occurred largely via a community library that popped up inside the camp, where petit-bourgeois students and professors lead the distribution of books and pamphlets advocating for abolition to camp residents. Absent a substantial and consistent proletarian line against the capitalist state, and with only the easily malleable and ultimately bourgeois line of abolition for those dissatisfied with the explicitly reformist ideology of NG1 to rally around, a false internationalist character emerged. False internationalism encourages organizing with the makeup of oppressor nations as essential to liberating the oppressed nations, presuming that recognition of the different class structures within nations and how oppressor nations exploit oppressed nations to be counterproductive. The popularity of anarchist thought within this group contributed heavily to failures to either acknowledge these differences, or move towards even their nebulous and often contradictory goals of abolition. There was no understanding of scientific socialism or how to struggle around class differences, much less using mass line to address the actual issues of the most oppressed classes. Such thought also motivated opposition to explicit organizing structures, dismissing any type of deliberate centralization in favor of decentralization in all aspects. The idea of forming a party was seen as inherently authoritarian, with contradictions in how to arrive at the goal of police abolition dismissed with the anarchist principle of “diversity of tactics, unity in action”4. This opposition to structure coupled with denial of oppressor/oppressed nation dynamics allowed for members of different nations to be assumed equal in how they represent themselves with no consideration for the class relationship between their nations, ultimately giving way to cults of personality that lacked an explicit structure to oppose them. The only hint of a unifying ideological line present within this cadre was the idea of police abolition, but there remained unresolved disagreements about the best way to achieve that, wherein anti-state rhetoric was mixed with calls to pressure the state to make the changes the ideology demanded. Amid this anarchist motivated chaos, the contradiction of false nationalism vs false internationalism began to take shape.
Within the camp at that time, NG1, and false nationalism by extension, remained primary. Demanding more than a static cut to the city’s police budget was discouraged by them, and actions that actually challenged the police, such as marches without a permit or attempts to hold the police back from tearing down structures erected in and around the camp, were similarly opposed by the reformists in charge. Despite this, the abolitionist cadre continued to push against NG1’s restrictions, a push that resulted in the abolitionist cadre attempting to block off traffic moving past city center late one evening. The NG1 members at camp at the time attempted to stop the abolitionist cadre, shouting them down from moving barriers into the streets, ultimately to no avail, as the barriers were placed with camp members following the abolitionist cadre to prepare for the police attempts to remove them. Though the human walls formed behind the barricades managed to hold off the first cop advances, once the morning came, the cops came in in force and pushed the camp back into the park proper. We again see how futile the abolitionist cadre was by not only having no explicit organizational structure or a concrete plan to work towards, but an idealist goal of maintaining the encampment as an autonomous zone that had no link to addressing the essence of the issue of police repression. Moreover, the goal was utterly divorced from any substantial challenge to the state, much less engagement with the issues of the masses.
The futility of this was only further driven home once the city budget vote was done and the police’s bloat of funding was hidden5 instead of removed. Following this, NG1 abandoned the space, taking much of the resources they had dedicated to it, including food, PPE, tables, web infrastructure, and various toiletries, with them6. The battle between reformists and abolitionists amounted to two sections of the petite-bourgeoisie pushing their own ideas of change and the masses ultimately getting lost in the cross fire. The abolitionist’s spontaneous vanguard within the encampment adhered to the more militant approaches towards their goals, but as they gained ground because they were more inline with the growing consciousness of the masses in opposition to the state, they refused a method of leadership or ideology that could have kept them close to the masses and their demands. Ultimately they preferred to engage in a bottom-up idea of revolution that was counter to scientific socialism and a proper execution of mass line, which contributed to the loudest (and often incorrect) voices directing the chaos during the encampment’s defense, and the failures that would continue as the masses were sidelined.
Black Leadership White Mask
The day after the vote happened, as the reformists put on defiant speeches while withdrawing from the camp, the rest of its residents debated whether or not it should be defended. Many of the homeless at camp, who were majority Black, wanted to stay. Some had lived in the park since before the encampment. Others found it a substantial example of what could be accomplished in defiance of the state, while others found it a reliable home for themselves that they hadn’t had access to beforehand. Many of the Black occupants of the camp agreed with the example that the camp set being too valuable to abandon, while many of the non-Black occupants wanted to move to another location or continue the fight without an encampment. A vote was ultimately held to determine if everyone should stay in the space or move someplace else. When everyone present voted, leaving the space won, but once a Black member of the voting bloc noticed the large number of white people present, they demanded a vote only counting the Black people present, including many of the homeless. In that vote, staying in the space won easily, revealing the national contradiction in priorities between the Black and non-Black people present. Deciding to go with the Black vote, the contradictions of the space shifted. Now for the first time, a nationalist impulse had been democratically acted upon, and the interests of Black people sticking together as a nation became visible within the encampment. This proved that behind the veil of internationalism were the very real interests of the Black nation; speaking to the dangers of anarchists perception of struggle that regards participation as the only criteria for involvement despite the goal or its result. They ignore class and nation where it is the responsibility of communists to understand both so as to unite the advanced sections of the oppressed nations. Had this realization been organized around by a party with a proper Maoist understanding of these dynamics between oppressor and oppressed nation, a genuine nationalism could have been cultivated to properly mobilize the masses. Alas, with the focus remaining on the encampment and keeping it going with neither a consistent nor correct political line to push, aside from the vague conceit of abolition, only a false nationalist character emerged that day. While the explicitly reformist, top-down hierarchical ideology of NG1 was no longer primary, the new organizational structure that grew after this vote carried forward the anarchist, anti-hierarchy ideology that had previously been secondary. But in the process of moving away from an explicit structure for governance, an implicit governing structure arose centered around a few petit-bourgeois Blacks and their cadre of white followers. As tends to be the case in anarchist organizations with an explicit focus on anti-hierarchy, false internationalism, alongside an implicit hierarchy, was on its way to being primary.
This Black petit-bourgeois leadership cadre became an unofficial, singular decision making organ within the budding organization of the camp’s occupants, now known as NoCops (NOC), a new organization dedicated to a variety of nebulous ideals regarding Black liberation, but most consistently rallying around the demand to abolish the police as the abolitionist cadre it was built from had. This took the form of “disruptive” actions (marches, art and noise demonstrations, etc) designed to interrupt the activities of petit-bourgeois classes on the street and “raise awareness” of the injustices of the state, specifically the police, in order to draw support for abolition. Members of NOC would regularly put themselves in front of the police, hoping that any resulting arrests would demonstrate their brutality and draw further support for abolition, as if such brutality had not already been on vivid display since the protests has started and in the preceding years. This only served to isolate them further from the masses, as the disruption and raising awareness kept focus on antagonistically engaging with the petit-bourgeois and not engaging with either the issues of the masses or what their demands were. To their credit, any member who was arrested received a bevy of support from the rest of the membership, with gatherings outside of the precincts where those arrested were taken lasting until they were released, providing them with food, bail funds, and enthusiastic support upon their release. However, this encouraged a cycle of arrests in service to the idealist awareness raising goals described above, wherein getting arrested and providing support afterwards became the main task of many actions, instead of pushing for a more qualitative change from them.
Since the bourgeois leadership cadre were the wealthiest, and by extension possessed the most resources within NOC, namely access to prepared food, construction materials, and startup cash, while also having petit-bourgeois connections to those who could provide these things; all actions and activities collectively undertaken would require their support in order to fully materialize. This occurred despite their oft circulated insistence that a lack of an explicit governing structure was an asset to maintaining the democracy of the organization. The “official” structure that was ultimately adopted, but never codified, written down, or ratified by the membership was one based on affinity groups that would send representatives to a council which would be responsible for making decisions for the organization as a whole. In practice, power coalesced around a Black woman professor named Angie, who commanded a wealthier white cadre around her, and tended to dictate the direction of the space through that cadre. Her status as a Black woman extinguished most forms of reproach she might receive from the non-Black people around her, taking full advantage of the incorrect false internationalist idea that being a more oppressed identity means you are more correct in an international context, regardless of your class character or actual correctness. Within NOC, false internationalism was firmly primary by this point, motivated by its dialectical support from false nationalism that Angie was taking full advantage of. Leadership was validated based on which Black person had the white cadre as followers, consolidated by the false nationalist idea that encouraged seeing Angie as more correct because she was a Black woman. This leadership further solidified from this cadre in large part due to them having the most resources available for funding and therefore legitimizing actions.
The Nation/Gender Shuffle
Towards mid July, the camp was raided and destroyed by Police and NOC's operations had to move from there. Though the focus of the group was no longer tied up with maintaining an autonomous zone, idealist contradictions continued to grow from the poisoned root of their founding abolitionist ideology. A major example of this was a consistent failure to address gender based violence within the organization, which stemmed from cis (Black) men remaining primary within NOC above Black femmes. At the encampment and afterwards, instances of assault or sexual violence continued against femmes in the space without accountability for those who committed them, often under the guise of abolition meaning no “carceral” solutions to such problems. In practice, this meant that those who did harm and were not part of a favored or exoticised group were exiled, and those who were part of said groups were allowed to continue operating in the org without any engagement about improving their behavior. To this end, cis Black men tended to be backed up by white femmes, one particular example of which included a former gang member named Cris, who was exoticised for his history with a gang and treated as being a less fallible voice in the space, even amid a history of abuse directed at other Black femmes in and outside of NOC. With the support he received from both white femmes and the Black bourgeoisie Angie had assembled around her, false internationalism remained supported by the secondary of false nationalism. Here we can see how the lack of a true proletarian line for NOC to follow gave way to false internationalist glorification of the lumpen; that is, classes vacillating outside of traditional bourgeois and proletariat relationships who often engage in criminal activity. As we have seen in our history “When the 1960s-1970s movements here mistakenly glorified the lumpen and glorified criminality as such, they were rejecting the task of helping the lumpen become true fighters for the people. False praise just covered up for slighting the legitimate political needs of these rads.”7 A racist perspective on Blackness on the part of the white oppressor nation participants here helped to lock this exoticising of Cris, as he was given power and protection due to his history regardless of whether or not he was doing harm, had correct ideas, or even adhered to a proletarian line. The failures to properly redress such gender based violence as in Cris’s case, in addition to the non-democratic operation of NOC via the dominance of Angie’s bourgeois cadre, encouraged a subgroup of more aggressively anarchist members to separate themselves from the organization. Predictably, this subgroup only perpetuated the same contradictions that plagued NOC, as they still operated from the same idealist root ideologies. As a majority white organization, the false internationalist primary that motivated its makeup only further frustrated their effectiveness after the split.
White Leadership Black Mask
The subgroup of more aggressively anarchist, non-hierarchical abolitionists within NOC called Our Streets (OS), made up of a majority of white petit-bourgeois students and a few Black service workers, separated themselves from NOC's operations shortly after the destruction of the park autonomous zone. The separation was driven by a stated desire for a more democratic structure for making decisions that did not have to be funneled through a single leader and her cadre. They also desired a better structure for dealing with the gender based violence that permeated NOC's space since the encampment. Predictably, they didn’t accomplish anything of the sort, ultimately motivated by the false internationalist conceit that as white members of the oppressor nation, they were the most capable of directing the struggle for Black liberation, an utterly laughable falsehood that continued to rear its head throughout the splinter organization’s operational lifespan. White radicals who take the initiative to solve the struggles of the Black nation often end up in continuity with the white supremacists of the oppressor nation they claim to oppose. Since they insist on taking control of the development of the Black nation, they only continue dominance by the oppressor nation under a slightly different label, never committing to the Black liberation they claim to be in favor of; all of which occurred within OS in spades. Though the subgroup’s break from NOC lead to genders apart from cis men becoming primary, the make-up of the group remained majority white and petit-bourgeois, with 2 active and 1 inactive Black members relative to 12-15 white members; upholding false internationalism as the primary ideology within the space. OS’s own documents state that the organization believed “in Black liberation, Black autonomy, and Black unity”8, and sought to pursue an end to police, prisons, private property, and the US’s capitalist regime along those lines.
Despite these stated beliefs and goals, the voices of Black members were routinely overshadowed, and white comfort was prioritized over the incorrect and chauvinist work they tried to do. The Black members of the cadre were repeatedly treated as more of a set dressing for their activities than members whose views should be valued and respected. Often at events run by the cadre, Black members would be carted over to speak to any Black person interested in the work being done so as to present the cadre as much Blacker than it actually was, demonstrating how the false internationalism of OS attempted to use false nationalist impulses of joining with nation without considering any other contradiction present. All the while, any type of Black supported directive within the space was shut down or redirected as being impractical or unimportant, and when white members did harm to Black people within the space, they were never held to critique. This was exemplified during a trip OS took in parallel to NOC to the state capital later that summer, in order to coordinate with the activists there attempting larger actions. When it came time to choose which marches to move with, the Black members wanted to follow the ones lead by Black organizations through the routes that they were familiar with, while the white members dismissed many of the routes as dangerous based on their experiences, leading them to disappear from said marches as the Black OS membership fended for themselves. The false internationalism that was primary at the time encouraged all OS members to weigh in on how big of an issue this was and how to address it, which predictably lead to the majority white membership to denounce the issue as not worth engaging with in depth.
This contradiction continued to intensify until the Black members of OS insisted on rejoining NOC in September of that year, hoping to reorient their work towards Black leadership, which was much more present within NOC than it had been at OS. This precipitated a shift from false internationalism to false nationalism being primary, further stalling any progress attempted towards the goals their rhetoric claimed to champion.
Play Bougie Games Win Petty Prizes
The qualitative shift to false nationalism being primary had been growing in NOC as well as OS by that point. Black people in NOC realized that their needs were not being properly addressed within the movement, and wanted to start organizing and making decisions as a Black unit. Did this lead to attempts to actually engage with the Black proletariat masses in an attempt to unite with them on the most productive ways to combat police repression, or to properly claim their agency against oppressor nations in general? Of course not, for abolition does not worry about class or the unity with the masses. Instead, the focus of the newly reunited NOC was turned further inward, via an event set up within the NOC organization called Blackspeak (BKS), wherein Black members of NOC (and NOC only) would speak of their traumas and experiences to the non-Black member audience without interruption or comment. There, Black members spoke of being ignored, having their ideas get pushed to the side, being policed for their tone and forms of expression, and not being prioritized for their inputs in what was ostensibly an organization dedicated to Black liberation. Here the dialectic between false internationalism and false nationalism was presented blatantly, as the Black membership sought control on the sole basis of being part of the Black nation (FN), but that control was still determined by who had the most white people supporting their ideas and attending their events (FI), leading to the BKS functioning mostly as a place to complain about one’s lack of white followers. The idea that Black people could provide for themselves without white support was completely absent from the conversation. In this context, Black people remained a nation dependent on whites instead of an independent one with agency that could make genuine international alliances on their own terms. The BKS revelations lead to the formation of the Black Leadership Council in October in an attempt to get the Black membership of NOC organized as a unit that could properly advocate for themselves and direct the actions of the organization. Unfortunately, with the Black Leadership Council, false internationalism became secondary to false nationalism instead of genuine nationalism, as class was not a factor in determining who should be organized within the council. With a makeup consisting of Black petite-bourgeoisie, professors, academics, some service workers, and at least one homeless person who disengaged with the council rapidly after its formation, it was inevitable that recognizing the decisive nature of the proletariat in terms of having a vested material interest in revolution was not in the cards. Though they were now organizing as a Black unit, they still lacked the structure, Maoist understanding, and much less a consistent proletarian political line with which to push towards class struggle and genuine Black liberation. What was needed was something closer to said understandings and a proper application of scientific socialism, as well as the knowledge that coming from non-proletarian objective conditions requires changing those conditions to those of a proletarian. If you do not come from the proletarian class but have still developed an understanding of Maoist principles, in order for you to properly apply those principles to your surroundings, you must apply them to your internal conditions so you can proletarianize properly from your objective class position. If you try to do the former without the latter, you will only continue the exploitative relationship between your class and the proletarian class. If armed with this understanding, the council's foray into Black nationalism could have learned from the failures of the past such that a genuine Black proletarian nationalist movement could have been constructed. Unfortunately, the flawed and idealist line of abolition kept its hold on their thinking, carrying its foibles forward with them.
The Black Leadership Council was meant to be the new governing body for the whole of NOC, wherein all actions would be decided and finalized by the body, keeping the false internationalism of depending on white support firmly foundational to the false nationalism primary within the council. This was built upon further through the organizational structure the Black Leadership Council pitched for the whole of NOC, wherein new work groups would be formed, each dedicated to a specific project either recommended by the Black Leadership Council apropos of no specific strategy or link to the stated general goal, or grandfathered in from NOC's projects, decided with a similar lack of direction. These arbitrary work groups would have at least one Black member in each. They were supposed to ensure that the projects adopted by the mostly non-Black work groups remained in Black interest. The Black members of each work group would then report back to the Black Leadership Council, giving their reports and relaying council decisions back to the work groups to keep the individual projects coordinated. The necessity of these projects was seldom if ever discussed, however. No reaching out to struggle with the masses about what their concerns were and using mass line to unite with them to find the correct path towards revolution, no tying the specific tasks back to their frustratingly nebulous general of police abolition, and no ideological consolidation of a disciplined party to synthesize genuine struggle with the masses into a doable plan for liberation; all under the assumption that the events they would frequently direct their efforts towards would somehow bring about liberation on their own.
The problems only continued to compound atop this lack of direction. Angie’s old cadre of Black petit-bourgeois were hesitant to give up their own power over the white followers. They repeatedly tried to dismiss Black Leadership Council as its own separate organization, and released a public statement to assure their membership that Black Leadership Council would not be replacing their allegedly non-hierarchical leadership structure. While both the council and the petit-bourgeois cadre of NOC clashed over the false internationalist demand to maintain a collection of white followers, each hoping to claim the most legitimacy by dominating that following; the false nationalism that was primary ensured that any fundamental disagreements between the Black membership were ignored instead of resolved.
Even after the Black petit-bourgeois cadre released a public statement denouncing the idea of the Black Leadership Council, hoarded donated money, and threatened to deprive other homeless council members of housing the petit-bourgeois had purchased for them, they remained within the Black Leadership Council. They never had to account for their conflicts or interrogate their class position as it contradicted with that of most other council members. Hence we see the persistence of the false nationalist idea that just being Black meant that there was no other way your goals could be truly in opposition to other Blacks.
As such, the petit-bourgeois cadre remained in the council, continually dismissing its agency, contradicting any plans or initiatives it sought to craft, and never facing any push back for it. Moreover, they maintained the event-focused style of organizing where actually engaging with the masses became subordinate to throwing events catered to the membership themselves. Cookouts, art shows, and food pop ups were primary and frequent, all without a smidgen of consideration for how they might lead towards their flawed goal of police abolition, much less whether or not the masses were actually engaging with them. There was a persistent misconception in the council that explicit structures for dealing with harm and conflict as well as taking a line against incorrect ideas ran counter to the liberatory goals of NOC. If you were opposed to the events or wanted to redirect the council’s efforts elsewhere, you were left to your own devices when you weren’t ignored outright, once more applying the anarchist idea of “diversity of tactics, unity in action”. In practice, this left the council and NOC as a whole rudderless, disorganized, and ideologically hollow, lacking even enough organization to keep track of who and how many were in their org and what they were all doing. It favored a bourgeois individualistic approach to getting things done, where members were left to pursue their own ends without questioning if they were productive to the collective’s goals. There was no Democratic Centralism applied, wherein an ideological basis for unity was struggled around and members were expected to follow along the resulting political lines. Instead of trying to struggle the correct path towards revolution, they were left to go in different directions with, in many cases, contradictory lines applied, doing what they felt was right instead of doing what would bring revolution. Predictably, there was barely any time to feel the full effects of the poorly conceived organizational structure before infighting locked up the council’s ability to decide on things completely.
Criticism, Sike!, Criticism
As the conflicts between the Black Leadership Council and the petit-bourgeois cadre remained unaddressed, false internationalism slowly became primary again as the legitimacy of both Black Leadership Council and NOC leadership began to hinge on white followers in a much more explicit capacity. As the winter lead into 2021, attempts to hold the petit-bourgeois cadre accountable for harm they had done to other members and past partners was repeatedly shot down by their white followers, or met with empty promises that were never followed up on from all sections of the NOC community. Lacking an understanding of Criticism/Self-Criticism, there wasn’t even an ideologically consolidated method available with which members who had done harm could acknowledge it and put effort into improving. All they had available was implicit isolation or public shaming. This was carried out by their accountability team, the majority of which was made up of the petit-bourgeois cadre, who only ever managed to dismiss any harm that their cadre or the leadership above them could have inflicted, while offering shallow initiatives of mediation or separation for the perpetrators of harm they did recognize. This committee never facilitated proper investigation into the behaviors that actually caused harm and ways in which to improve upon them, and how could they? The idealist foundation of this project presented no opportunities for a scientific analysis of how these problems were germinating. Moreover, reactionary movement remained primary within plans for both organizations. Events persisted as the primary method of seeding liberation and drawing large crowds of white helpers to charity actions for the masses of oppressed nations was a metric of success. On top of this, actual leg work for crafting said events was regularly placed upon Black femmes within the space, which was often seen as a way for them to take the lead as the most marginalized, a particularly regressive application of false nationalism. Rather than solidify plans or an ideological line dedicated to the flawed goal of just abolishing the Police, the organizations instead rallied around “disruptive” art displays in majority white areas, or mutual aid events in Black spaces that did not make a genuine effort to engage with the proletariat there, instead drawing larger white crowds and treating any white labor dedicated to the events as morally just in and of itself, backed by false internationalism and integrationism that assumed that such white labor was reparative enough on its own.
A strong example of this was a pitch that gained traction within the Black Leadership Council to organize snow shoveling groups in Black neighborhoods, which was followed by the suggestion that NOC's white members should be the ones to do the shoveling as a form of reparative labor. Of course, the idea was ideologically vapid from the core, operating under the idealism that if the masses of oppressed nations were shown “kindness” and an “alternative” to the oppressive capitalist system they suffered under, they would accept abolition as their gospel and be encouraged to build towards the spontaneous revolution anarchist like to imagine. All with no consideration of what actually keeps oppressed nations oppressed and what is necessary to engage with sharpening class contradictions to get them onboard with revolution. The council even repeatedly shot down suggestions of trying to engage the masses during the shoveling, content with the performance of it being the only point, instead of leading to even a slightly more authentic proletarian organizing. The council, of course, failed to enact even that flimsy ghost of a plan.
The Thin Red Mass Line
Moving into the spring, the petit-bourgeois cadre continued to clash with the Black Leadership Council over unproductive events, while attempts to standardize an explicit organizational structure for the council itself were repeatedly pushed back or met with empty platitudes. Despite this, an understanding did emerge from the struggles within the council that they weren’t engaging with the masses enough in their work; pushed by the same select few within the council who were struggling for explicit organization. Through this struggle against incorrect ideas driving their work, a well-intentioned but ultimately misguided course correction was established. This struggle was slowly beginning to sharpen the correct Maoist ideas against incorrect idealist ones, generating the beginnings of a proper two-line struggle within the council, though these correct ideas failed to reorient the idealist direction of the group. The corrections ultimately took the form of charity cookouts within majority Black neighborhoods with an exclusively Black attendance that were meant to engage the masses about the alleged necessity and correctness of abolition. Predictably, this insistence on dictating an incorrect line to the masses instead of struggling with them to find the correct one based on Maoist principles, only served to keep the council spinning its wheels when engaging them. The attendees who were willing to speak about abolition would frequently mention a need for the police for their own protection. Rather than engaging with the essence of that need, which could be struggled to a need for a protective force actually run by and for the Black nation to protect them from capital interests instead of exploiting them in favor of those interests, the council dismissed the sentiment entirely, trying to dictate how the masses were incorrect if they didn’t unite with the idea of getting rid of all police being the primary solution to their issues. Of course the council was in no position to address these flaws in their engagement strategy, as they continued to refuse a standardized structure for decision making or for correcting mistakes made. Meetings were regularly hostile events wherein disagreements were repeatedly ignored in the name of planning the next event, discouraging consistent attendance from those involved and making attempts at it utterly headache inducing. With the focus on events and maintenance of white followers as an essential resource for the council to have, the cycle of false nationalism and false internationalism in the space continued. False nationalism had edged back to the primary position as the charity events started as a Black only space, while the reliance on white followers to provide the resources for the events demonstrated the false internationalism still propping up false nationalism from its secondary position. Most frustratingly, not only was the incorrect line of abolition continually dictated at these events, but the methodology of the events themselves for engaging with the masses was never questioned. Instead of engaging the masses directly about their particular issues and how they link back to the general contradictions that keep them oppressed, and facilitating their direct participation in the struggle and work required for their liberation; these events focused on performing charity towards the masses, separating them from engagement with their own liberation, and preoccupying those doing the charity with setting up the next event instead of forwarding the actual struggles with the masses. There would never have been an opportunity to engage with the masses need for an armed force to protect their interests, and why the police as agents of capital could not be that force, because the focus was always on getting materials for the next event and pushing the incorrect ideology of abolition. Instead of authentically struggling out the needs of the masses, their concerns were shot down and they were dismissed as reactionary, as abolition had to be the guiding light of this group that couldn’t possibly be incorrect. For them, the correct ideas do not come from struggle with the masses, but instead need to be dictated to them, and if the masses disagree with what’s dictated, they must be the reactionary ones.
The consistent opposition to any type of explicit Maoist structure or line to be enacted through it from genuine struggle with the masses for fear of rampant authoritarianism, ironically enough, gave way to implicit authoritarianism within these organizations, as the idealist line of Abolition and the implicit leadership that drove it remained above reproach throughout. The masses remained at the edge of their work rather than the center of it due to their failure to understand their role as the primary motivator of historical change, much less an understanding of how to apply scientific socialism to build upon that history. In the absence of an explicit proletarian ideological line beyond a vague goal of abolition or a Maoist understanding of what working under genuine nationalism actually means, it remains impossible that even the poorly conceived stated goals of such spaces will ever be realized, beyond padding the resumes of the petit-bourgeois enforcing the contradictions. Resumes which are apparently now being padded with events crafted by the council and NOC to teach after-school programs about abolition within the school system. Perhaps starting the confusion young will make them more receptive to their hollow excuse for a political line.
Do Conclusions Need a Title?
In conclusion, we can see how easily a moment of rebellion can be curtailed by the insistence of an incorrect anarchist ideological line, how important a Maoist understanding of mass line is to struggling with the masses to synthesize the correct ideas for revolution, and how false nationalism and false internationalism work in dialectical unity to divert revolutionary impulses from the masses and keep them bound to the same bourgeois power structures. Failures such as this are essential to learning what is correct, however, as it was through struggle against these incorrect ideas that a genuine two line struggle was formed, leading to a Maoist understanding of the correct lines of scientific socialism for the most advanced members of the groups described, who will hopefully be able to find others who developed similar understandings through their own experiences of this type. One hopes that as those involved in NOC continue their work, they learn to improve it in the direction of the masses instead of the direction of the petit-bourgeois.
Footnotes:
1 Those of the incorrect belief that any form of hierarchy or explicit organizational structure leads to oppression, and that individual freedom is what must remain primary, even if it is in direct contradiction with the needs of the collective. They frequently idealistically claim that spontaneous action or resistance sans any type of plan or centralizing goal is the key to overthrowing the superstructure of capitalism, be it through the sudden collapse of the state from such resistance or its incremental dissolution by such resistance amassing dual power. As we will see, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
2 Referencing the oft touted anarchist idea that becoming “ungovernable” is one of the primary goals of organizing, with no word on how that will actually build to proletariat revolution.
