what’s the end goal here Zohran. ‘Socialism’ (actually social democracy) but with a roving gang of armed and organized fascists that we just ignore? are we just going to kick the issue of systemic racism down the road because it’s “woke 1” to even talk about, until it becomes a powder keg again? this is the actual internal DSA white chauvinism contradiction that MSM are clawing to find but they won’t use it as a real wedge because it’d increase the salience of Defund again
Fundamentally the defeat of the George Floyd rebellions meant the American and Western left in general ate compete shit over the topic of policing; the police are objectively worse than then they were in 2020, yet trust in police WENT UP over the last few years
White people are positively hopeless on the subject, and minority communities are literally incoherent on the topic, everyone knows the police are racist and corrupt yet simultaneously they “trust” them and want their budgets increased
This bizarre state of affairs isn’t the result of some inextricable organic love for the paramilitary hordes that roleplay as public servants, it’s the result of the utter non-existence of an independent worker’s politics and a mass movement presenting an alternative
Zohran presented the best technical example of a policy alternative in the form of diffusing police responsibility and defunding them sneakily through surrounding budget inflation, but that’s all it is, a technical proposal, without a mass movement behind it, capitalist realism and the nonviability of Great Man Theory means it runs smack into a brick wall
And even with a mass movement, the policy has to be advanced in the face of the most powerful and vicious police department in the country, a political juggernaut that is so powerful it could kidnap a previous mayor’s daughter without media or institutional pushback, Zohran isn’t dumb for taking a overly-cautious route in such circumstances, the fault lies with DSA and it’s inability to scale and communicate on this issue
Leadership has a right to caution, the movement underwriting it absolutely does not, DSA is filled with cowards and backbenchers, eternally disillusioned Berniecrats who want to follow their old master into comfortable political obscurity with just enough e-fame to keep it fun
Breaking up and stripping police of responsibilities through the cover messaging of “Reducing police overwork” is a winning strategy in the face of the currently incoherent American public, but it’s not Zohran sole reasonability to advance it on his lonesome, that is a mass movement strategy, “Build third party public safety institutions” is hardly radical nor dangerous and yet DSA is incapable of unified messaging around this basic first step
are we just going to kick the issue of systemic racism down the road
They are liberals comrade, of course they will
I feel like the DSA politicians are highlighting more and more what the difference between liberals and communists are.
At this point I don’t think it’s enough to settle for “socialist” politicians. Liberals have coopted it, but still won’t touch the C word.
US is just rerunning what we in Europe had for more than a century
It’s no surprise that a meaningful amount of the response to this post is “tailism is cool, actually”. I really don’t know how to reach such people.
Consequences of no one actually reading what is to be done
Also specifically Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, because it gets abused and quote-mined to turn any opposition to entryism into being an “ultra” (as you can see in the comments of this very post).
yuppp
What is to be done is a bad read and needs a rewrite
https://redsails.org/witbd-rs-abridged/
Edit: I also want to criticize the sentiment of “it’s a bad read.” Studying revolutionary theory is work, its analysis, its learning about the context of the work. It’s not a fun school textbook that gives you all the answers in the back.
I say it’s a bad read because I have been told over and over again on many sites that WITBD is this revelatory text that will explain, well, what is to be done, refute any other left tendency and is THE ML text.
What I got was super dry history that I couldn’t follow because none of the people in the text have been revelant for 200 years. I was confronted with terms that were outdated and needed footnotes to even understand what Lenin meant with a lot of his labels. Then the big crux of the text: start an independent vanguard party. OK, neat. Big “this could have been one-page” vibes.
I was expecting a scathing takedown of everything Capitalism stands for, railing against the oligarchs and telling me exactly what should happen to the people who literally allow shit in the lettuce to cut costs! I wanted a catharsis, not another lecture!
That attitude that reading theory is supposed to be this huge task and will somehow cause a huge breakthrough for whoever reads it sounds more like religious proselytizing than a serious political movement.
