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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/25/22

Scientific socialism, not accommodating reactionary ideas, is how communists can unite the masses

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Rainer Shea
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There's a difference between trying to please every individual, and uniting the masses. If you accommodate each ideological faction that you encounter as a revolutionary, believing this is what you need to do to build a popular coalition, you'll end up achieving the opposite and alienating yourself from the masses. Because in a society defined by capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism, there are plenty of people with reactionary ideas. And reactionary ideas are opposed to the interests of the masses.

We can't enable colonialism

An example of this error, the error of mistaking appeasement of reactionaries for building mass unity, is found in the Center for Political Innovation. Its adjacent polemicists, such as the supposedly Marxist streamer Infrared, argue that communists shouldn't advocate for the abolition of the United States because the masses supposedly will be alienated from communism should we take this position. But by "the masses", these types are truly referring to specific elements among the masses, ones that the CPI places excessive importance upon despite these elements actually representing some of the least revolutionary parts of the population. These elements are the labor aristocrats, the petty bourgeoisie, the settlers who own land. These represent a small minority of the masses, not the vast majority of proletarians--including white proletarians--who don't own any land and therefore wouldn't lose anything if the land were transferred over to the oppressed nations.

These parts of the frustrated middle class are more likely to be won over towards fascism than towards communism. And if the "patriotic socialists" believe preventing them from becoming fascists is instrumental for the revolution, they've overlooked the elements of the masses that are far easier to bring towards communism. The elements that, due to their extreme subjugation by the United States, are more likely to be repulsed by the American flag than attracted by it.

In contrast to the middle class, the elements of the masses that stand the most to gain from an end to settler-colonial land relations are the elements that have the most revolutionary potential. These are the black, brown, and indigenous proletarians, the colonized lumpenproletarians who've been pushed to society's margins by capitalism, the millions of felons among the lumpen who live without civil rights. They aren't tethered to the settler-colonial order, and they would have everything to gain from the restoration of pre-colonial territorial control for the tribes, the establishment of an autonomous Chicano state, and the establishment of the Republic of New Afrika.

For this reason, there's sociological evidence that these impoverished and disenfranchised nonwhites will be the first ones to physically rebel against the state as America's conditions continue to worsen. In an analysis on why the colonized lumpen are the most likely to participate in an insurrection against the state, sociologist Temitope Oriola has written:

Transgenerational oppression of an identifiable group is one of the pre-conditions for an armed insurgency, but this is hardly news. What the U.S. has managed to institute on a national and comprehensive scale is what sociologist Jock Young calls "cultural inclusion and structural exclusion." A strong sense of injustice, along with significant moments, events and episodes--like the killings of Taylor and Floyd--are also important... There is another, related variable: The availability of people willing and able to participate in such insurgency. The U.S. has potential candidates in abundance. Criminal records sometimes for relatively minor offences that mar Black males for life, have taken care of this critical supply. One study estimates that while eight per cent of the U.S. general population has felony convictions, the figure is 33 per cent among African American males. Some of these men may gradually be reaching the point where they believe they have nothing to lose. Some will join for revenge, others for the thrill of it and many for the dignity of the people they feel have been trampled on for too long.

When this revolt begins, the colonized peoples, who will act as its vanguard, will be joined by the progressive elements of the white proletariat and lumpenproletariat. The reactionary minority that the CPI seeks to appease will be fighting against these revolutionaries, or apathetically complaining from the sidelines. These flaws in the CPI's analysis are an example of a right deviation, coming from that false assumption about how accommodating reactionary ideas is synonymous with constructing a popular coalition. A left-wing example of this error is the idea that gangs are tools for revolution.

