On Homelessness: A Growing Site of Lumpen Organizing
The complex issue of dealing with homelessness here in the imperialist center has led to much debate within our party. In our current stage, we are engaged in consciousness building and raising public opinion, while it is our proletarian morality which compels us to struggle against oppression in all arenas. Homelessness is a crisis more serious than fentanyl and yet the capitalist state via its “supreme kourt” has recently determined that codifying homeless “sweeps” of encampments and criminalizing the homeless for being displaced is their remedy for the economic depression that capitalism creates. Surely communists can think of a far more humynizing solution.
At the same time, our responsibility here in the First World is not to follow the capitalist state around with a rag to wipe up its spills and a dust pan and broom to pick up its litter. We are not brainstorming to create reforms that simply make life in the occupied territories more bearable. We must fight oppression while serving the revolution.
Homeless Have National Oppression to Blame
The capitalist system is ultimately behind all social ills, and it was capitalism that first created a “surplus population”, which includes much of the homeless. However, looking particularly at recent rises in homelessness in the so-called United $tates, we can see how national oppression played a significant role in who became homeless.
During the 1960s and 70s, as the national liberation struggles peaked in the United $nakes, the movement suffered extreme repression from the U.$. government. Death and prison helped Amerika scale down the rise in resistance among the lumpen. As the 1980s arrived, so too did the introduction of crack cocaine to the ghetto streets – and soon followed mass incarceration. It’s important to note that during the 1960s and 70s there was not a homeless epidemic and there were no massive homeless encampments in every large city as is currently seen now. While statistics are not good, it’s possible that homelessness in the mid 1980s had reached rates that were double what they are today.(1)
Mass incarceration served the state in preventing another wave of revolutionary resistance. “Tough on crime” laws were enacted to curtail any efforts from the movement in the U.$. to regroup and reorganize the lumpen. As a result, the 1980s and 90s saw a mass capture of non-whites not seen on that level since the time of the middle passage. This mass incarceration – or mass kidnapping, to be more precise – led to the disruption and dissolution of the family unit while simultaneously injecting drugs on the scene. This mass kidnapping then led to mass displacement as single parents struggled to stay afloat often succumbing to escapism and criminalization themselves, only to be released to homelessness. Though the massive prison boom did allow for a shift of a significant portion of the lumpen from the streets to cages.
And while it is unclear how today’s rates compare to the 1980s, we are currently seeing a record in homelessness since the HUD started a more systematic count in 2007. And this has disproportionately hit oppressed nations again:
“This year’s big jump was driven by people who lost housing for the first time, which Biden administration officials say reflects the sharp rise in rent. The largest increase was among families, and the count also finds a significant rise among Hispanics. Nearly 40% of the unhoused are Black or African-American [who are only 12% of the general population -editor], and a quarter are seniors. The annual count does not include the many people who couch surf with friends or family, and who may be at high risk of ending up on the street.”(2)
We Don’t Want Peace with Amerikkka
Homelessness affects all of society in one way or another. Financially, it costs over 2 billion per year for former prisoners who are homeless.(3) If we look at it holistically, homelessness affects everything from mortality rates, healthcare, education, marriages, parenting, divorce, child welfare, the environment, etc. It’s unknown how this will affect future generations. What is known is that many of those in the homeless encampments, like most of those in the prison kamps, are Brown or Black. This all translates to economic oppression that the oppressed nations face with mass imprisonment, gentrification of their historic neighborhoods and of course being squeezed into homelessness. For those who support the empire, crumbs are flung their way, but for the lumpen who have no interest or intention to contribute to the U.$. capitalist system, an I.V. drip of violence, displacement, threat and trauma is fed to this population. When the United $tates describes “peace” for Aztlán, it is describing Chican@ capitulation to Amerikkka. To this, we decline, as we don’t want peace with Amerikkka, we want to be free. Our efforts to heighten the contradictions to step closer towards our goal of revolution and independence is what should guide us as we move toward our national interests.
