Once again it is necessary to mourn the death of a black US citizen, murdered by racist white cops. For as long as I have been writing this blog, it has been necessary, every so often, to write such a post, and, of course, for a very long time before that the same kinds of racist murder have been taking place by a thoroughly racist US police and criminal justice system. It hasn't mattered whether it has been Republicans or Democrats in the White House, in control of Congress, or of local state legislatures, the reality has been the same for the black populations of the US, and primarily for black workers. On this occasion, we all mourn the death of George Floyd.
I have nothing to add to what is already generally known about the murder of George Floyd, and what can clearly be witnessed on the video, or to what I have said on every previous occasions of the murder of black citizens, by racist white cops, because the reality remains the same. Not only did it not matter whether it is Democrats or Republicans in office, but nothing changed when Obama was President either, and nor could it. Institutional racism can't be changed simply by a change of personnel at the top, and nor even from a wholesale change of institutional and organisation reforms, which is what often comes out of inquiries into such incidents. The truth is that these incidents will only end when we get white cops out of black communities, and that applies not just in the US, but also in Britain, in France, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere.
Its not that we should blame white cops per se for the racism, though, particularly in the US, many of them are individually racist, but that the police force itself is necessarily racist, just as it is also necessarily anti-working-class. The latter is a consequence of a bourgeois society, and the domination of bourgeois ideas that means that whenever the working-class challenges those ideas in a strike, a big mobilisation and so on, the police as the instrument of the state must automatically come into confrontation with it. The former is a consequence that society itself continues to be dominated by a series of reactionary ideas inherited from the past, which are carried over into the present, and mix with the present reality in a way that makes it appear that society's victims are its villains.
A police force that is imbued with the idea that black people are all criminals of one sort or another reinforces that meme when the members of that force are disproportionately sent to deal with incidents in black or working class districts. As I have written in the past, black workers in the US, and their communities cannot rely on bourgeois politicians black or white, Democrat or Republican to resolve their problems. They can only resolve those problems themselves, through their own collective self organisation, self activity and self government. They can't rely on benevolent politicians or the state to bail them out, other than to keep them in a state of deprivation and dependency via welfare. Nor can they rely on benevolent black businessmen coming to their rescue, however philanthropic some of them may be. Indeed, the black workers have more in common with their white, Hispanic, and Asian brothers and sisters than they do with black capitalists.
As all these workers come to face the devastation that the lock down of social activity has imposed upon the economy, with 40 million US workers thrown into the dole queues, they need to look to their own organisation and self-government. They need to establish their own worker owned cooperatives to rebuild shattered communities, they need to occupy and take over closed businesses, demanding that the state bails them out in converting them into cooperatives on the same generous basis that it bails out other capitalist businesses and the banks. US workers, indeed workers across the globe, should rise as one to demand that all of the socialised capital, the collective property of the associated producers, be put under their control, and taken out of he hands of the shareholders that have no right to exercise such control.
But, the corollary of that is also that the workers take control of all other aspects of their lives too, and here and now, that means that, in black communities, their overwhelmingly working-class citizens should take over the policing of that community. The policing of working-class communities should be the civic duty of the workers that live in those communities, organised in the same way that jury duty is organised, on a rota basis, and under strict democratic control. Indeed, in line with the US Constitution's Second Amendment, it should be the only way that guns should be owned and utilised, i.e. as part of a well regulated militia.
In fact, the events surrounding the murder of George Floyd also demonstrate the reactionary nature of the demands of liberals and opportunists for the lock down of social activity in response to COVID19. Had those demands been adhered to the kinds of spontaneous protests that have erupted, across the globe, would have been impossible, though the liberals would no doubt have been content to limit their protests to bleating on Twitter about injustice. In fact as populist and Bonapartist regimes across the globe try to use COVID19 to suppress social activity and opposition to them, along with further restrictions on free movement, and individual and collective rights, it is even more reason why socialists and consistent democrats should have opposed them, instead of acting as cheerleaders for their illiberal and authoritarian manoeuvres. Once again, we see, across the globe, that is black people that have been disproportionately targeted by police for having broken the draconian rules imposed over COVID19.
And, with several months to go before the US elections, do not be surprised if Trump attempts to use all of those draconian measures and moral panic whipped up over COVID19 to cancel the elections if he thinks he will lose. But also do not assume that he will lose those elections. The rise in US unemployment as a result of the lock down in response to COVID has hit Trump's popularity, but in coming months, Trump could easily place the blame for that mass unemployment on the Democrats that were the ones calling for such a lock down and the economic disaster that accompanies it. Trump's existing supporters will require no convincing of that, but nor too will many more workers, as it becomes increasingly apparent that the lock down was based on a falsehood and was neither necessary nor effective. And, all this time, Biden has been sitting in his bunker essentially having gone AWOL from any political fight. Moreover, whilst large numbers of US citizens have been afflicted by the virus, Biden cannot even put forward a proposal for a socialised healthcare system for all in the US, as an alternative to Trump, as they would have been able to do had they chosen Bernie Sanders with his policy of Medicare For All. In choosing Biden, and all of his conservative policies, the Democrats, as they did when they chose Clinton, have given Trump every chance of returning to the White House.
And Trump knows such losers when he sees them, even though he is a moron. He knows where his base lies, and knows that if he can mobilise it together with a bit more he has every chance of winning, when Biden gives workers in the US little incentive to turn out to vote. Biden and the Democrats can only rely on an anti-Trump vote rather than any kind of enthusiastic support for the conservative politics they also offer up. Only at a local level, where some of the progressive social democrats, and supporters of the DSA are organising is there any chance of working-class voters having anything positive to vote for, and again in many places that will be best advanced by focusing on local self-organisation, self-activity and self-government. The highest reaches of the Democrat Party are out of reach, for now, but its possible to broaden and deepen progressive organisation and influence at the grass roots, and that will be done alongside militant struggles for black, civil and workers rights in those communities.
Trump is using the current events to whip up his base on a thoroughly reactionary and racist basis. But he knows that he can mobilise a large constituency on that basis, just as the reactionaries whipped up the same elements behind Brexit in Britain, and are doing the same across Europe, and in India, across other parts of Asia and so on. Trump's support for people owning guns is not an accident, and the vast number of guns owned by individuals in the US is actually concentrated into relatively few hands, the hands of the reactionary elements that stand behind Trump, and who will no doubt be utilised by him if he thinks he can get away with it, which the lacklustre, weak-kneed response of the Democrats suggests to him he might.
The fight to get Trump out of the Whitehouse, and to prevent him using the current response to the death of George Floyd starts now, and is one that is fought in the communities, in the workplace and on the streets, not in the polling booth. It requires progressive workers and black, Hispanic and other ethnic communities coming together to organise for their own collective self-defence. The armed threat of Trump's police goons, and paramilitaries can only be met by a mass organised, and armed response from working class communities of all colours and creeds. It requires large scale physical mobilisation and organisation, which again shows why the arguments for implementing a lock down of social activity, a lock down that was pointless given that millions of workers were required to continue to go to work, and to thereby come in contact with each other, and was pointless given that 80% of the population is at no risk from COVID19, were reactionary.
The threat to the majority of workers from the forces of reaction, be they in the US, in Britain, in Europe, in India or elsewhere, and from the economic and social consequences of the lockdown are far more devastating and long lasting than COVID19 was ever going to be. Its time for the Left to wake up, and learn to think.
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