“The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists. Liberalism, rotten within, tried to revive itself in the form of socialist opportunism. They interpreted the period of preparing the forces for great battles as renunciation of these battles. Improvement of the conditions of the slaves to fight against wage slavery they took to mean the sale by the slaves of their right to liberty for a few pence. They cravenly preached ‘social peace’ (i.e., peace with the slave-owners), renunciation of the class struggle, etc. They had very many adherents among socialist members of parliament, various officials of the working-class movement, and the ‘sympathising’ intelligentsia.”

Perceptions of material and social precarity in the middle classes (principally settlers, petit bourgeoisie, and the imperialist working class) tend to produce two outcomes, both a product of the heightening of the international class struggle. In the first case, middle class precarity can produce real class consciousness, that is, proletarian consciousness. In seeking answers to the problems faced by the middle classes, a small contingent of radicals emerges who seek education on matters of class conflict, imperialism, colonialism, settler occupation, racism, patriarchy, and the international Marxist-Leninist, Decolonial, Indigenous, and National Liberatory traditions. In the second case, a broader movement of false class consciousness, that is petit bourgeois consciousness, emerges. The latter is what we’re going to look at here. What is false consciousness? This broadly refers to all forms of middle class consciousness which purport to be liberatory. Because of the diversity of interests represented within the middle classes, these forms of consciousness are equally diverse in content, though in practice they all point in the same direction:  continued bourgeois supremacy over the whole world. 

Contemporary liberalism for instance can be analyzed as a form of middle class consciousness: extolling the supposed intrinsic virtues of order and procedure, universal equality before the law, freedom of expression, and “non-violence” as a central tenet of political activity. In false consciousness, the individual begins with the assumption of an ideal reality towards which to strive, and through political action attempts to shape material reality according to these ideals. In actual practice, this produces a dogmatic approach to political activity where these central tenets of Liberalism are more important than the material outcomes. Why is this? Attempts to label liberals as unintelligent, misguided, or otherwise unaware of the contradictions within their approach to political activity are unsatisfactory, as can be quickly seen when these contradictions are pointed out in discourse, and liberalism demonstrates its boundless capacity to deny, distort, and excuse. What then is the material outcome of liberal political activity? Social and institutional inertia, the preservation of the status quo, and ultimately support for and defense of oppressive white supremacist regimes of settler-colonial occupation, and imperialist exploitation of the global south. It’s important to note here that these patterns are not necessarily inherent to any particular ideology, but to the class itself.

The professed ideals are a smokescreen for the material outcome, which is the real intended function of the ideology. This smokescreen serves mainly for the benefit of the ideology’s adherents, who easily learn to live with its contradictions by rationalizing their ideas as being broadly “correct” on the basis of their own material concerns. If they are comfortable, they feel their worldview is approximately correct. It is only when they experience or expect discomfort that they begin to change their worldview, and usually only by demanding the restoration (or increase) of privileges. This additionally serves the interests of bourgeois rule by keeping the politically active sections of the masses debating and disputing one another’s ideological conceptions — conceptions rooted in the material interests of different strata of the middle classes. These debates, while sometimes incredibly lively, all operate within the bounds of the overarching middle class interest of the continued maintenance of the settler empire, and at their most intense represent conflicts for control over the levers of imperial power, but never stray into the realm of revolution. While the right wing of the settler empire is happy to experiment with new methods of control and dominance in the face of crisis, the imperial left wing can only debate and denounce, or at most occasionally roll back or delay particular reforms taken by the right. This leads to a circular process, a sort of political holding pattern that can only react to events and retroactively justify inaction and passivity in the face of crises, rather than actively struggling to change reality. 

Whether their words say so or not, the liberal does not want to solve homelessness, because to do so would require the overthrow of the regime of private property which is fundamental to imperial land speculation, the surest path to “financial security” (that is, upwards class mobility) available to the middle class individual (which most commonly takes the form of “homeownership”). The liberal does not want to free Palestine, because to do so would be to shatter the legitimacy of the institutions which actively maintain the occupation of Palestine, and which at the same time actively maintain the occupation of stolen Indigenous lands inside the borders of the U.S. empire, and which actively maintain the continuing flow of inexpensive commodities and superprofit-inflated worker wages into the empire. 

The liberal may go as far as to couch their demands in radical language, but the demands remain reactionary nonetheless. In the case of homelessness, liberals will advocate for jobs programs, or zoning reform, or expanded homeless shelters, and so on, measures which may or may not produce improvements in the conditions of the homeless population, but which are ultimately aimed at maintaining homelessness as an institution by providing a harmless outlet through which to redirect any resistance against the private property regime. At the same time, the victims of housing exploitation are corralled along lines amenable to the bourgeois/settler state, and violence is employed against them should they resist or fail to comply with the measures imposed. The language may say “end homelessness”, but the demands say “the homelessness regime is in need of maintenance”. In the case of Palestine, the most popular of such liberal measures is the two-state “solution”, which seeks to divert the struggle for national liberation into a formalized acceptance of the occupation by Palestinians, and a concretized formalization of apartheid by the occupation. The language may say “Free Palestine” but the demands say “the occupation has a right to exist”.

With this analysis in mind, let’s now turn to the issue of middle class “communism”. On the 22nd of May 2025, Elias Rodriguez shot and killed two staff members of the Palestine occupation regime, shouting “Free Palestine!” during the act. In doing so he tangibly brought the struggle for liberation into the rear base of the U.S.-israeli empire. This was, first and foremost, an act of radical love for and solidarity with the Palestinian people, the victims of the occupation’s genocidal onslaught. At the same time, this was an act of political desperation, a refusal to accept the normalization of genocide, whatever the personal costs may be. In doing so, Rodriguez called direct attention to the failure of the “Free Palestine” movement within the imperial core to heighten the struggle and bring tangible consequences to the perpetrators of the Gaza Holocaust. In one stroke, Rodriguez demonstrated that resistance is absolutely possible, and that those of us who have so far failed to organize militant violent resistance to imperial genocide are failing in our duty to uphold and defend the oppressed.

Seemingly frightened to the core at the dreadful thought of militant struggle against the state, the so-called Party “for” Socialism and Liberation, and the so-called “Communist” Party USA both immediately leapt to denounce this heightening of the struggle. Professing a commitment to “peace” and “non-violent struggle” these organizations have eagerly demonstrated in action the real aim of their respective programs: maintenance of imperial rule and the bourgeois monopoly on violence. We already knew this was the case, but the discussions erupting around these revisionist statements point in the direction of the future of this movement, and where the red line of class allegiance is to be drawn. Remember to ask: what is the material outcome of their political practice? This will inform us as to their actual goal, and in turn the outcomes of their practice will inform us as to their class allegiance.

