Colin Kaepernick, the Black Panthers, and Fred Hampton

By Simon Wood

"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In the 2016 preseason American football games of the San Francisco 49ers, quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to sit rather than stand for the US national anthem. In an interview, he explained his stance:

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

He later chose to kneel instead of sit, explaining that this change was to express more respect for past and present US military service members.

A year on the controversy has exploded, dominating news agendas and social media feeds. There is a hashtag [#takeaknee] and numerous opinion pieces, expressing sympathy and condemnation in broad measure, have achieved broad circulation. US President Trump has joined the fray, expressing the standard view from the right that the actions of Kaepernick are disrespectful and unpatriotic. This has in turn served to trigger the 'liberal left' in a way that decades of inequality, police violence against black people and mass carnage abroad has never quite managed.

Indeed the coronation of Donald Trump has been a stroke of genius for the US and global ruling classes. His unparalleled boorishness and ineptitude has been the perfect distraction for a generation force-fed decades of identity politics, people who see war and class oppression as abstract concepts to be frowned on and soberly discussed while foaming at the mouth over, say, the various classifications of gender, in those moments when they are not victims of all the other distractions on offer.

The chances of any serious movement arising to topple the financial elites and their collaborators under these circumstances are zero. 'Trump out!' goes the slogan, with the sloganeers all too happy to see this particular puppet replaced with another Obama, the man who personally ordered numerous drone strikes in full knowledge of the fact that 90% of the victims were civilians, some toddlers and infants.

Whatever Kaepernick's and his followers' good intentions, they must be aware that any movement that gains popularity and has potentially revolutionary appeal will be either subverted and rendered harmless by the state apparatus, or - if or when that fails - mercilessly crushed. That second stage has not been reached here, and it will not, as all the signs are there of a major media operation to re-direct and dilute the mass of outrage away from the true target, namely class oppression and the system that enables it - capitalism. By giving support and condemnation, the media subverts the anger of the people and crafts the debate on its terms. Black versus white, the people versus Trump, freedom of speech - whatever. What it absolutely must not ever mention or encourage understanding of is the reality that this injustice stems directly from oppression by the ruling classes. Just keep the people arguing among themselves. Divide and rule.

This is a class issue, and to understand that requires class awareness, the very concept identity politics was deployed to destroy. The one single thing that petrifies the looting warmongers in control of the world's 'democratic' institutions is a mass awakening of class awareness, from which follows the ability to discern between truth and fraud, fact and misdirection, reality and illusion - in other words, the only means to tackle the disease. If you listen carefully, as the right bang on and on about respecting the flag and the left argue among themselves, demanding some kind of vague 'justice' for the victims of police violence, on a quiet night you can hear the ruling classes laughing over champagne in their ivory towers. You may also hear the sound of Fred Hampton rolling fitfully in his grave.

Fred Hampton was the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. He understood that revolutionary change was the only answer to the long, deep injustice suffered by the oppressed. In a speech at Northern Illinois University in November 1969, he expressed this in his own inimitable manner:

You know a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. And the people that have those hang-ups are opportunists, and cowards, and individualists and everything that's anything but revolutionary. And they use these things as an excuse to justify and to alibi and to bonify their lack of participation in the real revolutionary struggle. So they say, "Well, I can't dig the Panther Party because the Panthers they are engrossed with dealing with oppressor country radicals, or white people, or hunkies, or what have you. They said these are some of the excuses that I use to negate really why I am not in the struggle."

We got a lot of answers for those people. First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, and Lenin, and Che Guevara end Mao Tse-Tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. It was one class--the oppressed--those other class--the oppressor. And it's got to be a universal fact. Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know that as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution.

[...]

If we never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that when you, the by-product, what comes off of racism, that capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to take money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means that capitalism had to, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a by-product of that.

Anybody that doesn't admit that is showing through their non-admittance and their non-participation in the struggle that all they are, are people who fail to make a commitment; and the only thing that they have going for them is the education that they receive in these institutions-education enough to teach them some alibis and teach them that you've gotta be black, and you've gotta change you name. And that's crazy.

[...]

And a lot of people think now that their hands are getting dirty. We call them ideological servants of United States fascism. And that's what they are, because they serve fascism by doing nothing about it until the law goes over and then they apologize for it, they get apologetic. But we say it's the same press that we'll look at and believe and think is bona fide; the same press that talked us into believing that we was somebody when in fact we were nobody.

I don't think there's anything more important. I think that what Malcolm says is important. Now think back. Those students were laughing at Malcolm. Can you dig it? They were laughing at Malcolm. Why? Regis Debray, he says the revolutionaries are in the future. That militants and pork chops and all these people, radical students, are in the present, and that most of the rest of the people try to remain in the past. That's why when somebody comes that's in the future of a lot of us can't understand him. And the same thing that you don't understand Huey P. Newton now, you didn't understand Malcolm when he was living. But we know that when Malcolm left, the well almost ran dry. You don't miss the water til the well runs dry, and it almost ran dry.

[Excerpts selected for relevance]

A month later, Hampton was murdered by the police on the orders of the FBI. A short examination of the circumstances leading to his death are relevant as they provide an object lesson of citizen actions the state is concerned about, as well as those that the state is not, and also the lengths to which the state will go to destroy potential threats to power.

While Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as an effective leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI. Hence, the bureau began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and similar radical coalitions forged by Hampton in Chicago as a frightening steppingstone toward the creation of such a revolutionary body that could, in its strength, cause a radical change in the U.S. government.

The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967. Hampton's mother's phone was tapped in February 1968, and Hampton was placed on the Bureau's "Agitator Index" as a "key militant leader" by May. In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office recruited an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal apparently agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard. In 1969, the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation of the BPP revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying that the career prospects of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".

By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their power base in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the Rainbow Coalition but nevertheless it was formed with an alliance of the Young Patriots and Young Lords. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel investigate the Rainbow Coalition and "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".

Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other radical groups, which provoked multiple murders in cities throughout the country. On May 26, 1969, Hampton was successfully prosecuted in a case related to a theft in 1967 of $71 worth of Good Humor Bars in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years but managed to obtain an appeal bond, and was released in August. On July 16, there was an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department, which left one BPP member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges. In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" stockpile of arms was being stored there and drew them a map of the layout of the apartment. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the Party's Central Committee. Shortly thereafter, he was to assume the position of Chief of Staff and major spokesman.

Here we observe several tactics of division and subversion such as infiltration, sowing distrust, publication of controversial materials under false pretenses, even the instigation of violence and so on.

Once Hoover - seeing Hampton and the Black Panthers as a major threat - had ordered an intensified FBI campaign to destroy them by any means necessary, a sequence of events eventually led to a raid on the apartment where Hampton often stayed in Chicago. On the evening of December 3rd, 1969, the FBI informant O'Neal slipped a sleeping agent into Hampton's drink to ensure he would sleep through a raid planned for that night. Unable to awaken when the raid occurred, Hampton was wounded in the shoulder as he lay next to his heavily pregnant fiancé. Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

"That's Fred Hampton."

"Is he dead? Bring him out."

"He's barely alive."

"He'll make it."

Two shots were heard, later discovered to have been fired point blank into Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said: "He's good and dead now."

Demanding social justice is a fine thing, one that raises a person above the many who have been so deeply indoctrinated that they care only for the things they are programmed to be concerned about. The propaganda apparatus is well prepared for such outrage, however, and successfully plays billions of people for fools again and again, ensuring that any and all protest organisations never attain a revolutionary aspect and actually start taking direct strategic actions against their oppressors. A concerned citizen or activist must be smart, aware of all the tricks of misdirection that are employed to ensure essential harmlessness from all possible threats. Being impervious to these methods is a necessary, key step toward freedom and progress. And therefore justice.

The Kaepernick issue is one such case. Yes, it is about social injustice and freedom of speech, but all this stems from the overriding issue - as Hampton explained so clearly - of class. Make it about that, strive to organize and/or join marches and other direct actions on as large a scale as possible to bring down the mass-murdering war apparatus of the Pentagon and the CIA and the financial networks that simultaneously fuel and profit from them. Forget the personalities (like the pathetic Trump) and focus only on the system that permits such evil and incompetence, the system that threatens all our lives.

This was originally published on Simon's blog. Simon is available on Twitter @simonwood11

From Turmoil to Tribute: How the Trump Presidency Will Ultimately Fortify the Status Quo

Michael Orion Powell

If you grew up in the United States as a Millennial or in Generation X, many of the historical names seem like a natural part of our environment. A main street is named after Martin Luther King, Jr. in close to every major city in the country, while New York's busiest airport is named after John F. Kennedy, parks and streets in major cities like Washington D.C. are named after Malcolm X, an airport in Kansas is named after Dwight Eisenhower, and a major stadium in Washington D.C. is named after Robert F. Kennedy.

It's normal for monuments to be named after leaders, but the process where it becomes finalized often occurs after a tumultuous period. The 1960s and 1970s were just that. Deemed "a long national nightmare" by President Gerald Ford (who also has an airport named after him in Michigan), that period started off with promises of "a new frontier," only to go through an unpopular war, multiple assassinations, the resignation of a president, inflation, an oil crisis, and social, class, and racial tension and conflict throughout the country.

Currently, we are passing through a similar phase. The eulogy of John McCain last week signaled a bipartisan group of former American heads of state coming together to actively spurn the sitting president, Donald Trump, while simultaneously building up a legacy for the Arizona Senator they were mourning.

Several comments seemed directed at Trump. One was from George W. Bush, who said, "Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power. He could not abide bigots and swaggering despots. There was something deep inside him that made him stand up for the little guy - to speak for forgotten people in forgotten places ... We are better than this. America is better than this."

Barack Obama added on by saying that "so much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It's a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that."

Trump is going to go down. At least every few days is a strange new accusation, departure, or friction between him and someone else, including people within his own administration. A few weeks ago, it was the departure of political aide Omarosa Manigault. As of this writing, it is bizarre accusations from veteran political journalist Bob Woodward of Trump behavior in the White House, including calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions "mentally retarded" and "a dumb Southerner" while imitating his accent in a Foghorn Leghorn manner. Woodward also claimed that he was told by an inside source that Trump wanted to "fucking kill" Syrian leader Bashir Assad, a strange accusation for someone who "colluded" with Russia, given Russia's decades-long support for Assad and his father.

And now, in perhaps one of the most shocking moments in modern political history, an anonymous op-ed published by the NY Times titled, " I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration ," whereas a reported "insider" goes on to talk about an organic resistance that has developed within Trump's own circle in an effort to "thwart Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

With the eventual exit of Trump will be a gift for his predecessors, who will be hoping to shore up their legacies as America's "legitimate" statesmen. Donald Trump, the Alt Right, Russia, and whatever other far-right elements are associated with him, will be pinned with the nadir of American society that the country now sits in, instead of the destructive policies that led America toward Trump in the first place.

The true legacy of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, no matter what role they are playing now, was war and decline.

Bush talked of a "humble foreign policy" while running for president, while one of Obama's first political appearances was at an anti-war speech in Chicago. The only change that Obama brought was changing how theatrical war appeared. Instead of relying on "troops on the ground," to coin a phrase from Secretary of State John Kerry, special forces and drones were used to maintain American supremacy in Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and elsewhere.

Bush's policies promised the end of terrorism, only to create a breeding ground for Al Qaeda to transform into ISIS and then Boko Haram. The invasion of Iraq touted democracy and the rule of law, but created so much chaos that people whose ancestors had lived in the Lavant for generations fled for Europe by the millions.

Obama promised "post-racialism," a phrase used often upon his election, only to see a small (and mostly one-sided) war between police and the black community escalate, as the federal government distributed military equipment to the nation's police departments.

All of this will be forgotten as the erratic housing tycoon-turned-president Donald Trump eventually falls, however. In the mainstream imagination, Trump will represent the treasonous forces of darkness that usurped those who wanted progress. Just as Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and the like were venerated in the aftermath of Nixon's resignation, national holidays, monuments, and buildings will be memorialized after the establishment figures who stepped up against him - all with the purpose of whitewashing recent history and fortifying the status quo.

The reality of what all the last American presidents, Trump included, really is stands beyond what a theater of difference they stage. As Vladimir Putin put it in an interview with Oliver Stone, "It's very curious. Your presidents change but the policy never changes." The truly powerful people who run the United States only change the face of the United States every few years. If we go through difficulties, it's their doing and not the spokesperson they pick. This reality, while tested by the tumultuous Trump, will only be strengthened in his ousting.

Learning from our Elders: Kwame Somburu and Scientific Socialism

By Colin Jenkins

A dear friend of mine passed away in 2016. He was a lifelong revolutionary activist and quite possibly the most interesting man in the world (sorry, Dos Equis guy). His name was Kwame Somburu, formerly Paul Boutelle.

I came into Kwame's life through chance when, after a journey that resembled more than a dozen lifetimes, his eclectic path led him to Albany, NY. It was 2012, and Kwame was well into his 70s when he entered the capital district activist scene. He was a bit of an enigma, presenting a uniquely powerful blend of principled conviction and carefree humor. Unlike many activists, he was immediately lovable; not bitter, not rancorous, not pushy, and not self-inflated. He was grizzled, yes, but in an old-school way, where you could almost see the wisdom oozing from his pores. He had every reason in the world to possess a runaway ego, but nonetheless carried a calm humility that could not be mistaken. In an oft-aimless world, he was the personification of guidance.