The Nature of the Homeless
Marxism taught us that the natural laws can be harnessed in the interests of the masses. Under capitalism, there is a whole sector – the lumpen-proletariat, or the First World lumpen in the non-proletarian countries – who are systematically locked out of the production process and whose very lives are sacrificed in the name of profit and seen as castaways of society. The First World lumpen make up the vast majority of the homeless here in these false U.$. borders. Capitalist ideology here in the U.$. has been shaped by a long chain of oppression that has squeezed the colonized internal nations into our current state. White supremacy and slavery helped forge capitalist theory and practice and helped accelerate class development even surpassing Europe in many ways. Indeed, even James Bryce in “The American Commonwealth” documented the early stages of the U.$. petit bourgeois nature of the 1800s when he made several trips to the U.$. and wrote:
“In Connecticut and Massachusetts the operatives in many a manufacturing town lead a life far easier, far more brightened by intellectual culture and by amusements than that of the clerks and shopkeepers of England or France.”(4)
By the late 1800s, Amerikkka became increasingly bourgeoisified in many areas. By the early 1900s, U.$. imperialism would begin to exploit abroad, bringing the blood money back to these false U.$. borders and distributing it to buy off sectors of workers as investments to its future survival. But capitalism can never provide full employment and this means the alienated masses turn to the underground economy to survive. For many ex-prisoners, the underground economy is the only way they can survive. And for the homeless – which consists in large part on Injustice-impacted people – the underground economy is, for some, the only game in town.
When we examine the homeless population in the United $tates, we find that it is made up of many ex-prisoners(5). The internal semi-colonies are the majority percentage-wise.(6) This highlights the class contradictions within the United $tates as well. The state has imported European immigrants in their scramble to counter their social reality. The 2022 U.$. Census data shows that the white population in the U.$. would have decreased had it not been for 391,000 white people immigrating to the U.$. from Europe.(7) This approach to maintaining demographics favorable to the oppressor nation is nothing new, of course. Sakai points out how in the decades following the Haitian Revolution of 1791, it became “increasingly obvious that a ‘thin, white line’ of a few soldiers, administrators and planters could not safely hold down whole oppressed nations” which was the political impetus behind several waves of immigration from Europe in the 19th century.(8)
We can even trace the interconnection and evolution of homelessness and criminalization in the United $tates from pop culture to the prison gates. In the 1950s, Hollywood movies depicted the classic train riding “hobo” while prisons were filled with chain smoking conmen. Both populations were whiter than meemaw’s tuna casserole. Today, both populations are mostly Brown and Black, and yet the revolutionary movement here within the occupied territories have yet to bring us closer to finding a remedy with teeth. Only a remedy that helps the oppressed nations while undermining Amerika will be sufficient in this scenario. While searching for the consideration of homelessness in the occupied territories let us not lose focus of how national oppression ties into the equation, despite Amerika flinging crumbs to a myriad of agencies, case managers, construction companies, advocacy groups and so-called social services.
On the surface it appears as if the capitalists are using the profits they accumulate through exploitation to help soothe the very social ills that they create. Nothing can be further from the truth, as the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s Prison Ministry put it:
“Under capitalism, the anarchy of production is the general rule. This is because capitalists only concern themselves with profit, while production and consumption of humyn needs is at the whim of the economic laws of capitalism. As a result, people starve, wars are fought and the environment is degraded in ways that make humyn life more difficult or even impossible. Another result is that whole groups of people are excluded from the production system, whereas in pre-class societies, a group of humyns could produce the basic food and shelter that they needed to survive. Capitalism is unique in keeping large groups of people from doing so.”(9)
Indeed, the capitalists lock entire sectors out of the production process and create social band-aids that do not eradicate this mess. Imperialism creates a network of petty bourgeois jobs for Amerikans that feed off this population that we call the lumpen but which most know as the “Homeless”. The capitalists have devised a way to make the lumpen useful for keeping others busy and paid, while preventing the lumpen themselves from being productive for their own humynity.
The Prison Parallel
As mentioned above, another place we find concentrations of lumpen are the prisons, where they are treated similarly. A recent example of this is in California where the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (known as CAL/OSHA) recently attempted to address climate change and adapting to a rising heat epidemic. The State of California recently created heat standards for California workers. This would include more breaks and cooling and ventilation in all state buildings that respond to climate change. CAL/OSHA excluded California prisons and jails from the new regulations.(10)
The jails and prisons are lumpen centers where prisoners are often subjected to subhuman conditions, torture, medical maltreatment in HELLth care, not to mention outright murder by the state. The heat is also used against those prisoners who challenge the state in general and revolutionary prisoners in particular. Indeed, our Party has heard first hand accounts from some of our members who have been held in the U.$. concentration kamps (prisons). Our Chairman himself was held and tortured for a decade in the state’s Security Housing Units (S.H.U.) in solitary confinement, so our understanding of the conditions of prisoners is in depth. Some of the accounts we heard were that in the most humid prisons where temperatures in the summer rise to 110°F (43°C) the prison officials will turn on the heaters in the cells, while in the coldest prisons, even where it snows, the prison officials will crank up the air conditioning to make the cells like “ice boxes”. One comrade described how at a particular prison they were at, it was so hot in the cell that this comrade would pour water on the cement floor and lay on the floor only in underwear as it was extremely unbearable. Another comrade described that it was so hot at one Central Valley prison that it felt as if eir “insides were cooking”.
