Class struggle is everywhere. Throughout history drugs have played an important role in capitalist illegal drug economies, in quelling revolutionary movements and in numbing the masses of the sharpness of capitalist contradictions.

Drugs and alcohol are, by their use and application in capitalist society, to the objective benefit of capitalism-imperialism, but even going as far back as British and Spanish colonialism. They serve the bourgeoisie in their fight against the conscious proletariat and proletarian revolution.

But drugs and alcohol alone are only one part of the problem. The implementers, the pushers, the dealers, are the ones who produce and circulate the poison. One cannot exist without the other. The harmfulness of drugs and alcohol are accelerated by their respective economies.

Drug dealers are merchants of death

Drug dealers, whether conscious of it or not, continue national oppression against the oppressed nations. They also play an accelerant role during the regular crises of capitalism[1] when scores of the masses turn to the numbness of distracting drugs and alcohol. The unemployed proletariat or the precarious position of the semi-proletariat, losing their home, their family, their well-being – without a revolutionary guiding organization with a correct line on sobriety and drugs and alcohol – will succumb to so-called “self-medication,” but what in reality is better described as drug and alcohol domination.

Another dimension to drug and alcohol domination is the psychological trauma and mental and emotional re-adaptation of the user from early childhood who must, seldom without revolutionary (let alone professional) guidance. Capitalist society breeds bourgeois nihilism and reactionary self-hatred. It breeds bourgeois-individualism. It breeds reactionary violence and self-destruction. Bourgeois ideology is constant violence against the masses.

Drug domination is not mostly a problem of individuals who made bad choices. It is not merely a choice, as the bourgeois lies are constantly repeated.  Drug domination is a combined external and internal attack. Externally, it is a highly-systematized web of oppression akin to population control that takes on almost a life of its own during economic crises and interpersonal problems among the masses, reproducing itself like a vicious cycle. Drug domination even has the power to remove the proletariat from their class, trapping them into the grim and bleak world of the lumpenproletariat, a de-classefication.

If drugs are the flames eating at the proletariat and the revolutionary movement, then economic crises is the gasoline accelerating the fire.

It is commonly acknowledged that historically capitalist states have played a fundamental role in introducing drugs into society, such as the U.S. Government under fascistic anticommunist President Reagan with crack cocaine in the 1980s. The CIA financed and defended two rightwing Contra supporters/members of Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense during the Nicaraguan Contra Wars, Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, as they sold “tons of cocaine[2]” to Ricky Donnell Ross, better known as “Freeway Rick Ross.” Reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News wrote a series and eventually published a book called “Dark Alliance” which documents this. Although some of the allegations are contested – not surprisingly by the U.S. Government and the CIA (it would be far more surprising for the bourgeois government to accept it as the damning truth it is)[3]. The money made from the selling of cocaine, to then be turned into crack cocaine by drug dealers, was funneled back to the rightwing guerrillas during the Contra Wars. Whether intentional or not, the objective reality became an organized, violent and bourgeois government-sponsored war against the masses of the country as Los Angeles as its epicenter and with a hyper-focus on Black proletarian/semi-proletarian neighborhoods. To this day, many Black and Chicano communities are left ravaged by crack cocaine domination while the only justice being that the corpse of fascist Reagan has been slowly devoured by the graveyard’s worms and beetles.

A narcotic with near-apocalyptic ramifications on the country’s masses is heroin. Arguably heroin’s mass consumption either began or was made known to the public in 1971 during the last few years of the Vietnam War. Soldiers were so addicted that they were forced to take a drug test before boarding a plane back to the U.S. “Approximately 15 percent of active soldiers were heroin addicts,” according to U.S. representatives in that same year[4].

Heroin remains one of the most popularly destructive narcotics in the Chicano Nation[5]. It is one, if not the most, popular narcotic that ruins families and destroys lives. Studies have even followed and documented the hereditary nature of alcohol, narcotics and drug domination, including heroin addiction – which families pass it down from one generation to the next[6]. Heroin is a bullet that never stops but shoots through father, mother, son, daughter, grandchildren, until all are in the streets, behind bars or in the grave.

But it is not simply only a moral issue – but of course that can’t be ignored. It is a method of domination of the masses like population control, of capitalist domination.

Drug and alcohol domination doesn’t just affect the masses. It also infects and poisons, and even neutralizes, revolutionary movements.

We are made stupid, spiritually crushed, and deadened by drug and alcohol domination. As we experience the political demoralization that occasionally creeps its way in, we are at risk at becoming destroyed by it. The masses absolutely already know this. Even the drug addicts and alcoholics know this. Revolutionary Communists, Maoists, must catch up en mass with the correct ideas of the masses on this question. You will seldom find any member of the basic masses arguing that drug and alcohol domination isn’t an antagonistic issue. The cemeteries have been collecting the bodies of the masses for generations. To them, there is no room for the postmodernist “left” who argues for hedonism as a revolutionary autonomous, anticapitalist alternative. To them, it is of great offense to talk about drugs and alcohol as liberatory devices – even if their families occasionally drink or smoke marijuana. Younger member of the masses with petite-bourgeois dispositions may occasionally defend drug and alcohol usage and even its abuse but their reality paints a grim picture in unison with our analysis.

The roles and three types of drug dealers

Everything under capitalism is stratified. There are hierarchies in everything. For drug dealers, they can be divided into three categories: big, medium and small. It is important to differentiate between the three different levels of drug dealers since all three categories have very different types of people and must have their own distinct methods of dealing with those contradictions:

1. Big drug dealersBig drug dealers are enemies of the people who prey on the proletariat – this is how their industries and economies are reproduced (not like the proletariat’s relationship to the bourgeoisie’s means of production); these are the heads/leaders of local big gangs and big cartels; they are antagonistic to the proletariat and the people.In the present, where possible, the masses should be organized and armed to defend their communities and families against the big drug dealers – in the near future carrying out selective annihilation, people’s tribunals, etc. But this must be an undertaking part of a larger mass movement. Because the revolutionary forces are small and we are outnumbered, this is not going to be something we will do at the present.
2. Medium drug dealersMedium drug dealers are smaller leaders of small-to-middle gangs and cartels; they are not beginners or recent members so it’s wrong to think they are less-guilty or less-dangerous. Most aspire to rise up in the ranks and make it to big dealer status. These are capitalist dreams. They see the drug economy as the capitalist enterprise that it essentially is. These dealers, however, are easier to encircle and mobilize against. The masses must be organized to expel them out of neighborhoods, to also take part in selective annihilation, people’s tribunals and armed propaganda when our forces are more advanced and the objective conditions correspond accordingly.
3. Small drug dealersSmall drug dealers are addicts and new recruits in all the above formations, but mostly in small-to-middle drug cartels and gangs. They are mostly redeemable. They can be won over, away from gangs and drug dealings. They are either fully lumpenproletariat, with an incredibly small minority being semi-proletariat – functioning addicts. They have no other recourse. No jobs, no families, no future – supposedly. But they have a good grasp that they are oppressed, even exploited to some degree. They know that probation or parole is a self-fulfilling sentence, constantly being violated at the whim of reactionary pig parole or probation officers, going in and out of jails and prisons. They want escape but they also want recognition, even revindication, validation – that is absent in their families, schools and jobs. They need to be respected and paid attention to and loved. They also need to feel strong and powerful. All of this can be done with their reintroduction into the proletariat and class struggle, guided by Communist cadre and mass-line organizations. Whether or not the focus of the mass initiative is specifically anti-drug domination or if it is part of the larger mass initiative is not immediately clear, but it should be under the guidance and organizational body of the proto-People’s Army.

The struggle against drug and alcohol domination needs the active participation of the advanced section of the intermediary, and as many of the outright advanced, both to win over the more friendly and progressive elements of the backwards – the small drug dealers.

Colonization and capitalist domination fueled by alcohol

Alcohol domination, or alcoholism, began with the conquest by the colonizers of the indigenous nations and groups, especially of North America. An example of its deadly and genocidal effects can be seen as early as the 18^th century. But it lasts to the present with natives suffering from alcoholism-related death six times more than any other population in the U.S. from 1992-1994[7].

The circulation of alcohol was an economic enterprise early on by European settlers, which of course eventually expanded into profitable, popular and global industries. Alcohol was a perfect weapon for the domination and subjugation of the rebellious natives who were fighting for their land and very existence. But the natives, before, during and after conquest, were also the colonizer’s clientele. In North America, researches highlight the extreme newness of alcohol to indigenous communities which caused the adverse effects. Europeans and others have had hundreds of years in perfecting and using alcohol, even though there surely was reckless drunkenness and alcoholism, but natives had no social practice or learned behavior – there were no “social controls” with its usage; Natives would often drink without moderation, consuming all alcohol available to them in the present moment; Native, like the colonizers, would often blame the alcohol – in some cases known as “Demon Rum” – and not hold each other accountable; there was learned behavior that alcohol would treat illnesses, in many cases substituting regular drinking water; In short, alcohol as colonization and capitalist domination was both intentional and unintentional.[8] There was no alcohol-alcoholism separation since early on. Alcohol meant domination and abuse. That is why we argue so strongly that Communists, especially Maoists, must be sober – alcohol is a volatile reactionary weapon, nearly if not entirely impossible to control.

On and off the reservation, in and out of the native-populated (North American or from Latin America) barrios and ghettos, Chicano, indigenous and New Afrikans are in a fight for their lives against alcoholism. There is no room for alcoholism, and possibly alcohol, under the transitional period from capitalism to communism. Certainly, there is no room for alcoholism in the ranks of the pre-Party cadre formations and the coming Maoist Communist Party, our People’s Army and new proletarian state.

Oppose alcoholism, love the masses, fight for their lives and the lives of our comrades!

On prostitution, briefly

Drug and alcohol domination and prostitution is heavily interconnected. Like the stratification and hierarchy of drug dealers, we say the prostitution economy shares some similarities but is also different. There are no meaningful big or middle prostitutes, as even the renegades – the ones without pimps – are in a horribly precarious position often ending with beatings, rape and even death. It is highly probable that prostitutes in general can be reintroduced into the proletariat and the class struggle, but we will most likely be more successful with small prostitutes. But of course, like drug dealers, it is immediately unclear if this should be its own campaign or an aspect of another mass project. Prostitution is always a last resort for proletarian and semi-proletarian women, especially fueled or accelerated by drug and alcohol domination. It is a shameful and bourgeois myth that prostitutes are empowered “sex workers” regaining autonomy over their bodies as a method of anti-capitalist resistance. It is false consciousness at its most ugly and misogynist, even if the ideology is owned and reproduced by proletarian women. It mostly exists in imperialist countries where postmodernism, especially Michel Foucault’s petite-bourgeois sex positivism bio-politics that justifies this capitulation to backwards self-serving/destructive ideology at the expense of the class struggle. Prostitution stifles the revolutionary fury of proletarian women. It is an attempt at turning oppression into a weapon of the proletariat. But it is more akin to a dagger with no handle, cutting both the proletariat wielding it and the proletariat being stabbed by it.

We should unleash the fury of proletarian women upon pimps, upon drug dealers and other enemies of the people – but squarely from the ranks of the proletariat and its vanguard, and not from petite-bourgeois or lumpenproletariat positions.

Prostitution is a type of an economic exchange (and not “work”) involving a client, the john, the prostitute and the pimp (when applicable). The john is often of proletarian background and so the addiction/domination doesn’t simply exist within the prostitute herself/themselves. Drug and alcohol domination is almost totalizing here. Everyone suffers, but the prostitute is at the bottom of course. The higher-end johns of course exist and come from petite-bourgeois backgrounds, but typically their prostitutes are escorts and we think that necessitates a slightly different analysis because escorts are a more legitimized industry with a more solidified and formalized relationship where the pimp is a company with supervisors and the prostitutes are petite-bourgeois small independent contractors. It’d be wrong to say there is no aspect of a worker-owner relationship here but it is much like the stripper-club-owner relationship; they are still given economic autonomy (under the guise of political power) with scheduling, the right to refuse clients/services/price setting to a certain degree.

