“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.”¹

Introductory Note

Before I begin, I would like to be transparent in sharing that this piece is largely reflective of my own experiences and observations of myself and others. Only in the past year (after more than four years of actively organizing and calling myself a Marxist) have I built up the courage and ability to truly notice, and more importantly rectify, my own liberal hobbyist tendencies. I want to encourage others who see themselves in this piece to do the same. Such rectification has come about not through metaphysical, undefined markers such as time or age, but as a result of intentional rigorous political education, reflection, struggle, and discomfort. The most important part is that I have not done any of these things alone. My beloved partner and comrades have helped me learn and grow in ways that I never thought were possible. So, to get things started, I wanted to thank my comrades in CCAP and the AEWL for their continued guidance and wisdom, not only generally but also with helping in the development of this piece. I never thought I would be able to actually write anything, but you allowed me to believe in myself. You all genuinely give me life and every action I take is inspired by you. In this horrid and dying place, in the face of true evils and insurmountable odds, if we have each other and are armed with the scientific application of Marxism, I am certain that we can win.

Secondly, as I will elaborate further in this piece, hobbyist tendencies stem from unchecked, individualist selfishness (a form of liberalism) which runs rampant among the west, particularly among the white settler amerikan left. To this point, in this article I will use “we” to refer to white leftist amerikan settlers, particularly those of the privileged petit-bourgeois or “petit-actionnaire” class. I am directing this piece mostly towards my peers in this similar class position. For further reading on the petit-actionnaire class, I highly recommend Morgan Phos’s article titled the“The Middle Class is Not a Myth“. In it, Phos lists one of the defining factors of this class as a unique phenomenon existing between the traditional definition of both proletariat and petit-bourgeois classes. People who “receiv[e] a lessened [but still significant] share of the imperial pie” but are still “enriched during the financial market’s upswings” through investments such as savings/interest accounts, small enterprises, ownership of land/property, and university education.²

On Hobbyism

Many settlers not only benefit, but also participate — whether actively or passively, willingly or unwillingly— in the genocide and suffocation of the Global South. Thus it is plain to see that our current “leftist” movement is filled with unprincipled organizations and individuals consisting of opportunists, misogynists, influencers, sellouts, spineless electoral candidates, u.s. “patriots,” and as we will get to, hobbyists. As frustrating as this is, it is to be expected of a nation that has been so ideologically stunted as theorized by Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa:

“If underdevelopment were related to anything other than comparing economies, the most underdeveloped country in the world would be the United States, which practices external oppression on a massive scale, while internally there is a blend of exploitation, brutality, and psychiatric disorder.“³

Amerikan settlers suffer from a horrible and fatal case of liberalism and racist narcissism, while also living in the most powerful country on the planet with enough resources to suck the life out of everything that exists. We are genuinely raised to believe — and in many cases fully DO believe — that the u.s. has pretty much always existed and always will, and not only that, but also that it is the greatest place on Earth to live, and those other slummy countries can only wish that they had it as good as us. When this evil narcissism and oblivious selective memory is combined with actual world power and multiplied across the minds of millions of people in a single nation, it is no wonder that even our “socialists” consistently miss the mark and fall into the traps of hobbyism.

Hobbyism, or “the hobbyists”, are those individuals or even entire organizations who simply treat Marxism and Communist organizing as a hobby, rather than their life’s work or purpose. This is a grave error plaguing our movement today.

By definition, a hobby is an activity that an individual does in their free time. Even here in this definition, we see western mind-bending at play. The concept of “free time” implies that there is a separate portion of your time, in some instances even a majority of your time, which is not free, i.e. your “work time.”

Since many Communists are forced to work wage-labor jobs to survive, it is true that organizing is something that they do during their “free time” (outside of work time). However, this results in many organizers wrongly conflating their free time enjoyment activities with the work they do as an organizer. Doing one activity or another in your free time does not make that activity a hobby; the distinction lies in your prioritization of different free time tasks or activities. It is still important to make time for hobbies and interests, as they are vital to our own individual well-being, and thus allows us to have the capacity to do important organizing work. But rather than being viewed as an enjoyable, feel-good activity (i.e. a hobby), revolutionary organizing must be prioritized on the same plane as that of your own survival, and the survival of your family and community.