Science tells us that excessive heat also increases risk of stroke and other health problems. Those with pre-existing conditions or failing health will have their conditions exacerbated in extreme heat. The excuse cited for excluding prisoners from these new climate related protections was cost. It’s too expensive to humynize the lumpen. This points to another example of the lumpen simply being useful at this time to be given the bare minimum to exist another day in dehumynized conditions.
The lumpen are in a precarious position to say the least, here in the United Snakes and in any society for that matter. First World lumpen can have a hand in emancipating humynity here in the imperialist center or end up succumbing to its demise like the old couple who had been married half a century and when one dies the other spouse quickly follows. The lumpen plays a vital role where it can be bought off as foot soldiers for capitalism in its fascist development or as the lumpen developed in Maoist China as some of the fiercest fighters for the revolution in the form of the Red Guards.(11)
Marx hinted at this when he said:
“But capital not only lives upon labor. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.”(12)
Today, in the First World, most “workers” are in the labor aristocracy and not the slaves of capital that Marx describes here. The lumpen, however, can be seen as “runaway slaves”, those who in many ways have cast off the tethers of capitalist society.
It is important that we understand that social control determines the mass influx of planation-like facilities which prisoners in the U.$. are compelled to endure as well as the lumpenization that comes with it. The future of the Chican@ Nation relies on us grasping this and responding in a way that advances Aztlán closer to independence.
Concrete Analysis of a Concrete Situation
The lumpen who mostly comprise the “homeless” within the U.$. are a resourceful bunch who organize in unprecedented ways within these false U.$. borders. In our party’s study, we have interviewed dozens of homeless people living in various modes of existence. Some homeless exist as couch surfers living persyn to persyn, some live in cars or RVs, some in cardboard boxes on sidewalks across the U.$., some live in mental facilities, jails or prisons and yet some live in abandoned buildings, parks, creeks and in homeless camps. About 62% of homeless in the general population are “sheltered”, while only 50% of former prisoners in the homeless population are “sheltered.”(13)
The encampments are of special concern, as they are the most organized of the homeless population. In the State of California, recent numbers show the homeless population at 181,000.(14) These are the numbers that could be documented, so we suspect the actual count to be much higher, probably in the range of 200,000, as there are many who live in the shadows and for many different reasons refuse to be counted by the state. It should also be noted that it was in San Jose, California some years back where some have called the largest homeless camp in the U.$. was found. This camp even had a name that the lumpen gave it – “The Jungle” and this encampment had up to 10,000 people living there, 10,000 lumpen, mostly Chican@s who existed for over a decade as a camp.
It is also interesting that the State of California which is not just a state within Aztlán but currently includes the heart of what the capitalists call “silicon valley” also has huge swaths of homeless people. So much wealth and privilege exists alongside such misery, poverty and hunger in this place where people’s lives are reduced to nada if those lives do not build capitalism. This reminds us what we are fighting.
The homeless camps are comprised of lumpen of all ages, including babies and the elderly. There are teens who have lived much of their lives in the camps. Many children are illiterate and relocating from camp to camp or from camp to “flying homeless” (i.e., living on sidewalks or in cars).
The larger and more established camps have a main organizer who acts as a warlord of sorts. These larger camps tend to be organized more on the model of U.$. youth survival groups, which the capitalists call “gangs” rather than lumpen organizations. These main camps have rules and penalties that go with them. The high crimes in these camps are crimes against children, for which the penalty can be a beating and banishment or even death depending on the severity of the crime.
The shot-callers within the main camps have hystorically been male, although the shot-callers tend to be more permanent while the rest of the community tends to be more fluid, with many relocating regularly or ending up in jail. In our study, all of the shot-callers have been imprisoned in some form, whether that be in county jail or prison.
Those who comprise these main camps “surface” to the streets sporadically for food, showers or to tap into the underground economy by any means necessary. Camp life tends to revolve around food, water and drugs. “Communal” living in the main camps is often injected with drugs. Drug use is rampant in the camps, although not all homeless in the camps are users. Some are sellers who slang dope in the camps making thousands in profits off their fellow lumpen’s misery and addiction. The prime drugs of choice in the camps being meth, heroin and crack. The dealers on the streets ensure that the main camps stay flooded with dope.
