Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism

Chapter Two

Isn’t capitalism international? How is a small tenant organization in Chicago connected to such a global struggle?

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

“Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”'

There is strictly speaking, no tenant movement that encompasses the entire world. Housing is provisioned in different ways in different countries. The rent relation that binds landlords and tenants is common throughout the core imperialist countries, i.e. Europe and North America in particular. This similarity has already led to efforts to connect the various movements. For example, ACTA is a member and actively involved in the constitution of the Tenant International (TI). Though still in its infancy, TI is attempting to link up every front in the war on landlords around the world but is currently composed almost exclusively of European and North American organizations. This is not a result of eurocentrism, but a reflection of the way housing is provisioned differently in the so-called ‘advanced’ countries versus the underdeveloped ones.

Nevertheless, renting houses does appear within limits in most countries in the world—as a rule, concentrated in cities—and there is reason to believe that the rent relation will increase globally, wherever capitalist development reworks nations in the image of the advanced countries. In the meantime, if the tenants’ struggle is to adopt a more geographically comprehensive orientation right away, it would have to consider itself less specifically as a part of the housing struggle. This brings it closer in principle to the most enduring form of struggle in history: land struggle.

In any case, ACTA is certain that the dwellings of the international working class, no matter their form or content, are one of the centers of a bitter war around the working class’ principal and most precious possession: their labor-power. The tenant struggle is a particular expression of this war that has emerged with the development of capitalism in the core and semi-peripheral countries. For examples of housing/land struggles that are not quite tenant struggles, we point to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil, the squatters movements throughout Africa, in particular Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa.

ACTA believes that it is advisable to be specific, because revolutions require revolutionary strategies and revolutionary strategies must be concrete. Therefore, we are happy to embrace the tenant struggle as our home, however, we will never turn away from the fact that we are internationalist in orientation and ambition, an orientation which derives from our commitment to revolutionary socialism.

How is this internationalism expressed then, if not directly through the tenant organizing?

To preface this, we’d like to say that the popular slogan about all struggles being interconnected is a one-sided truth. What is true is that all oppression and exploitation is interconnected. This is precisely due to imperialism, which has created the international division of labor and made a truly universal connective tissue out of the productive activity of men.

These connections do exist in various material processes of imperialism. For example, there are real political connections between the IDF and American police forces and economic connections between American corporations and the exploitation of South America. But when it comes to the links between our activity in Chicago and the broader struggle, we cannot be satisfied with substituting these existing connections outside our reach, considered abstractly, for the real connections which must be created between our activity and the world. For this, we must be capable of making a concrete analysis of these conditions of imperialism in relation to specific objectives. It is the second part which goes so misunderstood. It is not going to cut it to assert that Chicago is connected to, for example, Palestine, unless we can first, show how the links actually function and grasp their development. Second, do this from the standpoint of the real fact of our political activity—in other words, our practice; e.g. reconstruct the Palestinian struggle to include the connections that we and our organized comrades are capable of intervening in objectively. Third, in the course of doing that, discover the limits of our current practice and develop it to a higher stage where we can intervene in the connections which lie beyond our limits.

If we take this challenge seriously, we’re afraid that we will find that while the imperialists have made the connection between Chicago and the world system in reality, present anti-imperialists have by-and-large only made this connection in theory. This is a big problem. To seriously combat the vast links of oppression made by the imperialist system, we certainly must theorize them, but we cannot forget to attempt to prove the reality of these hypothesized connections with the test of organized, practical fighting. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Among other things, ACTA believes we must make material connections between organizations here and there and begin to organize together. The precondition of such connections is our own organization’s capability to forge and maintain these real, practical links; and this shows us the way to a first link in the chain of connections: build an organization capable of creating and maintaining such connections. This is the only basis on which our organized resistance can connect to other struggles in reality.

