This most recent scandal again demonstrates the inseparability of the structures of organizing we have criticized in the past from the perpetuation of chauvinism and abuse. As we have written about in the USU Prospectus, it is the top-down structure of major organizations like the CPUSA, PSL, RCI, and FRSO that engender the sort of anti-democratization and stagnant leadership that permit abuses like this to evade accountability to membership. We will offer criticism of that particular structure, and our feedback for what principled communists within and outside FRSO can do to prevent it. 

Following the exposure of a large Marxist organization for systematic permittance, compliance, and covering up of abuses, there is always a sense of hopelessness among conscious members and supporters of the exposed org. Many equate loss of trust in a particular organization with loss of hope in the movement for communism itself. To understand this, we must understand the reasons people overwhelmingly seek out larger organizations to subordinate themselves to, rather than forming their own groups from the ground up. These reasons are:

1. Political Underdevelopment: An individual new to Marxism assumes that an insufficient understanding of core principles and history will make any attempts at group formation, primarily through their own direction, careless or ineffectual.
2. Social Isolation: An individual who feels too socially isolated to begin the formation of a group — they do not have, or are not aware of, proximate access to other unorganized Marxists, and/or do not know where to begin to draw in the revolutionary masses. 
3. Fear of Redundancy: An individual who feels that to start from scratch in organization-building is wasted effort when a suitable organization of principled Marxists already exists within accessible distance. 

Political Underdevelopment

It is precisely the organized pursuit of Marxist understanding that laid the foundation for the emergence of nearly every successful socialist revolution throughout the world (Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, to name only a few). Therefore, if the underdeveloped comrade finds themselves unsure of where to begin, we cannot stress the importance of the study group enough. To study while the world burns is not to waste time, it is the only way to ensure we successfully douse the flames. 

To quote the USU handbook The Study Group:

Therefore, it is no idle fancy that we suggest the study group — the reading circle — as the focus of local work. The study group has historically been the way in which socialists educate themselves and each other. This is the methodology of early socialist development. We must consider ourselves to be in such a phase. We do not suggest the study group because it is simple or because it is the topic which we chose from a hat, but because it is a foundational type of primary Communist organization.

In fact, it is the overemphasis on “action,” before and above theory that will ensure precious time and energy be wasted, yet again. We often see the argument that, “Well, since the dialectic is practice-theory-practice, a group and its members must engage in practice first every single time, then study the results and modify next actions.” But this confuses our place within history; we wander the cramped halls of a library of failures, shelves stocked to burst with recorded practice.¹ What is the history of the Marxist movement in North America, if not the history of wheels spinning in place? This is not to suggest that there has never been progress, but those that did advance the struggle did so as far as they were able and willing to scientifically understand the conditions their actions existed within. 

Social Isolation

For the Marxist that is hesitant to undertake the building of a new Marxist organization due to isolation from other like-minded people in their community, we recommend the following (summarized from the relevant portions of the aforementioned Study Group handbook). First, investigate local conditions to determine demographics and needs. This will inform what the study group will initially set out to study and who in the local area will be most likely to be interested in revolutionary work. After this initial investigation, identify if there are any trustworthy individual Marxists nearby to assist in the formation of an Organizing Committee to adopt basic rules for the emerging organization and plan the first steps in putting it into motion. Whether an Organizing Committee is successfully assembled or the individual Marxist still finds themself operating on their own, they can proceed to the next step which is spreading the word of the study group through fliering or other outreach. We have seen the most success when the fliering advertises a specific text that will be read at a specific time and place, and that there is no expectation of having been familiar with it before the scheduled date.

If, however, the individual Marxist is not able to identify trustworthy individual Marxists nearby, nor engage in much of the on-the-ground investigation and spreading the word that the recommended tactics advise, we recommend getting involved in whatever local organizing is available for the purpose of identifying potential comrades to organize with separately in the creation of the study group. The individual should be wary of the ideological underpinnings of most local organizing, and keep in mind that the most vital work any individual Marxist can engage in is identifying others suitable for the creation of Marxist organizations. It is not the subordination of Marxists to local activism.