Most of the main camps are located in creeks, industrial areas, or under freeway bridges and underpasses. Many of the camps have electricity from stolen generators and power lines. Contrary to what people believe, many of the homeless do not bathe in the creeks even when their camps are in the creek. Many use camping showers or seek showers at community centers or at the homes of friends and family.
The factors contributing to the epidemic known as homelessness have been formulated elsewhere, we know that the heart of the problem remains to be capitalism. We understand that factors like hunger afflict the homeless population and throwing the homeless something to chew on has continued to be done by both liberals and religious conservatives alike and to no avail. As communists, we need to take action that translates to radically different terms and which is more impactful and deep reaching.
Identifying and heightening the contradictions here in the occupied territories of Aztlán while aiding the Brown masses and pushing the national liberation struggle forward on these shores is a key tenet of our party. Homelessness is one of the major fractures within the empire in which the development of resistance is likely, the other being the U.$. prison system. It is our duty to nurture these factors. In order to properly carry out our duties, we need to understand how the lumpen are currently responding to these capitalist assaults on their humynity.
Cultural Revolution
“Due to the precarious stratification of the lumpen, and the imperialists’ refusal to let us fully integrate into Amerika, our allegiance to the imperialists is more tenuous. As the lumpen experience oppression first hand here in Amerika, we are in a position to spearhead the revolutionary vehicle within U.$. borders” (15)
Social practice is the remedy which will deliver the Chican@ masses to national liberation. A heightened consciousness nurtured by and forged in the fires of political theory is the vehicle that we have awaited since colonization. As we struggle to rebuild the resistance that we need, the capitalist bribes sway our people to the tempo of their blood stained rhythm, and we listen to Lenin and dig deeper within the people to find those elements that continue to have nothing to lose but their chains. Here in the First World, those elements are the lumpen.
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which took place from 1966 - 1976 in revolutionary China, revolutionary intellectuals were sent from the cities to the countryside to take revolutionary culture to the peasants and politicize them, learn from them, to engage them so that they can take their rightful place in contributing to the revolution. To many at the time, the thought of venturing out to the countryside was not inviting. To those truly seeking to contribute to the revolution, the sacrifice of having no running water or indoor plumbing was miniscule. This practice of sending urban intellectuals and professionals to do practical work in the countryside was also done in the Soviet Union from the very earliest days of revolutionary power.
Here in the First World, the lumpen (which includes the homeless population) are a potential revolutionary force that must be tapped. Marx taught us that capitalism prevents us from solving the social ills like homelessness and that only through socialist revolution will we realize this truth. Mao’s China solved many social ills amongst the lumpen including drug addition and prostitution, both of which are activities found amongst the lumpen (homeless) throughout the U.$. and as we begin this work of politicizing the homeless, or of bringing revolutionary culture to them, we are in essence preparing the lumpen for the revolution.
We believe that it is not a question if we should go to the homeless camps to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen, we believe that it must be done. Our party has begun this task. Lenin describes our task ahead:
“We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, it is not an easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.”(16)
Although we are not “building socialism” now, we are building the conditions for revolution which will advance us toward socialism. We must take action, social practice amongst the homeless – on their turf. Cheerleading for the homeless in front of City Hall or sliding them a burrito is cute and subjectively fulfilling to an extent, but it moves the lumpen not one iota towards resistance or revolution. Comrades, we must do more than the churches and more than a liberal non-profit. As communists, our role is not to make the lumpen more comfortable under capitalism, rather we must prepare the lumpen for insurrection.
It is important that we work towards transforming the homeless camps into political bases, safe zones with Chican@ cadre in every camp throughout Aztlán. But we should also take our endeavors in this field seriously, as the state has captured or killed Chican@ revolutionaries for lesser ambitions. Amerikkka is deadly serious in its repression, we should be just as serious in our evasion and resistance and utilize a strong security culture as we move through the camps. There is much potential in the lumpen encampments and the enemy knows this.
Marx taught us that the lumpen were indeed the “dangerous class”. We agree that there is a certain danger in interacting with the lumpen, just as there is a certain danger of interacting with the capitalist state, not to mention the white settler nation in general. History has taught us that to be colonized is dangerous as well, so we have learned to struggle through generational danger and in many cases to do so armed and ready to resist.
