I've written about how especially in the core of imperialism, gangs have a fundamentally reactionary nature. Despite the attempts by ultra-leftists to portray them as crucial revolutionary avenues, they're a business like any other. Gangs are military governments that function by gaining access to the underground markets that capitalism produces. They're led by the lumpenbourgeoisie, who exploit the desperation of the lumpenproletariat--the people who've been pushed into society's margins by capitalism--to gain foot soldiers for their profit ventures. This means that the CIA's efforts to flood poor U.S. communities with drugs flows through the gangs.
Which makes it even more likely that during a revolutionary crisis, gangs will ally not with the forces for anti-colonial proletarian revolution, but with whichever side best serves the interests of the lumpenbourgeoisie. The wars that the gangs engage in will take precedence over the goals of intersectional, inter-proletarian unity that the communist movement represents, and needless violence and division will be perpetuated.
Due to this bourgeois, intelligence-aligned character of the gangs in this country, they serve as counterrevolutionary weapons in the class war. When communists within these gangs have tried to turn them into revolutionary vehicles, the wars between the gangs have led to the leaderships rejecting their appeals for unity, violently putting down attempts at reform. This fits with what Marx wrote about the lumpen tending to act as the "bribed tools of reactionary intrigue." The social ills that capitalism has created get exploited by the bourgeoisie, both lumpen and regular, to weaponize gangsterism against revolutionary organizing. This is the conclusion I've come to about gangs. But despite this conclusion being correct on its own, there's further context that I didn't see during my earlier studies on the lumpen. And it's this context that can prevent us from taking the reactionary position on the gangs--that being that they can only be responded to with militarized police intervention--and instead take the revolutionary position.
This position is that the violence within marginalized communities can't be ended until the conditions that produce that violence are addressed. The lumpenbourgeoisie won't start running short on gang recruits until poverty is ended, the school-to-prison pipeline is made extinct, and policing and incarceration are abolished. Which will require abolishing the settler-colonial capitalist state, and replacing it with a federation of post-colonial workers' democracies that function according to the jurisdiction of the liberated colonized nations. Under this order, whatever law enforcement or prisons that may exist will function in service of the interests of the proletariat within these nations. Not in service of the capitalists. This will mean that the drug trade as we now know it will be abolished, and those who fall victim to drug addiction are rehabilitated instead of punished. It will also mean sex workers are no longer incarcerated, a grievous human rights violation that exists under capitalism.
It's then that the communists here will be able to suppress the gangs, like how gangs are suppressed under China's communist party. The fact that this anti-gang suppression often serves to crush counterrevolutionary saboteurs, as the Western media laments, reflects the reactionary nature of gangs. And it hints at how organized crime will continue to be an enemy of the revolution here, one that will need to be put down for both political and human rights purposes.
Those who exploit and endanger impoverished women by pimping them, and who profit from the ravaging of poor communities by the CIA's poison, will no longer be able to operate. But we won't have the mass support for this campaign to liquidate the lumpenbourgeoisie until we've provided the lumpen with a deliverable alternative to gangsterism. Until we've given impoverished communities mutual-aid networks, social outlets other than gangs, the resources to gain revolutionary consciousness, and (after we've gained power) jobs programs. This is the implication within the statements from Marx and Engels about how the lumpen are especially at risk of being swayed towards the forces of reaction; this may be true, but what's also true is that the lumpen can be proletarianized, and therefore converted into revolutionaries. Which in our context means being brought out of feeling the material pressure to ally with the gangs, these military regimes that will command their members to betray the revolution as soon as this comes to serve the interests of the lumpenbourgeoisie.
In other words, until the wounds perpetuating the rule of the gangs are healed, law enforcement actions will continue to be ineffective against them, and will only keep furthering the harm to marginalized communities. Police don't prevent crime under capitalism, because capitalism depends on crime to exist. Gangsterism can't be eliminated until hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and their root causes of white supremacy and capitalism are eliminated.
We can't eliminate them until we've destroyed the capitalist state, and constructed the socialist federation I've described. Which could take decades. But there are things we can do today to begin this healing process. We can build our organizations, and work to provide the masses with food, medical supplies, and other necessities. We can educate the masses, providing them with the materials and ideological-training programs to understand revolutionary theory. We can set up community-defense networks that help protect people against the violence of the American oppressor "nation," whether this violence comes from individual bigots, fascist militias, or the police. With these resources, the lumpenproletariat will have social and material alternatives to the gangs, and will have a tangible reason to ally themselves with the communists over the lumpenbourgeoisie.
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