Sudip Bhattacharya reacts to the police murder of Minneapolis-resident Amir Locke last Spring with a rumination on the question of violence as it relates to both society at large and the socialist movement.
Introduction
By the early 1970s, the Black Panther Party had devolved into paranoia and what some would call “adventurism,” leaning heavily on the romantic view that only armed struggle could save them. Some of this was understandable, provided the pressures they were under, with FBI informants intentionally creating internal divisions, playing off the fears and anger of various factions. Still, as Assata Shakur, a BPP member herself, noted in her memoir about that time, some of the organization’s leaders also lost their ability to analyze critically the situation they were in.
“One of the basic laws of people’s struggle was to retreat when the enemy is strong and to attack when the enemy is weak,” she states, criticizing a leadership who believed in armed struggle alone, adding, “The pigs had manpower, initiative, surprise, and gunpowder.”
Ultimately, the BPP were indeed outgunned and much of the movement had no choice but to escape underground, to hide. Shakur herself would end up in exile in socialist Cuba nearly a decade later, after spending several years in prison for crimes she didn’t commit.
Several decades later, as the Left recovers from political repression and marginalization, the question of violence and how to understand it within concepts of socialist liberation and resistance once more must come to the forefront of Left discussion and strategy. After all, the country’s major institutions, and how U.S. society functions day to day, has become far less hidden or obscure, especially since Trump’s time in office. In many ways, the past few years have acted like a heavy rain, revealing the bones and broken roots beneath the lush green lawns and picturesque white fences.
It was during the Trump administration, as government policy was unabashedly pro- “free market”, that some of the usual mechanisms of social control, such as immigration border police, were explicitly seen as inherently “violent.” Since Biden has taken power, and as Covid-19 restrictions have all but been stripped away, and we’re encouraged to behave as if in “normal” times, evictions have once again gone back up, with police knocking on peoples’ doors, their hands on their holsters.
Over the last few years, more eyes have been directed toward how particular communities, such as African Americans, have existed in a state of disorder and violence, with police barging into peoples’ homes. Amir Locke, an unarmed African American man, was killed by law enforcement as they conducted yet another “no-knock” warrant. One does need a legal degree to surmise the level of punishment those involved received for basically partaking in state-sanctioned murder.
That said, the Covid-19 pandemic has also been an example of how necessary violence and coercion is when it comes to defending the needs and interests of working people and the oppressed. How else to describe self-defense tactics against fascists and the far-right? How else to explain the need to have a federal government with the power to punish people who refuse vaccinations and to demand companies manufacture masks and other resources that people desperately need in times of crises? As Lenin understood, a socialist or even a progressive society doesn’t magically appear. It requires a shifting of power and laws, and sometimes, force, or threat of force against elements in society holding its progress back.
Overall, a discussion on the topic of violence is necessary, as conditions grow more desperate for more people, pushing many to the brink. This is meant to be a short reflection on the topic, with a concluding view that if anything, violence and coercion cannot be kept in a narrow lane of “good” or bad. But neither can it be romanticized. Socialism wins when it is multifaceted and not simply an expression of peoples’ grief and outrage in the moment.
Violence as Control and Creation
“Violence, for me, and for the women I chronicle in this book, is simply a political reality,” Nimmi Gowrinathan states in Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence, an examination of women fighters in groups like the FLN in Colombia or members of the Tamil Tigers prior to their dissolution in Sri Lanka at the height of its civil war. In Gowrinathan’s work, she examines the subject of violence, by the state and as a tactic, through interviews with several female fighters themselves, including as they transition into “civilian” life.