The goal of the settler Communist, as a member of the international middle classes, is to leverage their material and social privileges in the interests of the international proletariat, with the aim of the liquidation and abolition of the settler class. The goal of the settler “communist” is to claim to fight for liberation in word while obstructing liberation in practice. They will therefore wield whatever institutional power they possess to effect this desired outcome. The CPUSA claims to fight for liberation in word, but in practice they canvass for bourgeois parties, instruct their members to “call their senator” in response to genocide, platform and defend zionists, and denounce violent struggle. These proponents of watered-down and sanitized “communism” are not doing this because they are unintelligent or ignorant or otherwise unaware of the aims of Communism, but because these actions serve their real material interests. During the First Inter-Imperialist War (1914 to 1918) the leadership of the Second International famously betrayed the aims of the Communist movement in favor of backing their own respective national bourgeois formations, not because they misunderstood the aims of Communism but because their aims were the interests of their own class, which at the time was benefitting tremendously from the expansion of imperialism and the intense exploitation of the colonized world. Today this opportunistic betrayal of the proletarian struggle repeats itself, as it has for most of the past century, in the settler-run “communist” and “socialist” parties. 

Marxism-Leninism has been proven, time and again through the history of the last century of class struggle, to be the most potent ideological tool wielded by the revolutionary proletariat. In this sense it is a dire existential threat to the continued privileges of the imperial middle classes, whose comforts are predicated on the very system which Marxism sets out to defeat. Despite this, it does not require any greater degree of cognitive dissonance (compared to adherents of liberalism) on behalf of the middle class radical to claim adherence to Marxism while rejecting it in practice. It is equally as trivial to wield the phraseology and aesthetics of Communism in the interests of the settler middle class as it is to wield liberalism for the same. The difference is that while liberalism is at present a decaying order, increasingly seen as obsolete by the masses, Communism is, after decades of decay and decline, currently on the ascent in international power and influence. It is therefore more urgent than ever that committed revolutionaries study Marxism. It is the development of mass consciousness which is the antidote to the opportunistic poison of middle class radicalism. Don’t just accept what we tell you to be the truth! You have to study, learn for yourself, and develop yourself and your understanding. Settler radical “communists” prey on youth and ignorance, turning potential budding revolutionaries into the footsoldiers of the perpetual counter-revolutionary holding pattern. Marching in cop-approved circles waving signs and decrying “violence” in word while supporting it in action as colonized people are actively being exterminated with your tax dollars feels wrong because it is.

Equally as urgent is the need to recognize the direction that settler “communism” is developing. No ideology is static while it has living adherents, and the ideologies of the middle classes are no different. As mass consciousness has developed and grown, the settler “communist” parties have been forced to take up the increasingly radical and revolutionary language of the proletarian struggle and distort it in order to adapt it to their aims. In recent years these parties have started talking of issues like settler colonialism, decolonization, national liberation, gender liberation, and so on. When they think they can get away with it, they denounce these issues as “un-Marxist”, “revisionist”, “ultra left”, etc. If they feel they can no longer hold back the tide of consciousness this way, they may adapt by accepting these ideas in theory while continuing to struggle against them in practice. Beware of “communists” who claim settler colonialism is no longer an ongoing structure, but an event of the past, or “communists” who promote a workerist agenda to the exclusion of Indigenous, Black, Queer, and women’s issues.

The old adage that if you “scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds” holds truer than ever today. Faced with culpability in the extermination of the Palestinians, liberals have roundly demonstrated their commitment to upholding the imperial order no matter the human cost. This development does not create fascists out of liberals, but exposes the classes invested in liberal ideology as being committed to the same interests as fascism. This commitment is inherent to the class, not to the ideology. Though liberalism is fundamentally incoherent, this is owing to its idealistic character which it draws from its reactionary class representatives. Marxism is not fundamentally incoherent, but middle class “communism” only superficially resembles Marxism, and in practical character functions identically to liberalism.

Does this mean that the so-called “communist” parties of the middle classes have more in common with fascism than proletarian Marxism? In most cases this still remains to be seen: will the settler “communists” change their allegiance when a really revolutionary international proletarian party emerges? For many, particularly among the disillusioned youth of the movement, the answer is certainly yes! For many others however, their commitment to the imperial order will win out. With the undeniable necessity of Marxism-Leninism becoming clearer by the day, many middle class radicals are even now preparing to either stem this tide for as long as humanly possible, or to subvert it to their own ends. “Marxism” which openly upholds such reactionary and counter-revolutionary values as US nationalism, the patriarchal family, “anti-woke ideology”, queer/transphobia, zionism, etc, has been emerging. And while the left wing of the middle classes can only hand-wring over the (potential) loss of their privileges and otherwise maintain the counterrevolutionary holding pattern, the right wing is openly preparing to mount a renewed offensive against the proletariat by consolidating the middle classes under the banner of “Marxism”.

We’ve seen reactionary middle class revolutions before. It bears reiterating that the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (NSDAP, or Nazi Party) called itself a “socialist workers’ party” because it was drawing on popular radical ideas of the time, portraying itself as a “sensible” third way alternative to radical Bolshevik terror and failing capitalism. In our time the ideas have changed somewhat, but the processes of class conflict are very similar in many ways. When our own NSDAP emerges it will drape itself in both the red flag and the U.S. flag.

What are the hallmarks of an organization which upholds false consciousness?

• Attempts to control members, rather than empower them. Members are isolated from their community rather than supported as Communists within their community.
• Stifles development through repetitive tasks and overbearing bureaucracy, rather than making development and the carrying forward of the struggle the key priority.
• Education takes a lower priority to “action”, rather than practice and study being treated as equally important aspects of the dialectic of development. Members are taught what to think rather than how to think.
• Opaque and/or impenetrable internal organizational functioning, instead of clearly defined rules which everyone follows and which everyone has a voice in the drafting and implementing of.
• Communications with central leadership are limited to commands that are carried down the line, rather than a dialogue.
• Leadership is upheld on the “strength” of their ideas, rather than on their contributions of labor to the struggle.
• Decisions are justified by appeals to the authority of leadership, “The Party”, etc. rather than democratic accountability. 
• Leaders are treated as rulers to be obeyed, rather than servants of the membership and the people.
• Ossified leadership structures, leaders are not subject to recall, elections do not happen or are designed to reproduce leadership power rather than empowering the general membership.
• Historical revolutionaries (particularly Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao) are treated as infallible prophets whose word cannot be challenged, rather than regular human beings whose ideas should be studied and understood holistically and within their particular historical contexts.
• Contradictions in the ideology, outlook, organizational functioning, decision making, theoretical disagreements, etc, are resolved with appeals to “faith” in the organization’s mission or leadership, or the words of the aforementioned “prophets”, rather than constructive struggle.
• Attempts to engage in constructive struggle are shut down, treated as “wrecker” behavior, or ignored, rather than embraced as necessary to the development of the proletarian party.
• Finances are kept hidden from the membership, and/or spending decisions are made without the consent of the membership, rather than being open and democratically accountable.
• The voices and contributions of members from oppressed populations (women, Indigenous, Black, Queer, disabled, etc) are dismissed, excluded, minimized, or otherwise disempowered or decentered, rather than being held as central to the proletarian struggle, and empowered and uplifted by the organization.
• Discussions with or about other organizations are discouraged or silenced, rather than being considered essential to the task of building unity among the Marxist movement.