Sobriety is not the answer but a necessary tool toward Protracted People’s War

Sobriety must be a first step for the cadre as part of building the Maoist Communist Party in the U.S. prison house of nations. We must be the revolutionary examples to the masses, especially to the colonized masses. Through our actions and prestige, we must proclaim, “We are not like the others. We are different. For us, as it is for you, revolution is serious. We are not playing games, posturing as heroes. We are becoming soldiers who must always be on alert, on call. There is no room for foolishness or self-harming drunkenness and drug domination. We rise up against the capitalist and colonizer’s poison but we won’t leave you behind. You are coming with us and together we will make revolution, to eradicate drug and alcohol domination from the earth!”

But sobriety is only one step, albeit a big one for some, a smaller one for others. There must be absolutely no arrogant sobriety; no attacks on the struggling masses must be allowed. We must weaponize it but in a revolutionary and not reactionary way. Individualist boastfulness is petite-bourgeois. Pre-Party, and future Party, cadre and mass organization members found to be rude or condescending to the struggling masses should be severely punished and made an example of to the masses. Sobriety is only a tool. It is not the end-result. Capitalism will not allow a dual socialist society before the Strategic Equilibrium of PPW. Sobriety must mainly and only be seen as an indispensable armament for a soldier’s arsenal.

Maoists must do everything in their power to ensure that our comrades are as healthy as they can be and that they maintain revolutionary sobriety. This can only be done through revolutionary rehabilitation programs guided by Party initiatives, as opposed to the bourgeois rehabilitation industry. While there is some good in bourgeois rehab centers (getting addicts sober is obviously good and many people’s lives can be saved and have been saved because of rehab, including revolutionaries), they ultimate serve capitalism – even if there are one or two progressive or radical doctors or staff. The program’s entirety, if it isn’t guided by communist politics, succumbs to the ideological-reproducing machine of the bourgeoisie.

Substituting self-destructive practices that addicts retreat to and reproduce often in isolation with healthy, communist-led militarized initiatives in collective settings will aid and sustain revolutionary sobriety. Regularly checking in with comrades on the road to sobriety, intensely studying revolutionary warfare and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, to all aspects of one’s life will replenish good morale in the comrade. The road to revolutionary recovery, if it is to be effective, must take place within the class struggle. And that road can only lead to Protracted People’s War as the peak arena of transformation. It is in revolutionary warfare that the people and communists are truly tested.

This general approach is not exclusive to communists, but it will be the communists who initially carry it out. But the masses also deserve revolutionary sobriety. Once communists perfect revolutionary rehabilitation programs they should implement them for the masses. The masses, then, must take these revolutionary sobriety programs over and reproduce them but orientating toward the masses.

There are two contradictory worlds we are living in, the old and the new; but the old one is primary and the new one is secondary for the time being. Prostitution and drug and alcohol domination are two systems relegated to the old bourgeois world which we have to annihilate, two industries whose ideology must be attacked – but guided by Communist leadership and reintroduction of the progressive, allied groups into the proletariat and class struggle. Class struggle – and especially Protracted People’s War – transforms people into revolutionary soldiers. Class struggle is the fire that cleanses the earth from the poisonous rot of the bourgeoisie. Cast away old ideas, break the chains of capitalist exploitation and accumulate forces for PPW! Militarize the masses and the pre-Party collectives! Apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, to the conditions in the U.S! The only method of defeating drug and alcohol domination is through revolutionary violence and unleashing the violent and redeeming torrents of the masses. Who are we to hold in their rage? Who are we to deny their revindication? Who are we to get in the way of their emancipation? We are but humble servants of the masses, revolutionary soldiers in the ranks of the becoming Party, People’s Army and the new proletarian state!

[1] http://time.com/money/4244536/drug-abuse-economy-relationship/

[2] https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch01p1.htm

[3] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html

[4] https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/health/vietnam-heroin-disrupting-addiction/index.html

[5] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/129171NCJRS.pdf

[6] https://www.addictionsandrecovery.org/is-addiction-a-disease.htm

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446168/pdf/10705850.pdf

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446168/pdf/10705850.pdf

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PDF is available here for download.

Recently, Fourth Sword Publications released a book on the growing Maoist Movement in the U.S., “Documents on the U.S. Maoist Conference for Line Struggle.” The book, a collection of position papers written for and presented at the conference, is nothing short of historical.

Red Guards – Los Angeles, for several years, has been working on various political lines and theoretical positions. One of which is the Chicano Nation. So much study and research has gone into this that the following document is merely an abridged version of a much larger work – due to be published by Fourth Sword Publications soon.

Prior to the conference, our line on the Chicano Nation was that it would move toward a national liberation revolution prior to socialist integration with its own distinct Maoist Communist Party. The Chicano national liberation would consolidate itself with the establishment of an Indigenous Republic of the Southwest governed by a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Indigenous & Chicano nations. During the conference we received a lot of criticism, of which we united with the majority. After the conference we continued line struggle with comrades in Austin and also united with much of their criticism. We have, since that time, changed our position to uphold RGA’s “Sunbelt Thesis,” which calls for a countrywide Maoist Communist Party, with a launching of Protracted People’s War in the Sunbelt region of the U.S., principally in the Black Nation.

Because “Documents on the U.S. Maoist Conference for Line Struggle” has already been released (and is currently sold out) and being read and studied, we feel obligated to release the updated paper in its entirety available as a downloadable PDF. This version will be available in the second edition of the book.

Below we post our updated theses on the Chicano Nation, as it appears in the larger document:

 

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… But most importantly, and our gravest error, was that the Chicano Nation would move toward national liberation prior to or during socialist integration into a countrywide dictatorship of the proletariat. While we did not idealistically wish for a Communist Party of the Chicano Nation or Aztlán, we now warn that it would be dangerous to the countrywide socialist revolution – precisely because it would abandon the rest of the oppressed nations within the prison house U.S.

We say that the fundamental and antagonistic contradiction of national oppression exists and continues to rack up national casualties, deaths, imprisonments, deportations, economic and political repression.

RGLA operates in the Chicano Nation. We understand our national context. We are part of the Chicano Nation’s up-and-coming leading Maoist revolutionary organizations. We have consistently maintained Chicano leadership in the organization and in all mass projects and organizations. There is a growing Maoist presence and leadership growing. Inside our nation there exists intense line struggle, with nationalism representing the capitalist line and Maoism representing the proletarian line.