I say it’s a bad read because I have been told over and over again on many sites that WITBD is this revelatory text that will explain, well, what is to be done, refute any other left tendency and is THE ML text.
this is of course dogmatic and incorrect stance
That attitude that reading theory is supposed to be this huge task and will somehow cause a huge breakthrough for whoever reads it sounds more like religious proselytizing than a serious political movement.
again, i think this is incorrect. i dont subscribe to this opinion. reading theory allows us to better understand the struggle for socialism, experiences of the past, recognise patterns / changes / constants. this is what the science of dialectical materialism is about.
I was expecting a scathing takedown of everything Capitalism stands for, railing against the oligarchs and telling me exactly what should happen to the people who literally allow shit in the lettuce to cut costs! I wanted a catharsis, not another lecture!
if you approach every text like its supposed to be a revelation, of course you will be frustrated. but then isnt the issue your own attitude? without revolutionary theory you will never build a revolutionary movement
Then the big crux of the text: start an independent vanguard party. OK, neat. Big “this could have been one-page” vibes.
it is not a one-pager because that is not the only point of the text. Lenin also argues against Economism / right-opportunism within the left. Recognising right-opportunism is an essential skill for a party.
eternal november
Agreed. I don’t expect everyone to be leading with “death to United Snakes of Amerikkka” but socialist electeds need to lead on issues and sometimes those issues won’t be popular yet…that’s why they need leadership
Without backing from an organized, armed movement, I don’t think it’s possible for a mayor to dismantle the police in any comfortable timeframe. Who’s going to enforce the reform? The police?
Mamdani and succs have 0 interest in forming such a movement so this defense falls flat. If such a militant left existed, they would work with the pigs to dismantle it, as they have always done historically
And instead of using his office’s platform to build the conscience and the state power to support the organization development, what does he do? He could advance the goal much more meaningfully by not dismissing and denigrating it.
Yeah he doesn’t even have to really do much aside from consistently educate and agitate from his platform until the masses demand change and are ready to fight for it. He is known as the social media guy, he could be doing a lot more on that front
I’m curious what your approach would be instead.
I mean this with no snark intended and would appreciate it being kept our of my replies.
My thoughts:
- dismantling the police state is difficult
- dismantling the police state is dangerous
- dismantling the police state is unpopular, even among certiain minority groups
- it needs to be done at some point, but a “transition plan” (to what and how?) Needs to be developed and communicated. Maybe I need to read deeper on police abolition theory, but I dont think these ideas are well developed even among the US left, and even among people who are interested in seeing it happen.
- Just because one has won a mayoral election doesnt mean you have the power to restrain the police in your first year of governing if you are doing really well, you probably get 1-2 major reforms per year. Each accomplishment develops your legitimacy and political power further, accumulating “political capital”.
Maybe I am exaggerating your expectation (straw manning your argument) by focusing on police abolition，when you meant something else?
To me Zohran is completely within expectations of a Democratic Socialist politician in 2026. My expectation is that major police reform would be a second or third term project, due to the risks involved.
Money is the root of all political power, and the police need to have their budget slashed in almost every municipality in the US. Mamdani has been playing footsie with 70 million dollars which is frankly a joke compared to the NYPD’s budget which is over 6 billion. I understand that he can’t just come out and say “I’m going to cut it to 10% of its current amount”, but he should come out of the gate with an opening bid of something like reducing the budget by 1 billion dollars by retiring all of the expensive military equipment that they have stockpiled, reducing officers and reducing hours, etc.
Personally I would also like to see a rhetorical shift towards the police’s role in society, something like “more accounting, less patrolling”, with the message being that we should be spending more money getting people’s stolen wages (the number one form of theft in terms of dollars stolen and it’s not even close) back and fighting white collar crime in general. Then the remainder of the budget could be put to useful things instead of paying overtime for bored thugs to stand around in the subway browsing their phones.
I think your approach is a very reasonable standard to hold Mamdani to. I hope activist groups (and/or NYC-DSA) will push for him to start trimming the budget, even if he can’t slash it to death quite yet. It would probably take some on-the-ground effort from activist groups to start building the grassroots needed to support that effort (and beyond).
