There are differing factors that led Trump to win the 2016 election, such as the unpopularity of the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and the perception that Trump was an “outsider” from DC-Beltway politics (though Trump is a member of the capitalist class, don’t think otherwise). However, Trump’s rhetoric continued beyond his election.

The phrase “MAGA” came to represent an idea of bringing America back to a former greatness which is exemplified by an idealized vision of America’s past. This nostalgic vision forgets that America’s past has included the following: slavery, Jim Crow, indigenous genocide, McCarthy-ism, concentration camps for the Japanese, repression of LGBT+ and Women, and more. In short, though America has had progressive ideas, it has never been “great.”

In reality, the MAGA movement under Trump’s first term led to the emboldening of reactionary, quasi-fascist movements, including the march of white nationalists in Charlottesville, a rise in reactionary thought movements like Q-Anon, and a further shifting of politics to the right where religious white nationalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who initially found their footing in the Tea Party movement, became acceptable public figures.

But how did Communism get mixed up in this? MAGA Communism has its origins in online areas where right-leaning streamers took the ideals of “MAGA” and dressed them in a veneer of Communism and began to spout the idea that “Communism will make America great again”. Its origins include online personalities like Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle, later promoted by other terminally online groups like the Midwestern Marx Institute and others.

A few threads tie them together. All of these groups and people have an uncritical view of present-day capitalist Russia, underlying socially conservative ideas like believing women should be stay-at-home mothers and slandering of the LGBT+ movement under the guise of so-called “family values.” All speak positively of Russia, but hardly ever the Soviet Union. They praised Maduro, including when he attacked opposition groups which included the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). There is nearly zero mention of either Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin. These groups are social chauvinists who opportunistically tail the masses, and their ideology appears closer to Strasserism and National Bolshevism than Communism. Finally, they ideologically praise right-wing demagogues like Alexander Dugin and Lyndon LaRouche.

Strasserism and MAGA Communism: Two Peas in a Pod

This new obscure political trend, MAGA Communism, through its reactionary policies and vague platform, leads the working class into supporting billionaire populists like President Trump against sections of the working class and the downtrodden masses. In fact there are parallels between MAGA Communism and the so-called National “Socialism” of the Strasserist variety.

Strasserism draws its name from its founders, the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, who were seen as the “left-wing” of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), also known as the Nazi Party of Germany. To understand the comparison drawn between Strasserism and MAGA Communism, we need to understand what Strasserism was in its essence.

Strasserism as a political movement was the expression of the dissatisfied petty-bourgeoisie (small entrepreneurs), who after WWI were unable to sell their goods, as wages for the working class had dropped to poverty levels and inflation made the German Mark basically worthless. Workers were permanently removed from industry and thus relegated to the underbelly of society as de-classed to the status of lumpenproletariat. These de-classed workers, reduced to fighting for their daily survival, became a breeding ground for the radicalism of this reactionary movement. Even certain sections of the proletariat, being driven from Marxism-Leninism due to the prevailing anti-Communist sentiment and suppression, were also absorbed into the reactionary radical movement. Strasserism purported to build a “socialism” that rejected the proletarian internationalism and materialist philosophy of Bolshevism in favor of an emphasis on the spiritual superiority of the Christian Germanic values.

The base of MAGA Communism is not as well-known as of now but what is known is that the origins of MAGA Communism reside in a group of online personalities such as Haz Al-Din whose infamy is derived from his YouTube platform, Infrared, and Jackson Hinkle, known for  being host of the YouTube channel Deep Dive with Jackson Hinkle. These individuals developed their platform by appealing to the backwards views (as Lenin called them) of the dispossessed. Such rallying points include their anti-LGBT+ scapegoating, going so far to say the LGBT+ movement is the new Nazi movement. Further discussion of the reactionary social policies of the MAGA Communist movement will be in another section. In a debate on the male chauvinist podcast called Fresh and Fit^[1], MAGA Communist leader Haz Al-Din claims that private enterprise is compatible with Communism so long as it “benefits the goal of the country or ultimate goals of the Party.” This is reminiscent of an excerpt from Otto Strasser’s Germany Tomorrow:

“The exchange will not be effected in accordance with the arbitrary wishes of the individual producers, but in accordance with a plan drafted to suit the needs of the State, and this will involve the existence of a State monopoly of foreign trade. Such a State monopoly will not (as does the Russian) aim at itself conducting the foreign trade, but will merely supervise, and give licenses for export to such persons as may need them..” ^[2]

Strasserism, though rejecting the racial theories of the Hitlerites, manifested anti-Semitism in the form of “economic anti-Semitism.” The anti-Jewish sentiment of the Strasserites was based on the idea that the Jewish people were inherently bourgeois and financial elites who were the cause of the economic crisis that shocked Germany and the capitalist world in general. According to Gregor Strasser himself:

“Down with the slavery of capitalism! Down with bloodsucking international world finance! Down with their leaders, their spokesmen, their henchmen: nationally-poisonous Judaism! [Our emphasis—Ed.] Long live the National Revolution! Long live the Social Revolution! Long live their common goal: The common front of productive national labor as the community of all productive German folk-comrades, united in the coming, salvation-bringing National Socialist state.” ^[3]

It is clear from this quote that the Strasserites believed that the Jewish people were a financial elite that were by their nature a parasitic class. This idea of Jewish elitism “pulling the strings of society” is not new and has its origins in the myth that the Jewish people as a collective killed Jesus Christ. Today, even MAGA Communist leaders such as Jackson Hinkle echo these scapegoating views. In the tweet shown below, while criticizing the Israeli government for its war crimes, he could not help but take a jab at Jews, which is obvious to deduce given that Zionism did not exist at the time of Jesus Christ.

Though these elements claim to pursue a socialist end, it could never come to fruition with their base among the dying petty-bourgeois class. As Karl Marx clearly stated in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:

“In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange, within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.”^[4]

In essence, Marx shows that the petty bourgeoisie, being an appendage of the bourgeoisie, can only serve ends that restore capitalist property relations. For this reason, and for the reason that the petty bourgeoisie is a class that is condemned to vanish as contradictions in capitalism sharpen, Strasserism and MAGA Communism can only serve the interests of the big bourgeoisie, in this case the most reactionary elements of finance capital, i.e., fascism. This is seen in the example of the Nazi Party, which started as a grouping of disgruntled elements and later served as a vehicle for the Monopolists and a hotbed for their reactionary methods.

Lyndon LaRouche: Ideological Father of MAGA Communism

The MAGA Communist movement from its inception has worked closely with followers of Lyndon LaRouche and its Schiller Institute organization, despite LaRouche’s history of blatant anti-communism.

Jackson Hinkle, MAGA Communist leader, spoke at the Schiller Institute Conference in October of 2022, where he stated:

“Lyndon LaRouche, for those of you who don’t know him, was a great visionary, ran for President, a great thinker … He was involved in many presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, in advising them on complex foreign policy matters. He envisioned a world in which … we would, as humans, tap into our unlimited potentiality for growth, and creativity, and build a brighter future by working with the economic powerhouses of the world, the commodities producers of the world, to produce a more prosperous environment for all.”^[5]

Furthermore, Haz Al-Din of Infrared has stated that he considers LaRouche to be “one of the most, if not the most, profound theorist and thinker [sic] of policy in the modern age.”

These are strange views indeed from people who claim to be Communists, given the views which were brought forth by LaRouche and the history of his organization and its activities.

LaRouche began his political life as a Trotskyite, joining the Socialist Workers Party in 1948. Later, he briefly joined the Spartacist League (another Trotskyite organization) before announcing his intention to build a “Fifth International.”

In the 1970s, LaRouche organized the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). This group was initially closely associated with the New Left – and thus petty-bourgeois radical – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). After being expelled by the SDS, the NCLC abandoned any pretense of Marxism-Leninism and quickly became explicitly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet.

The NCLC was, beyond being just a political organization; it was a cult, where members gave up their jobs to devote themselves totally to the cause. They believed that the NCLC would imminently take over the trade union movement and from there proceed to overthrow the American government.

The NCLC membership’s cultish devotion to LaRouche soon manifested in physical violence against their opposition. This began with fights that broke out against Mark Rudd’s faction of Students for a Democratic Society, and later culminated in the infamous “Operation Mop-Up.” Operation Mop-Up was an attack intended to dispose of the “stinking corpse” of the Communist Party USA, whereby Jewish members of the CPUSA were targeted and physically assaulted with lead pipes wrapped in newspapers by members of the NCLC. This act highlights the anti-Semitism which is present within both the LaRouche movement and within MAGA Communism as a whole.

