Went to a small regional socialist political conference recently and there was a lot of discussion about this. It has really advanced my worldview, especially having recently read Settlers.

The doctrinaire Marxist analysis of society is that there is a proletariat working class, and there is a capitalist class. The capitalists exploit the proles, and the proles are revolutionary. We are all familiar with this.

However, communists in every country must adapt this analysis to their own actual existing society. This requires answering three questions:

  1. The history of this region is characterized by ________
  2. The contradictions of the current moment are primarily ________
  3. The revolutionary class is _________

In Russia the revolutionary class was the industrial proletariat, and in China the revolutionary class were the peasants. We can’t pretend the US has any similarity to Tsarist Russia. So what are the answers to these questions in our context? I’ll give my own thoughts as a comment.

  • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    73·
    3 months ago
    1. The history of this region is characterized by colonialism, genocide, slavery, and a tacit refusal to pay for any of it in the hundred-fifty years since.
    2. The contradictions of the current moment are primarily that we’re told slavery is ended despite the existence of school-to-prison pipelines, ‘three strike’ laws (thanks, Genocide Joe), and stop-and-frisk law to provide bodies to the for-profit prison slavery complex.
    3. The revolutionary class is denigrated subjects-of-empire (Black and Indigenous predominantly) and ex-felons.

    My analysis based on the work I do and who I do it with.