Ending qualified immunity, private prisons, mass involuntary survailence. Instead of blanket statements such as “defund” start itemizing, listing the crimes, violations, false arrests, and make our opponents go on the defensive. Speak to the corruption of the hundreds of billions. Speak of the IDF to local pig policy pipeline.
To me Zohran is completely within expectations of a Democratic Socialist
Yeah this tbh. I think he’s playing the expected role and doing it well. The DSA is not gonna bring about socialism imo and it’s why I’m not a DSA member, but I have and will continue to work with DSA people when they’re willing to fight for important concessions to be won from the ruling class. He shows that a well meaning socialist is better than the alternatives in electoral politics, but also demonstrates the limitations of working within bourgeoisie democracy. He’s the union that I’m thankful for the existence of as a worker, but that needs to become more radical and militant or be replaced as soon as the conditions allow and demand it.
it needs to be done at some point, but a “transition plan” (to what and how?)
“To what” is the question we need to develop a firm answer on before anything besides reform gains mainstream support.
I think its just a fundamental limitation of sewer socialism or reform socialism or whatever. Especially without the threat of revolution. You can’t take on the most powerful reactionary elements because you’re playing a game that depends on their cooperation. You can’t push them too hard, especially now, because there are far right revolutionary factions out there. So you’re stuck going soft on police, stuck downplaying white supremacy, &c.
Revolutionary struggle is much more free to critique the system because it doesn’t need to limit itself to bourgeois democracy. Elections can be a tool, but they aren’t the only available avenue. Yes the stakes are higher, but so are the rewards.
Yeah, nobody likes “abolish the police” in the US anymore. Frankly Americans never liked the idea partly because it was never well communicated. It’s not up to Zohran to educate the masses, it’s up to him to meet them in the middle and show them the left aren’t demons. And he has been doing that well with all his day one accomplishments.
On the other hand I dont think police abolition should be a defunct idea the way “woke 1” seems to imply. The left just needs to be smarter. What might help is shining a spotlight on massive police stockpiles of weaponry, and the estimated budget to maintain said weaponry. Like others have said, shine the spotlight on corrupt police union and officers, and fire them case by case. Then its no longer abolish the police, its fighting corruption (while actually moving towards abolishing the police). If leadership gets Allende’d in the process, then the police remain the corrupt enemy that way. The left fights a war for public perception, so they must be smart.
I probably have terrible political instincts, but I think he could openly call the NYPD bastards even as he concedes he can’t do anything about it yet. That would be better than rhetorically defending them for no reason at all.
Imagine he says that, and the masses are 80% concurring. Then what? He would have a mandate against the NYPD, more than he has now.
No offense (cause I dont really disagree with you), but I think it is poor political instincts.
I think the US DemSoc movement is just now emerging into the Overton windows, and it is likely to become a real force in the next few cycles as the “easy topics” (M4A, defund israel/military, political finance reform) enter the conversation and are hopefully dealt with.
Future leaders in the movement would need to take up the “point positions” on new issues including police reform, after the legitimacy has been established. It is possible that the movement will be co-opted before that happens, but we dont know because it hasn’t happened yet.
Consistency on principle is of paramount importance, even and especially for a burgeoning social democratic movement. It is the only way it stays alive in the medium to long term, even if it causes difficulty in the short term.
Mamdani should say what he thinks or say nothing at all. He shouldn’t say incorrect things or things counter to his principles.
A party that shows consistency in its principles demonstrates that it has a clear vision, that they are reliable, and that they are not opportunist. All important traits to possess in a future unstable, revolutionary situation.
Both Lenin (fight with the economist etc) and Marx/Engels (Gotha critique) had to figure this out too. Don’t compromise your actual principle and theory. Compromise on policy if needed, for practical reasons. But don’t concede the theoretical correctness while doing it!
It is the only way it stays alive in the medium to long term, even if it causes difficulty in the short term.
