an underdeveloped communist¶

Back when I was an underdeveloped communist-in-name-only, the most dispiriting thing holding me back mentally was the nagging question of "Why has NOTHING in the past century been able to defeat the capitalist regime? Why is no one even trying? Are we just doomed from the start?" https://t.co/BkIVphmGgo The answer, of course, is that every attempt at an "American communist movement" has failed because of their failure on national liberation. The closest anyone has gotten to building a revolution in the imperial core has been various attempted national liberation movements. There will never be a communist movement that has room for "Americans," because the purpose of the revolution is to abolish the American empire in its entirety. There will be no more "first world proletarians" and there will be no more "Americans." That identity will be obviated. It is absolutely necessary for any developing revolutionary to reckon with that fact before they can develop any farther than "left-of-Democrats." It was this realization that brought me the most optimism, because I was no longer anticipating fighting a losing battle. Once I stopped being "an American communist" and started being "a communist," the path forward finally became clear.

And I'm not an exception among my "first world proletarian" peers. I've personally guided many people to that same conclusion, and obviously MY influence is tiny. National liberation is the key to revolution. It always has been. And it's growing stronger all the time -- not just on the periphery of the empire, but among its various internal colonies and oppressed peoples. As fascism continues to encroach on various subsections of self-identified Americans, they find themselves pulled away from liberal "acceptance" and "representation" and facile "rights," and toward revolutionary liberation. If a group of novice radicals in white-as-fuck middle-of-nowhere Kansas can read Blood in My Eye and find it energizing and deepen their revolutionary resolve, they can do it here in Baltimore. They can do it in Atlanta, they can do it in Pine Ridge, they can do it in Hawaii. Facing down our material realities and our social obstacles is not dispiriting. It's clarifying. Only through clarity can we begin to conceive of our eventual victory.