Fear of Redundancy

Fear of redundancy when considering building a new organization is, on its own, a valid concern. However, in understanding that it is valid, we must then ask, is the concern well-founded, is it sound? Let us assume, first, that it is. It is true that if you have a principled group of organized Marxists down the street, around the block, within a short bus trip or a bike ride away, then to attempt to build from scratch a new organization of Marxists to address the same community’s needs, to study the revolutionary science, or to otherwise advance the struggle, may be entirely redundant. Even in the cases of an existing organization formed to address a particular purpose (e.g. Red Aid, group study, community defense, etc.) that do not address a particular need an individual would like to organize around, it is in most cases best for that individual or group of individuals to make contact with the local organization and discuss the possibility of joining and forming a branch or committee to the organization that addresses the issue. This has the benefit of additional funding through dues, a preexisting and tested bylaws structure, and the input and labor of more people.

The alternative, more common case, is that through social media or word of mouth, the individual locates an organization of self-proclaimed Marxists, who identify with the same general tendency of the individual, Marxism-Leninism. The individual decides to contact the organization, which seems more than ready to receive and induct them into membership. The individual takes to the work with a sincere drive and passion. Likely, they become regarded by their fellow members as reliable and trustworthy. Principled. 

Then, weeks, months, years later, it happens. Maybe it happens all at once: the individual witnesses, or discovers, or experiences intra-org abuse. Maybe, at first, it’s a subtler, gnawing doubt: a confusing newsletter from leadership that vaguely gestures at some sort of conflict the membership must not allow themselves to be swayed by; the removal of a district organizer with no explanation due to “concerns of privacy”; a series of dead links to organizing cells that no longer exist, discussion of its members heavily discouraged. The more openly the individual confronts these moments of disconnect, these organizational hauntings, the more the individual realizes the organization has begun to shift and squirm around them. The individual’s reputation as trustworthy spoils, now other members seem nervous talking to them; their reputation as principled is outright questioned — “You’re behaving like a wrecker.” The secondary realization will not come easy, that the abuse is not some isolated tumor, but every muscle fiber and bone of the organization. It’s a nightmare, to push for a new life for everyone, only to find you’ve become embedded in a corpse. 

This is the reality of organizations like FRSO, RCI, and PSL. The members satisfied with working in a faux-radical reformist group stay, follow the rules (regardless of how these change based on leadership’s whims), and, understanding that their satisfaction with gradual change and improved conditions for the labor aristocracy is mirrored in the organization, remain unquestioningly loyal to it. Why wouldn’t they? As patriotic settlers and flag-worshipping elites show us, people become fiercely defensive of the structure serving their interests. For this loyalty, they are rewarded with advancement, leadership, maybe even the highest honor of all: full-time employment as a revisionist, maybe even with a corner office. The FRSO whistleblowers say this plainly (emphasis ours):

Each time leadership protects an alleged abuser, those who see the problem clearly either leave or leadership pushes them out, while those who can rationalize the decision remain. Over successive incidents, the organization becomes composed of people who have demonstrated willingness to defend leadership’s protection of alleged abusers. Leadership advances from this filtered pool.

Chrisley Carpio² and Michela Martinazzi³ were present for the Tampa and Gainesville incidents, and defended Dustin⁴ both times. Jared Hamil⁵ was the Tampa District Organizer in 2014. Fern⁶ was the DO of Gainesville in 2013 and Jacksonville in 2016. Sol Marquez⁷ defended Dustin in Tampa. They’ve all since been promoted to national leadership positions in FRSO.

Meanwhile, the members who are most desperate for real sweeping change, no matter how bitter the struggle, the most ready to be revolutionary, are resigned to the rank-and-file. These dedicated comrades are usually the most committed, initially, to the communicated “cause” of the organization. Usually nationally oppressed, disabled, queer, and/or trans, these members give their blood to the organization. It is useful to emphasize the ways in which the “multi-national working class” line that organizations like FRSO hold, and that we have criticized, helps to facilitate an opportunist position not just externally, but internally as well, as we now see clearly. It is by this line that opportunists can lecture members about how it is the advocacy against chauvinism and abuse which disrupts the “solidarity” and “stability” of this supposed multi-national working class. Real determining factors such as settler-colonialism and imperial superwages are flattened for the sake of a model that prizes false unity and not shaking the boat. Sometimes, in spite of being surrounded by this rhetoric, members try to struggle within the organization, like they were told to again and again, only to be stonewalled, silenced, disciplined, and gaslit. The system serves its purpose and crushes all attempts at real revolutionary struggle. Afterwards, these comrades are isolated entirely, betrayed, and often left too burnt out to pick the banner up again. Both leadership and the capitalist state are satisfied by this outcome. Leadership gets to continue its maintenance of a structure purged of genuine communists who may threaten business as usual, and the state eagerly pats them on the back for demobilizing these radicals. Is it any wonder these organizations have persisted in their current form for so many decades?

