Stop Protesting, Start Demonstrating: Revolutionary Strategy and Tactics in the 21st Century

-Written by Comrade N

There’s a lot to say about what is to be done now, in the era of revolutionary failure, in the age of complete capitalist domination and penetration of nearly every aspect of life, both human and non. I’ll make no attempt to provide a comprehensive study or theory. No one could — and you should be wary of anyone trying to sell you one.

But I will make a proposal — a proposal for now, for the next while, for the time being, while we communists get back on our feet: Let’s simplify. Let’s reduce. Let’s begin again. Let’s abandon presumptions and givens. Let’s use broad brushes to sweep away the dust of our failures and see once again the surface on which to build new successes.

Here, I’d like to sweep away what I think are persistent…mistakes? illusions? assumptions?…about strategy and tactics in the struggle for liberation from capitalist domination, which is to say, the struggle for communism. I’d like to do so by discussing — even reviving — what seems like an old word, one you almost never hear used by organizers these days. You hear a lot about protests, marches, direct actions, banner drops, sit-ins, drives, studies, campaigns, events — all wonderful things, all of which I have organized and participated in many times.

But what has become of the “demonstration”? Why don’t we hear this word more often? Let’s talk about it. Let’s also talk about “protest,” a word I’ll use as a shorthand to mean basically everything that isn’t quite a real demonstration.

What can we hope to learn by talking about a couple simple words? Actually, quite a lot, I think. And along the way we’ll talk also about things like collectives and individuals, strengths and weaknesses, relationships, power, and work.

What is a protest? What is a demonstration?

A demonstration demonstrates something. This may seem obvious, but it’s crucial. Because protest, in contrast, demonstrates nothing, at least by itself.

A demonstration shows — even proves — to anyone who sees it that you are capable of some particular thing. Protests, on the other hand, are the kinds of things which, regardless of their size, at best show only a righteous rage, and at worst may actually display weakness, incapacity, and disorganization.

A demonstration of what? What should a demonstration demonstrate, show, prove? For our purposes as communist revolutionaries, it absolutely must demonstrate the desire for some specific outcome. In that way it’s like a protest. But desire, often an ambiguous desire, is where a protest stops.

Crucially, to really make a demonstration, we must also demonstrate various types of collective power which are aimed at achieving that desired outcome. We must demonstrate not only desire, but also at least one of the following, and ideally all of them:

1. The willingness of a collective to obtain the desired outcome by specified means, in other words to make threats rather than demands.
2. The power of a collective to follow through on those threats.
3. The power of a collective to organize something complex, logistically and/or socially.
4. The power of a collective to continue organizing over a long period.
5. The power of a collective to unite disparate groups temporarily or permanently.
6. The power of a collective to mobilize masses of people in a non-spontaneous way.
7. The power of a collective to set the agenda and the timetable on the specified outcome, politically and socially.

These examples give the spirit of what I’m getting at, though they’re probably not exhaustive. 

You could sum this up by saying that demonstrations are any kind of action, tactic, or event which force your enemy to react to you rather than the other way around. Demonstrations force your enemy to move while you stand firm. Protests, on the other hand, are any action, tactic, or event which forces nothing and leaves your enemy in the same position they were before, even while it expresses the desire for the enemy to move.

Another way of saying this: Protesters expect that the enemy will move all on their own, that they’ll change of their own volition. Demonstrators, however, expect that the enemy will resist them, and hence they try to force the enemy to move even when they don’t want to.  

Whereas demonstrations are active and always for something, protests are usually reactive and against something. Whereas demonstrations are organized, protests are unorganized or even disorganized, even when plenty of time, effort, and planning has been put into them by conscious, committed people. Whereas demonstrations are sustained and sustainable, protests are temporary and ephemeral. Whereas demonstrations are united and uniting, protests require little unity and produce little unity. And so on.

It may seem like, for instance, large street protests (those in 2020 in the U.S. or, earlier, those against the Iraq war) show the ability to mobilize people. But when you look more closely this isn’t so clear: often the masses have actually mobilized themselves more or less spontaneously. No one really needed to tell them to take to the streets. They’re mobilized in the same way that a flock of birds is “mobilized” by the sound of a hunter’s shotgun — no one needs to convince them that movement is necessary, it’s obvious.

