Trends Among Liberal Organizers
The liberal government of the United States has once again shown the true face of its structure. The liberal organizers urge over and over that the uprisings in the centers of colonial oppression remain peaceful, that the uprisings turn into a solid base of legislation and legality. Liberals and revisionists alike emphasize the legal strategy in the face of challenges to imperialism, as we have come to understand among leftist circles. Rather than radical actions, they take the tiny step of urging more political involvement, deaf to the fact that this involvement, on a world historic basis, has never succeeded. There is much debate over whether a peaceful revolution is possible, but there is no evidence that these “peaceful revolutions” have ever occurred. Great debates surround historic figures such as Salvador Allende, but few remember that his failure was a failure to capture military power.
“Every communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’” Mao wrote these words after the failure of the First United Front and in the midst of the Second United Front against the Japanese. Anybody who has studied history for any period of time, whether that of the United States, or of any other country, has realized that change never comes with elections, or that when it does, the forces of reaction extinguish it. The Allende regime was overthrown by a military coup that killed 3000 Communists and their allies. In the United States, Progressives and Republicans in Wilmington, North Carolina were overthrown in a military coup in which thousands of whites, in protest to the election of black city administrators and a reformist fusion party. The fusionists were forced to resign, and an unknown number of black citizens and officials were killed. It is estimated that anywhere from 13–300 colonized black folk died, varying because some people merely disappeared and were never found in subsequent records. The white army was funded by large businesses and local interests who resented the possible limitations to capital and exploitation.
And now the liberals say that violence can change nothing, when it is they who have changed nothing! Violence led to the concessions of the Civil Rights movement, and those, too were rolled back, and continue to be rolled back. The colonized populations of the United States continue to live at levels of poverty which are near the same as pre-civil rights, and voila! Liberals (mostly us whites) proclaimed that the colonial system of exploitation was over! And then the gains were slowly rolled back by the forces of reaction. It was quiet, lonely, desolate. And now segregation is at pre-Civil Rights levels, and urban decline has remained, a manufactured trend led by the white liberals among us. Liberals not only misunderstand the leading forces of world history, but the mechanisms of how those forces change world history. For “the masses, and the masses alone, are the motive force in the making of world history,” not some elected officials, not some lying politician, but the people. And how do the people change the world? How do they exercise democracy?
They exercise their democracy through violence. A revolution is the truest expression of the will of the people, the ultimate action that shouts “no confidence!” in the powers that be. And a revolution is democratic, as well as authoritarian. The will of the people towards democracy is impeded by these false promises of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. The only thing that forced the reforms of labor and the demands of unions was violence. Thousands, led by radical union leaders, died in the struggle against capitalist and colonialist exploitation. And who were among the most feared unions? The radicals who integrated black leadership into their organizations. The Industrial Workers of the World and the United Mine Workers, both of which had colonized leaders (although not necessarily in the top position) were among the most powerful unions in the United States, and they won their rights by violence and intimidation. They lost their rights through exactly the same means, as the First Red Scare swept the United States, concurring with the height of Jim Crow and the ratcheting down of colonialist exploitation. Is this a coincidence? No! Of course not!
The liberals forget that colonial oppression upholds capitalist oppression, so in order to enforce one it is necessary to enforce the other. The primary contradictions, today and in the past, have been the colonial exploitation of the black workers and of colonized laborers in the Philippines and other American colonies. It is not convenient for the liberals to remember that colonial oppression underlies our capitalist oppression. It is not convenient for them to recognize the oppression of the colonized lumpenproletarian and proletarian classes, for this is what upholds the entire economic structure.
Liberals among us, although they proclaim equality, are unwilling to fight for it. “Elections! Elections! Elections!” they cry, but no elections have changed the way the United States has worked for centuries. Capital rules all things, and it governs the oppression of the masses. And now we expect that elections will save us! Clearly, they have studied no history outside that dogmatic patriotism that pervades the study of American history; they believe in that reckless progress that has led nowhere. And now somehow, they believe that the reactionaries will set them free. It is an exercise in ignorance. Perhaps there is little ignorance involved here, perhaps it is merely that “this ‘democratic’ party fears the sovereignty of the people.” The liberal ideology simply wants us to forget that all our peace, as whites and as the petite bourgeoisie is bought with the force of police and colonial violence.