But this remains quite an abstract conclusion, although internationalism is at some level about having revolutionary principles. We uphold the view that it does not ultimately matter what we think or say about ourselves, it matters what our total activity amounts to. ACTA accepts the point of view that the abstract is a one-sided category while the concrete is the unity of the many determinations. In shorthand, we could say that thinking abstractly is to simplify, while thinking concretely is to complexify. But the latter is not reducible to compiling a bunch of information willy-nilly, it is about arranging lots of information in a way that leaves us with a guide to action. Therefore we will give a brief example of the role played by concrete analysis in ACTA and at the same time show how “internationalism” materializes in our organization.

At the most general level, it is certainly true that Burkina Faso and the USA are concretely connected by chains of debt and trade which flow through the IMF, and these connections impose themselves

upon the actual people living in each country, changing their behavior. This is an abstract depiction of the interconnections and, more importantly, it vaguely describes the connections of imperialism, and says nothing about the interconnections of struggle let alone anything concrete.

“Burkina Faso” is an abstraction if we do not consider the social classes within it. If we split Burkina into the industrial working class, the agrarian class, and the bourgeoisie, just to name a few examples of classes present in Burkinabé society, we complicate our conception of Burkina Faso, but we also introduce connections which begin to bring us towards the level of the concrete. Forces begin to take shape and the trajectory of the country becomes clearer even as the overall picture becomes more complex. But if we were simply to conclude at this point that the national bourgeoisie must have an upper hand (because, for example, the analyst is satisfied to copy over his understanding of the class structure in the United States), we would have stopped before reconstructing a concrete conception of the country. We must continue our reconstruction of the totality by restoring additional elements until we have brought the picture into focus.

In the case of Burkina Faso, the analyst should go on to review the influence of France, the US, Russia, the other African powers, the complicated relation between the Islamic insurgents of the north and Ukrainian and NATO forces, the supposedly “disinterested” parties such as Germany, and of course the Fulani and Tuareg. This list could go on indefinitely, bringing us closer to a concrete conception. We should also recognize the ideological distinctions within the Burkinabé classes, for example, between those who support the ambitions of the national bourgeoisie with less qualification and those who hold a more revolutionary socialist vantage point—in the specific case of Burkina Faso, we have the vestiges of Thomas Sankara’s influence which still motivates certain strata of the people.

For brevity, we will pause our example here with the hope that it has done a part to concretize what we mean by concrete analysis itself.

But, what is the point of this type of detailed study of an African nation? What is concrete analysis for? As US revolutionaries we do not undertake this task in order to arrive at the “correct line” on the Traoré government to argue online and make slogans. We do not discourage general study and curiosity, but the type of analysis which produces real practical knowledge and leads us towards revolution is always oriented towards particular problems. Abstract knowledge may be useful one day, but it is no substitute for the cultivation of concrete knowledge on the part of the organization as a whole. The example of Burkina Faso is concrete for ACTA because we have made connections with organizations in Burkina Faso who are actually navigating the present conditions of the class struggle. By understanding these forces concretely, we can, firstly, know the real interconnections imperialism has given. In other words, we can locate ourselves in relation to Burkina and understand the limits of this relation.

Secondly and much more consequentially, with an understanding of our relation and its limits, we can attempt to transform these relations by overcoming these limits. We are revolutionary socialists and we desire to act in ways which strengthen the oppressed, the international working class. In this case, that is through its subsections in both the US and Burkina Faso. As far as we’re concerned, figuring out how to do this—always concretely—is the essential purpose of political organization as such.

Our connection is with a small school in the capital city, Ouagadougou, called the Centre Thomas Sankara. The organizers of the school are the teachers, they are called sofas, and they work with kids of elementary, middle and high school ages. The sofas are pan-African socialists and so they are engaged primarily in raising and spreading revolutionary consciousness among the young generation of Burkinabé. So the Centre is a place where kids can go to learn about revolutionary history in Africa and throughout the colonized world, as well as study directly the writing and speeches of Thomas Sankara, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Samora Machel, etc. Most significantly, they are in the early stages of reviving Sankara’s Young Pioneer program.