These organizations always set themselves up as the true inheritors of the future, in contradistinction to the tiny microsect or local study group.  This is how they market themselves — it is the only way they can justify their own drawn out existence. They say, “Well, what else are you going to do? Start a tiny group of three people that claims it represents the masses?” the same way  the Democratic Party defends its position saying “What are you going to do? Run as an independent?”. It is the same logic painted red and yellow. The rhetoric of the reformist clouds the horizon. This is repeated ad nauseum within these organizations and then repeated by members to people outside the group. Even when the principled communists flee these sinking ships in disgust still ready and willing to organize, too often does this toxic idea stick to them, signaling the sequel: the communist goes looking for another “big” org. 

It is crucial we do everything in our power to ensure this doesn’t happen. The choice is not between languishing in bloated reformist NGOs or isolated in some puny microsect for all time. This is a false binary. The true path forward is what has worked for most socialist revolutions around the world. The party of the people is not born from some downtown office that directs the formation of new cells like a chain restaurant establishing franchises. Rather, it is precisely the tiny, local group of principled communists that shifts history, step by step, until a leap and bound, to the party of the people. To summarize the portion on this in the USU Prospectus⁸: the correct path begins with the formation of the local organization, uniquely adapted to local conditions and able to establish roots among the local masses in a way these franchise organizations are incapable of. The local organization then reaches out to other primary groups of principled communists regionally and then around the country in order to collaborate, coordinate, and struggle in a process that eventually enables the establishment of real organizational unity. 

These local organizations are not subordinated to a tiny sect filtered through several vetting processes to remove any trace of real revolutionary consciousness. They democratically determine their own representatives to the second-order organizations they form to coordinate and reproduce their unity. It is through this initially, vitally horizontal process that a greater set of bylaws are written and ratified, a set of practices and standards. Through a series of conferences these local organizations eventually form the party-to-be. 

This is how the vanguard party emerges, not in the backwards manner that the CPUSA, PSL, and FRSO have undertaken. This top-down schematic followed by the chauvinist organizations is the correct blueprint only if your design is a weapon wielded against the people. We, however, wish to help the revolutionary masses build a great cannon to obliterate chauvinistic violence forever. The All-Empire Worker’s League has begun this process. 

Looking Forward

We commend the efforts of our comrades to lay out a plan for agitation and exodus of members from FRSO. As challenging as it may be, it is often far more important that the most principled communists, with the capacity to do so without risking burnout, remain within the exposed organization. Not for anything so foolhardy as to “change the system from within” (you cannot negotiate with the snake from the pit of its stomach), but to agitate and heighten the struggle to a fever pitch from within. As they do this, these communists must seek out sympathetic comrades within who take these abuses seriously but remain unsure for the reasons above. Each rallying cry for justice will peel back the rotting mask of democracy from the revisionist’s face; the skull of reaction will be grinning, sharp, and naked. 

The strategy of agitating around an attempt to seize the structure and body of the organization from its center may be useful in winning over the sympathetic comrades mentioned above, still in the grip of the apparent hopelessness of organizing outside the vast structure FRSO operates. But just as the authors of the exposé recognize, this goal will never be achieved. It is like a radical program that “demands” the United States government liquidate its military. This is a goal of the radical movement, but it is not something that will ever be given, only seized. However, just as part of that recognition is seeing that the settler-bourgeois state machinery will be smashed and replaced with a new structure to defend the revolution of the oppressed, the agitators in FRSO must see the structure of FRSO not as something to be taken and used, but something to be left in the dustbin of history. It is not an organizational system useful to those of us who demand revolution, it is a multi-level-marketing scheme with a beret. 