As stated above, hobbyism is a form of liberalism. It is easy to identify the liberals engaging in hobbyism, as that is essentially what liberal “activism” is. They use their artistic abilities to make quirky, funny protest signs, knit/crochet pussy hats (or its newest iteration, “melt the ICE” hats), or design Instagram infographics with milquetoast messaging. As Communists, we are quick to notice in what ways we are more dedicated and serious in our goals than the liberals. However, in leftist or Marxist circles,there are often individuals who conflate their hobbies and their activism, i.e., they see them as one and the same and do not see a need to separate them.

Mao writes in Combat Liberalism:

“Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second,and this gives rise to ideological, political, and organizational liberalism.”⁴

Hobbyism stems from a similar class-urge as careerism and is its dialectical opposite. The careerist seeks to resolve this contradiction (limited supply of time and responsibilities) by turning their organizing work into a full-time job, and thus descends to opportunism to ensure they can make a buck. The hobbyist attempts resolve it by making organizing into “play time,” often to absolve guilt or ease one’s worries about capitalism and their role in it. Hobbyists see Communism as something to do on the weekends, a cool aesthetic/personality trait, or a way to gain social media followers. I really encourage the reader here to identify any ways that they have noticed this tendency in themselves. It’s important to realize that the hobbyist is ultimately a liberal who is fine with the continuation of global suffering and will just hold rallies ad infinitum, run their candidates, and stockpile all of their funds until the very end. Flashy Communist aesthetics are often diametrically opposed to real, risky organizing. The hobbyist is loud and blatant to assure themselves of their dedication; the true Communist is not, to prevent the eyes of the state from falling upon them. Is this who you want to be? At what point will or won’t you give up on everything that is worth fighting for? It is time to be serious.

I would like to clarify here that I am not arguing that hobbies are useless or a waste of time. Quite the contrary! We still need interests outside of Communism, we still need hobbies. We cannot transform into warrior-monks and deny our human needs for mental breathing room. Creative outlets are imperative to our well-being, especially as the world around us crumbles. However, hobbies should be treated as assets for, and secondary to the movement for revolution, decolonization, and socialism.

Additionally, there is a difference between using your skills for the movement and treating organizing like a hobby. If you make music, host a benefit show to fund revolutionary activities or mutual aid; if you enjoy writing D&D campaigns, practice polemic and agitprop writing; if you’re good at drawing or knitting, commission your pieces to fund actual revolutionary organizations; if you’re into exercise or body-building, teach your comrades how to fight and defend themselves. All of these examples are important for the movement, but they are not the end all be all of organizing. The real work starts with rigorous study, struggle, and party building — eventually leading to tangible action to bring down the state apparatus.

Rachel Corrie, an amerikan settler who dedicated her life to the anti-zionist movement on the ground in Palestine, puts this in perspective for us as well. In a letter she wrote to her mother, just three weeks before being martyred by the iof in 2003, she writes:

“This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore.I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop.“⁵

If you say you want a better world, yes, your hobbies and interests, things you find joy in, are extremely important to make time for — and — none of them are more important or worthy of your time than doing whatever you can to bring the murderous u.s. empire to its knees. This is especially true for the white settler Communist. What the movement needs now is dedicated individuals and organizations who are willing to make the struggle for decolonization, world liberation, and socialism, their life’s work. This means risking it all. This means giving up your life, or the one you thought you knew.

“Risking it all” in this current moment does not equate to going out and committing reckless acts of terrorism that gets you or your comrades killed. In fact, as a revolutionary, at this moment in time, your death or incarceration would hinder the movement and your comrades significantly. Even martyrs who have died for the cause, whether by their own hand or not (to name a few: Aaron Bushnell, Rachel Corrie, and Tortuguita, may they rest in peace) arguably have not furthered the movement in a meaningful way, as we still exist under an incredibly oppressive fascist state apparatus. However, this does not mean that their deaths, along with all other revolutionary martyrs around the world, are in vain or will not be avenged.

“Giving up your life” in this context means that any way possible given your unique situation, you dedicate yourself to the movement. You practice criticism and self criticism constantly. You read, write, learn, and struggle. You go where work is needed, you make time. The hobbyist talks about “hating capitalism” and “revolution” but is still mainly focused in building their lives and careers as individuals. They are primarily concerned with their comfortable lives with their careers, precious savings, superwages with annual raises, and their 401(k)s. Even if they in theory disagree with the origins of settler ideals such as nuclear family goals and property ownership, a vast majority of left leaning individuals aspire towards these goals in the imperial core.