3 The idea that police and prisons as a concept are fundamentally oppressive and society does not require them in any capacity to move forward. It supposes that they must all be dismantled in order for oppression to end, particularly the oppression of Black People. It functions as a bourgeois ideology because it requires no interrogation of class differences. The assumption is that just by removing the enforcing arm of the state, the bourgeois class will fall apart and will no longer have an exploitative relationship with the lower classes. It also presumes that the oppressed classes do not need to martial vanguard force of their own to ensure the oppressor classes are truly abolished through violent revolution, and once that has happened, don’t try to oppress them again. This is all incredibly false, as the material reality of the organizations described in this text demonstrates. You cannot get rid of class relationships by just removing their enforcement arm, and qualitatively changing those relationships requires violent revolution to completely destroy both the oppressor class and the structures that protect them. Moreover, once that has happened, you can’t protect yourself from being re-oppressed by them if you are not prepared to use your own vanguard force. Using violence is a necessary reality of securing liberation.
4 Idea that within anarchist organizing, it is OK for different groups to engage in completely different, outright contradictory efforts towards a goal. As long as that shared goal is kept in mind, it will be reached even if the efforts frustrate each other.
5 The budget removed from the police department was instead funneled into hiring security officers from the police for other departments, such as schools, hospitals, and transit.
6 We can see how the class character of NG1 was evident in this move, as they provided much of the material backing of the encampment’s first week and tried to maintain dominion over the politics and direction of the camp as an extension of that. Hardly practice that keep close to the demands of the masses.
7 E. Tani and Kae Sera, “Introduction” in False Nationalism, False Internationalism, (Seeds Beneath the Snow, 1985), 7.
8 Our Streets’ Demands & Points of Unity.
Road-map to black liberation
No Locked Doors is proud to publish the “Road-Map to Black Liberation”, a booklet that has been submitted to us by an organization that would prefer to remain nameless. It was developed as a way to engage the Black masses in revolutionary theory in a popular way. The organization who authored the work submits, “The intention of this booklet is not for it to be limited to Black student study circles (although it may start there), but to be the basis of struggle for the Black proletariat among the Black masses being struggled with to join the revolution. Go out and be internal to the masses struggles, organize them and push these lines. These lines have been mass lined, but this process must continue; send us advances to these lines based on the advanced sections of the proletariat and their engagement and struggle with these lines. Send us lines that have been developed in struggle and we may include them in the next addition of this Road-Map series. Together, we can pave the road to our liberation.”
-- NLD Editorial Board
“Make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again... till their doom; that is the logic of the imperialists and all reactionaries the world over in dealing with the people's cause, and they will never go against this logic...Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again...till their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic.” – Mao Zedong
“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for the people.” – George Jackson
I. Introduction
This booklet was not created out of a desire to reach a broad audience; there is no intention of becoming a bestseller. This booklet is meant to reach and consolidate the most advanced elements of the Black nation and in doing so set in motion our task of national liberation through socialist revolution. This is not a leisurely read, but a guide to social transformation, to win freedom through class struggle. And through the consolidation of the proletariat of the Black nation we can achieve the unity of the masses of our nation towards our victory.
Only the proletariat of the Black nation can create the lines that lead the revolution and only they can lead the revolution; this booklet is for them to internalize, advance and criticize. The proletariat of other oppressed nations are encouraged to apply these lines to their particular conditions and in doing so bring their nations closer to the revolution and closer to us; this is internationalism and we are internationalists. If there are some terms in this introduction that are not clear, they will become so by the time you flip the last page.
Lines are a Road-Map
This here is a booklet of lines; and what better way to start than with a line on lines. A line can be imagined as one of many roads in a state; these roads lead to many different places. Many will lead you who-knows-where, but only the correct roads can take you where you want to be. Lines, like roads, are paths that can either lead to reformism where you run into a dead-end, down the reactionary path where things get worse (a car wreck), or up the revolutionary path that leads towards social transformation; a better world.
The lines in this booklet, like correct lines in general, have been paved through the practice of social transformation and, when taken, will lead us further up that road. Some lines are meant to shape our ideas about ourselves and the world, in order to know a correct line when we see one and to even pave some ourselves; these are ideological lines. Some lines are meant to place us on the correct road and from there it is up to us to drive up that path on your own gas; these are political lines, lines of action. And of course we should be carpooling, driving down correct lines as a collective, united in the struggle for social transformation; organizational lines allow for this. As we engage in the struggle to transform the world we will be zigzagging through traffic across a vast landscape of lines and we must ensure we stay along the correct path. Let this booklet be your roadmap.
II. Class
What is Class?
A class is a social grouping of people that have a similar collective position within the economy of our society. When we talk about economy, we specifically are talking about how people relate to production in society. Let's think about how production is organized; it's easiest to look at it starting from those who own wealth within the capitalist system - the bourgeoisie. They are a small group of people who no one ever sees, who rake in an enormous amount of profits from the work that people do in their company, for example. These bourgeoisie, the people at the top, own the tools that are used for production: they own the buildings, the equipment, the cash registers, the products being sold, etc. These things are defined as capital; they are the things that make money for the bourgeoisie when the working class set them into motion by their labor. These people at the top make up a class, the capitalist class also known as the bourgeoisie.
In this same example, those who work in those buildings, use the equipment, operate the cash registers and sell the products for the company also make up a class. Those are the people who do not own any capital and are forced to sell their ability to work in exchange for wages. These people make up the working class. So a class is a group of people who are bound together by how they relate to production.
In the example of the capitalist class, these are the people who own the means of production and therefore reap the benefits of production. This class has total control of the means of production and how they are used and needs to maintain its ownership of the means of production so that it can continue to make wealth. In every instance this class will fight to ensure its dominance over the production process and therefore its dominance over society. The working class, however, is constantly struggling against this class. The working class is constantly exploited because the wages that we earn are nowhere near equal to the value that we create for the capitalist class. This relationship between the workers and the capitalists is an antagonistic one. These two classes have interests that are completely opposed to one another and they will constantly struggle against one another as long as they both exist. The capitalists can only maintain their position in our current economy if they are exploiting workers. They have no interest in sharing their wealth nor making an equal society in which everyone can become capitalists. The capitalist class wants the workers to stay in their place and continue making extraordinary amounts of profits for them. The working class is interested in freedom, we want an end to our suffering. This is why so many workers either want to become capitalists themselves or they want to do away with our current economic system in general. This is why we see in our society that these different classes are always organizing themselves for their class interests. The capitalist has the organization of the company; its managers and top staff that keep the workers on a leash. It has internal rules that allow the capitalist to legally discipline and terminate workers from their jobs. They have the police that stops any violent retaliation or rebellion by the workers. They have the government who they can influence with their wealth to make laws that benefit their class. The working class has workers organizations like unions that are able to concentrate the quantitative power of workers into political actions. These actions include strikes, boycotts, petitions, protests, demonstrations, etc. There are other classes besides these two and they operate in the same way: they struggle and organize against each other based on how they relate to each other in the productive process. The struggle between the working class and the capitalist class however is decisive in how our current economy changes.
Within our times, we are under the era of imperialism; which means capitalism has reached a stage where monopolies control every corner of the world. In such an era the world becomes divided between oppressed and oppressor nations. Nations begin to act as classes where the oppressor nation's bourgeoisie control the oppressed nation's entire population. And as we know history to change by way of class struggle; it is up to the proletariat of the oppressed nations to lead the world revolution against the oppressor nations in order to create real social transformation.
“A class is a group of people who have a similiar economic position and role, like workers or bourgeoisie. Their relationship is antagonistic because the bourgeoisie exploits the workers and so they struggle against each other; this is the class struggle the working class of the oppressed nations are currently engaged in.”
What Makes History Move?
In school we are given a history textbook heavy with events, dates and important figures. It reads like a scattered series of occurences with no rhyme or reason other than that some great men, with statues built after them, willed the world to change all by themselves. The white oppressor writes history to make themselves the heroes of the world, when in reality they are anything but. They try to make history itself a caricature of history, by always making it feel as if it is some static and past thing locked away for ever. But history is very much alive and in constant motion even in this very moment; and it has definite laws that can be understood to explain and influence this motion. History since the beginning of man has built upon itself and is determined by our relationship with each other and the world. History is the history of class struggle.
Humans have always survived and thrived by our ability to create tools for our continued existence; we engage in the conscious production of our needs like food, clothing and shelter. The other imporant aspect is that we engage in this production as a community; together with other humans and in doing so create relations to each other within this production. As the line on class makes clear this creates a contradiction between those who own the means of production and those who work them. There was a stage of human history where everyone owned the means of production in common; but in every stage since then, as humans continue to engage in production, production itself advances and begins to yield a surplus of the human needs. The group within the community that pushed this development forward begins to capture the surplus and make up a class; history is moving. The class that captures the surplus owns the means of production and simultaneously develops a class that creates that surplus for them (by working the means of production) and is exploited in the process. The class that became the owners during feudalism, the kings and queens, were originally a class of those who advanced production in food through agriculture or protected it. Then they developed the peasants that toiled and worked on the land and became those who created the surplus. Up to today, every society has had this dynamic and changes by this dynamic.
At some point in this dynamic, those who originally created the conditions for advancing production begin to limit its progress for the purpose of maintaining their relations with the exploited; they want to stay on top. Meanwhile the exploited class that is engaging the closest with production is creating new advancements through their practice and begin to consitute a progressive force in the society. The kings and queens were holding back society in a backward form of production (hoarding land and the fruits of labor created on them) compared to the production being developed by the peasants who, through their practice, developed better tools and methods for producing. History at this point is about ready to boil over. You have a class that owns the means of production and in doing so has power, and because of that wants to remain in power; even stopping advancements in production and society as a whole. Then on the other side of the ring you have the exploited class that sees a path towards advancing society, but is being stopped and repressed by their exploiter. Revolution becomes inevitable, the only way to advance society.
This entire process, from the creation of these classes to the point where revolution is necessary, is class struggle. Society changes fundamentally when the exploited class ovethrows the exploiter and advances production, and in the process, advances humans relations to themselves and nature. The class that became the bourgeoisie under capitalism has its origins in the peasant class of the feudal time; they were the progressive force that increased productive forces and overthrew the backward relations of feudalism. And today they have become the backwards class themselves.
Every society changes by this process of class struggle and our society will be no different. We are the exploited and the bourgeoisie is the exploiter. The bourgeoisie is holding back society and we, the working class and oppressed, are actively engaged in a class struggle to transform society. It may not seem like it but the class struggle is raging on as you read this text. It manifests in the workers fighting for more of the fruits of their labor all over the world, in the Black nations seemingly spontaneous rebellions against the US empire and their foot soldiers. The class struggle gains a sharper edge when the working class and oppressed become conscious of themselves as a class engaged in class struggle; and in this awareness, understanding that a scientific approach to social transformation is needed and that revolution is necessary.
Since we are in the era of imperialism, where capitalism has made it so many nations are oppressed (so as to be exploited) by a few oppressor nations, the fight for national liberation becomes the main force in the class struggle. Every Black nation in the world, whether they be controlled by the oppressor through neo-colonialism or locked in a prison within an oppressor nation itself, (such as the Black nation within the US empire) must fight for national liberation as a decisive element of the class struggle. In fact, capitalism was able to come into existence partly based on the oppression and exploitation of the oppressed nations. For national liberation to be achieved, proletarian nationalism is necessary; meaning the advanced section of the working class must lead its entire nation towards national liberation through revolution; the elements of class and national struggle must be combined to ensure victory.
It is the proletariat that will be the class that ruptures from the exploitative relations of production of the past and ends class society as a whole. The proletariat fight for the surplus of production to go to all the workers and for all the people to be workers towards the common good. If the proletariat do not lead the struggle, it will be bought out or destroyed by the oppressor nation through a deal of betrayal with the petty and pseudo bourgeoisie of our nation. If the class struggle is not done on a national basis the oppressor nation will seize control of the oppressed nations movement and take it down the wrong path.
“As members of the working class and oppressed it is your historical role to consciously engage in the class and national struggle in order to shape history itself towards social transformation and end class society once and for all.”
Who are the Proletariat?
The proletariat is the revolutionary section of the working class (either employed or thrown into the reserve army of labor and left unemployed). This is when the working-class is organized, conscious of itself as a class and focused on taking the wealth of society for itself and destroying the capitalist system. This revolutionary class is no longer the scattered working class that it was; the confused mass that didn't know if it wanted higher wages or to become small business owners or to have better positions in the workplace. This is a leading force that understands that it is the class that produces the wealth for the capitalists. It understands its specific position in society as those who are the most familiar with the means of production and can seize it for human needs. It understands that it has the power to overthrow the capitalists and become the new owners of society to make a new society that allows for all working people to take ownership of what they make. The proletariat is not fighting for one section of workers over another, it fights as one revolutionary class for the overthrow of the capitalists and class society as a whole.
Historically, the working class has provided the basis for the proletarian class. Throughout the world in China, Cuba and Russia's revolutionary past, the workers and oppressed were able to organize themselves into a revolutionary class that was able to completely change the economy. In these historical examples, the working class organized itself into a revolutionary class by making a proletarian political party. This political party was the centralized leadership that allowed for the proletarian class to lead the masses of that particular society against the capitalist class. Although since, these countries have gone down the capitalist road; today other countries carry the lessons with them and continue down the revolutionary road.
One of these lessons include the need for a proletarian party which lies in the fact that the working class needs to change how they see and understand the world in order to change it. Many workers may have a revolutionary position in society because of their economic position but they lack a revolutionary outlook. Everyone in our society has ideas and practices that hinder class unity. Things like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc are all things among the working class that are mostly non-antagonistic. Meaning that these things can be solved without using violence.
Since we are in the era of imperialism, the working class of the oppressor and oppressed nations are not the same. The entire white nation (including their working class) within the US empire have no revolutionary position because of their relation to the oppressed nations within this country. They benefit as an entire nation by exploiting and oppressing the Black nation. The oppressed nations’ working class and most oppressed are the sections that have the conditions to become the proletariat. These are things that need to be addressed and resolved as a proletarian party is built because resolving these issues will provide for a stronger revolutionary unity within the proletariat internally and its allies externally. The organization of a revolutionary party is indispensable in making real and qualitative social change that we all want and deserve.
"The only way to make real change in society is by organizing the revolutionary class, it is the only class that is in the economic position and has a commitment to lead a revolutionary struggle. The advanced sections of the Black nation are part of the proletariat; their revolutionary outlook, class commitment, and revolutionary practice make them so."
Pseudo-Bourgeoisie: The False Promises of Black Wealth
There is a belief among many in our nation that our liberation can come from rising through the ranks of capital accumulation. We see rich members of our nation such as Jay-Z, Rihanna, or Barack Obama, and believe that they have become part of the US’s bourgeois class, and have therefore liberated themselves completely through such a climb. This is completely false, however, as the position of our nation as an oppressed nation prevents us from having a true bourgeoisie class. Meaning that even the richest members of our nation do not control the means of production within the US, nor are they able to accumulate their riches without the consent of the bourgeoisie of the white oppressor nation. Whether that consent is doled out through record and branded product deals with white businesses or entrance into a white political establishment, Black riches cannot be accumulated within the US without it.
As a result, the rich within our nation do not function as a true bourgeoisie class, but as a pseudobourgeoisie, never taking on the role of the owners of the means of production or exercising control over the economy of their own nation. The few wealthy Black pseudo-bourgeoisie, while they can buy stocks, houses and yachts, do not employ the Black proletariat, do not own any significant capital, and do not control in any way the economic activities of their own nation. Control of our nation’s economy remains in the hands of the white oppressor nation’s bourgeoisie, those who control its productive industry and not only sign your checks, but the checks of the rich members of our nation.
Our liberation will not come from accumulating a small portion of their stolen riches under their rule, but from taking control of the mechanisms of production for our own nation. The Black proletariat is the class that can lead such a revolution because they are the base of the wealth of the oppressor nation; their consciousness and action can turn our oppression into its opposite.
“Rich Black people don’t get rich without making deals with white oppressors, who will never allow them to take control over the means of production we drive and the wealth created as a result. Seizing those means ultimately falls to us, the organized masses and our proletarian leadership.”
III. Nation
Nationalism
Colonization began in history when the capitalists (especially in Europe) developed economically to the point where they had the ability to consolidate their wealth and power into a class (the bourgeoisie). They also realized they could no longer only extract labor/resources from the poor people in their own countries if they wanted to grow and expand (partly because the poor people were fighting back against this oppression which could lead to revolution – a nightmare situation for the bourgeoisie). Furthermore, the bourgeoisie could no longer sell their products only to the people in their own countries. Because of the amount of wealth that they accumulated and this need to expand to different markets and remain competitive against other capitalists, the bourgeoisie of certain nations went out to colonize and enslave people from Africa to Latin America to Asia using violent takeover.
However, because over time people were constantly rising up and fighting against this colonialism, the colonizers devised a new system where they could have indirect control, called neo-colonialism, which tricks people into thinking their nation has gained independence, when really there is still a colonizer or oppressor nation controlling things behind the scenes. With neo-colonialism, direct violence is no longer as necessary but the oppressed nation remains under the boot of the oppressor using loans, debt and puppet leaders. We are now at a point where all of the nations of the world have since been divided up and now fall into one of two categories – oppressor nation or oppressed nation.1
Currently, the oppressor nation will exercise control politically by establishing and influencing puppet leaders of the ruling class of the oppressed nation. These puppet leaders have the same nationality as the poor and oppressed people so they may be Black or Latino or Asian, but they still represent the interests of the (generally white) oppressor nation. The oppressor nation will then exercise control economically by extracting land/resources/people from the oppressed nation, and keeping them in debt through loans and international “aid” (that come with all sorts of demanding fine print). When oppressed nations do not cooperate with the imperialists, sanctions are imposed on them that cause financial ruin. This control of an oppressor nation over an oppressed nation, as many of us know, has devastating effects on the masses of the oppressed nations including war, poverty, superexploitation, hunger, climate disaster and forced migration.
The United States is also a special case of a country that has many oppressed nations imprisoned within it. Although most people consider the United States one nation and everyone within it “American”, we should really be looking at the Black, Latino, Asian and of course Indigenous people within the United States not as true American citizens but rather as citizens of different neo-colonized or oppressed nations living in the same country as their oppressor nation. In many ways we are still victims of the same type of exploitation and oppression that people of oppressed nations outside of the United States face.2 In the US, we also have puppet leaders of Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous descent that do not represent our interests but rather keep the oppressor nation running things behind the scenes. Our people also are devastated by war, poverty, hunger, climate disaster and forced migration in ways that the people of the white oppressor nation never have to go through despite the fact that they are living in the same country. In fact, the white oppressor nation is able to live better lives because our nations get our labor exploited and get our wealth extracted from us for their benefit. In the United States, the ruling class will allow a small percentage of the oppressed nations to elevate their class in order to trick people into thinking anyone can eventually reach the status of wealth of the oppressor nation if they just work hard enough. But the truth is, this system is a lottery and it will never be the case for all of us.
The only solution for oppressed nations is to fight for self-determination. This means throwing off the chains of the oppressor nation so that they no longer have political and economic control over us but rather we would have political and economic control over ourselves. We will only be able to do this if we 1) recognize our own nationhood is separate from that of the oppressor nation, 2) understand that the oppressor nation will never grant us true independence of their own will and that we must fight for it and 3) understand that only the proletarian class of the oppressed nation can lead the fight for self-determination (because the pseudo-bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes have too much to gain from sucking up to the oppressor nation and throughout history tend to easily fall into their traps and bribes).
“When the proletariat of the oppressed nation leads the fight for self-determination of their nation, all the other classes in that nation can, through struggle, be united with, fight to break the chains placed upon them by the oppressor nation and control their own destinies; this is proletarian nationalism. And once we do this, we can even unite with other oppressed nations to dismantle the system of oppressor-oppressed nations globally.”
The Need for Black National Struggle in the US
The white nation in the US is in a parasitic relationship with the Black nation in the US – they take our homes, resources, culture and labor so that the white nation remains rich and the Black nation remains poor. This is true whether you are African-American, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Jamaican, Haitian, etc. Within the projects, shelters and prisons, for example, it is obvious Black people from many nations make up the vast majority of these populations; it is our common conditions and way of life that make the Black nation in the U.S. a multi-national Black nation. It is clear to the white nation that we must be kept from uniting our Black nation, which is exactly why we must do it; because proletarian nationalism is the one thing that can defeat the white nation and liberate Black people. The advanced proletarian class will lead the broad Black masses in the creation of a new nation because they are the ones who are conscious that only the overthrow of capitalism-imperialism will lead to our liberation. It will not be led by the Black pseudo-bourgeoisie or the flip-flopping petty bourgeoisie who are helping in our oppression. The Black proletariat will be the ones to unite and lead all classes of the Black nation from the US empire in a liberation struggle.
Recently, a large percentage of Black people feel that moving from the North of the US to the South or vice versa will help them find better housing and better jobs. While the cost of living may be lower in the South at this point in time, or the social servces may be seemingly more available in the North, many Black people who migrate find themselves having the same problems of money and instability as they had before. This is because Black people are oppressed as a nation, meaning they do not face struggles because they live in a particular area, they face struggles wherever they are because they are Black. Therefore, we must deal with the oppression of our nation wherever we find ourselves and not look to a different region to solve our problems. In this same vein, some people think that Black people must return to Africa or different parts of the world in order to find freedom.
However, every Black nation in the world is oppressed and exploited within this imperialist world system. Therefore, the most important thing to remember is that freedom is created wherever the people are and whenever they are willing to be united to work together to achieve it. Although the US is a strong enemy and has been oppressing Black people for centuries, history has shown that if the correct methods are used, no opponent is too big to fight against.
“Black people shouldn’t look to other places to find freedom from oppression, but know that the most important factor is, wherever Black people in the US are located, we are united and fighting together. Using the correct methods and with the right leadership, no enemy is too big or too strong for us to overcome.”
Internationalism
We understand that the projects, prisons and shelters are filled up with almost exclusively people from Black nations and Latino nations. The commonality here is that they are filled up with people from the oppressed nations who are commonly oppressed by the US. The same motions of capital that dispossess the Black nations internally are the same ones that cause large sections of the Latino and Black countries to flee their homes and migrate to the US. This is an international problem that needs internationalism as its solution; we need to unite. But the solution for oppressed natons is to apply proletarian nationalism and organize within their nations first and foremost in order to have a correct basis in which to unite under internationalism. Due to the forces of imperialism, the various Black nations within the confines of the US empire are actually one oppressed Black nation. Proletarians from these nations must decide whether to be internal to the strugle to overthrow the US or go back home and create revolution. We want all oppressed people to be liberated but it takes each nation fighting its particular struggle to achieve the general goal of world communism.
"When the oppressed people, wherever they live and work, fight against their oppressor they make steps to change their conditions. When people within their oppressed nations fight against the oppressor nation, they are taking steps to change the world. Take hold of your nation and wield it as the only weapon that can put the people in power of your nation. When all oppressed nations do the same the people can take over the world together.”
The American Dream for Immigrants
We understand that most immigrants have been forced to migrate from their homes due to economic instability in their home countries. They have risked lives, separated from loved ones and faced enormous difficulties to come to America where they desire better work opportunities, ability to afford basic needs and educational opportunities for their children. While some may be able to come and find these opportunities, many do not. Life is still filled with the struggles of surviving. This is because of their status as people of an oppressed nation. Only a select few are allowed to rise in class by this system in order to keep everyone else dreaming of achieving the same while they continue to be exploited and dispossessed.
Many immigrants will argue that despite the struggles, life in America is still better than in their home countries. While this may be true, we recognize that one of the only reasons that there is more wealth here in America is because it is being extracted from countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and parts of Asia. The economic instability and poverty experienced in these countries is directly tied to imperialism ravaging them for their natural resources, taking them over for military use or sanctioning them because they've become a political threat. People would not have had to leave their home countries were it not for imperialist countries (and their neo-colonial collaborators) wreaking havoc on these oppressed nations.
We denounce the illusion that having a marginally better life in America provides real stability from dispossession, or comes from anything besides further exploitations of the nations the masses fled from. You are in effect escaping from one form of US oppression outside its borders to another within its borders. Your ability to enter this country changes on the whim of profit, as you can see from Mexico moving to keep immigrants coming from further South there, so they can work in the new factories being built there by US corporations. The US does not care about your safety or offering you a better life. They only care about being able to extract labor from you regardless of which countries’ borders you reside in, and integrating into the life of oppressor nations’ countries such as the US only further contributes to the backwards development of the exploitative relationship between the oppressor nation and your own oppressed nation. The only way to provide true safety from exploitation and dispossession is to organize within our nations and alongside other oppressed nations along a line of proletarian nationalism, building a dictatorship of the proletariat that reaps the full benefits of its own labor, rather than having it extracted for the benefit of bourgeois imperialists.
"While you may have better conditions here than you did in the country you came from, you are not fully stable and are still having your labor extracted without proper compensation. You still struggle to find a place to live and make sure your needs are met, and your home is still being ravaged by this system to ensure the bourgeoisie of the oppressor nations keep their luxury to themselves. Your children came here for freedom but are instead being put to work in factories. If we work together, we can stop this exploitation here, and then make sure it doesn't continue in your home country."
IV. Gender and Sexuality
Gender in the Black Nation
There are some things you just can't know about a person until you get to know them. You can assume all you want about a person by looking at them, but it's all speculation until you engage with them; a person’s interests, personality, or their gender. In today’s society, based on the private parts we are born with, we are labeled either a man or a woman and this comes with many traits we are expected to abide by; like men being expected to be strong, independent and courageous and woman nurturing, caring and emotional. However, these gender traits can really apply to anyone regardless of their private parts. We know that there are many men who are emotional and many women who are strong and this is not biologically unnatural nor is it a bad thing.
While we can choose to express traits outside of the gender we are labeled at birth, there are very real ways in which society forces us into acting masculine or acting feminine based on our private parts. Messages from our families, churches, schools, the media, etc. constantly pressure us to do everything according to our assigned gender – from the way we speak to the way we walk to the way we dress, it must align with masculinity or femininity according to your private parts and acting differently means you can be shunned, reprimanded, made fun of or even harmed. Gender has become a prison for all; we must break free from this. Why does society force us into the gender binary and make it seem like a bad thing when we act outside of it? Why is it so important to some people that men have masculine traits and women have feminine traits?
The gender binary of "man" and "woman" is a societal construct designed to benefit those in power. In fact, all of society is designed to benefit the oppressor’s economic interests, meaning even the idea of being a man or woman is designed to serve a purpose that is no more natural than paying taxes.
Like all cultural things, gender comes out of the economics of society. Even though pre-colonization African societies had different family structures that were both patriarchal (led by the fathers/men) and matriarchal (led by the mothers/women), when Black people were brought to the western hemisphere and enslaved, the oppressor nations enforced their particular patriarchal ideas of gender and family on us. One reason was purely economic – it is well documented that the white oppressor nation, as a common practice, selected and forced Black men and Black women to have sex and “marry”, essentially breeding them, to produce more slaves which would in turn make the oppressor nation more rich because these slaves could do more labor or be sold for profit. Furthermore, the oppressor nation pushed the idea of a traditional patriarchal nuclear family structure (man as head of household and women as subordinate caretakers) because they know from experience in their own nation that the gender divisions of man and woman socially controls people – they needed Black men to do hard labor, father children and control their women and they needed Black women to be controlled to do both hard labor and reproductive labor like birthing/taking care of children and maintaining households (not only for their own but the white children and households of the oppressor nation).
