There is a broad and fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the state in our society today.
The state is not merely elected politicians. As we’re (re)learning in real time, the state is an incredibly deep far-reaching apparatus of 3 million people who carry out the functions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
It’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it’s USAID, it’s the Pentagon, it’s FEMA. It’s the IRS and the EPA. It’s 438 federal agencies and sub-agencies.
The state is an instrument of the class that rules. And what class rules, you ask? Well, spoiler alert, it’s not the working class. The Trump administration is funneling state control to an even fewer number of billionaires, but the reality has been (and will continue to be, should the nation be able to flip flop back to Democratic control in 2028):
Which all goes to show why this tweet is a great example of our miseducation as a class:
I hope you’re getting the point here – even before the intensifying and direct billionaire takeover of the state now playing out before our eyes, the politicians were “an executive committee to manage the affairs of the [capitalist class]”
The guts of the state apparatus are being exposed for the first time in our lifetimes. Let’s learn the right lessons, and not allow the billionaires to continue to confuse us anymore about the role of the state.
Stay tuned for part 2: Why I Don’t Believe in Comparing Social Change to Science Fiction where I will look at some current and historical examples of the state working in the interests of the vast majority (true democracy) rather than in the interest of a tiny minority.
Every King Day, invariably the same silly debates arise.
“King was cool, but he was into that nonviolence bullshit, and I don’t believe in that.”
“I know right? That shit ain’t gonna work. I’m more of a Malcolm X person myself.”*
This King Day, don’t waste your time debating about the “radicality” of violence vs. nonviolence. That’s making the mistake of confusing tactics and strategy.
What radical really means is “getting to the root”. Radicalism is not a function of tactics but of strategy.** It’s about whether or not your tactics are part of an actual strategy for transformation that gets to the root of the fundamental problem at hand. Any effort lacking an assessment of the root cause, and a course to address that root cause, is simply not radical. The question of “violence or nonviolence” doesn’t begin to address whether one has a clear understanding of the fundamental problem, why the problem, who can solve it, and how.
What made King radical (in the sense of getting to the root) was not nonviolence. What made King radical was that as he evolved as a leader through the experiences of the civil rights movement he began to place himself explicitly on the side of the poor of all races. He began to conceive of a strategy to end the root causes of the interconnected evils of racism, poverty and militarism – first making the correct assessment that all three actually cannot be separated from each other or solved independently of each other. Specifically, linking up with the National Welfare Rights Organization and leaders like Johnnie Tillmon helped stoke the flames of King’s growing radicalism and would lead to the development of the first Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.
These days, it’s possible for some people to make a damn good living off of endlessly describing all the symptoms and manifestations of the fundamental problem that we face. Very few actually offer an actual assessment of what needs to happen – based in a study of history, a scientific understanding of the basis for change, and an assessment of the current conditions and terrain. Fewer still are actually moving on that path with other people to unleash the human possibilities of our time.
Most (so-called “progressive”) leaders speak from the vantage point of their own experience, ignorant to the historical experiences of the working class over time. They have the wrong diagnosis of the disease, therefore they cannot write an accurate prescription. Their diagnosis of the problem is that it’s “white people”, Republicans, “the racial wealth gap”, and a myriad of other (literal) dead ends. They don’t actually focus on the system that concentrates great wealth in a very few hands, is destroying the natural world, and continuously reproduces the false ideologies that sustain it.
Learning the legacy of King – and particularly the deepening awareness he developed over time which brought him from a civil rights framework to a human rights framework, means committing yourself to a collective process of liberation. It means divesting yourself from the false solutions of “buying up the block” or “using passive income from rental properties”. If the solutions someone is preaching are individualist then they are not radical. Period.
Demands for “access”, “affordability” and “opportunity” are not in keeping with King’s legacy. As described in Dr. Colleen Wessel-McCoy’s definitive book on this topic, King argued that economic opportunity was not the same as the right to employment, decent wages, or a minimum income. We must speak and lead from the position of guaranteed human rights as our basic needs that must be secured by the society regardless of whether or not it’s good for Wall Street.
And it’s not just about our understanding – this is not an academic exercise. Humanity and the very planet is at stake. This is about taking action together.
Quoting from Wessel-McCoy: “The maintenance of oppression depended on the cultivation of a sense of incapacity and bewilderment among those who in reality hold the power to transform society. King argued the oppressed were ‘schooled assiduously to believe in their lack of capacity,’ blocked from understanding their own ‘latent strengths’. But taking action together would help them ‘break out of the fog of self-denigration’, study ‘the science of social change’, and ‘embark on social experimentation with their own strengths to generate the kind of power that shapes basic decisions. (Where do we go from here: Chaos or community)
Like Jesus, King was executed by the state.***
So let’s continue to deepen our understanding of King – particularly his evolution as a leader, the lessons he learned throughout the phases of his life, as well as why he was killed.
This King Day let’s take some moments to light a candle and say a prayer for the state of our nation and of our world – for all that has been lost because of the deep failures of distraction, division, false solutions, sectarianism, syndicalism, individualism, opportunism, co-optation and collaboration that have plagued the working class on its path to power.
Can you imagine, where we might be now if a national Poor People’s Campaign, wielding liberation theology with U.S. characteristics, had been building continuously since 1968? If we had continued to love our class, and to work to “kill the system before it kills us”? (Willie Baptist).