Kwame undoubtedly carried the emotional scars of growing up Black in America, as well as the spiritual exhaustion of being on the front lines of struggle for five decades. Yet he was bulletproof, unfazed by the cruel confines of American society, which he had long broken from in his push to lead a fierce and principled revolution against the roots of this society: capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.

Kwame's list of achievements and experiences would require an entire book to do them justice. He had run for public office nine times throughout the 60s and 70s, once as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Socialist Workers Party. He spent these decades speaking on the street corners of Oakland and Harlem, giving lectures at Oxford and the London School of Economics, and appearing on numerous TV and radio shows, most notably partaking in a contentious debate with William F. Buckley in 1968 on Buckley's popular show, Firing Line.

Kwame was active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (early 60s), participated in the 1963 March on Washington, co-founded Afro-Americans Against the War in Vietnam (1965), spoke at numerous Black Power Conferences through the 60s, and assisted in organizing 400,000 people from the Native Sioux, Puerto Rican, and African-American communities to rally at the United Nations in 1967.

In 1970, Kwame served as the chairman of the Committee of Black Americans for Truth About the Middle East, an organization that spoke out against the U.S.-supported crimes of the Israeli government. Representing an early voice in support of the Palestinian struggle, Kwame toured Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria as a guest of the General Union of Palestine Students. In 1993, Kwame engaged in a speaking tour throughout Europe to discuss Malcolm X, the film about his life, and in defense of Black Nationalism and Socialism.

Despite all of this, Kwame's most endearing quality was his ability to inject his principles into humor. After living a few years in upstate New York, he regularly joked that there was "only one kind of white supremacy that cannot be denied…snow." He always made a point to immediately correct someone's usage of "history" by responding with, "it's herstory…because you can't have man without womb-man." He talked about his nationally televised appearance-turned-debate with William F. Buckley like a pugilist would talk about an old street fight in their prime: "Buckley had no idea how to respond to historically-informed analysis…he was a mental midget."

Kwame was proud of his performance on Buckley's show [ watch the entire episode here -Eds.], and rightfully so. He would encourage folks to watch it whenever he had the chance. He did this not in a boastful or braggadocios manner, but in a way that was meant to empower those of us in the trenches-as if to say, "here I was, a Black man in the belly of the beast and from modest beginnings, largely self-taught, staring down an Ivy League-educated white man and conservative icon who came from one of the most privileged paths imaginable." On national television. And not only staring down, but bodying on all levels-intellectually, ideologically, logically, historically, and morally, ala Malcolm X at the Oxford debates.

He masterfully defended the Cuban revolution to Buckley, justifying the harsh treatment of Cuban reactionaries by explaining that if a people's revolution occurred in the US, "I'm sure there will be a lot of Mississippi sheriffs who would be put on trial." To counter Buckley's misrepresentation of socialism, Kwame accurately described his party as "a party which represents social forces that desire change" due to a deadly and exploitative capitalist system and its embryonic Native genocide and "500-year slave trade" that resulted in the deaths of "100 million black people." When pressured further about his beliefs, Kwame brilliantly flipped the script, telling Buckley, "What are you representing? You're representing George Washington, you're representing Custer, you're representing an imperialist, oppressive, racist system. So, don't attack socialism on the assumption that the system you represent-which is full of lies, hypocrisy, and murder-has been so perfect. The only thing capitalism has done is to provide opportunists like yourself with the opportunity to be parasites on the backs of oppressed people." When Buckley tried to shut Kwame down by claiming, "American Negroes are free," and that he would "get more Negro votes" if he ran, Kwame nailed the coffin by snapping, "I'm sure of one thing… if you went down to Mississippi and told Black people they were free, you would be running and it wouldn't be for office."

During our time together, Kwame described his ideological development in his own words: "In 1960, after a few years of independent study (from a scientific perspective) in many and varied historical/contemporary areas, but mainly African and African American history, the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, and acquired knowledge from life experiences, I declared myself to be a Black Nationalist-class definition-and a Scientific Socialist." Within a multitude of wisdom and guidance, it dawned on me that this unassuming portion was perhaps his most important-scientific socialism.

Or maybe it wasn't so unassuming. When describing his political orientation, Kwame was intent on always including "scientific" before socialist. Whenever bluntly asked if he was a socialist, Kwame would quickly respond "scientific socialist," always with an emphasis on the scientific part. If engaged in a political or theoretical discussion, he would sometimes refer to socialism, only to quickly correct himself with a "that is, scientific socialism." He wanted folks to understand that socialism goes deeper than utopian idealism; that it is rooted in a scientific, materialist analysis. It's safe to say the commitment to this message was obsessive. So much so that it may have been easy for many to view it as a trivial quirk.

And while I always appreciated his relentless effort of being literal, I too underestimated the importance of the emphasis. That was until 2015, when Bernie Sanders emerged as a formidable candidate for president.

To those of us in radical circles, Bernie was always viewed as an interesting member of the entrenched political class-a man who spent his entire career as a U.S. Senator flopping back and forth between maintaining the imperialist state and serving as a thorn in the side of wealthy capitalists. Bernie was known for his Senate hearings, where he would routinely grill a CEO or financier, denounce economic inequality and poverty, and put on a valiant show in the name of morality. In a bit of a stretch and with some exaggeration, he could be given some credit for helping to spark the Occupy movement. However, not a whole lot beyond that. Despite his entertaining interludes, capitalism and its war machine always continued unabated, running roughshod over much of the world and many Americans.

Despite his predictable impotence while serving as a cog in a rotten machine, Bernie's emergence onto the national stage was beneficial in one way: It paved the way for the fateful return of the term "socialism." As a result, socialism has entered public discourse once again, millennials in droves are now referring to themselves as socialists, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have experienced historic swelling in their ranks, from 5,000 members in 2016 to 40,000 in 2018 , and it led The Guardian to ask the question, " Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America ?" even several months before the 2016 election. This development also indirectly helped authentic socialist candidates, like the Socialist Party USA's (SP-USA) Mimi Soltysik, the Party for Socialism and Liberation's (PSL) Gloria La Riva, and the Workers World Party's (WWP) Monica Moorehead to gain more momentum in their abbreviated tours across the country.

However, along with this sudden resurgence has been a lot of backlash and confusion. The backlash has come in the form of sensationalist tactics that are undoubtedly the product of an intentionally dumbed-down society. Red-baiting is being deployed from both sides of mainstream politics-by conservatives through their typical anti-intellectual and ahistorical knee-jerk reactions, and by liberals through a bizarre and equally ahistorical conflation of Trump, Russia, and Communism, which has reached the absurd level of associating the hyper-capitalist boss, Trump, with the hammer and sickle, a symbol that stands for industrial and agricultural workers uniting in opposition to capitalist bosses. The latter development has led to the chronic overuse of the term "democratic socialism"-a redundancy born of red-scare and cold-war propaganda-by those who moonlight in liberal spaces.

The confusion has come in the form of hordes of young people embracing a term that they have not researched or read up on. If you ask a few dozen, newly-ordained "socialists" in the United States what socialism is, you may get a dozen different answers. Many will be sure to insist that "socialism is not communism!" out of a residual fear still emanating from corporate media. Many describe socialism as nothing more than New-Deal liberalism, a tame form of capitalism that includes stronger social safety nets - an explanation surely rooted in the Sanders candidacy and Bernie himself. Others may give half-baked answers, vaguely referring to Nordic countries, cooperative business models, and even Guaranteed Basic Incomes in an attempt to separate themselves from the confusion.

In coming full circle, the answer to this backlash and confusion is found in my late friend, Kwame Somburu, or more specifically in his unapologetic, principled, and informed embrace of scientific socialism: The use of scientific methods, rooted in the work of Karl Marx (a materialist conception of history and dialectical materialism), that adequately analyze both the structure and evolutionary functioning of the capitalist system to expose inherent contradictions, exploitative and alienating underpinnings, surplus value, and the laws of accumulation of capital.

In "plain, proletarian English," scientific socialism is genuine socialism-an accurate breakdown of capitalism and a realization that it must come to an end if we have any hopes of living in a just and sustainable world. It means a constant, deliberate focus on pinpointing and destroying all forms of oppression, or as Kwame succinctly put it, "analysis of capitalism/imperialism, fascism, racism, and colonialism" with the purpose of "worker's revolution, colonial revolution, self-determination for all peoples, and relevant contribution towards a working-class world revolution." This does not mean a tightly monitored form of capitalism; it means no more capitalism. It does not mean government control; it means worker control of the means of production. It does not mean guaranteed income for all; it means workers, families, and communities finally enjoying the fruits of our labor. It does not mean "bread lines"; it means reducing massive amounts of waste through community-run production and the de-commodification of basic human needs. It does not mean equality; it means justice.

Although he never waned, Kwame would be rejuvenated by recent developments. But he would also be praising the merits of scientific socialism like never before. In a time of confusion, let's follow Kwame.

This was originally published at Monthly Review .

Trump's Muslim Ban is a Declaration of Perpetual War

By Amir Khafagy

After months of anticipation, the Supreme Court has finally made their decision on Trump v. Hawaii, better known as the Muslim ban. In a close 5-4 ruling the court has ruled to uphold Trump's ban. The decision has outraged many, yet the decision was expected given the court's conservative majority. Plastered all over my Facebook feed I'm bombarded with invites to protests and rallies that will achieve nothing but satisfy the collective catharsis. Say No to Trump's Muslim Ban, the invites enthusiastically read. Thousands have already taken to the streets in nationwide days of action to show solidarity with Muslims and in defiance of the court's decision. During a rally in Foley Square in Manhattan, Democratic politicians and nonprofit leaders took to the stage to lambast Trump. New York City Council Member, Carlos Manchaca, addressed a crowd which seemed to be comprised of mostly white non-Muslims by stating to roaring applause that Trump "doesn't represent New York and American values."

As a Muslim and an Arab American, one would think I would be the first to jump on the bandwagon of resistance to such an abhorrent policy. You would also think that I would be grateful to see so many non-Muslim liberals pledging to stand up for me and other Muslims. However, I can't seem to stomach any of it. Maybe because those who are in opposition of the ban are opposed to it for the wrong reasons. Politicians like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren pledge to defend Muslims in America, yet their support for military budgets that bomb, main, and kill Muslims abroad go unchallenged. Everyone is quick to react, but few are critically thinking. Trump's travel ban isn't a Muslim ban at all; it's a hit list. If it was truly a Muslim ban, meaning every majority-Muslim country was on the list, I would feel quite differently. But that doesn't seem to be the case. What is the case is the fact that every country on Trump's list is a country that the United States is currently at war with.

Let me first briefly explain what the travel ban is. On January 27, 2017, Trump signed the first travel ban, Executive Order 13769. In addition of blocking Syrian refugee's entry into the United States indefinitely and suspending U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, it also barred nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country. Immediately after the executive order was announced, liberal activists around the country sprang into actions. Rallies were held at JFK airport to support the travelers who were being turned away at customs. Upwards of over 700 travelers were detained, and nearly 60,000 visas were revoked. After numerous legal challenges and the public outcry, the Trump admiration grudgingly revoked the order, replacing with a modified and rebranded Executive Order 13780. The new travel ban was a much more diversified list that restricts travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Trump called the new travel ban the "watered-down, politically-correct version." Again, activists protested the plan and again the administration modified the list, this time only removing Chad. Soon after the third version of the travel ban went into effect, the state of Hawaii sued the administration, arguing that the ban was racially and religiously discriminatory because it specifically targets Muslims.

Hawaii's argument isn't wrong, per se. As far as that's concerned, I do agree to an extent that the ban is a bigotry policy that is intended to pander to Trump's Islamophobic and racist base. What I don't agree with is the simplistic view of the travel ban that ignores the relationship between it and America's imperial foreign policy. For instance, none of America's middle eastern allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, made the list, even though all the 9/11 hijackers were nationals of those two countries. Those two oppressive and dictatorial regimes are firmly nestled in America's pocket by being the recipients of massive amounts of military aid. It's not just happenstance that the travel ban aligns with American overt or covert regime-change operations abroad. Are we quick to forget that America has been conducting drone strikes in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen? Or the fact that American boots are on the ground in those countries? Additionally, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran are subjected to crippling economic sanctions and their governments are being constantly undermined by American intelligence services. If anything, those countries should have a travel ban in place against us.

What really makes the so-called "Muslim ban" dangerous is that it taps into the fear of Muslims, an irrational fear that is so pervasive in our culture, to further legitimize American imperialism. It's worth noting that retired four-star general, Wesley Clark, has remarked that the State Department and Pentagon have planned since 2001 to "take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." With the exception of Lebanon and the removal of Sudan and Iraq, Trump's travel ban list is identical to the Pentagon's "kill list." So, it should be safe to assume that the travel ban has more to do with justifying war than it does with banning Muslims. Thus, the ban serves as a de facto declaration of perpetual war, sanctioned by the highest court of the land. After all, if we aren't afraid of Muslims, how can we be persuaded to fight them indefinitely?