It is the people you will find while raising hell that will be invaluable to you. You must link arms with the most solid, passionate comrades you can find and only jump ship when you have enough hands to commandeer the lifeboats. Treat the chaos of this scandal as a proving ground for the most trustworthy and audacious communists. When you find your people, we have some resources to help you get started. Just as we were honored to offer our feedback and labor to the reporters of this abuse, we eagerly await your input, curiosity, and fire; not just as members of Unity–Struggle–Unity, but as part of the All-Empire Worker’s League. Meet us, organized and principled, and be treated as you are, as you’ve proven yourself to be: comrades.

Contact the USU Editorial Board here.

Contact the All-Empire Worker’s League here.

Footnotes

1. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Marx. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852. ︎
2.  “Member of the Standing Committee of FRSO, leader of the FRSO Student Commission, and president of National Students for a Democratic Society.” (Copied from source.) ︎
3.  “Member of the Central Committee, current District Organizer of FRSO New York.” Ibid. ︎
4.  “FRSO member who was accused of sexual assault in Gainesville, Tampa, and Jacksonville and protected by FRSO leadership. Left FRSO in 2018.” Ibid. ︎
5.  “Leader of Labor Commission” Ibid. ︎
6.  “Member of the Standing Committee of FRSO. DO of Gainesville when FRSO protected Dustin Ponder in 2013. DO of Jacksonville in 2016.” Ibid. ︎
7.  “Leadership of Legalization 4 All and FRSO Chicano/Latino Commission.” Ibid. ︎
8.  Worth highlighting is the subsection of our Prospectus on FRSO specifically. Written years ago, before our criticisms of them for settler chauvinism and these most recent revelations, and thus offering them more good faith than it turns out they deserved, the section still holds up in diagnosing the issue of structure that produces FRSO’s moribund theory and practice: “FRSO recognizes in theory that primary organizations must be built. However, despite claiming that they are a pre-party formation and not a party, they operate like a party-in-miniature, with congresses, a Central Committee, and central decision-making. The efforts of local FRSO organizers are directed at creating primary organizations — the local is being directed by the center. This reverses the necessary stages of growth of the Party.” ︎

“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.”

Yesterday, on September 10, 2025, the white supremacist nazi Charlie Kirk was shot dead at a hate rally. Sorry, Charlie! He was silenced in the midst of a racist screed about the origins of gun violence in the US — one he’s practiced before. He was merely expressing the unspoken rules of gun ownership in the United States out loud.

Kirk was asked “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?” The nazi replied, “Too many.” The audience member responded, “In America, it’s five. Now, five is a lot, right, I’m going to give you — I’m going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?”

Kirk replied, in his last words, “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

What stirring last words! Why did he spend his final breath asking his audience whether they wanted to count “gang violence” in the list of mass shootings? Because for Charlie Kirk and the ruling class, the question of gun ownership is simple. Every person should own a gun. The unspoken corollary to that is that only property owners are people.

For Charlie Kirk, as for the many others in the ruling class, rights are for property owners. Property owners are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men. Kirk knew that. He didn’t want “criminals” to own guns, and wouldn’t you know it, many “crimes” are defined or criminalized by poverty. He doesn’t want trans people to own guns, only cis people. Kirk stood for the proposition that all cis white men should own a house and a gun, they should patrol the internal frontier of their country against the poor, against Black people, against trans people, and against workers.

Sorry, Charlie!

We have not one tear to shed for Mr. Kirk, his backers, his supporters, or his ruling class friends. And unlike Mr. Kirk, we don’t agree that property owners should have guns. Only the working class, the poor, the sex-oppressed, the nationally oppressed and their agents, organizations, and tribunes should be armed. Until that day comes, Mr. Kirks’ allies will continue to talk out of the side of their necks.

Yet another utterly foreseeable tragedy has come to the conclusion of its opening chapter. Capital, that monstrous creature of reaction, has blocked all forward progress, and the center cannot hold. For the next two months, the liberal establishment will be pointing fingers everywhere except at their own policies or lack thereof. The time has come to abandon the well-trod road of opportunism and economism, to shuck off the liberal chains that still bind you and blind you to the need for revolutionary action, to come together, and to build the movement that will destroy our common enemy once and for all.