In addition to these acts of physical violence, LaRouche also endorsed “psywar techniques” to be used against his detractors and opponents on the Left. It was a common tactic for targets to be accused of homosexuality in an attempt to ruin their reputation. This is reflected in the chauvinism and homophobia of the modern MAGA Communist movement, which tails many of the most reactionary views against LGBT+ liberation found today.

After the failure of the NCLC, the LaRouche movement formed a front group called the US Labor Party as a platform for La-Rouche’s Presidential ambitions. LaRouche’s characteristic cult methods continued, and even intensified, in this formation. Members were subject to “ego-stripping” and brainwashing sessions, and they were made to place their savings and possessions in the hands of the party to increase its control over them. While the US Labor Party initially preached “Marxist revolution”, it quickly shifted to the far-right, rubbing shoulders with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the rightist Liberty Lobby. The Liberty Lobby defended the US Labor Party on the basis that it had “confused, disoriented, and disunified the Left,” just as the MAGA Communist movement stands to do today.

Later, in the 1980s, the Schiller Institute formed in West Germany to spread LaRouche’s ideology even further. The Schiller Institute continued LaRouche’s anti-Sovietism, going so far as to accuse the 1984 Democratic Party presidential candidate Walter Mondale of being a “Soviet agent.” The Schiller Institute also supported Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (often called the “Star Wars program”), which sought to develop laser weapons to be deployed to space to further pressure the Soviet Union, in addition to the nuclear arms race which was instigated by the United States government.

LaRouche would later claim to have invented the Strategic Defense Initiative, and this was extended to his so-called “Biological Strategic Defense Initiative”, whereby he proposed quarantining people who had been infected by HIV in the 1980s. LaRouche’s unscientific claim that HIV could be spread as easily as the common cold was a thinly veiled pretext for the rampant homophobia expressed by his initiative.

Today, the Schiller Institute is alive and well, having recently ran Diane Sare as their candidate for New York Senator in 2024. MAGA Communist figures like Jackson Hinkle continue their association and praise of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement to the present day.

The history of the LaRouche movement is marked by chauvinism, anti-Semitism, anti-environmentalism, and anti-Communism. The fact that the leaders of the MAGA Communist movement have given such praise to LaRouche and the Schiller Institute should be taken as a warning to the true nature of their ideology.

Strange Bed-Fellows: Alexander Dugin and MAGA Communism

In addition to their idolization of LaRouche, leaders of the MAGA Communist movement have also identified themselves as followers of Alexander Dugin, supporter of the Russian Tsarist monarchy who endorsed the anti-Communist propaganda of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Again, an examination of Dugin’s thought, as stated in his own words, will be enlightening as to the actual ideology of the MAGA Communists.

The Fourth Political Theory by Alexander Dugin claims “there is no difference between capitalism, socialism, or communism”. All require rules and regulations that can run over “traditional values” in their wake. “The way out of this dilemma is to achieve freedom. But not a freedom confined to one set of rules and regulations or constitutions.”

Dugin considers liberalism a culprit in the degradation of current social forces by “repudiating practically all social political institutions, right up to the family and sexual differentiation”. Another culprit is the “theory of progress” that “has caused the loss of traditional values sacrificed on the altar of progress, and thereby have just created another form of social and economic slavery”. This shows that the MAGA Communists  are an American branch of Dugin’s reactionary thinking.

The MAGA Communists also consistently preach of social conservatism^[6], similar to this passage from Dugin himself:

“We must also abandon the philosophy of development and propose the following slogan: life is more important than growth. Instead of the ideology of development, we must place our bets on the ideology of conservatism and conservation. However, we not only require conservatism in our daily lives, but also philosophical conservatism. We need the philosophy of conservatism.”[7]

Haz Al-Din has openly praised Dugin as “one of the most powerful minds of our era,”^[8] going as far as saying that “Marxist theory in the West is meaningless without the aid of Dugin and Heidegger’s [a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party] thinking.”^[9] The same Dugin whose goal is to remove materialism from Socialism:

“If we free socialism from its materialist, atheistic and modernist features, we arrive at a completely new kind of political ideology. We call it the Fourth Political Theory, or 4PT. …”[10]

Dugin continues with his anti-Communism with:

“… (The first being liberalism, that we essentially challenge, the second being the classical form of communism, the third being national-socialism and fascism). Its elaboration starts from the point of intersection between different anti-liberal political theories of the past (namely communism and the Third way theories). So we arrive at the national-bolshevism that represents socialism without materialism, atheism, progressivism, and Modernism …”[11]

MAGA Communists have thus far focused their attacks on liberalism and other progressive movements including the LGBT+ movement, Starbucks union organizing, and others. Given their parallels to Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, we wonder who they’re going to attack next.

Alexander Dugin concluded with, “I sincerely believe that the Fourth Political Theory, and its secondary variations, National Bolshevism and Eurasianism, can be of great use for our peoples, our countries, and our civilizations.” This would be in line with the common thread among MAGA Communists who largely are active in support of the non-Soviet Russophile movement based in the concept of Eurasianism.^[12]

Though Dugin claims to transcend all other political ideologies, Lenin made it clear that:

“Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”[13]

MAGA Communism: Center of Social Chauvinism

Leadership of the movement such as Haz and Hinkle, along with their followers, are very anti-LGBT. They justify their bigotry by claiming that acceptance of LGBT people is a sign of “western bourgeois decadence” and compatible with fascism. They ignore socialist countries which have pro-LGBT policies, such as Cuba, Vietnam and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Instead, they focus on instances of LGBT people being repressed in socialist countries. For instance, Hinkle posted a video of a Chinese police officer berating a man for wearing a skirt with the caption “China is a moral nation.”[14]

Women are hardly represented in the MAGA Communist movement, apart from the “Hegelian e-girls,” who could hardly be considered followers of socialism as they tout Hegel, not Marx. Prominent figures of MAGA Communism do not advocate for the rights of working women. Instead, they push a regressive position on the traditional role of the woman as a homemaker and child bearer. They obsess over masculinity and speak as guests on podcasts of right-wing figures who tout misogyny to promote “traditional masculinity” (such as Fresh and Fit, mentioned above).

The movement is led by overtly anti-Semitic individuals. Many claim to be pro-Palestine, though they focus less on the Palestinian liberation movement and more on directing hatred towards Israel and Jewish people. Online posts in these circles about the topic of Israel have anti-Semitic dog whistles. One such dog whistle is the “clown world” conspiracy theory, claiming that the government (or the world) is run by Jewish people. They spout the rhetoric of the Catholic church, that “Jews killed Christ.”

All of this is MAGA Communism, a movement that is left in form, right in essence. MAGA Communism furthermore appears to have, as Comrade Gus Hall would say, a “whiff of fascism”, and while Communist Parties worldwide shout “Workers and Oppressed people of the World Unite”, MAGA Communists are petty-bourgeois radicals who through an opportunistic approach to organization confuse the working class and disarm them against fascism. We see that MAGA Communism has many similarities with right-wing, even fascist, forces while using revolutionary phrase-mongering. Time will tell if such “Communist” demagogues will fall into the “Graveyard of [so-called] Communist groups” splattered across the landscape.

[1] https://youtu.be/iww_kD6ZQhA?t=3314

[2] Strasser, Otto, Germany Tomorrow; Jonathan Cape: London, 1940, p. 139.

[3] Strasser, Gregor, “The Slave-Market of Capitalism”. August 23, 1926.

[4] Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manifesto; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, p. 41.

[5]https://larouchepub.com/pr/2022/20221102_hinkle.html

[6] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1495363547240538118

[7] Dugin, Alexander, The Fourth Political Theory; The Eurasian Movement: Moscow, 2012, p. 62.

[8] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1766211760770429035. (See Image 3)

[9] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1672279455732215809. (See Image 4)

[10] Ibid., p. 205.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Eurasianism — is a socio-political movement in Russia that emerged in the early 20^th century under the Russian Empire, it states that Russia does not belong in the “European” or “Asian” categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia and the “Russian world”, forming an ostensibly standalone Russian civilization. The goal of the Eurasianists was the unification of the main Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

[13] Lenin, V.I., What is to Be Done?; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2023, pp. 51-52.