However, although the oppressor nation imposed their ideas of patriarchy on us, the way gender traits in general are imposed on us is filtered through the white oppressor nation’s power over us; for example, Black men are seen as being lazy or violent, while Black women are seen as overly aggressive and hypersexual. Even though there has always been struggle against this, three hundred years of this history has shaped the Black nation’s gender/family culture which continued to be reinforced after the emancipation of slaves and into the new economic mode of capitalism. Currently, the proletarian class is now being forced into the gender binary for similar reasons. The oppressor nation still needs men and women of the proletariat to carry out their traditional patriarchal gender roles 1) to have sex and produce more workers and 2) to keep us socially divided and controlled to do labor for the oppressor nation.
Even though the patriarchal nuclear family structure is now normalized in the Black nation, the power of patriarchy (male dominance) is limited for Black men because we are still an oppressed nation so our entire way of life is still dictated by the oppressor nation. Black men do have an ability to use the larger construct of patriarchy over Black women to their benefit, yet only to an extent because at any point the oppressor nation can take away the power of men in oppressed nations – such as the removal of many men as heads of household through mass incarceration or throwing them into unemployment. In the same vein, women and nonmen face oppression from patriarchy within their nation but only to an extent because at any point the oppressor nation can shape the culture to demonize Black men and uplift Black women and non-men such as through pushing the bourgeois concept of feminism. Through feminism, Black women are led to believe that women, regardless of class and nation, have the same struggle and should fight to be integrated into the capitalist system.
In these ways, the oppressor nation, which wants to keep the oppressed nation down, will pit genders against each other so as to weaken our forces and will reward any gender of the oppressed nations that keeps its people in their place. We often see rappers who promote misogynistic messages receive multimillion dollar contracts. We also see certain members of the LGBTQ+ community and women being uplifted by the white nation in ways that make it seem as if this community shares the same struggles with the white oppressor nation. The benefits of control over our gender culture is significant for the oppressor nation in terms of being another means of domination over the oppressed nations.
The oppressor nation may have control over us and therefore control over our gender culture, but the solution is not that we need to return to traditional patriarchal values simply because the oppressor nation does not always allow Black men to have male dominance nor is it to reverse patriarchy and give Black women all the power nor is it to change everything up so that men become more feminine or women become more masculine. The solution is that all traits need to be detached from the gender binary and allowed to be expressed by all and whatever gender you choose to express you should be treated equally within the Black nation. The only way to do this is to put liberation of the Black nation from the oppressor nation as the first and foremost goal. And to defeat the oppressor nation we must unite our nation across genders, so as to make revolution the real aim. In the process of doing this, we must also destroy the gender constructs that benefit the oppressor. If we do not, then we choose to play into these constructs and choose to stay oppressed. The class of the future has no room for gender oppression of any kind.
“In a society we must fight to create, everyone will be able to express themselves in whatever way they see fit, once we smash the oppressor nation and liberate ourselves from the gender binary. No gender is inherently bad; man, woman or otherwise. And we understand that the only way to be truly free as a Black nation and from gender oppression is to fight for Black liberation across every and any gender manifestion within our nation.”
Gender in Organization
In our organizations we must stress the equality of men, women, and non-conforming people; not replicating the dysfunctional relations that the oppressor produces. (That is not to say that we should treat everyone the same for the sake of being equal. Because the genders are all on unequal playing fields in society, we will need to understand that we have to consider people’s different situations and treat them accordingly in order to actually be equal). Men need to lead by example with other men in relinquishing this idea that women are beneath them. Both men and women must combat against the idea that trans or nonconforming people are something the enemy made up. Non-men must also battle internalized patriarchy within themselves, that may lead them to not see themselves as leaders or participants of liberation. Non-men must also not fall into the liberal trap of thinking Black men are the cause of our nations problems, when it is in fact the oppressor nation at fault. The goal is not to put down men in the organization but to raise men, women and gender non-conforming people's to equal levels in everything within the organization; something we have been conditioned to think impossible. All genders having a strong sense of camaraderie is something the oppressor nation is afraid to see. For the oppressed nations gender is further complicated by the oppressor nations control over our development. We understand that outside our organizations gender oppression runs wild, but we are building the base to fight and change the external world and it starts within our organizations.
“Liberation will not come if we continue to be limited by the gender roles handed to us by the oppressor. The Black proletariat is made of people of all genders – it is an equalizing force. Therefore all genders should be equal within our organizations. Liberation is at our fingertips when we choose to fight together in our organizations and smash those ideas force-fed to us; like boys-will-beboys, gay/trans people are unnatural or insert-awomans-place-here.”
For the Black Nation, Gender and Sexual Liberation Means National Liberation
Being queer – for example, being gay, lesbian or transgender – means choosing to express gender traits or sexuality that is outside of the traditional "man" and "woman" gender binary. We must acknowledge that queerness is a part of our material world and how we express ourselves, and that the idealist perspective that denies its occurence as part of our material reality is fundamentally incorrect. We have seen examples of queerness, from those Black people in relationships outside of the monogamous man-with-woman, to those with genders outside the male/female binary, documented in our cultures for centuries before interactions with imperialism and white supremacy. We know that it is a natural occurence and have even seen homosexual relationships documented in several species of animals. It remains a consistent part of our material world. Acknowledging this material reality means being up front about the queerness in the Black nation and encouraging our siblings around us who exhibit it to express it openly and honestly. It also means remembering that it is not just a fad of modernity, to which point it helps to remember the “left hand” parable. More people were identified as left handed after established science recognized it as a baseline condition of humans. In the same way, more people are discovering their queerness as more people understand it, recognize it as part of reality and are encouraged to explore it.
Queerness is also not a fad that was invented by the white oppressor nation. So why does the Black nation commonly views queerness as a white corruption of our Blackness that is fundamentally alien to our nation, despite its long history within our nations before colonization?
For one, the source for much of the homophobia within our nation comes from its use in the historical oppressive efforts from the white oppressor nation. One example is the homosexual rape of Black males. There have been historical examples such as the rape of Black male slaves by male slavers and contemporary examples such as rape between males within the conditions of our modern prison system. Such a history of violence has reinforced the idea that homosexuality/queerness in general (and receiving in specific) is weak and an undesirable anomaly within our reality. Masculine ideals of strength, independence and autonomy existed within African societies even before colonization, so the sexual violence against Black men by the white oppressor nation men and systems that they create has lead to the idea that queerness is an inherently violent challenge to our (male) agency from the oppressor nation that contradicts our national ideals.
However, to this point, although the history of homosexual rape in our nation especially by the oppressor nation is painful, horrific and critically under studied, we must not falsely associate homosexuality and rape. This homophobia in our nation only serves to ostracize gay Black men in our nation and divide us further. (It is worth noting that the heterosexual rape of Black people has been used as a historical tool of the white nation as well and you rarely hear people saying heterosexual sex is unnatural or wrong). Masculinity and homosexuality of Black men was allowed to coexist in pre-colonization Africa and should be allowed to exist today. (Yes, you can bottom and still be a man). But more than that, men should not be forced into the trappings of masculinity in the first place.
Black men have not only been forced into masculinity but have embraced it as survival tools in the economic mode we are trapped in – the men attempting to own land, protect their families and assert their humanity. But just as we must move beyond the trappings of this economic mode of capitalism , we must also move beyond the trappings of masculinity when it is used for the benefit of the oppressor nation by way of endorsing gender oppression and keeping us divided by gender.
Additionally, even though the oppressor nation historically saw the need to reinforce heterosexuality, nowadays the oppressor nation takes whichever positions around queerness within our nation that benefits them. Because of the Black LGBTQ+ community's fight against homophobia and transphobia, the oppressor nation realized that if their homophobic oppression goes too far, our people will rise up and it can have revolutionary potential. So the white oppressor nation in today's society can be very accepting of the LGBTQ+ community when it wants to be.
This has the effect of encouraging many of us who do embrace our queerness to take its false association with the white nation to heart, and spend more time with queers of the oppressor nation under the false belief they’ll find liberation and acceptance there. Nothing could be further from the truth. Queers of the oppressor nation will use the shared experience of queerness with queer members of the oppressed nation to try and hide their oppressor-oppressed nation dynamic. This drives a wedge in the Black community because some Black queers believe they can only find acceptance for their queerness in the arms of the oppressor nation and that their queer liberation can only be achieved while united with these white oppressors, in particular the democratic party. The white nation is only interested in promoting Black LGBTQ+ people when it will benefit their nation through pitting groups within the Black nation against each other, trying to win elections, or exploiting their labor.
Meanwhile, the oppressor nation also continues using their power to maintain homophobia in society when it wants to with serious material consequences; like LGBTQ+ Black people being subject to horrendous treatment by the unjustice system and police. White LGBTQ+ people do not share this outcome because they belong to the white oppressor nation. Black people often say that the struggle of queer people has “skipped the line” in terms of the need for Black people’s conditions to improve. This is muddled by the fact that Black queer people are still part of the oppressed nation and so the struggle is still in line with liberation when it is fought as an oppressed nation.
Uniting with the oppressor nation is not the path to queer liberation for those within our oppressed nation. Assuming our nation will never get rid of its homophobia is an idea that must be dropped by the queers inside it, in concert with homophobia being struggled out of our nation. It is not an idea that benefits or protects us. Instead it divides us in favor of the oppressor nation and not to mention encourages needlessly harsh standards of masculinity on the men in our nation. Queerness in our nation is not the result of the oppressor nation, but its homophobic association with violence and submission is. If we are to be free, we must struggle against this perception while destroying the oppressor nation that perpetuates this idea.
All members of the Black nation, regardless of gender or sexuality, are subject to oppression and the motions of capital by the hands of the white nation, even if it takes different forms at times. Therefore it is imperative to link the class struggle, the national liberation struggle, and all other social groupings within the Black nation in order to destroy the source of our oppression and exploitation in order to build a society, culture and economic system that creates the conditions for true self-determination and freedom. And the Black proletariat, which is made of all genders and sexualities, will be the class to lead this revolutionary movement and they must be united to do so. We need to resolve the gender/sexuality contradictions within our nation, because it is the only way forward to unite and defeat the oppressor nation.
“Queerness is not a construct of our white oppressors, but the homophobia we engage in is. We must abandon the falsehood that queerness hasn’t existed in our nations for centuries before colonization, and that queerness only exists through violence and submission. For the Black nation, gender and sexual liberation means national liberation. Only a Black Communist Nation can ensure the healthcare needs, proper education, fulfilling labor, and cultural development that is needed by the entire Black nation, including the specific needs of members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
V. Capitalism vs Communism
The State and its Function
The government (or the state) is a tool that keeps the ruling class in power by any means necessary. The US government includes the politicians of local, state and federal government, the agencies they run, the courts of law and law enforcement – also known as the police and the military. In our current society, the government is a tool that keeps the wealthy capitalist class (the bourgeoisie, our current ruling class) in power by oppressing all other classes. The government uses politicians, laws, propaganda and most importantly the US armed forces to make sure that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. This is why, at best, all the government proposed “solutions” for solving issues of homelessness, unemployment, immigration, hunger and other social problems are band-aid solutions. At worst, the government is swayed by the ruling political power and uses outright violence to control us, especially when people try and make genuine change.
Although we usually don’t think about it like this, our government is currently a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. A dictatorship means that a particular class has ultimate authority over the direction of the state. We know of dictatorships from examples like Hitler’s Germany. But the US government is just as much a dictatorship because one class has complete authority. When we think about it in these terms, it becomes obvious – this dictatorship cannot be voted away, only overthrown by force.
However, because governments are a tool, this does not necessarily mean governments are a bad thing. Governments are only good or bad depending on who is using the tool. If we are to wage revolution and turn the majority of oppressed people into the ruling class, we would also create a government lead by the proletariat to be used as a tool to make sure that the people maintain power and that those who want to hoard wealth for only a select few are prevented from coming into power again. It would become a dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat of the Black nation must lead their nation to gain our rightful piece of land in this country in order to create this government. Instead of the politicians of the oppressive system we would have Black proletarian leadership that works with the people to see the proletariat’s power advanced. We also would have different laws (that actually promote the people owning their own land and resources), different propaganda (that persuades people to build a new and better society) and our own armed forces (that suppresses those who want to return to capitalism). This new government would be organized very differently from our current government to ensure that the new ruling class, made up of the people, stays in power.
Eventually, of course, the goal is to not need a dictatorship. But in the process of building a new society, even after winning many victories and changing different areas of life for the better, there will be a class of people who want to return to the old ways of hoarding wealth for the few. Without a government, there would be no organized way of preventing those people from taking over again.
Creating mass organizations is the beginning of building a new socialist state because they can transform into government bodies that are used as tools for political power. See: Mass organization.
“We must understand that our current government is a tool for the wealthy to oppress the people and can only be removed through revolution. We need a new government made of the people that works for our needs.”
A Different Way to Organize Society
For all the appearance of order this system likes to give off, it is actually economic anarchy. Capitalism blindly produces products without a care of what people actually need; being guided only by greed and the desire for profit. How else can you explain the fact that there are thousands of apartments all over major cities sitting empty because no one can afford them? The sheer imagined opportunity to make a lot of money is enough to make capitalists throw money at anything. And the fucked up thing is that, with things like food for example, if they make too much of it, they won't just give it away. They prefer to throw it in the trash than to people who go to sleep hungry, in fear that meeting people's needs might lessen their profit margins.
Capitalists compete with each other and produce too much of everything and then we end up with an economic crisis; leaving a bunch of waste behind and the people with nothing. All the government does (democrat or republican) is ensure the capitalists can continue to exploit the people and whenever neccessary, bailing out the capitalists with the people's tax dollars whenever they make a mistake.
What we need is a system that produces based on need and not based on profit. A system like that would produce housing for people to live in, and not keep them out just because they want more money; it would be based on the poor and working class, who work together to plan out what society needs.
“A system where the proletariat leads society through a communist party is a system where things are produced based on need and not based on the bourgeois greedy vampire-like quest for profit.”
Communism: The Answer to the Limits of NonProfits and Their Band-Aid Solutions
Communists are mainly concerned with having a plan for long-term organizing that will result in qualitative change. While in contrast, the culture of activism and social change has currently been one that focuses on quantitative change. Meaning most of the struggle begins and ends with concessions that can be given by an oppressive class to appease the interests of an oppressed class so that the general economic system of capitalism can stay in tact. The overall problem with this is that it becomes a never-ending cycle. Once one concession is given, it's only a matter of time until the oppressed class will need another concession; then the cycle repeats and repeats. The problem is the quality of the economic system, the fact that our society develops based on the classes of people who hoard the most capital and exploit the labor of mostly everyone else to maintain and grow this same capital. As long as this economic relationship exists throughout our country, there will always be a basis for oppression.
Communists actually want qualitative change; to destroy capitalism as an economic mode because it is fundamentally oppressive. We want to organize the working masses through a prolonged struggle and make them the new leaders of society. A society that is not confined by wage labor and capital. The problem with the culture of activism previously mentioned is that it is mainly led by non-profits. Non-profit organizing is a particularly corrosive element of social change generally. They do engage with people who are genuinely oppressed and they do have access to a wide array of resources that can be and are immediately helpful. However, those resources and their capacity to organize is completely dependent on capitalism itself; they need some type of funding to exist and operate. For them that funding comes from none other than the oppressive capitalist class. Obviously, the oppressive class will never fund their own demise, at least not directly, so there is a ceiling on what can be accomplished by these non-profit organizers. At the end of the day they are wage-laborers like everyone else and their commitment begins and ends at the same duration of their shift at work. These people may mean well but they do not see capitalism as fundamentally oppressive and therefore cannot make the changes that are necessary to bring about qualitative change that the masses want, need and deserve.
Some of these people in these organizations identify as "Communists" but this is not true. When you ask them about their ideology, they might say all the right things. They also might be able to quote the Huey Newton's, Angela Davis's, Assata Shakur's, Che Guevara's etc. to make themselves look good. Even worse, some are anarchists who have an idealist vision of qualitative change and demand disorganization of the people as their backward path forward. However, in most cases these people are not actually committed to the struggle outside of work hours. They might not like to be criticized by the masses and only criticize the masses. They might kiss up to the capitalist class for more funding so that they can "do the work". They also might, explicitly or implicitly, be trying to “class climb” and separate themselves from the working masses as much as possible in order to join the class that helps the oppressor oppress. The term for this class of “class climbers” is the petty bourgeoisie. They are the managers, supervisors and administrators of the world that make sure that the working class stay exploited and the oppressed stay oppressed on the day-to-day, and get paid more for this. The bourgeoisie cannot ensure this themselves so they created a class that can ensure their system is maintained; this includes many in the non-profit world.
In sharp contrast, a genuine Communist will be struggling alongside you at all times; they are not bound by a contract nor a paycheck and are social scientists of the highest order. When something isn't working, they listen to the masses about the problems and they will work to resolve them. If they don't know the solution to the problem they will be honest and say that they don't know and then work tirelessly to apply communist principles to find the solution. They also do not intend to take a slice of the capitalist pie to secure themselves a seat at the overcrowded kids table in the capitalist order. They are proletarians; the revolutionary section of the working class that is aware of their unique position in society. They want to build power for their class to overthrow this system and that starts with the proletariat being conscious of itself through struggle and study. We intend to apply this general theory of a prolonged struggle toward qualitative change to the conditions of the Black nation within the US empire.
“There will be quantitative changes that have to be won in order to complete this qualitative change of society. But unlike non-profits our quantitative changes build towards revolution. They add up to become bigger and bigger as the revolutionary power of the masses grows towards a qualitatively new society.”
Stopping the Dispossession of Our People
The situation that the gentrified, homeless and unemployed find themselves in is a result of the exploitation and oppression of the working class and poor of the oppressed nations. They are the source of the capital that is then set in motion by the ruling class so as to make more capital at the expense of the oppressed and exploited. They will take away jobs and homes whenever it is profitable and relocate you in even worse housing and jobs if you even get anything at all. They will give you jobs that pay nothing because they know that as long as you act as an individual you cannot resist their offers. They do all this partly with the very same capital they stole from you through exploitation. The ruling class works together to oppress you, but most people work alone and end up barely making it. The only way to stop this is to stop the system and end capitalism and its decisions based on capital accumulation.
"You are poor because they are rich and they are rich because you are poor. The only way to change this is to change the very system that is in the hands of the rich. The only ones that can do that are the people that are poor, once they understand their toxic relationship to the rich."
How They Exploit Us
It's no wonder people don't want to work, when we are being exploited every second on the job. Humanity by nature is a laboring animal; we have always created things and worked towards our collective survival and advancement. But capitalism found a way to exploit one of the things that makes us human. The scam is simple, you work for eight hours, but the capitalist only pays you for like five hours; keeping the difference of what you produced. That is capitalism. When you look at a billionaire, what you are seeing is millions of hours stolen from workers and turned into capital that the bourgeoise use to further exploit workers somewhere else. This phenomenon happens on a national basis between oppressor and oppressed nations, and to be specific between the white and the Black nation within the US empire. The white nation did not get rich through their own hard work, but through labor exploitation of the Black nation in particular. Capitalism means that they have developed from our underdevelopment.
This should make clear to us that capitalism is in no way the path towards our freedom; economic or political. For Black people or any other oppressed nation to succeed as a nation under capitalism would require us to find some nation to exploit; and even then most of our nation would be exploited by our own nation. What oppressed nations need to do is destroy capitalism, since it exists to exploit and oppress them, and build a society where labor is done for the society as a whole and not for the white nation to spend as they wish for their development and our continued underdevelopment. As the bourgeoisie grows richer, the suffering of the proletariat grows because that is the source of their wealth; the proletariat is the class that can destroy the current order.
“Labor needs to be taken back from the capitalists and turned back into a source of wealth and fulfillment for the people as the path to liberation for the oppressed nations.”
VI. Organization
Mass Organization
We have been incorrectly led to believe that being an individual is the height of freedom and control. And although one person can win the lottery, one person cannot transform society for the better. The people need their own forms of organization in order to utilize their collective power against the enemies of the people; may they be corporate landlords, exploitative bosses, or the repressive state. One person can of course exhaust themselves trying to get a fix in their building only to have another problem spring up immediately after; the root of the problem remains that the enemy can handle individual problems slowly and to their benefit.
Collective problems need collective solutions. We are oppressed and exploited as a class and as oppressed nations even if it may seem that it is affecting us individually. So our power is found not in our individual suffering, but in our collective organizing against the enemy. The word “mass” is something that stokes great fear in the enemy; so much so that they paint it as a mindless mob. What scares them the most is the masses of oppressed and exploited people consciously organized against them; a wave they cannot outrun.
And so mass organizations are fully powered by the people: funded and operated by people who want to engage in a struggle against an enemy of the people. This organization should be constantly engaging with the people to paint a clear picture of the objective situation and the demands that should be fought for. Everyone has their own subjective accounts but having a mass organization can fuse those accounts together to fight against the enemy. Together we can force the enemy to make the changes necessary for the members of the mass organization and beyond.
We must remember that the enemy has many organizations to ensure they can exploit and oppress us. They have landlord councils and lobbyists to consolidate their interests; bosses have entire units of the business that specialize in keeping the worker in their place. Being that the enemy has such superior organization, the oppressed nations must build a power that can rival and eventually dominate the power of the oppressor in order to get the desired changes that are needed. It is a fact that the oppressed people are the majority and the oppressor is the minority in the world; once we are organized we can defeat them.
“Building mass organizations will be an essential tool in building power for oppressed nations and classes in general, ensuring that things are actually moving towards social transformation.”
How to Make Decisions as an Organization
We must struggle collectively not only against the enemy, but struggle3 respectfully amongst ourselves to decide the direction of the organizations we create in order to meet our goals. Here we find democratic centralism to be powerful, a tool used within organizations to decide and continue to lead the struggle in a revolutionary direction.
Democracy requires the voluntary and active participation of all members, making it effective in the formation and implementation of goals. This is so unlike the electoral democracy the system tries to sell us, where all we do is vote and have no say afterwards. Here when a collective decision is made, the collective is the one ready to act on it. And what we are ready to act on must be based on a revolutionary goal that adheres to a revolutionary direction. We understand we need an organization, a collective, and so we must move like one. Meaning when a decision is democratically made, that is agreed upon by the majority, the whole organization must follow it even if an individual disagrees. This is the aspect of centralism; the organization is centralized around the decision. If every individual is able to do whatever they want we are not a collective, but a group of singleminded people, and in this way no goal can be met. If you act individually or choose to break from the collective decision, then you go back to being the same individual that the enemy can continue to push around at will.
“It is as an unorganized body of individuals that the enemy feels right in bullying you. It is as a unified body that makes collective decisions and sees them through, that the enemy will be defeated.”
Mass Line: The Masses are the Makers of History
Communists know, because it has been historically proven, that it is always the masses, the poorest and most dispossessed of people, that are able to create real change in society. Therefore, despite the bourgeoisie that says otherwise, we need to trust the masses of the Black nation and rely on them to accomplish our revolutionary goals. This is part of the mass line, or the correct way to lead a revolution. The mass line also means that everything we do should be in the interest of the masses. In order to know what this is, we have to constantly be around the masses, living and working with them and building trusting relationships with them.
Communists should aim to lead the masses by the principle, "from the masses to the masses." The masses hold the correct ideas about how society works and how best to achieve liberation so we should get our ideas from them. However, their ideas are scattered and disorganized because they are mixed in with incorrect ideas from bourgeois society. And although their ideas may be correct, this does not make them automatically revolutionary. Revolutionary ideas do not spring spontaneously from the masses, but require struggle with communists to bring them into a revolutionary direction. So communists need to listen to the masses, get our ideas from them, see which ideas match the science of revolution that we've been building upon throughout history, struggle with the masses on those ideas to bring them towards a revolutionary direction, then take these organized ideas and give them back to the masses to put into practice. We will really know the ideas are correct if the practice advances our work and revolution. We will know the ideas to be incorrect if they do not. This is the scientific experimentation of revolution and the only correct way to lead a revolution.
In the process of waging revolution, not all of the masses should be organized in the same order. We should identify which forces of the masses are advanced, which are middle and which are backward. Advanced people know the problems of society (usually from experiencing it firsthand) and they are willing to fight for a solution. They will also put the most effort toward building and leading organizations. The advanced forces will always be a minority of the masses, but they are the most important to find and organize because they are most willing to take in the revolutionary ideas and put them into practice.
Middle forces know the problems of society but are on the fence about fighting for a solution. They may even propose solutions that keep things the same because they benefit from society staying the same or they simply fear what will happen in the fight for change. This will be the majority of people we encounter. However, when the advanced are organized and chart the revolutionary path forward, a large section of the middle forces tend to follow their lead. In addition, we must struggle with the middle forces to fight for the correct solutions and turn as many of them into advanced forces as we can.
Finally, we will encounter backwards forces who either deny there is a problem or actively work against people fighting for a solution. Usually, backwards people have something to gain from things getting worse for the masses or they have nothing to gain but are brainwashed by society into thinking change is negative. These people should be isolated from the movement so that they cannot interfere with progress toward a new society. It is important to note that people can change from category to category – middle forces can become advanced, backward people can become middle and advanced forces can even become backward. Knowing these categorizations allows communists to understand who the masses are and how to organize them in a way that will move us closer to revolution. Given that we live under an oppressive capitalist system that shapes us, it is important to remember: No matter what backwards things you’ve done in the past, be they crimes or otherwise, if you are truly ready to transform your life towards revolution and are open and honest, the revolution welcomes you into the struggle to transform yourself and the world.
Furthermore, communists should move according to the political readiness of the advanced forces. We shouldn't move beyond their political readiness because then we might be forcing them to do something they do not understand or agree with. When taking political action, people should always understand why they are doing something and not just act because someone says so. We should instead meet the advanced masses where they're at but always try to constantly elevate their level of revolutionary consciousness through education and practice so that they feel ready to struggle and fight at higher and higher levels. In the same vein, we should make sure we are not falling behind the advanced forces – if they are ready and willing to fight, communists should be ready alongside them instead of trailing behind them or following the backward or middle section of the masses.
“Everything we do should be in the interest of the masses of the Black nation. By using the mass line of "from the masses to the masses" and by organizing the advanced forces, encouraging the middle forces and removing the backward forces, we can lead the entire Black nation to liberation.”
Using Secrecy in Our Work
History teaches us that any attempt to fight back against the capitalist class results in retaliation. Those who rise up against the forces in power are, at minimum, bribed, co-opted and/or tricked into working for the capitalist class again. At maximum, they are surveilled, harassed or worse for their revolutionary work. As revolutionaries, we must understand this risk and be brave enough to face the consequences in order to move our nation toward liberation. However, we should, of course, try to avoid such retaliation as much as we possibly can. Clandestinity or secrecy is a powerful tool that we can use to prevent retaliation that hinders our work. At this point in time, our mass movement is weak compared to the strength of the enemy class. We are small in number and therefore we are easy to target and stomp out. However, if we are secret with our movements and plans and share them only with people who we know are trustworthy and supportive of our work, then we can prevent our plans from falling into the hands of people who might be against us. Not all aspects of our work have to be secret. In fact, it would be impossible for all of our work to be secret because we eventually have to create a broad and wide mass movement. The key is striking the right balance between our open work and our secret work. If we strategically implement secrecy when it is appropriate, it will be harder for the enemy to sabotage our plans.