If you feel like you or someone you know may be involved in an organization which upholds false consciousness, we have several articles which can provide further guidance:

• From USU: Cadre Development Literature, Organizing Theory
• On the Cult Form: The Cult Building Tendency
• On CPUSA: A True Accounting of the CPUSA In Its Members Own Words, Against CPUSA’s Colonizer “Communism”
• On PSL: Revolution in Our Lifetime
• On FRSO: Colonizer “Communism” in the FRSO, The Settler J. Sykes and the FRSO
• On DSA: Organize Within the DSA!, Uncommitted: A Lesson in Counterinsurgency

The struggle for the Party is at times a bitter one, and promises to only grow in contention as the proletarian movement builds momentum and begins to truly challenge the established “communist” institutions. Already many middle class “communists” resort to increasingly coordinated campaigns of harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence in order to assert the “legitimacy” of their particular organization. Committed revolutionaries must understand the backwardness of this approach: To assert authority without the backing of the proletariat, or to attempt to cudgel the proletariat into submission to “the party” can only ever at most postpone the emergence of the Party of the revolutionary proletariat. 

The Party will form the vanguard of the revolution only when the masses of the most oppressed internationally recognize it as their representative and their weapon in the class struggle, wielded by and in the interests of the international proletariat.

“Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa,
Quieren el barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya,
No, no suelte’ la bandera ni olvide’ el leolai,
Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái.”

They want to take the river from me and the bеach too,
They want my neighborhood and they want grandma to leave,
No, don’t drop the flag or forget the leolai,
I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.

Puerto Rico entered 2025 in the dark. The colony’s outdated power grid faced a massive blackout on New Year’s Eve, causing 90% of the island to lose electricity. Outages are a part of day-to-day life under the Yankee occupation that has impoverished and displaced Puerto Ricans since 1898. Colonialism attacks Puerto Rican unity. Young Boricuas — forced to leave in search of jobs — are exploited as cheap labor here in the states, all while millionaires move to Puerto Rico in droves. Outages, poverty, and migration are symptoms; colonialism is the illness. The independence movement, historically suppressed but rapidly growing, is the cure. A nation without self determination is a nation denied freedom, and Puerto Ricans have been enslaved for too long.  

Why does Puerto Rico experience so many blackouts in the first place?

The “Commonwealth of Puerto Rico” has no sovereignty. Unlike the mainland, which pretends to be a democracy, Puerto Rico is controlled by Congress’ “plenary” powers. As a territory, they receive less federal funding than the states. Congress has never used its total control over Puerto Rico to meaningfully invest in the island’s economy. They have always treated Puerto Rico like an imperial colony, temporarily installing American companies and paying Puerto Rican workers lower wages than anywhere on the mainland.  

The official excuse for why Puerto Rico cannot fix its power grid is that the island is in tremendous debt. This debt crisis can be traced back to a series of U.S. Congressional incursions on behalf of U.S. capital. Since the early 20th century, they have made Puerto Rico into a tax haven for U.S. investors and corporations. They transformed the agrarian economy into an industrial one, displacing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.

Operation Bootstrap, which began after World War 2, paints a brutal picture of colonialism on the island. Corporate taxes were eliminated to entice Yankee business. Meanwhile, wages were kept lower than anywhere on the mainland and unionism was suppressed. The colonial capitalists were making  themselves a heaven on Earth, while the situation for Puerto Ricans only became more hellish. The farming economy was destroyed faster than advanced industry could be built, and the island became plagued by unemployment. Those who could find a job in the new factories enjoyed improved living standards, but there weren’t nearly enough for everyone. Almost 500,000 Puerto Ricans had to migrate to the U.S. in the 1950s in search of a wage. Whether they were kept on the island or sent to a foreign land, Operation Bootstrap was a corporate scheme to trap nationally oppressed Puerto Ricans into more advanced forms of wage slavery. 

In a testament to the compromised insular government, their first governor Luis Muñoz Marín supported the federal government in blaming mass unemployment on Puerto Rican overpopulation. According to these traitors, Puerto Ricans had too many children, and needed to have less. By 1969, 35% of all child-bearing women had been sterilized. La Operación, they called it.

“The so-called insular government is only a corporation organized by the Congress of the United States.” Pedro Albizu Campos, President, National Party of Puerto Rico, 1950.

More recently in 2016, President Barack Obama completely took over Puerto Rico’s financial policy and placed it in the control of an unelected, seven member council of finance goons known as La Junta. Eight years later, they are still gutting Puerto Rico’s social safety net, cutting social programs, and leaving the power grid to rust. La Junta represents the interests of Congress, the White House, and USian business. There is not even the illusion of equality in the relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico; between an empire and its colony. It is one nation exploiting another at every turn. 

Nearly 3,000 people died in the man-made catastrophe that followed Hurricane Maria in 2017. Only a few dozen perished in the storm itself. Thousands were killed over the following months as power was knocked out and clean water disappeared. The destroyed health care system was unable to prevent the spread of infectious disease, especially among the poor and the elderly. The people sacrificed on the altar of colonialism died in agony while imperial masters blocked relief from coming in.

As is often the case under capitalism, where the colonized and working classes face complete devastation, the owning class found fresh opportunities for new business. La Junta, on behalf of the U.S. capitalists, used Hurricane Maria to privatize the power grid. Without consulting the people, the Board created an energy contract for private companies Luma and Genera, companies based in the U.S. and its junior imperialist partner Canada. The move transfers money from Puerto Rico’s tax base off of the island directly into the hands of Yankee capitalists. Privatization was marketed as a way to stop blackouts and eventually modernize the power grid. Seven years later, all that has changed are the monthly bills, which are nearly 50% more expensive than in 2017. 