We take lessons away from the Kurdish national liberation movement and the liquidation of proletarian theory and leadership (at the time Marxism-Leninism) and the capitulating to petite-bourgeois leadership by the PKK (which now calls for democratic federalism). We must uphold and represent a Communist line. Nationalism poses a reactionary threat to the national liberation movement of the Chicano Nation. The nationalists would lead the nation through a bourgeois national liberation movement. Like revolutionary China with its Communist Party leading their national liberation movement, so to must the countrywide Maoist Communist Party led but not exclusively focus on one nation at the expense of others.

Precisely because of the criticisms we have received, namely from RGA over our subjectivism and incidental chauvinism – of putting the Chicano Nation as the center of our analysis without contextualizing its relation to the Black Nation – both nations making up the country’s Southern Sunbelt region – we have revised our position on Chicano national liberation by theorizing two possible scenarios or theses as detailed below, one of which is RGA’s “Sunbelt Thesis,” of which we unite with. We are not laying out two options but rather possibilities as a warning and urgent push into immediate theorizing and struggling over the countrywide national question.

For Chicanos, as a colonized nation, self-determination is of the utmost importance. The question of national self-determination, at its most profound essence, is really a question of freedom. There are several positions on the national question and specifically the Chicano Nation, but generally there are two possible outcomes, or theses, in the movement toward Chicano national liberation. They are:

1. The separatist line: that the liberation of the Chicano Nation may exercise its right of secession from the U.S. and establish an indigenous republic of the Southwest governed by its own national Communist Party before, during or after countrywide PPW.With this trajectory of the Chicano national liberation struggle, the nation could take the form of an independent indigenous republic of the Southwest. But even though it could be governed by the proletariat of the oppressed indigenous nations and the Chicano Nation of the Southwest, it would effectively abandon the entirety of the rest of the internal colonies such as the native nations outside of the Southwest and especially its immediate neighbor to the east, the Black Nation. That sort of prioritizing of Chicano national liberation over all other oppressed nations – even if governed by the proletariat of the Chicano and indigenous nations – is counter-revolutionary for its abandonment of the countrywide proletariat. We would effectively abandon revolutionary (continental) internationalism and say with this secession and construction of the independent republic, you are all on your own, come what may.The size of the indigenous population and nations in the territory and their kettled reservations must factor into any national analysis, even if it’s only speculation. Educated and informed speculation is not a hindrance to a revolutionary movement. It enables revolutionaries to strategize for possible outcomes – even though those ideas are truly only tested when applied.

   Indigenous revolution is part and parcel to the history of the Chicano Nation and its Southwestern territory, but revolutionary class struggle also has a place in the heart of the Chicano Nation history, as laid out in the book – miner, port workers, railroad workers, and agricultural and industrial proletariat struggles in and out of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, Utah, and parts of Kansas, Oklahoma ad Wyoming.

   However, we are against a federation model giving separate oppressed native nations complete autonomy without a centralized body of leadership. We are against federalism, not for wanting to dominate the Chicano, Black or native nations or its people (contrary to what nationalists or Third-Worldists would idealistically criticize us for) but rather for arming them – us – with the weaponry to guard the revolution and defend it against counter-revolutionary forces.

   The secession of the Chicano Nation, while a right for any oppressed nation in exercising self-determination, would support a dividing up of oppressed nations in the country and not uniting the oppressed nations as the strongest weapon against their principal enemy: U.S. imperialism.

   An enemy surrounded by one army under one centralized command is far easier to topple rather than several autonomous armies surrounding the enemy. War calls for discipline and hierarchy – especially the greatest war on earth, PPW against the U.S. – an army capable of annihilating the enemy from the face of the planet with revolutionary vengeance.

   As Communists, especially operating within the Chicano Nation, our aim ultimately is to unite the people and the proletariat, not to delineate unnecessarily oppressed nations from one another. That would be bundism, which we reject. The principal national enemy of the Chicano Nation, other indigenous nations and the Black Nation is the oppressor White Nation, the U.S. So, then, a more effective strategy is uniting the proletariat of all oppressed nations against the U.S.

   The Chicano Nation is oppressed by the U.S. Our complete freedom, beyond national freedom, will only come when the U.S. is destroyed and reconstructed under socialism administered by the dictatorship of the countrywide proletariat.

2. RGA’s sunbelt thesis as generally summarized in “Condemned to Win”: That PPW will initiate in the sunbelt region – the Southern half of the U.S. mostly following the Northern borders of both the Chicano and Black nations – specifically in the Black Nation region; that both the Chicano and Black nations will not secede but integrate, without their own separate national parties, into the countrywide project of socialist construction under one multinational Communist Party. The multinational countrywide Communist Party is a necessity for the destruction of the S. and the liberation of all people, all oppressed nations, from national oppression and capitalist-imperialist exploitation. To advocate for one oppressed nation to be liberated while the rest are still being held captive in the prison house of nations is treacherous. The nationalist line is: we matter firstly. The Communist line is: all of us or none of us – but not as a moral choice, rather a political-military strategy.National liberation is not being liquidated in this thesis but rather it is integrated into the socialist revolution because anything other than a centralized militarized Maoist Communist Party leading a countrywide PPW will guarantee colossal failure. The Party’s role would be to form and lead national liberation-specific organizations to win over and militarize the oppressed nations’ masses under a Communist line and reject a nationalist line. Nationalism leads to capitalism. Internationalism leads to communism.

   In the past, the national question has been poorly theorized – with either capitulating to Great White Nation Chauvinism and liquidating national liberation struggles entirely or abandoning socialist revolution in favor of nationalist-capitalist segregation. These two lines have been well documented in the New Communist Movement. But even as far back as the 1940 and 50s, the arch-revisionist CPUSA led by Earl Browder had pushed the liquidation of oppressed nations, namely the Black Nation as theorized by Harry Haywood, in favor of a more patriotic American (chauvinism) trajectory toward socialism. This has plagued the national Communist movement into the present and is embodied in the revisionist Chicano national minority line.