Most of the criticism of the ban from Democrats is mute when it comes to attacking America's foreign policy. It focuses on the politics of identity rather than the politics of the reality. The Democrats want us to focus our outrage on Trump and the racist Republicans instead of understanding that the Democrats are just as complicit in their bipartisan support for the military industrial complex. Just last year, Trump signed into law a whopping $700-billion military budget with overwhelming, bipartisan support. Interestingly enough, the budget stipulated increased military spending for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The Democrats have no problem bombing Muslims, they only take issue with banning them.

Which reminds me, this whole paternal obsession with refugees is also misguided. During one of the protests I attended, I noticed a woman holding up a sign that read, "We Love Refugees." During the rally, another politician stood at the podium and declared, "We welcome the refugees fleeing their war-torn countries." Maybe it's just me, but I found this whole love affair with refugees to be quite morbid. I couldn't help but think if we weren't busy bombing and destabilizing their countries, there wouldn't be a refugee crisis in the first place. But, of course, no one made mention of that. As always, liberals in attendance were quick to diagnose the symptom but failed to acknowledge the disease. In this case, the disease is, as Martin Luther King, Hr. put it so eloquently so many years ago, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

The 2001 Terrorist Attack on American Soil Wasn't the Only "9/11"

By Matthew Dolezal

On the morning of September 11, 2001 , four commercial airliners were hijacked by 19 members of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda. One plane was deliberately flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan, closely followed by another crashing into the south tower. About 30 minutes later, a third plane collided into the western wall of The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. The forth and final aircraft crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.

The unprecedented coordinated attack resulted in a loss of nearly 3,000 lives, making it the deadliest act of terrorism in American history.

This surreal assault was monstrous and tragic beyond words, but unfortunately it wasn't the first "9/11". On September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed military coup ousted Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, paving the way for two decades of brutal dictatorship under the rule of General Augusto Pinochet. More than 3,000 people were murdered by Pinochet's regime, and approximately 32,000 were tortured . During this tyranny, Chile was part of a broad network of Latin American despots and death squads known as Operation Condor , which was assisted by a CIA base in Panama. This episode is but one example of violent American hegemony that has contributed to global resentment and even blowback, such as the aforementioned terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

In a series of interviews (published as a small book entitled, "9-11"), famous linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky discussed terrorism as a global phenomenon, including the Western double-standard regarding the term. By detailing an array of examples, such as Kosovo, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and Sudan, Chomsky observed that, based on the conventional definition of the word, the U.S. is a top global purveyor of terror. The immediate death, destruction, trauma, and misery caused by this vicious tactic is abhorrent, but this violence can also perpetuate itself, often continuing for generations. Regarding the 9/11 attacks and the origins of al-Qaeda specifically, Chomsky explained:

"The CIA did have a role, a major one in fact, but that was in the 1980s, when it joined Pakistani intelligence and others (Saudi Arabia, Britain, etc.) in recruiting, training, and arming the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists it could find to fight a 'Holy War' against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan."

The term "blowback" was coined by the CIA to describe the unintended consequences of covert actions undertaken by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. The word was first used in this context during internal speculation after the agency helped overthrow the Iranian government in 1953 (which I summarized in a previous article ).

In his groundbreaking exposé of said phenomenon, the late Chalmers Johnson vividly chronicled the far-reaching tentacles of the post-war American empire. He explained how this multi-faceted hegemony causes profound resentment and hatred throughout the world, sometimes even leading to cases of blowback. Such incidents have included terrorist bombings against Americans abroad, with targets like U.S. embassies in Africa, a Pan Am flight above Lockerbie, Scotland, and an apartment building in Saudi Arabia that housed American soldiers. Blowback also includes organizations and foreign leaders whom were once armed and/or supported by the U.S. later becoming enemies of the U.S., as was the case with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. And the presence of roughly 700 American military bases in 130 different countries only seems to fan these flames.

A post-9/11 manifestation of blowback was the formation of the gruesome terrorist organization known as ISIS , which was only possible thanks to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Though ISIS committed shocking acts of violence, this outcome wasn't shocking at all; it was entirely predictable, based on the U.S. military's own research . In 2004, then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld requested a report from the Defense Science Board Task Force regarding the efficacy of American policy in the Middle East. The task force's response included the following:

"American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the U.S. to single-digits in some Arab societies.[…] In the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.[…] Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies."

This unsavory, yet sober analysis of our problematic role in foreign conflicts is often omitted from mainstream discourse because it is profoundly embarrassing to many of our prominent institutions and public officials. Acknowledging our own role in perpetuating mass violence calls into question the popular notions of American exceptionalism and American moral benevolence. President George W. Bush's explanation of the events of September 11, 2001 (which occurred early in his first term) revolved around the phrase "they hate our freedoms." Bush's evaluation was vastly different from the words of the actual perpetrator, Osama bin Laden, who outlined his motives in a detailed "letter to America". Though the missive is laced with Wahhabi rhetoric, it also elucidates bin Laden's political grievances, including verification that 9/11 should be categorized as "blowback."

Bin Laden's objections to U.S. policy included its support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine (including the killing of civilians and destruction of homes), its sanctions against Iraq (resulting in at least half a million civilian deaths), its military bases throughout the Middle East (including in Saudi Arabia), its military actions in Somalia, and its support for regimes that have killed and oppressed Muslims throughout the world. This al-Qaeda kingpin may have been an extremist and a mass-murderer, but his explanation certainly holds more water than Bush's glib retort.

The devastation caused by the 9/11 attacks inspired a beautiful outpouring of support and solidarity among people from all backgrounds coming together to assist and comfort one another. However, the aftermath of this atrocity also unleashed pervasive nationalism, ethnic and religious profiling, violations of constitutional rights, and imperialistic mass murder in the Middle East.

The 9/11 slogan became "Never Forget." As a nation, we certainly won't forget such a large-scale catastrophe, but in a sense, we also "Never Remember." Instead of starting the timeline only when an event affects us directly, we should analyze the historical context of such events, and have the courage to look in the mirror and see our decades of relentless global violence, both covert and overt. We should also - as participants in a democracy - evaluate our role in the profound suffering, sorrow, resentment, and blowback these policies have generated.

The Korean War may help put this in perspective: American military aggression in North Korea between 1950 and 1953 resulted in the equivalent of hundreds of 9/11s, based on the respective death tolls. The same is true of American aggression in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and '70s. In recent decades, the so-called "War on Terror" has taken the lives of approximately 1.3 million people . The scope of these blood-drenched foreign conquests, combined with consistent historic U.S. support for dictatorships and death squads , makes it easy to see why America is widely perceived as the greatest threat to world peace .

On this dark anniversary, let's honor the victims of September 11, 2001 by overcoming our tribalistic tendencies and remembering the victims of our own terrorism as well. If we change our ways, we can address the root causes of these conflicts, and prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future. Let's acknowledge our history, confront our current complicity in mass murder (in Gaza and Yemen , for instance), and work to end this cycle of violence.

Political Automatons and the Politics of Automation

By Bryant William Sculos

What's in a Meme?

While it would be easy to exaggerate the significance of any meme shared on social media, it is widely acknowledged that memes are inherently limited and simplistic. But their value in conveying important political messages is also clear-especially through sarcasm and irony. One need only spend a few seconds on social media to see the creative energy that people put into making and sharing these often-captioned images across various digital platforms. With that said, I came across this meme below (shared in a number of Facebook groups), and it seems like a useful starting point for a discussion about its central claims regarding political-economic change and the overall goals of such change. The meme's central argument (insofar as we can say a meme has an argument) is that consumers should not use the increasingly prevalent self-checkout lines at grocery stores, because the more they are used the fewer people the company will hire to work as cashiers and baggers. If consumers make the ostensibly simple choice to not use these lines and instead use the lines with human cashiers, grocery stores will not only stop installing these automated checkout lines and will even remove the ones they have already put in place-hiring more cashiers to work the in-person lanes that would be needed to service the customers once the automated systems are replaced.

Given the dire life circumstances that unemployment can cause, especially for previously underemployed, low-wage workers, the goal of struggling for more jobs for people is a noble one. However, this essay will show how that goal, as articulated in the context of a grocery store-and in society more broadly-is misguided, rooted in problematic assumptions about capitalism and transformational change, and is ultimately ineffective and an inefficient use of political energy. The core misunderstandings that produce the argument of this meme are two-fold: 1. individual consumer choices are an effective means of resisting the devastating consequences of capitalism (e.g., automation-induced unemployment), and 2. That resisting automation is productive goal.

There is an automated character to these modes of thinking, a kind of superficial intuitiveness that if we (each as individuals) simply behave differently the forces of the market will adjust to the implications of those choices in aggregate-as if neither the forces of the market (of capitalism) were to blame nor the individual choices difficult to make. Politics is not primarily about our individual daily choices. In fact, the least positive political thing you can do is act on your own. This is the liberal-influenced ideology, ensconced in capitalistic assumptions about society and human nature, that "individual choices matter"-and matter more than collective choices. In fact, liberalism doesn't even have the theoretical architecture to think through the concept of collective choices. Neither does capitalism. Aggregating individuals is all they can do. Socialist political praxis-rooted in democratic, egalitarian solidarity- on the other hand, knows better.

Your Choice Doesn't Matter, But Ours Do

In the 1960s, we saw a number of direct-action campaigns utilizing tactics like sit-ins and occupations to fight against segregation, the Vietnam War, and even capitalism itself. While these actions were taken by consumers of a certain kind, it was not primarily as consumers that these actions were conducted. Thinking about student protests specifically, students are often-and increasingly-treated as consumers within more contemporary neoliberal capitalism, but it is worth remembering that this conception of the student-as-customer is relatively new. Despite historically (and too often still being) bastions of elitism, too often excluding the poor and people of color, college campuses in the 60s were communities of radical dissent, often engaging positively with local communities, with people coming together to enhance their political power through collective action as affected (and effected) human beings with moral and practical interest in challenging violence, exploitation, oppression, and antidemocratic politics. They were not exercising political power rooted in "consumer choice."

We see similar, seemingly automatic, consumer-choice arguments made by left-liberal environmentalists. We are encouraged to recycle, to "shop Green," to use reusable bags, to use energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances. But in a world where something like 100 companies account for approximately 75% of carbon emissions and pollution more broadly, I can assure you that what kind of lightbulb you use could not matter less. You could burn all of your recycling daily in a tire pit using 1950s hairspray as an accelerant and it wouldn't matter in the slightest compared to the ecological footprint of just the US military (the single greatest ecologically-criminal entity in human history). We need collective, solidaristic, organized solutions on a massive scale to make a dent in the ecological damage wrought by centuries of extractive capitalism. In other words, fuck your lightbulbs. The planet's biosphere is dying. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to think outside of our individual consumer choices. Choose organized resistance, not Starbucks' Ethos Water.

Marches, protests, occupations, organizational meetings, public talks and discussions, sit-ins, and strikes, on the other hand, are all forms of collective political action that tend to speak better to the depth of the systemic forces that need to be resisted and superseded. They tend to be more effective at rejecting the forces of exploitation and oppression that drive our societies in the contemporary period, because they do not reinforce the underlying logic of automated consumerism produced through manipulative marketing and advertising, themselves driven by the profit-motive. It is not the choice of product on which you spend your almighty dollars that expresses your political power, but instead it is your capacity to act in concert with others. One of these conceptions of politics challenges the status quo-but the other conception is the status quo.

Thinking back to the meme that started this piece, the implied activism here is undergirded by a false alternative: I can either use the self-checkout line or use the human-clerk line. That is all. What should I do? What is the best political decision? First, it is useful to accept the fact that despite this decision taking place within a highly politicized context, in general, this decision is politically irrelevant. The structures involved are deeply political. We may feel that the appearance of our decision is reflective of a certain perceived set of political commitments-but compared to the political character of the political-economic structures that shape the circumstances where we feel like there might be important political consequences of one choice or another-or simply the fact that we have those two choices-the actual choice we make is functionally irrelevant. In aggregate, which is what I take this meme to be expressing, if customers stopped using the self-checkout lines, supermarkets would indeed stop expanding their use; they may even remove some of the ones they've already installed and hire more human cashiers, but given the enormity of the systemic evils we face, we should be thinking much bigger, broader, and deeper about our politics.

Given the degree of forces levelled against us, the severity of the problems we face, and the time and effort and general difficulty of collective action and organizing, it is too easy to think well at least I'm doing something. The problem is, after a long day or week or month or year of alienating labor, raising children, filling out memos, whatever wears you out, it is easy forat least I'm doing my part to become, I'll try again tomorrow. Our political engagement, our reflective capacities are increasingly automated. Like the automated checkout lines, we are (re)produced as (de)politicized subjects with little sense of any activity other than what we've been programmed-conditioned over years and years-to think. My individual choices matter. And, in fairness, to some degree they absolutely do, but some choices matter more than others.

Which choice matters more here: the decision as to which checkout line I should use, or the decision to get involved in a political organization or local social movement? Again, there is a false alternative here. You can do both, but if you're only going to do one, it should be clear that because of the depth of the structures of exploitation and oppression most people face daily, the latter choice-and the content of that choice-is the choice that really matters. It is a choice that, if made in the affirmative (and the choice is made to get involved in an organization that is socialist, anti-imperialist, pro-worker, anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc.), the choice automatically challenges the programmed automated political (un)thinking that is predominant in our society. Building solidarity in collective struggles with others directly challenges the automated, one dimensional, pathological (anti)politics of individualized consumer choice-oriented slacktivism.

