[News] The State and White supremacy: The Inextricable Link

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.blackagendareport.com/state-and-white-supremacy-inextricable-link
The
State and White supremacy: The Inextricable Link
Ajamu Baraka - 08 Jul 2020
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The demand for “justice” by the pubic had the ironic result of
re-legitimizing the state as an institution that could in fact render
justice – but only an empowered people can establish a just order.

*“It is the settler state, and the corrupt colonial/capitalist system and
the interests that it upholds, that must be the target.”*

As an ongoing phenomenon, the analysis of what is referred to as the George
Floyd, or now the “Black Lives Matter” demos, must be necessarily
tentative. It has been instructive to observe how the energy and passion of
the spontaneous militant response to the murder of George Floyd went from a
movement that saw the burning of a police station transformed into one in
which, according to Martin Schoots-McAlpine
<https://mronline.org/2020/07/03/anatomy-of-a-counter-insurgency/?fbclid=IwAR07aeaYZMaG6Bw43YqZEfe8O339Mx-pJuRvzOxLYen0G8xpfA2O57jL0X0>,
the most militant demand was to make “minor amendments to municipal
budgets.” I will resist the temptation of attempting to address all the
components and will only focus on one central element in this short essay.
That element is the nature and role of the state — an element that has
almost disappeared from liberal/left discourse and analysis but is
essential for understanding the current political moment.

As the article by Schools-McAlphine lays out in meticulous detail, the
state was able to engage in an effective counterinsurgency strategy in
response to the protests in cities and towns across the country, which
achieved many of its goals and objectives. And while I will not attempt to
cover those arguments, I will restate my analysis that corresponds to many
of the points in the article.

*“The state was able to engage in an effective counterinsurgency strategy.”*

The state was able to meet many of its counterinsurgency goals primarily
because of the unevenness of political development that is reflected in the
spontaneity and the narrow and amorphous demands for something called
justice and then for ending “racism” or “white supremacy.” I characterized
those objectives as to 1) get people off the streets in mass numbers, 2)
split the movement by empowering moderates and isolating radicals,
especially white radicals, 3) flip the oppositional energy into a
re-legitimization of the state and 4) drive the remaining energy into the
dead-end of policy wonkism.

I wrote about this as it was unfolding in real time: The media’s fixation
was on property crimes and the “violence” of the protestors; the white
outside agitator; the PR stunts by the police kneeling and even joining in
with some of the protests; the state’s attempts to colonize/co-opt with the
painting of BLM slogans on the street; and state officials joining demos –
that is, after they had effectively separated out the militants and created
the narrative of the good, peaceful protestor.

And finally, the appropriation of the actions by the Democratic Party as a
referendum on Trump since, of course, he is responsible for racism, police
violence and state repression!

*We Must be Clear About the Nature of the State*

In contrast to the liberal conception of a state and government, V.I. Lenin
asserted in the pamphlet, *State and Revolution*, that a state was
essentially “an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one
class by another.”

A central component of that class rule is that the state has a monopoly
over the legitimate exercise of coercive force. But beyond the element of
force, the state is made up of government, social institutions like
educational institutions. But the modern, advanced capitalist states also
have incorporated into the state all of the cultural and ideological
apparatuses like the media, entertainment, and now the social media.

All states represent the interests of its dominant class. A state
representing the interests of workers and all oppressed through the
colonial capitalist order would be fundamentally different than the current
U.S. state, which represents the interests of the white male super-minority
capitalist ruling class.

The U.S. state that was established coming out of its bourgeois war of
independence and consolidated in 1791, represented the interests of the
white male slavocracy. The white power represented in its founding
documents, and its constitution represents a continuity of white
supremacist power right up to this very moment. That is why the
concentration on the so-called confederacy, at the time when people are
talking about removing symbols of white supremacy, is so absurd and
ahistorical.