Reading the text, one is reminded of how for many, there is no way to lead a so-called “peaceful” existence, where one can simply carry on. Being a woman generally, or a non-man, means existing in society as someone usually only a few steps away from explicit forms of violence; at the hands of the government, private actors, even comrades. Hence, for many of the women that Gowrinathan builds a relationship with in order to comprehend what it is they’ve gone through, their choices, there was no real avenue away from, at the very least, picking up a gun and learning how to use it. In Sri Lanka and Colombia, government troops were virulent in their mistreatment and abuse of any woman seen as even sympathizing with resistance forces, which in of itself, was borne from necessity. A Tamil woman, somehow pulling together a living under a Sinhalese-led government, would often see no alternative other than joining the Tamil Tiger movement in the hopes of creating a society whereby her and the people she loves can finally have food and resources that they need.
“While much has been rightly made of the surge of women in electoral politics, this text reclaims women’s place in another form of political life: on the battlefield and in the streets,” Gowrinathan writes, adding, “The erasure of the female fighter from narratives on gender and power is not only dangerous but also antifeminist.”
It’s either picking up a weapon or starvation.
Still, violence operates under pre-socialist societies without having to be so evident, so stark, in daily living. Under capitalism in the U.S., the threat of violence is always looming. How else to describe the dependency that all working people, white collar or blue, have on their jobs for safety and security, to keep us essentially one step away from having a policeman at our front doors, with groups of men sanctioned by local government to remove all your prized possessions from where you currently reside, to chuck them onto the curb? How else do you describe the dynamic for most working people in which you must keep working or face a situation where you and those you love won’t have food, shelter, or medicine one needs to keep themselves in this world? Yes, for some, there is the front lawn, lush and green, and the cars double-parked on the driveway. But, nevertheless, for the most part, people still behave as they do to maintain what they have, and not be thrown aside, which is the punishment when one refuses to work longer hours, or is willing to see their pensions scraped away for the “health” of the company.
There’s also the cruel fact that our jobs are violent; in that you can get seriously injured, or your health impacted in ways that are debilitating to say the least, such as what’s happening within Amazon warehouses, or those working as agricultural workers or in meatpacking facilities too.
The violence inherent to capitalism and pre-socialist societies was clear to Marx and Engels of course, both of whom saw the rise of industrial capitalism first-hand; a process which necessitated populations in Europe to be thrown off the land. For other thinkers who expanded on their theories of violence and the state, this identification of violence at the heart of society was attributed to coloniality too. Frantz Fanon, one of the premier thinkers on the subject of coloniality, surmised, based in his historical work as well as a psychiatrist, how violence was necessary in order for these colonial societies to exist in the first place.
“In colonial regions, however, the proximity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and the military ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts and napalm,” he stated in his classic essay, aptly titled “On Violence.” In that same essay, Fanon argues how violence is inevitable, too, in terms of getting rid of the colonizing forces. The colonized, frustrated, and humiliated must find a way to overthrow the existing order, and oftentimes this will require armed struggle, like we’ve seen in Sri Lanka and Colombia today, and back then, in much of the colonized world across Africa and parts of Asia.
Indeed, even in fairly conservative or bourgeois revolutions, like the one in the U.S., violence was critical in shifting power. As far as I can remember, the U.S. “revolution” didn’t take place over some “heated debate” between George Washington, his stolen teeth, and King George.
Regardless, much of the world’s liberation struggles relied on modes of violence to rid themselves of some of their worst elements, whether it be explicit colonizers living luxuriously on stolen land, or some puppet regime.
Nelson Mandela credited Cuban military forces for weakening pro-apartheid South Africa. As highlighted in Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa (1976-1991), pro-apartheid military forces, supported by the U.S., ventured deep into surrounding territories, with the intent of either occupying neighboring African countries, or altering their internal politics to suit a white supremacist pro-CIA agenda. One wonders, if pro-apartheid military forces succeeded, how much longer the apartheid regime would’ve lasted… how much more support it could’ve sustained?
Fortunately, Cuba allied with local radicals to defeat invading apartheid soldiers, thus weakening the pro-apartheid regime at home. This shocking defeat would demoralize pro-apartheid regime backers, while emboldening pro-democratic activists instead.