[14] https://x.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1842506425639297315.

The post “MAGA Communism”: A Whiff of Fascism appeared first on The Communist.

Huey P. Newton, writing in the Black Panther of April 17, 1971, attempts to provide an explanation for this crisis, which led to the party’s split into factions, one headed by himself, the other by Eldridge Cleaver.

In his April 17 article, Newton states: “Under the influence of Eldridge Cleaver the party gave the community no alternative for dealing with us, except by picking up the gun . . . Therefore, the Black Panther Party defected from the community long before Eldridge Cleaver defected from the party.”

In saying this, Newton appears at first glance to have taken a step toward understanding and correcting past mistakes—to have begun the process of disentangling the Black Panther Party from Cleaver’s catastrophic influence. However, in this article as a whole, Newton, instead of providing answers, creates still more questions and doubts as to the past, present and future course of the Black Panther Party.

That the uneasiness created by this article is well-founded is confirmed by Newton’s subsequent writings and speeches, and particularly by his May 29 article in the Black Panther. Here he announces that the party is ready to open, in San Francisco, a shoe factory and one to make clothing and golf bags—the first of many factories to be operated by the Black Panthers in ghettos across the nation.

That these are enterprises of “Black capitalism,” Newton does not deny. In fact, he states: “I am doing an article now called ‘To Reanalyze Black Capitalism’. . . . I think this is the kind of thing we’re involved in and we’ll judge how successful we are by whether we can take the community with us.”

It will undoubtedly appear to some that there is a head-on contradiction between Newton’s “new” direction and his previous “revolutionary” period. The opposite is true. There is no contradiction between his previous ultra-Leftist role and his present position. In essence, both positions represent accommodations to the status quo—even though the earlier one was more effectively camouflaged with the rhetoric of revolution. The link between both positions is the fact that neither “Black capitalism” nor ultra-revolutionary rhetoric offers the people the path of struggle. That is why the new form of opportunism (like the old form, still pursued by Eldridge Cleaver) presents no perspective for the Black liberation movement.

Hard Reality

According to Newton, the Black Panther Party had its origin as a response to what he interprets as the people’s rejection of non-violent action. When the Black Panthers first picked up the gun, he states in the April 17 article, “we are acting (in 1966) at a time when the people had given up on the philosophy of non-violent direct action and were to deal with sterner stuff. We wanted them to see the virtues of disciplined and organized armed self-defense, rather than spontaneous and disorganized outbreaks and riots.”

In this estimate of what was needed as the next step in the Black liberation struggle can be found the source of the Panthers’ subsequent difficulties. By offering the alternative of armed self-defense, the Panthers presented the upsurging Black urban youth with a false choice diverting them from mass unity and struggle.

As Congressman Ronald Dellums recently stated, “The average Black person, if you go back to that experience in the ghetto, doesn’t wake up in the morning oriented to the bullet or the bomb. He’s oriented to hope, and that’s when you can move him. It is time now to translate Black is Beautiful into hard political reality.”

In 1966 that “hard reality” called, as it does today, for more militant forms of organized and disciplined mass struggle. The people, including the youth, in their fight to create a movement to end poverty and racism, will respond to such an alternative to the blind alley of spontaneity or the equally hopeless concept of “picking up the gun.”

It is clear that the people want to challenge the oppressor on the grounds they choose, not on those chosen by their enemy. They want to engage the class enemy where he is most vulnerable—and this ruling class, the most massively armed oppressor in history, is the most vulnerable of all oppressors when the oppressed and exploited move in solidarity into the arena of mass struggle. The guns of the racist monopolists will be of no avail when the Blacks together with all the oppressed and exploited exercise their strength through self-organization and unity. That is why the people do not relate to the idea, whether advanced by Mao Tse-tung or Eldridge Cleaver or Huey Newton, that the power to change things comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Strategy—Defensive or Offensive?

When Newton advocated guns and a defensive Strategy as the solution for Black people, he was wrong on both counts. Not only did the people refuse to relate to the gun, but they also rejected the concept of a defensive strategy. Black people have been warding off attacks for 400 years. They want and need an offensive strategy to build a great popular movement to end racist oppression.

In his concept of self-defense, Newton endeavored to respond to the oppression of his people. However, this concept excluded the masses of the people from their own liberation struggle. It involved the idea of an elite few acting for the masses—in fact, supplanting them.

Thus, even before Cleaver joined the Black Panther Party, Newton had substituted elitism for mass struggle. Cleaver’s influence brought the elitist concept to new levels of anarchistic, adventurist confusion and provocation—but his ideology was nevertheless inherent in the original concepts on which the Black Panther Party was founded.

At one point, however, it did appear, even if briefly, that the Black Panthers might be turning away from these original concepts, that they might supplant Mao’s Little Red Book and Cleaver’s anarchism with Marx and Lenin. This was in the summer of 1969 when the Black Panther Party called for studying the historic report on the united front by Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist leader who transformed himself from the accused into the accuser while standing trial in a Nazi court. But instead of linking theory with practice, the actions taken by the Black Panther Party turned the concept of the united front into a sectarian caricature of the Marxist-Leninist principles on which it is based. Its policies and actions continued to be inconsistent with the interests of the class struggle and the Black liberation movement. It becomes increasingly clear that the Black Panther Party had only adopted some of the phraseology of Marxism-Leninism, but not the ideology.

Against this background, internal strife in the Black Panther Party deteriorated into factionalism, and—with neither faction guided by scientific theory—into an inevitable split. Newton expelled Cleaver and a group of [his] supporters. Although there are now two groups, both unfortunately hold similar anti-Marxist views on the most basic principles of class and national liberation.

 “There Go My People”

It is worth recalling that in the same period when the Black Panthers came on the scene, others were also seeking new directions, notably Martin Luther King.

During the Montgomery bus strike in 1955, King had said, “There go my people. I must catch up with them.” More than a decade later and at a new turning point, King was still motivated by these sentiments. Unlike the Panthers, he did not misread the mood of the people in this new phase, often called the “post-civil rights period.”

It had become apparent to King that an offensive strategy of new dimensions had to be built. The new situation required the continued and even expanded participation of Church and middle-strata forces, including students and professionals, Black and white, that had predominated in 1954-66. But King saw that the basis for regaining the offensive was class strength moving in coalition with the middle class forces. He now directed all his efforts toward involving the working class in a higher level of struggle with the Black Liberation movement—and with the poor and oppressed.

The Communist party welcomed this historic revolution in Dr. King’s leadership, and wholeheartedly supported his efforts to bring about a new strategy and a new alignment of forces. The Communist party saw this as a profoundly important development, even though Dr. King had not yet demonstrated a full understanding that an offensive strategy to end class exploitation, racist oppression and war demands not only the strength of the working class, but also the leadership of the working class—Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and white—guided by the science of socialism. It was clearly evident, however, that long before he was assassinated, King had already begun to move toward an anti-imperialist position.

King was also keenly aware of the dangers that faced the movement. For instance, in his historic address—just two months before his death—at the Freedomways memorial meeting for Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, King warned that racism and imperialism could not be fought with anti-Communism. In addition, his words about DuBois carried an all-important message for today’s radical youth:

“Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional relief and then to retire into smug passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry. The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”[1]

The ruling class did everything in its power to divert and defeat the new direction taken by King. The capitalist mass media went all out to promote the activity and the ideology of those Black and white radicals for whom King was “too non-violent” and the Communist Party “too conservative.”

While Newton, Cleaver and Hilliard waved the Little Red Book and talked of picking up the gun, they were joined in these activities by middle-class white radicals who also came forward with interpretations of Marxism. All of this created diversions and confusion on the campuses, in the ghettos and in the peace movement.

The Image-Makers and “Revolution”

As part of the ruling class efforts to divert the radicalization process, the mass media have popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse, Debray, Cleaver, Newton, Tom Hayden, Stokely Carmichael, Rennie Davis and others. At the same time, they have promoted a “revolutionary” image for many of the new radicals.

These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from King, they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.

The pseudo-militancy of Newton, Cleaver and Hilliard made their own party and its supporters particularly vulnerable to nation-wide genocidal assaults and frameups. And this, their super-revolutionism made the movements for Black liberation and against war and poverty more vulnerable to mounting repressive attacks.