According to Luma, the massive New Year’s blackout was caused by a single underground electric cable. The cable was so old and outdated that the company which manufactured it closed 28 years ago. A perfect microcosm of the overall power grid! Lights turned off around dawn on Tuesday, December 31 and stayed out all day and night, the only power available coming from diesel generators for the minority who could afford them. Most Puerto Ricans celebrated the New Year by candlelight. Power was eventually restored to 98% of customers by Wednesday afternoon, January 1, the blackout lasting a little over a day. Each blackout triggers more and more anger against Luma. The new Trump-supporting governor has already threatened to replace them. The company is performing so poorly that everyone, including the people who first supported privatization, are being forced to acknowledge its failure. 

These corporate planners had Puerto Rico in an artificial economic bubble. Local Puerto Rican businesses had no way to compete with these tax incentives. The island’s economy would face destruction if the U.S. businesses left or if there was an economic downturn. This is what happened when the economy went into recession in 2006. Puerto Rico was in a debt snowball at this point; they were borrowing money just to pay the bills. Wall Street investors continued to push these loans even after it became obvious the government was going bankrupt. Puerto Ricans themselves were targeted by these predatory bonds. When the bond market finally crashed, hundreds of millions of dollars in Puerto Rican wealth disappeared overnight. The banks got away not just scot free, but rich. Puerto Ricans are footing the bill to this day. They are at the mercy of La Junta. Targeted by Wall Street hedge funds, they are paying off their government’s debt with the dilapidation of their power grid and hospitals. Mass displacement is the other half of this crime against the Puerto Rican people. As the island is gutted from the inside, the occupier lures Puerto Ricans with  the chance of employment on the mainland. Between 2010 and 2020 alone, over 10% of Puerto Ricans have moved to the states. They survive on the farms, in the cities, but their heart stays in Puerto Rico. 

The strength of the Puerto Rican nation lies in the unity of its people. In both the mainland and the colony, Puerto Ricans share the same oppressor.  But Puerto Ricans will not defeat the Yankee Empire on their own. Full unity with the other oppressed nations — Black, Hawaiian, and other Native nations — is also required. 

Puerto Rico will never be free in the subservient role of territory or state. Puerto Rico will only prosper, will only know freedom, as an economically and politically sovereign nation. Full support to a self-determined Puerto Rico, on both the mainland and the island! Unity with the nationally oppressed! Remember the Cry of Lares: ¡Libertad o muerte! ¡Viva Puerto Rico libre!

The Navajo, Havasupai, and Ute Nations are being poisoned. Toxic uranium saturates their land, drinking water, and homes. Southwestern indigenous tribes lived on top of uranium deposits for centuries without issue. They called it leetso, or “yellow dirt.” Cancer rates in this area were so low that some believed the Navajo were immune. This changed in the 1940s, when the federal government pledged to commit a nuclear holocaust against Japanese civilians. Since then, over 40,000 tons of uranium ore have been extracted from their land with no concern for the Indigenous miners or their families. The Navajo language had no word for “radiation” or “cancer” at the time. They didn’t know what the mines would do to their people, and they were desperate for a source of income. The federal government and mining companies knew.  

The trucks traveled from Pinyon Plain Mine (formerly Canyon Mine), which is controversially located on Havasupai territory. The mine sits in the foreground of the Havasupai’s sacred mountain, Red Butte, and over several important aquifers. These were the first trucks sent from the mine since it began operation in December 2023.  They were set to follow a 300 mile route to the White Mesa uranium mill in southern Utah. The Navajo outlawed uranium transport in 2012 due to its horrifying legacy of radiation sickness and cancer in the Navajo nation. 

Alas, the federal government does not recognize Indigenous sovereignty in any meaningful sense. Indigenous nations are technically allowed to write laws concerning their internal affairs, but exceptions are made when a law could interfere with pillaging tribal lands. In the case of uranium transport, the statute exempts state and federal highways on Navajo lands which Energy Fuels Resources, the company contracted to mine and transport the radioactive material, has designated as hauling routes between their mine and processing mill. While the company is allowed to travel in the eyes of the American government, President Nygren has promised to set up roadblocks against any additional trucks. He demands an agreement that requires Energy Fuels to provide ten days notice before shipping uranium so that the Navajo nation can take safety precautions and inform the community. The Navajo nation is generally opposed to any movement of uranium through its land, but they are willing to let the ore through if given proper notice, which was not the case here. The Navajo nation only learned of the trucks because the Forest Service relayed the message that same morning.      

On August 2, First Lady Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren led a rally and march with Navajo, Havasupai, Hopi, and Fort Mojave nation members. They marched up the hauling route as Grand Canyon tourists drove by in the opposite direction. Many honked in support. Energy Fuels Resources has since agreed to pause uranium hauling until an agreement can be reached with the Navajo nation. It is in Energy Fuel’s best interest to cooperate, given new research that suggests the mine will contaminate the Havasupai’s drinking water. A temporary pause in shipments would be a small price for Energy Fuels to pay if they can continue exploiting the sacred Ancestral Footprints Monument. Genocide Joe Biden and Killer Kamala Harris ironically designated this area as a national monument in August, 2023, but since the Pinyon Plain mine was approved in 1986, it escapes regulation. Thanks for nothing, Joe and Kamala!

The Navajo nation’s promise to block uranium shipments is a test of Indigenous sovereignty over its borders. The federal government has their dirty fingerprints all over Indigenous statutes. Indigenous nations are often referred to as semi- sovereign, but “semi- sovereign” will always remain a shallow and disingenuous concept under the settler colonial relation. So-called limited sovereignty is reduced or annihilated at any moment the settler government chooses. Congress can terminate the existence of Indigenous nations at any time, like it did in 1953 when hundreds of thousands of indigenous were relocated to American cities for cheap labor. The Supreme Court will continue to affirm Congressional fiat over Indigenous nations. Limited sovereignty has a clearly defined ceiling, but no floor. These are the scars of oppressed nations entitled to full control over their peoples, resources, and destinies. 

Protests against Energy Fuels Resources are set to continue. Another 100 indigenous people marched along the haul route on Saturday, August 24th. The next march is scheduled for October 12th against the company’s processing mill. Energy Fuels Resources must face consequences after poisoning Havasupai and Ute Tribal members. Organized Indigenous nations pose an inherent threat to the status quo of settler domination. The settler regime will only pretend to recognize sovereignty for so long. Force Congress to exert its veto power so that all may see the zombified corpse that is limited sovereignty.

Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, and National Liberation

Colonialism in the modern era first developed in the latter years of the 15th century, but reached maturity in the late 19th and early 20th century with the comprehensive colonization of the African continent. In their infancy, colonialism and capitalism developed hand-in-hand, with the resources and profits extracted from the colonization of the Americas and the Atlantic Slave Trade spurring rapid growth in the European economies. In turn, products manufactured in the European metropoles were utilized to further develop the grip of the European economy over the world at large. In essence, capitalism was born with the profits of colonial extraction, and the insatiable capitalist mode of production drove the expansion of the colonialist system.

In its “traditional” form, the colonial economy is primarily an extractive economy, maintained through economic, political, and military domination. The colonial power takes raw materials and other resources from the colonized territory to be shipped back to the “home” country to fuel their burgeoning economies. During the dawn of the era of imperialism (from the 1880s onwards), colonial holdings also served as a sink for the exportation of capital from the European countries, financing international corporations in their advancement of the extraction of resources from the colonial territories. For “traditional” colonialism, the Indigenous population constitutes the labor force for the international corporations. The rapid development of the urban centers in the colonial territories drove the “proletarianization” of the colonized workforce; that is, driving populations from the countryside to the urban centers to engage in the newly imposed capitalist-colonialist economy. The Indigenous people themselves in this context serve as a resource; labor to be exploited for profit, most acute under the slave system in which colonized peoples were literally exchanged as commodities themselves.

Settler colonialism is a distinct form of colonialism. Whereas in the “traditional” colonial economy, extraction of resources is the primary focus of the occupying power and indigenous labor utilized in that extraction is a central component, settler colonialism is concerned with complete control and assimilation of the land as the foundation of a new settler nation. Under settler colonialism, the Indigenous populations are eradicated, in whole or in part, by a series of deliberate policies enacted by the settlers to drive them off the land and claim it for themselves.

In its initial stages, the development of settler colonies on the American continents was driven by rivalries between the last remnants of the European monarchies, which involved religious and military expansionism. The so-called “New World” presented a crisis for the European kingdoms, essentially constituting a new battleground for existing tensions on the continent. At the time, the nascent capitalist system in the form of mercantilism was subordinate to the interests of the monarchs, driven by the need to expand control in the religious sphere, through which the kings justified their “divine right to rule”, and the need to grow the coffers through which they funded their respective armies. An as yet “undiscovered” continent made up of billions of acres of “unclaimed” land presented both an opportunity and a threat to the kingdoms. They could not afford to be left behind while their rivals expanded their power overseas.

What resulted was a mad dash for the direct control of the land, leading to a period of primitive accumulation which increased the wealth and power of the European kingdoms, but also increased the wealth and power of the nascent bourgeoisie which would go on to supplant them in the following centuries. Some of the European powers attempted to engage in “traditional” colonization schemes, but the most successful and the earliest — that of Spain — was settler colonial from its inception and would provide the model for England.

The problem for the Europeans was that this land was not “unclaimed” as they pretended, but was inhabited by millions of Indigenous people organized in thousands of complex societies across both continents. Instead of halting the ambitions of the European economies, a solution was developed, and the Europeans, especially the English, having honed their skills at warfare through centuries of struggle both inside and outside the continent, utilized those skills towards the complete supplanting of the indigenous populations for their own.

Today, the first phase of the settler colonial project in North America is complete. What once was a land of dizzying cultural wealth and complex civilization has been completely supplanted by the US settler colonial empire and its Canadian counterpart. The millions of Indigenous people that once inhabited the continent have been subjected to outright slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and otherwise removed from the land to be corralled into reservations, making way for the fascist global hegemon to thrive. 

Some believe that because the “settlement” of the U.S. is complete, the colonial relation in the country has ceased. On the contrary, through the reservation system and the indigenous reserve labor force kept in perpetual poverty, through the continued subjugation of the Black interior semi-colony by the survival of slavery in the prison industrial complex and the continued denial of land rights in the Black Belt, and through the exploitation of immigrant labor largely consisting of indigenous South and Central Americans, the colonial relation is thriving. This relation is most clear through the antagonization of these colonized populations by the armed wing of the state — the DHS, the BIA, and the federal, state, and municipal police — which takes up its legacy as an occupying colonial military.

The imperial outpost of “israel” is the most readily apparent example of settler colonialism due to the intensity, and thus visibility, of the conflict. Through widespread media coverage of the issue, this genocidal relation is undeniable. Despite billions of dollars being funneled every year into maybe the most advanced propaganda campaign the world has ever seen, the age of social media has allowed the Palestinians to demonstrate their plight for all to see.

The colonization of Palestine is well-documented by scholars and by the zionists themselves. Following the British acquisition of Mandatory Palestine from the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, the “holy land” provided a golden opportunity for the zionist conference in Britain to begin their colonial project. Between 1917 and 1948, zionists began in earnest to claim land in Palestine through both purchase and conquest. This process culminated in the infamous Nakba of 1948, in which zionist paramilitaries excised large swaths of the land through genocidal slaughter and ethnic cleansing, killing thousands and driving many hundreds of thousands more from their homes. What resulted was almost 80% of the land of Palestine falling under control of the zionists, driving the displaced Palestinians into refugee centers that became the Gaza Strip and the West Bank territories, an act that was legitimized by the international community’s recognition of the “State of israel”.

Zionist ideology closely resembles the religious settler ideology of Manifest Destiny that drove the lion’s share of the colonization of what would become the western United States. Believing the land to be promised to them by God, settlers push the boundaries of the existing colonial borders, encroaching into land that is still controlled by the indigenous inhabitants, often in violation of the various treaties and agreements previously negotiated between the colonialists and the colonized. When the colonized naturally resist this unlawful expansion, the military forces of the colonial entity intervene on the basis that the settlers constitute civilians and they must be defended from the “violent, uncivilized natives”. Thus, the colonial borders expand and the indigenous are further removed from the land. This practice is utilized to this day in the zionist settlements in the West Bank.

We should not be surprised at the similarity; we should not be surprised that the zionists appear to be brothers in arms to the U.S. ruling class. After all, the same economic exploitation of Indigenous people is the basis for both.

So what is the resolution to the colonial contradiction? Despite settler colonialism constituting a distinct form of colonialism, the solution remains the same: national liberation. The anatomy of the colonial system consists of the economic, social, and political domination of the colonized by the colonizers. To abolish this relation, the political, economic, and social spheres must be taken hold of by the subject nation. In a “traditional” colony, this is easy to envision due to the fact that the majority of the population is Indigenous. The anti-colonial liberation movement in this context must seize control of the state from the colonizers and the bought-off compradors, nationalize the colonial enterprises, and begin the process of developing national self-determination. In the settler colonial context, control of the land is the axis upon which the Indigenous peoples are oppressed and self-determination takes the form of the reclamation of the land from the settlers.

