The recent murder of the as-yet-unnamed Honduran in El Paso is far from the only state-sanctioned murder in the past few months. Police executions happen nearly every day, and abuses of working-class people do happen every day, all throughout the domestic territory of the U.S. empire. 

Over the past two months, Unity–Struggle–Unity Press has been publicly calling for all Communists to join the student revolts and link that movement up with radical labor. There is another pressing issue, particularly for those Communists who are isolated, semi-isolated, developing, or otherwise not prepared to enter into the student movement. As we have warned in the past (in relation to joining the Democratic Socialists of America or DSA), joining a non-Marxist or opportunist/revisionist organization (like the Communist Party of the United States of America or CPUSA), has its own problems, namely becoming submerged and negated by becoming organizationally subordinated to non-Marxists. The only way to counter this tendency of neutralization is to have a strong, external organization of one’s own that is well-developed and which acts as an anchor or grounding-point.

We have also obliquely discussed the “cult of action” in the past — the petty bourgeois, liberal-individualist trend of anarchistic theories of action (propaganda of the deed, etc.) to creep into the organizational strategies of even dedicated true Marxists in the imperial core. To put it simply, most Western Marxists in the U.S.-Canadian empire’s territory believe that unless they are “doing something” (and that “something” can range from simple survival programs to active people’s war), they aren’t working to forward the revolution, all the while forgetting that the most foundational form of “doing something” for a Marxist is to study and develop theory with other Marxists.

With this in mind, we have long advocated the formation of what we call primary organizations, the cells that will become the eventual vanguard party of the proletariat, through the foundation of Marxist study groups. We publish (and make freely available online) The Study Group and Constructive Struggle, both of which act as manuals on this topic. However, it is possible to “act,” as it were, while at the same time studying. The time is upon us for primary organizations to be able to pick up responsibilities in their communities, because the crisis of capital is growing very acute indeed. If we do not do so, particularly in the most affected regions where police terror is sharpest and most immediate, then we will run the risk of losing before we begin.

The formation of community self-defense leagues is critical in these areas. New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A., Salt Lake City, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit — these are the cities in which killer cops have executed the most people over the last year. Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Maine have the most cop executions per-capita. Between 2000 and 2008, the cities of St. Louis, Orlando, Las Vegas, San Bernardino, Miami, Kansas City, Bakersfield, Tulsa, Tucson, and Atlanta have had by far and away the most police murders per 100,000 residents. Marxists can and should become involved in community self-defense in these areas. But how can we, if the community itself lacks trained Marxists to engage? How can we hope to police the police if we do not have developed cadres to act as a backbone?

The Hybrid Self-Defense League

It remains the case that we cannot simply go into the community and group non-Marxists into coherent Marxist organizations; it defies both experience and theory. “Going to the people” is, of course, an old anarchist notion and is wholly metaphysical, as though simply integrating with the local communities would transform them into Marxists, rather than isolating the Marxist methodology of the organizers. Although the urge of the cult of action, the deadening self-denying need to take extreme and radical actions in the most extreme possible direction that arises as the result of living in the center of the capitalist empire, whispers that we should be assisting communities in the self-organization of armed defense leagues, the fact is that our movement is not yet developed enough to take this step. “A soldier without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal,” as Sankara warned.

Then what is the solution? If you don’t know enough gun-toting Communists to form an active community self-defense league, then the answer is to make more Communists. We can do this without sacrificing entirely that drive to “take action” by the formation of a hybrid self-defense league. As always, this will entail at least a handful of dedicated Communists of cadre-level militance. If you cannot gather this many trained Communists, you should attempt to build up more by means of a simple study group.

Put simply, a hybrid self-defense league should be prepared to act as a copwatch, should recruit community members from the affected community, should have a definite organizational form, and should engage in internal political education. Copwatches monitor the state and act as de facto legal observers whenever state violence is enacted (called whenever police, national guard, etc., are summoned). They must act as a reflection to the state power they are monitoring, setting up systems of response and communication, duty rosters, etc., to be prepared to respond to the presence of police or other state actors.

At the same time, copwatching is very limited in its revolutionary power and will quickly become a brake on further development. Thus, the political education must be preparing ever-widening groups of Communists and trained Marxists to participate in the organizing, maintenance, and deployment of the self-defense league. The goal should be to build capacity and heighten activity, moving toward a fully armed community-self defense league.

The fully-realized league should take on the following responsibilities, in escalating order:

1. Copwatching and reporting;
2. Armament with something other than firearms;
3. Community dispute-resolution, for which the league members must be trained, to solve problems without resort to the police;
4. Cop-deterrence;
5. Firearms training;
6. Full community self-defense; protection from police, response to community calls, independence from the economic and political interests of the locality.

Obviously, it is of the utmost importance that the community self-defense league bear a proletarian class-character and be organized in such a fashion as to protect the nationally oppressed communities first and foremost. 

• Property crimes should be adjudicated to favor workers and unemployed. 
• Conflicts between working-class people should be adjudicated to prevent violence but not to protect property. 
• The class-composition of the organization should be largely proletarian and should exclude contradicting interests such as the petit-bourgeoisie until the Marxist core of the group is large enough to maintain tight control. 
• Actual democracy must be practiced, and the membership must be trained as Marxists because they want to be and because the organizers can convince them that it is the objectively correct course.
• Nationally oppressed communities must be protected at all costs and members of those communities should form a large contingent of the league.

Following these guidelines should help develop desperately-needed self-defense organizations, as well as developing new Communists.