One could also think about all this in terms of capabilities, capacities, skills, and experience, rather than strength, power, and will, and it wouldn’t be wrong. Really, as we’ll see below, what we’re talking about are deep human relationships built over time. Our organized strength is the only thing that actually scares our oppressors. They know that we oppose them, even hate them, and that we want an end to their rule — protest displays only this desire, and hence shows rulers something they already know. But demonstrations put on display networks of human connection that pose an actual threat to those in power.

In short, demonstrations show strength that can’t be ignored, while protests, even large ones, can betray a fundamental weakness which is easily ignored. Weakness is worth thinking about. If protests show anything beyond pure desire, it’s weakness. If protests prove anything, it’s that we aren’t actually able to challenge the enemy in the way our protests claim. We can be safely forgotten, and once everyone goes home, the rulers can carry on with their oppression and exploitation without a worry in their hearts. If we’ve proven that we are weak through vain, empty protest, then we’ve actually done our enemy a great service.

Demonstrations are collective. Protests are individualist.

Notice that every element in the list above contains the word “collective.” It’s not just because I decided to put it there. Demonstrations are about collective power while protests are about individual action. Even very large groups of people (sometimes millions) are still acting as individuals when they haven’t united to organize over the long term in a way that truly threatens the enemy. Individuals, no matter how large a group they may gather in, are almost always weaker than a collective.

What’s the distinction between collectives and simple groups of individuals? Collectives make decisions and carry them out using relationships of mutual trust, mutual interest, and mutual discussion. These are the key points. Individuals, even large groups of them, basically just show up. But collectives make plans, strategize, theorize, etc. This is of course not a pure binary and there are shades and gradations, but the key point is that collectives make decisions and carry them out.

With that in mind, I’ll point something out: our enemies act as collectives — extremely well-organized collectives at that. Take, for instance, the state. The purpose of the state was explained well by Lenin, but understood and articulated by revolutionaries of all kinds both before and after: The state is a ruling-class collective whose only purpose is to oppress, to keep the working class and all other classes in line. This oppression is carried out by actual people, who are collectively united in their need to oppress the working class and uphold the state. Another group, capitalists, are a ruling-class collective whose purpose is to extract the maximum possible value from, primarily, the working class, but also other lower classes. And there are many more ruling-class collectives, each of which serve various purposes for both the state and the capitalists: Police, police unions, state bureaucracies, corporate bureaucracies, middle managers, NGOs and nonprofits, commercial associations, news and media outlets — even some unions that have been captured by the ruling class.

The practices and theories of these enemy collectives have been refined over decades and centuries. They have become well-oiled machines of exploitation whose organizational capacity is far higher than anything ever witnessed in human history. You could see a large part of our day-to-day lives in this society as demonstrations of the strength of these enemy collectives. Every day you are forced to work for a wage is a ruling-class demonstration. Every time you are forced to exchange money for food, that is a ruling-class demonstration. Every repressive law passed is a ruling-class demonstration. Every mine stripped is a ruling-class demonstration. Every person murdered by cops is a ruling-class demonstration. Every session of a congress, legislature, or city council is a ruling-class demonstration. Every bomb dropped is a ruling-class demonstration.

We have to recognize that this is the level of organization we are contending with. However, none of this means ruling-class collectives are invulnerable. It may seem that way, but they have weaknesses; we’ll talk about identifying those weaknesses later. For now, we can say that their greatest weakness, and our greatest strength, is that they depend on us, the masses, in critical ways. We may not be part of the ruling-class collectives described here (because we, of course, don’t make any of the decisions), but we are totally wrapped up in them. We are forced to be individuals who show up and do what they’re told for the benefit of their small but powerful collectives. But we, the masses, make up all the critical parts of the machine we hope to destroy. That is their weakness and our strength.