One example of this could look like not openly talking about the plans for a mass organization until a large number of forces are gathered secretly, one by one. By the time the mass organization has a wide membership and is openly revealed, it will be more difficult for the enemy to bribe, co-opt or harass people who want to participate. Another example is not posting about plans online. Because we live in a surveillance state, we know that the enemy has even easier access to us through our phones, computers and social media, and it is all too easy for such information to fall into the wrong hands. However, no matter how we choose to implement strategies of secrecy, we should also remember that the first and best defense against retaliation is always the power of our united mass movement – our people in large numbers standing together and supporting each other in the fight against the enemy.
“We understand that the enemy uses retaliation as a weapon against people to prevent them from organizing. While retaliation as a whole is inevitable, we should not let this weapon stop us, but collectively come up with ways to minimize and resist it. Using secrecy in a strategic manner will only strengthen our ability to fight against the enemy.”
VII. Particular Struggles
Homelessness
Homelessness is a result of housing being treated as a commodity (something to be sold and made for profit) instead of a human need. The high cost of living is causing people all across the country to be dispossessed of their homes. In large metropolitan cities in particular, capitalists are evicting tenants from low-income housing to rent to richer tenants, who can pay much more, so they can make an enormous profit in a process called gentrification. In this process the Black nation and other oppressed nations are displaced while the white oppressor nation and its allies move in. This is creating an increasingly large population of people who are kicked out of their homes and cannot afford/find housing elsewhere. Many homeless folks have jobs as well so they are confronted with the exploitation of the capitalist not just at their workplace but also in their living situation.
The government does not have any intention of solving the homelessness crisis. No matter what politicians say, the only thing they are concerned about on the whole is making a profit. Furthermore, the only way to solve the homelessness crisis would be rational social planning (figuring out how many people were homeless and creating affordable housing based on that, for example). The government has plenty of money to do this, but they will never do it because their job is to support the wealthy capitalists and actually ending homelessness is not profitable. Therefore, they will keep coming up with band-aid solutions like giving billions of dollars to non-profits that will help a select few homeless people find homes while the majority live in rundown shelters and the rest of the money goes straight into the pockets of the private companies that run them.
These types of "help-the-homeless" non-profit programs/shelters exist all over the United States in order to 1) make sure the majority of the workforce that keeps this country running is "housed", even if the conditons are terrible, 2) keep the unemployed population alive as a reserve army of labor for future capital expansion, 3) create a front to show that the government is "doing something", and 4) give even more profit to the bourgeoisie class.
Neither the government-owned nor privately owned shelters are doing anything to solve the homelessness crisis and they are actually exploiting homeless people for money. In fact, the government and privately owned shelters work together. Private owners rake in giant profits by receiving millions of dollars in government money to maintain shelters for the homeless and provide them with services. Yet the shelters they are paid to maintain aren't properly maintained, and the services they are supposed to provide are few and far between, while they pocket most of the money that's supposed to be spent on the homeless for themselves. Some private shelter owners/non-profits even use government funds to buy up property that is supposed to be for homeless populations. However, if you look closely, the buildings only partially go to homeless populations and the rest of the units go to regular renters. So essentially the government is giving money that is supposed to be for homelessness prevention to private companies that simply use it to buy real estate and become regular-degular landlords in the name of "helping the homeless."
Furthermore, although there may be a select few staff who mean well within these shelters, the companies as a whole are not designed to solve problems of homelessness. Along the way, staff may help a few individuals in order to present a positive image so that the shelters and the government look good to the wider public. They may even con people into laboring for free on events and programs that they can use as a photo-op for this very purpose. But overall, the shelter system lines the higher-ups' pockets while they keep the status quo.
The class struggle that happens within shelters will reflect the conditions and resources at the shelters. If the shelter residents don't struggle against the unfair conditions, the less the shelter owners will do to improve conditions and provide resources. If the homeless population organizes and rises up against the unfair conditions and treatment, the more the shelter owners will improve the conditions and provide resources. However, there is a limit to this because the point is that shelter owners will do the absolute bare minimum to keep people thinking that something is being done about homelessness because at the end of the day the shelters are designed to maintain order. And we know that whatever they do is not nearly enough to provide quality housing to the entire homeless population and the only solution is to completely transform the housing system in this country as a whole. It is also important to note that homelessness affects Black people and other oppressed nations at much higher rates than white people. That is purposeful so that our nations can be controlled and exploited; this is a manifestation of our relationship with the oppressed nation.
The government and private capitalists have actually created a problem for themselves because they are creating a larger and larger population with nothing to lose and everything to fight for. Homeless people themselves (alongside other sectors of the proletariat) are the only ones who can solve the homelessness crisis by organizing against these oppressive forces. An organization of homeless folks, to gain political power over their own conditions and fight to dismantle the system that makes housing for profit instead of for human need, is the only way to change the conditions that we find ourselves in. The struggle against homelessness is part of the struggle against capitalism and the struggle for a new socialist society.
"The homelessness crisis in the US benefits the ruling class because they can profit off of it and have control over this large population while keeping them in terrible conditions. It is only the homeless shelter residents, the source of their capital, that can fight and win demands to improve their conditions. There is no solution to the homelessness crisis other than to organize for true change to the housing system while recognizing that this is one fight that is part of a larger fight against capitalism."
Domestic Violence
Communists should strive to have healthy romantic and family relationships that do not include emotional, verbal or physical abuse and assaults. Unfortunately, in today's society, these types of abusive relationships have become normalized and many people in our nation, often women, face conditions of domestic violence. There is an internal and external nature to domestic violence. What is meant by the external is the things outside of yourself like the abuser and the society that allows abuse to continue. The internal in this cirumstance is the person being abused. Our understanding is that someones internal thoughts and feelings are always the factors that decide the change and outcome of that person, but that external factors define the shape this change takes. If we rely on this society, with its inherent abusive laws and enforcement, to help us out of abusive situations, no matter how internally determined someone is to leave an abusive relationship, the conditions for abuse continue because our society will continue to enable it. Case in point, oftentimes a person can be financially dependent on their abuser. However if we fight to shape the external factors, they can be overcome if the internal is also decisive in overcoming the violent relationship that makes pain a prerequisite to love. It may be hard for someone to be internally prepared to leave an abuser because a violent and/or manipulative relationship can cause you to forget the internal is decisive, making it feel as if the abuser is the one that decides your fate. The needed external factor is a collective organization that seeks to defend, protect and grow the conditions for a world without abuse. In the present, that demands a revolutionary organization led by the proletariat that fights against the individual abusers, but also the society that creates them.
“We are united to protect and give strength to anyone facing external forces of violence if the internal will to defeat this relationship is ready for a qualitative change in their relationship with themselves and is committed to defeating the system that perpetuates abuse.”
Religion Does Not Make the Blind See
The Black nation consists of people from many different religious backgrounds. Religion has existed for centuries and we know that it began as a way to explain the world around us. However, as communists we now have a material understanding of the world, meaning there is an objective world and it is knowable. Everything can be explained and understood by humans – even if there are many things we don’t understand just yet. Communists seek to understand what they don’t yet know and accomplish this through a materialist understanding of the world. Religion always seeks to stay in the realm of not knowing by mystifying the reasons and causes of things.
Religion gives people explanations and comfort to the things we do not know. Historically, it gave people explanations for the lack of understanding of nature such as praying for a good harvest or a rainy season – whereas now we understand more the science behind these things. Nowadays religion gives people explanations for the lack of understanding of our suffering and oppression. Unfortunately, more often than not these explanations are things like, “I don’t know why I’m suffering like this but I just have to leave it in God’s hands,” or “I may be suffering now but as long as I pray God will reward me; if not in this life, in the next life.” These are explanations that keep our people from fighting for their liberation in the here and now. To combat this, we must give people the understanding of the science behind class society and our oppression. As communists who seek liberation, we need to make decisions and determinations not on what we believe, but on what we know and what we want to know.
However, even though religion is not compatible with a socialist or communist understanding of the world, that does not mean we need to ban religion in our nation. It is the opposite – we must ensure everyone has the freedom to practice their religion in this current society and even in our liberated socialist society. In fact, although we know religion is not compatible with material reality, we have seen historically that religion has been used in the past as a positive material force in the national liberation struggle. It is only through free and open discussion, debate and the practice of advancing the revolution that we will be able to struggle with the masses about the real reason religion exists as a whole. Through these methods, we need to struggle against religion because it prevents us from making decisions as a nation that reflect our actual conditions. And in the way that religion gives our people answers and spiritual fulfillment, we must work to grow our revolution to the point where it can provide our people the answers and spiritual fulfillment that they seek.
“The communist understanding of the world is that it is fully knowable and that religion only mystifies. However, we must allow for freedom of religion and openly struggle with this idea using the material world, the growth of our movement and revolution to provide answers and spiritual fulfillment."
Addiction and Recovery Using Dialectical Materialism
Those who struggle with addiction are made to feel they merely lack the will to change or possess some moral failings. Anyone who struggles with addiction knows that the feeling of powerlessness is so great as to make it seem as if they are possessed by some outside force, making them feed their addiction. What we are left with are those who believe that recovery from addiction merely requires internal resolve versus those who see it as exclusively coming from external factors. The truth about addiction is that it is both an internal and external struggle. Internally, when we are faced with difficult cirumstances, exploitation and oppression, we will look for ways to bring ourselves some form of relief. Over time, the very thing that may have caused quick relief, whether it be a behaviour or a substance, becomes itself an oppressive force, an addiction that seems out of our control.
This addiction over time harms us more than it helps us. But this internal situation comes from external forces that create the conditions for addictions. The capitalist system breeds a surplus of drugs that are cheap, easy to get and return huge profits for corporations and cartels. While capitalism simultaneously creates the conditions for the suffering, oppression and exploitation the masses face through mass evictions, labor exploitation and rising costs of living. So although the seed of our addiction is within us, the toxic capitalist system is what makes it grow as it does.
Using a tool called Dialectial Materialism (DM) we can approach the internal and external nature of addiction in a way that can not only free ourselves, but the oppressed nations in general from the chains of addiction and national oppression. Dialectics means that we are looking at everything as having two aspects/sides. For example, if there is addiction then there must also be the possibility for recovery; if there is national oppression then there must also be the possibility for national liberation. Materialism means that we understand everything to be based on a material reality that is in constant motion and change; from one aspect to another. For example, through the process of going through recovery you can move towards overcoming your addiction; through the struggle towards national liberation we can overcome national oppression.
Although we need the internal decisiveness to want to move towards recovery, as long as captialism’s toxic rain hits all of us, what grows from the soil will be damaged, addicted, oppressed, exploited and limited. DM is an umbrella that can shield us from the toxic rain long enough to destroy it's source; capitalism. And if we ever want the national cycle of addiction to stop, we must destroy capitalism. The proletariat, being the leader of social transformation, is the class that has the most interest in using DM because it is the most accurate tool for understanding the world and changing it. So if we want what grows from the soil to be strong, free, and loving, we use DM to create a world that conforms to our peoples needs, and aspirations.
“By using DM, you are directing your energy towards the liberation of your nation while moving yourself closer to recovery from addiction. By achieving national liberation for your nation, you are creating the conditions for addiction to cease to be a common way of life for our people.”
It's Not a Conspiracy; Just Business
There are many decisions, plots and plans that occur behind the closed doors of governments and their capitalist benefactors. It's enough to make anyone suspicious of their intentions. How did this pandemic come to be? Who killed MLK and Malcolm X? Who is really making the decisions and why? Since we are forbidden from going into these elite rooms we are left guessing and listening to those who make assumptions. We hear it's a satanic cult that runs the world with the intention of enslaving humanity. Maybe the elite aren't human at all; perhaps they are lizards or aliens. And then all their decisions become means to those ends; connecting the dots results in seeing clues where there are none. The reality of the situation is it's not a grand conspiracy; it's just business. It's the capitalist drive for more and more profit that is the motivation behind their decisions. Once that is understood and this method of understanding applied, you don't have to listen to youtube charlatans that peddle theories that sound true when tied to some dramatic music; you will know the motivation for the elites evils and how to struggle against it.
We must stop this plan of the elite in a material way. All the oppression, exploitation and suffering of the Black nation is a result of economic interests. The oppressor nation (the US empire) is not hiding the fact that profits come before people. And it is that motive of profit that results in government policies and plans that are so twisted it's much scarier and in-our-face than any conspiracy theory out there. If pharmaceutical companies could profit from a drug that poisons people they will do it (and they do); at the same time it is also profitable to make useful medicines on the market. Of course the rich engage in twisted sex parties; they're rich. Governments have and do assassinate Black revolutionary leaders because it would be bad for business if an oppressed nation within this country, one that does much of the low-wage labor, would fight for their own liberation. Governments work with the capitalist class to control and mentally sedate the population because they need people to continue to pay their taxes and go to work; so as to exploit the labor of the people and stop them from realizing this. What they hide from you is not their allegiance to some cult; but their allegiance to the bourgeoisie and even this they barely hide. The mainstream media is run and owned by the capitalist class and is a conspiracy against the people in that it is constructed to keep the informaiton from you that might make you rebellious and feed you information and images that keep you enslaved to the capitalist system. There doesn't need to be a grand conspiracy around controlling the population because we are already controlled as an oppressed nation. It is our revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system that will overturn the conditions we currently live in; where we can't trust the food we eat, a doctors advice, or our leadership.
“A Black Proletarian Communist Party struggles to create a society where truth is at the forefront and developed by the people themselves. In this way the Black masses and their leadership, can unite and banish all conspiracy. In order to do this we must fight the bourgeoisie and their lackeys at the source of their corruption; the capitalist system.”
We Must Change Our Mindset
When someone says that Black people can't unite we must respond that it is that kind of mindset that needs to change in order to make unity and liberation possible, and that it is indeed our personal responsibility to do so. A mindset is only correct if it conforms with reality and reality shows that not only is unity possible, it is necessary. Reality shows Black people are already united in being oppressed; it's the mindset that needs to change to make that unity into a force for liberation. The Black working class and most oppressed have the most to gain from and so must lead the path to Black unity.
When someone says the reason Black people are oppressed is a lack of individual responsibility, we ask responsibility towards what? If it is our responsibility to keep our heads down and allow ourselves to be oppressed as individuals then we say no. But if our responsibility is to organize with other Black people in order to destroy the system that oppresses all of us, we respond yes. The system oppresses all of us and no amount of individual responsibility can solve that unless it's the responsibility to a collective goal.
The Black working class and most oppressed must change their mindset into one of Black national unity, and take individual responsibility for the collective revolution.”
Footnotes:
1 Yes, some nations can be an oppressor nation and an oppressed nation, depending on the particular relation to a given nation.
2 Although, even the oppressed nations in America benefit from the exploitation of the oppressed nations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and parts of Asia. We go through exploitation, but they go through superexploitation because we extract much more wealth from oppressed nations outside the United States. This is why so many immigrants come to the United States searching for a “better life.” See: The American Dream for Immigrants.
3 There are many forms of struggle. The struggle with our enemies is antagonistic, meaning it needs to come to blows and one side needs to be defeated for the other to prevail. However, some struggle – like the struggle between ourselves and the people – is non-antagonistic and can be resolved peacefully. The struggle described here is the discussion and debate of ideas that communists need to engage in with each other and the masses in order to come to correct conclusions. Though it may seem difficult, it is a healthy and necessary part of any organization.
Palestine & me
2020 wasn’t that long ago, yet the lessons have slipped by us at a time when Palestine is facing genocidal attacks from Israel.1 The white oppressor nation’s activist-minded folk marched and screamed with the Black nation during the George Floyd Rebellion, only for our consolation prize to be Kamala Harris and a couple other diversity hires.
Palestine, The US-Bound Black Nation, and the Revolutionary Aspect of the Imperialist Contradiction
By Ooga Booga
Chairs and Stones Will Break Their Bones
Hey settlers, keep scrolling...this ones for the oppressed. (Well of course they won't, they can't imagine a place they're not supposed to be). Anyway, there seems to be a bit of collective amnesia on the limits of “solidarity” from the oppressor nations. 2020 wasn't that long ago, yet the lessons have slipped by us at a time when Palestine is facing genocidal attacks from Israel.1 The white oppressor nation’s activist-minded folk marched and screamed with the Black nation during the George Floyd Rebellion, only for our consolation prize to be Kamala Harris and a couple other diversity hires.2 These actions wrapped up the Black rebellion into the reformist leadership of the oppressor nation’s activists and our nation’s petty bourgeois, leaving the entire oppressor nation safe from an actual Black revolutionary movement; brunch again can be served. And now, as the white activists flood the streets in solidarity with Palestine, we can be sure that the fruits of that labor will be juiced by the oppressor nation’s bourgeoisie, and again, they will both drink from the cup of a Palestine deferred. Left out of the equation once again is the oppressed nations, no more free than they were before. This relation with the oppressor is not new. Palestine and the US-bound Black nation3 are the same, but different. In that they are both a particular manifestation of the general contradiction of imperialism. Particularly, the white oppressor nation that rules over the US empire oppresses the Black nation, as Israel oppresses Palestine. These pairs create a unity of opposites; where the development of the oppressor is dependent on the underdevelopment of the oppressed. What is missing for the revolutionary development of the secondary aspect of the imperialist contradiction (the oppressed nations like Palestine and the Black nation) is the internal decisiveness to develop revolution as a nation in order to sharpen their struggle against their oppressor for its complete overthrow. The secondary aspect is the revolutionary aspect in the imperialist contradiction because it is the force that develops quantitatively towards the smashing of the primary aspect (the oppressor nation) for the qualitative transformation of the imperialist contradiction into its opposite. By looking at Palestine's conditions, we aim to find the universal within that particular, and in so doing, apply it to the Black Nation’s current conditions and struggle. What becomes clear is that the imperialist contradiction has an essence that can be seen in both these nations.
Oppressor nations apply a "good settler, bad settler" approach to keep the oppressed from revolution; one screaming for reactionary war and the other for peace, but none calling for the overthrow of the oppressor nation. Imperialist superstructures like the United Nations (UN) are deployed to ensure all settlers get their wish. Imperialism is hidden under the guise of "human rights" so as to eliminate the distinction between the oppressed and the oppressor; making the oppressed dependent on being peaceful and the oppressor continually warned to be oppressive “within reason.” The oppressed are divided into “combatants” and “civilians;” an attempt to rationalize the murder of both because of the evilness of the former and the helplessness of the latter. When it would in fact be correct for the entire oppressed nation to rise up in armed revolution and erase this distinction. Land is continually taken from the oppressed, as a way to ensure that the basis for revolutionary struggle is eroded. All while our exploitation helps fund our own destruction, and you have a certain petty bourgeois class of our own nations helping this process along. All of the above can be seen being deployed on both Palestine and the Black nation at any given time. The goal of these tactics is to forestall the inevitable consolidation of our nations towards revolutionary struggle through Maoism in general and proletarian nationalism in particular. The eclectic nature of “solidarity” among nations has lead to an inability to actually build up the oppressed nations’ movements. Even oppressed nations’ “solidarity” with each other tends to lack the internal decisiveness of either needed to actually engage in true internationalism. Palestine has had multiple "uprising of stones" (intifada) while the Black nation recently had our impending uprising christened by a Black man rocking a settler over the head with a folding chair during a brawl in Alabama between the Black nation and the settler nation.4 As we explore the parallels between Palestine and the Black nation, our common path will be charted, and our next steps clearly before us. We have already begun to trade in our stones and folding chairs for something a little more potent.
Palestine: A Land With a People
While the history of Israel can fit on an index card, Palestine's history is vast.5 For this reason, going into historical Palestine is beyond the scope of this piece. The indigenous Palestinian people, spanning more than three millennia and a couple fallen empires, were composed of various faiths and cultures. Yes that is correct, Palestine included Arab Muslims, Christians and Jews; before the intrusion of Zionism. Meanwhile, British imperialism's occupation of Palestine in December 1918 is claimed by them as the beginning of Palestine. Zionists claim to Palestine comes from a literal and selective interpretation of Biblical pseudo-history which has been proven highly inaccurate by some of Israel’s very own archaeologists; indigenous Palestinians have a long material history in which the very name “Israel” is a blip.6 This is not to say that Palestine's history is a neat continuity; no history is. Yet there has been a constant and internal development of what Palestine was and has become; with many ruptures along the way. One of them being the colonial project of Britain, but this was not one-sided. What became the nation-state of Palestine in the 20th century was a struggle between internally-developing ancient Palestine and its transformation due to the imperialist contradiction. Imperialism meant that every nation became either an oppressor or oppressed nation; these two aspects becoming locked in a contradiction, a unity of opposites.7 In the 18th and 19th century Palestine's agriculture began to produce and export for the benefit of Britain and France, proletarianizing the masses, creating a domestic bourgeoisie servile to Europe, saving France from a famine, and feeding the English Industrial Revolution. Just as in Africa, as Walter Rodney has explained; the oppressors’ development depended on the oppressed nations’ underdevelopment.8 And this dialectic developed towards Britain eventually seizing Palestine as a colony. But you can't have national oppression without its opposite; national liberation. Britain did not create Palestine, but it sure as hell helped create Israel. Once Palestine defeats Israel, the Palestinian people can create an order that has equality for the Jewish people alongside the Palestinians as it was before Zionisms incursions, from the river to the sea, through socialist means of integration towards the dissolution of classes; while ensuring that Zionists and other reactionaries are dealt with accordingly. Palestine's history shows it has outlasted multiple empires; the US empire will just be one more for the books.
Israel: Doing What an Out-Post To Do
The relationship between Israel and the US runs deep and serves a vital imperialist function. It isn't merely a matter of direct transactional material benefit or the "Jewish lobby." The cost of keeping Israel afloat is partly a manifestation of the class struggle in the Middle East and inter-imperialist rivalry. Proletarian revolutions must be thwarted if the US is to maintain control in the Middle East and Israel is part of this effort in the region. And as other imperialists engage in the Middle East it is clear that they also arm groups there to fight as proxies. It is incorrect to assume that imperialism only does things that directly result in capital accumulation. “...[T]he overall defense of empire frequently demands major undertakings which are not, in and of themselves, profitable.”9 The US maintains Israel because it is a vital foothold, a military outpost in the Middle East for US machinations. Before we begin to look at the contradictions within the imperialist dialectic, lets go through an overview of how and why Israel came to be.
As Lenin had explained in 1913, in the capitalist countries, Jews were already being assimilated into the oppressor nations of Europe.10 How else can you explain the various prominent Jewish-European figures, the existence of organizations in Europe and the US at the time like the American Zionist Organization, the existence of the wealthy Jewish financier Lord Rothschild (and other Jewish bourgeoisie), and various other international Zionist organizations? Groups and individuals like this were involved in the foundational funding and planning for the creation of Israel; and this required being a part of the advanced capitalist countries’ bourgeois class, which required their integration. It is also true that Jews were oppressed and confronted with pogroms in various backwards countries at the time, like in Great Russia. And Lenin said of the latter that, although it was through no fault of their own, the Jewish people were treated as a caste in Russia yet were not a nation and so were not an oppressed nation; they have no land of their own to claim. Therefore Lenin understood that if the economic base was free from its backward relations under feudalism; integration would be possible for the Jewish people. Analyzing the situation concretely, Lenin pointed out that the solution for the Jewish people was their integration into the revolutionary struggle of the Bolshevik Party towards the creation of a socialist state; something that many Jewish people did participate in and so were part of the victory of socialism over the Tsarist Empire. Yet the reactionary Jews and their bourgeois financiers developed Zionism; which uses the alleged belief that God selected the Jewish people to be the “chosen people” and Palestine to be their chosen land, to hide their settler aims. This only became a material force in the era of imperialism. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Zionism was endorsed by Britain partly as a means of separating the Jews from the Bolshevik Party and the communist project more broadly. More importantly for Britain, its was an opportunity to use their colonial control of Palestine to create the conditions for a “stable” foothold in the Middle East, via the creation of a settler colonial base.
With Zionism gaining momentum in 1917, the external conditions were needed to apply their internal decisiveness. Jewish migration to Palestine from the 1920s and especially during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s was sponsored by international Zionist organizations. Nazi Germany itself was a manifestation of imperialism, with its aspiring imperialist aims needing to implement fascism to facilitate a new re-division of the world; and its antisemitism another method toward national consolidation. The solution to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, be it bourgeois democracy or fascism at this time was the same as it is today; communist revolution. Zionists could be found working with the Nazi's to facilitate Jews moving to Palestine.11 The US and major imperialist powers limited emigration of Jews in order to send them over to Palestine. After WW2 Britain's power was diminishing and the US (wanting a piece of the re-division of the world taking place) took on the initiative of supporting the Zionist project in order to have their own outpost in the Middle East, where before they had no roots at all. The US used its control of the UN for this very purpose, of settling Jews in Palestine (promising to create “two states”) under the cover of a resolution to Germany's genocidal acts. WHAT KIND OF IMPERIALIST SORCERY IS THAT? Jewish people get genocided by Germany and the colonized Palestinians are the ones to pay the price? Why on earth didn't the “reparations” Germany had to pay post-WW2 include a piece of Germany going to the Jewish people? Well, the growing US hegemon needed a strong capitalist Europe to combat a growing socialist USSR and there was enough imperialist raw material in Europe to work from. Not to mention the opportunity for capital accumulation via petroleum playing a large part in the desire for an outpost in the Middle East. Oh and the Zionist also claim that “God said so.” The aid from the US to Israel at this time was almost equal to Israel's entire state budget. The existence of a settler outpost provided more stability then the relation of an imperialist controlling an oppressed nation through a weak and corrupt comprador bourgeoisie that could more readily be defeated by the revolutionary oppressed masses. The prerequisite for such a settler outpost was being part of the white oppressor nation which European Jews certainly became. In fact, Theodore Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism, framed their mission in Palestine as a means to civilize Palestine and bring to it European ethics.12 From its inception Israel was in complete unity with imperialism and acted as a military outpost for the US; even though Israel now has its own decisive internal development within the imperialist contradiction. This is the source of the hatred towards Israel's existence from the oppressed Arab world, not antisemitism (according to a US house of representatives resolution, as of December 1st , 2023, anti-Zionism and antisemitism are “officially” the same thing). Imperialism was a precondition for the existence of Israel because imperialism is driven by the need to divide up the world for the purpose of capital accumulation. Israel applied a mixture of tactics to seize control of Palestine away from the Palestinians; promising peace and then slowly expropriating land, denying employment, etc. While interspersing this with bouts of terror on the Palestinian people; with the ever-present US support. This has continued with growing severity to this day. Just as the white nation within the US empire doesn't have a right to self-determination, neither does the settler colonial Israel; an imperialist gendarme wreaking havoc across the Middle East and beyond. Without the continual economic and military support of their imperialist benefactors, Israel would cease to exist. And if Palestine is to have liberation, Israel must cease to exist; whether imperialist support continues or not. US imperialism and their masses however, have other plans.