*“The U.S. state represents the interests of the white male super-minority
capitalist ruling class.”*

As an instrument of class rule, and in the context of a settler
colonial-capitalist state ruling on a white supremacist ideological
foundation, the state is not a neutral force that can be appealed to. It
has no autonomous rational character. It does not arbitrate disputes or
contradictory demands from the oppressed people. Rather, it will modify
those demands so that they remain within the bounds of the existing state.
The state will give the appearance of attempting to respond to certain
demands as an ideological device only when open repression is not necessary
or would create political problems.

For example, the call to defund and abolish the police can be viewed as a
democratic or transitional strategic demand that represents an
understanding of the role of the police as a protector of oppressive white
colonial power. The strategic ideological and organizational objective of
that demand should be to create awareness of the real role of the state and
to facilitate the building of an independent organizational power based in
the working class in order to create the conditions for the elimination of
the police — the capture and dismantling of the oppressive bourgeois
state.

With that basic understanding, there is clarity that two interconnecting
errors were being made by the forces who separate the demand for abolition
of the police and prisons from the state and its role as an instrument of
class rule: first, operating within context of a liberal idealist
framework; and secondly, normalizing the existing state by the implication
that the state can make alterations in its basic institutions of class
control without having to be fundamentally changed.

That is precisely why the protests and the demand for something called
“justice” by the pubic had the ironic, or contradictory, result of
re-legitimation of white supremacy by re-legitimizing the state as an
institution that could in fact render justice!

*Reversing the Effects of the 1970s Counterinsurgency Against the Radical
Black Movement*

As a consequence of the vicious counterinsurgency waged against the Black
Liberation Movement, which intensified during the administration of Richard
Nixon and continued throughout the 1970s, even after the revelations of the
FBI’s COINTELPRO, the Movement was devastated. This created opportunities
for the ascendency of the Black petit-bourgeois administrative/managerial
class that assumed political positions in municipal governments and even in
Congress.

For our liberation forces, the disruption of organizational continuity
meant that the experiential knowledge from militant struggles of the past
and the moves made by the state to counter mass resistance has also been
disrupted. It has meant that the last few generations have been forced to
construct new knowledge — a process heavily influenced by their experiences
in academia. Post modernism and Afro pessimism has produced a toxic brew of
confusion which, out of the necessity of the battle being waged over the
last few weeks, some are just beginning to emerge from.

That is what is hopeful.

Although the state was able to achieve its goals, these goals were/are
short-term and stop-gap. The objective conditions of the collapse of the
national and global economy and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic translates
into a situation where the state is still facing a formidable challenge
because the structural crisis of capital has produced a set of
irreconcilable contradictions.

Subjectively, large numbers of the young unemployed and underemployed petit
bourgeoisie have been radicalized. Disparate but increasingly connected
processes are developing that are leading toward the consolidation of a
“new left” that will be grounded by the leadership of Black radical
organizations, networks, and coalitions.

This will be the foundation of the intellectual and organizational
leadership of the more longer-term resistance in the U.S.

*“The structural crisis of capital has produced a set of irreconcilable
contradictions.”*

These Black formations will not see a dime of the massive amounts of money
coming down the pipeline from the settler state and its associated
institutions and the corporate sector. Why? Because these Black radical
organizations, networks and coalitions are clear that it is the settler
state, and the corrupt colonial/capitalist system and the interests that it
upholds, that must be the target.

And while we recognize the righteous anger that our people have for the
occupation forces in our communities, we also recognize that the police are
one, albeit important, institution that must be brought under the control
of the people if we are to have community self-determination as a
collective human right.

The complete control of and democratic governance of territory where Black
working-class people reside will represent a necessary qualitative
development in self-reliant organization.

However, we operate under no illusions about what it will take to develop
that capacity. Moreover, when it comes to the state’s repressive function
as the leading edge of white capitalist rule, we understand that it will
not voluntarily relinquish control of that apparatus. Therefore, the task
is crystal clear: If one wants peace, human rights, self-determination and
social justice in societies — in harmony with the needs and rights of
mother earth — we must take and dismantle the capitalist state apparatus,
take power from the capitalist minority, and build socialism. Any
position short of that is a liberal and reactionary distortion.

*Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and
was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka
serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership
body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and
contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing
columnist for Counterpunch.** He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial
2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in
journalism.   *
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