But to actually wield that strength (capability, capacity, etc.), we have to learn to organize and act as collectives, to break out of the individualism forced on us by the ruling class, by society as it currently exists. When we organize collectively, with mutual trust, mutual interest, and mutual discussion, we become more than individuals even as we retain our individuality. We gain knowledge, skills, theories, practices, capacities that are only possible as part of a collective. We can use all these against our oppressors in ways that are impossible as individuals.

For example, calling in sick or stealing from your job are admirable things to do and perfectly justified, but they are individual, they’re nothing more than protest. On the other hand, the collective equivalent of calling in sick is a strike, and the collective equivalent of theft is expropriation. These are much better, much more noble, and much more effective. But clearly, strikes and expropriations require more than a bunch of people doing the same thing. Things like strikes require planning, thinking, relationships, strategies, contingencies, decisions — that are only possible through collectives; for example, unity in action and timing, funds to support the strikers over weeks or months, effective communication, leadership by participation and example, effective decision-making structures, militant solidarity (even with sometimes backward people). All of these things are necessary and go beyond simply walking off the job, even when done as a group.

That is why these kinds of things are more than protests. Precisely because they require so much, they demonstrate multiple kinds of power, the kinds listed above, all of which strike fear in the hearts of bosses, billionaires, and politicians, and which often force them to bend to the will of the demonstrators. This is the point of a demonstration, really: To show to all who need to see that a collective power exists which is capable of challenging and ultimately changing at least some aspect of the existing social order. The point is precisely to make those in power afraid of what we make possible through organizing.

How do you move from protest to demonstration?

All this leads to yet another question: How exactly do we go from one to the other? How do you get from a protest to a demonstration?

Protests are easy. Demonstrations are hard. So prepare.

As is apparent, protests require little (relative to what I’m suggesting) in the way of effort, thought, planning, preparation, strategy, tactics, etc. They may not require any organization at all — in the simplest case, masses of people just hit the street or take over a government meeting with no goal or reason other than wanting to do it. Things like this happen all the time. In one sense, this is fine; there’s no reason to discourage protest, whether spontaneous or semi-organized by some group. It’s good for people to protest because it is always right to rebel. Protests like this might even be the first tentative steps toward higher levels of struggle. But this fact does not mean that protest, by itself, will win the day. Therefore, we have to encourage people to take the next step, show them that it’s possible to go further. 

Winning something, pushing your enemy into a weaker position, making that change permanent and sustainable — these require the kinds of power and organization that go beyond protest. If we want to demonstrate that collective power, then we must first build that collective power. Demonstrating some or all of the things listed above requires those things to actually exist. If we’re unable to organize something complex, we can’t display that skill to anyone. If we can’t actually mobilize people, our enemy (and allies) will never notice or care. If we can’t unite disparate groups, our disunity will be on full display. If we can’t follow through on threats, we shouldn’t be making them.

You could see “protest” in the way I’ve been describing as mistaking cause for effect: People try to bring into being the collective powers, capacities, and relationships that they know on some level are needed by acting as though they were already there. But before these things actually exist, there is nothing to demonstrate, and all you have are gestures — meaningful and righteous gestures, to be sure, but ultimately empty ones. You can’t create power by pantomiming its expression any more than you can win a race by repeatedly standing on the winner’s podium.

So, long before it’s time to demonstrate, we have to create the powers, capacities, skills, and relationships that are to be demonstrated in the first place. This is where we as revolutionaries have, for a long time, been so abysmally lacking. It requires long periods of work that many movements and organizers seem to want to avoid.