We can't enable gang ideology

Because gangs are a response to capitalism and colonialism, a bid for self-determination from the oppressed nations that can't find autonomy from looking to any institutions besides gangs, ultra-leftists assume that gangs can be turned into revolutionary vehicles. But the fundamental character of gangs makes them incompatible with the goals of a vanguard party. They're military governments that seek to gain access to capitalism's underground markets, which means that they won't cede control to a workers' state, and that they won't want the exploitation within these markets to end. The class interests of the lumpenbourgeoisie who run the gangs are in conflict with the interests of the proletariat. The lumpenbourgeoisie don't want the lumpen to become proletarianized, as in be provided with jobs and alternative social outlets to gangs. They want the lumpen to remain in their desperate position, and therefore able to continue serving the power structure of the gangs.

This reality about the counterrevolutionary class character of the gangs bleeds into gang ideology, which tends to encourage ultra-leftist sentiment rather than scientific socialism. This tendency exists because gang ideology and scientific socialism are incompatible. The former is based around idealistic thinking, instead of materialist analysis. It centers on a concept of "loyalty" that demands uncritical allegiance to the clique, whether this clique is the gang itself or the political cults that ultra-leftism tends to produce. Such a mentality is hostile towards criticism and intellectualism, and provides an ideological rationale for counterrevolutionary actions like adventurism, individualism, and other manifestations of liberalism.

Part of this stubbornness can come from the fact that gang members are more likely to listen to criticism from people within their own community than from outsiders; capitalism and colonialism's harrowing conditions have made gangs become insulated out of necessity, and this can be hard for outsiders to understand. So gang members can reflect, leave their gangs, and give up any toxic habits they've internalized, as some former gangsters I've encountered have done. But no one can force these kinds of changes, and if someone from this category turns out to be an active abuser (as I've also seen), we shouldn't enable them out of the hope that they'll change.

If these reactionary and destructive tendencies influence the movement, the movement won't be able to gain mass support. It will remain isolated to whatever enclaves it can manage to carve out, running in endless circles of guerrilla struggle, like the Maoist struggles in India and the Philippines. Unsurprisingly, Maoism is also ideologically informed by ultra-leftism, with its unwillingness to bend to material realities that contradict the political cult's predetermined ideals. When Maoists denounce China for implementing the market reforms necessary to make its productive forces adequate, they're coming from the same place as the gang fetishists I've encountered who denounce communist parties for not accommodating their recklessly violent way of operating. What's important to the ultra-leftist is not what the conditions call for, but what their ideals claim is right.

For communists to build unity with the lumpen, and to therefore unite with a crucial portion of the revolutionary population in this country, we must recognize that such a thing as gang ideology exists. And that gang ideology can't be accommodated by Marxists, but made obsolete. To do this, we must not allow the reactionary elements among the lumpen to influence our movement, any more than we should allow the reactionary labor aristocrats to influence our stances. This means not letting active or semi-active gang members into communist parties; they're a tiny minority of the lumpen, and the majority of the lumpen are women who've been economically pressured into doing tasks like sex work. This also means not romanticizing the existence of the lumpen, or overlooking the fact that the proletariat has the unique ability to wield leverage over the economy.

What we must do is build alternative social and material outlets to the gangs, like the Panthers did with their mutual-aid networks and armed anti-racist community patrols. What will also be essential for us to provide are tenants' unions, and revolutionary education outlets. After we've gained power, we'll also be able to provide a jobs program that isn't constrained by capitalism's demand for a reserve army of labor, and therefore can employ everyone who's able to work.

When we've delivered these improvements in conditions for the lumpen, gangsterism and its ideology will be made obsolete. The colonized peoples will no longer have a material incentive to join the gangs en masse, and the lumpenbourgeoisie will be able to get suppressed like it is under China's communist party. But communists can't get that kind of power until we've gotten the masses on our side. Which does not mean appeasing the reactionary elements of the masses, whether middle class or lumpen. It means acting according to the interests of the masses. Because if we do what's in the interests of the masses, enough of the masses will support us for us to be able to defeat the capitalist state.

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Rainer Shea is writing articles that counter the propaganda of the capitalist/imperialist power establishment, and that help move us towards a socialist revolution. Donate to me on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=11988744

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