Yes! It is time to come together on revolutionary lines. That means an actual assessment of the fallout, the wreckage, the ruin of the past century of political maneuvering and failed class struggle in the heart of the U.S. capitalist empire. The pretenses are gone, the veils rent asunder, and we must evaluate our position in the cold light of day. It will be unforgiving to the actual movement for progress and justice, which, at every turn, has betrayed its principles to fawn at the seat of power.

First, you will hear the liberals howling that democracy is dead because the American people are too stupid for democracy. “You’re voting against your interests!” they scream. But they haven’t taken even a moment to assess who actually did the voting and what those interests are. That’s the problem with vampires: they can’t look at themselves in the mirror.

No matter who won the election, we would be in a similar place today. We are watching the U.S. capitalist empire unravel before our very eyes. There is a huge swath of the imperial working class that sees the benefits of that empire as a right to which they are entitled, and there is no outlet for their economic fears to manifest. Why? The ruling class refuses to offer such an outlet. In other countries, it has always been the existence of a traitorous social-democratic party that provides the escape valve for this anxiety. When social-democratic capitalistic policies are unavailable, the desperate will turn to whichever option is open. That is, of course, the revanchist (that is, fighting for the recovery of lost territory or status) nativist drug of demagoguery.

Liberalism is dying, capitalism is contracting, and the capitalist empire is tottering. This is a scary time. But it is also our time. The only movement capable of progress is the Communist movement. The capitalist dreams of empire restored will only produce the utter exhaustion and destruction of the planet and organized society as we know it. As Marx wrote in the Manifesto: Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stand in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time has ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

Who are the People?

Committed liberals make up only a small portion of the working people. Liberalism, particularly the milquetoast liberalism of this latter age of the capitalist empires, has a general tendency to attract the petit-bourgeois professional workers: lawyers, doctors, higher academics, etc. These are people firmly attached to the lifestyle made possible only through the worldwide exploitation of the international working classes and subject nations by the U.S. capitalist empire — by the existence of U.S. colonies and neo-colonies, debt traps, the IMF, etc. The great mass of liberal voters are less attached to these mechanisms, or attached through more attenuated means: cheap phones and cars, low-interest home loans, etc., and would be easier to peel off from the interests of the empire.

But a great number of people in the United States simply do not vote. Voter turnout information is still being collected, but the Washington Post is estimating that voter turnout is roughly 65% of the voting-eligible population. The total is estimated at 231 million people; this means that roughly 150 million people voted and 80.8 million did not. That is a massively disenfranchised population. This is less than the 67% turnout to “defeat Trumpism” in 2020, and far less than, for instance, the 81.8% turnout in Indonesia and 79.4% turnout in Sri Lanka this year.

The working class is divided between its settler components (the imperial proletariat and imperial petit-bourgeoisie), its comprador components, and its subject-national components. The settlers are those segments of the U.S. population that benefit from land-, goods-, and labor-theft. The subject-national segments are those from whom the land, goods, and labor are stolen, often under the color of “law.” Compradors are sections of the subject-national population that serve the interests of the big ruling bourgeoisie instead of their own nation. The victory of Trump represents the will of finance capital and its co-opting of the disenfranchised ranks of the settler, imperial working class. This should not be cause for despair on our part. The people mobilized by the big capitalists to re-elect Trump are either our enemies (labor aristocrats, compradors, etc.) or are people that our movement has failed to reach, but who will turn against the ruling class when they understand their true position.

The problem is, the liberal establishment is inevitably going to cast this as a failure of democracy. Never mind the fact that bourgeois democracy is a sham, that true democracy is not possible within our warped system. Put aside the warning given by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French socialist (“The USA could not choose the left: there wasn’t one. When there’s no more Left, there’s no limit on the Right. When there’s no fight over a program, the election becomes a casting call. The victory of Trump is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.”) Never mind all of that! The questions we must ask are these: who are the people? Can we trust the people?