True! I certainly have concerns that these next couple of years will be “as good as it gets” for US socialism, because the core principles aren’t always clear! I hope the messaging will get better defined before it’s too late (I think there’s still some time to get this straightened out).
given that demsoc=socdem=progressive liberal, i agree
I think flattening definitions like this reduces the level of conversation and analysis. Ancom=syndicalist=mutualist, Marxist-leninist=MLM=CPC would also flatten the conversation around relevant topics on our left-wing discussuon forum.
I wouldn’t disagree that these factions currently have a lot of alignment in the current US political context. We see this demonstrated with AES being a “unity candidate” between the left and even part of the liberal establishment.
I would phrase it differently, but it’s very hard to contest that the bulk of “democratic socialists” in America are literally socdems (“Nordic socialists” or whatever) which literally is a type of liberal.
There are also genuine democratic socialists, who are incorrect but for different reasons, but I think they might be in the minority of people using that title.
If we are discussing from a perspective within the US, I think that flattening our vocabulary weakens our analysis. I think there is a chance (though not overwhelmingly likely) that the differences between these factions will become more pronounced in the future, rather than less. I would like our community to retain the vocabulary to identify it if it happens.
I dont expect discussions from a non-US perspective to care too much about it, though.
I agree that we shouldn’t flatten our vocabulary, but consider that treating all self-identifying demsocs as just being “demsocs” is flattening the distinction between actual demsocs and “Nordic socialist” socdems.
I think the conflation is fairly accurate in this case, as the “DemSocs” in question don’t believe in (and therefore constantly contradict) forwarding and defending socialism, but maintaining and moderately reforming capitalism. This means they are actually SocDems at best and SocDems are just a kind of “progressive” liberal.
@free_casc@hexbear.net @Chana@hexbear.net @purpleworm@hexbear.net
I think a useful essay for this discussion is https://redsails.org/esquerda-reformista/
the gist of the essay (although I really recommend reading the whole thing if you’ve never read it before) is that so often we are mixing up reformists vs social liberals and it’s important to clarify which we are actually fighting against. basically free_casc, I would say sicksemper, chana, and purpleleworm are all arguing that DSA is social liberal rather than reformist as a whole, and you don’t even really seem to disagree? correct me if I’m wrong, but you would want us to potentially support the reformists if they gain more prominence in the future, not because reform > revolution, but because we need the “left” to actually become reform vs revolution instead of this social liberalism dominance we see today. Or at least, that is the conclusion from the essay’s author, who shares your idea that we need to sharpen our analysis/language
I often joke that if what is understood as the “majority left” in Brazil was reformist, that would be a good thing! If that were the case, we’d be discussing fundamental questions and contradictions. But we are not. Therefore, a fundamental task for those trying to understand and communicate about the political crisis in Brazil is to adapt our political language. We have to stop calling those who are social liberals reformists. The correct understanding of the Brazilian left today is that Marxists and reformists are a minority, and face together a very large social liberal camp.
Glauber Braga, a radicalized reformist, is in the minority. [6] He is a minority in his own party, he is a minority in the Brazilian parliament, and he is a minority in the Brazilian progressive camp. He is a serious reformer, consistent, honest and so on. It would be great if we had 30 or 40 Glauber Bragas in the Chamber of Deputies! But we don’t. This is why I put forward this subject for debate. We have to sharpen our language and our political analysis. What we face is a left dominated by social liberals. [7] Against this majority, reformists, like revolutionaries, remain a minority.
I’m actually referring to a subset of the DSA. DSA does have DemSocs and many other tendencies and I wouldn’t say they are all just DemSocs or SocDems. I mean the people who are the topic of this post, the people who are really into electoralism and dedicate their political lives to running and supporting candidates above all else (literally). These folks tend to be highly liberal and are barely even in the reformist discussion because their idea of reformism is something quite vague, it is plainly evident that it is more about gaining power in bourgeois electoralism than actually standing for anything other than there being 7 Bernie Sanders instead of 1. There is no additional game plan, no discipline outside of lashing out at others (pro-Palestine, pro-BLM, none of it matters unless it serves getting elected for these folks), no plan for having real fights and what they will lean on for support aside from having some people in office.