It is apparent that neither Newton nor Cleaver have ever based their tactics on the working class and its revolutionary Science, Marxism-Leninism. At the present moment, while Cleaver’s opportunism continues along an ultra-Leftist course and Newton’s has taken a Right opportunist form (although he attempts to maintain a Leftist image), both base their policies on the lumpenproletariat.

In order to give some semblance of credibility to the “revolutionary” role they assign the lumpen elements, Newton and Cleaver would have us believe that the Black unemployed, those on welfare, and high school dropouts are all part of the lumpenproletariat. This is an insult to Black men, women and youth. People are not lumpen simply because they are denied jobs, and when Newton and Cleaver make such claims they sound like Black Moynihans.

Today, in the citadel of imperialism in the era of its decline, there is a massive increase in the army of the unemployed. Alongside this, the number of lumpen elements also increases. However, these groups do not merge: each has its distinct characteristics. As Marx wrote in The Class Struggles in France, the lumpenproletariat “forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat.”

Specifically, the lumpen elements are those so demoralized by the system that they are not only jobless, but that to them a job is unthinkable. It is their declassed parasitical status and outlook that sharply distinguish them from the great mass of the unemployed, who are searching for and demanding jobs and the opportunity for a decent life. That is why, in addition to making the distinction that Marx emphasized, it is now even more necessary than in Marx’s time to clearly distinguish between the lumpenproletariat and the great mass of unemployed, which includes so many youth (particularly Black and Brown) who have never been regularly employed. The following statistics from the sixties foreshadow the vastly greater number of youth who will be forced into this position in the seventies:

“It is reported that there are now 50 percent fewer unskilled and semi-skilled jobs than there are high school dropouts. Almost one-third of the 26 million young people entering the labor market in the sixties will be dropouts. But the percentage of the Negro dropouts nationally is 57 percent, and in New York City, among Negroes 25 years of age or over it is 68 percent. They are without a future.”[2]

However, it is quite evident that the ruling class is not counting on the prediction that the unemployed will passively accept the idea that “they are without a future.” Today, the monopolists fear the fact that the struggles of the unemployed, together with the rank-and-file struggles within the unions, will lay the basis for a new upsurge of the working class and the Black liberation movement. The monopolists sense that these struggles will eclipse those of the thirties.

One of the ways in which the ruling class is trying to short-circuit the struggle for jobs and against war and racism is through its barbaric promotion of drugs—in the armed forces (particularly in Vietnam), in the ghettos, among the workers, and among the youth on and off the campuses.

The lumpenproletariat, as Engels noted, includes “elements of all classes.” This is particularly evident today as large numbers of students, demoralized by drugs, turn away from struggle and become part of the lumpen sector for the first time in history.

Together with its mass promotion of drugs, the ruling class is promoting anti-working class ideology on a mass scale in new ways. This is why the media have popularized the writings of such individuals as Regis Debray and Herbert Marcuse, whose views have greatly influenced Cleaver, Newton, Hayden, Hoffman, Rubin and other radicals who foster the idea that workers have “a stake in the system.” From this starting point Cleaver and Newton have developed the concept that the lumpen sectors, who will resort to anything but work, and not the working class, comprise the vanguard of revolution.

Objective Laws of Development

Those who point to the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary vanguard disregard the objective laws of historical development. In pre-capitalist societies, poverty and oppression were even greater than under capitalism. But oppression in itself, no matter how great, does not create the basis for the struggle to abolish oppression.

Because of the specific nature of exploitation under capitalism, the working class, which collectively operates the mass production process of the privately owned monopolies, is transformed into the gravedigger of the system. That is why Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.”

No fundamental change—or even a challenge to the monopolists—can occur without the working class. And today the proportion of Black workers in basic industries such as steel, coal, auto, transport and others is transforming the prospects for the class struggle and Black liberation.

The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers. Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers. This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.

At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers—as the leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.

It is the monopolists’ fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity, which in turn can form the basis for still broader people’s unity, that is behind racism and anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.

Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with national liberation movements against imperialism.

No other theory has served to free a single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction.

“On the Side of the Oppressor”

Cleaver and Newton have tried to use the writings of Frantz Fanon, whose vantage point was the Algerian and other African liberation movements, to justify their anti-Leninist theory of the role of the lumpenproletariat. They have attempted to apply Fanon’s ideas to the U.S., although these ideas in some respects lack Marxist clarity even within the African context for which they were intended. On top of this, Cleaver and Newton have inflated Fanon’s positive views on the lumpenproletariat, while completely ignoring his serious reservations about this group.

“Colonialism will also find in the lumpenproletariat a considerable space for maneuvering,” Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth. There is a danger, he warned, that “the lumpenproletariat will throw itself into battle and will take part in the conflict—but this time on the side of the oppressor” He then stated:

“In Algeria it is the lumpenproletariat which furnished the Harkis and the Messalists; in Angola it supplied the road openers who now precede the Portuguese armed columns; in the Congo, we find once more the lumpenproletariat in regional manifestations in Katai and Katanga, while at Leopoldville, the Congo enemies made use of it to organize spontaneous mass meetings against Lumumba.[3]

For ways in which the ruling class can manipulate the lumpen elements, we need only refer to the Panthers’ own experience with George Sams, who was used to frame Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins and others. And we should remember that a white lumpen individual was used to assassinate Martin Luther King, while black ones were recruited to murder Malcolm X. And we should also recall the German monopolists’ manipulation of Van der Lubbe to frame Georgi Dimitrov as part of their drive to launch a genocidal war for world domination.

The Cleaver-Newton theory of the lumpenproletariat as vanguard would mean objective surrender to the ruling class because only the working class can lead the fight against poverty and exploitation. And not only does this theory fail to offer an offensive strategy for liberation; without working-class leadership of the struggle, the lumpen victims themselves will not be provided with even their own barest needs.

It is ironic that, while some Panthers glorify the lumpenproletariat, at least one Panther leader takes pride in his working-class background and skills. In his book Seize the Time, Bobby Seale states that his father was a master carpenter, and that he himself is a carpenter, a draftsman and “a top-flight sheet-metal mechanic.”

We fervently hope that Bobby Seale will vindicate his well-founded pride by using his outstanding ability to help chart a working-class path of struggle for millions of Black youth, in contrast to the course Newton and Cleaver adopted while Seale was in prison.

Incredible Thrust Backward

Between mid-April and the end of May 1971, Huey P. Newton became increasingly frank in describing his new course. What he only hinted at in the April 17 Black Panther, he made astoundingly clear in the May 29 issue, when he described what he calls a “survival program,” i.e., survival through “Black capitalism.”

Announcing that the Panthers will now operate factories in ghettos, he went on to say: “We will have no overhead because our collective—we’ll exploit our collective by making them work free. We’ll do this not just to justify ourselves, like philanthropists, to save someone from going without shoes, even though this is part of the cause of our problems. People make the revolution; we will give the process a forward thrust. If we suffer from genocide, We won’t be around to change things. So, in this way our survival program is very practical.”

Far from being either “practical” or a “forward thrust,” this is an incredibly reactionary thrust backward. By comparison with Newton’s “survival program,” Booker T. Washington’s philosophy sounds positively revolutionary!

Newton, however, tries to justify his retreat into the past with the following explanation: “We can jump too far ahead and say that the system absolutely cannot give us anything, which is not true, the system can correct itself to a certain extent. What we are interested in is for it to correct itself as much as it can do and after that if it doesn’t do everything that the people think is necessary then we’ll think about reorganizing things.”

Well, this is a pretty late date to advise the oppressed and exploited to call off their struggles and wait to see if “the system can correct itself”! Why should the people surrender to still more racism and oppression in order to learn what they already know—that the system “can correct itself” only through wars, increased racism, poverty and exploitation.

While in the past Newton did indeed jump ahead of the people’s needs, he has now leaped far behind them. He misread the mood of the people and mistook their real needs when he talked of “picking up the gun” from 1966 through early 1971. Now he is again misreading their mood and ignoring their real needs, when in effect he tells them to surrender to racist oppression and accept a “survival” concept based on his anti-working class theories and glorification, in the same breath, of the lumpenproletariat and of capitalism.

Newton offers the people mini-enclaves of Black capitalism in the form of ghetto sweatshops across the country. But what Black people want is an end to the ghettos. During slavery, the underground railroad established way stations to meet the basic survival needs of Blacks escaping from the South. In context, a defensive “survival” strategy cannot possibly serve the people, for whom way stations cannot provide an escape. The vast scope of Black Americans’ needs today can be met only by an offensive strategy.