What kinds of work? We can list at least a few:

• Investigations of many kinds, each of which is unique to a particular issue.
  • If the issue is evictions, then you’ll need data on where they are taking place most frequently, the kinds of people most affected. You’ll need to know which landlords are most likely to evict, how many properties they own, how many tenants rent with them and where. You’ll need to know about these landlord’s business connections, their lives, their political attitudes. You’ll need to know the local eviction laws backward and forward. You’ll need to know which law firms specialize in eviction cases and the judges who hear these cases. You’ll need to understand the local economic situation in general and how it relates to housing specifically. And much more.
  • If the issue is, in contrast, low wages at a workplace, you’ll need to understand the business in detail. You’ll need to know the revenue and profits of the business. You’ll need to understand the labor market in that industry. You’ll need to know the wage history at that business, when it was lower or higher, and why. You’ll need to know whether anyone has union representation at that business. You’ll need to know which unions operate in that industry and which ones might be amenable to a campaign. And much more.
• Investigations require and shade into extensive and ongoing discussions with people of all kinds, and again these people are unique to each particular issue.
  • If the issue is evictions, you’ll need to talk with people who have been evicted and understand the effects it has had on them personally. You’ll need to talk to tenants in buildings who may soon face eviction, and understand what they need in order to avoid it. You’ll need to talk with them about their desired outcomes, their availability, their political attitudes, their work, their needs, their family’s needs. You’ll have to talk with them about their ideas of what should be done, what is necessary, what is possible. You’ll need to talk with friendly lawyers about the legal situation, precedents, and expectations. You’ll need to conduct surveys, one-on-one discussions, and group discussions. You’ll need to talk with organizers with experience in this area. You’ll need to talk with your own comrades.
  • If the issue is, in contrast, low wages at a workplace, you’ll need to talk with coworkers, secretly. You’ll need to understand their needs, desires, expectations, work, families, histories, etc. You’ll need to learn from them who not to talk to. You’ll need to talk with past employees. You’ll need to talk with union representatives. You’ll need to talk with organizers who have done labor work before. And much more.
• All of this should lead to increasingly deep relationships of mutual trust, mutual interest, and mutual discussion. One could even say mutual aid.
  • These kinds of relationships deepen through struggle, most importantly struggle 1) for a common good, and 2) against a common enemy.  It’s through struggle that we learn that we can in fact trust each other, that we are really on the same side, that we really do want the same things, that we can achieve these things. 
  • You’ll learn who will be there to help and in what ways they’ll help. They will learn the same thing about you. These relationships are the infrastructure on which all future demonstrations will be built — demonstrations of power are always actually demonstrations of deep human relationships — and these relationships are precisely the point, precisely the things that must be created and sustained before any struggle driven home by demonstrationsis possible.

Everything above happens roughly in the order given, but they’re all ongoing and become simultaneous and continuous with time.

There is a term for all this, which, if you’re familiar with Maoist thought and practice, you’re probably already thinking about: “mass work.” Mass work should be the immediate task of all revolutionaries. It is far more important, in this moment, than any direct confrontation — more important than hitting the streets, more important than taking down some elected official, more important than voting in some other official, more important than immediately overturning an unjust law. Why? Because none of these things are possible without mass work, which is to say, without first building up the collective power that makes them possible. Mass work happens before (temporally, logically, practically) any demonstration can be made, before we can actually show any real capacity to change society by confronting those who want it to stay just the same.

Still, having said all this, you might ask: when exactly do we get to the demonstration part? When do we get to use our collective power or at least show it off?

When to demonstrate? How to do so?

As you’ve probably guessed, there’s something like a cycle involved in all this. You don’t build up power (i.e., deep human relationships) linearly, but through repetition, practice, experimentation, trial and error, adjustmentment. It grows with time. It looks something like this:

desire → mass work → planning → small demonstration → small victory → desire → continued mass work → more planning → another demonstration → small victory → desire → continued mass work → more planning → a larger demonstration → a larger victory → desire…

There’s a serious implication to what I’ve just laid out: This means that we cannot and should not respond in full force to every attack on the people, every reactionary legal judgment, every atrocity committed in our communities. When we do that before we’ve built up collective power through mass work, we make exactly the mistake we’ve been talking about: engaging in empty protest rather than powerful demonstrations. Making this mistake leads to defeat after defeat. This actually helps the ruling class continue in their oppression by proving to them that we’re weak and that we can be safely ignored, or even that they can go further in their oppression and exploitation. . 

We have to choose carefully when, where, and what to demonstrate based on what we can materially do — not what we may want to do, even if that thing is morally correct and politically relevant.