I know this to be true because this was me. The petit actionnaire class exists in such droves because the pull to conform, the benefits — however slim they really are — are intoxicating and convincing. One of the most fundamental (and suffocating) tenets of whiteness and settler ideology is to succumb to the urge to look away. Only by staring into the most stained parts of myself was I able to wake up to reality and begin to confront my errors. Every “leftist” in amerika who considers themselves a revolutionary must constantly combat these hobbyist and opportunist tendencies, because none of us are immune to it. We must face the uncomfortable reality that the world we know is dying, if not already dead. You must truly and genuinely ask yourself: do you really want a revolution? Do you really want a war? Are you willing to sacrifice, whatever it takes? Answer quickly, because we are out of time. As George Jackson states in Blood in my Eye:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”⁶

What do you have to lose? Come to terms with losing it. Stare into the gaping, black hole inside of this world and inside of yourself, soaked black with the blood of millions. You will want to look away, and it is important that you do not. This is the solution to the “privilege” question that is often mentioned in progressive circles. You must not only get used to discomfort but actively seek it. You will not have time for the things you wanted. You will not hoard any wealth you might have access to. You will not save for “retirement” in 30-40 years. You may have hobbies and interests, but ultimately the skills that you have should be used towards the cause of socialism. If you’d rather look away, and stay in your safe and oblivious bubble, admit this to yourself and leave the revolutionary circles. You aren’t welcome here.

If you are caught in the middle, recognizing the reactionary and hobbyist tendencies within yourself but wanting to overcome them, I encourage you to be honest and open with yourself and your comrades about this. We all have fear, we all have hesitations and drawbacks. But you must not retreat. Again, choose your fate and choose now.

It is not a recommendation, but a requirement, that as Communists, we must still find joy and pleasures in those things that are inherent to us being humans on Earth. Take care of yourself, because your comrades and the movement need you. Take time for your interests, your lovers, your children, your comrades; but your dedication, your purpose, in the end, is towards a better world, and towards the destruction of the united states and towards a new world order. You can work for a better world, not separate from, but for and in conjunction with your community, your lovers, children, and comrades. We must constantly remember Huey’s words:

“Revolutionary suicide does not mean that i and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.”⁷

1. Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 1. Pei-Ching I.E. Peking, [Foreign Languages Press] ; Oxford, 1978, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. ︎
2. Phos, Morgan. “The Middle Class Is Not a Myth.” The Middle Class Is Not a Myth – by Morgan Phos, The Red Compass, 20 May 2023 ︎
3. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 1972. London, Verso, 1972, pp. 16-17. ︎
4. Mao, Zedong. Combat Liberalism. Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1967. ︎
5. Rachel’s Writing and Emails from Palestine | the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. 29 Aug.
   ; 2007, rachelcorriefoundation.org/rachel/emails. ︎
6. Jackson, George. Blood in My Eye. 1972. Great Britain, Penguin Books, 1975, pp. 15–16. ︎
7. Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide. 1973. London, Penguin Books, 2009, p. 3. ︎

The first question: which are the primary revolutionary classes in the United States Empire and Canada? Which are the classes that can be drawn to the primary revolutionary classes to adopt their stand-point?

The second question: what is the current political development of each of these classes?

The third question: which formations are our friends and which formations are our enemies? With whom can we unite? Whom must we not unite with?

The enemy — the capitalist bourgeois class and their political puppets — knows firmly who their allies are. They are drawing up their battle lines and preparing for a confrontation. It is now time to organize our camp and arrange our forces according to the necessity for all-out conflict, but in order to this we must have a thoroughgoing and complete accounting of who stands inside our camp, and who is without.

Revolutionary Classes

We must draw our understanding of the revolutionary classes within the U.S.-Canadian Empire from the experience of the past century and the theory of Marxism. Capitalism subjects the old classes to a constant process of consolidation; it is the universal social solvent, tending to dissolve old relationships into the primary classes of industrial capitalism: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

In each country and economy subject to capitalism, the decay of the old classes into these two primary and opposed camps (as Marx and Engels put it) is unique. We cannot be content to understand the revolutionary classes generally, we must comprehend their specific manifestation in the U.S.-Canadian Empire. The science of historical materialism furnishes us the tools to comprehend the class-interests of these classes.