Mandela himself stated after the end of apartheid, and when visiting Cuba:
“The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor. The defeat of the apartheid army served as an inspiration to the struggling people of South Africa. Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale [a famous battle between pitting Cuban and Angolan forces against the South Africans] our organizations would not have been legalized. The defeat of the racist army in Cuito Cuanavale made it possible for me to be here with you today.”
The successes of so-called peaceful agitation had always been linked with some form of armed contingent of people.
Following the end of WWI and subsequently, WWII, many African American men had returned from the frontlines, having been trained on using firearms, and quickly used such training to protect activists and campaigns to desegregate.
“In the early 1960s, robust and organized defensive measures were an absolute necessity for any prominent black civil rights advocate who valued his or her life,” Charles Cobb Jr., who was part of the movement, writes in This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed. “The terror of the preceding decade had selected leaders who were willing to stand up to white terrorism, with force if necessary.”
Indeed, in Gowrinathan’s discussion of violence and gender, once armed movements were crushed (as was the case with the Tamil Tigers) or were encouraged to “assimilate” into existing civil society, it was easier for groups of women who demanded more to be easily controlled once again. The “nonviolent” activism loses its leverage over the existing institutions.
“The next time I meet Sandra, the government has kicked them out of the hotel,” Gowrinathan says, referring to one interviewee who had been part of the FLN. The conservative government in Colombia had extended some housing to her and others but the women wanted more than just dilapidated spaces. They desired free college, and other amenities they still believed in as socialists. The government, in response, shooed them away. “Nimmi, do you think we have given up too much in the peace talks? Have we been taken advantage of?” Sandra asks.
Violence, therefore, can function as a force of creation: creating space for nonviolent movement to thrive, as well as creating a new political landscape advantageous to previously oppressed and exploited peoples.
This brings to mind the deity Ma Kali, a Hindu goddess that many Bengali Hindus in my community feel a closeness to. Although I don’t necessarily describe myself as religious or as Hindu, I do wear a necklace featuring Her around my neck, and many Hindu and Muslim independence fighters, and rebels, had done the same, realizing the interconnectness between destruction and creation.
Of course, a liberatory society cannot be rooted in pure social control, and a restriction of peoples’ rights and freedoms. What would be the point then of desiring a new world? Still, for a liberatory society to exist, one in which the rich and previously powerful no longer dominate, a society whereby most people now can be in dignity and enjoy safety they’ve never had, the threat of violence/destruction will remain, or as Max Weber had once stated about the function of the state, the “threat of violence” may never truly disappear.
As seen in the Reconstruction era, confederate sympathizers and their plantation brethren had to be forcefully deposed from power. Union troops had to occupy the south for it to move forward and finally have the creative space for African Americans and others, like white Republicans, to vote, to own property, to partake in an actual democratic society, however maligned from previous traditions.
As DuBois writes in Black Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau, a government “institution” created for the “relief and guidance” of black and white labor, created laws to do so, and made certain that such laws were followed by those who were still opposed to the burgeoning democracy. The slaveholder class had been kicked out of government and, in turn, the new government was not delusional about what had to be done; which was maintain an infrastructure that could secure the new order, and as Du Bois quotes, was capable of “defin[ing] and punish[ing] crimes” (such as white supremacist vigilantism) and which “maintained and used military force and dictated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for the accomplishment of its varied ends.”
In the first few years of the New Deal, the federal government, pushed by the organized masses, were willing to use force to remove recalcitrant business owners who refused to improve working standards for their employees. The situation now has changed, as the federal government has backed away from its capacity to utilize force in taming the greed and power of companies, such as Amazon and Walmart, which have dominated our lives in ways unimaginable generations ago. What we lack isn’t an “understanding” between us and the companies that control us, but rather, movements and policymakers willing to use the law, or make law, that would punish and coerce such companies into raising their working conditions, and, someday, producing what they can for public use, without people having to pay.