We are Communists. The answer to our second question is emphatically yes. The working people did not create Trump. Certainly there are those sections of the U.S. imperial working class that gleefully voted for him. There are reactionary segments that will never be won to the side of progress and justice, of internationalism and tolerance, segments of the imperial working class that must be isolated and destroyed. However, they do not make up the entire U.S. working class. The election of Trump isn’t a failing of the people; it is a failing of the bourgeois state.

What Happened?

As we warned in March, the Democratic party has exhausted any progressive potential it may have had from its historic alliance with the imperial working class. The ruling class has successfully shut out any semblance of the Left from imperial politics. That has, in fact, been the purpose of the Democratic “coalition” (machine) since it was dreamed into existence during the Great Depression.

Every election year, progressives trapped in the Democratic Party or its wake ask themselves why they are told to “hold their noses and vote” while the Republican base is given everything they ask for. Why do the Democrats and Republicans invariably tack rightward? It’s not because the working class is inherently reactionary! It is because the property relations of this country are inherently reactionary. What do we mean by this?

The United States is a settler-garrison. The country is occupied territory, held by the presence of armed bands of police and paramilitaries. Oppressed nations are incorporated into the U.S. territory in the form of New Afrika, Puerto Rico, and the Indigenous nations, and their oppression is realized through extractive economics. Land is routinely and continuously stolen from the oppressed nations; money is taken from them; they are jailed and exploited; their property is stolen by the state, by banks, and by private citizens; they are subject to predatory lending practices. For instance, since 1950, 98% of Black-owned farmland has been appropriated by banks, agricorporations, and state governments. This isn’t idle academic chatter. This means that the basic relations of land and property ownership continuously reinforce the dominance of a single segment of society — the white ruling class.
The Democrats are left without room to maneuver in every election. The ruling class must see its profits preserved; they fund the Democratic and Republican parties. This means the Democrats are forbidden from offering meaningful economic concessions to the working class. They cannot support strong unions (remember, it was the current Democratic regime that broke the rail strike and supported treasonous labor agreements of the imperialist unions). They cannot offer anything except mealy-mouthed promises to, for instance, codify Roe (which they failed to do when they had the chance).

They cannot take meaningful steps to counteract the extreme fascist Supreme Court because if they took some kind of action outside of Washington norms, the people might expect them to provide some other kind of relief. The Democrats are tied to procedure, they are forced to shrug guilelessly and smile dumbly, as the warmonger Harris did at her concession speech. “Aw shucks, we lost. We gotta keep using the proper channels to challenge the Republicans, and just put our shoulders to the grindstone.” Had she said anything else, the people might have learned to expect aid from their politicians. The truth is, the Democrats have never been interested in helping the working people. They simply want their votes.

For the political class, for the Harrises and Cheneys, the elections feel like everything. This is the life and death game for them, when they’re in it. But it’s just that: a sport. U.S. politicians are primarily sports stars, performing in a controlled match against an opposing team. Ultimately, their pay doesn’t depend on winning the game, but rather on simply showing up and putting on a good show. When the game is over and the election is concluded, the owners of both teams get together for a drink. When the season ends, the players go off and have their own future.

Bourgeois politics is a show for our sake. It is a circus.

That’s what happened here. The electoral strategy of the Democratic Party — to chastise and cajole, to promise nothing else besides not being Trump, to demand loyalty in exchange for some vague hope of cheaper gas and grocery prices — failed. The game is over. The season is ending. The owners of both teams are toasting to each other and we, the sports fans, bemoan or celebrate the victory or loss of “our side.” Nothing was ever at stake. Harris would have allowed the eradication of trans and gay life in the South. Trump will do the same.

What Do We Do?

Class consciousness will rise in the hours and days to come. The wave will grow higher and higher as the reality of the election washes over the working classes. Every time they play this game, the ruling class tips a bit more of their hand. As the footing of the empire stumbles and its wealth depletes, the ruling class must be more and more obvious with their schemes. People can see what happened. They are ready to fight.

But we’ve left them nothing to fight with. As Communists, it is our job to provide weapons to our class, to fuse it together in a concerted effort against our true enemies. It is the Communist movement that has failed, not the people of the United States. But now we have the opportunity to build, and this election has provided us with the raw material to do it.