   And so a line must be clearly demarcated by Maoists that we must not liquidate the right to self-determination of oppressed nations, in our outside of the U.S. The oppressed nations/internal colonies of the U.S. require painstaking dedication of theoretical study – especially the native nations lightly touched upon in this book. Failing to treat the right of self-determination for oppressed nations seriously is a rejection of Leninism. Maoists must not tail national liberation struggles; when we are nationals of those oppressed nations in question, we mustn’t merely be critical supporters but instead be active participants – to win over a proletarian line from a nationalist-capitalist line.

Whatever scenario is to come to fruition, a central truth that cuts through the two theses presented is that the Chicano Nation has played and will subsequently play a crucial role in the coming PPW in some resemblance of unison with the Black Nation. The Maoist forces within these nations, namely RGLA in the anti-gentrification movement and RGA in the antifascist movement, have already planted the seeds to grow the most advanced pre-Party formations in the Sunbelt region. Following that premise, a Communist Party must be leading the Chicano national liberation movement ensuring that a nationalist hegemony capitulating to capitalism does not win out. Whereas the first thesis called for a separate national Maoist Communist Party of Aztlán, the second thesis still gives priority to Chicano national liberation but working in unity with the Black Nation and all-around priority given to concentric construction of the countrywide Maoist Communist Party, the People’s Army and the United Front.

Because each of the two theses uphold the Chicano Nation as an oppressed nation and internal colony and does not dispense with its necessary liberation and freedom, these theorized trajectories all fall under the Chicano National Liberation line. The theses are not options. We are not arguing that we can pick and chose one over the other; we are theorizing of a future where the possibilities revolving around the oppressed Chicano Nation and a Maoist Communist movement will produce one of these two possible outcomes, and we will move toward the realization of the second thesis, that is, formally adopting RGA’s Sunbelt thesis.

National liberation is a permanent aspiration of an oppressed nation throughout its continued oppression; but if the oppressor nation – in our case, and most of the world, being the U.S. – is destroyed, then the oppressed nation ceases to be oppressed. Both theses are predicated on a revolutionary war – PPW – intended on destroying the U.S. For our people, our class and our nation to be free, the U.S.’s domination over our lands must cease to exist.

We are experience a growing hegemony of the Maoist movement in the country, but principally in the Chicano Nation with RGLA and Red Guards Austin, the latter being the principally-Maoist leading pre-party force. We must seize the time.

Once upon a time, May Day used to be the most significant day for the international proletariat. From its 1886 origins from the streets of Chicago, turned red with the blood of the Haymarket Martyrs, in the fight for the eight-hour workday, May Day gave the proletariat a fighting spirit in the U.S. It gave our class some of its first communist and anarchist martyrs in this country.

May Day gave fear to our enemy, the capitalists and their lapdogs, with their historically-sealed fates growing nearer.

The first drop of blood spilled was at the expense of the proletariat, but the last drop of blood will not come from our veins. 

May Day has been co-opted by supposed “communist” and “leftist” organizations. It has turned into a police-permitted, capitalist-sanctioned-and-celebrated parade. 

In fact, just last year we even saw well-known populist pan-nationalist and fake socialist organizers follow the liberal #resist march, not to mention the rewarding speech by bicyclist-gentrifier Mayor Eric Garcetti himself at the end. The same capitalist mayor that has ushered in destructive gentrification throughout Los Angeles!

How dare any of these organizations and capitalists use this march – this day! – as a rallying call for their reformism, for their revisionism, for their labor aristocratic arrogance!

We must fight tooth and nail to free red May Day, the fighting spirit of the proletariat, from the clutches of the pro-imperialist, pro-gentrification, pro-settler-colonialism liberals!

May Day was never meant to be a parade with police escorts and city permits. The first May Day was illegal!

No more are we waiting for permits to take over streets. No more are we going to succumb to the liberalism and danger of having police escort us. We don’t need the pigs, we have each other.

We call on proletarians and the oppressed – the undocumented proletarian immigrants, the oppressed nation’s working-class women and trans militants, the working-class renters – to join supporters of Red Guards – Los Angeles and rally at Mariachi Plaza and march with the red flag! Time and route will be disclosed later today due to pig surveillance on Boyle Heights organizers and revolutionaries. 

Join us today, May Day, as we make it red again, in Boyle Heights. Please keep an eye on our Facebook event page where we will be posting important updates today.

We must dare to struggle, dare to win! We must pave the way for the proletariat and the oppressed to follow our path toward Protracted People’s War and communism!

Come angry, wear a mask! Bring red flags! Bring the ruckus! 

Long live International Workers’ Day!

Long live Red May Day!

 

Intro: rectification and conference

Earlier this month Red Guards – Los Angeles’ (RGLA) gender rectification project “Unlearning Patriarchy,” now known as “Arming Ourselves Against Patriarchy: Creating the Women’s Guerrilla Defense Unit,” was invited to and participated in the conference “#HowIWillChange: A Conference for Men to Deal With Our Sh!t.”

RGLA, with the guidance of Red Guards Austin, initiated a gender rectification campaign approximately two years ago when it was discovered that a member at the time had physically assaulted a woman. Leadership expelled the person and constructed an internal gender rectification campaign for the main task of transforming the men in the organization into proletarian feminists, and to better their understanding of gender and practice. Approximately one year ago, RGLA’s gender rectification campaign took on a semi-public character when we started hosting monthly workshops on patriarchy and capitalism, Unlearning Patriarchy. The workshops, the series overall, had a dual character: 1. to continue on with the internal gender rectification campaign – each RGLA member or supporter had their own particularities for their own specific gender rectification, 2. to politically bring up the men in our social and activist circles who also have bad gender practice and theory, with many women in their lives suffering because of this.

The conference, largely inspired by the #MeToo Movement, was organized around the idea of men dealing with their misogynistic behaviors, ideas, tendencies, etc. The conference was organized by men in the community and was hosted at a community center in Vancouver, Canada. Speakers and participants came from various parts of Canada and even the US, including many community members from indigenous nations in the regional area. Although the conference did focus on men speaking, engaging, transforming themselves and each other, women and trans people also participated.