ACTA’s role in this is through the assistance with curriculum and learning materials at the Centre. Several of our members belong to an international organization called Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye (CCTE), an organization of comrades who specialize in pedagogy and develop our practice by making links between different communist or pan-Africanist fighters around the world and helping them with their political education.

In Chicago, CCTE’s emphasis on pedagogy is at the very center of ACTA, as well. Like the sofas in Ouagadougou, we believe that fortifying a revolutionary movement means raising up the next generation of fighters. Therefore, there is a special division in ACTA made of four members who are beginning to organize a youth wing called the Young Questioneers. They focus entirely on developing youth education. The mechanism for this education is completely specific to the ACTA infrastructure and relies on the effective operation of ACTA as a whole.

For example, ACTA’s main activity is mass work and it is focused (currently) in the West Side of Chicago. Extensive direct experience has revealed that the tenants inside of the apartment buildings throughout these areas include thousands of children and young people whose parents have extremely limited resources. Door after door, parents tell us that more than anything else they want better for their kids. Better houses, of course, but also better futures, better ways to spend their time, better ways to learn and stay active and safe. On the other hand, poverty traps them, it is hard for them to travel to other parts of town and violence drives a common fear of spending excessive amounts of time outdoors.

In short, the YQ group’s central objective is to learn the conditions. They use the reports from ACTA’s mass work for this, including their own direct investigation at mass work themselves. Then, they attempt to develop education that is appropriate for the specific, concrete situation. Currently, this takes the shape of monthly packages that get delivered (also by ACTA’s forces) directly to the doors of families in the apartment buildings. Each month, the learning materials are themed around problems discovered by talking to the families. For example, a recent theme was around young people’s attitudes toward making mistakes.

Each theme is also given a specific international emphasis, so learning always introduces kids to revolutionary movements in other parts of the world; India, Palestine, Cuba, and of course Burkina Faso. Because we are simultaneously helping organize education in Ouagadougou, this has allowed us to join efforts. We send material that is made with the kids here to Ouagadougou. Materials produced by the Young Pioneers at the Centre are shared with the kids here.

We can see in this example, how ACTA’s basis of organization is a dynamic foundation on which new forms and frontiers of the

struggle can be built, including international ones. It is the material basis that permits the young people in slums of the West Side to know the young people in the capital of Burkina Faso. Of course, this basis of organization greatly improves our ability to organize more traditional types of international solidarity, too; arranging fundraisers that address our comrades’ direct needs, helping them promote their own efforts to a wider audience, raising awareness of their struggle, etc. It is self-evident that our link with Burkina Faso is very small and still insignificant in the grand scheme. We are not delusional about our level of influence on the development of the present Burkinabé revolution nor about their current interest in ours.

But, these examples should illustrate that ACTA is dead serious about being an internationalist organization and would never flatter itself for making slogans and releasing statements that profess “our line” on this or that movement in some other part of the world. We recognize that if there is ever going to be a real interconnection of struggle, it has to begin like this. Our dream is for the Centre in Ouagadougou to grow and gain influence, and we aim to help it however we can.

At the same time, we want ACTA’s influence and power to grow until at some point both of our organizations are powerful and linked in ways that go beyond our current limits of youth education and raising consciousness, and take us into the realm of revolutionary strategy. Our tasks will always be to break through the limits concretely and rise to a higher stage of fighting. If this is possible—and we are certain it is—our organizations here and there (ACTA, CTS, CCTE) cannot be given up or allowed to fall into ruin, or else the interconnection of imperialism will remain unbreakable. It is our organization which provides the motive force for acting upon all the conclusions of our analysis. No matter the precision and critical integrity of such analyses, the weapon of criticism must pass over into the criticism of our weapons or else theory remains a dead letter.

As our comrades - and B.S.Ph have written succinctly, “The lack of clear and precise political analysis gives excuses to the people in the belly of the beast to evade their responsibility to humanity by seriously engaging in the struggle to destroy the imperialist system.”