What are the classes? They are those groups of a people who share common material interests by virtue of sharing common productive, social, and juridical relations. Lenin defined classes as “large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it,” in the June 1919 article, A Great Beginning.

In the U.S.-Canadian Empire, as in all instances where capitalism has reached even a moderate stage of development, the primary revolutionary class is the proletariat. The proletariat is not alone as a class possessing revolutionary potential. The working classes broadly — the subproletariat, which is composed of under-employed proletarians and proletarians who are otherwise excluded from labor and the lower, laboring ranks of the petit-bourgeoisie are both allied class-fractions or class-fractions that can be drawn into a permanent alliance with the proletariat.

This understanding must be tempered with a comprehensive understanding of the settler-colonial foundations of the U.S.-Canadian Empire and the ongoing settler-relation that provides the social and legal underpinnings of the two states.

The U.S.-Canadian Empire was explicitly founded on a settler-colonial model which required the importation of European — primarily English, Irish, Scottish, and French — settlers to serve as an occupying force. The early colonies were in direct conflict with the Indigenous peoples of the North American continent, and as they evolved into the first settler-republics they actively sought to exterminate those Indigenous peoples to expand the land-base of their economies. At the same time, the early colonies both enslaved Indigenous peoples and began to import an alien labor force from Africa.

The slave system took root in what is now the southern United States and not the northern regions of the settler-colonies primarily because the soil was very fertile and thus did not require intensive cultivation. Slave production cannot be intensive production, because slaves have a high incentive to damage complex machinery, find ways to avoid labor-intensive tasks, and so forth; this limited the use of slaves in the northern stretches where the soil was less productive. The outcome of the settler-colonial and slave systems was to produce a number of unique class-combinations in the U.S.-Canadian territories and to entrench a racial apartheid based on phenotypic appearance and ancestry within the U.S.-Canadian legal and social systems.

Today, the settler-colonial slave system imparts several new or unique questions to the U.S.-Canadian Empire in terms of its class composition. The Black Nation, created by slavery, and the many Indigenous Nations, encysted in the vice-like grip of the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, have their own class compositions. As Anglo-American imperialism spread in the wake of WWII and dominated the entire world-capitalist system, the U.S.-Canadian territories have also seen the influx of peoples from the imperial periphery, who have formed other internal nations within the geographical borders of the U.S.-Canadian Empire.

Thus, the semi-colonies of the Black Nation (called the Black Belt by Harry Haywood and other Communists), have their own class structure. Within these semi-colonies we find both comprador bourgeoisie — a Black bourgeois class that receives its benefits from the U.S. Empire, is granted a larger market-share and control of more resources within the Empire at the expense of other Black bourgeoisie — and the national bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie of the Black Nation, which are in conflict with the compradors and their haute-bourgeois puppet-masters.

A similar distinction can be made for the Indigenous territories within the Empire, which are more properly classified as full colonies: geographically discrete, subject to underdevelopment, and relegated to producing natural materials and labor for the Empire while they are purposefully choked of resources.

At the same time, the settler-relation provides to the dominant political group — the “white” bourgeoisie and working classes — a benefit from the theft of Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican, and third world labor. To a lesser or greater extent, the white working  classes are therefore corrupted at various levels; their revolutionary potential is lowered (as with the majority of the “middle” white working classes) or perverted into labor aristocracy, aligning them with the enemy.

Political Development

The main revolutionary class (the proletariat, excluding the settler labor aristocracy) and the allied classes (the subproletariat, the laboring classes of the petit-bourgeoisie) can be divided into three levels of overall political development and consciousness: backwards, intermediate, and advanced. Within each of these levels, we can identify a further subdivision of tailing, central, and leading groups. When combined in one analysis, we are left with the following schema:

Reactionary Elements. These are composed of the tailing-backwards and central-backwards elements. They are our enemies. They must be isolated and will not adhere to any communist program.

Salvageable Backwards Elements. Composed of the leading-backwards elements. These are the reactionaries that can be re-educated through experience, study, labor, and activity within or adjacent to the movement.

Tailing-intermediate elements. The tailing-intermediate elements tend to be those on the cusp of the labor-aristocracy or the petit-bourgeoisie. These elements are those who are fully entrenched into mainstream Democratic politics.

Central Intermediate Elements. The central-intermediate elements are those working class people who are “progressive” Democrats and who are becoming disabused with the rot within the Democratic party. It takes only a little push to bring a central-intermediate group into the leading-intermediate strata.

