Red Machete
Points of Unity
2023
As a group we commit to struggle along these lines and use these as guides towards goals, practice, and who we build with internally and externally.
Revolutionary Intersectional Feminist Praxis and Queer and Trans Liberation:
Red Machete (RM) centers a revolutionary intersectional feminist praxis (theory and practice) in our organizing. Our feminism is based on understanding and centering those most impacted and marginalized in capitalist white supremacist cis-hetero patriarchy. While eschewing identity politics, we center those feminisms with a class analysis, center the fight against white supremacy, and seek the abolition of the gender binary. Feminized labor and reproductive labor is often situated as some of the most undervalued, underpaid, under resourced work in this society and RM seeks to dismantle gendered labor with the binary. We respect and learn from those within the spectrum of care labor in this society, which is feminized and exploited. Our feminism is militantly against transphobia and homophobia, and we do the work internally to deconstruct and understand the privileges and oppression that cis hetero patriarchy imposes on society. Relationship building is central to our feminist practice.
Anti Imperialist and Anti-Capitalist:
RM understands we live in a class society, dividing people based on their relationship to the means of production - the means of generating surplus capital, or profit. The bourgeoisie (capitalist ruling class) controls and owns the means of production in capitalist society. This includes the land, the factories, the machinery, the finance capital, etc. The state is also controlled by those that control the means of production, meaning that the state in a capitalist society exists to protect the interest of the bourgeoisie. The other side of the coin is the proletariat (the working class), those of us who have to sell our labor for a wage just to survive. Either we sell our labor or we die in a capitalist society.
We seek an overturning of this economic system and a flipping of the coin where the working class controls the means of production collectively, and controls the state mechanism to be able to protect and fight for our interests as a class. We will continue to struggle until the bourgeoisie and their class collaborators cease to exist, and we can further the socialist transition of society to communism, based 'from each according to their ability to each according to their needs.'
Our anti-imperialism centers on fighting United States (U.S.) economic and hegemonic rule all over the world. We understand imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism” as Lenin said, meaning that imperialism is capitalism in it’s monopoly stage.
“Imperialism is that stage of capitalism where the control of land, culture, and power has been established via colonialism, and then transitioned to a control via finance, politics, resource, and the implicit threat of violence.” —All African Peoples Revolutionary Party
The United States imposes it's economic neoliberal will across the globe through wars, sanctions and structural adjustment programs, often tied to trade agreements. Neoliberalism is defined as free market capitalism which includes privatization, western economic dominance, and austerity at home and abroad. The U.S. also imposes its interests through global economic institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and deeply unfair trade agreements made with desperate countries or with neo-colonial elites that the west has put in power. Other aspects of U.S. imperialism and neoliberal economics look like: NATO, AFRICOM, the 750 military bases in at least 80 countries worldwide, and the U.S. military’s budget exceeding the next 10 largest military budgets combined. We seek to do battle against this system here in the belly of the beast and support our comrades globally who are fighting in a principled way against U.S. and Western Imperialism.
Against White Supremacy, Colonialism, Neo-colonialism and Fascism:
RM understands the foundations of U.S. capitalism is settler colonialism and white supremacy. As a settler colonial society, the intention was the genocide of Native Americans and populating their land with settlers. This continues in various ways today. This sort of society also existed in South Africa (known as apartheid) and currently operates in Israel. Several oppressed nationalities in the U.S. have survived generations of colonial violence displacement, and oppression, particularly the Afrikan, Latine/Mexicano, Native American, and Puerto Rican communities. Puerto Rico still exists as a direct colony of the U.S. today. Other "territories" the U.S. claims include Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We are in solidarity with progressive national liberation struggles, sovereignty movements, anti-colonial movements and movements for self determination. When genocide and assimilation were not enough, neo-colonialism was used on the direct colonies, promoting small sections of the oppressed Afrikan, Native American, Mexicano/Chicano and Puerto Rican communities to serve the interests of the (settler) colonial economic ambitions, and presenting them as a voice for neoliberal economic policies and continued exploitation of their communities. The Democratic Party and business unions (unions that exist to protect the interests of maintaining capitalism) and other settler entities such as tribal governments and non profits are tools used in the neo-colonial system to recruit and put oppressed nationalities in positions of influence within their communities, and continue neo-colonial plunder of those very same communities. Abroad this looks like the forming of a comprador bourgeoisie class (neo-colonial elites) in other countries to serve the interests of imperialists in the metropole.
“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”― George L. Jackson
Fascism, which as George Jackson speaks of, has always been here for Afrikan, Native American, and colonized people. Fascism must be understood as a tool of the bourgeoisie. It is utilized when capitalism enters into crisis. Settler capitalism has always been in crisis around how to respond to Afrikan, Native American, Puerto Rican, and other anti-colonial resistance in the metropole. History shows the systemic and brutal legality of repression and control mechanisms the capitalist state has used against colonized people, especially Afrikan and Native American oppression. Anti-fascism, to us then, means fighting against settler white supremacist capitalism and its state apparatus in the first sense.
The rise of grassroots far right and white nationalism in the U.S. and globally, is both a tool of the bourgeoisie and autonomous from it. The far right is allowed to flourish in times of crisis to further divide the working class. This often creates various localized crisis situations that we must deal with, but also can distract us from the real enemy. The rhetoric and violence of the far right must be stamped out in the streets as community defense, coupled with mass education to settler youth to draw them away from embracing these reactionary ideas and to help them to disassociate from whiteness and to side with the working class.
We Are A Revolutionary Decolonial Communist Organization:
Revolutionaries understand that violent, oppressive systems cannot be reformed. We recognize that calls for peaceful revolution among a violent ruling class only further oppresses those who are continuously harmed by the results of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy. Revolutionaries denounce performative protests while emphasizing the vitality of dismantling and abolishing the current structures in place.
We take inspiration from Marxist revolutionaries who developed their ideas through struggling against imperialism, colonialism, settler colonialism and neo-colonialism. In the U.S. this means to center the fight against white supremacy, settler colonialism, and neo-colonialism. We see this as the strategic necessity towards building a communist movement in the belly of the beast, and the main contradiction in the way of revolutionary struggle in the U.S.
Our communism is rooted in being anti-dogmatic and recognizing that revolution in the U.S. MUST be based on a historical materialist analysis of the U.S. We cannot replicate revolutions that have happened or are happening in other countries. To paraphrase Joel Olson, we believe that communists in the U.S. have more to learn from the Black Liberation movement about how to make revolution here, than we do from long dead Europeans. We take this to heart and center our work on fighting white supremacy as a strategic mechanism to unite as much of the working class and to build a force capable of contributing to the overthrow of U.S. hegemony and imperialism. As communists we recognize there is no peaceful transition of power. We recognize that, unlike previous generations, we face a literal existential crisis of capitalist climate catastrophe. We believe that now more than ever, it is time to find each other and organize. To unite as many as we can with the goal of taking power from the bourgeoisie, transitioning to socialism, and building towards communism. We must keep our eye on the prize, and understand our enemies. We must push for a better world before it devolves into barbarism, or most life is extinct.
Towards the Revolution.
For Communism.
Red Machete.