Facilitators and leaders of Unlearning Patriarchy, as a project reaching its end, saw this as a good opportunity to engage with different community members regarding the history, present, and future of the project. RGLA saw this as a good way to reflect, self-criticize on the projects shortcomings, and engage in good-faith criticism on multi-tendency spaces that speak of transforming society by transforming the individual, especially on “challenging, unlearning, countering, decolonizing” patriarchy, but do not build revolution nor do they know how to get there.

The conference was a big umbrella space for leftist and community members looking to end misogyny in society and within ourselves. But the conference, like all bourgeois institutions and manifestations, was incidentally about how to continue operating capitalism, and how to continue surviving under capitalism.

Like the reformist nature of the state’s nonprofit suger-coated bullets, all manifestations of supposed solutions to the contradictions and problems of capitalism, patriarchy and settler-colonialism that do not uphold and reaffirm revolutionary war as the method of resolving the principle antagonistic contradiction, that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, is actually counter-revolutionary in essence.

The conference was devoid of revolutionary politics, Marxism. There was no guiding ideology or analysis exposing the contradictions of capitalism, its relation to patriarchy and how to destroy it. Of course, aspects and sub-aspects of patriarchy were discussed but not sufficiently analyzed and struggled over theoretically (e.g. defining terms, violence in homes, what causes individuals to become violent, how violence is around us all the time, etc.). While settler-colonialism was only vaguely discussed as a principle cause for much of the sub-aspects of patriarchy like misogyny and objectification, there was no scientific correlation as to how patriarchy predated the European conquest and settlement of present-day Canada, its development through private property and the ascension of the family economic unity and the state. There was no analysis as to how patriarchy gets reproduced in capitalist society or the type of character – antagonistic or non-antagonistic – of the relationship between proletarian men and women.

It was a space for men to openly talk about what was wrong in the dominant capitalist culture, how culture reproduces misogynistic ideology and actions, how men themselves do so too in their daily lives, and how to better combat that as individuals. But here the conference speakers perpetuated a line that RGLA had adopted early on, which was fundamentally incorrect. That is, a flattening of all men, regardless of class or nationality, who perpetuate equally patriarchy against women. Secondly, as mentioned earlier, the conference and RGLA had upheld a political line that interpersonal relationships between men and women under patriarchal capitalism – as opposed to the incorrect “capitalist patriarchy,” which puts patriarchy first as the principle contradiction – can be “unlearned,” while not completely, to a lower more bearable level. It is of little to no concern about the individual’s concept of gender or patriarchy; it is far more important to adopt a collective, in our present state the pre-party formation, political line on the position of proletarian women, in and outside of the internal colonies/oppressed nations, under capitalism and to strategize a resolution to the contradiction between the sexes.

We assert, now, that the contradiction between proletarian men and women is not generally antagonistic and therefore does not require a revolution between men and women to resolve this contradiction. The non-antagonistic contradiction between proletarian men and women however may, at times, become antagonistic and often results in violence and even murder of women. However, there is a direct correlation between the contradictions of capitalism and the precarious economic position the proletariat occupies. Violence exits in proletarian neighborhoods. Violence against women exists in proletarian neighborhoods. Violence against women exists in the oppressed nations in proletarian neighborhoods. This violence does not exist constantly but rather under regular peaks of sharpen imperialist economic crises like recessions, massive job loss, offshoring, outsourcing and state policies that heightens the exploitation of the proletariat and increases the level of national oppressed by the white nation against the internal colonies/oppressed nations like mass housing displacement (gentrification). Capitalism perpetuates violence, not the other way around. The former is explained by Marxism, the other is upheld by postmodernism and revisionist “Marxist”-feminism and other non-Marxist feminist schools of thought.

After the revolution the socialist construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat with a reconstruction and collectivization of domestic/reproductive labor will initially resolve the contradiction between men and women. Subsequent cultural revolutions can also resolve the more aggressive residue patriarchal ideas that linger on as the dying old ideas of a dying old world.

Thoughts on the conference: the good and the bad

Most conference speakers came from nonprofits and many were members of indigenous nations, and/or had academic backgrounds. A lot of the focus could be narrowed down to acknowledging settler-colonialism, intersectionality, and self-transformation by individuals.

Again, we repeat, if the goal is to end patriarchy, simply put, we argue that you cannot end patriarchy without destroying the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; and only a revolutionary movement led by a militarized Communist Party guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, can destroy the capitalist state. Patriarchy came about with the advent of private property, the state and correlating social classes. We can only move closer to its elimination with the destruction of social classes. That is not an end all, by any means, but it is fundamental. It is the fundamental political line, and within the line contains the steps, to destroy the state and doesn’t exist in the idealist, un-Marxist world in which patriarchy will eventually crumble under its own weight; it must be destroyed through revolutionary violence, through a revolutionary war. Within this, however, we find unity with many non-Maoists organizations, movements and people. So to speak of destroying one without the other – capitalism and patriarchy – is to uphold both, just like how revisionism pretends to be Marxist and anti-capitalist when in reality to uphold revisionism is to uphold capitalism and/or its restoration.

Some thoughts on the tactics from the conference:

1) On nonprofits: Nonprofits are not revolutionary, nor do many claim to be (but some do, and ought not to lie to themselves and the masses). Many acknowledge their limits, but still they see the necessity of creating a better world. Beyond the fact that many nonprofits have contradictory roles within communities, like Self-Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights that works with the bureaucratic bourgeoisie actively displacing/gentrifying the proletarian community, as well as receiving money from the comprador bourgeoisie that make their wealth through exploiting other communities, what role do nonprofits generally play in society?

Nonprofits generally focus on issues that affect working-class families living under capitalism but look to put band-aids on them – that is, soften the contradictions of capitalism. Because of this they are only bourgeois instruments. Nonprofits who orientate to urban proletarian students receive a sub-par education, especially oppressed nationality youth. Nonprofits look at this national oppression or capitalist exploitation and says, “Let’s give them art classes, tutoring programs, mentors, healthier spaces to grow and learn.” Nonprofits who orientate to working-class families struggle to eat looks at this and says, “Let’s give them free food, help them find employment, provide amenities to survive the realities of capitalism.” All this, without a class analysis, sounds nice, is nice, and is subjectively morally good. But it keeps the proletariat comfortable in their shackles, the colonized subjects able to bear colonization. There is no freedom without violent confrontation. There is no proletarian emancipation, of men or women, without an ending of the political economic relationship to the means of production. There is no emancipation of the colonized, oppressed and exploited without the seizure of power. As Lenin and the Bolsheviks and Presidente Gonzalo and the Communist Party of Peru have asserted, “Everything is illusory except power!”