Manufacturing Dissent: The United Front of the Imperialist US
The current US narrative of a “post-war resolution” is some form of the “two-state solution” where Israel, Palestinian lackeys, and “International leaders” facilitate a new Palestinian order that will do the imperialists bidding of keeping their own nation oppressed. Any deal that is made among these players is simply concessions to one imperialist or another to maintain the oppression of Palestine through a puppet regime within Palestine; if their plan even includes the existence of a Palestine at all. Even today, talk about a Palestinian state is conditioned by the demand from the imperialists of a “demilitarized” Palestine; Israel is said to be able to ensure its security. The absence of their own army and true determination of the state would mean Palestine being controlled by either some imperialist international body, a coalition of Arab countries (controlled by the imperialists) in the region or Israel itself. A truly self-determined Palestinian state is impossible for Israel. For Israel to continue to exist it must continue to serve its purpose as a military outpost in the Middle East; it cannot have peace. The comprador bourgeoisie and feudal class of many Arab nations around Palestine deploy a Pan-Arab false internationalism; when they attempt to mitigate the contradictions between Israel-Palestine through vapid gestures of solidarity so as to ward off a strengthening of the Palestinian revolution that might spark revolution at home and destabilize the current order. They shake their fists at Israel only to limit their calls to a “ceasefire;” while they ache to “normalize relations” with Israel for access to capital and a share in the fruits of Palestinian oppression. And if given the opportunity by US imperialism (and the US is pushing this) to divide up Palestine for themselves through an Arab “multi-national force” to “secure” Gaza in exchange for capital and deals, they would do it under the guise of defending Palestinians. They are already eyeing up the opportunity to deploy their capital for the “reconstruction” of Palestine; to further intertwine their interests with Israel; and control the development of Palestine. They support the reactionary elements within Palestine that do not represent the proletarian aspect of the masses and thus lead the masses away from proletarian nationalism and revolution. The leaders of Arab countries only feign support of the Palestinian people, to keep their masses from rebelling further and in collaboration with the US, which provides capital for accepting Palestinians into their country and other deals. Any true internationalism will come from the Arab masses.
Still the Middle East has its own regional contradictions like between the UAE and Saudi Arabia for dominance of the region; while countries like Iran struggle against the US. Iran, in contradiction with Israel and the US, has funded many armed groups in the region, with already existing struggles, to create the conditions for this dominance. China has also become a powerful force in the Middle East. While the imperialists and their various reactionary vanguards are looking to expand; their “resolutions” only seeks to stall revolution in favor of expansion. In this goal, the US imperialists in particular have a friend among their activist-minded masses; they're in an united front which serves to manufacture dissent that ensures the “solution” to the Palestinian struggle remains in their hands.
The white petty bourgeois activists13 in particular and the white masses in general have been showing an increasingly strong support for Palestine. There have been consistent and growing actions by the former and a rising discomfort by the latter; in the face of genocidal acts on the Palestinian people. This is a welcome shift that cuts through the superstructures continued insistence on manufacturing support for Israel. The media has been doing some incredible acrobatics to somehow support the armed struggle of the Ukrainians against imperialist Russia, while skirting around the death-toll of Palestinians and condemning any armed resistance by them. Yet those of the white masses who support Palestine are still in the minority within their nation and there are limits given their petty bourgeois, intermediate position; due to being internal to an oppressor nation. They demand that Palestinian “human rights” are recognized and that there is a “peaceful settlement” that follows a “ceasefire” and “negotiations.” Not even their ideological love-interest Noam Chomsky, an anarchist (ew), can imagine a liberated Palestine. All he can come up with is either an Israel that has completely annihilated Palestinians, or a “two-state solution;”
...there are really two options. One is, either this [a Greater Israel], which will have very few Palestinians, they will be somewhere else and the other one is two states. Two states is a rotten solution, but at least it has the merit of having overwhelming international support that has been blocked by the United States for thirty-five years now but has overwhelming international support.14
Because the white activists are intermediate forces, they struggle for homeostasis and reform; meaning the continuance of their nation in the dominant position within the imperialist contradiction. Therefore they promote humanitarian aid and the current imperialist political institutions, like the imperialist-run UN (in conjunction with the regional Arab comprador/feudal lackeys), resolving the Israeli-Palestinian contradiction. The united front between them and the US bourgeoisie can be seen in the methods of their proposed “solutions.” The differences of getting to these solutions the united front takes, can then be revealed as mere theater. They continue to pose the struggle being resolved through calls for “morality” and “garnering sympathy” when the decisive reason for Israel and US actions is purely imperialistic motives. The white activists bend themselves in knots trying to balance their reform-minded selves with also supporting Palestine. They'll say that Hamas is not representative of the masses and that the majority of Palestinians are “peaceful.” However, the essence here is that they want to separate “civilians” or better put, the Palestinian masses, from armed struggle. They promote Palestinian leadership only when they are (knowingly or unknowingly) lackeys of the imperialists themselves (like the Palestinian academics who prefer Foucault over Mao15); because any true Palestinian leadership would indeed engage in armed struggle, something the peace-minded activists are against. A peace which is actually not really peace, but the continuation of imperialist oppression, with liberal characteristics. They like the type of oppression where there is a stronger (yet very small) petty bourgeois class from the oppressed nations (yet detached from it) for them to relate to. To call them "friends" and invite them over for dinner as a badge on their liberal armor. They might as well be chanting “Palestinian Lives Matter!” for about an hour (getting their steps in) and then making it to the bar just in time for happy hour. If endless marches did anything, all those “Walks for Cancer” around the US would have found the cure decades ago. The white activists therefore want Palestinians to be “good victims” as Raji Sourani has called the expectations from the oppressor nations for the conduct of an oppressed people. The support from the white activists is around the Palestinians being slaughtered and not fighting back so that the oppressor nation can provide a solution that keeps them in control of the struggle; same as their relation to the Black struggle for self-determination. For the oppressed, “human rights” only kicks in when you are kicked down, beaten or dead by the hands of your oppressor. For those who dare, human rights disappears the moment you rise up to defeat your oppressor; by then they mark you a terrorist and do everything to dehumanize you. Human rights really only manifest as bourgeois rights; for this is who it serves. Yet, there is a dual character to bourgeois rights that is utilized by the intermediate forces of the oppressor nations. “Bourgeois right” stands for the domination of the bourgeoisie which is covered by the insistence that it stands for the equal rights of “everyone.” This contradiction is what creates problems for the oppressor nation as they sometimes lose control of the very same superstructural element they created to maintain order; yet this contradiction has limits. The white activists are screaming about the double-standard between Israeli and Palestinian death, but they measure this from the “standard” of imperialism. How can they cry for peace when their very material interest is predicated on the use of violent force by the strongest military in human history; dedicated to mass oppression?
Most petty bourgeois activists will insist that Palestine has no hopes of winning a revolution and so the best that can be done is to push Biden to limit aid to Israel, or the international community to step in. They say this as if it comes from a strategic military assessment when it's merely a product of the subjective limits of the objective lives of a nation dependent on the oppression of nations. And here lies the dual character and problem with the “solidarity movement” of the white activists in relation to the Palestinian character. The white activists want a quantitative shift in the amount of oppression faced by the Palestinians, but reject a Palestinian revolution that is needed to qualitatively liberate the Palestinians. In this way the white petty bourgeois activist hit a limit: Palestinians must stop being killed in such large numbers, but they also must not be free. This will remain false internationalism until the Palestinians have armed struggle lead by a communist vanguard that the progressive16 white petty bourgeois among the activists can externally relate to in a true internationalist manner.
The recent marches and protests for a ceasefire have been largely held by Jewish organizations, muddling things further. There is a difference between being Jewish and being an active participant in Zionism. However when the Jewish person is white; well then, they are just white. Which means they are still firmly members of an oppressor nation; due to their integration. Jewish people within the US are just members of a religion when they are from the US and are principally members of the US oppressor nation. Their actions claim to speak for the internal development of Israel which they are external to for the most part; while sharing the interest of all oppressor nations, including Israel, for maintaining imperialism. They make it appear as if they are in the vanguard of the movement within the US, uniting with Palestinians in a way that defers revolution by trying to make it seem as if peace is possible through hand-holding with the oppressor; when Palestinians within the US empire should be focusing on destroying the enemy where they are. This applies to the (very small) peace movement within Israel. The Black nation has had a long history of hand-holding with the white activists, and it has always lead to revolution becoming subordinate to reform. The armed struggle of the oppressed nations against the oppressor nation is the only means to liberate the Palestinian masses in particular and all oppressed nations in general.
For the Palestinian proletariat, the demand for equality, that sounds through the call for their human rights to be recognized, has a dual character as well; yet a revolutionary one. It is either “the spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities”17 to the injustice of class and national oppression on the one hand. And on the other, the demand for equality can become the demand by a communist party to arouse the oppressed masses toward the abolition of national and class oppression; and towards the path to the abolition of nation and class themselves. If the Palestinians continue to expect a qualitative change in their conditions to come from external forces, liberation will not come. If Israel agrees to a more permanent ceasefire, the white activists will claim victory when it is merely a sign of an internal change of conditions, and thus strategy, of Israel's continued plan to suppress revolution in Palestine while continuing to try and destroy them by thousands of different means. The externally imposed limit on Israel within these current conditions, in terms of their mass killing of Palestinians in particular (which they call their “window of legitimacy”) is based on the attempt to maintain its position and support within the global superstructure. Along with the risk of increasing the revolutionary sentiment among the Palestinians and other oppressed nations; and feeding the rising pro-Palestinian tide of the masses in the world. Israel must strike a balance in continuing their oppression of Palestine while not sharpening these contradictions; an inevitably impossible feat. Even the US tone to Israel becoming sharper as Palestinian death climbs to unprecedented numbers, is only an attempt to mitigate multiple contradictions, not to resolve any of them. If and when Israel decides to pull back, these are the considerations, with the decisive factor being growing revolutionary action by the Palestinian masses. It's not some legitimate call to “civility” or direct pressure from the white activists in the imperialist centers that is at the heart of this. The real risk of going beyond the limit in terms of internationally (including the reformist organizations, despite themselves), is the conditions that are created for a revolutionary struggle to gain broad support internally and externally. The Palestinian masses are learning through the actions of Israel that revolution is necessary for their liberation and any vanguard that takes up this initiative will win over the masses and be seen by all the revolutionary and progressive classes in the world as being right to do so. Armed groups in and around Palestine are already jumping in to the increasing righteous act of striking blows on Israel and its allies. Israel has this to contend with, but given their position, they have no choice but to feed into it; dragging the US deeper into the conflict. As Israel and the US continue to strike Israel’s neighbors in the name of “defense,” countries in the Middle East may have no choice, but to engage in a regional war. Israel and the US empire are currently risking the “promise” and “moral authority” of imperialist “liberal democracy” in general and their position within the globe in particular. Contending imperialists, various foreign-funded armed groups, and revolutionaries alike stand to gain from the continued destruction of the position of the US empire and its military outposts. Who makes these gains will depend on the level of advancement of either of these forces. Israel also hopes that any attacks on it will lack a proletarian revolutionary character, so that they can claim justification to continue to engage in “disproportionate warfare.” Given the commodification of humans under capitalism; the imperialist order is pretty satisfied with the exchange-value: 1,000 oppressed masses = 1 oppressor. What should always be kept in mind and deployed in all our analysis of events and material conditions is the law of contradiction. The primary aspect of a contradiction only changes in quantity and not in quality. The US empire and Israel, part of the primary aspect of the imperialist contradiction, are limited to increases and decreases in the quantity of its exploitation and oppression.
And so the dead-ends are numerous for those of the oppressor nation who want the killing to stop in Palestine. The idea of pressuring congress is as likely to succeed as the DSA's strategy of socialism through the democratic party. Congress has already been bypassed recently to approve “aid” to Israel. Biden may not get re-elected partly because of his support for Israel, but whoever is elected will continue to sustain the military outpost in the Middle East. Peaceful demonstrations are as useful as an oil CEO at a climate change summit. And violent demonstrations that only use the threat of further violence as a means of pressure can always be defeated due to its remaining at an infantile stage of violence; by way of seeing violence only as a theatrical prop. What is needed is the white nation to organize the progressives within their nation towards revolutionary defeatism and the oppressed nations to organize around proletarian nationalism. The current political structure will impose a mitigation to the scary amount of suffering at best and reactionary advances at worst, while the white activists satisfy themselves within the limits of reform, support, and calls for peace. They will not move beyond this without a change in the conditions of the Palestinian struggle. The white activists and progressives will be split into two when there is a Maoist Palestinian party leading the armed struggle: those prepared to support the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian people and those who want the Palestinians to remain “good victims.” This means that although there is seemingly contention within the oppressor nation around the question of Palestine; the solution does not lie within the oppressor nation because they value the same “solution” to this problem. To the entire oppressor nation all roads to Palestine must lead to some form of subordination and oppression. This problem cannot be solved any other way than Palestinian proletarian revolution; external forces and internal basis must be defined. Meaning that the Palestinians must have a Maoist party in order to internally relate to their own struggle as decisive and relate to external forces of support as external conditions to wield.
Human Rights: Imperialism's Human Shield
Now lets take a moment to dig into this whole idea of “human rights” as the basis for equality which is parroted by the oppressed and oppressor alike; whenever the oppressor “goes too far” or the oppressed fight back. The ruler in which to measure equal rights being “humanness” is a funny way to muddle a divided world into seeming like an utopia. Of course we are all human, but humanity is defined by our social and economic nature; and the concept of “rights” is a manifestation of society. Since all societies up to this point have been class societies, given the clear division of the classes depending on their relations to production; the concept of rights isn't something that is gifted to humans via some law of nature, but itself has a class component. The idea of the “average individual”18 corresponds with “civil rights” within a country and “human rights” internationally. Marx explains that the “average individual” means that under capitalism, class determines our singular lives so much that we cannot be said to truly be individuals; we are forced into relations to production as a class that create barriers to our present and future. And so civil rights is truly just bourgeois right because the bourgeoisie is the class that benefits from capitalist society. The rights for “anyone” to privately own the means the production (or not) and for “anyone” to freely pick where they want to be exploited and oppressed, obviously amounts to the right of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. In this same vein, human rights (a concept developed in the bourgeoisie's struggle to defeat feudalism and firmly consolidated in the era of imperialism19) obfuscates socio-economic relations between oppressor and oppressed nations under imperialism. This conceals the national character of the oppressed nation and the need for a national revolutionary struggle that mobilizes the entire nation; class and national struggle are eliminated. By treating the violence against Palestinians as a human rights issue, the solution becomes aiding the collective individuals of Palestine; they are framed as humans and as such deserving of aid as an amalgamation of humans. Therefore the imperialists utilize human rights so that all overt violence is condemned, be it from the oppressed fighting for liberation or from the oppressor that fights to keep the oppressed oppressed. Through this lens, there is no settler or colonized, no oppressed or oppressor; just humans being equally human. If I fight back against settler occupation I am not justified because human rights don't include protection against the everyday exploitation and suffering caused by imperialism; just its most outward manifestations are marked as such. And even these have exceptions that allow the oppressor to continue their violent development on the backs of the oppressed. Engels reminds us that,
It is significant of the specifically bourgeois character of these human rights that the American Constitution, the first to recognize the rights of man, in the same breath confirms the slavery of the colored races existing in America: class privileges are proscribed, race privileges sanctioned.20
The UN allows for the killing of countless civilians if the intended target was a “combatant.” The structure of the UN will allow for the condemnation of oppressor nations at times with absolutely no follow through, in the hopes that it might keep what little moral authority it has left. It was designed to meet imperialist interests by pushing a “liberal” economic system globally, maintaining “peace and stability” (when that means preserving the imperialist order), and can continue this despite all the nations involved because only some members have veto power. The various organizations and bodies within the UN are just window dressing to the imperialist controlled formations, like the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), within the UN that make the actual decisions like where to deploy its “peacekeepers” and “aid.” The oppressed nations are controlled partly through these mechanisms. The illusion of every nation having a “seat at the table” becomes clear at every turn. A UN resolution overwhelmingly passed on December 12, 2023, for example, demanding a ceasefire in Israel-Palestine; yet this resolution is completely “non-binding” and so purely symbolic. This occurred when a binding resolution for a ceasefire in the UNSC, a couple days prior, was vetoed by one of its permanent members; the US. The oppressed get to “speak truth to power” while the oppressors remain the power.
Human rights is the ideological basis of the UN and its veto holding members don't accept the conditions that make the oppressed attack the oppressor because it doesn't accept the very real social relations under imperialism; it pushes the idea of “humans” as if pulled straight out of some anatomy book, void of the social being and relations that define us. As a body, their recognition of national oppression is subordinate to this because it allows the veto-holding members the fluidity necessary to pick and choose which nations are deserving of support and which will be condemned. So the trick lies in the fact that Palestinians and Israelis are both human; therefore you flatten the issue in order to combine the oppressor and the oppressed, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. With the aim of limiting the struggle to reform and not revolution, to negotiations and not decisive victory over the oppressor. This is counter to the reality that Palestine is an oppressed nation and as such requires unity and mass mobilization as a nation against their oppressor. You can't have rights for proletarians if there is the right of the bourgeoisie to exploit; you can't have rights for the oppressed nations if there is the right of the oppressor nations to oppress. The “average individual” locked within their relations to production, through nation and class, will continue to exist until we end national oppression and move to end classes and nations themselves. Human rights can only truly exist in a stateless classless society.
More Than the Sum of Their Civilians
Israel as an oppressor nation has taken steps to ensure that the entire population of Palestine remains oppressed. They destroyed the Palestinians agricultural system so they could not support a people’s army, control the water so as to limit crop cultivation, etc. The reality is that Israel in its entirety acts as an oppressor nation and in doing so is in unity with its opposite, Palestine that in its entirety is oppressed by, and so struggles against, Israel. The line between civilian and combatant is thin when an entire nation is faced with the indignity and material reality of national oppression. For decades Israel has been indiscriminate about the oppression and exploitation of Palestinians. If you aren't toiling in Israel as a low-wage worker, you are in an open-air prison dependent on humanitarian aid. If you yourself were not killed by the IDF, one of your close relations has been. If a bomb hasn't dropped on your head, you hear them not too far away. If you in some way benefit from the current state of affairs you stepped on your own people to get there. No Palestinian is spared Israels existence.
Maoism understands that the contradiction of oppressor-oppressed nations is the principal contradiction and as such all other contradictions under it within the oppressed nation are subordinate to this (national liberation struggle is class struggle under imperialism). This means the oppressed nations masses do not only benefit from revolution, but because of this will participate in the revolution; their conditions necessitate this. In Mao's Selected Works, the word “troops” or “soldiers” is never far from the word “civilian”. They are essential to the use of the “three magic weapons”21 and internal decisiveness of a national revolutionary struggle. Mao says,
Nevertheless, we must mobilize the entire Party, the government and the army and the civilian population both to fight against the enemy and to engage in production, in order to support the war, to cope with the enemy's policy of “burn all, kill all, loot all” and to provide disaster relief.22
The decisive factor is the communist party that can bring forward the masses in all parts of society towards the revolutionary struggle. Their leadership is needed to overcome the limits of any one section of the masses; such as solely engaging the “civilians” at the cost of organizing the “soldiers” or leaving aside the other progressive classes of an oppressed nation outside of the working class. This is an aspect of proletarian nationalism.
Civilians engage in struggles as civilians; and this character can be revolutionary or reformist depending on the leadership of the movement. Under civilian leadership legal means tend to be the limit and “international law” is the bar set and fought towards (the height of bourgeois human rights). Legal means are an important aspect of the work, but must be led by the illegal party consolidated around Maoism. The clandestine party is free from the limitations of legal work and able to apply “any means necessary” to achieve victory of the revolution by adhering to and developing scientific socialism. Clandestinity isn't only a matter of security but also of allowing for ideological and political development that is internal to the proletariat; ensuring the enemy can’t infiltrate and influence the direction of the party. The civilian organizations currently engaged in solidarity with Palestine, because they have no Maoist party in Palestine to relate to, (and, when they are white activists, given their subjective position of being part of an oppressor nation) often make the goal integration, settlement through international law and subjecting the oppressed nation to that of a “beggar” as Malcolm X would call it. Meaning they should be “good victims” and wait until the oppressor nations are forced by their “civilians” into a legal compromise. Their solutions are not viable. Israel further takes advantage of this lack of unity by bombing and killing civilians on purpose in order to turn them against the armed struggle by claiming that they are only doing this because the armed organizations are hiding there. These civilian shortcomings can only be overcome by a proletarian Maoist Party within their borders in which to relate to their struggle. This is necessary for all Palestinian progressive and revolutionary classes to participate in and achieve victory through revolution. A revolution is inherently illegal and so must be clandestine; armed struggle will never be permitted by the enemy. Mao puts the pieces together:
Our eighteen years of experience show that the united front and armed struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the enemy. The united front is a united front for carrying on armed struggle. And the Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons, the united front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy positions. That is how the three are related to each other.23
Through the leadership of the party, the united front of the progressive forces within the entire nation supports and defends the development toward victory of the armed struggle of the people's army; which is lead by the party.
Meanwhile some of the legal solutions include pressuring Israel to integrate Palestinians (the Black nation can show you how far integration will go and how little it will get you). Some want a “two-state solution” where external forces, like the UN in conjunction with imperialists and their compradors, are given the decisive role in the Palestinian's fate. The oppressed are forced to seek redress through the very same channels that oppress them, according to "international law". None of the petty bourgeois or the intermediate oppressed masses that remain trapped within this imperialist framework can create the understanding or lead the internal revolutionary struggle needed by the Palestinian people to decisively destroy the Israeli state; the leadership of the advanced Palestinian proletariat is needed. However, this understanding is not something that just materializes, but is developed through the national liberation struggle itself and the forms it concretely takes.
The Black nation, for example, has spent decades trying to get recognition from the UN. From petty bourgeois organizations like the Civil Rights Congress in 1951 presenting “an historic petition to the U.N. charging amerikkka with practicing the crime of genocide against its Afrikan colonial subjects within its borders.”24 To the movement to recognize Black revolutionaries as Political Prisoners or Prisoners of War in the 70s; which carries on to this day. There has been a long history of trying to get the international community, through the UN, to recognize the Black nation as a nation separate from the US. These tactics could be beneficial to the revolutionary struggle as a method of agitation among the Black nation, to build revolutionary consciousness among the proletariat. However, as previous revolutionaries have concluded;
Struggles for human rights in or out of prisons must be clearly seen as tactical struggles. As tactics, they must be subordinated to strategy and not seek to substitute themselves in place of strategy. The strategic objective is the creation of an infrastructure capable of fielding a people's army, of waging a people's war – on all levels, political and military.25
The Palestinian masses, through the practice of struggle are seeing the limits of international law, of international institutions, of external solidarity, of petty bourgeois leadership, of adventurism and commandism. Correct ideas come from the struggle with incorrect ideas. The internal decisiveness of oppressed nations is what must be harnessed in order to correctly identify external forces as such, understand their limits, and focus on the internal development of revolutionary forces. This requires subordinating all tactics, including the legal ones, to the strategy for revolution, lead by the Maoist party. The Black nation has been struggling with this aspect for decades.
Different But Same
All of the above are not musings, but an analysis of Palestine's contradiction with Israel that is based on the Black nations contradiction with the US empire, to find the general within our respective particulars. As described in the introduction, Palestine and the US-bound Black nation are part of the imperialist contradiction between oppressor-oppressed nations. In this way they share the essence of this contradiction within their particular conditions (internal and external). The difference between the US and Israel in relation to their dialectical unity with the oppressed nations, is merely a question of when the quantity of revolutionary struggle against the quantity of oppression will result in a qualitative leap towards Maoist leadership for the Black nation or Palestine. Moving forward we are going to focus on the ways in which the Black nation parallels Palestine; where the particulars of each nation make up the essence of the revolutionary aspect of the imperialist contradiction.
But first we need to make clear that Maoism, currently the highest stage of Marxism, isn't some ossified dogma that requires the lessons of the Chinese Revolution to be stitched onto our conditions mechanically. This very analysis of Palestine and the Black nation is through the science of Maoism. Our conditions are different from the proletarian revolutions of Russia and China, yet the same in the most essential ways. The essence of which has been verified, from Marx to Mao and onward, through a synthesis of revolutionary practice that has lead to continuity and ruptures, still being practiced and developed today.26 Maoism is correct not because it sounds good, but because it most accurately reflects the conditions of the oppressed nations and provides the principles necessary to advance the revolution to victory. In this way it is a science that we must apply to our conditions in a creative way so as to achieve victory in revolution. Many think that anarchism or abolitionism or any other form of idealism provides more “freedom” or room for creativity; yet these ideologies provide only the freedom to think up thousands of different “possibilities” that remain safely in the imagination and away from the reality of the material world. The important factor of any science is to explore the thousands of opportunities to change the world through an accurate assessment and analysis of the material world, using the most advanced tools available. Maoist political economy and philosophy provide the correct methods of assessing and analyzing the world, and Maoist scientific socialism is the most advanced tool for changing it. As for the development of these tools, the Russian Revolution was eventually defeated, yet it was the very first country to win a socialist revolution and practice socialism towards communism by applying Marxism; they were the revolutionary vanguard of their time. Their eventual defeat (any defeat in fact), is not the mark of failure, but a hard fought lesson in practice that, when studied can provide completely new conditions, insights on overcoming defeat in the future and making advances. And that's precisely what the Chinese Revolution did; applying the lessons of Leninism (which was in continuity and rupture with Marxism) to their conditions as an oppressed nation under imperialism, in order to take the practice of socialism even further. Maoism was developed in the process. Maoism wasn't dawned as such by the Chinese Revolution alone, it was its application in new conditions that verified it as such. And so Maoist parties all over the world today are daring to fight for revolution with the goal of learning from the eventual defeat of the Chinese Revolution and exceeding it, in order to advance the science. No science is ever complete.
Palestine and the Black nation then, need not start from scratch, but carry on scientific socialism until victory. Our entire historical development is already in continuity with the Maoist understanding of oppressed nations; it is only our lack of proletarian consciousness that limits our advancing toward victory. This consciousness does not arise spontaneously and requires a communist party that is the vanguard of the proletariat. It is the vanguard because it is itself the proletariat; advancing the consciousness of the masses through struggle towards becoming the proletariat class for-itself; subjectively-absolute, for its own decisive development. No science can ensure a correct conclusion to every experiment, however correct science is verified in the practice of experimentation. Every scientist builds off the lessons of the past, while being prepared to rupture with them in the process of new advancements and new conditions; but for those leaps to occur, continuity of what is correct must be preserved. That is the essence of Maoism for the oppressed nations. There is still much revolutionary practice (past and present) within our nations development that needs a Maoist analysis, in order to correct our errors and clear the way towards revolution. For the proletarians of the oppressed nations of the world, as they advance in revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary theories of Maoism will not be far behind. Study and apply Maoism to our conditions in order to advance the revolutionary science forward in general and our revolutionary victory in particular.
Where the Masses End and Their Vanguard Begins
Is there a difference between the Israeli government and their “citizens”; or between Hamas and Palestinians? The essence of this answer depends greatly on the aspect of the imperialist contradiction and whether the organizations are moving the development of each aspect forward. All the imperialist oppressor nations, especially settler nations, are in fact inseparable from their nation, regardless of class. The masses of the oppressor nation work hard to detach themselves from the violence and oppression by the hands of their government, internally and externally. The settler wants to be absolved as just another human civilian walking the earth; pulled by their own bootstraps into existence. The oppressor nation is full of what Malcolm X called, “foxes and wolves.”27 He was saying that although they are different animals, they are the same breed and want the same things. The oppressor nation has the wolves; the dominant aspect of the economic base and its superstructure that deploys the violence and exploitation needed to maintain the oppressor nation. You have the bourgeoisie, the government, and its armed forces. The foxes, so much so that at times they have out-foxed themselves in terms of their role, include the liberal petty bourgeois who, at best, fight for a solution that continually puts the control and power in their own nations and the other imperialist powers; under the guise of integration. When the imperialists eat, their nation eats; and they feed off the oppressed nations. The only progressive path for the oppressor nations’ masses is to internalize revolutionary defeatism (the working class and petty bourgeois oppressor masses actively engaging in their own nations destruction) in the face of the oppressed nations proletarian nationalism (the strategic unity of varying classes within the oppressed nation for decisive victory over the oppressor through socialist revolution and the construction of a socialist state.)