We must ask hard questions, answer them honestly, and build up our strength based on what we’re materially capable of. Demonstrations are hard because they set out to accomplish specific things in the real world beyond simply sending a message or expressing a desire. We want something to actually change. 

Hence we have to answer a lot of questions about goals and criteria for success: 

• What specific thing do we want to change and in what way (what is our goal)? 
• Does changing that thing count as a success? 
• How will we recognize success when it happens? 
• Does achieving our goal mean we push for something more, or does it mean we claim victory and stand by for the time being?

We also have to ask a different but related set of questions about material capacity. 

• What kind of support is there among the masses around the particular issue in question? 
• How many advanced forces/organizers do we have, and how committed are they? How many people can we mobilize, and how committed are they?
  • If you can only guarantee five people will be at the city council meeting, then there’s no point in trying to shut it down. Instead, you need to find more supporters, build relationships of trust with them, help them organize, and thereby improve your position. Alternatively, perhaps there is another government meeting, another council or body, which is maybe less important but still relevant, where five people could realistically shut it down.
• Do we have the funds necessary? 
• How long can we realistically organize for?
  • If you only have enough supplies to occupy a building for five hours, then there’s no point in trying to take it. Instead, you need to build up your support and supply networks. Or find another method.
• Who are our allies, and how committed are they? Will they be with us for the long term, or are they temporary allies?
  • If only one tenant in a building supports a plan to confront the landlord, there’s no point in doing it. Instead, you need to talk with tenants, understand their needs and desires, and win them over, or possibly find a better building to organize in.
• Where is the best place to start?
• What is our chance of success?
  • If there’s no chance of changing a repressive law even with 10,000 people in the streets, then there’s no point in taking to the streets. Instead, you need to look for other weak spots in the enemy to focus on.

Demonstrations also require asking questions about defeat. 

• What are the criteria for defeat? 
• How will we see it when it happens? 
• What are the plans for organized retreat (sometimes quite literally)? 
• Does defeat mean an end to the organizing, temporarily or permanently? 
• Do we switch goals/demands? 
• Do we change strategies or tactics? 
• Was the defeat the result of the enemy’s strength or the result of our weakness (these are not the same)? 
• What were our mistakes? 
• If there were no serious mistakes, what was the cause of defeat?

The answers to these questions determine what you actually do, and they can only be answered inside the collectives that will actually be organizing.

Find real weaknesses to attack. Don’t reflexively fight where it seems most obvious.

Finding real weaknesses has proven to be one of the most difficult and enduring problems of revolutionary activity. This isn’t surprising because the state, capitalists, and the ruling class in general are constantly trying to eliminate weaknesses. Furthermore, they are strong simply as a result of their positions, money, and power. Because they have these things, they have a lot of room for maneuver, a lot of room for mistakes not available to the relatively poor and powerless masses like us.

Nevertheless, revolutionaries and “the left,” such as it is, continue to persist in launching head-first attacks at some of the strongest parts of the ruling class and the capitalist state rather than identifying and attacking weakness.

An example is in order.

Consider the police (which include, for our purposes, things like the military, FBI, CIA, etc). They are the boot of the ruling class meant to trample on workers everywhere and to exploit class (and racial and gender) differences in order to keep the lower classes low. Police are perhaps the most important institution for the continued existence of the ruling class: without cops, it would be nearly impossible for the ruling class to maintain its position as exploiters. Everything they have depends on the violence police use to enforce the existing social order.

So it’s not surprising that a lot of time and effort has been spent on fighting back against the police: to end their racist killings; to stop their strikebreaking; to stop their constant harassment of working class neighborhoods; to end policing entirely. The uprisings of 2020 were the most recent expressions of this fight against police, and they were beautiful to see and to participate in. But what was accomplished? On the whole, not much — probably nothing. Police budgets are higher. Cops are more protected by civil and state institutions than ever. They are more dangerous and violent than they have ever been. How did this happen? The 2020 uprisings were the largest and most sustained actions in a generation, with millions of participants in one form or another. Why did nothing change?

