Who’s Ready for Civil War? — A Brief Analysis of April and May, 2020
The legislative body of the State of Michigan cancelled its legislative session yesterday in response to the threat posed by armed reactionaries that have been swarming the state capitol at Lansing for the past week. This comes on the heels of similar armed reactionary protests at a myriad of state capitols over the past month in response to state imposed restrictions on movement and public gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This also comes on the heels of even more police and armed vigilante murders of Black people, in Indianapolis and Brunswick, Georgia most notably. These armed protests are not organic, nor are they really proletarian in character or line. There is no basis of unity between these elements, who seek to force the colonized proletariat back to work, and Communists, who are tribunes of the proletariat and defenders of their basic interests. The Communist line is that the proletariat should not be forced back to work to risk their lives for the ruling class, it’s that simple. Communists promote, support, and actively develop alternative structures to weather the imperialist storm. Throughout the country, revolutionaries and progressive forces have been conducting effective serve the people programs and struggle against landlords and bosses to ensure that the toiling masses are not suffering from hunger and eviction during this pandemic. However, these programs are only part of the process of seizing power, as we all know.
The Right is flexing its muscle. It has now directly caused the cancellation of a bourgeois legislative session, in conjunction with reactionaries in the state GOP. This is a highly important development for Maoists, who realize that in the final analysis that all political power flows from the barrel of a gun. The Right is developing political power on the street in the old way. These rightist/fascist elements are backed by the police, billionaires such as the Koch clique, and the President of the United States himself, who has taken to Twitter to encourage more provocations and protests. Furthermore, we have also seen social democrats in DSA take an antagonistic position against Maoists in Chicago around land use issues in the proletarian neighborhood of Albany Park, demonstrating further their historical position as the twin of fascism. Yet, there has been proletarian and colonized armed response to the killings of Black people, as always. Armed Black revolutionaries took to the streets of Brunswick, Georgia, to demonstrate against the vigilante killing of Bro. Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23 of this year. There was also an armed escort provided to a Black legislator in the wake of reactionary protests at the Michigan capitol. We see how the masses take measures for their own well being, but, as I have said before, disciplined Communist leadership is needed to ensure that reactionary elements, the Jesse Jacksons and Shaun Kings of the world, do not continue to play havoc with our deaths and struggles.
As the enemy sharpens their knives and bares their teeth at home and abroad, we have to keep in mind that they are paper tigers, but also real tigers that can bite and shoot and wreak havoc. The masses of Venezuela stopped yet another armed regime change attempt this month, this time by US mercenaries who tried to invade the country by sea and were captured by vigilant fishermen. The people of Venezuela have resisted attempts by Yankee imperialism to split them up and drive the country into civil war. It is on us, Communist revolutionaries in the United States, to learn these lessons and continue to develop our militant practice, revolutionary political line, and unity through struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the reactionary fascist plot to drive the proletariat to its deathbed through “reopening” the country. It is our task to fight tooth and nail any attempt to force the masses back to dead end jobs and return the situation to “normal”, as normal is the exploitation, incarceration, and continued destruction of our people. We must construct a new normal for the proletariat through socialist revolution carried out using the universal strategy of protracted people’s war.
