Art by Debashish Chakrabarty
What do you do when your government has shown it only intends to keep attacking the people more viciously as time goes on? When the assaults on freedom, and the methods of these assaults, are going to get exponentially more extreme with every step? That’s the nature of our situation in the United States, and it’s crucial that we respond to this situation in a way which ensures the survival of our revolutionary organizations.
There’s already widespread understanding of the criminal and dictatorial actions our government is taking. The bulk of the people have been exposed to the atrocities against the Palestinians, and even on the right, there’s growing opposition to the Trump White House’s war efforts. The administration’s use of ICE to attack the First Amendment is there for everybody to see, and our society isn’t simply accepting this as normal; Mahmoud Khalil, and the other pro-Palestine activists who’ve been persecuted, have become major parts of our discourse. These are evils that can’t be ignored, because they represent an extremely clear threat to our liberties. And there is a growing awareness about the connection between this repression, and the third world war which our rulers are determined to advance.
Just because there’s widespread consciousness about these things, though, doesn’t mean the people are equipped to respond to them. One of the biggest dangers is that mere knowledge of today’s ruling class activities will become seen as a substitute for revolutionary action; that “speaking truth to power” will be what dissident politics overwhelmingly focuses on, as opposed to building collective organizations and actually mobilizing the masses. Given how much our society has become disillusioned, it’s now the best option of our ruling class to propagate such attitudes; to encourage complacency among the people, even though many of them have actively rejected the ruling class ideology.
This is the attitude that’s propagated by the types of “alt” media which have been captured or compromised. The core problem is that these sources don’t emphasize the class struggle, which is the only means through which we’ll be able to overcome these attacks from our imperialist dictatorship.
Much of the masses already understand that class is at the essence of our society’s problems; the popular support for Luigi Mangione has shown this. There’s already such widespread consciousness because for the last two decades, this country’s working class has been living in a perpetual depression. The question is whether the reaction to these conditions will lead to a sustained, cohesive mass mobilization against this campaign of war and repression.
It’s the working-class response to Luigi that’s personally given me much more hope for such an endeavor to succeed; the workers have come to so strongly reject the ruling system, with a large percentage of them openly supporting a man who’s taken extreme measures to combat this system’s violence. The masses absolutely can be mobilized, because they have a desire to fight back in ways which often go beyond anything the controlled opposition voices talk about.
This is the limitation on the state’s efforts to manage dissent. And should we sufficiently build up the institutions for popular revolt, this will let us guide that mass energy in a way which overwhelms the crackdown. Among these institutions, there’s absolutely a role for orgs that are specifically focused on antiwar activism, the civil liberties struggle, or other particular aspects of this fight; but to overcome the state’s attacks, it’s essential that we also build independent worker organizations. Ones that give the workers their own source of power, beyond the unions. Making the unions stronger and more populated is one aspect of this task, but for the workers to gain victory, they’ll need an organizational force which the proletariat fully controls. I’m certainly not talking about dual unionism, which only sets back the cause; I’m talking about building a modern Bolshevik party.
That’s the logical conclusion of the desire to combat our government’s fascistic activities. George Mavrikos, former General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions, observed that “The struggle of the workers’ movement against the fascist formations is an indispensable condition for the workers’ counterattack…With this perspective, the class-oriented trade union movement must realize that fascism is synonymous with capitalism, ‘flesh of its flesh’ and its gold reserve. Then, the authentic anti-fascist struggle is also an anti-capitalist struggle.” This is the practical reality that’s being obscured by many of today’s “dissident” voices; there’s an absence of emphasis on the class struggle, and this leaves us unequipped to combat the war on dissent. There is a popular desire to fight back against the destruction of our liberties, and to defeat the war machine. But this energy needs to be channeled towards the workers struggle, rather than being redirected into discourses which are detached from this struggle.
A force that’s been greatly furthering this effort is the American Communist Party, which has become a notable source of material support and leadership for workers. ACP of course isn’t the vanguard yet; but it’s building ties with the unions, and guiding the workers movement, in ways that U.S. communists haven’t done for decades. For this reason, it’s most certainly on the list of orgs that the repressive apparatus seeks to make illegal. The state has as much of a reason to go after ACP as it does the Cop City or Gaza protesters, which it’s already quite far along in persecuting. The main reason why ACP hasn’t so far been subjected to the same treatment is that COINTELPRO hasn’t had enough time to build a case against it. Because at least at this stage, our ruling class at least needs to have some sort of pretext for charging political targets, even if that pretext comes from total lies.
The other big threat to our orgs is violent vigilantism, cultivated through efforts to radicalize individuals into physically assaulting designated enemies. This is an idea that certain detractors of the ACP have felt comfortable openly discussing, and we should take these statements seriously. It’s a form of terrorism where the state weaponizes anarchists or “communists” against the people who are doing the most effective work. And it’s an example of how the most sectarian forces within the left can come to collaborate with fascists during the class struggle’s most pivotal moments.
There are countless other weapons our enemies could use, including ones that involve importing the same violent methods which have been employed abroad. I’m talking about bombing residential areas, or actually using snipers instead of just putting them on rooftops as a warning. These most extreme dangers should be treated seriously too, and within our training and studying, we must account for the risk that we’ll be faced with them. Should we reach a stage where state violence on that level becomes normal, though, it will mean the ruling class has exhausted its other options for fighting the people. It will mean the state, in its desperation, has decided to take actions which will turn more of the masses against it.
If our revolutionary orgs have gained enough mass backing by then, and have become internally trained to a serious degree, then we’ll be in place to outmaneuver our foes. As we advance these projects, all the while we must make sure to create backup structures; to establish clandestine networks that can keep our operations alive, even if we get forced underground. For the time being, though, we must put all we have into fighting for our freedoms. However intense the enemy’s offensive becomes, we must never simply surrender, and assume we can win while neglecting crucial areas of the struggle. We’ll only prevail through principled, consistent solidarity, assisting all who our enemy targets and always working on behalf of the masses.
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