This failure on the part of anti-police movements (my failure, to be clear — I was deeply involved in this organizing in 2020) makes more sense when we take seriously the role that cops play in society: As we said above, they are perhaps the most important institution for the ruling class to maintain their position. For the rulers, everything depends on the existence of police violence and repression. As such, the ruling class will do anything and everything to defend and support that institution. It is — it has to be — strong, well-funded, fully resourced, and constantly supported. In short, it has to be one of the strongest institutions in capitalist society, and cops must be completely dedicated to protecting the ruling-class status quo. Moreover, police are unique in that they, on an individual and personal level, depend entirely on the ruling class for support. Workers don’t need managers, capitalists, or rulers in order to live and thrive, but cops do. Their personal interests are entirely captured and contained by the ruling class in a way that is completely different from other people and institutions. Hence, they have every reason to stand firm and no reason to break ranks and join the side of justice.

My proposition is that the uprisings of 2020 had little lasting effect because, on the whole, they attacked the enemy at one of their strongest points in a more or less direct confrontation. We confronted the police in the streets where they have total dominance. Our reform campaigns like defunding and community control confronted the police at the point of government bodies, both local and federal, precisely where they have the most support. Of course, the demands we made and the politics we espoused were correct: the cops should be defunded and abolished, we should have community control, they should end their racist practices. But the likelihood of success was low because of the structural necessity for (and hence strength of) police in capitalist society. Add on top of that our inability to move from protest to demonstration, to build collective power through mass work, and you can see what we need to learn from the mistakes of 2020.

Does this mean that revolutionaries should not organize against police crimes? No, of course not. But it does mean that we have to reevaluate our goals, targets, timelines, and priorities. We have to look beyond direct attacks on police forces themselves and the state bodies that support them to find other possibilities — and this will take time and experimentation. To be clear, we should definitely have uprisings. In fact they are a necessity. But we can’t keep jumping in blindly with protest as our only weapon. We must learn to 1) find weak points in the ruling class’s grip on society, 2) build up collective power aimed at that weak spot through mass work, and 3) demonstrate that power through actions that show the capabilities and possibilities discussed throughout this text. Only then can we have some reasonable chance of success.

One could make broadly similar arguments for large parts of the anti-war movement, the reproductive rights movement, the anti-globalization movement, and more besides.

How to identify weaknesses in the enemy?

We’ve talked about mass work and demonstrations. What can we say about finding weaknesses?

As we said before, the ruling class depends on us — the masses, the working class, the marginalized, the precariat, however you choose to see it — in critical ways. This should be a clue: wherever the structures that facilitate their dependence on us begin to break down, there is a potential weakness.

I think that’s very obviously happening in five places: Workplaces, hospitals, classrooms, climate, and homes (W.H.C.C.H. for short — pronounce it “witch,” if you like). The contradictions between exploitation and existence are quickly coming to a head in all these areas.

Let’s observe something before talking about each individually: All are sites of production in one way or another, but four are also important sites of reproduction. Perhaps this is a rough and ready shorthand for where we should be looking to take the struggle: Find places where production, circulation, and reproduction directly take place, but where they are breaking down. If you don’t see these things nearby, you’re probably not looking at a weakness worth attacking. 

We should also note that all these areas interact directly with liberation struggles for all kinds of marginalized people — oppressed nationalities, LGBTQ people, women, disabled people — and even play key roles in their ongoing oppression. All show clear class disparities as well.

Many committed revolutionaries are already fighting the good fight in these struggles, so I’m not claiming to have discovered anything new. But they are absolutely priorities we should focus on, and a lot of people fail to see their importance. 

Workplaces

By which I mean the labor struggle in general. This whole thing we call capitalism depends on our labor. The sites of this labor are therefore important, to understate things dramatically. I won’t say much more about workplaces because this has been a primary place of struggle for communists basically forever. It’s utterly core to our project, and we’re all aware of it. Also because there’s already a tremendous amount of literature, theory, ongoing struggle, and history which we can refer to and learn from. The recent unionization wins for Amazon and Starbucks workers are perfect examples. 