We must go into our communities and explain what happened to the shell-shocked people around us. We must make it clear who our enemies are. Now is the time that all the vampires will come out to feast, but in revealing themselves to us, they make themselves known. We must gather and prepare for them.

We recommend connecting with other Marxists and Marxist-Leninists in your immediate locality. All of the major Marxist organizations in the U.S. and Canada are hopelessly compromised in one way or another. Form a local study group. Prepare it to act. If you’re not sure how to start, take a look at our handbooks or reach out to us directly. Affiliate with Unity–Struggle–Unity Press and bring your local organization into the All-Empire Workers’ League.

Now is the time to build.

Soon it will be the time to fight.

The Board will be retracting the article for further review.

The retraction of this article is intended to be a temporary measure, so the broad issues within the article can be reformulated. The problems with the article extend neither to the specific subject matter of the article — the mass shooting perpetrated by Neo-Nazi, Mauricio Garcia — nor to its general thesis of the dynamics by which fascist violence is reproduced in the U.S. empire. Instead, the issues lay with the muddled presentation of that central concept, the inapt examination of racial dynamics, and the article’s general failure to integrate the Clarion’s broader theoretical throughline in a manner that equips its mass audience for revolutionary mobilization. For these reasons, Comrade Serj has offered to thoroughly rework the article in a way that upholds this mission, both for the sake of their own development as a Communist writer, as well as for the theoretical value the article itself bears for our mass audience. Upon completion of this task, the revised article will be published once more on the Red Clarion website.

Yesterday, Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter brought to our attention a discussion held a few days ago in a Facebook group concerning the aforementioned article. Commenters were highly critical of several of Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s arguments and claims, as well as his overall “rhetorical approach” throughout the article, which one commenter, who works in the transport industry as a truck driver, described as “alienating at best.”

The Editorial Board takes all comradely and mass criticism seriously as a matter of basic principle and policy. We discussed the matter at some length as a team, and found ourselves broadly in agreement with the criticisms raised.

We will briefly summarize the errors we’ve identified in Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article.

In his article, Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter states the following: 

[N]ot all people who call themselves “truck drivers” are workers — not all these people are actually truck drivers. Some of the people who drive trucks (or who call themselves truck drivers) are owner-operators. Others are fleet owners. In other words, some people who call themselves “truck drivers” are actually petty business tyrants or big business owners. Roughly 9% of all “truckers” (because these people are not really truckers at all, but truck-owners) are owner-operators.

While we maintain that Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s characterization of “fleet owners,” namely that they are haute-bourgeois capitalists, is correct — to be clear, this point is not in dispute by our comrade-critics — we recognize that Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s characterization of owner-operator truck drivers is incorrect. Owner-operators are not necessarily petite-bourgeois, and certainly not “tyrants” over other truck drivers. We would instead characterize owner-operators as semi-independent contractors — who own their instruments of labor, but not their objects of labor, and therefore lack a completed means of production; who, while controlling a portion of the means of production, still sell their labor to a capitalist, and so fall outside the exchange relationships necessary to advance those small, one-sided means as capital; who are, therefore, not “bourgeois,” and are instead semi-proletarian workers; who, the facts and data suggest, enjoy certain privileges above those of the proletariat generally, but do not participate in the exploitation of labor, and are instead themselves exploited by capitalists.

To be clear, this characterization does not extend to those “owner-operators” so-called who actually are petite-bourgeois, i.e., who own complete means of production, exploit laborers and reap profits, and thereby advance their means as capital.

Now the question will be raised: Why do we say owner-operators are semi-proletarian? What is the difference between the semi-independent worker, who owns his small means, and the proletarian worker, who owns nothing but his labor-power? Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter points out in his article, “Owner-operators made [on average] roughly $165,000 in 2021, or $80.43 an hour. The top ten percent of owner-operators make around $250,000 a year.” This average salary is almost four times that of a proletarian truck driver. A comrade criticized this point by noting that this much higher average salary enjoyed by an owner-operator will be eaten-into by the costs of maintaining the truck they own; the comrade says that these costs can “easily” amount to “well over half” of a $160,000/year salary. Assuming this is correct, this still leaves the owner-operator worker with nearly double the yearly salary of the average truck driver, but even so, we can appreciate that the margin may be much smaller (or larger), depending on the costs incurred by the owner-operator.