With that criticism laid out, it is worth noting that collective consumer-side actions can be effective in short-term, limited circumstances. They can be a productive dimension of a broader strategy which utilizes a variety of tactics. One of the most historically significant examples of this is the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While it was certainly an exceptional example of collective consumer action rooted not in the ideology of individual choices. A boycott is not an individual act, so, if we give the meme a more charitable reading, we could interpret it as a call for collective action against self-checkout lines. Again, that isn't made clear in the meme explicitly, but it still leaves open the broader question of the limitations of consumer actions, even when done collectively, but it also leaves open the issue of whether resisting automation is a good idea for those interested in progressive or socialist political-economic change.

A Robot Could Do Your Job (and It Should)

As for this second dimension of the meme, the opposition to automation itself, I want to suggest here, in line with what has been argued elsewhere by Peter Frase, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams, that automation-done democratically and equitably-is a process that we should support. There are, quite simply, jobs, where if there is an opportunity to make them not exist, that is precisely what should be done. Where is the expression of humanity in being a cashier or bagger? In what ways, other than simply engaging in casual sixty-second conversations with customers, do people employed in these kinds of professions express their humanity in any significant way? I want to be clear; I'm not criticizing the people who, for whatever reasons, do these jobs. I'm criticizing the existence of these jobs as such.

Who should feel compelled to clean piss or shit off bathroom walls in order to make some more money to pay for basic human needs, such as: healthy, nutritious food; safe, clean housing; and/or quality health care? Who should feel compelled to pick strawberries or lettuce in 100-degree heat? Who should feel compelled to install roofing in the scorching sunlight day after day? There is nothing wrong with manual labor per se, and certainly many people would prefer it to sitting in a cubical for eight hours per day, but the problem with any of these options is that none are typically chosen freely. Very few people, if any, would actively choose to undertake the most revolting, dangerous, uninteresting, and socially-unrewarding jobs if it weren't for the lack of better alternatives, if it weren't for the fact that freely chosen labor is barely a mythology in our societies (in that we can hardly even fantasize about it).

In an automated political economy, there will be plenty of creative, hands-on, salt-of-the-earth jobs to do. There will also be plenty of time for other, perhaps a bit more sedentary, creative, and productive activities for those of us who are less callously-inclined. The point is that automation driven by democratically-organized movements of working people, everyday people, the 99%, is the best way to make freely-chosen productive, humane labor thinkable again.

Automation in and of itself is neither a positive nor a negative. At its worst, automation deskills jobs so that the cognitive engagement and technical know-how needed to do the job decreases. Sometimes whole job categories disappear. All the while, companies continue to rake in record-breaking profits. These are the very real, if still exaggerated, fears that underlie this meme.

History need not go in that direction though. We can have an automation that increases quality of life for all people. In order for automation to have the liberatory effects that the above meme eschews, there would need to be a corollary supplement in the form of a universal basic income and/or shorter workweeks or job-share programs with no loss in pay - but it is highly unlikely either of those options would be achievable without the kind of mass organized political action that the individualized, automated politics of consumer choice activism undermines.

Automation-only when combined with genuinely democratized workplaces, companies, homes, towns, cities, states, and countries-can set us on a path of increased freedom for all people. Put simply, we want our shitty jobs automated, not our capacities for creative, collective activity. We want to automate toil, not politics. And it is always worth remembering: automation isn't the enemy of working people, their bosses are.

Bryant William Sculos holds a PhD in political theory and international relations. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at The Amherst Program in Critical Theory, contributing writer for the Hampton Institute, and Politics of Culture section editor for Class, Race and Corporate Power. His other work has been published with a variety of academic and non-academic outlets, including: Constellations, New Political Science, Public Seminar, Truthout, Dissident Voice, and New Politics. His most recent article "Minding the Gap: Marxian Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Postcapitalism" is in the May 2018 special issue of tripleC commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Bryant is also a member of Socialist Alternative-CWI in the US.

Women's Reproductive Rights in Cuba vs the United States: A Comparative Analysis

By Valerie Reynoso

Cuba is an island in the Caribbean governed by a socialist state that has made strides in numerous aspects, including but not limited to socioeconomic equality, redistribution of wealth to the masses, advocacy for the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the end of the colonial rule in Angola during the 1960s. Cuba has served as an inspiration for the overthrow of fascist dictators in other Latin American nations such as Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the neighboring Dominican Republic, along with an outstanding healthcare system that has even drawn attention from organizations such as the UN and UNICEF.

The United States, on the other hand, is a hegemonic Western nation with a capitalist-imperialist government that is rendered as the most superior in the world. The US is defined by the existence and persistence of systemic inequities, deepening class stratification, high rates of mass incarceration, homelessness, and poverty; as well as unique socioeconomic consequences faced by women, largely due to reproductive healthcare services not being universalized and not always covered by health insurance.

In comparison, Cuba outperforms the US in areas of women's reproductive rights and abortion access, given its complete legalization of abortion and other healthcare services to women for free. The US is unable and seemingly unwilling to meet the standards of Cuba, given primarily the Hyde Amendment and overall privatization ("profitization") of medical industries.

Cuba and Women's Health

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 brought radical change to the island in the form of new socialist socioeconomic and political structures, as well as a shift in the role of women in society and women's reproductive rights, distinct to pre-1959 Cuba. Cuban leader Fidel Castro believed that the liberation of women was vital to the socialist revolution. This idea stood in stark contrast to pre-revolutionary Cuba, which more closely resembled that of the United States, with regressive policies in terms of women's rights and reproductive care under General Fulgencio Batista. Prior to the rise of the Castro, abortion laws in Cuba were based on the 1870 Penal Code of Spain and had many restrictions, some of which were loosened in 1936 with the entry of the new Social Defense Code. This new penal code legalized abortion in the cases of endangerment of the life of the mother due to pregnancy, any form of rape, or serious medical complication of the fetus that would require the termination of pregnancy. During this time, Cubans who sought abortions due to health risks caused by pregnancy had to be granted permission from two physicians to get the procedure done.

Following the birth of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba became one of the first countries in the world to legalize abortion with full access in 1965, up to the tenth week of gestation, through their national health system. The Social Defense Code was replaced once again in 1979 with the adoption of a new penal code, which explicated what constituted as illegal abortion as well as punishments for those who conducted them. Illegal abortions were defined as those done under conditions that neglect health laws regarding abortion. Likewise, those caught in violation of said legal abortion regulations would potentially face three months to a year in prison. Abortions performed for profit, outside of accredited institutions, or by anyone other than a legitimate physician would result in culprits being subject to two to five years in prison. Abortions are also considered illegal in Cuba if executed without the consent of the pregnant patient and would result in two to five years of prison time for the executer of the procedure. If the non-consensual abortion is performed with force or violence, then the prison sentence is increased to up to eight years.

Likewise, menstrual regulation is implemented in the case that gestation is five weeks or less; women do not need to confirm their pregnancy, nor do minors need parental consent to receive menstrual regulation. Gestations of ten to twelve weeks would require confirmation of pregnancy to obtain an abortion and, along with that, the pregnant woman must be examined by a gynecologist as well as be given counseling from a social worker. For those who seek abortions services, parental consent is needed for women under eighteen, and permission from a medical committee is required for women under 16. A committee of obstetricians, psychologists, and social workers would have to approve a second trimester abortion in addition to the patient satisfying the regulations for a first trimester abortion. Moreover, in 1960, the Castro administration formed the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which was led by Vilma Espin, a revolutionary who resisted against the Batista regime and was also the partner of Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's brother. FMC has played a vital role in the advancement of gender equality and the enhancement of women's healthcare in Cuba.

The FMC has a membership that includes 85.2 percent of all eligible Cuban women and girls over 14 years of age. It is recognized as an NGO and as a national system for women, due to the overwhelming majority of Cuban women being participants, because the organization is not socioeconomically funded by the Cuban government, and because the federation has a hierarchy consisting of local, municipal, provincial, and national levels of representation and leadership. Along with endorsing the mass education of women, inclusion of women in the work force, and advocacy for legislative and social reform for gender equality, the FMC has also had a significant impact on the Cuban healthcare system and its regulations. One instance of the influence of the FMC on the Cuban healthcare regulations is their assistance in passing maternity leave laws in 1974, under which pregnant women are granted three months of paid leave. The FMC also played a role in the foundation of maternity homes for women to deliver their infants under the maintenance of primarily FMC volunteers who serve as trained attendants.

The FMC has proven to be successful in the mobilization and formation of solidarity amongst Cuban women, united under a common motivation to fight for women's rights to higher education, paid maternity leave, childcare provision, and free abortions and birth control.

The United States and Women's Health

In the US, the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v Wade was a victory for women's reproductive rights. However, the battle against women's rights are ongoing, with various conservative and right-wing interests, typically headed by men, continuing to mount a powerful opposition. Measures taken to diminish the impact of Roe v. Wade and strengthen anti-woman legislation like the Hyde Amendment have significantly changed abortion accessibility and affordability for women in the US.

Abortions were legal and frequently performed from the 18th century until approximately 1880 in the US. The idea that the fetus at conception and the early stages of pregnancy was a human life was not a conventional one held in US societies, nor the Catholic Church, for some time. The typical stance on this subject at the time was that it was centered on women's experiences and relations with their own bodies, rather than societal stances on what is considered immoral for women to do regarding abortion. The Catholic Church accepted early abortions before ensoulment; however, around 1869, began to denounce abortion, simultaneously when abortion became politicized in the US. In 1895, the church opposed therapeutic abortions, which were meant to save a woman's life. Abortions were outlawed in the US by 1880 due to pressure from medical groups, with the exception of cases involving medical complications that could endanger the woman's life.

Women in the US continued to seek abortions despite these newfound laws and those who could afford options often received services from practitioners in private homes. Those who could not afford private services were left with no other choice but to resort to near-lethal means out of desperation. Rates of women who obtained illegal abortions naturally increased with restrictions barring access to legal procedures. Between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal abortions were conducted per year in the US in the 1950s and 1960s. Underground organizations that provided safe, illegal abortions were formed in the 1960s by individuals concerned about the well-being of the high number of women who dangerously sought to terminate their pregnancies. These organizations included the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion and The Abortion Counseling Center of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, also known as Jane. The Rubella outbreak in the US, which lasted from 1964 to 1965, endangered fetuses and hence was a major factor in a rehashing of the abortion debate in the country. This outbreak and the ongoing debate led to the passage of Roe v Wade in 1973.

Roe v Wade was decided on January 22nd, 1973 and ruled that state-sanctioned restrictions of abortion are unconstitutional. It was concluded that the criminalization of abortion under Texas statutes (for the most part) infringes upon the constitutional right to privacy women have under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. Numerous abortion rights activists wanted the case to be passed under the ninth amendment, so that it could be written in the constitution rather than malleable and subject to change. Although this case made legal abortion more available and safe for women in the US, barriers were still placed on them, including measures that were taken to restrict the effectiveness of Roe v Wade and socioeconomic disparities that made it more difficult for underclass women to receive services. Following Roe v Wade, several US states have enacted over 1,074 laws with the purpose of limiting access to abortion, with over a quarter of these legislations having been legalized between 2010 and 2015.

Part of the anti-woman crusade that was sparked by Roe v. Wade was the Hyde Amendment, which was passed in 1977 to prohibit the use of Medicaid to pay for abortions, excluding cases of rape, incest, or endangerment of the life of the mother. According to a study done in 1984 at the Guttmacher Institute, 44 percent of female Medicaid recipients who had abortions that year paid for them by using money they had initially saved for necessities, such as rent and food. Due to said women not being able to afford the costly prices of abortions, many were forced to save for a longer period of time for the procedure, which resulted in later, riskier, and more expensive abortions, or women being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term due to an inability to afford an abortion. This statistic increased to 57 percent of abortion patients paying out of pocket by 2010. The Hyde Amendment resulted in Medicaid-funded abortions decreasing from 300,000 per year to only a few thousand per year. As of 2010, seventeen states finance abortion care for citizens with Medicaid coverage, and 20% of abortions conducted in the US were funded with Medicaid in 2008. Additional barriers are posed to women in need of abortions per individual state. For instance, as of 2008, fifteen of the seventeen states that fund abortion care for its people have also established obstacles such as low reimbursement rates and delays in enrollment, which make it more difficult for women and providers to use Medicaid for abortion services.

Comparing Cuba and the United States

The changes Cuba experienced in its transition from the Batista regime to the Castro administration, as well as the changes in abortion legislation the US experienced from the 18th and 19th centuries to the late 20th century, demonstrates that Cuba was making drastic improvements in the conditions of Cuban women. While the Cuban government made tremendous strides in forging women's rights, the accessibility of abortion declined for women in the US during the same period.

The radicalization of the Cuban government implemented by Fidel Castro set the foundation for the drastic modification of women's rights that would occur in the island throughout the latter half of the 20th century and 21st century. The FMC led by Vilma Espin was crucial to the development of universalized healthcare and inclusions of free abortions and other reproductive health services that overwhelmingly affect Cuban women. Contrarily, the Hyde Amendment, malleability of the Roe v Wade case, and constant pressure from a male-driven, conservative crusade have proven that the profits of US medical industries and artificial morals of fundamental Christianity are paramount to the reproductive rights of women in the US, especially given how expensive abortions are and that Medicaid cannot be used to pay for it in a majority of cases.