For the oppressed nation of Palestine, who are learning through their struggle towards a correct scientific approach to revolution, they have yet to sustain their vanguard. Hamas is not the decisive leadership of the Palestinian people, however Hamas is a manifestation of the oppressive contradiction Palestine has with Israel. The reform and capitulation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the commandism-adventurism of Hamas, contributes to the practice of the Palestinian masses to learn from in order to genuinely internalize proletarian ideology. It must also be remembered that although we don't get any media coverage about it; Hamas isn't the only armed organization in Palestine. There are and have been many popular groups engaging in armed struggle like the “Lion's Den” that have risen and been developed straight from the ranks of the oppressed masses. Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, one of the Lion's Den founders is an expression of the bravery and revolutionary spirit that will continually spring forward from those who suffer under imperialism. Nabulsi, a commander, lead his people into armed struggle against the Israeli forces multiple times, survived several assassination attempts by the Israeli's, and still defiantly showed up unmasked to a very public funeral of a militant; right in the face of Israel.28 Nabulsi was only 18 years old at this time and was martyred at that very age. Already at 15 he had the resolve to fight against the oppressor and had already suffered torture and detainment at the hands of Israel. He inspired an entire generation of Palestinians to pick up arms against their enemy; not because he was an anomaly, but because he expressed the sentiments of the Palestinian people and embodied the courage needed to do what needs to be done. Hamas may be in part a foreign-funded organization that isn't fighting for proletarian revolution, but that in no way negates the reality that its ranks are filled with proletarians drawn to the armed struggle by their oppression and exploitation. Weeks after Israel’s bombardment campaign on Gaza, support for Hamas, particularly by the young Palestinian masses, reached an all time high. The essence here is that the masses support and engage with those who most closely take action towards the full liberation and self-determination of Palestine. The narrative of foreign agitators at the helm and a nation filled with helpless civilians doesn't explain the consistent and growing armed struggle rising from the masses themselves. “Um Eyad [Ibrahim al-Nabulsi's mother] told a throng of mourners: ‘They are mistaken if they think they killed Ibrahim. Everyone is Ibrahim.’”29
While the Israeli government as a whole is serving its purpose as the oppressor aspect of the contradiction (as the primary aspect its development is limited to oppressing in various quantities) the Palestinian's vanguard will become apparent when their masses are united around an organization that fights (as the secondary aspect) for decisive victory through revolution to achieve a qualitative shift in the contradiction. The unity between leadership and masses, in short, is determined by this dialectic of moving towards a resolution to the imperialist contradiction for the oppressed nation and the preservation of the contradiction by the oppressor nation. To be sure, the Israel-Palestine contradiction is an antagonistic one and requires decisive revolutionary victory in order to be resolved.
For the Black nation, it is clear that the wolves themselves lead the Black nation, resulting in the same outcome that Palestine is currently dealing with; we have no vanguard. The US oppressor nation, the wolf in shepherds clothing; through its advanced level of counterrevolutionary tactics has convinced the Black nation that it is our leadership. It uses handpicked Black petty bourgeois “leaders” when necessary, but sometimes a smiling white fox is enough to get our vote. And in a sign of the sharpening contradiction, the few Black people who do vote, often knowingly vote for the lesser of two wolves as a form of desperation. This is all part of the US Counterinsurgency (COIN) military strategy:
An effective COIN operation will utilize all instruments of national power to integrate and synchronize political, security, legal, economic development, and psychological activities carried out by the host nation and applicable US government and multinational partners to create a holistic approach aimed at weakening the insurgents while simultaneously bolstering the government's legitimacy in the eyes of the contested population.30
The application of COIN to the internal Black nation reveals that we are already in a protracted struggle with the US and must develop our forces to engage accordingly. Yet just like Palestine, we have yet to have a cohesive vanguard that actually moves our nation towards revolutionary struggle to decisively achieve our liberation; to rightfully be called our leadership.
This quote from a Palestinian shows that the understanding of the unity between Palestine and the Black nation cuts both ways, specifically on the co-optation of leadership by the oppressor:
Following the militant Black Liberation Movement of the 60s, the occupation government moved to grant “Civil Rights” and other pittances to Black people that served to rebuild “legitimacy” of the government and imperialist economic system. We see the success of their strategy today. They have fully integrated a privileged group of (some) Black people into the economy and the government. In the United States, Black politicians and policemen and Black-led NGOs have replaced Black Liberation. Of course, none of them have stopped the lynchings, prison slavery, or Black genocide. In fact, the compradors participate in it as willing collaborators.31
Our absorption into the liberal democratic framework has done much to weaken our revolutionary direction; yet as the oppressor nations’ internal contradictions sharpen, it will reveal that whatever the social organization of the state leans towards, it remains a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The Dictatorship of Democracy
The internal development of oppressor nations like the US and Israel, manifests in the struggle within the masses and their leadership over the best way to preserve their domination in the imperialist contradiction. This internal contradiction within all imperialist nations is between bourgeois democracy and fascism. Fascism is a development in the function of the state for the capitalists in the era of imperialism. This applies as clear as day to the US and Israel. In this way the white masses of these nations go no further than the defense of bourgeois democracy or the struggle to implement further fascism. These nations don't sit firmly on one side of bourgeois organization or the other, but vacillate between the two, given conditions. The calls of the white activists is actually a call to save their own nations. They don't want to stop oppression, they want to preserve it through more reformist means. Yet their take is even more backwards than the imperialists, because what they want is to turn back to a time that never existed; and they recruit the oppressed masses to this dead-end as best they can. They are idealists of the highest order who perceive their nation as able to keep the promise of equality that was never anything more than a promise (with fingers crossed behind the back for good measure). They hope that if their nations listen to them, the peace will be kept; peace meaning they get to keep the piece of the imperialist pie they are sitting on right now.32 The claim of being “peace activists” (fascinating how they see themselves as morally evolved) in a nation that utilizes this rhetoric to continually oppress and exploit nations through violent means is somehow lost on them. They are not really trying to save Palestinians, they are trying to save themselves, because they know that if their nation is developing deeper into fascism (and it is), they are facing a fight they can't win. Fascism becomes necessary in the face of crisis and growing revolutionary sentiment. The US empire is moving closer to fascism because it's on its last leg of being able to maintain its order. It must consolidate its nation firmly around its dictatorship to provide a more unified imperialist front in the face of increased inter-imperialist and revolutionary struggle. Although fascism is in part already in existence against the oppressed nations within the US empire and Israel-Palestine, the white masses tend to only call it fascism when their nation starts cutting at their liberal freedoms in the attempt to strengthen themselves against internal contradictions. To be sure, bourgeois democracy and fascism are both dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and neither holds the key to liberation for the oppressed nations.
The oppressed nations are unable to deploy bourgeois democracy due to their relation to the oppressor nations and so the class struggle for the former manifests itself in semi or neo-colonialism vs socialism. The promise of liberal democracy (which is just a form of bourgeois democracy) has not been realized in Africa for example; in fact it's merely a tool for the oppressed nations comprador bourgeoisie to divide the wealth among themselves and the oppressor nations. There is evidence in some African countries of opposing political parties taking turns being in power to maintain their collective interests and the illusion of liberal democracy. The importance of “fundraising” from “donors” in US electoral campaigns, which is mostly capital from the bourgeoisie, should make clear that liberal democracy is an effective tool to allow capitalists to pick their candidates. In the oppressed nations, foreign capital prefers “liberal democracy” for the same ease of influence. The domination of the oppressor nations’ bourgeoisie, over the comprador bourgeoisie and bureaucracy of the oppressed nations expresses itself in the withholding or “donating” of capital to serve the oppressor nations interests. Therefore the implementation of liberal democracy is severely limited for oppressed nations. The limits for the oppressed nations that try their hand at liberal democracy is seen whenever the masses overcome imperialist machinations and elect a president that seeks to go against imperialist interests; they are dealt with through sanctions, coups, assassinations or direct military intervention. If none of those work, the imperialists work tirelessly to fund the “opposition,” of the party in office, and deploy various economic and covert political tactics to weaken the upstart. This is another reason why oppressed nations must internalize Maoism, because it ensures the party leading them is in the interests of the masses and has a people's army that can defend those interests. It is also the case that the form “democracy” takes is itself a class question. As long as classes exist societies will be dictatorships of a given class. The “will of the people” will never be realized under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Socialism towards communism through a Maoist party provides a democracy far greater and wider than what representative democracies in the imperialist centers afford. Through a dictatorship of the proletariat, proletarian democracy would also engage the masses in the construction of a new society, expanding democracy beyond just wearing a sticker proudly that says "I Voted" just because you pulled a lever to elect one agent of the bourgeoisie over another. The proletariat must have a dictatorship to secure their broad democracy from being destroyed by the reactionary classes that hope to reinstate their dictatorship.
This is in contrast with the oppressor nations who struggle to either preserve bourgeois democracy or further implement fascism. This has significant implications for the orientation of either the oppressor or oppressed nations’ revolutionary strategy. The former must engage in revolutionary defeatism while the latter must engage in proletarian nationalism. The white chauvinists who claim to be communists will attempt to confuse the issue by taking the US empire as a case where the multi-national masses are so inter-mixed that the struggle is one akin to the Russian Revolution where the oppressor and oppressed nations united under the Bolsheviks. Every oppressed nation under the Russian empire at the time, including the oppressor nation of Great Russians, had a basis for unity because they were both engaging in a struggle between feudalism and bourgeois revolution, and quickly thereafter bourgeois revolution to socialist revolution, lead by the Bolshevik Party. The development of Russia itself and all the oppressed nations under it, required the destruction of the Tsarist Empire. A more appropriate example for the US context, to clearly see this distinction, is to look at settler-colonial Israel. Earlier this year, we had seen the continual oppression of the Palestinian people simultaneously taking place while the Israeli people had an internal struggle to preserve aspects of bourgeois democracy vs implement further fascism. The Israeli masses took to the streets, sometimes violently, to protect their Supreme Court that they saw as upholding Israeli democracy; but is actually still the very same dictatorship of the Israelis over the Palestinians. This struggle within the Israeli nation did not bleed into the struggle for Palestinian liberation at all. Palestinians saw right through this:
Our bullets are the guarantor of creating real contradictions in this entity [Israel], and our steadfastness is the one capable of dispersing the masses of the enemy and tearing apart his battalions...our people are betting on the unit of our own guns and not on the disagreements among the ranks of the murderers.33
This encapsulates the internal decisiveness of the oppressed nation in not only its own liberation, but in the transformation of the oppressor nation itself into a position where their masses can be freed from their backwards relations to the formerly oppressed nations. And as we see today, even with the protests to protect Israeli hostages, the internal contradictions in Israel have been subordinated, with Israel united again, in the face of the essence of their struggle; to preserve their oppression of Palestine and expand their own nation. The narrative that it is Netanyahu that is the source of the antagonism between Israel and Palestine is dishonest, and attempts to conceal that Israel's oppression of Palestine is its essence. You will find many white activists engaging in this rhetoric. Even Biden's growing criticism of the current Israeli administration is used to divert criticism from the very essence of Israel itself; again some Palestinians are not convinced:
The “human rights defenders”, “journalists” and “intellectuals” who are working overtime to present Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as exceptional or unique “neo-Zionists” are doing the work of the enemy. There is no such thing as leftist, centrist, or rightist in the Israeli government.34
Palestinians also understand false internationalism by the oppressor nation’s masses is set to reinforce the oppressor’s position through the deception of a sympathetic ear. Our proximity to the oppressor (in terms of our pseudo-integration) sharpens this contradiction and makes it ever clearer for us within the US-bound Black nation. The decisive revolutionary element for the revolutionary Palestinian proletariat is proletarian nationalism. And so it is under the US empire. Look around the world and you will find the oppressor nations’ struggling between bourgeois democracy and fascism.35 Look to the oppressed nations and you will find the struggle between semi or neo-colonialism run by the comprador bourgeoisie vs the revolutionary struggle towards socialism. The basis for this struggle between bourgeois democracy and fascism lies in the limits imposed on the primary aspect of imperialism, the oppressor nations; they can develop no further. That is until the secondary aspect of the imperialist contradiction (the oppressed nations), with its revolutionary initiative is able to transform the contradiction qualitatively. A Palestinian asked the oppressor masses a tough question:
What will they do when confronted by a new political equation where Palestinians and their popular Resistance organizations dictate the terms? The answer is plain to those who understand the class leadership and political ambiguity of the present “solidarity movement” in the imperialist countries.36
This “political ambiguity” on the part of the “solidarity movement” is one of the many ways it remains in the service of the entire oppressor nation. The divisions within the oppressor nation are real, yet the oppressor nation in its entirety is more same than different.
The Oppressor Nation’s Masses: It's Settled
Let’s start by thinking about how ridiculous the notion that a revolutionary Palestinian movement should create a vanguard party with the Israeli "progressives" for the overthrow of Israel. Its absurdity has material origins; there isn't any material basis for the Israeli masses to revolt against their state. The masses of settler nations are a seemingly divided bunch; if you suffer from political nearsightedness. In actuality, ranging from the "proud right" to the "die-hard liberals" all the way to the "red" white-and-communist (which encapsulates 99.9% of 'em), they all share in a common understanding that the US and Israel must remain intact; something that is by no means a guarantee.37 That means that all solutions are limited to the preservation of their nation, with no solutions proposed from any side going beyond this limit. Settlers are in communion with their bourgeoisie in a way that is apparent by the lack of revolutionary character of the settler masses. The oppressor nations’ bourgeoisie needs their nations’ masses consolidated under them for the preservation of the contradiction of imperialism and the oppressor nations’ masses benefit from this order. US whites haven't had an internal revolutionary character since European immigrants in the early 20s had sway in the communist movement (they were the overwhelming majority of “white” communists at the time); and they have comfortably been integrated into US whiteness long since. Not to mention the white Americans within these movements did their best to lower the revolutionary pitch of those organizations and many others to come; the continuity of which can be found from the chauvinist, reformist and enduring CPUSA, all the way to the cultish, tattered Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) and its edgy spawn of today. Since, there has been radio silence on the revolutionary airwaves from the white masses; short of tailing the oppressed nations’ revolutionary frequency, which is where groups like the Weather Underground come in. This is not to say that all white people are openly reactionary and will be so to the liberation struggles within the US empire. But their involvement in any revolution will be severely limited by their relation to the oppressed nations; to the point where they will only be freed of this limit by the liberation struggles themselves. The last time the actual white masses had a decisively internal rebellion, it was January 6, 2021. What has been growing from the white masses since, has been consolidation around “protecting their communities;” rallying around a song that warns the oppressed nations to “try that in a small town,” in reference to the George Floyd Rebellion in the cities. They see rebellion from the oppressed nations as a direct threat. The song by Jason Aldean has become the anthem for the white nation. Meanwhile white activists and psuedo-Maoists envision their role as anything but dealing with their own reactionary base.
Look at settlers in the US and Israel now; who have always had a warrant to do what-they-will to the oppressed nations historically. There are countless examples of their reactionary attacks on the oppressed, with the approval of the state behind them. However, with increased economic strength, like in the case of the US, comes the development of new and more covert counter-revolutionary methods. Just as direct colonialism set the stage for the capital requirement needed to implement neo-colonialism, the US empire's long history of settler economic development has gotten us to a Broadway-ready performance of “integration” and “equality” written by (the guy who wrote Hamilton) and starring (that light-skin girl from spiderman or euphoria or whatever). It would be incorrect to assume that the struggle for liberation by the oppressed had nothing to do with these concessions, in either case; forcing the oppressor nation to adapt to the sharpening revolutionary pitch of the oppressed. But remaining short of its destruction, results in the US system developing to be able to prosecute settlers (barely ever) that kill Black people directly, while continuing the daily injuries of imperialism inflicted upon us, including just letting settlers do their thing by joining the police force. We set cities on fire for police killings of Black people, but as of yet, not for things like the poisoning of our water, our continued exploitation, or our dispossession by white people who are eager for a nice bar layout in the big cities. The Black nation’s consciousness on the relation between these manifestations of oppression will grow, while the settler masses will continue to want to benefit from the current level of ignorance. This growing consciousness of the Black nation will be sped up by the white nation’s rising movement to delve deeper into fascism and reactionary settler violence.
"But hey!" Their thin-lips rattle; "what about that 0.01% of White people like me that read Mao and Malcolm X and are down for the revolution?!?" You have no proletarian base. The line goes "the masses are the makers of history" not "the-handful-of-white-people-who-have-made-an-identity-out-of-Maoism are the makers of history." This is why white pseudo-Maoists so desperately muddle, well, everything. They smash the law of contradiction by trying to make the oppressor nations aspect of the imperialist contradiction internal to the oppressed nations. Their bourgeoisie do this through NGOs, military, cultural organizations, international financial institutions and other imperialist-run international institutions, in order to make themselves the “solution” to the problems of the oppressed nations. And settler pseudo-Maoists do this by obscuring the internal development of nations under imperialism so as to sneak into the oppressed nations’ revolutionary struggles. Ajith in “Against Avakianism”, does an in-depth analysis on the revisionism of white pseudo-Maoists in terms of the law of contradiction; using Bob Avakian and the RCP as an example.38 Avakian had the interest of obfuscating the internal development of nations under imperialism for the purpose of claiming that nationalism puts too much focus on the internal being decisive when in the era of imperialism, the whole world is internal to the contradiction of capitalism. By doing this Avakian wants to push that the external conditions of imperialism are more decisive for any given country than whatever internal conditions are developing in that country itself. Ajith correctly asserts in opposition to this that every nation has internal conditions qualitatively specific to itself and that demands a firm understanding in which to deploy Maoism; the internal is decisive. Ajith goes into the fundamental contradiction vs the principal contradiction. The fundamental contradiction in the world is socialized production vs private appropriation and this is the contradiction that influences all others. Ajith continues that the principal contradiction is decisive at a given moment, and that currently it is between imperialism vs the oppressed nations. Every nation has a qualitatively different expression of this principal contradiction and the success of a Maoist party in every nation depends on understanding how this contradiction applies to its nation. Avakian's version of internationalism amounts to demanding that all nations wait for world events to bring forth a revolutionary situation broadly. Ajith makes clear that the proletariat is international in that it cannot escape wage-slavery neither as a class or as a nation, that “[i]t's emancipation can only be universal”, but that;
This does not deny the real historical process of emergence of this class from within distinct national contexts. Nor does it eliminate the distinctly different tasks confronting it in the imperialist countries and the oppressed ones.39
Although Ajith doesn't get into this, in our analysis, the “national context” in the imperialist country of the US is a prison-house of nations where many internally developing oppressed nations exist under the oppression of the white nation. Think of the latter as the “Great-Americans” who are the true citizens of the US, not only in name but in deed. This is something that is often muddled, in the service of neo-colonial acts of “integrating with the masses” by the white well-to-do. Here is a quote from Ajith that could easily be a criticism to the current hoard of white pseudo-Maoists within the US empire today:
The Avakianists have no time for such complexities. They imagine up an “ideal” internationalist proletariat and then make that the basis of their analysis. This inevitably leads them to an absolutist, purist concept of proletarian internationalism. Thus, self-anointed as the true guardians of the faith, they launch into righteous battle against a host of attributed “nationalistic” tendencies.40
Anyone from the oppressed nations who has engaged with white pseudo-Maoists will recognize this attribute of false internationalism. Every engagement they have with the oppressed masses results in an attempt to suppress completely the nationalist sentiment of the oppressed masses, when it should in fact be developed towards proletarian nationalism. These white saviors find that they must save the oppressed from themselves; a delusion afforded to them by their objective position as a member of the oppressor nation and affirmed by their own idealism.
These white pseudo-Maoists also throw the Maoist theory-of-knowledge in the garbage by ignoring the fact that their nation has no revolutionary-directed practice in which to internalize revolutionary theory; essentially putting theory over practice. To do so they struggle against materialism itself so as to lay the ground work for their revisionism in the hopes that their idealist theories might dominate. Like Avakianism, they attempt to make Maoism a science and method alone that anyone can use just through understanding the theory; when Ajith points out that Maoism as a science cannot be divorced from the proletariat itself. Errors in the implementation of Maoism arise when the class standing of those attempting to practice Maoism are not proletarian. To identify Maoism as merely a method void of class character is to attempt to indulge in revisionism. Maoism is a philosophy and method with a class stand of the proletariat; it is true because it is partisan. The proletariat is the class that can objectify reality most accurately and truly because it is the class that seeks to eliminate class distinction itself. For it to achieve this revolutionary task it must look at the world as objectively as possible and utilize the material world to achieve these ends. This requires dialectical materialism. Instead of the white nations progressives accurately assessing their nations practice in order to move towards revolutionary practice; they refuse to even acknowledge the extreme hurdles they must overcome within their nation, in exchange for the “quick-fix” of attaching themselves to the oppressed nations’ revolutionary struggles. We recommend they go try Maoism “in a small town” among their own nation.
So the white pseudo-Maoists do all of this because when they look at their own nation, they don't see the identity they have chosen for themselves; they feel alienated. (There isn't a movement, identity, ideology or culture in the whole-wide-world that doesn't have a group of white people consuming it as a “sub-culture.”) Their nation’s base is firmly non-revolutionary (they have no proletariat) and every revolutionary leadership needs a revolutionary base. Meanwhile a Black Maoist can go to their own nation and see and hear revolutionary practice from the advanced sections, that is not only waiting for revolutionary theory; but is also applying and developing it. We and other oppressed nations, develop internally as a nation through our struggles for liberation and so internalize Maoism through the process of the theory-of-knowledge; our revolutionary practice calls for revolutionary theory. White pseudo-Maoists say; "We need a multi-national party!", but what they mean is they want to leech off the oppressed nations’ revolutionary movements. Not to mention the Black nation within the US empire is already multi-national.
The contradiction that leads to continued failures within the multi-national parties that include oppressor-oppressed within the imperialist centers is that what would lead to a revolutionary movement is not given primacy. The real error doesn't take place because white people are just impossible to get along with or that they are always wrong or smell or something; it is because their method of organizing within the communist movement stops the development of national liberation struggles. National liberation struggles are acknowledged as necessary while being placed in a subordinate position to this idealist internationalism within the context of the centers of imperialism. This sometimes leads to national liberation struggles being lead by those who see another form of revolution being primary, such as one limited to bourgeois revolution; an impossibility for the oppressed nations within these current conditions. What national liberation struggles need (as they are the weak link in the chain that should be grabbed so as to strongly struggle within the principal contradiction) is a party formation that ensures proletarian leadership. What takes place in these multi-national parties is what takes place within imperialism more broadly; the best minds are sent away from their political base and into bastions of false internationalism within the oppressor nations. Solidly revisionist communist parties tend to appear to have harmonious multi-national parties because they are filled with the petty bourgeois, seek integration in one form or another into imperialism, and so their class unity obscures the contradictions. Oppressed nations within "Maoist" multi-national formations find themselves scratching up against the contradictions much more closely; when they actually apply their practice to the theories they study. If these pseudo-Maoists were to acknowledge the primacy of national liberation struggles they would have to relinquish their position as members of the party that is supposed to be the leadership of the most oppressed and exploited. So they must by default become revisionist and counter-revolutionary in order to ensure their position in the movement. They become idealist and refer to internationalism as if it is the solution to all contradictions instead of analyzing what they call internationalism in the face of imperialism. They quote the Russian Revolution endlessly, without looking into the material conditions of the present or assessing the compromise between the oppressor nation as a whole and imperialism; something the tsar of Russia couldn't have even dreamed of, despite his best efforts.41 They'll cry “identity politics” as if nations weren't in fact very real material formations. They attempt to make national liberation struggle impossible by calling any attempt to form a party for the job, some form of narrow nationalism. They desire to make oppressed nations dependent on some multi-national party which would seek to delay the national liberation struggle indefinitely; turning many of the Black nation away from communism.
Internationalism is not a solver of all conditions and if it was you would have to admit that Palestinians should work with the “progressives” of Israel and join within the same party; still enough to make you let out a bitter laugh. Therefore internationalism, although an universal principle, takes different forms depending on the material conditions. It is a form of essentialism that refuses to understand the true universal aspect of internationalism; the understanding and undertaking of the proletariat of different nations to work together to ensure world revolution. The particular form this collaboration takes depends on the material conditions and social forces at play. Troskyists are the ones that reject socialism in one country and thus would demand that every nation wait till the other is ready. Well the oppressed nations are ready now, while the oppressor masses in revolutionary terms are “out to lunch.”
So these white pseudo-Maoists both want to organize the most oppressed and exploited against the US empire while removing them from their political base. This limits the very thing that could contend against the oppressor nations’ masses’ need to depend on the oppression of nations; oppressed nations consolidated around proletarian nationalism. The white pseudo-Maoists speak of oppressed nations without speaking of oppressor nations in which they are a part. They do this for quite obvious reasons. Kautsky's chauvinism was not some anomaly, he was an outgrowth of the developing contradiction between oppressor and oppressed nations. The validity of Lenin's call for internationalism (from an empire locked into semi-feudal ways that affected the entire country) was not meant to be used as a counter-revolutionary weapon by the oppressor nations' communists to bludgeon the oppressed nations into submission. Lenin himself said “we” when referring to the entire oppressor nation of Great Russians and took responsibility for his nation and the understanding that for the oppressed nations to join the oppressor in revolutionary struggle, the masses of the oppressor nation would need to have its own revolutionary practice and development; and the Great Russian masses most definitely did. Great Russians in the 1910s weren't out there holding “Solidarity with Georgians!” signs and calling it a day; they were actively working towards the destruction of their own Tsarz's Empire. Lenin took part in organizing his nation towards revolutionary internationalism; he didn't pretend the idea of a multi-national party was only dependent on the desire for one. Reading Lenin's "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination" it is clear that while Lenin struggled for multi-national parties within Russia; this was entirely conditional and not in any way a universal principle. Yet the white communists continue to selectively quote the Russian Revolution and mechanically apply it so as to give their false internationalism credence. Lenin along with Marx determined that unless the oppressor nations’ masses were able to have a non-chauvinist and revolutionary character, the multi-national party would be made impossible and the oppressed nations would play the decisive role. Marx, Engels and Lenin had no problem putting certain nations within certain conditions as the primary force for revolution; as a catalyst for the development of revolutionary struggle in nations with different conditions. Although they got the order wrong, thinking that the proletariat in the most advanced capitalist countries would be the first to win revolution; setting the stage for socialism's development in the oppressed nations. As we have stated in an earlier piece;
It must be understood that the decline of imperialism was not clear to Marx or Engels in their era, and this is why they misunderstood the revolutionary role of the oppressed nations and the reactionary role of the oppressor nations entire class structure. This is why they were unable to fully grasp national structure in its most developed and thus declining stage; imperialism. Lenin was able to understand imperialism, but was still in continuity with Marx in regards to the principal role of the oppressor nations. Lenin himself thought that revolution would first take place in the capitalist oppressor nations as well, only to be surprised by his backward oppressor nation being at the vanguard of socialist revolution. The Chinese Revolution was a battleground itself for the struggle around reversing this theory to see to it that the advanced oppressor nations will lose their reactionary and chauvinist orientation when the oppressed nations save them by destroying the exploitative foundation of the advanced countries economic life; radically changing it. Maoism was where nationalism and internationalism ruptured with this particular incorrect theory and advanced scientific socialism in this regard (among many others).42
Today, imperialism has only advanced further and the cries for revolution from the oppressor nations have long grown dim; while the oppressed nations play the decisive revolutionary role in the world.