I will say, though, that workplaces related to the circulation of capital are increasingly important in the labor struggle: transportation, infrastructure, utilities, communication.

Hospitals

By which I mean health care in its entirety, not (only) as a workplace, but as a necessary component of everyday life for all.

Nowhere is it more obvious how little capitalism and the ruling class in the U.S. care about people than in health care, where access to money determines whether one lives or dies, or at least whether they live something like a decent life or one full of pain, debt, and bureaucratic nightmares.

There is an increasingly sharp contradiction between decreasing wages (in terms of purchasing power) and increasing health care costs. Furthermore, there is a deep connection between the workplace and health care because employers provide insurance for many people. At what point does the inability to access real health care start causing serious problems for metrics important to the ruling class, like productivity, reproduction, profitability? At what point does this contradiction become a breaking point for workers, or for those who are unable to work? In what ways can the recipients of health care, the masses as patients, be organized to fight back? How does this connect with health care workers?

Classrooms

By which I mean the system of education in general, primary, secondary, and post-secondary.

Schools are critical to the ongoing operation of capitalism in the U.S. They are early points of propaganda, indoctrination, and ideological conformity. They provide training for workers, without which the system of production could not continue in the same way. Once kids are old enough, schools provide cheap child care which allows adults to spend more time in the workplace generating profits. Despite all this, the ruling class seems uninterested in providing education with the resources it needs. Or, to ask an illuminating question: Why does the ruling class treat teachers so differently from police? Police are showered with money and resources for reasons we explained above, so why not buy off educators in the same way and solidify this group as die-hard supporters of the ruling class?

Whatever the answers (yet another interesting place for future analysis), the fact that they refuse to do so — and actually continue to cut education budgets, privatize schools, and underpay teachers — shows cracks in the capitalist facade. Neither teachers nor students currently share fundamental interests with the ruling class. Parents are in a similar position.

Like health care, college is increasingly expensive. But it’s also increasingly important for getting a job, even an entry-level job in industries that didn’t previously require it. Hence it’s becoming a way of siphoning wages paid to workers back into the hands of the class that paid them in the first place, while also being a sort of “fee” for joining the workforce to begin with.

Moreover, primary and secondary schools are often overseen by government bodies that are independent of other state structures and composed of relatively few people.

Climate

By which I mean not just the warming of the Earth, but all forms of ecological catastrophe brought on by capitalist extraction and “production” that is really destruction. It’s impossible to overstate the direness of the situation and how completely all other struggles will soon be tied up with this one. The dominant view, even among many on the left, is that some kind of technological solution will eventually be found to deal with the problem of carbon, but this is a fantasy. First, the problems go far beyond carbon in the atmosphere (water availability, ecosystem destruction, mass extinction, agricultural practices…). Second, the problem is social — the existence of the capitalist system — and technologies rarely solve social problems.

I also think that, for communists specifically, this is the area that’s least developed in the U.S. Communists have not yet found a way to engage in real mass work of the type explained here. A lot of trial and experimentation is needed, and there’s a lot more work to open up. 

Homes

By which I mean housing, both renting and buying, and by extension, real estate, development, and city planning.

The interests of renters and landlords are, for all intents and purposes, diametrically opposed. For potential home buyers, their interests diverge sharply from the banks that lend to them. We’re all witnessing the explosion in both rental prices and home prices, which is likely to slow down at some point, but unlikely to actually decrease significantly relative to wages. We have seen from the 2008 mortgage crisis how important housing is for capital. And we see financial firms betting big on buying up all the housing they can, not to sell it, but to rent it out — another way of returning the wages paid by the capitalists right back to their own pockets.

Nevertheless, we all need a home. The contradiction is clear and similar to the situations in health care and education.