Black Americans have a first and equal claim on the total economy of the country—which they helped build with 400 years of slave and near-slave labor—for billions for jobs, housing, medical care, education, etc. They want the total economy turned around to meet the people’s needs, instead of operating for the wars and the profits of a handful of corporate monopolists.

When in 1968 Martin Luther King warned radicals that super-militancy often ends in accommodation, he seems to have prophesied Huey P. Newton’s latest move. After “hurling” super-revolutionary rhetoric for six years, it appears that Newton will now “retire into small passive satisfaction” while Black people are given the prospect of working in the ghetto under racist sweatshop conditions.

In Seize the Time, Bobby Seale attacked Ron Karenga for operating “little jive businesses” in the Black community. “Ron Karenga,” wrote Seale, “had no intention before and has no intention now of working in opposition to the power structure to change the system for the needs of Black America.” (Random House, New York, 1970, p. 273.)

We truly hope that Seale will recall these words because they aptly describe Newton’s “survival program.” No matter how Newton may later attempt to portray his new enterprises—as collectives, cooperatives, etc.—he cannot disguise the fact that they offer Black people no hope.

Accommodation—or Struggle

Neither Newton’s nor Cleaver’s concept of a “survival program” is in the interests of the people. While Cleaver expresses the ultra-Leftist face of opportunism—”urban guerilla warfare now”—Newton’s opportunism takes a different form.

Describing his “survival program,” Newton says: “We serve [the people’s] needs so they can survive oppression. Then, when they are ready to pick up the gun, serious things will happen.” (Black Panther, April 1971) In other words, Newton would have us believe that accommodation today will lead to revolution tomorrow!

Both the “survival program” Newton-style (“wait until the masses are ready to pick up the gun”) and the “survival program” Cleaver-style (“pick up the gun now!”) objectively amount to the same thing—desertion of the people’s struggles.

The cause of liberation cannot be served by a negative idea—“survival” pending a future day when “serious things will happen.” What is needed is a struggle program for the immediate interests of the people and for their ultimate liberation from capitalist, racist oppression.

Marx and Engels taught that the salvation of the exploited requires an ever-expanding unity in struggle even so much as to retard the downward spiral of exploitation and oppression. This concept is even more acutely relevant today. By contrast the idea of a “survival program” evokes passivity and demoralizes the people. To justify his “survival” concept, which would divert the Black liberation movement from an offensive anti-monopoly strategy, Huey P. Newton has developed a classless approach to capitalist democracy. It is amazing to read his description of democracy in the May 29 issue of the Black Panther. This is the way he puts it: “Democracy in America (bourgeois democracy) means nothing more than the domination of the majority over the minority.”

It is indeed strange to find one who regards himself as a dialectical materialist speaking of bourgeois democracy as “the domination of the majority over the minority.” In the sphere of social science, dialectical materialism relates not to struggle in general but to the struggle of classes.

Because he does not relate dialectics to the class struggle, Newton fails to explain that his is a society in which state monopoly capitalism rules; that there is a class of exploiters exercising state power to defend its class interests; that there is national oppression maintained by this class.

In the same article, Newton also states that the majority has “decreed” that the minority “fight and die in wars.” He dares make this claim at a time when even the polls show that considerably more than 70 percent of the people want immediate withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.

It is certainly not the majority but the ruling-class minority that has “decreed” the imperialist aggression in Indochina and in the Middle East, and which threatens thermonuclear war against peaceful states and peoples, and first of all against the socialist camp, which supports anti-imperialist liberation struggles throughout the world. In the 1930’s the threat of war came from Nazi Germany; today it comes from the U.S. monopolists—and Newton would have us believe that the majority has “decreed” it!

But not only do the polls show that there is an anti-war majority. They also show that within this anti-war majority there is another majority—one with the potential to bring to an end to the war in Indochina and, moreover, to imperialism itself.

This majority within the majority is made up of the overwhelming percentage of white workers and the still greater percentage of Black Americans who oppose the war. For the first time in U.S. history, the people, though not effectively organized, are in motion against the genocidal aggression of U.S. imperialism.

How then can Huey Newton, who apparently considers himself a revolutionary, speak of democracy in the U.S. as the rule of a majority (white masses) over the minority (Black masses)? How can he deny and cover up the rule of a tiny minority of monopolists who fan racial strife between Black and white, Black and Chicano, Black and Puerto Rican, Black and Indian, and of course between whites and all who are Black, Brown, Red or Yellow?

So-called revolutionary rhetoric cannot hide this monstrous error which omits the class nature of society, which denies capitalism as the source of racism, and the monopolists’ use of racism, along with anti-Communism, to exploit and oppress the masses. Such rhetoric is a disservice to all those, irrespective of color, who are fighting for peace, democracy and the well-being of the people.

Huey P. Newton engages in demagogy when he claims that there is a struggle between a majority of whites and a minority of Blacks. He lumps the white monopolists (a minority) with the white working class majority (and sections of the middle strata).

He fails to identify the monopolists (a white minority), and he does this in a way unbecoming to a revolutionary—by lumping the exploited majority of white workers with the oppressing minority of white monopolists. Revolutionaries must understand that this is the traditional method of accommodating to the imperialist enemy of change.

“The Building of the Machine”

In the June 5 Black Panther, Huey P. Newton reveals the full nature of his projected Black capitalist course. “In the past,” writes Newton, “the Black Panther party took a counter-revolutionary position with our blanket condemnation of Black capitalism.” Now, however, Newton sees a revolutionary role for Black capitalism.

He outlines a program in which Black Panther clothing and shoe factories and medical programs will be assisted by “contributions” from Black capitalists. In exchange, the Panthers will call upon the community to patronize the businesses of these Black capitalists.

“Black capitalists,” states Newton, will have “the potential to contribute to the building of the machine which will serve the true interests of the people and end all oppression.” (Emphasis added—H.W.) One can get an idea of the kind of “machine” Newton intends to build from the following admission: In the past, he writes, “we received money for our survival programs from the big, white capitalists.”

Perhaps this admission also casts light on some of the reasons why Newton complained, in his April 17 article, that “our hook-up with white radicals did not give us access to the white community because they did not guide the white community.” It now becomes clear that he prefers instead to have “access” to white capitalists—whom he identifies not as the exploiters of Black and white workers, but as the “guides” of the “white community.”

Newton cannot, however, camouflage the fact that his “access” to white corporate capital means that he is continuing to serve the monopolists at the expense of Black Americans and all working people. One need not hesitate to predict that his new form of accommodation to the white capitalist “guides” will be exposed far more rapidly than his previous super-revolutionary services to the same forces.

Black people are in a unique position of more than 200 years of chattel slavery, operated by the slave-owner partners of emergent capitalism, they have had over 100 years of capitalist exploitation, racism, war and poverty.

And now Newton echoes the monopolists responsible for the oppression and exploitation of Black people who are saying that the problems of the system will be solved if only a few more Black people become capitalists. The capitalists who say this are, of course, the same ones who have set up every type of barrier against those Blacks who have tried to establish small businesses over the years.

And it is particularly ironic that the “invitation” to Black people to become capitalists should come from the very same corporate monopolists who have already destroyed most of the nation’s small businesses. Those that still remain, whether white- or Black-owned, can operate only under the conditions of monopoly domination.

Not only have the mass production industries come under the control of corporate monopoly. Through their control of the banks, chains, franchising operations, insurance and real estate companies, etc., these same monopolists dominate all sectors of the economy, including that in the Black community.

Now, in an effort to recruit a sector of Blacks to support the ruling class against their own people, the monopolists have offered a tiny minority the illusion of Black capitalism. This is another variation of the tokenism rejected by the Black masses.

Yet we must keep in mind that the Black bourgeoisie is oppressed by the same monopolists who exploit and oppress the Black people as a whole. It is within this context that Communists—who are opposed to capitalist exploitation, whether by white- or Black-owned business—support the anti-monopolist demands of Black capitalists.

Access to the handful of giant corporations and banks which control the nation’s economy promotes the myth of “Black capitalism” as a crude attempt to convince Black people that anyone can still “make it” in the U.S. The monopolists do this in order to divert the Black liberation movement from its true course. At a time when one-third of the workers in the great mass production industries are Black, the future of the liberation movement lies in united struggle with all the oppressed and exploited against the common enemy, the monopolists.