Leading-Intermediate Elements. These are class-conscious workers who are not yet Marxists or Marxist-Leninists. They are developed politically without having formal political education. These leading-intermediate elements are angry now — most angry within the nationally oppressed groups — and are prepared to act.

Tailing, intermediate, and leading Advanced Elements. These are the organizing elements of the three identified classes that not only possess class-consciousness but possess some degree of political development. These are by and large contained in organizations like the DSA, but are also locked up in CPUSA, PSL, etc. Advanced Elements are even now organizing Marxist and Marxist-Leninist cliques, circles, and organizations within the U.S.-Canadian Empire.

Our Friends and Our Enemies

Now to the central questions: who are our friends? Who are our enemies? This will help us understand how to act, what strategy to pursue, with whom we may unify, with whom we may ally but not unify, and who we must isolate from the movement or openly attack. The prior analysis will only serve us up to a point for, although we can now identify class-fractions that will serve both as the main material for the revolutionary movement and its allies with the above schema, this does not illuminate either the class-character or class-composition of organizations within the U.S.-Canadian Empire. We must be able to articulate why there is no vanguard Communist party within the Empire and how such a vanguard can come to be. Critically, we must separate the rank-and-file of various organizations from their corrupted, misguided, careerist, revisionist, or opportunist leadership.

To what end must we make this distinction? Because the advanced elements of the working class are, by and large, swallowed up by, contained within, and therefore negated by these very careerist, revisionist, and opportunist organizations. Organizations have both class-character and class-standpoint. In careerist or revisionist organizations, the character of their makeup tends to be negated by strict structures of antidemocratic control. Where the rank-and-file have a structural incapacity to alter the direction, course, political lines, or material acts of an organization, the class-standpoint of that organization is decided entirely by its leadership. To make it simpler: class-standpoint is decided by the determining factors in an organization. When an organization negates its rank-and-file as a determining factor, its class composition becomes irrelevant to its class-standing. Rather, its class-standpoint is then decided entirely by its leadership — invariably, at this stage, petit-bourgeois or bourgeois.

This is the form of “democracy” exhibited in the bourgeois republic. As the toiling masses within the bourgeois republic are powerless, through their votes, to influence the decisions of their elected representatives — as Lenin says, “Participation in the bourgeois parliament (which never decides serious questions in bourgeois democracy — their decision is for the stock exchange and the banks) is fenced off… an alien institution” — so the complaints, votes, and political activity of the membership of these kinds of organizations (whether the organization calls itself a “party” or something else) is powerless to influence its direction. No outcry could force, for instance, CP Canada’s leadership not to countermand its own constitution and seat a farce convention. No amount of protest or impassioned pleas could prevent that leadership from re-electing itself even in the face of mass outrage over the fact that the very same committee had protected sexual abusers.

Thus, we may identify as enemies those organizations that claim to be Marxist, contain a large number of advanced elements, and yet exhibit these antidemocratic structures. However, the members within these organizations, those with advanced levels of political development — indeed, even those with merely intermediate levels of development — are our allies. More, we must unify with them. How are we to do this?

Domination of the field by these ossified organizations — CPUSA, PSL, IMT/RCI, PCUSA, etc., etc. — must be broken. We must ruthlessly expose them as objective tools of capitalism. We must spare no effort, pass up no chance, to reveal the true nature of these organizations as evinced by the actions of their leadership. We must discard any semi-revolutionary or radical words they speak and look at the policies and activities they engage in. At each turn, where they suppress their own membership, where they disclaim a truly revolutionary position, where they endorse defeatism, American exceptionalism, or reform, we must hold up a light to this rot and exclaim “there!”

At the same time, we must not attack the advanced members of these organizations. We must draw them out, provide them the evidence of the perfidy of their leadership, and then unite them into the party-to-be.

Onward, Toward Revolution

Only once those distorters of revolutionary Marxism have been cleared away, their ideas thoroughly discredited before the advanced workers, the detritus of their “organizations” swept into the grave and soundly buried, can we build a fighting force capable of confronting the enemy class.

Thus, we urge all the advanced workers to join together in combating the liquidationists who preach Marxism in words and practice reformism in action. We cannot afford to tail the bourgeois parties any longer. To you, we say: onward, toward revolution!