On the Los Angeles Uprising

As of this writing, 56 people in Los Angeles have been arrested by the state for resisting terrorist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. 2,000 members of the National Guard have been deployed and 700 Marines have been detailed to protect the property of the ruling class. This conflict was sparked by the outrageous actions of the US Department of Homeland Security, which claims to have kidnapped nearly 14,000 people in the last week alone.

We have said before that in order for a revolt to carry over into a successful revolution, both the objective and subjective factors of a revolution must be in place. The objective factors are the material conditions which put pressure on a class and provoke it to respond in a spontaneous uprising. Subjective factors are the intentional political actions taken by the most active members of a class to strengthen the movement and drive it forward.

The Current Situation

The objective factors which set off this conflagration are numerous; first among them is the inhumane policy of kidnapping and family separation (which has intensified over the last decade but echoes the horrors of slavery and colonization which have steadfastly remained a motive force of US history). But the increasing hardship caused by rising prices and the mass trauma of the Imperialists’ genocide against Gaza have no doubt added to tensions. 

Beneath this surface lies the turning gears of class struggle, wherein the capitalist ruling class exploits both documented and undocumented workers. As profits are derived from the surplus value produced by workers, capitalists seek to increase their profits by reducing worker wages. One method of doing so is to create a sector of workers whose status is so precarious that they can be forced into taking the lowest wage possible. 

This is the purpose of the war on undocumented workers. If workers from the global south — almost exclusively from countries the US has bombed or destabilized — were given proper documentation and the right to openly seek work, they would demand the same labor rights that documented workers have (meager as those are). Even if foreign workers were not given documentation, but were left in unregulated limbo, they would eventually come together and demand greater labor rights as they did during the immigrants rights protest of May Day 2006. In order to act as a downward force on wages, foreign workers must remain undocumented and they must be subjected to a campaign of terrorism to cow them into silence and submission. 

We must emphasize that capitalists want undocumented workers to come into the US. Capitalists want them to remain undocumented and capitalists want to subject them to violence and humiliation in order to force them to accept low wages. That includes President Trump and the entire cohort of viciously racist politicians who back him, as well as the ‘moderate’ democrats who have quietly but enthusiastically built an apparatus of mass deportation and detainment over the last two decades. 

The migrant crisis is manufactured, which is why it has never been ‘solved’. It is fueled by imperialist war and CIA operations which fund cartels and traffic the drugs they produce to Black and Brown communities in the US. The crisis is then intensified by the refusal of bourgeois politicians to grant migrant workers the right to work and live freely — instead brutalizing them with raids, detention, and deportation. 

The status quo, which suppresses the wages of terrorized migrants and in turn lowers the floor for the wages of documented citizens, is the ideal outcome for the bourgeoisie. However, the working class, both documented and undocumented, united in struggle, has a say as well. In Los Angeles, with selfless courage and iron determination, the working class has declared that there is a point beyond which they will not be moved. 

Political Leadership 

As was the case in the George Floyd Uprisings of 2020, there is no clear political leadership to focus the energy of the masses into a single blow against the main enemy. The heroism of the spontaneous masses surpasses that which is needed, but the most politically active communists and socialists have proven unequal to the task of leading the struggle. Lions led by donkeys have never found their way to victory. 

The subjective factor, as has been the case since the height of the state’s mid century Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), is underdeveloped and anemic. The network of cadre required to spread agitation and propaganda amongst the working class during times of acute struggle has not yet been sown together. The masses do not have ready at hand an analysis of the political situation and a clear direction of movement. 

What history demands of those of us in the political struggle now is to throw ourselves into the effort of political leadership and of organization building at the same time. We do not choose the circumstances under which we struggle. We can only choose whether or not to give our all. 

Political Action

What’s required now is for communists to go out amongst the working class; entering workplaces, knocking on doors, and making phone calls. We must explain to workers (1) that the ICE raids and the vicious state repression required to maintain them are an assault on the entire working class — an attempt by the bourgeoisie to wrest more of our earnings from our hands by force of arms. We must explain (2) that a working class united across racial, national, and gender lines, between documented and undocumented, will give us the strength to beat back the rising tide of this repression. We must (3) encourage those workers who have not joined the struggle to take to the streets in condemnation of ICE. To stand in solidarity with those currently under direct attack, as an attack on one is an attack on all. Lastly, we must (4) show these workers how to organize in their own places of work and help them build durable structures to prepare for the long struggle ahead. We must prepare them to go on strike for better conditions and to stop ICE raids. We must do this urgently before the forces of liberal co-option descend on the movement to lead it into reform and irrelevance — as happened in 2020. 

The time is now. We have before us another historical inflection point where we have the opportunity to advance the struggle forward by a giant stride. We must not allow it to slip by. We must advance with determination. The contradiction between the world proletariat and the imperialists who seek nothing but plunder and death is sharpening. Revolutionaries across the planet have shouldered the burden of resistance and we must join them.