It is not in any way a coincidence that this is identical to how “progressive” left electoralism functions. There is no difference at all except for the aesthetics and trappings and they will abandon even those if it serves the “elected”. There is no reform vs revolution debate, there is no real plan to reform anything much beyond dog catcher level challenges, it’s all incoherent. The same “strategies” and excuses are trotted out as are used for other liberals. “We can lobby X candidate better than Y once they are in office!” And then once in office, now that is not the priority, keep your criticisms quiet, we need unity. lmao.
It would be much more interesting if it tied into other forms of building power and maintaining momentum, something that requires sticking to clear principles and positions. Maybe defunding police isn’t particularly salient for enough people yet in a given city - so work with orgs to (1) agitate and (2) increase the number of orgs making demands. An organizer that wanted to follow through on this would not have any trouble developing a strategic longitudinal campaign to attempt this sort of thing. The SocDem opportunist doesn’t know how because that is not how they approach the topic at all, it isn’t about building a base that is always there or a larger policy campaign, it is about the getting the person in office and then staying in office. If anything else happens intentionally it is in support of the politician, not the politician in support of the left projects.
I think we may be agreeing with one another but I’m not totally sure lol
I think we may be agreeing with one another but I’m not totally sure lol
I agree with pretty much everything you said here, except I think I’m just somewhat more optimistic about DSA developing a more principled position as time goes on. I don’t have a strong argument to support my position except for my (vague) impression that the farther left caucuses are continuing to gain power in the national level of the organization.
I have seen some activities beyond electoralism in Portland and Seattle, but it is not well developed and properly bonded to the electoral front in the way that you and I would like to see.
I think the liberal electoralists within DSA have grown via the electoralism and their recruitment efforts around them. Those groups don’t do much political education, they just get people who like vaguely left electoralism to join the org and volunteer in elections, so their political alignment tends to be fairly to the right within DSA aside from those who are committed to specific moral principals that eventually run up against the opportunism of the liberal electoralists - e.g. those who will not accept any level of Zionism regarding Palestine get alienated pretty fast. Which is to say I think a lot of DSA’s growth lately is unfortunately not particularly politically educated and is a bit tot the right, though I’d welcome being wrong.
The left formations in DSA are much better organized (electoralism itself is what organizes the electoralists) and have indeed gotten leadership positions and are overrepresented at conventions, which of course I think is a good thing. They tend to do political education, event organizing, solidarity work, etc in their local groups, they distinguish themselves.
We’ll need to see how things shake out in the next few years, but I appreciate that we are both hoping for the best
we are very much agreeing! I just saw an opportunity to post that article because I thought it was relevant to the discussion, and I have often seen debates about DSA and what not use very imprecise/inaccurate language to call them reformists when often times we are criticizing the social liberal faction in actuality.
There is no reform vs revolution debate
This is pretty much the reasoning behind why it would be good for actual reformists to have a resurgence, even if we know it’s not enough the framing of reform vs revolution is a lot better for us than this environment where social liberalism* remains king.
*i think people often use this interchangeably with socdem/succdem, but people also use socdem to mean an actual reformist occasionally too so I kind of like using social liberalism like in the speech
I am indeed saying that they seem to mostly be social liberals, though there are many genuine reformists as well. I don’t have census data on the matter though, and I do think the factions of genuine reformists have been growing overall.
I appreciate the recommendation and will read the essay.
The one thing that I would add to your summary of the issue is that there are different kinds of reformists, the genuinely counterrevolutionary electoralists vs the people seeking to advance socialism by every means available, having chosen pushing for reform as their particular job at the moment. I think this latter camp can be helpful and have historically been important (revolutionary organizations historically have often had both legal and illegal wings), the biggest problem with this distinction in my perception is that members of the first camp, counterrevolutionaries, will often pretend to be members of or at least strong allies to members of the second camp, when that is false and they are roughly as dangerous as any other kind of liberal.
for an example of an actual reformist the author/speaker (apparently this is a transcript of a speech, i have never noticed despite reading the essay a few times before lol) chose Hugo Chavez, which i think maps well with this distinction between genuine electoralist and a reformist who is actually willing to change their tactics.