An area of enemy strength to avoid

It’s worth saying a little bit about identifying the enemy’s strengths, in contrast, and what we should not waste our time on. Consider the ruling-class institutions (ruling-class collectives) which do not really depend on us in the same way that the ruling class depends on our labor, lives, and time. We’ve identified one already: The police. There are more, the most obvious of which are national government bodies of all kinds: Congresses, parliaments, judiciaries, presidencies, and the like. You may think that because we are sometimes required to vote for them, or because they are funded through taxes, that they “depend” on us in some way, but this is an illusion which must be swept away immediately. National politicians don’t depend on us for their positions in any serious sense, at least not in the United States at this time. Any government position can be bought either literally or through other means. To enter into these ranks requires one to already be part of the ruling class, and the boundaries of these ranks are strictly patrolled and enforced by all kinds of means. It’s worth noting, however, that this is less true the more local you get in the hierarchy.

Consider Bernie Sanders. Even when someone as timidly socialist as Sanders finds their way into a position usually prohibited to them, they are sidelined into irrelevance and become nothing more than a punching bag, or even worse, a drain into which all our more radical ambitions can be poured and eliminated, rendered useless.

This is not to say that government officials, elected or otherwise, aren’t important or relevant to us and our struggle for liberation. Of course they are deeply important — it’s just that they’re not really weak points and therefore aren’t legitimate sites of contestation for the purposes we’re talking about here. It’s true that there’s much more to say and debate about this, but for now, I’ll simply point out that no one has ever, in all of history, snuck in a communist revolution through the parliamentary back door while no one was looking.

A note on power

The word “power” has been mentioned throughout this discussion. Notice, though, that we haven’t talked about “taking” power, only of building it or sometimes of replacing it. This is because I’m not suggesting that “taking” the power that already exists (the power of the state, of the police, of the capitalists and exploiters, of the rich) is necessarily a goal that any of us should have. Without question, the power that upholds the social status quo must be overturned and knocked down. But as for taking…this is another subject that deserves its own discussion. But I will say that there is a big difference, or there should be a big difference, between building the kinds of collective, mass power discussed here and “taking” power in the sense understood by many of the revolutionaries of the 20th century.

Demonstration isn’t optional. It’s required. 

You might ask: Do you mean we should stop gathering in front of important buildings and giving speeches, stop marching through the streets, and start doing something else? 

Not exactly. What I’m suggesting is that there’s a material difference between, on the one hand, a protest in front of city hall put together by a few individuals demanding an end to discrimination against trans kids in schools, for example; and on the other hand, a nearly identical protest organized by a long-lasting collective composed of and backed by trans people, experienced organizers, a large chunk of residents and community members (the masses), all of whom are committed to a long-term, escalating campaign, and which is the culmination of a long period of research, discussion, planning, and strategizing.

In the first case, it will be clear to all who see that the protest is unlikely to lead to anything more than what it is. If it’s ignored, everyone will more or less go back to what they were doing before ­— or at best they’ll show up and do the same thing in a year or two when another egregious attack on a trans kid makes the headlines. Their demands will go unmet and the whole thing will be yet another defeat. 

In the second case, even if the event itself is largely the same, it will be clear in all kinds of ways that it was done by people to be reckoned with, people who won’t go away, who will continue, and who are likely to be a force in the ongoing struggle that is tough to ignore. This has a very different and much more pronounced effect. Those in power will have to respond or else they’ll face serious consequences and escalating conflict: perhaps a sit in, perhaps a takeover of a school board meeting, perhaps an out-and-out occupation, perhaps a student strike, perhaps a campaign to defeat a particular official, perhaps a tactical lawsuit, perhaps something that we’ve never thought of or tried before. We will win concessions, small ones at first, then larger ones. 

These higher levels of struggle can’t be achieved by a well-meaning group of individuals responding to immediate events with protest alone. They require collective power developed with a strategy over time through mass work. They require demonstrations that don’t happen spontaneously and can’t be faked.

Furthermore, in the case of demonstration, we’ve created something new: actually-existing collective power that wasn’t there before. Those deep relationships forged in the cycle of struggle and mass work will last for a lifetime and beyond. This is what the ruling class is truly afraid of. This power, these relations, are the foundation on which our revolution is built, and the foundation on which we’ll build a society that deserves the name “communist.”

Further reading

Alain Badiou, “Thirteen Theses and Some Comments on Politics Today”

Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”

Mao, “On Contradiction”

Mao, “On Practice”