The capitalism system which dominates American life is a system driven by infinite profit extracted from the finite resources of the planet and exploitation of the labor of the working class. This exploitation is deepened when members of this working class are part of other marginalized groups as well, such as women, non-white people, and disabled people; all of which make up the overwhelming number of patients struggling to obtain legal abortions in the US. Many of these women have the misfortune of resorting to dangerous alternatives out of need. In comparison, the socialist system Cuba operates under has clearly succeeded in ensuring that Cubans of any racial or socioeconomic background have access to high quality, universalized healthcare and abortions without barriers of any kind.

Statistics prove that in terms of abortion access and reproductive healthcare, Cuba has a model that is more superior than that of the US. Chapter IV of the Cuban constitution contains articles that explicitly enforce the socioeconomic and political equality of all genders, as well as state-funding of financial support for pregnant women. Article 44 states that all genders enjoy equal rights in all aspects of society; women are guaranteed equal opportunities to men and will have an equal impact on the advancement of the island; and the state also manages institutions like child centers, boarding schools, and homes for the elderly with the purpose of helping working families. Article 40 dictates that the Cuban state provide working women with paid maternity leave before and after childbirth, as well as job options that would be suitable for pregnant people and mothers.

As of 2014, Cuba has a total expenditure on health per capita of $2,475 ; and a total expenditure on health as percent of GDP of 11.1 percent for a population of 11,147,407 as of July 2017. The Cuban government has no intervention concerning fertility level, allows abortions on request for any reason, and provides direct support on contraceptives for its citizens. As of 1987, 70 percent of married Cuban women between the ages 15 and 49 use modern contraception, which is available in all government health institutions and through one agency called the Sociedad Cientifica Cubana para el Desarrollo de la Familia (SOCUDEF) that receives full support from the government. Under these measures taken by the Cuban government, in accordance with the country's constitution, the amount of legal abortions quadrupled from 1968 to 1974 with a percent increase from 16.7 to 69.5 legal abortions per 1,000 fertile women. 85,445 abortions were conducted among women between the ages 12 and 49 in 2016, which totals to 41.9 abortions per 100 pregnant women, which is half of the figures from 12 years prior to that. Even more so, contraceptive use has caused a decline in abortion rates in Cuba over the past 15 years.

In contrast, despite the increase in healthcare spending and decline in legal abortion rates in the US, the spike in illegal abortions and barriers posed by the Hyde Amendment indicate that US women still do not have full access to reproductive healthcare. The total expenditure of health in the US rose by 4.3 percent in 2016, at a ratio of $10,348 per person, and made up 17.9 percent of the national GDP. In addition to this, the national abortion rate decreased by 2 percent between 2013 and 2014, where there was a rate of 12.1 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, or 186 abortions per 1,000 live births. Frequent Google searches for self-induced abortions in US regions with low access to health institutions imply a spike in the obtainment of illegal abortions, although an exact statistic for this is difficult to determine given that illegal procedures are not easy to keep track of. In 2015, the Guttmacher Institute found that there were 119,000 searches on how to have a miscarriage as well as other phrases of a similar nature, such as how to self-abort, etc. In total, there were over 700,000 Google searches that year on how to conduct a "self-induced abortion." There were also 3.4 million searches for abortion clinics, 160,000 for how to find abortion pills through unverified sources, tens of thousands on herbal remedies for abortions, 4,000 on instructions for coat hanger abortions and a few hundred on abortion methods through bleaching the uterus. It was found that a disproportionately large number of these Google searches were in the state of Mississippi, which only had one abortion clinic in 2016. For perspective, the Guttmacher Institute reported that there are approximately one million legal abortions per year in the US. Based on this research, a correlation between economic insecurity and abortion seems clear. Online searches related to "self-conducted abortions" surged towards the end of 2008, during the financial crisis and great recession at the time. Legislative barriers also seem clear, as these searches increased by 40 percent in 2011, the year when 92 laws that restrict abortions were passed in the US.

Conclusion

Cuban women have free reproductive care and are provided abortions at their request for free as well, under one of the statistically best healthcare systems in the world. In the US, a significant number of pregnant women cannot afford nor have access to legal abortions; therefore, being forced to endanger their lives through illegal procedures. The Cuban state operates under a socialist system that places the lives of its women citizens before corporate or private profit, to the point where it is illegal for abortions to be conducted for profit in the nation and prison terms are possible for violators of this policy. The fact that access to abortion clinics in the US has dwindled, causing legal abortions to decline while searches for illegal abortions have drastically spiked, is yet another failure of the capitalist healthcare system in the country. Specifically, the US for-profit system has failed the women it is meant to serve and will only continue to fail them as these dangerous statistics further grow.

In addition to operating for profit, US healthcare and medical industries remain beholden to patriarchal (and downright misogynistic) values that are tied to its economic system. Capitalism is a system founded on imperial conquests of Global South nations and the enforcement of patriarchy and class stratification on these matriarchal, communal societies by European Crowns. These structures have disproportionately affected women, and especially women who are oppressed in other aspects of their being. This has resulted in the devaluation of feminized labor, usage of women as domestic tools for the social reproduction of working men, and now high costs of abortions as well as barriers that prevent women from getting them. All of this leads to already underpaid and underprivileged women risking their lives to get their necessities out of despair because the system that governs them does not value them.

As maternal mortality rates are skyrocketing in the US, Cuba boasts one of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. As of 2015, Cuba has a maternal mortality rate of 39 deaths for every 100,000 live births and an infant mortality rate of 4.2 deaths for every thousand births. The probability of children under the age of five dying in Cuba is 0 per 1,000 live births based on data from 2015. In addition to this, in June 2015, Cuba became the first nation in the world to be praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) for their achievement in eradicating mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis through medical innovation. The corollary benefit to this is enjoyed by pregnant women who may otherwise seek abortions due to them having HIV and not wanting to infect their baby. With this ability, and the expectation of a healthy baby, those mothers may now choose to carry full term. Since 2010, the WHO has been teaming up with Cuba and other nations in the Americas to execute a regional plan to get rid of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. As part of this program, Cuba has guaranteed early access to prenatal care, HIV and syphilis testing for pregnant women and their partners, treatment for women who test positive for the infections and their babies, caesarean deliveries and substitution of breastfeeding-all of which is provided under the universalized healthcare system of the island. These statistics make Cuba the country with the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas, in the Global South as a whole, and one of the lowest in the world.

On the other hand, as of 2015, the US has a maternal mortality rate of 26.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, up from around 17 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1999. Other Western nations rank much lower in comparison to the US regarding maternal mortality, such as 9.2 for the UK and 7.8 for France per 100,000 live births respectively. According to a six-month long examination conducted by NPR and ProPublica on maternal mortality in the US, more women in the US are dying from complications due to pregnancy than any other Western nation, and the US is the only country where this rate is actually increasing. While the neglect of women's health is certainly predetermined by the for-profit system, it is also systematically neglected by the US government and its health agencies. Only 6 percent of block grants designated for maternal and child health end up being used for the health of the mothers, as revealed by federal and state funding. This is despite the increase in spending in overall healthcare in the US. The fact that only a minimum percent of block grants that are meant to be used for maternal and child health is utilized to help them further illustrates how the well-being of pregnant women and abortion patients is not paramount in the capitalist healthcare system of the US. Additionally, US hospitals that must worry about "bottom lines" (like any for-profit company) can be extremely unprepared for maternal emergencies such as self-induced abortions having gone wrong, even if the hospital has an intensive care unit for newborns and their mothers. Medical training in the US is also suspect. Some US doctors may specialize in maternal-fetal medicine without ever having to spend time in a labor-delivery unit that would further develop their specialties.

Cuba's healthcare system is world-renowned for many reasons: It was among the first of nations to fully legalize abortion; it has successfully eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis through medical innovation; it has implemented universalized healthcare such that all reproductive services are free for all citizens; it has scored low maternal and infant mortality rates; and it is a significant factor in creating one of the highest standards of living for women in the world. All of this is due to taking profit and personal interest out of healthcare by making it a social imperative and human right. In comparison, the US has systematically restricted women's reproductive rights, increased barriers for women who seek abortions, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the West, is forcing women who seek illegal abortions due to lack of access to legal services, and has implemented high costs for legal abortions and other basic services, therefore diminishing the quality of living for millions of marginalized women. All of this is due to putting profit above people while pushing patriarchal values that do not recognize women as human beings who should have full agency over their bodies.

Bibliography

"Central America and the Caribbean: Cuba." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 11 Apr. 2018.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Roe v Wade. 26 Apr. 1999.

Falk, Pam, et al. Cuba's Constitution of 1976 with Amendments through 2002. Oxford University Press Inc.

Ginsburg, Faye D. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. University of California Press, 1998.

Jatlaoui, Tara C., et al. "Abortion Surveillance - United States, 2014." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 24 Nov. 2017.

Jones, Rachel K., et al. "At What Cost? Payment for Abortion Care by US Women." Women's Health Issues Journal, no. 23-3, 4 Mar. 2013. Elsevier.

Kassebaum, Nicholas J. "Global, Regional, and National Levels of Maternal Mortality, 1990-2015: a Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015." The Lancet, vol. 388, 8 Oct. 2016.

Last Five Years Account for More Than One-Quarter of All Abortion Restrictions Enacted Since Roe. Guttmacher Institute, 13 Jan. 2016.

Montagne, Renee, and Nina Martin. "U.S. Has The Worst Rate Of Maternal Deaths In The Developed World." Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.s., NPR, 12 May 2017.

National Health Expenditure Data. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 8 Jan. 2018.

Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. Cuba: Abortion Policy. The Population Policy Data Bank.

Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 . University of California Press, 1998.

Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth. Abortions at Clinics, or Somewhere Else. Guttmacher Institute, 5 Mar. 2016.

"The Federation of Cuban Women." The Federation of Cuban Women, Stanford University.

World Health Organization. Facts on Cuba.

WHO Validates Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Syphilis in Cuba. World Health Organization, 30 June 2015.

Jordan Peterson: Reactionary Guru and Accidental Incel Intellectual

By Matthew Dolezal

Jordan Peterson loves to talk about lobsters. I assume they are one of his favorite animals. In the 90-minute presentation I agreed to watch (after losing a bet), the best-selling author and former clinical psychologist recounted a cute little factoid about these crimson crustaceans.

"I was reading these articles on lobsters, and I came across this finding that lobsters govern their postural flexion with serotonin," said the gaunt middle-aged man in a crackling and nervous tone.

The anecdote was meant as an extension of Peterson's first "rule for life": Stand up straight.

"Fair enough," I thought, "That is interesting."

But shortly thereafter, mere minutes into his monologue, the "self-help" facade began to crumble. Peterson promptly advanced his discourse by using lobster "dominance hierarchies" as a vague metaphorical justification for hierarchies in human society.

This enigmatic notion got me thinking. First of all, if any behavior in nature should either be mimicked by humans or is "natural" when conducted by humans, then what about eating your babies ? Does Peterson advocate cannibalism? Secondly, if he's saying that human hierarchies are inherently justifiable simply because hierarchies exist in nature, then, in order to be logically consistent, he would have to say slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, and other racial hierarchies were justifiable, as well as all other iterations of human dominance and coercion throughout history.

At this point I had more questions than answers. But I could surmise that Peterson was simply using the naturalistic fallacy in order to rationalize his pre-existing ideology. If I wanted to be really creative, I could defend one of my own beliefs in a similar fashion. For instance, abortions happen all the time in nature; they're called "miscarriages." Therefore, abortion is morally justifiable.

To be clear, I do think abortion is morally justifiable, but for other reasons (such as bodily integrity ). I'm not arrogant enough to claim that my specific moral views are warranted by some pseudo-pantheistic "order." Unfortunately, my entire moral outlook hinges on my ostensibly functional amygdala and subsequent experience of empathy. I am therefore entirely biased in my opposition to the systems and institutions that perpetuate unnecessary death and suffering worldwide. But apparently Jordan Peterson can just breeze through conservative moral platitudes as though they are simple math problems with but one empirical answer.

Continuing with anti-Marxist remarks and statements like, "smart, hardworking people are the most likely to succeed," Peterson asserted that individuals climb up social hierarchies based on their own competence (calling it a "competence hierarchy"). His related commentary made his support for the current class system (and economic hierarchies in general) crystal-clear. These sentiments seem perfectly delightful in a vacuum, but a glance at the reality on the ground (in the U.S., for instance) makes this meritocratic dogma look wildly delusional:

Three men own as much as half the population.

Half the population is living in or near poverty.

CEOs of large firms makes 300 times more than their average employee.

The vast majority of new income goes to the top 1 percent.

White families have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families.

Inheritance plays a huge role in determining individual wealth.

Your parents' income strongly predicts how much money you will make and whether or not you will go to college.

I continued watching and taking notes. But the rest of Peterson's performance followed suit; self-evident advice like "compare yourself to who you were yesterday" or "treat yourself like you're someone you care about" peppered with neo-McCarthyist rhetoric and social Darwinism. Toward the end, the man was ranting about the superiority of Western culture like some washed-up white nationalist . The entire presentation could be summarized by the following quote from journalist Nora Loreto :

"Peterson cloaks his anti-progressive opinions in folksy, common-sense advice. He is a master at inventing an enemy and offering young men a solution to various straw men. Peterson has perfectly tailored his self-help style to the individual, no doubt a holdover from his days as a clinical psychologist, which he mentions a lot when he talks."