In outlining the Panthers’ Black capitalist course, Newton states that the party’s new programs “satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problems. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival revolution.” He then goes on to develop his concept of the revolutionary role of Black capitalists:

“We now see the Black capitalist as having a similar relationship to the Black community as the national bourgeoisie have to the people in national wars of decolonization. In wars of decolonization the national bourgeoisie supports the freedom struggles of the people because they recognize that it is in their own selfish interest. Then when the foreign exploiter has been kicked out, the national bourgeoisie takes his place and continues the exploitation. However, the national bourgeoisie is a weaker group, even though they are exploiters. Therefore, the people are in a better position to wipe the national bourgeoisie away after they have assisted the people in wiping out the foreign exploiters.”[4]

With this brazen misappropriation and misuse of Marxist terminology, Newton tries to put a revolutionary stamp on his scheme to build a machine that will serve the “foreign” U.S. monopolists at the expense of the marginal Black capitalists and all Black people—including the most victimized of capitalism’s victims, the lumpenproletariat.

In accordance with Newton’s theory of the revolutionary role of the lumpen elements, the lumpen victims will be rewarded with free handouts from the party. In return, they will form a machine that, to understate the matter, can serve no good purpose in the Black liberation movement.

At the same time, Newton proposes that all strata of Black Americans remain within the ghetto enclaves “pending” revolution. He is asking that they give up the only struggle that can benefit all Black Americans, including the middle classes: a united struggle with all exploited and oppressed people to win the only “territory” upon which Black people can gain their liberation in the United States—that is, the entire country and its economy.

In the former colonies of Africa and other countries, it was the foreign settler who lived in enclaves within the oppressed peoples’ lands. In the U.S„ the white corporate oppressors have forced Black people into the enclaves where Newton suggests they remain until the revolution in which the Black minority frees itself by fighting the white majority. This is the blind alley into which Newton urges Black people. But Black Americans can be liberated only through a joint struggle with all the oppressed and exploited against the white corporate minority.

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, the anti-imperialist phase of the revolutionary process opens the way to the transition to socialism. In the United States, the revolutionary process demands the building of a great anti-monopoly movement led by contingents of Black, white, Brown, Red and Yellow workers to break monopolist control of the government. It is the only path offering a perspective for the Black liberation movement, though some “revolutionaries” refuse to recognize this.

Some look for short cuts (“instant” revolution), while others devise “survival” programs pending the day when revolution comes magically into being. In actuality, both concepts are anti-revolutionary diversions from the centrality of the anti-monopoly strategy at this stage of the revolutionary process.

The Future Determines Its Own Tactics

To help preserve his “revolutionary” image while introducing his Black capitalist “survival program,” Newton makes use of the “when they are ready to pick up the gun” concept. But, shorn of its rhetoric, this is the equivalent of saying, “Since the masses are not yet ready to pick up the gun, we will table the question of picking up the gun until the masses are ready to put it on the agenda.” This is simply another way of creating passivity and compounding frustration.

The “when they are ready to pick up the gun” idea has also been expressed by others on the Left. Even some avowed Marxists have reflected views that represent an accommodation to, rather than a struggle against, this concept. But such views are in contradiction to the program of the Communist Party, to the Marxist-Leninist principles on which the party is based.

In his April 17 article, Newton stated that Cleaver’s concept of “instant” revolution was a “fantasy.” But the idea of “picking up the gun when the masses are ready” is no less a fantasy. Tomorrow’s tactics cannot be determined today. Future struggles, although they will be influenced by the outcome of today’s, will, depending on the concrete conditions that exist then, determine the tactics that go on tomorrow’s agenda.

Focusing on the gun in the future leads to frustration in the present. It carries the implication that any method short of the gun is inadequate or futile, amounting to no more than a holding operation until the real thing happens—merely a question of firing blanks until at long last reaching the point of “picking up the gun.”

This same idea is also expressed in a slightly different form by other individuals on the Left. According to one such view, “the possibilities of peaceful Struggle have not yet been exhausted.” This formulation implies that while armed struggle is not “yet” on the agenda, a revolutionary strategy must be based on the assumption that it will inevitably be placed there.

This view operates on the fatalistic notion that no matter what changes occur in the relationship of forces on a national and world scale, the working class and its allies will inevitably exhaust their capacity to prevent the ruling class from imposing armed struggle on the revolutionary process. This view, like its variants, differs from Cleaver’s concepts of armed struggle only in emphasis and timing, since it presupposes the inevitability of armed struggle as the only form of revolution, of transition to liberation and socialism.

Against such erroneous views, Lenin wrote:

“Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become more acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied forms of defense and attack . . .

“In the second place, Marxism demands an absolutely historical examination of the question of the forms of struggle. To treat this question apart from the concrete historical situation betrays a failure to understand the rudiments of dialectical materialism. At different stages of economic evolution, depending on differences in political, national, cultural, living and other conditions, different forms of struggle come to the fore and become the principal forms of struggle; and in connection with this, the secondary, auxiliary forms of struggle undergo change in turn.”[5]

Marx, Engels and Lenin fought against ideas that foreclosed the possibility of varying forms of revolutionary struggle in the transition to socialism. They rejected both the Right opportunist illusion that the transition would inevitably be peaceful, and the “Left” opportunism that proclaimed armed struggle as the only path to socialism for every country.

Today’s Right opportunists also predict that armed struggle will not be necessary, while the “Left” opportunists predict that it will be inevitable. Marxism-Leninism opposes both the will and the won’t of these two faces of opportunism, both of which tend to disarm the mass struggle.

While opposing “Left” concepts of the inevitability of armed struggle, Communist strategy simultaneously opposes Right opportunist illusions that transition to socialism is possible without the sharpest class struggles combined with the struggles of all the oppressed to curb and defeat the power of racist monopoly.

As Lenin wrote, “To attempt to answer yes or no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used, without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon the Marxist position.”[6]

The “Most Extraordinary Privilege”

“Super-revolutionaries” are quick to shout “revisionist” at those who are guided by Lenin’s views regarding different paths to socialism.

By contrast, Le Duan, Ho Chi Minh’s close comrade and successor, who has been at the center of more than 30 years of armed struggle against imperialism, emphasizes that “Lenin, like Marx, was much concerned about the possibility of peacefully seizing power by the working class.”

Even before the October revolution, states Le Duan, Lenin believed that “Communists should do everything to strive for [peaceful transition] as long as a real possibility existed, even though the chances are one in a hundred.”

Specifically, after state power had been transferred to the bourgeoisie by the February 1917 revolution, Lenin saw the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power to the working class. “Lenin,” says Le Duan, “proposed the tactics of the peaceful development of the revolution. When conditions changed, after July, and there was no longer the peaceful possibility, Lenin changed tactics and prepared for armed revolution.”

Now that the October Revolution has led to a world system of socialist countries headed by the Soviet Union, forming the primary contradiction to imperialism, the possibilities for differing forms of revolutionary transition to socialism are increasing. This also means that forms of revolutionary transition that were rare in Lenin’s time may become more frequent in the present epoch.

At the heart of the ultra-Leftists’ errors is a lack of understanding of how the socialist countries have altered the prospects for class and national liberation within the prison of imperialism. They maintain, for example, that the Cuban experience represents the only valid type of transition to socialism. As Fidel Castro points out, these ultra-Leftists are a part of a “whole series of negators of Lenin [who] have emerged since the October Revolution.” Amplifying this view, Castro states:

Today, there are, as we know, theoretical super-revolutionaries, super-Leftists, veritable “supermen” if you will, who can destroy imperialism in a jiffy with their tongues. There are many super-revolutionaries lacking all notions of reality about the problems and difficulties of a revolution. They are prompted by sentiments carefully fostered by imperialism and are full of fierce hatred. It is as if they refused to forgive the Soviet Union its existence, and this from “Left-wing” positions. They would like a Soviet Union according to their strange model, according to their ridiculous ideals. Yet a country is primarily a reality, one made up of numerous other realities.

The exponents of these trends forget the incredible initial difficulties of the revolutionary process in the Soviet Union, the incredible problems arising from the blockade, isolation and fascist aggression. They pretend not to know anything about all this and regard the existence of the Soviet Union as almost a crime, and this from “Left-wing” which is an act of absolute dishonesty.