To rephrase this point in Marxist terms, the owner-operator worker assumes the costs of simple reproduction of the instruments of production (in our case, the truck), whereas, in the case of non-owning workers, these costs are instead assumed by the capitalist, who owns both the instruments and objects of labor.

Two conclusions follow: First, the owner-operator worker clearly stands in a different position within the mode of production than the proletarian worker. The relations of production that define the owner-operator’s place in the capitalist mode are clearly not identical to those of the proletarian. However, the owner-operator and proletarian workers clearly share some relations of production: Both sell their labor-power to a capitalist in exchange for a wage (or, a salary; it makes no difference), although under differing circumstances. The workers in either class are deprived of a portion of the value their labor creates by the capitalist; the capitalist expropriates labor from either, although, once again, under differing circumstances. Second, then, we must regard owner-operator workers as workers, and recognize within this class of semi-proletarians a revolutionary potential — despite their relatively privileged position. This revolutionary potential is to be found in the capacity of the relatively privileged workers to stand in solidarity with the proletariat, to struggle alongside the proletariat against the capitalists.

The elements of class analysis outlined above have critical strategic implications. In highly advanced (and highly moribund) capitalist economies like the U.S. Empire, this privileged semi-proletarian class of owner-operator contract-workers (we have no firm opinion on the “correct” term for this class) seems to be growing in size; consider, for example, the massive growth in recent years of contract-based private transportation and delivery services like Uber and Lyft. It would be — and in Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article, in fact, was — a strategic blunder for Communists to simply dismiss this growing class as reactionary. Communism must strive not only to win over the proletariat, but to win over certain sections and strata of the many other classes in society, including even some of the petite-bourgeoisie (we would qualify that this will mainly mean the colonially and nationally oppressed petite-bourgeoisies), as allies of the proletariat and the sub-proletarian masses. In the near-term, it would be a tactical blunder if we excluded from our industrial labor organizing efforts this owner-operator class, whose interests are fundamentally aligned with those of the proletariat proper and against the capitalists; it would be especially foolish to sow antagonisms between these two laboring classes, when their antagonisms must be directed, in unison, against the capitalists.

In this regard, as far as we can tell, we are basically, if not completely, in agreement with the aforementioned comrade who criticized Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article, and who made a similar argument concerning the article’s strategic errors. We further concur with the comrade in question’s criticisms of the deficiencies in Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article regarding the practicalities of union-organizing among truck drivers: Classic “talking shop” modes won’t work when most of the workers are continually on-the-road — when the road, or the truck, is the workplace. Put bluntly, if we want to make progress, then we’ll need to get creative, and Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article fails in this respect. The criticizing comrade admits that they aren’t sure how we’ll pull this off — we aren’t sure, either, as this is, in some ways, “new ground” — but correctly, in our view, states that a “significant outside infrastructure” will be required.

Finally, we fully accept the comrade’s criticism regarding the “rhetorical approach” used throughout the article: By oversimplifying the problems of organizing truck drivers and other transport workers, and by failing to acknowledge the difficulties involved, Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter reads as unserious and potentially patronizing. In our view, this error stems from Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s failure to conduct a thorough investigation of the matter before attempting to formulate a course of action.

In light of these considerations, the Editorial Board has unanimously agreed that the article in question stands as a detriment, and should be retracted. We have attached the full text of Cde.-Ed. Katsfoter’s article, in its published form, in a document on this webpage, because, on principle, we do not believe in merely “erasing” our errors. But we have taken down the article from the Red Clarion, as we do not want its publication to result in further potential detriments.

We thank the comrades who voiced criticisms of the article for doing so.

The Unity–Struggle–Unity Editorial Board is committed to fostering a comradely forum for all revolutionary socialists, regardless of declared ideology, political tendency, or organizational affiliation (or lack thereof), centered on this work-in-progress project of a mass political newspaper. Our goal is to advance the Communist movement in North America by serving the people — and by learning how to do so effectively. To these ends, we welcome any and all comradely and mass criticism of content in the Red Clarion.

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