South Africa is a particularly interesting case study on this point. Prior to the takeover of the South African apartheid government by the ANC in the 1990s, South Africa could similarly be described as a settler colonial project. After the apartheid system was overthrown and Mandela elected in 1994 as the first president of the country, a process of land reform was undertaken, but was not taken to completion as it had been in Algeria in the 1960s and in Zimbabwe and other territories that made up the former Rhodesian state in the 1980s. As a result, racial disparity and racial tensions continue to wreak havoc on the South African social and political sphere, with white settlers still owning a disproportionate amount of land relative to their population, leaving millions of indigenous South Africans in poverty. What this tells us is that the land and who controls it is the most important aspect of the settler colonial context.

CPUSA Convention Controversy

This past weekend, June 7–9, the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) held its 2024 national convention in Chicago. Two particularly important results of this conference made a significant stir among communist circles on social media regarding the Party’s position on settler colonialism.

As part of the party’s membership in the International Meeting of Communist Workers’ Parties (IMCWP), the CPUSA invited delegates from several other participant parties to speak at the convention. Included in this group was the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), whose speech, delivered by israeli Knesset Member, Ofer Kassif, was streamed on YouTube and subsequently posted by the Party’s official account on Twitter. In this speech, Kassif began by “providing context” to the situation in the zionist entity, in which he vocally condemned the Palestinian Resistance for its acts on October 7, repeating the rigorously debunked lie that thousands of Israeli citizens were massacred by the Palestinians. Later in his speech, he rightly describes the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide, but ultimately delivers a message that is indistinguishable from the messaging of, say, US Senator Bernie Sanders. In essence, it espouses a political position which can be described as “labor zionism”; the genocide of Palestinians is to be condemned but so are those struggling against it. It is bad to kill Palestinians, but those who are waging a national liberation struggle to overthrow the settler colonial relation are terrorists. Essentially, their position is that the state of “israel” has a right to exist and that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1917 and 1948 is legitimate, but with a left-wing facade. The position of the CPI is further revealed in an article posted on their website in November of 2023, calling for an investigation of war crimes against the Palestinians for sexual crimes committed on October 7, which has since been thoroughly debunked as a conspiracy, a lie spread by the IOF to justify the genocide in Gaza.

The Twitter post of Kassif’s speech received vitriolic backlash from people criticizing the party for inviting the CPI to speak at the convention, especially during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Many CPUSA members took to social media in an effort to do damage control, justifying the invitation of the party with such excuses as CPI being a “fraternal party of the IMCWP”, as if that isn’t an indictment of the IMCWP in its own right!

During the CPUSA’s discussion of the resolutions being adopted at the convention, the question of settler colonialism in the United States was presented. Following this discussion, a CPUSA delegate who was present at the convention tweeted “After an investigation the Communist Party USA has rejected settler colonialism as the primary contradiction in the United States”. Again, backlash from communist circles on social media was responded to by hand-waving and justification by party members, calling any who criticized this decision “ultras” and “wreckers.”

The formulation of this CPUSA resolution is malformed and belies the lack of understanding on the part of the CPUSA delegates and those who rejected it. It is clear that the resolution was raised as a sop, and always designed to be defeated. There is no primary contradiction; this is a mish-mash of Marxist terms. There is, of course, in any situation, a principal contradiction, but this is a question of strategy. The principal contradiction conditions the other, secondary, contradictions, which cannot be resolved without first addressing it.

Party members on Twitter immediately began denying the need for any national liberation struggle in the US. It is clear that, where CPUSA once suffered from extreme white (imperialist) chauvinism, that chauvinism is alive and well.

Social Class and Class Struggle

Defenders of the party’s resolution on Twitter made a point of railing against Anything But Class (ABC) Marxists. While ABC as an ideological trend does constitute a liberal distortion of Marxism, the Nothing But Class (NBC) position lacks any basis in reality. Proponents of NBC argue that all oppression and oppressive institutions arise from capitalism, and thus through waging class struggle, all oppressive contradictions will be resolved. What this deviation ignores is the reality of social classes, and the particularity of the nature of class in the colonial context.

The Wretched of the Earth, written by Martiniquais revolutionary Frantz Fanon, who developed his analysis from his participation in the national liberation struggle against the French settler colonial project in Algeria, argues that in the colonial context a person’s race in part dictates a person’s class. An analysis of the colonial relation reveals this fact to be true. In colonial Africa, all of the enterprises were owned by Europeans, whereas all of the industrial and agricultural workers were African. They were workers and not owners because they were members of an oppressed nation; because of their indigeneity. As a result, class was stratified along national lines, meaning that a national liberation struggle also constitutes a class struggle.

“Identity politics” is a contentious topic among Marxists, with many taking the view that the concept of identity is a liberal distortion that only serves to obfuscate the class struggle. What this leaves out is a robust understanding of what exactly goes into determining someone’s social class. In our white-supremacist cis-hetero-patriarchal settler colony, a person’s identity plays a part in determining a person’s class. If you are a trans person, a Black person, a gay person, or any intersection of the various avenues of oppression, odds are that you are not a member of the bourgeois class. As a result, gender relations, race relations, disability relations; these things all constitute social relations with an objectively identifiable economic base. They are class relations and thus are essential to address when engaging in class struggle.

These are fundamentally not questions of identity. Identity is a social question; the relations that produce these social identities are economic questions.

In the US settler colonial system, Black and Indigenous people are corralled into reservations and ghettos, flushed into the prison system to work as money-printing slaves, and are oppressed along national lines. As a result, a national liberation struggle must be waged as PART of the class struggle. National liberation IS class struggle, and must be taken up and supported by Communists.

When CPUSA and its membership reject an in-depth analysis and discussion of settler colonialism, reject the principles of national liberation, and embrace only a simplified analysis of class, they are, in effect, abandoning the class struggle. 

Do not mistake their behavior. The CPUSA has abandoned the class struggle. At best, they represent a dam holding back a reservoir of committed Communists, straining to fight in the class war. At worst, they represent an active barrier to the advancement of the very movement they claim to lead, and thus serve as an objective pillar of U.S. capitalist-imperialism.

A source within the party shared a section of one of the resolutions to be adopted at the convention with regards to the national sovereignty for Indigenous peoples of the Americas which read:

Therefore be it resolved that the CPUSA fully supports the struggles of the Native American people for full social, economic, and political equality and national sovereignty over Native lands. We demand expansion of federal and state funds and services for all the reservations. We oppose schemes to nullify tribal treaty rights.