Really appreciate yout contribution to the discussion! The article is very interesting (redsails is almost like the xkcd for the left haha)
arguing that DSA is social liberal rather than reformist as a whole, and you don’t even really seem to disagree?
I am not an insider, but based on my understanding the DSA encompasses both typical social liberals, but has been moving in the direction of reformist, especially at the higher levels of leadership. The org is not sufficiently centralized (it is not even a party, for instance), so it has a ton of flaws and contradictions that make it less effective, but in my view, it is largely moving in the direction of reformism.
I like that the author of the article highlights how reformism “gets the masses in motion” so they can actually develop their understanding of things like reform v. revolution and similar topics, just like you pointed out.
The article also highlights the political stagnation that is offered by social liberalism. I think it is important for the masses to be politically activated to defend the gains of the working class (whether from reform or revolution). I know this is something the DPRK takes seriously, for instance. USians aren’t ready for all that, and sort of need “baby steps” until reformism has its own momentum. In my view, either “reformism works and we voted our way to communism for the first time ever” or it will force people toward a more revolutionary stance when it fails.
This does not resolve the contradiction of “what if your reformism delays back to social liberalism and nothing happens”. I still wrestle with that often. I dont think “just discard reformism and only take the revolutionary angle” is the answer, but maybe im just wrong about that and im fucking it up for everybody idk.
I would say my impression is similar about DSA having an internal struggle between reformists and social liberals. I do not have a ton of hope about the reformists winning with how much momentum DSA right is getting from these electoral wins.
and I’m glad you found the article/speech interesting
socdems doing this is perhaps the most predictable historical trend in human history
Besides policy changes (which do require buy in city council and also is restriction by state and federal government), the number one thing that a bourgeois politician (as in, a politician within the bourgeois state) can do to help the socialist movement is to remove reactionaries from government positions and replace them with loyalists.
The implementation of genuine harm reduction policies would go much easier if a cycle of purges was established.
You can’t do a mass purge right away for obvious reasons. It could provoke a massive reaction. You have to chip away at it. Start with the easy targets (corrupt officers and open white supremacists) then move towards tightening the rules to cut more reactionaries out of the police. It would be good to put as many of them in prison serving life sentences as possible.
Weakening the police union is also important, as is creating alternative armed organisations (such as, perhaps allowing for the arming of some militant groups and unions). I’m not too sure about the feasibility of this. But the priority in dealing with the police state is naturally to wrest control of arms away from reactionaries such that it becomes easier for further developments.
Bro elect just one more democratic socialist bro, I promise literally something somewhere will measurably and noticeably improve if we just keep pushing the genocide party left bro
I’m honestly at the point of just saying electoral victories are counter productive for the left in the imperial core cuz the candidate always end up being a let down and we spend all our time arguing about them. I sometimes question if above ground organizing is really worth it at all because most of the US “working class” are global equivalent of kulaks.
I sometimes question if above ground organizing is really worth it at all
Above ground organizing from a revolutionary perspective is necessary for any actual popular movement, the issue is these dsa and socdem (and dsa socdem) candidates were never interested in supporting something compatible with revolution.
we spend all our time arguing about them.
A 100+ comment thread on a fucking mayor. He could be a fascist and it wouldn’t change things much because mayors are pretty low on the totem pole. In a decade, we went from caring about a potential presidential candidate to caring about a mayor. Said potential presidential candidate from 2016 was also a mayor for a while, but notice how he only became nationally relevant once he stopped being a mayor and went to pursue more important offices. This is how far we have sunken.
A 100+ comment thread on a fucking mayor.
internet comments are basically free. also the meta discussion isn’t about one guy, don’t backflip into great man theory.
