No.158916
It's very difficult to look at this current era of "the left" and not come to the conclusion that dismissing the importance of any act of violent resistance is ill advised. When I compare this current era to previous eras, the early 1900s, the 1800s lead up to the US Civil War, even the '60s and early '70s, it's striking just how little power "the left" has now, and how neatly that correlates with a huge drop in leftist political violence & sabotage. Even before the rise of the USSR, there was momentum in the west behind workers' movements, embodied not just in political parties and militant labor unions, but also in various other organized groups whose political class interest aligned even if their strategies differed.
While there is plenty of debate over the effectiveness of "propaganda of the deed" (a term which is thrown around too liberally), it's actually very difficult to argue that it had a net mitigating effect on the power of the workers' movement in the early 20th century or the abolitionist movement in the 19th century. The expression of class contradiction through workers' violence against slavers, capitalists, landlords, and imperialists, far from damaging the labor or abolitionist movement, reinforced the antagonism between the people and the state. It is more difficult to obfuscate the contradiction between classes in a circumstance where the monopoly on force of the rentier-capitalist class is challenged by workers. If unchallenged, the violence of the state does not diminish, the paranoia of the robber barons does not disappear; rather, their megalomaniacal advance simply continues unchallenged. Even without a real violent challenge to the capitalist status quo, the iron heel still comes down, eager to stomp out even the most reasonable voices of disagreement with the brutal agenda of the state.
It is not that acts of terror against the state are singlehandedly effective revolutionary activity, but I can't help but conclude that these acts were essential to a broader revolutionary movement. A left which totally dismisses or suppresses such actions is merely a punching bag for the state. You can march, you can organize, you can do whatever peaceful, legal things you like… and the state will still vilify and suppress you as though you were a violent criminal. The state will use all its power - propaganda, electoral shenanigans, accusations, censorship - to ensure that you cannot win elections without bending the knee. Once upon a time in the west, this applied mostly just to major national elections; now, in the US, it even applies to the local level.
All the while, the state enacts its own terror against the workers. Its IDF-trained police forces stalk, kill, torture, and rape members of the public to spread fear and intimidation. Its brutal prisons are the most populated in the world, lined with the poor and mentally ill, a massive industrial system which turns small-time offenders into much more serious ones. Its federal agencies spy on the people with total impunity. It traffics drugs internationally and nationally, arming drug gangs and terrorists. It wages genocidal war around the world, and allows individuals from its Zionist terror colony to commit crimes in the US, while devout Zionists commit acts of violence with delayed & minimal reciprocation. It drains communities by offering little to no check on land speculation, and disproportionately taxing the poorest among the public who are also hit by exorbitant, exploitative rents. Its corporate & political elite participate in sex trafficking rings, imprisoning and raping minors for purposes of perverse blackmail.
When people march peaceful, they are gassed. When people try to organize, they are surveilled. The state wages unchecked war against the public, and it is in this context that I cannot take seriously any complaint about so-called "adventurism" - particularly when there is no alternative on offer. By dismissing acts of retaliation against the state perpetually, the armchair left has accomplished nothing - except to suggest, indirectly, that such resistance, organized or not, is simply useless. This suggestion is incorrect; if political violence bore no benefit, then they would not be killing us. They would not beat us, nor gas us, nor wage economic warfare against us. They do all of these things, however, and yet there are still those among us who think it is bad to do even so much damage as to cost them money in repairs!
This line of thought is unconvincing to me.
While revolutionaries like Lenin and Stalin existed in a context rich with workers' political violence, and, as perpetrators of political violence, critiqued other strategies and ideologies, we have no such context today. In effect, when someone today reflexively deems an act of "leftist" political violence to be "adventurism," "ineffective," etc., they aren't doing so from the position of Lenin, they're doing so from the position of Bordiga. They're offering absolutely nothing except condemnation of any militant left activity, condemnation of any directed strike by workers against capital, condemnation of anything except doing nothing; if this condemnation is "doing it right" then they would be better off "doing it wrong." Humanity needs an armed, ruthless proletariat, and every single step towards a honed, militant workers' force is a step in the right direction.