Mindless Violence

Add to the list of victims: Nice. 

What happened in Nice wasn't very nice.

And boomerang violence in Baton Rouge. At least that is what I think it is. Revenge shooting for the murder of Alton Sterling.

There are three police dead, three others are wounded, and one shooter dead. Two other shooters are “out there” somewhere. Baton Rouge is on edge and stressed out.

I do not know what the shooters intended to accomplish. Outrage? That exists. Now more at the shooters than the police that shot Alton Sterling dead.

Sympathy? For Alton Sterling – not enough existed for him before he was shot. Now that there are three dead police and three more wounded, on top of the Dallas shooting, the police – the armed force that carries out the in-state oppression of capitalism – are receiving plenty of sympathy. Somehow I do not think that is what the shooters wanted.  Neither would have Alton is my guess.

Justice? Vigilante shooting will never achieve justice. Then again, the system rarely indicts police officers when they field execute an African American, So the system needs reform. I sincerely doubt that much, if any, reform will take place under the spiral of violence that is occurring in this country. More likely we are moving towards a state of martial law which will make it harder for those of us that want to change the system make the changes.

And please note that phrase: change the system.

I refuse to talk about reforming “the system.” The capitalists in charge will make slight reforms that are aimed at appeasing the oppressed. As long as they (the oppressed) are looking at the puppets on the strings and not the masters pulling the strings, they (the oppressors) will be happy.

In my college studies of the Russian Revolution of 1917, I read about the events that led up to the revolution. Not just the earlier attempts that Lenin made before he and Trotsky fled Russia, but all the way back to the 1820s. The Imperial Russian government had a policy in which they dealt with uprisings and rebellions – repression and reform. After some violent action – bombing or assassination – they would use the state police to repress those responsible and then institute enough of a reform to appease the masses so that they would not rise up. At the end of the day, the Imperial Russian government remained in power, the masses were docile, and the revolutionaries were thwarted.

Lenin called this mindless violence ultra-leftism. Those that took part in the bombings and assassination attempts thought that if they took some sort of violent action that the masses would rise up and and overthrow the government. As stated above, all they did was undermine the revolution.

Lenin worked within and without the system. He helped to create a revolutionary socialist party that educated and prepared “professional” revolutionaries for the day of the revolution. They were well versed in theory (something I doubt those that committed the violence today have any of) and action. They knew that they needed a “critical mass” of people to support them from across the peasants (farmers today), workers, and the military & police.

These professionals went out and educated the people through unions and other social organizations. (You'd be surprised to know how revolutionary the church was.) So the masses were developing a consciousness of their situation and why it was that way. They knew that the only way to change their situation in life was to change the system. So in 1917 they had two revolutions. The first put the Imperial government out of power and replaced them with a democratically elected government. The second revolution put this government out of power when it was clear that the only thing that the government was going to do was continue the Imperial government's agenda.

Hence land, bread, and peace. Land for the peasants. Bread (food) for the urban masses. Peace for a conscripted military force that was being chewed up in a war that nobody understood. Everybody understood the call and enough people were educated and radicalized to be able to carry out the revolutionary call.

Here in America we do not have anything like that. We have plenty of angry individuals that are willing to engage in violence against their direct oppressors. But they are merely throwing a brick in the Grand Canyon thinking that it is going to somehow stop the Colorado River from running through it. The masses have little in the way of consciousness that helps them to understand why these events are happening. So they get outraged at those that commit the violence, but do nothing to change the system that creates the crisis of violence in the first place.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Socialists are opposed to the violence that is being carried out against African Americans and other minority groups (Muslims, Hispanics, LGBTQ, and others) and the boomerang violence that is being committed against the police.

Socialists demand:

-An end to racism in the police force and all law enforcement agencies.

-A federal level law that ends “stop and frisk” laws that unfairly target African Americans and other minority citizens. (It's called the Fourth Amendment. Get a warrant.)

-Community control over police forces. It has been shown to reduce violence against all people and reduce police violence against citizens.

-A requirement that the police live in the communities that they are going to work or that police recruits be drawn from the community where they live and that they work in those communities while they are in law enforcement.

-The creation of a non-political and independent investigator and prosecutor to address instances of police abuse and violence.

-An end to the capitalist economic and social system that creates lines of control that separate and segregate workers against themselves.

This mindless violence is never going to achieve the revolution that will end the oppression that we all live under. We need a revolutionary minded and conscious working class that will rise up against the whole system and bring the real change that will end this cycle of violence.

Workers of the world unite.

You have nothing to lose but your chains.