To be fair, there is a major difference between Burlington (43,000 people) and New York City (8,600,000 people) in terms of both population and capital accumulation. It’s 200 times bigger and likely several thousand times more wealth accumulated.
However you are totally correct that mayor is small potatoes and has very little power, as demonstrated by the excuses of “what is he supposed to do, NYPD will kill him if he tries to exert any influence beyond free childcare”. Yeah, kind of defeating your own argument there Soc Dems
The population doesn’t really matter if we’re playing by bourgeois electoral games. Sanders only represents around 322330 people (because he shares 644663 people with another senator), but he is far more politically relevant than Mamdani because Sanders is a senator while Mamdani is just some mayor. Neither of them have a paramilitary, so their real political power is effectively 0.
on the other hand one mayor has way more of a direct impact on someone’s life than one out of 100 senators.
i also don’t think
Sanders only represents around 322330 people (because he shares 644663 people with another senator),
is correct analysis, you vote for each senator separately and give or take deaths, moving, and teens growing up it’s the same population this year as it next time
and then they represent their donors rather than the publicRight I was comparing mayor to mayor
I sometimes question if above ground organizing is really worth it at all because most of the US “working class” are global equivalent of kulaks.
Sakai showed us all this already, I thought.
As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the case. Marx’s idea is that the working class must break up, smash the “ready-made state machinery”, and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann:
“If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it [Marx’s italics–the original is zerbrechen], and this is the precondition for every real people’s revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting.” (Neue Zeit, Vol.XX, 1, 1901-02, p. 709.)[2] (The letters of Marx to Kugelmann have appeared in Russian in no less than two editions, one of which I edited and supplied with a preface.)
The words, “to smash the bureaucratic-military machine”, briefly express the principal lesson of Marxism regarding the tasks of the proletariat during a revolution in relation to the state.
- Lenin
It’s not even necessarily about an ideological tailism. If a movement’s strategy is to seize control of the minority-crushing machine, it will always seem pragmatic to keep it crushing.
They are severely idealistic about political power and don’t understand that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. This blinds them to the need to immediately undermine/physically weaken their local reactionary paramilitary force at the cop shop. Within their flawed framework though, it’s just one issue among many, so it’s entirely reasonable to tactically compromise on it or put it on the back burner until a more opportune time and focus on a different issue. That’s the charitable read at least
political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Right, so if political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, what steps could you take towards the NYPD when yours is non-existant? You can only weaken the NYPD so much with budget cuts until that very political power is exercised against you.
Dsa and mamdani would need to be expanding and organizing their base to be more militant, more politically developed, and into armed militias in preparation for future conflict. This includes at the very least talking openly about the problems instead of basically backing the blue and more or less no push back, even rhetorical
Nobody wants to die seriously pushing this. IDK how you solve the chicken-and-egg problem of wanting an armed left but most people won’t do it unless they have lots of other armed comrades with them.
that’s what mamdani needs to be educating people with his massive platform. talking about class contradictions, the nature of class war, etc. it doesn’t need to start with immediately calling for arms, but he could be driving political development much more rapidly if he was about it
If only someone had written how to do a revolution to deal with this problem
I agree that budget cuts alone are insufficient. You need to build power of your own, obviously. Ideally redirect resources whenever possible. Another idea could be stuffing the department with as many of your cronies as possible to sabotage the department internally. There are many tactics which could be tried.
But obviously this would require a serious plan to phase out the police (meaning replace their minority of genuinely pro-social roles) and building an appropriate armed force. Mamdani almost certainly has no such plans. Removing Jessica Tisch and ideally replacing her with someone else who will stuff the department with wreckers is an easy step which could be taken though.
The main problem with electoralism-as-strategy is it individualizes a movement. Mamdani can do nothing by himself against capital, no matter how awesome he might be. The people are the power source. Every choice he makes and every speech he gives ought to raise the power of the people, and diminish his own, since his own historical role is fleeting.