To further clarify his reactionary worldview, Peterson has accused the Left of " weaponizing compassion ." Of course this is a doltish oxymoron straight out of The Onion, but it is also a bit hypocritical, since Peterson's androcentric language and influence could readily be used to weaponize male supremacy.

The general public became quickly aware of the term "incel" after Alek Minassian killed ten people in a terrorist attack in Toronto last April. The label is a portmanteau of "involuntary" and "celibate," and members of this movement have been described as "male supremacist[s][…]who believe women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights."

In a scathing New York Times exposé , Nellie Bowles interviewed Peterson in his Toronto home. When asked about the aforementioned atrocity, this highly credentialed academic said, "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges."

In addition, during the same interview, Peterson stated, "The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence," and, in a Vice interview , waxed profound when asking, "Can men and women work together in the workplace?" He later added, "How about no makeup in the workplace?"

Upon discovering these statements I realized that, in addition to class hierarchies, Peterson espouses another hierarchical concept: patriarchy. He even seems to inadvertently side with the incels. I am left wondering about his views regarding racial hierarchies, but this (along with other observations ) was sufficient evidence that lobsters would be utterly ashamed of the psychologist in question.

Toxic masculinity is already an entrenched aspect of the Western culture this man holds in such high regard. For those who espouse this destructive outlook as a latent and unquestioned tendency, Peterson is preaching to the choir. He is simply telling them what they want to hear, dressing his message in the garb of academic jargon, redundant axioms (e.g. "Endless failure is not good."), and recycled, reactionary, anti-communism. As a public figure, his style, rhetoric, and avid fan base are comparable to a combination of Dr. Atkins, L. Ron Hubbard, and Joseph McCarthy. Despite his name-dropping of psychoanalysts of yore, these are his true predecessors. Jordan Peterson is simply a bitter and paranoid huckster, attempting to protect and maintain his position of privilege while selling as many books as possible. But, due to the particular ultra-traditionalist framing of his subject matter, this pursuit of fame and fortune might not be harmless.

This article was originally posted on Matthew's blog.

Peter Kropotkin's Anarchist Critique of Capitalism

By Jon Bekken

Peter Kropotkin devoted a major part of his prolific anarchist writings to two related themes: examining the actual workings of capitalist economies and developing the broad outlines of an anarchist-communist society. Kropotkin was not satisfied to merely assert that a free society was possible, he sought to show how such a society could be constructed from the materials at hand - realizing that a revolutionary movement that failed to consider the problems of production and distribution would quickly collapse. This installment outlines Kropotkin's critique of capitalist political economy.

Economic Doctrine

For Kropotkin, the purpose of political economy was to study society's needs and the means available (either currently in use, or which could be developed with present knowledge) to meet them.

"It should try to analyze how far the present means are expedient and satisfactory … [and] should concern itself with the discovery of means for the satisfaction of these needs with the smallest possible waste of labor and with the greatest benefit to mankind in general." [1]

It was this task that Kropotkin took on.

Rather than engage in the abstract theorizing that dominated, then as now, the field, he carried out detailed studies of the agricultural and industrial techniques practical in his day (whether they were in general use or not) and their capacity to meet human needs.

Unlike most economists, Kropotkin insisted on subjecting economic theories to the same rigorous inquiry he would apply to any "scientific" theory:

"When certain economists tell us that "in a perfectly free market the price of commodities is measured by the amount of labor socially necessary for their production," we do not take this assertion on faith …. We not only find most of these so-called laws grossly erroneous, but maintain also that those who believe in them will themselves become convinced of their error as soon as they come to see the necessity of verifying the[m] … by quantitative investigation."

While there certainly was a relationship between the price of commodities and the amount of labor necessary for their production, Kropotkin argued, they were by no means proportional to one another (as the Labor Theory of Value would imply). Nor had socialist economists troubled themselves to investigate whether or not the theory was true by actually gathering data to test the alleged relationship. Anyone who took the trouble to engage in such an investigation would quickly learn that the theory was false. We need only consider the price of oil or gold to realize that these prices are set not by the amount of labor power required to extract and process them, but rather by external market and social conditions. Most so-called economic laws, Kropotkin concluded, were mere suppositions. And although socialist economists "criticize some of these deductions … it has not yet been original enough to find a path of its own." [2]

Thus, when Marx argued against Proudhon that all products exchanged at (or, at least, fluctuated around) their labor value, he was implicitly arguing for what has been called the Iron Law of Wages (though Marx later refuted himself by conceding that union activity could decrease the level of exploitation). The Socialist Party of Great Britain and similar tendencies are wholly correct when they maintain that a Marxian analysis requires that all commodities- including labor power-are valued under capitalism at the cost of their reproduction, which in turn is determined by the most-productive available methods. (Thus a shirt that takes 60 minutes to make by hand or five minutes to make by machine sells for the same price on the world market.)

There is, of course, an element of truth to this-which is why the theory was widely accepted by the labor movement. But, as we shall see, it mistakes an association for a causal relationship. The commodity theory of labor would indicate that only by increasing productivity can workers make possible an improved standard of living, and only through socialist revolution can those possible improvements be actually realized. (Otherwise, the benefits merely accrue to the capitalists and their underlings.)

This doctrine leads inevitably to the conclusion that wage struggles are essentially a waste of time and energy (though workers, through hundreds of years of struggle, have proved the opposite), and that the only alternative to competing against each other into ever-greater immiseration is a state-managed, planned economy which can determine labor values and ensure their equitable distribution. But this doctrine is wholly false. I turn, below, to Kropotkin's proof that wage levels have nothing to do with the cost of reproduction. But the essential point is that wage levels, like the price of all commodities, are set not by their cost of production or the amount of labor they require, but by the relative economic, military and social power held by the respective parties. Monopolies, cartels, police clubs, prisons, labor organization, co-operative associations-these and other power relationships skew the relative "value" of commodities, or at least of the price that can be gotten for them. (And it really matters very little whether a canteloupe has a theoretical, labor-derived value of 25 cents if all the stores charge a dollar.)

Capitalism Not Productive

Like most socialists, Kropotkin initially assumed that an abundance of goods was being produced-and thus that the primary problem facing socialists was arranging their distribution. But when Malatesta suggested that this could not be true, Kropotkin investigated the matter, and found that (quoting Malatesta):

"this accumulation of products could not possibly exist, because the bosses normally only allow for the production of what they can sell at a profit … Some countries were continually threatened by shortages."

In fact, there was only enough food on hand in most major cities to sustain the population for a few days. Yet upon further investigation, Kropotkin established that the shortages, economic crises and general distress endemic to his age (and which continue to this day) did not result, as was widely believed, from overpopulation, poor soil, or other such material causes. Rather, they resulted from a failure to utilize the means already at hand to meet society's needs. [3]

Kropotkin presented his findings in Fields, Factories and Workshops- an anarchist classic that proved that people using then-existing technologies could meet all their needs with just a few months of labor per year. Space precludes anything more than the briefest summary of a volume with which every anarchist should have long since made themselves familiar.

He demonstrated that the technical means then existed to produce abundant and healthful food with relatively little effort or expense (a vision quite distinct from today's factory farms-the precursors of which already existed, but which, he noted, destroyed the soil for generations to come, as well as displacing people who might otherwise derive a comfortable living from the land). Contrary to many economists, Kropotkin argued for decentralizing agriculture and industry, noting that huge industrial establishments were both less common than generally believed, and established less to realize largely dubious economies of scale than to facilitate managerial control. The doctrine of national specialization or competitive advantage±then coming into prominence, and which has since been used as an excuse to ravish "third world" economies-was demonstrably harmful to the interests of the population. (As is well known to peasants compelled to grow coffee beans and sugar cane on land that could otherwise feed their families.) If the debilitating influences of capitalist control and ignorance could be ended, abundance for all was well within reach.

"All this has been proved … despite the innumerable obstacles always thrown in the way of every innovative mind …. For thousands of years … to grow one's own food was the burden, almost the curse, or mankind. But it need be so no longer … To grow the yearly food of a family, under rational conditions of culture, requires so little labor that it might almost be done as a mere change from other pursuits … And again, you will be struck to see with what facility and in how short a time your needs of dress and of thousands of articles of luxury can be satisfied, when production is carried on for satisfying real needs rather than for satisfying shareholders …" [4]

And yet, everywhere workers lived in misery. Contrary to the teachings of every economic school, Kropotkin argued that overproduction was far from a problem:

"Far from producing more than is needed to assure material riches, we do not produce enough …. If certain economists delight in writing treatises on over-production. and in explaining each industrial crisis by this cause, they would be much at a loss if called upon to name a single article produced by France in greater quantities than are necessary to satisfy the needs of the whole population …. What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by capital and State …" [5]

Only exploiters, he concluded, were in abundant supply. Today, 94 years later, there may well be overproduction of some goods (nuclear weapons, toxic chemicals, and products that must almost immediately be replaced)-but it is just as obscene today to talk of, for example, an overproduction crisis in agriculture when millions face immediate starvation.

Thus, rather than celebrating capitalism's development of society's productive capacity, as Marxists do, Kropotkin demonstrated that capitalism resulted in chronic underproduction and deprivation. Capitalists not only do not equitably distribute the fruits of our production, the entire development of technology is distorted by their short-term profit calculations. Employers faced with the possibility of new labor-saving technologies, for example, often move to drive down labor costs rather than invest in developing the means of production (their historic role, according to Marx). The Social Revolution, then, would not merely expropriate the means of production developed by the capitalists-it would be forced to rapidly develop those means in order to meet even the most basic social needs.

Fortunately, the means for doing so have long been in place, and workers are more than capable of meeting the challenge.

Wage Slavery

Like all socialists, Kropotkin recognized the self-evident truth that workers work for the employing class because they are forced to-without their weekly wages they and their families must starve.

"Whence come the fortunes of the rich[?] A little thought would suffice to show that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute there will no longer be any rich to exploit them …" [7]

If people had the means to support themselves-if they were capable of meeting their daily needs without hiring out their labor-no one would consent to work for wages that must inevitably be (if the capitalist is to derive any profit) a mere fraction of the value of the goods they produce. Even an independent artisan, the labor aristocracy of Kropotkin's day, could not hope to do better than to support his family and put together an (almost certainly inadequate) pittance for his old age, should he rely on his own effort and diligence:

"Assuredly this is not how great fortunes are made. But suppose our shoemaker … takes an apprentice, the child of some poor wretch who will think himself lucky if in five years time his son has learned the trade and is able to earn his living. …

Meanwhile our shoemaker does not lose by him; and if trade is brisk he soon takes a second, and then a third … If he is keen enough and mean enough, his journeymen and apprentices will bring him in nearly a pound a day over and above the product of his own toil … He will gradually become rich … That is what people call "being economical and having frugal temperate habits."

At bottom it is nothing more nor less than grinding the face of the poor." [8]

Today, to be sure, workers have after a hundred years succeeded in improving their condition-and the apprentice system, already declining in Kropotkin's time, has all but disappeared. But saving one's earnings is no more the route to real wealth than it ever was-at best workers can hope to buy a house, afford some time off from the hated job, and put a little money aside for retirement or hard times. To become wealthy, in economic term, requires exploitation-either directly, from workers' labor, or indirectly, by exploiting workers' need for the necessities of life.

Under capitalism, "the harder a man works the less he is paid." But the solution to this manifest injustice could not be found in reversing this equation-in payment according to the service each renders to society. For who is to determine the value of another's service?

"We know what reply we shall get … The bourgeois economists-and Marx too-will be quoted … to prove that the scale of wages has its raison d'etre, since the "labor power" of the engineer will have cost society more than the "labor power" of the laborer …

[But] the employer who pays the engineer twenty times more than the laborer makes the following simple reckoning: if the engineer can save him a hundred thousand francs a year on his production costs, he will pay the. engineer twenty thousand. And when he sees a foreman, able to drive the workers and save ten thousand francs in wages, he loses no time in offering him two or three thousand .. He parts with a thousand francs where he counts on gaining ten thousand, and this in essence is the capitalist system.

So let no one come up with this talk about production costs of the labor force, and tell us that a student who has cheerfully spent his youth at a university has a "right" to a salary ten times that of a miner's son who has been wasting away down a mine from the age of eleven." [9]

Wage differentials, whether under capitalism or in some future "socialist" society, must be condemned as unjust. Nor is it possible to determine a "just wage" based on an individual's contribution (even if such a system could be tolerated on ethical grounds, which it cannot). [10]

Production is Social

Production is not carried out by isolated individuals whose economic contribution can be isolated from that of each other worker so that its value can be determined. To illustrate this, Kropotkin turned to coal mining. (At that time, miners worked either individually or in gangs at the coal face, and were paid piece rate. In today's coal mines, of course, the issue of individual production would never arise.)

"One man controls the lift, continually rushing the cage from level to level so that men and coal may be moved about. If he relaxes his concentration for an instant the apparatus will be destroyed, many men killed, and work brought to a standstill. If he loses as little as three seconds at each movement of the lever, production will be reduced by 20 tons a day or more.