A federal government more willing to punish killer cops, more willing to strip them of their so-called authority, as well as provide restitution for those impacted, against the hue and cry among rightwing “law and order” sycophants, would certainly have benefitted someone like Amir Locke. Instead, what we have are certain elements willing and free to use their force against others, without fear of legal retribution, or the feeling of community groups watching and monitoring them, as the BPP had once done.
As Frederick Douglas realized generations ago, “Power concedes nothing.”
For a new society to emerge, it must depend on law (“the threat of violence”). It must depend on institutions and public forces to help create the conditions that allow for the oppressed and exploited elements to achieve what they’ve always deserved.
Violence is Not Liberation
One of the biggest critiques Lenin would have of anarchists in Russia, prior to the fall of the brutal and incompetent Tsarist regime, was their reliance on violent means, or “terror”. Lenin could relate to the anger they had toward members of the Tsar’s personal circle of friends and family, as well as his coterie of supporters and functionaries (Lenin’s older brother was murdered by the regime). Yet, he detested their nearly nihilist dedication to simply attacking the regime through violence, and not going beyond such actions.
Ultimately, as he correctly pointed out, what was necessary to truly overturn the existing order was socialist revolution through the organized masses. But for what reason would the masses feel committed to this, if all they see are either socialists willing to work with the existing order, or anarchists simply planting bombs and moving on without explaining politically their philosophy, if they had one.
He stated:
“Both these trends, the opportunists and the ‘revolutionists,’ bow to the prevailing amateurism: neither believes that it can be eliminated, neither understands our primary and imperative practical task to establish an organisation of revolutionaries capable of lending energy, stability, and continuity to the political struggle.”
Assata Shakur herself would reiterate that what drew her to the BPP had been their ideas, and their outreach. She was extremely excited about their breakfast programs and political education. Many African Americans were excited to see black men armed and willing to take on the state. That cannot be denied. Their now infamous stroll through the California legislature had become a main reason for why the BPP became a national force. Yet, what sustained them wasn’t the act of being armed, but rather, a broader initiative to change society from one that was imperialist, capitalist, and white supremacist to what would be described as socialist and freedom enriching for most people.
The long-term vision of what society should look like mattered greatly to their appeal.
Shakur exclaimed:
“The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn’t working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn’t working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth, while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it.”
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the figure most associated with armed struggle, identified it as meaningless, as even counterproductive, when there is no vision or ideals that people are fighting for.
Acts of blind rage and revenge do not build effective socialist and liberation movements, however justified.
Guevara saw first-hand among Congolese troops battling against the U.S. and Belgian-backed Congo regime how violence, when it is the core method of a group, can start to infect so-called revolutionaries and how they treat others. Guevara, after the successes of the Cuban Revolution, had decided to continue the revolution against U.S. empire in Africa, joining Congolese rebel troops, seeking to impart what he knew, and to lead his own band of Cuban volunteers.
Yet, what he realized was that all the rebels had done, for the most part, was assassinate and fight, and not to build what was truly necessary and had helped turn the tide for Cubans in their own fight for freedom and socialism, which were relationships with surrounding towns and villages. Over time, the lack of a political principle (apart from replacing the U.S. backed Congo government), lack of political alternatives, and the forging of a political mission with others beyond their military camps, led to many of the fighters to become apathetic about anything beyond the immediate and short-term. Since the movement was so predicated on violence, its fighters saw violence as its main language in dealing with others as well.
“The fundamental character of the People’s Liberation Army was that it was a parasitic army that did not work, did not train, did not fight, and demanded provisions and labor from the local population, sometimes with extreme brutality. The peasants were at the mercy of groups who came on leave from the camps to demand extra food, and who repeatedly consumed their poultry and little luxury food items they kept in reserve.”
Guevara would start to direct the men into providing healthcare and food to villages and people in surrounding towns, while also using force to constrain and punish so-called rebels.
