To a Future Comrade Investigating Marxism
A New Afrikan comrade from North Carolina investigating Marxism recently hit me up with a series of questions and concerns that I’ve run into frequently when propagating Marxism-Leninism-Maoism among our people. I’m going to attempt to answer them. First, why are more and more people seeking to learn about and apply Marxism? What the hell does Marxism have to do with our people? Isn’t that a European thing?
As America becomes more and more openly fascist and repressive towards the masses, as more and more of our people are shot down and left in the streets, or are made subject to harassment and shame for simply existing, for simply going about our daily lives, as we see ourselves left to rot and die in inner cities like Baltimore, semi rural areas in the Deep South which Harry Haywood considered our original national territory in the Black Belt Thesis (and which theoreticians like Rashid have sought to correctly update to address the reality facing our people in the 21st century) and inner ring suburbs like Ferguson, more and more of us will reject spontaneity and seek and apply a scientific explanation and solution to the problems we as an oppressed nation face. Many of our people cut our political teeth in organizations such as the Nation of Islam and come to maturity in semi-lumpen organizations such as the various prison-based Moorish sects, street gangs, etc. because they are in our communities every day denouncing America and doing political education and mass work, albeit non communist. These things cannot liberate us as a people because they reject scientific analysis of our oppression, do not respect the autonomy or existence of New Afrikan nonbinary and nonmale people, and in many instances while embracing the necessity of armed struggle, promote and tail spontaneity. Riots and rebellions led by non-Communist elements can not liberate us, only armed struggle led by a disciplined Communist Party guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism can. The racial struggle is a class struggle. The majority of our people are proletarians subject to an ever deepening lumpenization due to neoliberal gutting of our communities and the prison industrial complex. In short, Marxism has much to do with our people, if we really want to settle our blood debt with settler America and don’t want to go the way of Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and other enslaved revolutionaries who lost because they didn’t go all the way and pursue scientifically our liberation through armed struggle and disciplined revolutionary development of forces. Marxism was developed in Europe because Europe saw the first industrialized proletariat, but Europe is not who we follow. The origin of a thing that can be masterfully and creatively applied to the liberation of our people is irrelevant. The sub machine gun was developed by Europeans as well, ask yourself if we should throw it away because of this fact.
Second, this comrade has spent three years investigating Marxism. He has bought books by Dikotter, Applebaum, and other agents of Euro-American bourgeois imperialist narrative and myth making masquerading as objective historians. These hacks claim things like the cultural revolution was really a petty power play, the Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster, etc. Keep in mind that all things have a class nature and class stand. Nothing stands above class, including books. Nothing is objective. As Communists we are class partisans locked in struggle against our antagonistic opposite, the bourgeoisie or those who own. There are proletarian writers and theoreticians, and there are bourgeois theoreticians and writers. The comrade also claims that Marxism is invalid because it “lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fact that China is now imperialist and capitalist”. This is not a strike against Marxism, it is a confirmation of the proof that we must thoroughly and conscientiously struggle against the new bourgeoisie that will rise out of the soil of socialism. People who get comfortable, spend all their time in offices, and see themselves as petty lords apart from the masses like the “Communists” in the 1960s USSR and current day China will undoubtedly lead their socialist states onto the capitalist road and into collapse. This is why we make Cultural Revolution and consistently struggle in word and deed for the proletarian red line against the capitalist line in ourselves and our revolutionary organizations. This is done through consistent and constant study of MLM classics and criticism-self criticism as soon as we see revisionist ideas or positions in ourselves and our comrades. The masses can recognize bullshit when they see it, this is why we subordinate ourselves to their interests and consistently seek criticism from them to sharpen ourselves.
Finally, the claim that Lenin, Stalin and Mao “were cold and weren’t good people”. This statement also has class position — it is typical of Christian moralists who don’t realize that life and death struggle is just that. We have to realize that we just be cold and merciless against our unrepentant enemies to protect and defend our gains. To be liberal with our enemies is a death sentence. We are in a war, a war to the death. Our enemies show no mercy to us and ours. We must be good to our class, and merciless to our enemies. I hope that this brief response has helped, and invite you to check out my reading list that will help give you a background in not just Marxism but black liberation and theory as well.
