The Spirit of May 28th

Posted: July 8th, 2021 | Author: Red and Black | Filed under: General | Comments Off on The Spirit of May 28th

The Spirit of May 28th

By the SM28 Collective

Philadelphia-NYC, 2021

For almost a year now we’ve discussed the limits encountered during the George Floyd Uprising and how an organization could have helped us intervene. The SM28 collective is a product of these discussions. We write this document as a proposal for such an organisation: The Spirit of May 28th (SM28). 

Although we are currently experiencing a downturn in mass action, an organization can help us engage with the tactics and theories produced by the uprising to develop a strategy for revolution in the United States. Of course, we recognize that revolutions are not created by any specific group of revolutionaries, but by millions of proletarians. As such, the purpose of this organization isn’t to lead “the masses” towards revolution, but to recognize and develop those politics and strategies that are already oriented towards revolution, and to work to generalize them within mass struggles. 

This document expresses the politics and strategies that we have developed so far in this endeavor. It isn’t meant to be a final program for revolution. It is instead an initial outline of the basic principles from which we hope to develop a revolutionary organization.

A Membership Organization

This organization is open to anyone who participated in the revolts of 2020-2021.

A membership organization is needed because the uprising demanded a precise set of actions which could have only been possible with intense preparation. While subcultures, milieus, and looser formations can help us do this, the fact that so many self-professed revolutionaries were caught off guard during the uprising leads us to believe that some formalization of this preparation is required.

A membership organization is also necessary for purposes of accountability and coherency. Only a formal membership can ensure that those who make decisions and act on behalf of the organization are directly accountable to it and genuinely committed to the strategy and politics of the group. Membership criteria should include both political and financial commitments to the organization. At the same time, this wouldn’t be a cadre organization. It would instead keep its politics and organizational commitments to a minimal necessity, so that members can live holistic lives, participate in interesting social scenes, and maintain fresh legs for the coming struggles. While trying to build an organization of committed militants, we also want to avoid the time consuming internal life common to cadre groups, activist campaigns, and other practices of the social movement apparatus.

Equally important, SM28 is not about drilling a line into new members. Instead, we want to cultivate an organizational praxis that is accessible to all who are willing to fight for revolution. As long as they agree with the politics and strategy expressed in this text, we expect all members to be involved in a process of mutual recognition, practical reflexivity, open debate, political experimentation, and immanent critique in order to develop new theories, tactics, and strategies. We have learned that to see the world as honestly as possible is often the most challenging task facing small revolutionary formations.

Revolutionary Strategy 

The proposed organization is oriented around a revolutionary strategy, not leftist reform politics.

We believe that revolutionary organization and strategy should be derived from a fidelity to the insurgent contents of the uprising, its antagonism to racism, capitalism, and the state, and its implicit vision of a classless society. 

Reforms won by progressive social movements may be important, but they are not the goal of a revolutionary organization. For example, defunding the police is a popular strategy, but it’s difficult to imagine how this could threaten capitalism or the state, let alone lead to revolution. While a revolutionary organization might find itself struggling alongside those who seek to defund the police, it wouldn’t waste its energy and resources on such a cause. On the other hand, a movement that seeks to abolish the police could develop a revolutionary strategy if such a movement is oriented towards mass revolt, instead of a liberal fantasy of a world where everything is kept the same minus police and prisons. A revolutionary abolitionist strategy could help the anti-police revolt become conscious of itself as a force that can pose a real threat not only to the police but to the entire capitalist system.

The Black Revolt

The proposed organization sees the revolt of the Black proletariat as the harbinger of a larger struggle that includes all people. How this struggle connects to revolution is the fundamental question.

There are many blueprints for what revolution might look like in this country, but we are only on materialist grounds when we base our analysis on actual class struggles in the current historical moment, the most advanced of which has been the George Floyd Uprising, initiated by the Black proletariat. 

While we have educated guesses of what needs to happen next, we would rather stay open-ended towards the future and acknowledge that the Black proletariat itself has not solved the questions which may unlock revolution. For example, the contradiction between the Black proletariat and the Black counterinsurgency of middle and upper-class politicians, institutions, and activists. At the same, what makes the Black proletarian revolt so important is that it continues to bring all other struggles into its orbit. This observation isn’t meant to imply that poor and working class Black people are automatically revolutionary, nor does it mean that we are nationalists or prefer crass identity politics. It is instead a strategic argument, based on an analysis of US history and of those movements and struggles which have posed the greatest challenge to the American ruling class. 

Many important struggles have taken place in the United States, but Black struggles have consistently been the most insurrectionary and multi-racial. To this end, the central task of the organization is to connect the struggles of all people to the unfolding dynamic of the Black revolt. 

The Spirit Of May 28th

The Spirit of May 28th is one faction of the Party of George Floyd. We hope to see others come together in the future. 

We prefer the organization to be composed of participants of the uprising over activists and leftists. This will include not only those who directly fought the police, but also those who gave political and logistical support to the riots, strikes, occupations, autonomous zones, blockades, and other forms of mass struggle that proliferated during the uprising.

Most importantly, this organization won’t be permanent. As cycles of struggle come and go, this organization would measure itself on how it advances the class war. The moment the organization is no longer relevant or an obstacle to further struggle, this formation will cease to exist. 

If you agree with the politics and strategy of this proposal and would like to embark on this journey, contact us.

spiritofmay28@protonmail.com

 

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