“We decided to do something about this, and Charles was sent on a punitive trip to clear the soldiers out, demobilize them, and retrieve their weapons. This was well received by the peasants who were very upset by the actions of these vagabonds that engaged in more pillaging than what they had come as a group displaying some elements of order.”
Yet, it was too late. The rebels already had a negative image among peasants, and the Congolese mercenaries had hired mercenaries to hunt Guevara and his men down. Eventually, Guevara had no choice but to flee, heartbroken and frustrated at what had transpired. A loss of principle. A reliance on violent acts. A reliance on hubris.
As mentioned earlier, the police barreling into neighborhoods will continue. So will actions taken by businesses and those aligned with them that persist in undermining peoples’ sense of safety and control over their lives. There will certainly also be situations where working people are pitted against working people, whether at work for scraps, or, as we’re bound to see, some resorting to stealing from others, usually done in areas closer to them.
Overall, doom and gloom shall prevail in some instances, and anger will find a way to permeate. Anger is critical. If you exist in this world and don’t feel some sense of anger, you are someone transcendent, or as some would aptly state, “privileged.”
But there comes a point when this anger and frustration can overtake a political vision, which has always been at the core of effective socialist mobilization for power.
Donna Murch, historian, writes in Living For The City about the BPP:
“By tapping into long-standing institutions of southern black communities—like the church and mutual-aid societies—BPP breakfast, health and school programs fused the Party’s Marxist vision of radical internationalism with organic forms of black self-help. Establishing autonomous social services—and broadcasting their existence in a high-quality newspaper with national and international distribution—highlighted the American government’s negligence, while vastly broadening the Panthers’ base of support.”
Indeed, the BPP and other groups on the New Left began to fall apart when some chapters ceased meeting peoples’ immediate needs, and providing an alternative society for them to be invested in, and instead, fell into “clandestine” actions, i.e. bombings and militancy. Some chapters broke away from the Oakland leadership, determined to wage guerilla war. Again, there was a legitimate reason for self-defense and for pushing against an occupying force. The problem had become an obsession with militancy as the solution to what was still a reluctance among people to believe they could win a new world for themselves. For the most part, people of color, especially its working class and poor, would not differ in how certain groups battled against the cops. Rather, they were now fearful of the very high likelihood of dying when clearly outnumbered by an enemy that had all the weaponry and resources to continue their own campaign of terror for years to come.
The problem became that people who may have sympathized with the BPP and groups like it were now reluctant to join when the alternative vision of society went missing and there was no other reason to join apart from picking up a weapon and dying. Life was already hard as it was, in the shadow of Nixon and growing neoliberalism.
The idea of becoming a martyr is rarely something people want for themselves, especially when they have friends and family who rely on them and need them. Movements that devolve into a martyrdom logic are movements that have lost their way, and will not attract the support they would need among the oppressed and exploited.
To avenge Amir Locke would then require a mixture of self-defense, to ward off the spirits of the carceral state under capitalism, as well as genuine movements to scale up peoples’ frustrations and rage into ways to effectively build a new society. This will take on the form of challenging and taking over existing institutions, and building power for the oppressed and exploited. And it will need to take on the form of movements with a sense of destiny and direction. Not simply reacting to tragedy.
“The only way to prevent violence, I argue, is to understand the forces that produced this rage—that pushed women to arm themselves in the fight for self-determination,” Gowrinathan explains.
Overall, we desire a society in which not everyone needs a gun in the home to feel safe. We desire a society in which people aren’t pushed into arming themselves simply to be heard.
The killing of Amir Locke is the sign of the opposite right now, with most institutions, especially law enforcement, working against true safety and security for most. It is these institutions that thrive on violence, that push and push people into either anxiety or fear or anger that eats away at a person’s sense of hope.
We deserve a society in which its major government institutions are on our side rather than theirs, to impose and counteract.
