A Recession Is Coming. What can Communists Do?
It’s been reported that a recession is coming. All Communists know that these things are part and parcel of the capitalist-imperialist order. Instead of the fearmongering about how “Millenials are doomed”, etc. etc., it would be to our great benefit to continue to develop on the ground structure and economic development work to help allay the worst impact of this coming contraction. Of course, as a Black person, this fear mongering about losing everything and being doomed falls on deaf ears. We ain’t never had shit to lose. Our houses are mortgaged and rented, foreclosure notices and eviction letters are more common than raises, and what little we have is liable to be taken away from us using a variety of legal tricknology methods. Our businesses consistently dance on the brink of bankruptcy and lumpenization is a trend that has been going on since “Emancipation”. Those who promote the strategy of Black accommodation and integration into capitalism-imperialism are the biggest of fools because as Walter Rodney explained in “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, the presence of a strong bourgeoisie among the colonized is detrimental to the interests of the imperialist oppressor. Europeans and American settlers want customers, not competitors. Finally, we should not want to be capitalists. We should not want to throw ourselves into the system that is responsible for the poor condition in which we as a people live. The solution for us as a Nation is to unfold a mighty protracted people’s war and build a Communist Party, our instrument of bloody vengeance and settling of blood debt with our oppressors and their supporters. This is the spirit of Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman and Nanny of the Maroons.
With that out of the way, booms inevitably give way to busts. There is no feast that can last for a thousand years. This is the very nature of the capitalist system, and this cycle can only be broken through revolution. Building for revolution is not simply a matter of making overserious and pious dogmatic declarations, it is getting down to the people, meeting them where they are, and turning them into Communists through class struggle, political education, and serving them heart and soul. Communists should be obtaining land, growing and making food, building revolutionary organizations of the people that serve as tribunes of the people in regards to their enemies, always taking their side and raising their political level, and also serving as arbitrators of community disputes. It is one thing to say that we should not call the police, every child in the hood knows this. Yet people continue to get shot. In my city 12 children have been shot and killed since April. Women continue to get abused and beaten by male partners. The Left must stop talking about solutions from the government and start actually developing solutions on the ground. These symptoms of living in a disgusting capitalist-imperialist shithole do not cease for the Left or the anemic Communist movement to get its shit together. If we do not unite, organize, and fill the vacuum left by neoliberalism which has gutted services in our communities, government backed NGOs, churches and other institutions will. People follow who serves them and who they earnestly believes represent their interests. The Left must abandon hobbyism, dilettantism and other manifestations of petit-bourgeois outlook and stand and become really committed to where they are. Stop moving around. Stop chasing riots. Stop going to where you think “things are happening”. There is struggle in Gary, there is struggle in Philly, there is struggle in Detroit, there is struggle in your podunk town in the middle of nowhere. It’s up to you, the Communist, to develop it along correct lines using our theory as a guide. Nobody is coming along to do it for you. If you can’t organize in the area you were born and raised in and where people know you, you can’t organize in a city of millions of people. You’ll fall into an opportunist sect that has you selling papers while the world burns.
People know the causes of the recession, and they know what it means for them. Many people still have not recovered from the last crisis. People are losing everything. There is a solid foundation for the deepening and strengthening of a real Communist movement in this country. Wherever there is struggle, there is the foundation for Communism. What are you prepared to do to serve the people in the wake of this crisis? Will you make art? Will you write? Will you grow food? Will you start a tenants’ union? Will you teach people how to use weapons? Will you set up a community patrol? Will you start a mass organization for queer people in the wake of queerphobic assaults? Will you run fascists off our campus and out of your neighborhoods? There is much work to be done. Find people who have the same problems you have, unite them around a revolutionary Communist method and line and get to it.