There will be no white proletariat until their dialectic with oppressor nations reaches a qualitatively new stage. To those white pseudo-Maoists who would cry “third worldism”43 and that they have the responsibility as do all communists to make revolution wherever/whoever they are, it is recommended they apply historical materialism to look at their history in a materialist manner. Within the imperialist centers, any progressive movement by white people has always come on the heels of oppressed nations’ revolutionary struggles. Any “action” that was worth a damn from white pseudo-Maoists was through the mobilization and tailing of the oppressed nations. Whether they like it or not, their movements have always conformed to their very conception of third worldism; the concept itself is an oppressor nation invention. We are not third worldists, we are Maoists who need look no further than the revolutionary theories of Maoism to develop our nation towards revolutionary struggle. US white “solidarity” for Palestine will not in and of itself turn into revolutionary practice for the white masses. The oppressed nations in the US, unlike the whites, have not started or stopped their revolutionary struggle based on the rising and falling of other revolutionary movements.
Whites (for those of you who didn't heed our first request to avert your treacherous eyes), you don't have to sit around and not contribute to your nation, but understand you are a member of an oppressor nation. You are confronted with at best a nation of intermediates and more so of backward elements; you have no proletarian base in the subjective or objective sense of the word. And you as progressives are responsible for mobilizing your nation in support of the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations while destroying your own nation, via revolutionary defeatism. We will not begin to contribute to how you do this, less we engage in false internationalism; however our nation will engage in an external sense with the white progressives who understand the need for revolution. The best we can do is organize the Black nation towards communist revolution and surely you will see that some of your white nation will be mobilized; this is your progressive base you must organize around revolutionary defeatism. The motion of the revolutionary contradiction, with oppressed nations as its primary aspect, will also see the white nation mostly mobilized in reactionary ways; you will no doubt have your work cut out for you, in fact you already do. If the white nation can't be organized around revolutionary defeatism, a civil war against their own nation, how do these white pseudo-Maoists expect to join the oppressed nations in decisive revolutionary liberation struggles? They see themselves as an army of Bethunes among a sea of oppressed masses. The thing is, Mao wrote something up specifically about his great sacrifice, because there was only one Bethune walking around China.44
Living in a Fools' Paradise
Some words should be spent speaking directly to the progressive petty bourgeois of the oppressed nations that always find themselves in the company of the white activists, especially when struggles such as these occur. This is always at the expense of struggling alongside your own nation. In exchange for a neo-colonial relationship with the oppressor nation and the subjective and objective comforts this seems to afford; you're living in a fools' paradise. Black revolutionaries in the 1970s, when struggling around how to transform the colonial/criminal mentality, surmised that, “As slaves, colonial subjects, we tend not to feel worthy unless the oppressor in some way acknowledges our existence.”45 The whites resources rain down on you, their “support” and “solidarity” seem essential and within your control, your “comfortable” lifestyle is never questioned. The petty bourgeois and working class among the Palestinians and Black nation here in the US are confronted on all sides by the white activists, ready to kill you with tokenism, “elevating” your words to affirm your compliance, dismissing you if you proletarianize and join your people. This dependence and perception of external forces being the basis for change can be as big as Palestinian calls to the international community to resolve their struggle for self-determination, but also takes place every day in smaller ways. Many Black movements, like those which focus on local police brutality, have found themselves limiting their entire strategy to the tactic of demanding reforms from elected officials. They see this as correct partly because of the large sections of white activist support. The answer for these issues, big and small, remain the same: subjectively-absolute, internally decisive organization among the oppressed masses of your nation.
If you find yourself constantly surrounded by white activists, petty bourgeois students, non-profiteers, academics, artists and white collar workers of any shade, along with fellow members of the oppressed nations trapped in this same web; your nations proletariat are surely nowhere to be found. The phrase “fools' paradise” was used in the book “False Nationalism, False Internationalism” to describe the “amateurish mis-estimation” of some Black revolutionaries or activists that, “directly sprang from a neo-colonial awe of the magical power of white people—and the neo-colonial error that white people are the answer to the problems of the New Afrikan Nation.”46 Joining these sections in their external approach to the oppressed masses, be it charity disguised as “serving the people” or attempts at convincing your own nation of the wonders of integration, or any other variant of petty bourgeois ideology (and there are many); it all results in further dividing you from your own nation’s revolutionary base. Not only that, but you are actively engaging in the misdirection of your nation; into the hands of the oppressor nation and their reformist/revisionist not-so-fun-house of mirrors.
If you genuinely seek liberation for yourself and your nation, you must proletarianize; which means integrating with your own nations “lowest and deepest.” This doesn't mean occasionally visiting them by standing outside of projects and community centers just to give them a “quick pitch” on the need for revolution like some Mormon. The more difficult it is to remold, the more correct it probably is. Proletarianization means working, living, eating, being with the lowest and deepest masses until the objective distinctions between you and the masses dissipate and the difference that remains is the subjective resolve to struggle with your nation around the question of revolution; within your conditions. Given your internal relation to the oppressed nation, your level of revolutionary consciousness will ultimately determine if you are up to the task. This is what is required for being internal to your nation’s revolutionary movement and development; a direction away from claiming easy victory through neo-colonial acceptance. Tani and Sera point out:
The millions of the Black proletariat have every skill and physical resource need to sustain the liberation struggle—knowledge, cars, arms, apartments, intelligence, access to technology, etc.—plus the life-or-death need to find an answer outside Babylon [the US empire].47
Scientific socialism understands that the objective conditions of the masses mostly determine their subjective development. So there will be sections of the Black petty bourgeois that will not proletarianize for various reasons while still being won over to the revolutionary struggle that is lead by a Black Maoist party. Proletarian nationalism accounts for the importance of the progressive sections of the oppressed nations petty bourgeois, with all their skills and resources, in the framework of the internal united front. Their class position, does not permit them to be the leading base of the party. These sections of the Black nation will objectively proletarianize decisively through the Black nation’s socialist construction toward communism; which creates the conditions for the subjective proletarianization needed to create a classless society. In the case of the Black petty bourgeois out there that like their position yet love their people, they should be prepared to give their full effort to the Black revolutionary movement lead by the proletariat; you can keep the shallow comforts, for now. Either way, the oppressed nations’ petty bourgeois will find that, as the contradictions sharpen in the face of a growing revolutionary movement, their privileges will begin to be revealed for what they are. Your position and comfort is predicated on ensuring the dominance of the oppressor nations over the oppressed. Deeper commitments to the oppressor will be required to maintain your class position. You will have to choose a side.
The Land Question: Beyond Feudal Relations
White communists in general make it seem as if the only land question, the only time it is ever relevant, is as a solution to an agrarian struggle. However, the land question is also a national question; a solution to the national struggle in the era of imperialism. Palestinians do not have a feudal relationship with Israel, yet they seek a solution to the land question. Even if they were all removed from their land, the solution would still be revolutionary struggle towards solving their land question. This is because an aspect of their nation and their national oppression is around land. The Palestinians once owned and worked the land and now they don't own it and can only work for Israel or by its permission. The removal of them from their land is an aspect of their oppression/exploitation and struggle. The resolving of the contradiction requires the solving of the land question; of owning their land anew as a nation (under the leadership of the proletariat). It's not limited to giving the masses individual plots of land as agrarian revolutions did. Palestine under imperialism doesn't own their land as an aspect of the class struggle between oppressor and oppressed nations. Therefore a national liberation struggle fought by an oppressed nation requires the struggle to “Free the Land”48 because the oppressor struggles to keep it from them for the purposes of imperialist expansion, exploitation and oppression.
And so it is with the Black nation within the US empire. We are an oppressed nation which means we are economically and politically dominated by the oppressor nation. Gaining political and economic control of our nation is a prerequisite for our liberation and land is the base in which to build that. This is a matter of political economy. The historical development of the Black nation has been toiling on the land and creating large amounts of capital for the oppressor; followed by being dispossessed from that land by the oppressor to keep us from having our own land, and furthering our exploitation. Just because we have been removed from the historical site of slavery and sharecropping doesn't remove the struggle for that land. Just as Palestinians being forced out of Palestine doesn't mean “no backsies.”
While You're At It: Exploiting Labor and Oppression
In the Black nation our “integration” within the US empire is similar to the Palestinians; we are cheap labor to be brought in from the ghettos as needed. The maintenance of this social relation with our oppressor requires our petty bourgeois serve the oppressor nation and our masses be dispossessed as needed by capital. After Hamas unleashed a heavy blow to Israel it had to call nearly 10% of its Israeli workforce back into the armed forces. Fortunately for Israel, the US will (for now) up the military aid to Israel in order to ensure the needs of these soldiers and their effectiveness. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of low paying jobs in Israel are held by Palestinians who live in the West Bank. This “war” of Israel killing tens of thousands of Palestinians is leading to a situation for their economy similar to the second intifada, where a lack of Palestinian workers greatly reduced Israel's economic growth. The Palestinians in their open-air prisons have been Israel’s reserve army of labor, in a labor market that has little wiggle room. As far back as 1988,
...Palestinians' wages are 50-60% of those of Israeli workers, with almost no work rights. All this provides a bonanza of profits for the Israeli bourgeoisie, and has created conditions where Israeli Jews are less and less often to be found in dirty, low-paying jobs and are more typically foremen, middle-level clerical workers, etc.49
While Israel more directly restricts Palestinians from higher wage jobs, the US and its consolidated counter-revolutionary tactics has different methods. Underdevelopment of Black communities, elite universities with selective tokenism measures, mass incarceration, the list goes on. The Palestinian working class have gone on a general strike in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem recently in the face of their oppression by Israel; the Black nation, a large section of the low-wage workforce, should take note. Considering that Black people’s income within the US today has just caught up to white people’s income from the year 1985,50 it is apparent that our position as an oppressed nation serves the oppressor as a means of readily exploitable labor for the oppressor nation’s development. Although, within the middle to lower wage jobs there appears to be no distinction between who holds these positions; not only is the Black nation over-represented in the lower wage jobs given their population, but Black people on average get paid less than white people across every single occupation. When looking at all management occupations white people are the overwhelming majority in those positions exceeding their average in most positions.51 What’s becoming clear looking at Per Capita Money Income along with weekly earnings reports from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is that capitalism in the US is paying whites, which make up 249,250,000 people, more money for the same job as they do Blacks who make up (and this is most likely an under-count) 48,363,000 people. This shows that capitalist logic that intends to pit the bourgeoisie against the entire working class, in the unquenchable search for surplus-value, seems to have some sort of limitation in bringing the wages of white workers down to the level of Black and Latino people. The only explanation is a more principal contradiction within this dynamic; the social relation between oppressor-oppressed nations in production.
Although economic determinations are the base of oppression, they are not the full extent. Similarly to the way that direct material benefit for the US is not the sole reason for Israel’s continued funding, Israel and the US apply costly measures to ensure the position of their oppressed nations. The level of the class-national struggle, imperialist-rivalry, and maintaining imperialism are also factors that play into the decisions and actions of the oppressor nation. However since they are capitalists, they do find a way to make a capital return even in the most insidious ways. So while Palestine is exploited through labor, their very oppression is mined for advancements in the commodification of counter-revolution and surveillance. The US made Israel an imperialist outpost in the Middle East and in turn Israelis use their perpetually developing settler practice to share with the US police, “defense” and intelligence forces, how to oppress and surveil oppressed nations. The connection between the Black nation and Palestinians here becomes personal. US police forces go to Israel to learn from the best oppressors in the business; surveillance practices on the Palestinian people can be found deployed in Black communities all over the US. The connection between Cop City and Israel has yet to be fully explored. Yet as we have seen recently, despite all these advancements and claims of expertise on the matter, an oppressed people will always find a way to strike back at the enemy. The acts of Hamas should give every oppressed nation the assurance, and oppressor nations the frightful reminder; that no oppressor nation is untouchable.
Sill Israel has made material advancements; its main export being “defense” technology, from weaponry to surveillance. Their tech industry is driven in this direction. In fact, Israel tests new weapons on the Palestinian population, film it, and use it as advertisements to sell the weapons to other countries. Israel sells so many weapons to Ukraine that Zelensky plans to go to Israel to show his support for the massacre of Palestinians.
And although this has always been the case (Silicon Valley itself is a manifestation of US defense funding), increasingly, the defense industry is finding competition from Silicon Valley. After a hiatus of focusing on consumer products and utilizing these devices of mass surveillance for "consumer targeting" and the occasional NSA collab; The Valley is going back to its roots. This means the large white liberal tech community which could pride itself in its “progressive” politics, will be even more like the foot soldiers of the gendarme state of Israel. The artificial division between “civilian” and “combatant” within the imperialist oppressor nations is beginning to vanish. Tech companies that have mostly been on the pentagons budget for cloud computing and other services are now increasingly seeing opportunities to profit in hardware where traditional defense industry players have become sluggish in terms of innovation. The introduction of consumer drones in warfare is an example. The state will be responsible for mitigating this contradiction that is growing between these two industries that once stayed in their own lanes. This is only an expansion of Silicon Valley's collaboration with imperialism. Their monopoly on software has continued to be advanced towards the oppression of nations; continually finding ways to surveil and censor the progressive and revolutionary sections of the oppressed nations. The liberal petty bourgeois orientation of the majority of the white collar tech workers will either need to be dispensed with under this new reality or struggled with. If these workers are at the helm; their struggle will make an useless attempt to hold back capital’s insatiable drive for further enumeration; through calls for “peace” and “transparency.”
Stop Fronting
With all the movements around the world taking place in support of Palestine it is easy to think that all of these “solidarity” and “support” actions will spontaneously amount to a solution; where a vague amount of mounting pressure forces the US empire and Israel to capitulate. This however in no way ensures decisive victory, because victory is attained through the oppressed nations themselves consciously wielding their own internal development as a means to relate to all the contradictions in a way that advances the revolution. During the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese Communist Party was flooded with the actions of other nations in support of their cause. Here you had a small oppressed nation taking on the paper tiger that is the US; and making gains. The white nations progressives were so inspired and radicalized (this is the inception of “the New Left”) by the acts of the revolutionary struggle of the Vietnamese, that it woke up an entire generation to political life and growing anti-American sentiment. They began to support the Vietnamese Communist Party in droves; started supporting other oppressed nations engaged in armed struggle (of course far less supported the armed struggles internal to the US empire) and some even struggled out the idea of how to practice revolutionary defeatism through armed means. There were those who supported “peace” but others who supported the peoples war; and still large sections of the New Left that were pro-imperialist.
You also had the Black nation that was largely against the war. Black soldiers sent to Vietnam dissenting in large numbers, refusing to go with the imperialist program, even going so far as to engage in mutiny. The US, seeing the uprising within the Black ranks, realized this growing internal threat might only be stopped with the end of the war. The Black nation identified that they had the same enemy as the Vietnamese did. On the home front, soon after the Vietnam War ended, the anti-war white activists mostly disappeared and the national liberation struggles in the US continued to grow. But even with the budding solidarity of the white nation, and the true internationalism of the Black nation through supporting Vietnam by fighting for its own liberation was in full swing;
U.S. solidarity was never seen by the Vietnamese as a substitute for educating and mobilizing their own people to military victory. Even at the height of the U.S. anti-war storm, the Vietnamese comrades never even suggested that liberation would come any other way than through Peoples War. It was their own strategic understanding of self-reliance as primary that became the foundation for successful internationalism. International solidarity not only requires correct leadership, but cannot be a substitute for self-reliance on both sides. This is in distinct contrast to the prevailing attitude within the U.S. Empire now.52
The various united fronts can be immensely valuable to the revolutionary struggle when they are in proper relation to the revolutionary movement. When a Maoist party sets the program of what support and solidarity is required, the broad and external united front can begin to set out to achieve those aims; when it is in line with their internal revolutionary development. This is the basis for external relations between revolutionaries and progressives of different nations to engage in a united front that preserves the internal decisiveness of each nation; while being able to coordinate how internationalism can serve the collective aim of world revolution. Because when the white masses see the struggle as “solved,” move on to the next “issue” of interest, or simply tire of the matter entirely; the struggle must continue. We need to rebuild united fronts to have correct orientations to proletarian nationalism and correct relations between internal and external forces. Only a Maoist party can navigate the contradictions between the friends and enemies internal to Palestine in a way that utilizes the law of contradiction;53 to know when to unite sections and classes of the masses for victory over external forces and when to struggle against those sections and classes. To maintain the internal development and decisiveness of their nation while also relating to the external forces that are friends and enemies correctly. An enemy in one set of conditions can become a friend in another. All revolutionaries and reactionaries in Palestine will relate to the proletarian leadership of a Maoist party accordingly; alliances forming and breaking away as needed.
The law of contradiction is meant to go deeply into the different contradictions, to the point where what is internal at one moment becomes external in the next through a thorough analysis of different contradictions. Within the imperialist contradiction for example; the Black petty bourgeois are internal to the oppressed Black nation and so can be friends of the revolution, yet they should remain external to a Black Maoist party that must remain proletarian so as to be the leadership of the entire Black nation towards revolution. In this capacity, the Black petty bourgeois are part of the internal united front developed by the Party for the purpose of advancing the armed revolution. However, because they are internal to the Black nation, they are able to proletarianize (which must not only be done subjectively but also objectively) through the struggle, and then be able to become party members. Meanwhile the white masses are solidly external to the Black nation and must be related to as external forces that can be friends or enemies of the revolution. External friends should be related to by a more broad and external united front that will have its own development, but which a Black Maoist party can attempt to influence. Oppressed nations within the US empire that have their own internal united front and party will be the most essential to be in coalition with. The enemies of the revolution must also be understood so as to struggle correctly against them and ensure they remain outside of the party if they are internal to the Black nation and are dealt with accordingly as external forces otherwise. Internal factors are the basis for change and external factors are the conditions for that change. A Black Maoist party's leadership of the Black nation must remain the basis for the revolutionary movement, correctly relating to the external conditions in order to achieve victory. This has been a hard fought lesson after decades of muddling the relations between all the various sections and classes of our nation and the oppressor nation.
The oppressed nations progressive and revolutionary masses within the US, without internally developing movements of their own, often find themselves aimlessly “supporting” each other in a way that leads to nowhere. These are the grounds in which the white activists thrive; but false internationalism happens frequently enough among oppressed nations themselves. Often what takes place is that the most consolidated movements and organizations of an oppressed nation, find other oppressed nations masses gravitating towards them. Usually, the organizations of oppressed nations who garner support for their nation of origin’s revolutionary armed struggles (sometimes lead by a Maoist party), seem to be themselves revolutionary. This draws other oppressed nations progressives and revolutionaries to them as they call for armed struggle abroad. Yet they are not automatically themselves revolutionary; but are often full of the petty bourgeoisie, locked themselves in false internationalism. They and their false internationalist allies confuse the united front they engage, in support of the revolution in their home country, for revolutionary practice itself; not understanding the need for armed struggle within the US. How can an oppressed nation within the US actually assess if another oppressed nation’s movement is truly revolutionary, without having its own revolutionary movement lead by its proletariat? There can be no basis for measurement of revolutionary direction without rigorous internal revolutionary practice. It is right and necessary for oppressed nations to struggle together towards revolution, however internationalism requires the conscious wielding of your own nation towards revolution so as to build and relate to other nations correctly. An oppressed nation can't offer true internationalism without a consolidated movement of its nation to offer this internationalism. Here is an example of the state of the Japanese communist movement in the US, during the era of Japanese concentration camps in the US, to solidify this point:
We say that internationalism begins with self-reliance. There is a widespread trend of thought that really believes the reverse, that international solidarity is needed to compensate for weakness. This is what Japanese-Amerikan communists (most of them youth with little political education) believed in the 1930s. They thought that their people would be protected by the broad alliances woven by the Communist Party USA; that their small numbers were compensated for by joining the masses of liberal and radical settlers. This illusion was deliberately encouraged by the CPUSA, to be sure. Japanese-Amerikan communists joined the picket lines protesting Japan’s invasion of China, boycotting Japanese silk and demanding an end to scrap iron sales to the Japanese war industry—“Silk Stockings Kill Chinese”. Japanese-Amerikan communists were united with Filipino and Chinese brothers and sisters in building the CIO Cannery Workers Union on the West Coast in 1936- 1938. On 11 July 1937 Jack Shirai, a New York restaurant worker, fell in the defense of Madrid. A Japanese-Amerikan revolutionary gave his life to help the Spanish people fight fascism. In doing all this young Japanese-Amerikan communists thought that they were building internationalism. But as the troops herded into the trains into the camps, they learned the hard way that nothing had been built. Internationalism is not a crutch for beggars, as some U.S. Revolutionaries today think it is. Others could not aid their resistance if it had never been built into a real campaign of struggle. Shamefully, Japanese-Amerikan communism had never prepared to lead any program in their defense.54
Masses from the Black nation individually going out to support Palestine is not in-itself incorrect; yet it reveals a lack of understanding of true internationalism or the actual necessity of revolutionary struggle for the Black nation against the US. The latter has more impact than a thousand settler-run “solidarity” marches.
It Has Happened Here
For one; the reason the Black nation is able to correctly assess the value of proletarian nationalism as the solution to false nationalism, false internationalism (FIFN) is our direct struggle with FIFN, being in the center of imperialism. The sharpness of the contradiction is great and is a huge barrier to our work. We have first-hand experience of the oppressor actively engaging in the control of our revolutionary movements from a revisionist angle; from the “solidarity” of the white activists to the “revolutionary leadership” of the white pseudo-Maoists. It is our proximity to the oppressor that muddles the internal-external aspects of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction. Because the white pseudo-Maoists can get in close proximity to the oppressed nations, they think themselves internal to their revolutionary character; they confuse spacial closeness with being part of the proletariat. You can find white pseudo-Maoists all over the US going to the projects and “struggling” with the oppressed nations; always remaining in the eyes of the Black nation, at best as well-to-do white people and at worst the only example of “communists” they've seen lately. Palestinians in the US who are engaging in actions of support for their own nation are grappling with this phenomenon, as white petty bourgeois Jewish activists are encircling the movement and diminishing its revolutionary potential. Palestinian youth too (in Palestine and abroad) have been influenced by post-modernism and its unscientific and idealist methods; an internal struggle we share with them. In Palestine there are academics and artists that are running an imperialist-funded art program for youth, where they are claiming that the 3rd intifada should be “cultural” (sigh). So Palestine experiences external forces of support, but must ensure that they are related to on a basis of an external united front and not internal to the revolutionary struggle to liberate Palestine. The liberation of Palestine can be in no other hands but the Palestinian people. Calls to the UN, to human rights, to the Hague, to peace movements around the world; none of them will be the basis for Palestine's liberation.
The spark to a popular uprising in Palestine on December 8, 1987 was “[t]he killing of four Palestinian workers by a Zionist military truck.”55 It was limited in political direction and was spontaneous yet still dealt a real blow to the idea of Israels strength. If this wasn't similar enough to the Black nations rebellions against the US empire, the Palestinian masses also confronted the fact that; “[i]n the absence (or weakness) of this subjective force [a communist vanguard party], the struggle of the masses is liable to be limited and contained by reactionary forces.”56 As we have seen in practice during the George Floyd Rebellion, the oppressor will begin to make big promises of reform exactly when the movement becomes too much for them to handle, so that they can bide their time and regain control. Unfortunately for Israel and a foreshadowing for the US; it doesn't work for long.
In the attempt to build a “New Palestinian”57 (one that is focused on individual interests and not their nation) the US showed Israel the ropes with a tested strategy of adopting an “open economic policy” like allowing “a large number of Palestinians to work in the occupied interior” or providing financial incentives, that were supposed to bring the Palestinians away from military activity in the fear of losing their “gains.” The US is probably trying to also teach Israel how to use tokenistic “diversity” within their government as a shield against any criticisms about being a “racist institution” or apartheid state. Look at Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary; him being Black is supposed to be some implicit example of the unity of oppressor-oppressed nations within the US. So that when he collaborates with the Israeli administration, on behalf of the US empire, in the strategic-planning of murdering Palestinians, it gives off the most cynical air of “equality.” How many petty bourgeois Arab Israelis or opportunistic Palestinians would answer this call? Until then, the PA played its false nationalist part in trying to make the Palestinian economy dependent on being beggars for aid to the international community. Their plan went:
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have long sought to create a “New Palestinian”; a Palestinian who is far removed from their cause, whose concern is making money and accepts living under occupation, and whose only recourse to resolving conflicts is “peace”. Israel wanted peaceful Palestinians who would accept security coordination as a way to preserve a fake “Palestinian state.”58
We see how so many city workers are Black, how Black people fill up the prisons not only as prisoners, but also as correction officers; giving those Black people a fear of losing their “gains.” We have food stamps, welfare, and subsidized housing dangled in front of us; just enough to survive, giving us the impression of freedom disguised as choice, and requiring a bureaucratic run-around to attain that eats up much of our time. Keeping us underdeveloped until capital comes in to remove us. These reforms don't keep us complacent for long; as with a new generation of Palestinians that,
realized that resistance and armed struggle could achieve results...This generation grew up seeing the Israeli settlements surrounding them, growing and prospering, while they live in the ghettos besieged by enemy soldiers who impose arbitrary blockades whenever they please.59
Black people experience the effects of gentrification which amount to a manifestation of the development-underdevelopment contradiction in imperialism. Black communities are starved of resources while taxes and surplus-value are siphoned out; leading to the underdevelopment of these communities. When development (in part through the capital stolen from the internally oppressed nations) occurs, this is the clear sign of impending dispossession of the oppressed nations within that community. The police even more severely oppress the Black community to make way for the incoming settlers; drawing lines in the sand to protect the fledgling coffee shops and art galleries. They try to sell gentrification as underdevelopment pending development, when in fact for the oppressed nations it's underdevelopment pending dispossession. The new generation of Palestinians and the Black nation see that these reforms from the oppressor facilitated their continued underdevelopment and the enemies development; a unity of opposites. Some will point to economically depressed white communities as a rebuttal to this dialectic. Yet it is clear their potential to develop depends on their nation deploying imperialist capital and exploiting oppressed nations. Government development programs team up with the bourgeoisie to deploy capital in these communities, as evidenced by the places that are benefiting from the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. While the introduction of oppressed nations into white communities have been an opportunity for the oppressor nations to develop. Those white activists who think themselves in the service of “immigrant rights” often make the argument to their nation that immigrants are good for the economy. What they mean is that the white nation can develop through the exploitation of the oppressed nations. Armed struggle is needed to break this chain.
