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:
- The history of this region is characterized by ________
- The contradictions of the current moment are primarily ________
- 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.
The party line of the Panthers was that the lumpenproles could serve as a revolutionary base in the imperial core, leading them to organize in prisons among other places.
Legit starting to believe this more and more. I’ve seen more revolutionary spirit and awareness among homeless addicts, Juggalos, convicts, and struggling sex workers than even the most “radical” suburban angsty teen. For whatever it is worth these groups of the marginalized in our society are growing. I think there is more potential in starting a food program in your city (which the Panthers did) than any other type of organizing. I think the hardest part in organizing is that it is a slow grind. It is a lot of planting seeds without seeing many of them grow.
To be more specific, there are professional-class “joiners” that you might get in your org. They might participate a lot and eagerly engage with theory, but many of them will still have both feet firmly planted back with their more-affluent family and school career, and the life path constructed around them.
TRUE. I have seen this first hand. And boy do they flip when the rubber hits the road on a big issue like police abolition or something.