They forget the problems of Cuba, of Vietnam, of the Arab world. They forget that wherever imperialism is striking its blows it comes up against a country which sends the people the arms they need to defend themselves. We recall Playa Giron these days. We well remember the anti-aircraft artillery, the tanks and guns and mortars and other weapons that enabled us to smash the mercenaries.

This means that the existence of the Soviet state is objectively one of the most extraordinary privileges of the revolutionary movement. (Granma, May 3, 1970.)

Shortly after the October revolution, Lincoln Steffens, the U.S. journalist, visited the Soviet Union and said, “I have seen the future and it works.” And now, as Castro has shown, this revolution not only “works” for the Soviet people, it works for all oppressed humanity. It is the single most important force in the world working in support of liberation everywhere—a “most extraordinary privilege” constantly creating “extraordinary” changes in the revolutionary process on a world scale. It creates new opportunities for class and national liberation struggles that cannot be contained within the preconceived molds of pseudo-theorists, or by the desperate repressions of neo-colonialist imperialism.

While the pseudo-theorists cling to the single idea of “picking up the gun,” the Chilean Popular Unity coalition, with a solid working-class base led by the Communist Party, pursues an opposite tactic—aimed not at “picking up the gun,” but at preventing the internal oligarchy and its imperialist patrons from doing so. This tactic combines maximum internal strength with anti-imperialist unity on a world scale.

If, however, the oligarchy together with U.S. imperialism should at some point resort to “picking up the gun,” the advantage would nevertheless remain with those who have adapted Leninist tactics which apply to each stage of the struggle.

The imperialists have always been the first to pick up the gun—including in Vietnam. If they repeat this pattern in Chile, victory—as in Vietnam—will nevertheless belong to those who recognize that power comes not out of the barrel of a gun but out of the unity of the masses in struggle against the imperialism which picks up the gun. Those who fail to see through this strategy of the ruling class, and instead indulge in “super-revolutionary” rhetoric, obstruct rather than build the movement to free Angela Davis and all political prisoners.

[1] King, Martin Luther, Jr.,  “Honoring Dr. Du Bois”, Freedomways Memorial Meeting, February 23, 1968.

[2] Ferman, Louis A., Kornbluh, Joyce L., Poverty in America; University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1968, p.622.

[3] Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, First Evergreen Black Cat Edition; Grove Press: New York, 1966, p. 109.

[4] Newton, Huey P., Article in The Black Panther, June 5, 1971.

[5] Lenin, V.I., Collected Works, Vol. 11; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1972, pp. 213-214.

[6] Ibid., p. 214.

The post The Crisis of the Black Panther Party appeared first on The Communist.

The eyes of the whole world are focused on the United States, despite the discreet commitment of certain Italian media which, for evidently political reasons, succeed in the arduous task of giving considerably greater importance to the protests in Hong Kong. The virality of the video showing the death of 46-year-old African American George Floyd and the indignation that ensued sparked a spontaneous mass movement that spread from Minneapolis to the whole country in a few days.

This is a just, legitimate protest. And not only that: what days ago could be defined as a protest movement, today takes on the characteristics of a real revolt of the urban proletariat, right in the metropolitan center of imperialism. Just look at what is happening. Protests in more than 40 cities where a curfew was imposed with the intervention of the National Guard; more than 10,000 people arrested, dozens of injured by the police who make extensive use of tear gas and rubber bullets. The repressive response of the state has raised the bar of confrontation day by day. Donald Trump has openly addressed the governors of the various states, accusing them of being too weak and asking for more arrests and to intervene to “restore order”, an invitation that seems to have already been taken up by far-right groups and supporters of white supremacists. of the President. A few days ago, taking refuge in the security bunker while the White House was surrounded by demonstrators, Trump announced the banning of the “Antifa” network and declared that the protests are led by terrorist organizations. In part it is an electoral campaign, in part it is unmistakable signs of the high level of the conflict in which the country finds itself today.

Police abuse of African Americans in the United States and racial discrimination[1] , which has never really disappeared from American society, have always been known. But it would be highly reductive to think of the protests of recent days as a simply anti-racist movement . From the riots of the last few days, a political rejection of the American model, of the injustice of that model of society has emerged . The target of the protests does not appear to be just the Trump government, but the entire scaffolding that large sections of US society perceive as grossly unfair. And in fact, in all the cities, demonstrators are seen waving US flags upside down.

The African American question in the USA, which today also extends to Hispanics, has always been intertwined with the class character of American society. Police abuses of African Americans are the icing on a deeply unfair system. To cite some data, African Americans are 13% of the US population, but they own 1.5% of the wealth. A white household earns on average ten times more than a black household, and inequality rose sharply during the crisis 10 years ago (before the crisis the proportion was one to seven). The health emergency from Covid-19 has hit African Americans in considerably greater proportions, in a country without a true public health service, which does not consider health a right, making it accessible only to those who can afford it. All the statistics have highlighted a trend: the sick and especially the dead from Covid are African Americans. According to data from the Washington Post and the New York Times, in counties with a majority of African Americans there are three times the number of infections and six times the deaths. In New York, the main outbreaks of the epidemic are in the working-class neighborhoods: Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. The data of the individual states make the situation even clearer: In Michigan, African Americans are 14% of the population, but they represent 40% of deaths from Covid. In Louisiana, 70% of Covid deaths are African American, but blacks are only 32% of the population. This happens because the black communities, being the poorest, they have less access to treatment as they cannot afford to pay for them and therefore have more frequent previous pathologies, which increase mortality. Many work underpaid and exploited precisely in those essential sectors that are not affected by lockdown measures and are therefore more exposed to infections. All this happens to increase the dose in a context, that of the health emergency, in which thousands of people are deprived of their income, lose their jobs, have no access to medical assistance.

The killing of George Floyd acted as a detonator for the exasperation of the popular classes to turn into revolt. A class revolt, because those who live in African-American neighborhoods are proletarians, and it is the proletarians who are affected by racial discrimination. It is against this exasperation that the police, the National Guard are mobilized today in the US and the opportunity to use even the army to suppress protests is discussed. It is a response that is far from atypical for the United States: a country that has 6% of the world population, and which at the same time boasts 25% of the world’s prison population.

Any reflection on the violence, on the police stations set on fire, on the destroyed shop windows or on the episodes of looting, must take steps starting from this context, because they are typical phenomena of a context of revolt like the one in progress, they have to do with the effective mass participation in the protests that have been going on for more than a week now. This net of reports of infiltration by police and provocateurs by the protesters themselves. The talk of beautiful souls about violence that calls more violence, about “there is a way and way to manifest”, really leave the time they find when faced with a real mass movement that points the finger at the power of the ruling classes. It is a context that physiologically presupposes, by its very definition, the presence of violence, which comes primarily from the state. Those who hasten to “condemn” the violence of the demonstrators, real or alleged, only show that they prefer the daily violence of the bosses. Those who even from the “left” distance themselves from looting do not realize that there is no popular uprising in history without such episodes, in which exasperation for their living conditions finds an outlet in the act of appropriating goods and merchandise which normally could not be afforded for economic reasons. It is a phenomenon explained by the context. Rather, we should ask ourselves what are the reasons why the anger of the popular classes in the US does not find a more advanced outlet than this. What for the right-thinking and for the theorists of order and discipline would be enough to condemn that movement?

What Are The Prospects?

The United States is a country in which the insufficiency of the forces of the labor and communist movement has emerged for some time and much more than in other countries. The historical CPUSA, who started with a troubled history, suffers the profound limits due to an opportunist political leadership that has led him for years to support the Democratic Party of the USA, also and above all electorally. The Communists in the USA operate in a context of weakness and fragmentation, in the absence of a party that can express today a real political and fighting alternative. The US trade union system imposes an entirely company-based structure in the total absence of collective agreements and therefore an enormous fragmentation of workers’ organizations. An overall picture that shares many aspects with other Anglo-Saxon countries;

The movement these days is paying the price for these shortcomings, for which the young people who animate it are not to blame. It is a great protest movement, a revolt that certainly sees black and non-black men and women as protagonists, workers and precarious workers, and students but that does not see the support of a large, organized workers movement that is capable of giving the protests an outlet for struggle for a more advanced policy. This movement does not exist in the USA, just as there is no communist party rooted and present throughout the national territory, despite some interesting and important experiences, but still in an embryonic phase. These days it is a movement animated by proletarians, by waged, precarious, unemployed workers, who however are not organized as such, and one would wonder if they are aware of it.