Well, is it he who renders the greatest service in the mine? Or is it perhaps that boy who from below signals to him when it is time to raise the cage to the surface? Is it instead the miner who is risking his life at every moment of the day … Or again is it the engineer who would miss the coal seam and have the miners dig into stone if he made the smallest error in his calculations? …

All the workers engaged in the mine contribute within the limits of their powers, their knowledge … and their skill to mine coal. And all we can say is that everybody has the right to live, to satisfy their needs, and even their fantasies, once the most pressing needs of all have been satisfied. But how can one estimate their labors?" [ll]

Obviously you can't-no one but a Marxist would attempt such an absurdity. And yet we still have not identified everyone who contributes to the production of that coal.

What of the construction workers who built the railways to the pit head, without which the coal would sit useless. What of the farmers, who raise the food the coal miners eat? What of those who build the machines that will bum the coal-without which coal is merely a rather useless dirt.

There was a time, Kropotkin concedes, when a family could support itself by agricultural pursuits, supplemented with a few domestic trades, and consider the com they raised and the cloth they weaved as products of their own, and no one else's, labor.

Even then such a view was not quite correct:

"there were forests cleared and roads built by common efforts … But now, in the extremely interwoven state of industry of which each branch supports all others, such an individualistic view can be held no more.

If the iron trade and the cotton industry of this country have reached so high a degree of development, they have done so owing to the parallel growth of thousands of other industries, great and small; to the extension of the railway system; to an increase of knowledge … and, above all, to the world trade which has itself grown up …

The Italians who died from cholera in digging the Suez Canal … have contributed as much towards the enrichment of this country as the British girl who is prematurely growing old in serving a machine at Manchester… How can we pretend to estimate the exact part of each of them in the riches accumulated around us?" [12]

And if there is no individual production, then how can private ownership of property be justified? Just as it is impossible to argue that anyone person created a lump of coal or a bolt of cloth, so it is impossible to justify private ownership of buildings or land. Homes, after all, are not built by their owners. Their construction is a cooperative endeavor involving innumerable workers in forestry, timber yards, brickyards, etc.

Moreover-and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring-the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it.

"Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town … which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful." [13]

Like the ground they stand upon, buildings are a common heritage.

"For instance, take the town of Paris-a creation of so many centuries, a product of the genius of a whole nation … How could one maintain to an inhabitant of that town who works every day to embellish it, to purify it, to nourish it, to make it a center of thought and art-how could one assert before one who produces this wealth that the palaces adorning the streets of Paris belong in all justice to those who are the legal proprietors today …. It is by spoliation that they hold these riches!" [14]

That this remains so can readily be seen by examining the value of today's office buildings and shopping complexes. Without even the slightest improvements their value rise so long as the local economy prospers. But no sum of money invested in maintenance or beautification is sufficient to maintain their value when the local economy fails. For their value is not derived from the money invested, or from the bricks and mortar (and plastic, steel and cement) of which they are constructed. Not even the labor of the workers who build and maintain these modem temples to capital determines their value. Their value, in the final analysis, depends almost entirely upon the wealth and prosperity of the greater society. The most luxurious hotel built in a dying city will soon fade with its surroundings, while the meanest hovel increases in value as surrounding properties are developed.

We enrich each other-not only spiritually, but materially as well-as we work, contemplate and play together; and without the efforts of society as a whole, no one prospers.

Private Ownership Absurd

Private ownership, then, is not merely unjust±it is absurd. As early as 1873, when he was only beginning to become active in revolutionary circles, Kropotkin recognized that true equality was impossible under capitalism.

"It is desirable that a person beginning to work not enslave himself, not yield part of his labor, his strength, his independence … to private individuals whose arbitrariness always will determine how great that part should be, then it is necessary that private persons control neither the instruments of labor … nor the … earth … nor the means of existence during work … Thus we arrive at the elimination, in that future society whose realization we desire, of any personal property …" [16]

All property, no matter how it was created, must become the property of all, available to all who contribute to society through their labor. This was, and remains, necessary not only on grounds of social justice, but because all production is necessarily social.

Production for Needs

Kropotkin refused to separate his analysis of what was from what could be. He insisted on asking not merely if the present economic order worked on its own terms but whether:

"the means now in use for satisfying human needs, under the present system of … production for profits, [was] really economical?

Do they really lead to economy in the expenditure of human forces. Or are they not mere wasteful survivals from a past that was plunged into darkness, ignorance and oppression, and never took into consideration the economical and social value of the human being?" [16]

The "economical and social value of the human being," for Kropotkin, was the key to anarchist economics-to the building of a free society.

This was republished from Anarcho-Syndicalist Review .

Notes

[1] "Modern Science and Anarchism," p. 180. In: R. Baldwin (ed.), Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (Dover. 1970).

[2] "Modem Science and Anarchism," pp. 177-79.

[3] Errico Malatesta, "Peter Kropotkin-Recollections and Criticisms." In: V. Richards (ed.), Malatesta: Life & Ideas. Freedom Press, 1977, p. 266. Malatesta went on to argue that Kropotkin's revised view was also wildly optimistic in its assessment of what could be realized. History, however has confirmed that agriculture can indeed produce much greater yields than was generally believed at the time-yields that in fact exceed those Kropotkin discussed.

[4] Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow edited by Colin Ward. Freedom Press, 1985, pp 194-97. (This is an abridged and annotated version of Kropotkin's second edition, eliminating whole chapters of statistical data eclipsed in the 91 years since this work first saw print.)

[5] "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal," pp. 126-27. In: Baldwin.

[7] "Expropriation," p. 162. In: M. Miller (ed, Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution. (MIT Press, 1970)

[8] ibid. p. 166.

[9] "The Wage System," pp. 101, 99. In: V. Richards (ed.), Why Work? Arguments for the Leisure Society. (Freedom Press, 1983)

[10] Many Marxists, and even some who consider themselves anarcho-syndicalists, continue to argue for maintaining the wage system in such a guise. Their arguments will be presented, and refuted, in the next installment. '

[12] "Anarchist Communism: 'Its Basis and Principles," p. 57. In: Baldwin.

[13] "Expropriation," p. 197. In: Miller.

[14] "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal," p. 125.

[16] Fields, Factories and Workshops, p. 193.

[16]

Fields, Factories and Workshops, p. 193.

The Violence of Dogmatic Pacifism

By Gregory Stevens

"Violence means working for 40 years, getting miserable wages and wondering if you ever get to retire…

Violence means state bonds, robbed pension funds and the stock market fraud…

Violence means unemployment, temporary employment….

Violence means work "accidents"…

Violence means being driven sick because of hard work…

Violence means consuming psych-drugs and vitamin s in order to cope with exhausting working hours…

Violence means working for money to buy medicines in order to fix your labor power commodity…

Violence means dying on ready-made beds in horrible hospitals, when you can't afford bribing."

- Proletarians from occupied headquarters of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE), Athens, December 2008

I was once a hardcore Christian pacifist who would justify non-violence in the face of rape, robbery, military occupation, police violence, or systemic racist violence. I have read much of the literature, attended and taught pacifist trainings/conferences/events, and have previously been one to publicly shame more militant tactics. As my political work has transitioned from liberal policy activism to revolutionary organizing (lead by and for the oppressed, working toward collective liberation) I have learned more historically-nuanced notions of violence, non-violence, and self-defense. I have come to think dogmatic Christian pacifism can be extremely dangerous and violent to oppressed human and non-human peoples.

One of the first things done in religious debates about pacifism is proof-texting verses from the Bible, picking verses (usually out of context) to prove one/your vision over the other. If we hold a more complex and nuanced version of our faith stories we recognize the goodness and the vast diversity, often contradictory, in biblical narratives and Church traditions. Much like the diversity of gospel accounts shows us the diversity of the early Church, the diversity of revolutionary tactics within our biblical stories and faithful traditions can help us shape our contemporary movements through a diversity of tactics. Rather than assume one way of thinking is right for all times and all places, no matter the context or people involved, we are better off using a diversity of tactics in our goal of our collective salvation from sin (aka our collective liberation from oppression). We need every tool in the box, we need all sorts of tactics available, and we need a great multiplicity of strategies if we want to win in taking down the capitalist, imperialist, hetero-patriarchal system destroying planetary life.

I do not think the world will ever be, or has ever been, a world without violence. Violence is a broad word with many different meanings. I am using the term violence in a very general sense when I suggest that the world will never be a place without some forms of violence. An indigenous Elder of mine teaches this in relation to rain: just the right amount of rain creates new and thriving life, too much rain and life is violently swept away. When the hungry tiger pounces on an antelope, digging their sharp teeth into the flesh to kill for nourishment, violence erupts for life to maintain living. When a glacier cracks and crumbles down into the fishing villages of the far northern regions, entire communities can be lost to the tidal waves and impact of the moving mountains of ice. When a fire takes over a forest, burning down trees and decaying plant matter to ashes, nutrients flood the soil and stronger rays of sun can then reach the forest floor providing more ingredients for new life to flourish.

Mother Earth is not a dogmatic pacifist, she uses violence to transform the world. It's not always Her favorite tool, but it sometimes is; it doesn't seem to be Her ultimate philosophy but a tactic within Her larger strategy for survival.

To claim a completely pure dogmatic pacifism goes against the patterns we see in the world around us. Pacifism becomes a fundamentalist religion or ideology rather than one of many tools within our revolutionary strategies. It is important that we begin to see non-violence or non-resistance as a tactic within a diversity of strategies; it is not the only answer but one very useful answer to very specific historical moments. Non-violence is not dogmatic pacifism, non-violence does not need to be universalized as an ideology for all times, places, and circumstances as in pacifism. The militant non-violent tactics used by some of the civil rights movement (boycotts and sit-ins) have shown that some non-violent tactics can be successful. The militant self-defense tactics used by others within the larger liberation movements (Black Panthers, Young Lords, UHURU etc.) were also proven successful. Neither would have been as successful without the other.

Capitalist Violence

To claim some sort of purist pacifism as the only way forward is also illogical for those who live, move, and have their being within the capitalist world economy. Central to Marx's critique of the capitalist system was the inherent violence of private property, centralization of wealth, worker alienation, and vast hierarchies of domination. Through the ownership of other humans, water, air, and land; the pillaging of global lands for resource extraction; the centralization of property ownership within the hands of the few; and the endless pursuit of 'infinite growth' on a finite planet, life itself is being violently destroyed. With billionaires and millionaires centralizing their wealth and power, strengthening and broadening the gap between the rich and the poor, extreme acts of violence run amuck in society: rampant impoverishment, and no or terrible access to healthcare, food, education, shelter etc. While capitalist pacifists sit rich and pretty, a majority of the world suffers immeasurably.

The capitalist system thrives on the racialization of peoples and their subjugation to colonial power through extreme violence. The capitalist economy thrives on war for oil, land, monopoly-imperialist power, and for the many markets opened up through the production and sales of millions of high-tech weapons. To claim a pacifist existence of non-violence is to assume your life is not actively executing violence on the world through the very social systems those who claim such lofty ideals benefit from.

It is white middle-class pacifists who do not experience capitalist violence in the disproportionate way black, brown, differently able, queer, trans, mothering/care-giving, migrant, female, and religiously diverse people experience daily. It is these same middle-class pacifists who greatly benefit from the violence enacted by the state and corporate business forces on Earth and peoples around the world. They experience health, wealth, and property; they experience the abundance of food, shelter, and access to the excesses of capitalism but they do so on the backs of the global south and the middle east. It is these white middle-class dogmatic "peace police" who scream and yell at people defending themselves from state violence, telling them they are immoral and violent. In this way, they stand directly in the way of someone seeking their own liberation.

Writing in his personal journal about the rise of fascism in Germany, George Orwell mused, "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.… others imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.… Despotic governments can stand "moral force" till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force" (emphasis added).

Pacifist capitalists are extremely violent and can even be regarded as home-grown terrorists, as they are committing senseless acts of violence by perpetuating a state of extreme inequality through violent relations of domination, hierarchy, alienation, and exploitation. They project this violent privilege onto the impoverished, the working class, and other radical organizers who seek to defend themselves from the extreme violence of a capitalist society. Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks to this problem among political leaders, "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con." ( "Nonviolence as Compliance" in the Atlantic )

A key to understanding this problem lies within the social location of many pacifists. The free-market, private ownership of property, elected governmental officials, and the legal system itself have all been managed by and for white people (often white Christian men). When all of these systems do not work in your favor and when they do not protect you but are in fact a great source of the violence you face, then your political actions focus on ending these systems of death, if not just defending yourself from their violence. This is exactly why disenfranchised people do not always choose "civility" as their response to liberal violence. The state defines "civility" and their "civilization" - they chose to define their civil state through genocide, colonization, imperialism, slavery, inequality, etc. Civility is the problem.

Revolutionary Resistance, Diversity of Tactics, and Liberation

People of color, trans people, and folx with differing abilities know this, and have been leading struggles with diverse tactics for a very long time. In an article posted on April 26, 2015 on the Radical Faggot blog , Benji Hart writes, "Calling them uncivilized and encouraging them to mind the Constitution is racist, [sexists, ableist] and as an argument fails to ground itself not only in the violent political reality in which black, [trans, and differently abled] people find themselves but also in our centuries-long tradition of resistance - one that has taught effective strategies for militancy and direct action to virtually every other current movement for justice."