Speaking of armed struggle; what will it look like when white supporters of Palestinian liberation, who prefer imperialist controlled peace, transfer the essence of their limited and conditional support to their own conditions within the US empire? Most won't support Black self-determination within the US empire, but are quick to take to the streets to demand “equality” and continually vapid calls for justice which cannot exist under imperialism between oppressor-oppressed nations. Given the orientation of the “peace” and “ceasefire” movement among the activist petty bourgeois, it could be expected that when the Black nation engages in armed struggle against the US empire, a large section of the white activists will deploy their petty bourgeois line based on the relative strength of the Black nation’s forces. The experiences of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) of the 70s gives us much needed insight on this matter. Given a choice between the Black Panther Party (BPP), which only threatened armed struggle while focusing heavily on garnering white support and legal campaigns, and the BLA, that was actively engaging in armed struggle; the white activists chose the BPP.60 The BLA, although they mainly neglected the concept of a vanguard party, was a leap in the development of the Black nation’s revolutionary practice. With our nation’s own lessons in mind along with the practice of the Palestinian struggle, some things become clear. If our level of armed struggle is weak, they will scream for the need of a humanitarian ceasefire because the brutality of the oppressor (both settler militia and government sanctioned; and the eventual collaboration of the two) will be apparent. If we are strong and able to inflict damage on the enemy, they will scream for peace through appeals to the “left” in the government, some UN sanctioned body or other imperialist third-party. The entire oppressor nation will work tirelessly, in their own ways, to separate the “combatants” from the “civilians.” Black petty bourgeois false internationalists and false nationalists alike will be elevated by the oppressor nation as the “real leadership” of the Black nation; in opposition to the revolutionary movement and its vanguard. This is the limit of the white activists, left to their own development. In and of themselves, they will not support the Black nations struggle for decisive victory over the enemy; they will condemn “both sides.” This intermediate force can begin to support the revolution of the oppressed nations when they have the correct external relation to a Black Maoist party and an internal relation to a white Maoist party of their progressive petty bourgeois that follows the line of revolutionary defeatism. The latter will be difficult because the white progressive petty bourgeois are too busy engaging in false internationalism and thinking they are the ones to lead the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations. A white Maoist Party will only be possible at a certain stage of the oppressed nations liberation struggle, after they have the correct relation to the oppressed nations’ revolutionary movement. This doesn't mean white progressives have to wait to organize their nation; but that their revolutionary base will not exist until that certain stage is met. Yet, if the Black nation is unable to pull itself away from both the activist or progressive sections of the white nation, it will never even begin to build the revolutionary movement the Black nation needs; straddled between the reformist policies of the activists and the revisionist lines of the “progressives.”
A Correct Lens: Cure to Double Visions
There are many oppressed nations masses within the US empire that are taking to the streets in support of Palestine, from the petty bourgeois to the proletariat. These masses have the internal conditions needed to develop this struggle against the US empire towards Palestine into a struggle against the US empire itself, from within; once they understand their relation to Palestine as sharing the universal and revolutionary aspect of being an oppressed nation within the imperialist contradiction. The oppressed nations, through practice, are gaining the consciousness that they too are an oppressed nation within this country and they too will struggle for liberation once they internalize Maoism in general and proletarian nationalism in particular. This path however, is developing through a struggle internally between the oppressed nations’ petty bourgeois and proletariat.
The handpicked Black leadership like Ta-Nehisi Coates, has gone so far as to “bite the hand” somewhat and come out in support of Palestine. However, he says it’s a matter of “segregation,” “morality” and “evil” that is at play and that the “vote” which is so important to the Black petty bourgeois (even if only symbolically) is not afforded to Palestinians.61 So he's for integration for the Palestinians as much as he is for integration of the Black nation within the US empire through his tired rhetoric on reparations and non-violence. He is correct when he points out that there is a commonality between the struggles of the Palestinians and US-bound Black nation; he just looks at it through his petty bourgeois lens (ideology). Black proletarian nationalists see the similarities; albeit through a dialectical materialist and thus revolutionary lens. And this is a universality of the oppressed nations in the world; the battle for leadership of the national liberation struggle between the petty bourgeois and the proletariat.
The struggle of the Palestinian masses is not to pressure the Israeli government into a two-state solution or integration into Israel, but to achieve decisive self-determination. The petty bourgeois leadership of the Palestinian Authority however, still “view the insurrection as an additional factor for convincing the Zionists and imperialists to negotiate”62 with them. Oh so similar to the methods deployed by the petty bourgeois revolutionary nationalists of the Black nation like the Republic of New Afrika (RNA)63 of the late 1960s, early 70s, that continually saw the rebelling masses merely as a threat to hold over the oppressor. Both the PA and groups in the tradition of the RNA, see their leadership role not as developing the spontaneous rebellions of their nation towards conscious revolution, but as a struggle they could promise to mitigate if the oppressor would just give them the capital needed to do so. The decisive factor for petty bourgeois leadership is not the masses, but reparations and other forms of “start-up capital” from the oppressor nation that they can use to “develop” their nation into their idea of liberation.64 In actuality what the petty bourgeois intend to do, whether they are aware of it or not, is to develop their class on the backs of their nation’s masses. What practice has shown is that petty bourgeois leadership such as this, are not only completely rejected by the oppressor nations, but they are rejected by their own nation. What the PA and groups like the RNA have in common is that they both appeal to external forces to achieve their aims and not the revolutionary development and decisiveness of the masses in their nation. This is something that can only be done by the leadership of a Maoist party wielding proletarian nationalism in the era of imperialism.
But this correct revolutionary line comes from the development of the oppressed nations’ revolutionary practice, even through this phase of bourgeois nationalism. Mao was a revolutionary nationalist and even an anarchist (see there's hope for you yet) before he was a communist. The Chinese national struggle was splitting between bourgeois nationalism and the seed of proletarian nationalism through putting Leninism into practice within an oppressed nation in the era of imperialism. Contrary to the white communist interpretation, revolutionary nationalism within the oppressed nations is not a deviation from communist ideology, but has been a prerequisite within the two-line struggle of an oppressed nation towards internalizing, applying and developing Maoist ideology. Proletarian nationalism comes from the revolutionary practice of an oppressed nation; one of the stages in this process has been bourgeois nationalism for those revolutionary nationalists. The limits are overcome through practice, where proletarian ideology can be internalized. We no longer have to continue this protracted bourgeois nationalist stage or idealist false internationalism; Maoism has synthesized the lessons of proletarian nationalism. This is not like the white communists think; as idealists, they negate the Marxist theory of knowledge by thinking that theory alone can create the conditions for a revolutionary communist party; which for them always builds a firmly oppressor nation organization shrouded in revisionism. The oppressed masses develop revolutionary theory out of their practice with what was incorrect in their struggle for liberation. As Lenin has said;
Capitalism is not so harmoniously built that various sources of rebellion can immediately merge of their own accord, without reverses and defeats. On the other hand, the very fact that revolts do break out at different times, in different places, and are of different kinds, guarantees a wide scope and depth to the general movement; but it is only in premature, individual, sporadic and therefore unsuccessful revolutionary movements that the masses gain experience, acquire knowledge, gather strength, and get to know their real leaders, the socialist [revolutionary communist] proletarians, and in this way prepare for the general onslaught.65
The new generation of Palestinians have made advancements in their practice through the historical development of their struggle, attempting to coordinate the actions of different factions; struggling against the factionalization of their movement towards consolidation. They also advanced their understanding of the need for clandestinity; “of mystery and misdirection.”66 The oppressed masses within the US empire have continually shown their revolutionary character through their liberation struggles while the oppressor nations petty bourgeois activists have always tailed these struggles even when they have attempted to lead them; trying to drag the revolutionary masses down with them. The leap from bourgeois nationalism, when your nation has no actual bourgeoisie, is proletarian nationalism. We must not be so nationally-oriented that we neglect our internationalism and class struggle within our own nation; but we must be nationally-oriented enough to have the internal decisiveness to unite our nation towards revolutionary victory and prevent the oppressor nation from seizing control of our struggle, leading it down the reactionary path.
Palestine and You
Palestine has shown us not only through its attack on Israel by Hamas, but through its continued armed struggle since 1918 through various armed groups, that its development towards scientific socialism and armed revolution can be realized. The Palestinian masses will continue to strike back against Israel. What has yet to be internalized by some of the oppressed nations across the world is that they are already engaged in a protracted war against the oppressor nations; it is just one-sided at the moment. “It is past time to leave the paradise. Past time to master the real world of protracted war, with all its complexities and deceptions.”67 This is not occurring by some collaboration with Israeli “progressives,” or with the promise of the white activists abroad and their “solidarity movements;” but through their own internal development that correctly relates to the external forces that include those who would drag them down to being beggars for peace. The oppressed nations are learning everyday that the overthrow of the oppressor is the only way towards liberation; that what is missing is to be conscious of the already in action protracted war and meet it with protracted peoples war. The idea of spontaneous “autonomous and decentralized” armed struggle must be overcome.
The resolve of the Palestinian masses that has inspired many, is what should motivate every oppressed nation locked within the “prison-house of nations” (the US empire) to respond to their own oppression in the same way. “Thus, understanding the enemy can only develop while simultaneously struggling to understand ourselves and overturning our bad politics.”68 We continue to find ourselves, with the aid of our petty bourgeois, chained to the white activists and their orientation towards “integration” (within their movements or within their state) and “non-violence” (through calls for peace or revisionist communist ideology) that only serves to maintain their control and domination over us. The reactionary vanguard of the oppressor nation within the state realize what many of the oppressed nations, in the US particularly, have at times forgotten; that revolutionary practice will never stop. Tani and Sera explain:
In other words, the professionals in the State security apparatus recognize that revolutionary discontent is continually being reborn and sustained within the masses, and therefore that its total eradication is not practical. Their long-range strategy is thus one of controlling and indirectly managing the inevitable revolutionary opposition. That is, they recognize and adapt in their own way to the necessarily protracted nature of the conflict. For this information is their primary necessity, the alpha and omega of counterinsurgency.69
Maoism in general and proletarian nationalism in particular sets the path to a revolution that ensures our internal decisiveness and revolutionary leadership, to break through this habitual attempt by the entire oppressor nation to halt or slow down the revolutionary machine. There are oppressed revolutionary masses within the solidarity movement, but they will be lost to false internationalism without Maoism. If you want to support Palestine, the best way to do that is to fight for revolution through protracted peoples war against the enemy you both have in common; the US empire.
Footnotes
1 We aren't going to focus on the grim details of the horrors Israel is committing on Palestinians, because so often these are deployed by liberals in order to “humanize” the Palestinian or bring them sympathy. They think it's enough to explain the ways the Palestinians are suffering, and not why they are being put through these forms of oppression. It is assumed that those who are reading this are aware of the atrocities, so we can focus on the causes and the solutions. If you need to be convinced of Palestinian humanity and base your feelings towards them on the level of pain inflicted, you could stop reading right now.
2 For a deeper look into the lessons from the George Floyd Rebellion, read both the 2020 summation “2020 Division” and our introduction “When The Fire Goes Out.”
3 From here on, the "Black nation" is referring to the Black nation within the US empire.
4 For months after the Alabama Brawl, the Black masses collectively united around the actions of those from our nation that took it upon themselves to defend their own (many didn't know each other personally) and beat whitey's ass. From then on, every slight “racial” moment from whitey had Black people looking at each other silently, waiting to see if it would be their “Alabama moment.” It felt like retribution; a sentiment that will continually rise up within us until our revolutionary victory.
5 Nur Masalha, “Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History” (London: Zed Books Ltd, 2018) goes deeply into this history that goes as far back as 1300 BC; (this section referenced this text heavily). It challenges the Biblical record as pure myth in terms of Zionist claims. Using a scientific and “bottom up” approach to history to explain the development of ancient Palestine, beyond its existence as the “conquered” within subsequent empires; Masalha explores its internal forces. Masalha's perspective on the imperialist dialectic in Palestine however, often veers into post-modernism; rejecting how contradictions develop as a unity of opposites.
6 “The toponymic use of the name Judah dates from the 8th century and refers to the region of the southern highlands, foothills and adjacent steppe lands only at some stage in the course of 8th –early 6th century BC. Similarly, the name Israel exists first in the 9th century BC and is used until the 4th quarter of the 8th century BC, when this name gives way to the name of the Assyrian province of Samerina.” – Ibid., 37.
7 As the recently released “Road-Map to Black Liberation” (available on our website) makes clear; “some nations can be an oppressor nation and an oppressed nation, depending on the particular relation to a given nation.” Revisionists make this out to be so complicated so as to discount the idea of this dialectic; but dialectics is always supposed to look at the relations between two aspects. We should always look to how given nations relate to each other to understand their position within the imperialist dialectic; case by case. If you are new to revolutionary theory the “Road-Map to Black Liberation” is a strong starting point.
8 Walter Rodney, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2011).
9 V.K. Sin, "Israel: Imperialism's Attack Dog in the Middle East" in A World To Win 1988/11 (London: World to Win, 1988), 15.
10 V.I. Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2022), 32.
11 The holocaust was not some conspiracy constructed by the Zionists for the establishment of Israel. Yet it is apparent that it provided the conditions for the Zionists to speed up their already-in-motion efforts of seizing parts of Palestine in order to begin their process of expansion. 9/11 shows us that reactionaries never let a crisis go to waste towards their goals. “Ben Gurion, long the Prime Minister of Israel, set forth the Zionists' priorities: ‘If I knew that it could be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel], then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’” – V.K. Sin, “Israel: Imperialism's Attack Dog in the Middle East” in A World To Win 1988/11 (London: World to Win, 1988), 11.
12 Theodore Herzel's own words; “We are going to Palestine as an expedition on behalf of civilisation. Ours is the mission of spreading Europe's ethical code out of the Euphrates.” – Ibid., 13.
13 From here on, “white activists” will be used to refer to “white petty bourgeois activists.”
14 Frank Barat, Noam Chomsky, Illan Pappe, “On Palestine” (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015), 109.
15 There is an insistence that the left-oriented media has on giving the mic to Palestinian artists and academics who focus on their poems and pontificate in response to the genocide of their people. This is what's called false internationalism; the white activists picking their champion among the oppressed nation that is tolerable to their interests of “peace” at all costs. Despite what the post-modernists think; the pen can be mighty, only when backed up by a revolutionary class with a sword.
16 The term “progressive” throughout this writing is used to define those sections of the masses that are receptive and willing to follow the leadership of the revolutionary masses. Through struggle, and given conditions, they can become part of the revolutionary masses. The manner in which these progressives participate depends on their relations to imperialism.
17 Frederick Engels, “Anti-Duhring” (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 113.
18 For a more comprehensive analysis on the average individual, read: Ajith, “The Socialist State System” in The New Wave December 2006.
19 For a better understanding of the origin of human rights read, Fredrick Engels, “Morals and Law. Equality” in Anti-Duhring. But in summary: the idea of the equality of humans is “very, very ancient;” but has always in one form or another been conditional. It was always equality within the tribe, the property owning class, or the slave master, etc. Bourgeois societies conception of equality is no less conditional, however it was the first to attempt to span across many nations and across the world, for the purpose of the bourgeoisie's freedom to exploit within and across their own borders. When the bourgeoisie was economically strong yet still fettered to the feudal political system, its need to expand meant the destruction of feudalism so as to have free reign in the creation of capital through the exploitation of the masses. “Trade on a large scale, that is to say, particularly international and, even more so, world trade, requires free owners of commodities who are unrestricted in their movements and as such enjoy equal rights, who may exchange their commodities on the basis of laws that are equal for them all, at least in each particular place.” The bourgeoisie needed a “free” worker and the feudal system could not exist in that way. The bourgeoisie set out to smash feudalism, uniting with the peasants and the budding proletariat to create “equality” but also “the abolition of the feudal privileges...” Because Europe had many states with a developing bourgeoisie, this call for equality gained a general character across all of Central and Western Europe for the benefit of the entire bourgeois class and eventually spanned the entire world via imperialism. This freedom and equality pushed by the bourgeois class was called “human rights.”
20 ibid., 113.
21 Just to clarify, because white pseudo-Maoists like the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR), have revised the three magic weapons to fit their reformist ends, saying they are “mass line, the united front, and the vanguard party,” in their historical summation; “The RCP” in Kites Journal #8. The actual three magic weapons are: the vanguard party, armed struggle, and united front. The essence of these three magic weapons is that they are used by the oppressed nations through their principal struggle against imperialism (the oppressor nations). The revisionism of OCR and Kites more generally (both hella white organizations), is the fact that the advancements of Maoism within the era of imperialism is for the decisive revolutionary aspect; oppressed nations. This revisionism also shines a light as to why the united front is the most focused on and principal part of the struggle for white “Maoist” parties. Their highest form of struggle is movementism and it gains a reactionary flavor when they impose their petty bourgeois orientation on the oppressed nations via a negation of the need for proletarian nationalism. They also use the mass line as a method of negating the internal development of the oppressed nations by claiming they can mobilize the oppressed masses towards “revolution” using this “tool.” The summation of the RCP by the OCR is a glimpse into the limits of the white nations “revolutionary” struggle. The Black nation within the US empire needs its own united front across its nation that is in the service of advancing the armed struggle in which the party decisively wields. OCR and those like them, inversely tries to find the revolution within the united front movement as could be seen in their negation of armed struggle.
22 Mao Tse-Tung, “Get Organized!” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: Vol. 3, (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 143. (our emphasis)
23 Mao Tse-Tung, “Introducing The Communist” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: Vol. 2, (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 263.
24 Atiba, "Afrikan P.O.W.s & the U.N." in Notes from an Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, (Chicago: Spear & Shield Publications, 1977), 12.
25 Atiba, "On Transforming the Colonial/Criminal Mentality" in Notes from an Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, (Chicago: Spear & Shield Publications, 1977), 11.
26 The Communist Party of the Philippines and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) are currently waging people's wars; and in the process showing the other oppressed nations the way through wielding and developing Maoism.
27 “Foxes and wolves usually are of the same breed. They belong to the same family—I think it's called canine. And the difference is that the wolf when he shows you his teeth, you know that he's your enemy; and the fox, when he shows you his teeth he appears to be smiling. But no matter which of them you go with, you end up in the dog house.” – Malcolm X, “A Message to the Grassroots” (November 10, 1963).
28 Hadis Hosseini, “A Vengeful Lion” (Tehran Times, March 2023), Translated by Rookery Press in, “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle: Ibhrahim Al-Nabulsi, A Generation of Bravery, and The Phenomenon of Resistance.” Highly recommend reading the inspiring account of a Palestinian revolutionary for yourself. Much appreciation to Rookery Press and the work they are doing. Their translation of Palestinian writings on their revolutionary struggle should bring further resolve to the oppressed nations of the world. They have other great reads on their site: rookerypress.wordpress.com
29 ibid., 5.
30 Sincerely, the US government.
31 Dalal Zayed, “Rejoice! Israeli Counterinsurgency is Losing” (Al Mayadeen January 2023), Translated by Rookery Press in “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle,” 38.
32 And if you haven't been keeping count of how the US has been getting some of these pieces, the Communist Party of the Philippines lays it out: “Since the 1950s, US imperialism has been the most aggressive. It maintains at least 700 overseas military bases and facilities scattered around the globe. It has eleven aircraft carriers (five times more than any other imperialist power) to project power and hegemony in any part to globe [sic]. It has mounted wars of aggression and intervention in Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Pakistan); the Middle East (support for Israel against Palestine, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan); in Eastern Europe, especially in connivance with the NATO (Yugoslavia, Ukraine); in Africa (Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Liberia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Lybia); and in Latin America (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia). Until the 1980s, the US justified its wars of intervention and aggression by claiming these to be part of the ‘war against communism;’ and since 2001, a decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a ‘war on terror,’” – Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines, “Wage Revolutionary Wars To Fight Imperialist Wars” (October 14-15, 2023).
33 “The Enemy's Contradictions Do Not Disrupt the Unity of the Killers” (Al-Hadf News, March 2023), Translated by Rookery Press in “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle,” 36.
34 Zayed, “Rejoice! Israeli Counterinsurgency is Losing” (Al Mayadeen January 2023), Translated by Rookery Press in “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle,” 40.
35 Just looking at the recent presidential terms, from Trump (2017-2021) to Biden (2021-?), has revealed that the fundamental qualities of an imperialist center remain constant, but take different forms between the preservation of bourgeois democracy and fascism. Both terms carry elements of fascism, however Trump is providing more elements of it in order to preserve (in its own way) what both systems seek to accomplish; the continued domination of the US empire over the world in general and the oppressed in particular. A 2024 victory for Trump, would do away with aspects of bourgeois democracy, reorganize US relationships on the international stage to match this shift, and consolidate the oppressor nation around more fascistic aims; all in an attempt to protect the US empire and the particular capitalist interests that the Republican party represents. While both parties at times represent different factions of the bourgeoisie (although many donate to both parties to varying degrees), and this reflects a contradiction within the bourgeoisie itself; the limit can be found in the need to preserve the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in general. No election victory will result in the Black nation or Palestine being any closer to self-determination.
36 Zayed, "Rejoice! Israeli Counterinsurgency is Losing" (Al Mayadeen January 2023), Translated by Rookery Press in "New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle," 41.
37 “There are both many great empires and many small nations that have gone out of existence, just as many new nations are coming into being this [20th] century...There is no law that says that the U.S. oppressor nation will continue to be a large nation. And there is no law that guarantees that New Afrika or Hawaii or the Navaho nation or any imperialist neo-colony will be independent in the future. This is up to the struggle, and up to the desires of the masses.” – E.Tani and Kae Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” 261.
38 If you have had the good graces to never have dealt with a white pseudo-Maoist, but would like to understand them in order to properly give them the boot when they try to tell you what Maoism “really is;” a reading of “Against Avakianism” by Ajith is recommended. Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) encapsulate a history of white “Maoist” revisionism that is unmatched in the US empire; the remnants of which can be found in the OCR, which carries the torch...so to speak.
39 Ajith, “Against Avakianism” (Utrecht: Foreign Language Press, 2017), 66.
40 Ibid., 67.
41 “The Russian Revolution” by Walter Rodney goes into the ways in which the tsar attempted to mitigate the contradictions within the empire through settler concessions in the form of further oppression and dispossession of the oppressed nations, but due to the backward form of production (semi-feudalism) these attempts failed to meet their aims. This is nothing like the consolidated imperialism we live under today. As long as their are masses from oppressed nations, the oppressor nation masses will be in a unity of opposites with them.
42 NLD Editorial Board, “The Spook That Still Haunts” (Noneya: No Locked Doors Journal, 2023), 5.
43 “Third Worldism” as a theory says that the entire working class in the imperialist centers are exploiting the labor of the oppressed nations and so the imperialist centers have no proletariat; therefore revolution will only take place within the external oppressed nations. It is a form of economism to assert that economic determinations alone are enough to explain the superstructural factors of imperialism; such as the oppression of nations within the US empire. Although there are some oppressed nation activists and organizations within the imperialist centers who claim this title and spend their time “supporting” struggles in externally oppressed nations; this term is often used as a straw-man against revolutionaries from the oppressed nations, within the imperialist centers who work to organize their own nation. Funny enough, the theory of “Third Worldism” was itself first developed and internalized by communists of an oppressor nation (Denmark's Communist Working Circle) well within the era of imperialism (1960s) who were trying to make sense of their nations non-revolutionary character. Instead of going up against the internal development of nations, a historical materialist analysis of the revolutionary development of oppressed nations vs oppressor nations, or the fact that oppressed nations exist within imperialist centers; they just argue against a theory their ilk came up with. Convenient.
44 “Comrade Norman Bethune, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, was around fifty when he was sent by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States to China; he made light of travelling (sic) thousands of miles to help us in our War of Resistance Against Japan.” It is important to note that Mao speaks on the importance of the oppressor and oppressed communists to “support” their respective struggles, and not to summarily be internal to them. Bethune, as a doctor, supported the CCP, but remained a member of the Communist Party of Canada. Mao Tse-Tung, “In Memory of Norman Bethune” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: Vol. 2, (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2021), 315.
45 Atiba, “On Transforming the Colonial/Criminal Mentality” in Notes from an Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, (Chicago: Spear & Shield Publications, 1977), 10.
46 Tani and Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” 316.
47 Ibid., 300.
48 “Free the Land” was the demand of the Republic of New Afrika (Provisional Government), a Black nationalist organization within the US empire which, although heavily petty bourgeois and limited to revolutionary nationalism, was a great contribution to the revolutionary practice of the Black nation. A good analysis of the RNA can be found in – Tani and Sera, “Ch.VIII Black Power &New Afrikan Revolution,” in False Nationalism, False Internationalism.
49 V.K. Sin, “Israel: Imperialism's Attack Dog in the Middle East” in A World To Win 1988/11 (London: World to Win, 1988), 19.
50 CPS Population and Per Capita Money Income, Black People & White People: 1967 to 2021 (accounts for inflation), based on: “U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1968 to 2022 Annual Social and Economic Supplements.”
51 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2020.
52 For a more in-depth look at the ways in which the Vietnam War helped shape the development of the liberation struggles and solidarity movements within the US empire, read – Tani and Sera, “Ch.VI The Vietnam Catalyst,” in False Nationalism, False Internationalism.
53 Even if you have already read it, read it again: Mao Tse-Tung's “On Practice” & “On Contradiction.” If you get that “Slavoj Zizek Presents” version, you have permission to skip his revisionist introduction. Re-publishers of classic revolutionary texts insist on priming the reader with bourgeois idealist ideology; in the hopes of watering down the main text.
54 Tani and Sera, "False Nationalism, False Internationalism," 92.
55 J.K., “Arab Reaction – The Other Enemy of the Intifada,” in A World To Win 1988/11 (London: World to Win, 1988), 26.
56 Ibid., 27.
57 All the quotes from this paragraph are from: Qasim S. Qassem, “The Nabulsi Generation and the ‘New Palestinian’” (Al-Akhbar, August 2022), Translated by Rookery Press in “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle.”
58 Ibid., 7.
59 Ibid., 8.
60 Tani and Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” has a more in depth analysis on the development of the “autonomous and decentralized” BLA and its continuity and rupture with the BPP and RNA, for better and worse.
61 As for voting; it would only be a method to forestalling a Palestinian revolution by attempting to make non-violence seem like a viable approach to self-determination. An election in Palestine would only be permitted if it will result in the similar fate of the African attempt at liberal democracy. In fact, Hamas would most likely win an election in Palestine today; furthering the impossibility of any imperialist “recognizing” the results. Not to mention that if voting was recognized by the imperialists, Palestinians would overwhelmingly vote for self-determination, something the imperialists would like to avoid. Concessions from Israel will become prevalent only for the purpose of creating the illusion of a non-violent possibility. Just as Israel speaks about a ceasefire only resulting in an opportunity for Hamas to regroup; any reforms from Israel towards Palestine serve the purpose of controlling again the means of oppression of the Palestinian people.
62 J.K., “Arab Reaction – The Other Enemy of the Intifada,” in A World To Win 1988/11 (London: World to Win, 1988), 27.
63 Tani and Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” is a great source for the ways in which petty bourgeois leadership, through a look at the Republic of New Afrika, leads to incorrect practice, separation from the masses, and dependency on the oppressor nation. The book also makes the clear point that the attempts of the RNA are still a manifestation of the Black nation’s struggle against the oppressor, and practice that is of great value towards our revolutionary development.
64 Yes we are talking to you Cooperation Jackson.
65 V.I. Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination” (Paris: Foreign Language Press, 2022), 196.
66 Qasim S. Qassem, “The Nabulsi Generation and the ‘New Palestinian’” (Al-Akhbar, August 2022), Translated by Rookery Press in “New Equations In The Palestinian Struggle,” 9.
67 Tani and Sera, “False Nationalism, False Internationalism,” 316.
68 Ibid., 317.
69 Ibid., 318.