The United States is no stranger to the explosion of this kind of movement. Indeed, it can be said that in the last 10 years there has been more mass movement in the US than in Italy. But they take place in a context in which the forces capable of directing anger and rebellion in the direction of the revolutionary struggle , of the struggle against the imperialist system of which the US has been the main global player for years, are lacking .

It is not a question, mind you, of discrediting a movement for these shortcomings. Those who think that the role of the Communists is to pontificate at the window by excommunicating any mass movement that is not born on its own initiative, without asking the question of what kind of intervention should be put on the real level, have understood very little of Marxism. However, it is a question of remembering the lesson of the many movements seen in recent decades. We think of Occupy (born in the USA), the Indignados and so on, which were also movements with more “political” connotations when compared with this which really expresses the characteristics of a people’s revolt. The irrational and romantic fascination for protest movements should rather be contrasted with a mature reflection on how the communists should act.

In Italy the movements have shown one thing: without a communist party and an organized workers’ movement, but even if the communists do not prove themselves politically up to it, a spontaneous protest movement can run out, or slowly ebb, without there having been no advancement for the class forces. In the years of the G8 in Genoa, the two communist parties present in Italy at the time, Rifondazione and the Pdci, were respectively engaged in theorising the movement of movements (a sort of Bertinottian version of the multitudes of Toni Negri, which in fact dragged that party to the tail and not at the head of those movements) and to study the best alliance for each region to obtain councilors and elect councilors. That movement, which posed important fundamental questions in the opposition to the G8 and saw the participation of large proletarian and trade union sectors, found itself lacking a vanguard leadership and a real perspective. A merciless picture if observed today in retrospect, which reminds us that that is not enough in itself there are communist parties, but it is also necessary that the right objectives be set.

A separate discussion applies to the individual days of protest that resulted in pitched clashes with the police, which is linked to the reflections on the violence. On the specific theme of street clashes, some clarifications are important and it may be useful to recall the recent experiences of our country to clarify some aspects. A day that the not so young will remember is that of December 14, 2010. A large mass movement, participated in spite of the fact that it mostly saw students at the center (unlike the movement against the G8 in Genoa which saw a wider mass participation), culminated in that day that saw the explosion of the clash in the street after the Berlusconi government did not fall in the Chamber by three votes from the center-left. The last blow of the tail of that movement was, in hindsight, on October 15, 2011, where the contradictions of an ever less spontaneous street conflict were already emerging and more and more practiced on the precise choice of individual organized groups. But it is perhaps the march of 1 May 2015 in Milan that made a reflection on how the mere simulation of a conflict that does not correspond to the reality of the class struggle (which certainly cannot be reduced to the aesthetics of a clash with the police) really necessary. ) risks even being counterproductive and lending its side to reaction and repression. Here, when it comes to violence and clashes that take place during a protest, this should be the main discriminator for communists. But it is perhaps the march of 1 May 2015 in Milan that made a reflection on how the mere simulation of a conflict that does not correspond to the reality of the class struggle (which certainly cannot be reduced to the aesthetics of a clash with the police) really necessary. ) risks even being counterproductive and lending its side to reaction and repression.  The condemnation of spontaneous episodes of violence typical of a mass movement does not belong to the communists, much less the condemnation of violence in general in the name of that “pacifism” which would like the unilateral disarmament of the oppressed. On the other hand, it is entirely legitimate and right to criticize the political tactics of certain minority groups which envisage the simulation of that violence even when the real mass movement does not exist or does not express advanced positions, for the reasons mentioned above. In the case of the current uprising in the United States, however, it seems that we are more in the first case than in the second.

The attempt to “absorb” the protest and the tasks of the Communists

When a movement is born and develops outside the organized workers’ movement, but above all when there is no political vanguard of the class capable of taking over it, it is physiologically that this movement expresses backward conceptions and that above all the conditions are met for which it can be absorbed by bourgeois political forces.

Recent news is the announcement of the participation in the funeral of George Floyd of Joe Biden, candidate of the Democrats in the US presidential elections highlighted an election campaign logic that seeks to transform the anger that is setting the United States to fire and sword into political consensus, without any form of real political discontinuity. Suffice it to say that the Democratic candidate, even in a similar situation, did not go much further than affirming the need to teach the police to “shoot in the legs instead of the heart”. And beyond Biden, all the political, media, cultural, and even economic apparatuses are already working to “normalize” the protest. Big companies are scrambling to take part for the demonstrators, for many big monopolies #BlackLivesMatter has already become a marketing campaign, much like what happens annually in the month of Pride (which “normalization” has already seen. for quite a while), in which even large companies are tinged with the rainbow.

For some time now the hands of those “left” sectors of the Democratic Party of the USA have been reaching out to the Black Lives Matter movement, from Bernie Sanders to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which more than representing a real alternative of struggle capable of undermining the American bipartisan system, are successfully carrying out the function of reabsorbing even the most radical elements of protest emerging from American society into the confines of that system. A function similar to that performed throughout Europe by the parties of the European Left with respect to movements against austerity. Experiences of government or support for bourgeois governments of the European Left in countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal have fully demonstrated the historical function of those forces that are now fully integrated into the bourgeois political system (Syriza, Podemos, Bloco de Esquerda…), for the sake of those in Italy who still think they are taking that road out of time. The “left” of the US Democratic Party does not express anything qualitatively different from these experiences, and manages to be more backward even on the political level.

The Communists of the USA operate in a difficult context, but also in a historical moment in which – it is now well known – among the young American generations an idea of ​​rehabilitation of “socialism” (certainly conceived in a confused way) is gaining ground. It took place from the time of the protests against the war in Vietnam. This sentiment, certainly confused and contradictory, but which remains indicative, is now being intercepted by the left of the Democrats, which re-proposes the project of a “traditional” social democracy as opposed to the substantially liberal nature of that party.

Of course, the bipartisanism of that system, with the primaries of the two parties now welded as institutional processes in all respects (and not just party-based), has considerable weight. Asking whether the two-party system in Anglo-Saxon countries is the product of the marginalization of the communists in the political scenario or whether it is quite the opposite is a bit like the story of the chicken and the egg. If one thing is certain, it is that that mechanism can only be undermined by the material strength of the workers and organized proletarians; that building this force is all the more necessary in a country like the USA where the electoral system deprives the Communists of even the same parliamentarian illusion and the possibility of building the party as a political / electoral consensus party disconnected from the working class.

It would be a great mistake, however, to cultivate the illusion that those forms of spontaneity can in themselves lead to a real change in the system, and that in this they can replace the organization. History shows that when there is no political reference, even the largest mass movements can ebb and give way to the return of ordinary oppression, or even to responses of a reactionary nature. The images of the White House surrounded by demonstrators are an important signal, but we cannot delude ourselves that the White House “conquers itself”, without an organized force of the oppressed classes capable of leading the assault as it did with the Winter Palace.

The task of the Communists would be first of all not to arrive unprepared. Recent events, not only in the US but also in France, constantly remind us that the possibility of the explosion of movements of struggle and protest also exists outside the forecasts of the organized class forces. When this happens, you risk missing the train of history. The biggest mistake, in a situation of this kind that we know well in Italy, would be to stay at the window launching anathemas, blaming the masses for being backward, blaming the movement for its own limits deriving above all from the unpreparedness of those who should put themselves to the guide of the masses. Conduct such as this has the sole result of facilitating the absorption of a movement of this type by the bourgeois political apparatus,

The experience of the workers’ movement teaches us that the Communists can and must move like fish in water. That even small organized groups, such as the most consequent Communists in the USA who are fighting for the reconstruction of a revolutionary party, can act in the context of a mass movement, gaining positions and prestige, albeit in initially limited sectors; they can place the need for organization on the more advanced and conscious sectors of that movement, absorb the more combative part that has no intention of remaining to witness the reflux of a struggle movement that it has helped to animate. Our whole history is full of episodes that remind us of a lesson: there are no conditions that, however unfavorable they may be, justify the abandonment of the struggle.

To the anger, to the will for change of millions of proletarians in the USA who today point the finger at injustice, we must offer a force capable of truly conquering a different society. This force is the Communist Party. The struggle to organize and strengthen this party, in the US as in all countries, remains the greatest hope of change for a generation that does not want to bow its head in the face of the new capital crisis.

Paolo Spena is a leader in the Italian communist movement.

[1] Let us use the term “race” in its social and non-biological meaning, which has always belonged to the Afro-American movements.

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