We don’t have a moment to lose. Every day we’re not organizing the working class, as a class, united across lines of division, is a day we’re losing ground.
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*[Malcolm X was a genius who deserves our love, respect and sincere study of his development over the course of his life (spoiler alert – neither King nor X were static figures and their thinking actually developed and changed significantly over the course of their lives)]
**[oversimplified definition for the purpose of this writing] Tactics are the like the tools in a toolbox, whereas strategy is like the blueprint of the house that you’re about to build.
***For more on that, check out “The Plot to Kill King” and “Orders to Kill” by William F. Pepper.
The capitalists are in crisis. There hasn’t been this level of polarization within the capitalist class since the civil war. When the capitalists get the sniffles, we get long Covid. Their infighting will result in the increasing polarization of the working class as long as we are weaponized against each other instead of them. However, those who are clear on the true face of state power, which is that the state is a tool of the class that rules, can avoid being pitted against each other and instead build a movement to end poverty led by the poor – the only possible solution to the “polycrisis” bed that the capitalists have made. Faith in every single institution is breaking down – because those institutions have brought humanity to perpetual war and ecological collapse. We, the 140 million who are poor or near poor, don’t need pity, or charity. We need to know that we are the people who can find a way out of this mess because we are the first to wake up. The position of the poor and homeless today is the position of the so-called “middle class” tomorrow. We are at the forefront of understanding that there is no “going back” – any narrative that invokes the idea that we can go back (whether to the New Deal or to the post WWII “American Dream era”) is false. We must move forward, using all of the productive capacity of humanity to end poverty for all – everywhere. This is now possible for the first time in human history, and it’s about 3,000 billionaires up against the interests of 8 billion of us.
Fascism is a cruel right-wing break with the existing social, political and economic order. FALSE
The F word is going to be all the rage in 2025 and certainly for the next 4 years. But remember, we live in an anti-intellectual and ahistorical culture where the working class is purposefully miseducated. Let’s not throw this word around while misunderstanding its history and what it really means.
Fascism can be described as an “open terrorist dictatorship of finance capital”. It is not the exclusive territory of one of the parties of Wall Street or the other. It is not embodied in a single person. It is an outgrowth of capitalist democracy in decay. It’s a solution for the crisis of the capitalist class when their version of limited “democracy” for the rest of us is inadequate to ensure their profit-making. Don’t perpetuate distracting falsehoods about fascism.Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt is a highly recommended work on this topic.
The working class has nothing to complain about – everything is fine! FALSE
Please don’t share memes about how great the stock market is, or how busy stores are, to reinforce ruling class narratives that the working class is doing okay and has nothing to complain about. Wages have been practically stagnant for the last 50 years. We are mad, and we should be! Fighting mad – not at other workers – from anywhere in the world, but at a system that controls our lives and labor and then denies us all the basic necessities of life, because our wages aren’t enough to buy them. That’s why 800 people are dying every day from poverty in the richest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world.
So with that being said, anyone who is part of or who wants freedom for the working class should JUST SAY NO to things like this:
Victim-blaming much? Seriously stop with the Stockholm Syndrome.
3. Well, it’s all fine and good to talk about ending poverty, but to meet everyone’s needs or bring the entire world to a decent standard of living we would need additional planets, or there will be total ecological collapse. It’s just not possible!FALSE
The world that global capital has made is one in which technological capability and productive capacity is not used to meet human needs, but to produce unlimited commodities for the market. This anarchistic production for unlimited drive for profit results in war and devastation for people and the planet. The technology and productive capacity we have today is the result of the creative genius of hundreds of years of working class labor and millions of workers all over the world who deserve our undying love and respect. Yet, because the working class doesn’t own and control what we’ve produced, its used to emiserate and kill us. This excellent research shows that economics planned around human needs would drastically reduce unnecessary over-production and production for commodity exchange. Living standards can be raised for all people when we leave behind the insanity of anarchic production for profit.
4. Okay, but after all there is a Global North and Global South and poverty in the US is nothing like poverty elsewhere. Our role is simply to be “allies”. FALSE
As Jae Hubay of the Ohio Nonviolent Medicaid Army has brilliantly shown in these visualizations, the poor of the U.S. are much closer in position to the global poor than to the billionaire class that is holding the planet hostage.
Comparing the global poverty measure to the U.S. poverty threshold to Bill Gates’ daily income Visualizing this in distance, starting from the Wall Street golden bull in New York City a person living on the daily income of the global poverty measure can get about a foot away from the bull. A U.S. person living in poverty can get across Broadway. A billionaire can get all the way to the Bean in Chicago. We’re much closer than we’re taught to think. Workers of the world unite. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
5. But with this new administration coming in, I can’t even! Life is over. We’re about to face never-before-seen attacks. FALSE
I could go on… I thought about adding a 6 or 7 but 5 is a good number for now. Bonus confusion to leave behind is that acts of individuals are enough to save the day. They are not. The ruling class has the power of the “pen (media), the purse (money) and the sword (military)” to quote Frederick Douglass. What we have is our numbers, and our numbers mean little without organization. Organization requires “intelligent and unselfish leadership” (W.E.B. Dubois). And leaders must be clear, committed, competent and connected. (Willie Baptist). So let’s get clear and let’s get organized!!
** Top image is unsold Tesla inventory, visible from space.
