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9/16/2025 American Communists, the Lumpenproletariat, and the Prospect of Civil War By: Rainer SheaRead Now The American Communist Party’s chairman Haz Al-Din has said that civil war is coming to the United States, but that this civil war will not look like a fight between conventional armies.[1] Instead, he concludes, it will look like a breakdown in governance, and a further normalization of violence throughout our society. This, observes Haz, is something that our ruling class has already made us used to: “the mistake people make is thinking the breakdown of Federal authority will be dramatic. The truth is that we have already gotten used to that breakdown. Lawlessness is already normal in many parts of this country. It won't take much for a constitutional crisis to lead to a divided consensus as far as who the president is.”[2] As our elites engineer this great domestic conflict, an instrumental ally that they’ll need in order to carry out the violence is the “lumpenproletariat.”[3] This is the social class that’s unable to make a living off of doing work for the bourgeoisie, whether because of unemployment or wages which are too low, and has thereby been pushed into subsisting at least partially through illicit means. The parts of the lumpenproletariat that use violence to advance their material interests, such as gangs, are often actively cultivated by the capitalist state. So they are going to play a crucial role in this civil war that our divided rulers will wage against each other, and against the American people. This does not mean, though, that the workers should necessarily treat the lumpenproletariat as their class enemies. In fact, when one investigates our conditions today, it becomes apparent that a growing number of American workers are themselves becoming incrementally more “lumpenized.” This is the outcome of the unemployment and inflation crises that our country is experiencing: more and more people are getting pushed into making a living at least partly through underground activities, or activities that should be illegal but have been elevated by the bourgeoisie.[4] Perhaps the most shameful example of this trend is the rise of the sex industry that we’ve seen throughout the 2020s, which is a tragedy that illustrates what role communists must have in combating lumpenization.[5] The ACP takes the position that all aspects of the sex industry must be abolished, and such a policy would of course come with economic replacements for so-called “sex work.” Under the system that American Marxists are going to build, the sex industry and all other lumpen income outlets will no longer be things that people are incentivized to seek out, as our economy will be structured around ensuring limitless growth in our society’s collective prosperity. Prior to when the workers have overthrown the capitalist state, there are ways that communists can show we offer the lumpenized masses a way out of their circumstances; namely programs to aid and restore our communities, which the party has already been engaging in. But to get a sense of what a long-term effort at organizing the masses looks like within a lumpenized country, we need to study Haiti, and the popular movement that’s been constructed there by Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.[6] In terms of where its class struggle has gone, Haiti represents essentially the best-case scenario for a society that’s been de-proletarianized, and whose people desire to undo this economic destruction. In Haiti, the gangs have been successfully unified; which is a project that won’t necessarily be part of the USA’s revolution, but is required given Haiti’s level of lumpenization. Throughout the areas where Cherizier’s forces have taken control, the people have become able to govern themselves without the institutions of the neo-colonial mercenary regime, and the revolutionary movement has begun a program to educate the children.[7] Barbecue’s movement is a force that can catalyze new popular victories all across America, and this revolutionary wave started in a country that’s been de-proletarianized to an exceptional extent. With this civil war that our ruling class is engineering, the different wings of the capitalist class are vying for control over imperial spoils which keep growing scarcer. And this rivalry among our class enemies has the potential to catalyze a revolutionary scenario, where the proletariat and their class allies unite to overthrow the exploiters. During World War I, when the capitalists of the different imperialist countries were at odds with each other, Lenin observed how this kind of inter-bourgeois conflict “inevitably creates, on the basis of an objective revolutionary situation, revolutionary sentiments in the masses. Our duty is to help make these sentiments conscious, to deepen them and give them form. The only correct expression of this task is the slogan ‘Turn the imperialist war into civil war.’ All consistent class struggle in time of war, all ‘mass action’ earnestly conducted must inevitably lead to this.”[8] This advice also applies to our conditions, but in a different way. Our task is to end the civil war that our ruling class has created, and thereby unify the American masses behind the effort at building socialism. This kind of civil war is today’s version of the old inter-imperialist wars; it’s another case of the capitalists fighting amongst themselves over imperialism’s super-profits. So when America’s people do the equivalent of “turning the imperialist war into civil war,” it will look like a project to bring the lumpenized masses out of their powerless state, and into a cohesive, organized revolutionary unit. Parts of the lumpen will be successfully recruited to fight our inter-capitalist civil war, but many other parts can and must be brought to the revolutionary side. Bringing in the lumpenproletariat does not mean that communists must make their organizing efforts lumpenized, i.e. instilled with the habits and attitudes of the lumpenproletariat; in fact it means the opposite. Bringing in the lumpen means providing an opportunity for those who’ve been shoved out of the working-class to enter back into it. In the long term, this will look like an actual state program to eliminate unemployment, at least to the extent that work is still necessary as technology outmodes ever-more types of human labor. In the short term, this will look like a campaign to economically uplift our impoverished communities in the ways that a party can when it’s not yet in power; we must create more businesses, more opportunities for people to get resources via party aid, more sources of subsistence that don’t come from lumpenproletarian exploitation. It’s only by staying diligent about these efforts to assist the people that we’ll be able to lead the people, and give them the means to overcome the bourgeoisie’s manufactured chaos. Footnotes [1] Haz Al-Din, “Social Media Post on X (formerly Twitter),” X (June 1, 2024): https://x.com/infrahaz/status/1796985206961746364?s=46 [2] ibid. [3] Justin P. Holt, The Social Thought of Karl Marx (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014), 105. [4] Ja’Mea Thomas, “When Basic Needs Aren’t Met: How a Lack of Resources Can Drive Criminal Behavior,” Empower CDC (October 30, 2023): https://empowercdc.org/news-events/newsroom.html/article/2023/10/30/when-basic-needs-aren-t-met-how-a-lack-of-resources-can-drive-criminal-behavior [5] Janisse Miles, “Another Form of Gig Work: The 202s Sex-Work Boom,” Workers World (March 23, 2023): https://www.workers.org/2023/03/70026/amp/ [6] Al Jazeera Staff, “‘Overthrow the System’: Haiti Gang Leader Cherizier Seeks Revolution,” Al Jazeera (March 16, 2024): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/16/overthrow-the-system-haiti-gang-leader-cherizier-seeks-revolution [7] Tom Phillips and Luke Taylor, “Is the Feared Gang Boss ‘Barbecue’ Now the Most Powerful Man in Haiti?” The Guardian (March 10, 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/10/haiti-gang-boss-kingpin-barbecue-jimmy-cherizier [8] Vladimir Lenin, "Turn Imperialist War Into Civil War,” Marxists.org (August 1915): https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/v03n21/lenin.htm Author Rainer Shea Archives September 2025
2 Comments
Jon
9/23/2025 05:07:21 pm
"where the proletariat and their class allies unite to overthrow the exploiters."
Jon
9/26/2025 09:57:50 pm
Also Lenin, who was in favor of the option to secede and recognition of the correct nations, made it clear that the colonies in the U.S. should have "entire freedom:" Leave a Reply. |
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