While paying lip service to national sovereignty for indigenous nations, this resolution reveals deep issues within the party’s understanding of settler colonialism. In their message of support for the struggles of the Indigenous people of the Americas, CPUSA takes care to specify that this only extends to the borders of so-called “Native land”, a distinction that legitimizes the settler control of land not specified as “Native”. The resolution also calls for the expansion of federal and state funds with regards to the existing reservation system. Instead of calling to abolish this violent colonial institution, the CPUSA takes the position that the system should be expanded! Funneling funds into the existing genocidal reservation system can do nothing but strengthen it in its purpose: exercising control over the indigenous populations held captive inside of them. Additionally, this resolution calls for the upholding of existing treaties between indigenous nations and the US government, with no mention at all as to the nature of those treaties as documents forged through coercion that legitimize the settler control over already-stolen Native lands.

This position is indistinguishable from the “labor zionist” position of the Communist Party of “Israel,” which pays lip service to the plight of the Indigenous Palestinians while at the same time upholding the existing colonial borders taken through wholesale slaughter and ethnic cleansing in 1948 and today. By refusing to acknowledge the nature through which this land was claimed and the illegitimacy of the settler control over it, the CPI and its brethren in the CPUSA effectively condone the genocidal actions taken by the settler system.

Settler colonialism and national liberation are not buzzwords. They are not empty platitudes to be tossed out and then ignored, nor are they secondary issues to be subordinated to an ill-defined “class struggle”. They are class struggle, and any party which seeks to overthrow the settler colonial relation must engage with this from the outset. Settler colonialism is a material relation concerned with control of the land. A communist party in a settler-colony must contend with the question of the land and who controls it. They must take the stance that the reclamation of the land through a national liberation struggle is the issue at hand. Otherwise, they are giving in to settler chauvinism as willful idiots of empire.

What is to be Done?

A problem of this magnitude requires extensive education of general party membership, but the capacity to carry out that education would require a party leadership which has this understanding and is capable of imparting it to others. Many members of the CPUSA, especially the younger ones, have a better understanding of these issues than the old party bureaucrats, but the undemocratic nature of the party —  through measures such as the slate system — prevents that leadership from being replaced. Instead, membership at large is forced to table any attempts at eliciting structural change until the party convention, which is only held every four years, and even then resolutions are laundered through the National Committee before being put to a vote.

With the CPUSA’s rejection of settler colonialism as the principal contradiction, they willingly reveal the settler chauvinism that is eating away at the party’s structure, nullifies its revolutionary capability, and condemns it to serve the forces of reaction. 

We have no Communist party in the United States. Once we accept this, we can then begin the process of building one. National liberation and gender liberation are essential aspects of the class struggle, and we must begin to organize a resolute political structure that understands this fact. In order to engage in class struggle, in order to destroy all existing oppressive relations, we must come together to build a political formation capable of taking on this challenge and building a better world for all people.

No one can see into the minds of the Democratic party functionaries or the Democratic party’s political agents — Senators, Congresspeople, mayors, appointees, etc. — but we need no special powers of mental acuity to examine their actions and gauge their effects or to comprehend how they work and the role they’ve played in shaping the political landscape. Since approximately 1945, the two political vehicles of the ruling class, the Democratic and Republican parties, have worked out, by experiment, their respective roles in a repressive anti-Communist machine. This machine’s primary function is first to mediate conflicts among ruling class interests, but second, and of much more interest to us (and the direct subject of the present article), to suppress proletarian class consciousness and avert a revolution.

Are there self-conscious agents at work within this atmosphere, building this machine of repression? Almost certainly. Is the entire thing built up this way? Absolutely not. This is the result of an emergent process of habituation, of individual elements of the ruling class following their own narrow interests and coming to accommodation with one another. However, in each of these interactions, the ruling class shares a common and underlying interest: the repression of the working classes. To the extent that this machine has a “soul,” a ghost guiding its processes, that soul is in the U.S. intelligence agencies, which were crafted to be the self-conscious element of the entire apparatus. The purpose of the FBI and CIA is to fight Communism. The ultimate effect created by this apparatus can be termed the “Hostage Syndrome,” and it has successfully defused the revolutionary potential of proletarian organizations claiming to lead the working classes in the struggle for Communism more than once. Of course, this syndrome is the result of the political strategies pursued by these two parties. It is an effect achieved in the minds of the so-called Communists who fall prey to it — most commonly and predominantly those Communists from the settler population of the empire and the labor-aristocratic or petit-bourgeois classes.

It is this Hostage Syndrome that a revolutionary in the heart of the U.S.-Canadian settler empire must counter. Any revolutionary strategy must defeat this tendency. This cannot be done by will alone. The Hostage Syndrome cannot be overcome by sheer “moral character” of those involved in the struggle. The solution must be at once theoretical and organizational. The solution must be arrived at by theory and then made manifest by organizational form.

The answer of course is a specific manifestation of the general principle of proletarian internationalism. The bedrock guarantee of national self-determination for the Indigenous nations, the Black nation, the Puerto Rican nation, and all other oppressed nations within the U.S.-Canadian capitalist empire. This theoretical commitment must manifest in armed wings of a party dedicated firstly to the class war, and secondly to the war for national self-determination. Only armed, working people of each of the oppressed nations can form the anchor through which to hold a working-class party in the U.S.-Canadian empire accountable to its ultimate aim of class liberation.

To correctly identify and do battle with this Hostage Syndrome, we must ask two questions: “What is the appearance of this Hostage Syndrome?” (How do we recognize it?) and “How does this Hostage Syndrome function?” (How can we fight it?).

What is Hostage Syndrome?

The logic of Hostage Syndrome goes like this: “We cannot afford to risk revolution now, because we stand to lose the gains we’ve already made if we don’t support the left-most of the bourgeois political parties.” This formulation can be altered in various ways, but it always boils down to this same thesis. For instance, the claim that “revolution would endanger the already endangered communities” is another incarnation of this hostage syndrome. To act radically and challenge the system that exists, our hostage-taking logic says, we would put the people who are still receiving a benefit from that system at risk.

There are two exceedingly common manifestations of this syndrome. The first is focused around elections where the contest is between a Democrat (or other “left Progressive”) and any Republican or right reactionary. This is what we may call the naive Hostage Syndrome, which is a result of the unconscious operation of the system of bourgeois government. In this case, the left wing of the ruling class, in its guise as the “Democrat,” announces that it will preserve the present distribution of power. They promise to safeguard the advances of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements and women’s rights movement. Often, they do this by broadcasting a kind of revisionist history in which it was the Democrats’ battle in the political arena, not the blood of the working classes physically fighting the state and corporations, that won the victories of the mid-century movements. The lackluster social safety net, like employer-covered health insurance, which barely qualifies as a nod to social democracy, is waved around as proof that there is something to lose. The same is done with basic rights like the right to abortion or to organize labor unions. “This is the most important election of your lifetime,” is the slogan, despite the logical flaw that it is trumpeted at every single election.