With a class analysis we see that nonprofits generally only exist and thrive off the contradictions of capitalism. They do not seek to destroy the root causes of the issues they actively work around; they do not see the need of destroying capitalism in every way, shape and form. They see the need of transforming individuals and helping them out in their basic needs to make capitalism more bearable and survivable for them. They, in practice, reinforce capitalism by putting band-aids on contradictions that should be used to sharpen revolutionary moments and movements in aiding and ushering the destruction of the old, sepulchral capitalist world.

2) On the performativity of Unlearning Patriarchy: This is a criticism and self-criticism. You cannot unlearn patriarchy. An attempt to do so is, at its best, an exercise in performative, empty posturing. At its worst, it is actually treacherous to the emancipation of the proletariat, especially proletarian women. Patriarchy is inherent in every aspect of society and it is reinforced every second we live on this earth under capitalism. That is one of the functions of society’s superstructure. And to merely “unlearn” something prior to a hit to the economic base of society, or in absence in striking a hit against the economic base of society, is metaphysical.

At the start and much throughout the gender rectification campaign, we de-prioritized Maoist politics in favor of more immediate and interpersonal feminist politics. That is, we suspended Marxism. We put non-Marxist feminist politics in command. We did so because we saw the urgency in fighting relentlessly against the men of the cadre and supporters’ rampant patriarchal behavior, which included physical abuse against women but also included emotional/psychological abuse. We eagerly dove into publications by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Silvia Federici and others, grasping for any semblance of male feminist practice. We found some good and correct ideas, but we also found many bad and incorrect ideas. We attempted to distill the good from the bad, see Silvia Federici’s immense research on the development of patriarchy and primitive accumulation or read about bell hooks upholding the need for multi-gender formations (she used concepts like spaces or convenings, but formations would be better said and applied). This wasn’t a total failure, however. We struggled internally and externally with allied women and men who were welcomed into the rectification campaign. It was during ideological struggle on questions of gender that Marxism began to rear its head in opposition to certain lines – such as the radical feminist assertion of the man-woman contradiction being antagonistic instead of the Marxist position of it being a secondary non-antagonistic one. However, the fact that Unlearning Patriarchy lasted as long as it did without enough fundamental changes to its mission and outcome means it was more a failure than a victory. Nonetheless, RGLA and our supporters did take away great lessons and mental transformation – which can only mean developing a militarized communist discipline and adherence to a life of revolutionary service and revolutionary prestige.

This is a path we have already embarked on and we cannot be removed from it; our feet are firmly planted and our resolve is growing harder and harder like communist soldiers – becoming.

This – patriarchy’s hegemony – will not change, no matter how many bell hooks reading groups we are a part of; it will not change, no matter how many more self-care books are published; it will not change, no matter how many feminist seminars are conducted – even if they call themselves anticapitalist or even Marxist; it will not change, no matter how many men’s circles gather to learn how to be emotionally available and vulnerable with their intimate partners; it will not change, no matter how gender-diverse your organization is in its membership. Healing is impossible. Representation is not power. It, alone, is identity politics. Revolutionary war – principally Protracted People’s War – is the only solution.

Patriarchy’s violent hegemony will only begin to be chipped away when the global proletariat, with a special emphasis on proletarian women from the oppressed nations of the world, are no longer under the subjugation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

No longer will we suffice with the concept of unlearning – yes, men need to improve their gender practice but without an analysis as to why sexism exists and who benefits from it, unlearning becomes performative. Performative is generally radical in speech and reformist in action. One must literally arm themselves against patriarchy and build a revolutionary movement! If one commits to fight against patriarchy but not destroy the economic base that produces patriarchal ideas and relations, what was accomplished?

3) Lifestylism: Lifestylism focuses on an individual transforming themselves. That’s it, mainly. And this is generally what the conference was about. The environment is being destroyed by the amount of commodities we consume, so we must consume less. The amount of energy taken to grow beef, chicken, and pork drains natural resources, so we need to eat less meat and become vegan. Misogyny is rampant in society, so we must be genuinely nicer and smile more when walking around. That one company is fucking up a community, so then we must boycott it. Water is becoming more scarce and needs to be preserved, so we need to drink less, hah! We jest on this last point, of course, but that is where this line leads. It does not address the root of the problem or seek to transform it. Many tactics under lifestylism (which only are choices) might need to be taken up under revolutionary movements, but the revolutionary movement seeking to destroy that which treats life as a commodity must remain primary in every instance – otherwise capitalism is the end of the world and the human species.

4) “Check your privilege-ism”: The conference also brought awareness to settler-colonialism. Statements like, “this city is founded on violence by settlers” and “I identify as a settler” were made by presenters. Acknowledging settler-colonialism and the role it plays within patriarchal capitalism is very important, of course, but only acknowledgment so as to form a political analysis for revolution. To check your privilege is not only not enough, it is performative and politically stupid.

The postmodernist concept of “decolonization” is liberal political trickery that only preserves the colonizer’s world and their capitalist economy. The need to fight back against decolonization’s meaninglessness posturing and reassert revolutionary national liberation, primarily around the question of land, as Frantz Fanon originally had theorized it, is essential. There is no talk of fighting against colonization without fighting for the recapture of native land, of the homeland of the oppressed nations within the US and Canada. Otherwise, how can we talk about settler-colonialism existing without talking about how to materially end it?

Our political economic system in North America is settler-colonialism capitalism-imperialism. Patriarchy is a secondary contradiction, but one that can become and is mortal for women. But patriarchy is best studied from a class analysis. Bourgeouis women share very little with proletarian women. Proletarian women are alienated from their labor. They are abused, raped, brutalized, killed and left discarded in public parks like here in Boyle Heights and other parts of Los Angeles. Bourgeois women, as the gender of the dominant class in power, do not face that same reality.