In reaping the benefits of violence and then subjecting oppressed peoples to violence so they cannot escape their oppression, you not only thrive off their perpetual suffering, but you take away the ability to claim dignity and self-determination. It is extremely violent to push pacifism on those who exist under the heaviest of boots of capitalist and colonial exploitation when you greatly benefit from the exploits of capitalist and colonial violence.

The colonizer tells the colonized not to defend themselves.

The rapist tells the raped not to defend themselves.

The attacker tells the attacked not to defend themselves.

The murderer tells the victim not to defend themselves.

The slave owner tells the slave not to defend themselves.

The civilized tells the savage not to defend themselves.

The pacifist tells the oppressed not to defend themselves.

The revolutionary joins the colonized, raped, attacked, victim, slave, savage, and oppressed in solidarity; together they seek collective liberation. It is "precisely marginalized groups utilizing these tactics - poor women of color defending their right to land and housing, trans* street workers and indigenous peoples fighting back against murder and violence; black and brown struggles against white supremacist violence - that have waged the most powerful and successful uprisings in US history." (from an April 2012 pamphlet written for Occupy Oakland, Who is Oakland? ).

It is often argued that by offering your own life in martyrdom, the violence of the state will be exposed when the state or armed forces act in violence against you for all to see, and then put an end to once and for all. This is terrible logic, especially if applied to every context in all of history. We should not expect someone to die or not defend themselves in abusive and violent situations so that the violence of their actions can be exposed, somehow convincing others not to be violent in the same way.

Jesus was nailed to a cross and Caesar didn't have a change of heart in the face of such oppressive brutality. He celebrated.

Black and Brown people were lynched, and white supremacists didn't have a change of heart in the face of such oppressive brutality. The community celebrated.

Violence is exposed all the time, and nothing is done about it. How many videos of police murdering unarmed teenagers do state officials need (or do liberals need) to watch before they realize their violence and magically chose to stop it via a change of heart? How would that even make sense coming from an institution founded just after slavery to harass, watch, and catch non-white former slaves? The very same legal system that didn't have a change of heart in the face of violent white supremacy but rather created an entire white supremacist billion-dollar business: the prison industrial complex.

White feminist theologians in the 1960's critiqued the idea of "sacrificial living" as the mission of their faith-filled lives. It was being forced upon them by liberal theologians of the day: the highest calling is kenotic, sacrifice, emptying oneself for thy neighbor. The white cis male liberal theologians making these claims on the bodies of women did not consider the thousands of ways women are already subjected to capitalist hetero patriarchy, especially the unpaid reproductive labor it takes to produce such a society. This critique was later enhanced in the 1970s by revolutionary black feminists in the Combahee River Collective who first wrote about intersectionality: "The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face."

This narrative of sacrificing one's life to the powers and principalities also assumes that the upper class, the capitalist class, and the exploiting classes will suddenly choose to sacrifice their wealth, power, and privilege in order to liberate the masses who have (at their own expense and for their own survival) produced all of their wealth, power, and privilege. Not only does this idea take autonomy away from the oppressed, continuing the elitist narrative that the oppressed are uneducated filthy savages, but it also supports oppressive violence through demanding non-resistance in hopes of revealing the brutality of oppression to the oppressor.

Here's another example: A man breaks into a woman's house with a knife and has intention to rape, rob, and kill her. As a pacifist she chooses not to use a gun to defend herself. Rather, she creatively tells him that his ways are unjust, that there is another way of living, and that compassion is the way of truth; she hopes that her rape and murder will be a shining example of compassion and courage - she offers her own life as a sacrifice to show him that his ways are unjust, that he should change his ways, that he should rape, rob, and murder people no more. She hopes to convert his heart along the way, through her sacrifice she hopes he will repent.

It's also absolutely absurd to think a woman who fights or kills a rapist, becomes like the rapist. Colonized Indigenous and African peoples forced into slavery did not become like their slave owning colonizers when they violently rebelled, resisted, revolted, and rioted. The Jewish people who killed or fought the Nazis trying to exterminate their people, did not become like the Nazis. Using violence against those who exploit, oppress, and abuse you does not make you like them. Reality is more complex than dogmatic pacifism allows.

Don't Speak Truth to Power; Destroy Power

If someone is suffering and experiencing oppression, we should act to stop the violence and not hope that timely bureaucratic answers of policy reform will actually do anything to alleviate suffering and fight injustice. Wasn't it the elite classes and their bureaucrats who created the very legal system that attempts to make extremely complex realities into black-and-white situations for "educated" judges to dictate someone's future?

Most people in the world are already experiencing violence and are not defending themselves; most people are not acting violently in direct confrontation with their abusers, and these hoped-for non-responses have not motivated liberals or conservatives into action. Slavery did not end because all the salves were full of hope or because they were pacifists. Slavery was abolished because of slave revolts, organized rebellions, and armed underground rail roads like the one Harriet Tubman led thousands to freedom through. Slave abolitionist, Frederick Douglas , speaks so eloquently to these ideas in his 1857 speech delivered on the 23rd anniversary of the West India Emancipation:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Liberal dogmatic pacifism is one of the most effective tools of violence used by the State to keep marginal and oppressed communities from rising up, restoring their dignity, and protecting themselves from further abuse through liberatory communal armed self-defense.

What then does it mean to love your enemy? Does it mean you continue to allow you enemy to attack you? Is it loving to allow someone to attack you, to bomb you, to exploit you, to oppress you - is that really what Jesus and the early church were getting at?

"Love your enemy" does not mean: stay in an abusive relationship, take the abuse because it's good and holy. If such an abusive relationship is complexified and organized on a mass scale why would the logic of resistance be any different? Why is the abuse of the state or of right wing fascists any different than the abuse of a spouse? It absolutely seems more intense, it seems more organized, it seems more brutal - and if anything, it doesn't seem to be worthy of our acceptance. We should always defend ourselves and others from oppression. Why would we accept the abuse as if pacifism is more righteous? Ending the abuse and setting each other free is far more righteous.

When experiencing oppressive violence, it is important to remember that our struggle is a struggle for life itself. We are not struggling for voter recognition or policy reforms, we are not assuming life is good and just needs a few adjustments; we are struggling because our very existence depends upon it. The 13th trans woman to be murdered in 2018 was killed on July 10th; the police have killed 446 people so far this year (1,147 people in 2017); the military has dropped thousands of more bombs than ever before, murdering record breaking numbers of people and places; over 1,200 children have literally been lost by the federal government; white supremacists were directly responsible for 18 out of 24 US extremist-related deaths in 2017; and over 200 species go extinct every single day amidst apocalyptic ecological conditions that are ultimately leading to our very own species' extinction.

There is no time to wait for oppressors to stop oppressing us, as if one day they will wake up to their extremely violent ways. This is exactly what the plantation owner would hope their slaves believed. We must choose life, and we must choose to defend ourselves, our communities, and our ecosystems from colonization, industrialization, state formations, and coercive social control. To live for life is to live in opposition to capitalism and the violence it perpetuates on the world around. We do not advocate revolution because we hope to see our tendencies win the day, but because we seek the flourishing of planetary life.

Liberatory self-defense is a far greater framing than dogmatic pacifism as it encourages dignity, self-determination, and participation in the shaping of a new world beyond appealing to "representative" authorities to pass less abusive policies. When these politicians do make decisions for the masses they create more bureaucracy and make it possible to define and categorize more bodies, and thus further discriminate, oppress, and define our bodies through legal definitions. Under the rules of pacifism, the oppressors win, they always hold the bargaining power, and they always decide who gets the goods and who gets nailed to a cross.

Liberatory, Community, Armed Self-Defense

Scott Crow's recent anthology, Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense , explores liberatory, armed, community self-defense as a tactic within a larger revolutionary strategy through theoretical reflections and historical studies. He and the various other author-activists make it very clear that the armed component of any self-defense strategy should never become the center (or we risk becoming standing militaries). Rather power is sought to be shared and equalized as best as possible, thus distinguishing armed self-defense from armed terrorist, armed insurrection, armed military organizations, armed guerilla armies, or armed law enforcement. Crow writes, "The liberatory framework is built on anarchist principles of mutual aid (cooperation), direct action (taking action without waiting on the approval of the authorities), solidarity (recognizing that the well-being of disparate groups is tied together) and collective autonomy (community self-determination)."

Crow goes on to say that this form of liberatory self-defense is not to be used to seize permanent power, or that arms are to be used as the first resource for self-defense but should be taken up only "after other forms of conflict resolution have been exhausted." This isn't about revolutionary vanguardism or storming the white house with guns. This is about self-defense from literal Nazis who have been murdering, mass shooting, and assaulting people at record-breaking numbers in the past few years (Rest in Power Heather Heyer ).

It should be noted that Crow's brand of liberatory, community, armed self-defense differs from other forms of armed action in two main ways: the first is that it is organized but temporary, "people can train in firearms tactics and safety individually or together but would be called on more like a volunteer fire department - only when need and in response to specific circumstances" (9). The second, and probably most distinct and important element of liberatory, community, armed self-defense (as used historically by groups like the Zapatistas, those fighting in the Rojava revolution, and the Black Panther Party from the 1960's), is power-sharing and egalitarian principles incorporated into the ethics of the group and its culture well before conflict is engaged (9). Unlike, for instance, right-wing militias (anti-immigration patrols of the Minutemen Militia, or the racist Algiers Point Militia that patrolled New Orleans after Katrina), who have nothing to do with collective liberation. "These militias are built on racist beliefs, conspiracy theories, and a macho culture where the strongest or loudest is the leader. They are typically organized in military type hierarchies with no real accountability to the people in civil society and the communities they operate within" (9).

Another key component to the tactics of self-defense is dual power which is about both resisting and creating. The resistance is toward exploitation and oppression, the creation is toward "developing other initiatives toward autonomy and liberation as part of other efforts in self-sufficiency and self-determination." This model is about creating a better world, much like the Black Panther breakfast program did when they stopped waiting around for white governing officials and started to feed their own communities' kids, so they might succeed in school and life generally. Self-defense isn't merely about being armed, but about building networks and infrastructure of people powered mutual aid. The Church institution has muddled this but in many ways has a strong people powered infrastructure: when you get sick, the care team will drop off some dinner; when you have a baby, just about everyone in the church is willing to hold, play with, or baby sit your child as needed; and if you total your car in an accident, someone in the church offers to drive you places or gives you their grandma's old car. How might we use this infrastructure in more radical ways with more revolutionary purposes? How might we use this infrastructure to establish the Queerdom of God in the US Empire?

Conclusion

What I hope to have accomplished with this article is to expose some of the more basic and less nuanced notions that are often used by dogmatic pacifists who refuse to engage radical critiques of their ideas. These dogmatic pacifists keep themselves in their privileged existence, waving the finger of judgment at both lumpen and proletariat communities that choose dignity through emancipatory self-defense. In relation to violence within our movements, our tactics, and our overall philosophies, it is important we continue to ask tough questions. Here are some really great questions to ask in thinking about violence in our direct actions:

• Are we harming state and private property, or are we harming people, communities, and natural resources? Is the result of our action disrupting state and corporate violence, or creating collateral damage that more oppressed people will have to deal with (i.e., Black families and business owners, cleaning staff, etc.)? Are we mimicking state violence by harming people and the environment, or are we harming state property in ways that can stop or slow violence? Are we demonizing systems or people?

• Who is in the vicinity? Are we doing harm to people around us as we act? Is there a possibility of violence for those who are not the intended targets of our action? Are we forcing people to be involved in an action who many not want to be, or who are not ready?

• Who is involved in the action? Are people involved in our action consensually, or simply because they are in the vicinity? Have we created ways for people of all abilities who may not want to be present to leave? Are we being strategic about location and placement of bodies? If there are violent repercussions for our actions, who will be facing them? [1]

In conclusion, some more thoughts from Scott Crow on forming organized, liberatory, community, armed self-defense:

• Many questions remain, including those concerning organization, tactical considerations, the coercive power inherent in firearms, accountability to the community being defended and to the broader social movement, and ultimately, one hopes, the process of demilitarization. For example: Do defensive engagements have to remain geographically isolated? Are small affinity groups the best formations for power-sharing and broad mobilization? How do we create cultures of support for those who engage in defensive armed conflict, especially with respect to historically oppressed people's right to defend themselves? What do those engagements of support look like? Additionally, there are many tactical considerations and questions to be discussed and debated to avoid replicating the dominant gun culture. How do we keep arms training from becoming the central focus, whether from habit, culture, or romanticization?

Further Reading and Research

Akinyele Omowale Umoja - We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Charles E. Cobb - This Nonviolent Stuff′ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Cindy Milstein (editor) - Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism

CrimthInc - The illegitimacy of Violence, The Violence of Legitimacy

Derick Jensen - Endgame (Volume 1 and 2)

Francis Dupuis-Deri - Who's Afraid of the Black Bloc?: Anarchy in Action Around the World

Franz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth

Kristian Williams - Fire the Cops!

Scott Crow - Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense

William Meyer - Nonviolence and Its Violent Consequences

Notes

[1] https://radfag.com/2015/04/26/in-support-of-baltimore-or-smashing-police-cars-is-logical-political-strategy/