The Syndrome, the attitude this produces in so-called radicals, is the mental construction of defensive barricades. “We don’t have time for revolution, we have to forestall fascism.” This is the breathless battle cry of many a pseudo-Communist. Regardless of the evidence that electing the Democratic candidates invariably produces a rightward shift in the policies of the U.S. empire — because the material conditions dictate a continuous rightward march as being in the basic interests of the class both Republicans and Democrats serve — they fall prey to the threat.

We may metaphorically phrase it thusly: the Democratic candidate, in order to maintain the ever-weakening ties that bind the coalition of nationally oppressed groups, labor, and petit-bourgeois graspers that gave it power in 1932, acts as a hostage taker. The hostage is the status quo. Partnering in this game is the Republican party, acting as a bad cop in a good cop/bad cop duo. The Democrat warns our pseudo-revolutionary that he is trying to de-escalate. “Listen to me and I can convince the Republican not to shoot the hostage!” he warns.

What these pseudo-Communists have forgotten is that we, too, are against the status quo. We must be willing to pursue change, even change that will harm the working class in the short run. If we are unwilling to change, we are not Communists, we are reactionaries. “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” Those who are not willing to see blood and take risks are not revolutionaries. They are rearguards of the bourgeois state.

The second form of the Hostage Syndrome comes through the integration of someone with characteristics of an oppressed group into the machinery of oppression. We have seen this form cynically deployed throughout the U.S. empire over the last few decades. This is the election of Black mayors and police chiefs, women on the boards of corporations, and so forth. A pertinent example is Minouche Shafik, a Muslim woman who serves as the current imperial administrator of Columbia University. In this incarnation of the system, the very existence of this person is meant to demonstrate that progress has been made, no matter if they act to repress the vast majority on behalf of the colonizing ruling class. “Don’t attack the system,” they say — and not necessarily with their mouths, but by their very conscription into it — “because it has clearly been reformed, and more reform is possible.” Again, the underlying logic is that we cannot afford to throw away the meager crumbs we have won in order to seize the whole feast.

How Does It Work?

One of the pernicious tricks of this strategy is that the candidates for political office who perform the dance that produces the Hostage Syndrome in their viewers can be entirely sincere. It is not required that the actors in this drama cynically manipulate their audience. They may have every intention, once they are elected “this time,” to pursue an agenda of social and economic progress. But the system protects itself. Therefore, the outcome of even the warmest-hearted reformer, the most earnest opponent of corporate greed and reactionary overreach, finds themselves confronted with intractable opposition once they actually take office.

In order to achieve anything within the bourgeois government, they are forced to adopt bourgeois methods. Politicians in the U.S.-Canadian system, as in all the bourgeois republics, are required to cultivate powerful backers and wealthy donors. Only with the assistance of these allies can they ensure even a fraction of their political plans come to pass. They must continually appease and placate big businesses and elder statesmen. This is how big businesses and elder statesmen exert control over the entire system. In fact, it was those same capitalists and lawyers who designed the system. They are the ruling class, and their machine serves their interests.

The effect itself is dependent on the working class of the U.S.-Canadian capitalist empire receiving benefits from their position in relation to the exploited and colonized world. Superprofits extracted from the colonized world (the neocolonies like Ukraine, full colonies like Puerto Rico, and the semi-colonies such as the Black Belt within the domestic U.S.) are used to drive down the cost of commodities inside the empire and keep the imperial worker flush with out-of-season fruit, cheap gas, and freely flowing credit. These superprofits are also used to support a hugely inflated petit-bourgeois “middle class” of managers and professionals that far outstrips the number of professionals necessary to manage the productive domestic economy. Hordes of lawyers, doctors, and accountants are kept high on the hog by these superprofits.

As a result, all of these people — petit-bourgeoisie and labor aristocrats alike — have institutional buy-in to the system of government within the U.S. empire, even if they can’t actively change it. It works for them, so they work for it. Essentially, for this group of people, other than the fact that they cannot control their own economic destiny, nothing is fundamentally wrong. Why would they risk their spoils? From their point of view, it doesn’t make sense to shoot the hostage.

But the status quo is changing. The average worker in the U.S. empire is seeing less and less of those superprofits. Inflation is rising. The adventures of the U.S. armed forces are more and more ending in disgrace, ignominy, and terror abroad. As this continues and accelerates, the Hostage Syndrome will begin to lose its hold. The status quo, the hostage, no longer looks quite as appealing.

National Liberation: Killing the Hostage

There is another cure for the chauvinism common to this labor aristocratic and petit-bourgeois class, who are poisoned by imperial bribery: that cure is a commitment to the national liberation movements. National liberation of the Black Belt, of the Indigenous nations, and of all subject nations in the U.S.-Canadian empire has a special place in the revolution. Each of these national liberation movements represents a special front in the class war; each must be treated with as much gravity as the war between the owning and working classes.

This means that the party-to-be (for no such party yet exists) must have a structural component grounded in national liberation. Only with national liberation sections, each of which with its own armed wing, each of which must have authority to veto the direction of the party-to-be, can the workers movement be purged of the chauvinism that now infects it.

In the past decade, every labor struggle has ended with a meek acquiescence on behalf of labor. The railworker’s unions were broken by Biden. The UAW and UPS unions accepted crumbs when they could have demanded the bakery. The great upheavals within the U.S.-Canadian empire have been, in our lifetimes, upheavals, revolts, and proto-revolutions focused around national liberation. Whether this is the Black nation in its expression of Black Power, Indigenous nations like AIM’s rebellion at Wounded Knee or Alcatraz, or the current wave of student revolts that aims to see the Palestinian nation free from interference, national liberation is the heart of the movement within the empire.

Only by adhering to a national liberation line can the movement regain its lost soul, which was bartered away so many years ago at some sordid party conference. Only through a national liberation line will it become clear that we can no longer abide by the Hostage Syndrome. Because national liberation cannot be achieved without shooting the hostage — the status quo — it can be our polestar.Enough is enough. We are done with good cops and bad cops, done with bourgeois courts and police, done with bourgeois politicians, and done with social democrats who are nothing more than lap dogs for the bourgeoisie. We are done with the Hostage Syndrome, and we now look to the future, when the hostage can no longer be used to control us.