A system such as ours, imposed upon the native, Chicano and Black nations, having colonized and genocided countless groups and even entire native nations – can we really talk about merely unlearning, checking privilege or decolonizing or deconstructing such a system without the use of revolutionary violence and vengeance?

Moving forward with the Women’s Guerrilla Defense Units

We are thankful that our supporter was invited and able to participate in the conference in Vancouver. As Maoists we will reflect on participating in future similar conferences that are multi-tendency and not revolutionary. Our proletarian communities, especially proletarian women of the oppressed nations, need and die each day that there is not a revolutionary vanguard. We cannot, they cannot, afford more academic and reformist conferences with no material revolutionary solutions and strategies. We are not fooling ourselves in thinking that that will be provided outside of revolutionary formation.

Proletarian women will be part of the leadership of this revolutionary struggle and it will be crucial for men to transform and become better comrades, not for personal gain, but as a necessary step toward ending all forms of injustices on this earth.

The Women’s Guerrilla Defense Units is still in its nascent steps but we are putting a heavy emphasis on political development and political struggle so as to lay down a concrete foundation capable of supporting nothing short of the towering project of continued preparation for the great revolutionary war against capitalism.

The masses die each day the militarized Party, People’s Army and United Front continues not existing. Proletarian women of the oppressed nations continue to die each day the Women’s Guerrilla Defense Units continues not existing fully. We must build as if the lives of the masses depended on it, for it does. We must build with the noble revolutionary abandonment that our lives are guaranteed to be laid down in service of revolution and the emancipation of proletarian women. We are invincible with the revolutionary development of a militarized proletarian feminism! We are unstoppable with the becoming-militarized masses full support and participation! We are immortal under the red banner of Maoism!

Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism!

Long live the proletarian women of the oppressed nations, and the world!

Women hold up half the sky!

Long live all immortal proletarian women who fight and give their lives to the revolution!

 

Red Guards – Los Angeles (RGLA) sends its deepest solidarity to our comrades in Austin and in particular comrade Dallas who is, as we type this and as you read this, sits in a jail cell fighting for his freedom and to return as a die-hard supporter of the revolutionary communist movement.

We unite with the international outpouring of support for our comrade, from Turkey to Paris, from Norway to Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Houston, and now here in the eastside of Los Angeles. Boyle Heights lifts up the bold and daring communist character of comrade Dallas! Selflessness, revolutionary, always ready to give his life to the masses and the revolution!

We, too, are affected and moved to action and solidarity with our comrades resisting state repression in Austin. RGLA will not rest, will not spend a single hour or day without contemplating seriously on the release and well-being of Dallas and the growth of the revolutionary movement. The two are permanently connected.

The comrades in Austin were instrumental in the political development of our organization, and in particular Dallas and his comrade-fiancée – both facing serious jail time on suspicious charges most likely in cooperation with liars.

So many memories were shared with comrade Dallas and his comrade-fiancée. From sitting around a living room, drinking too much coffee, smoking too many cigarettes, line struggling over key questions of the movement, theorizing ways in which to stop their dog from shitting on the comrade’s carpet – analyzing whether or not it was a passive-aggressive treacherous act. Our revolutionary love and bond was cemented with dark and psychological-taxing situations that we inevitably persevered. Communism may not be love, but it is an invincible and immortal power that, like electricity, surges through the veins and molecules of its loyal soldiers and the masses.

Los Angeles swells with pride at the memory of our proletarian soldiers, comrade Dallas and his comrade-fiancée! We are sadden but as calculating as scientists with this sadness, turning it into revolutionary resolve and invincible motivation.

Long live comrade Dallas!

• Write to him at freedallas@protonmail.com 
• Send PayPal donations to avantiguzman@gmail.com 
• Please continue to buy T-shirts, which directly fund the struggle to defend Dallas. Some of them feature his original artwork: https://teespring.com/stores/urban-guerrilla-outfitters 
• Please keep sharing his story far and wide. The article about him has been translated into French, German, and Danish. Keep it going! http://www.redspark.nu/en/political-prisoners/defend-comrade-dallas-and-fight-for-his-freedom/

Nothing strengthens our resolve within ourselves and with each other better than state repression. The state feeds us daily and will feed us till it or we die. We are ready for what’s to come.

If you are serious about ending exploitation of one by another, of ending the oppression of imperialism, of patriarchy of the diseased parasitic capitalist system that takes its toll on the working poor every day, if you wear the title ‘communist’ because you are honored to sacrifice yourself for the emancipation of the working class and all oppressed people, if you know all this, then you know you are condemned to give up your freedom, to die and to win.

Dallas, as a principle Maoist, understands this to its core. He grasps the duty of the communist and his selflessness. (Link at the end)

The state is cracking down on our comrades in Austin but all Maoists, revolutionary anarchists and others who are actually putting their theory into practice, await their turn. You need to accept this.

Support the comrade in whatever way possible – financial donations, making this go viral, becoming Maoists, building and training people’s soldiers!

You need to accept that when you give your freedom or life, a dozen or hundred others will rise up to take your place in the coming Party and Army and Front.

You need to train your replacements. You need to spread Maoism like the prairie fire it is. Light up all the fields on this earth so that they can be seen from any corner of the world!

We must think of ourselves as not belonging to ourselves. We are grains of sands. We are made up of millions, across the globe. Under extreme conditions, we can change shape and form. And right now, I think it is fair to say we are currently under that transformation. We have to think of ourselves as only belonging to the people as their permanent comrades and defenders. An individual can be crushed, but their realization, that which is outside of them, that they are part of millions, that can never be destroyed.

We are immortal because we are the martyrs becoming!

As one falls, dozens and hundreds shall now rise up!

Death to the individual, life to the masses, the becoming party and revolution!

Free Dallas!
Long live Red Guards Austin!
Long live the Red Guards!
Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism!

—

Donate to the fundraiser: fundedjustice.com/free-dallas

Buy a T-shirt—all proceeds will be used for this struggle: http://teespring.com/free-dallas
https://redguardsaustin.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/defend-comrade-dallas-and-fight-for-his-freedom/