At this stage, we only seek to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen encampments as we see it as complimenting our efforts to raise public opinion. At the same time, we stand firm that ultimately it will be through armed struggle that Aztlán will be free and the lumpen will play a key role in the national liberation struggle here in the internal semi-colonies. Here we agree with Fanon when describing the lumpen, he said:
“…that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”(17)
As Fanon suggests, the lumpen moves differently. It is not a class which succeeds at town hall debates or boycotts. Hit the lumpen up when it’s time to boogie, when violence explodes in the metropole and the capitalist state feels the slugs of liberation, for this is the arena in which the lumpen excels. Forged through oppression, the lumpen will perform on the stage built by the bourgeoisie and their collaborators. But the party must perform as well and the movement more broadly must perform. We must perform agitation and propaganda (agit/prop) and do so well amongst the lumpen.
In “Combat Liberalism”, Mao discussed how liberalism prevents people from acting on living up to their obligations as communists. Among other things, he points to failing to show concern for the masses and not engaging in agit/prop. There are many reasons why people practice liberalism. In many ways, some have fallen into liberalism here in the occupied territories. Many within the movement have opted out of reaching back into the lumpen encampments to those alienated not only from labor but from society as well. In this sense, the party seeks to combat liberalism in this field.
Some have wondered what is to be done with the lumpen encampments, “what is possible?” some ask. There is much work to be done. We need our presence felt, we need to become a regular presence in the camps and begin to inject them with revolutionary culture – with art, literature and teatro. We need to gain their confidence and to teach and learn – from the masses, to the masses.
The Chican@ movement of the past never dealt with the homeless in this way, although the homeless epidemic was not in existence to today’s levels we must be honest that scant attention was given to the homeless in general. Today’s Chican@ movement must do more as the next generation must in turn do more than us and continue to build.
The lumpen encampments are self-governed as the pigs or other state agencies rarely ever go into the camps. We see that there is potential in these zones, especially with their concentrated amount of lumpen. We believe that by focusing our energy on this demographic, it will complete our overall strategy of winning this struggle for national liberation. There is much work to do in these camps, but political education is essential and a stepping stone to developing dual power in these zones.
Let us be clear that any weakening of resolve about the task ahead only helps Amerikkka and hurts the struggle for national liberation. At the same time, our efforts are not to set up re-entry services for the homeless lumpen, on the contrary, our efforts are to set up and recruit the lumpen to serve the people. We are not seeking reforms, nor do we believe in them, rather we agree with the BLA that
“reform of the oppressive system can never benefit its victims: in the final analysis, the system of oppression was created to insure the rule of particular racist classes and sanctify their capital. To seek reform therefore inevitably leads to, or begins with, the recognition of the laws of our oppressor as being valid.”(18)
Reform is only tactical in getting the boot off our neck long enough for us to breathe to fight and resist the oppressor nation another day. Likewise, the oppressors laws and kkkourts mean nothing to us, as they are illegitimate to the core, we only navigate them in order to plot the demise of Amerika.
The lumpen encampments, like the prisons, are fertile grounds for resistance. In the First World, we are forced to dig deeper into the social forces to find those who are not bribed by the profits stolen from the Third World pockets. Our efforts today are for the Third World.
Notes:
(1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States - gives
a homeless rate of 0.09% in 1990, but mentions this was probably an
undercount; it gives 200-500 thousand as the homeless count in 1984,
which doubled by 1987 - at the high end this would put homeless rates at
0.22% and 0.42% respectively; the 2023 rate was 0.19% the highest rate
since HUD began gathering data more accurately in 2007
(2)Jennifer
Ludden, 15 December 2023, Homelessness in the U.S. hit a record high
last year as pandemic aid ran out, All Things Considered.
(3)
“The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S.”, from the Institute
for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation”, October 2016, George
Warren Brown School of Social Work.
(4) “The American Commonwealth”,
by James Bryce (1888-1959, Vol II, pp.557-58).
(5)According Prison Policy
Initiative analysis of HUD data, formerly incarcerated have 2%
homelessness rate compared to 0.21% of the overall population. A Harvard
Business review article says there are about 5 million formerly
incarcerated in U.$.; 2% of 5 million is 100,000; .21% of 350 million is
735,000. Based on these estimates, formerly incarcerated are less than
15% of homeless in U.$. streets.
(6) about 61% of homeless are
oppressed nations according to stats in “Defining and Measuring the
Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by
MIM(Prisons), July 2016.
(7) U.S. Census Bureau.
(8) “Settlers”,
by J. Sakai (2014, pg. 52).
(9) “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen
Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons),
July 2016.
(10) “Prisons are a Cruel Exception to Heat Rules”, by
Nicholas Shapiro and Bharat Jayram Venkat, the Mercury News, July 14,
2024.
(11)Wiawimawo,
October 2018, Sakai’s Investigation of the Lumpen in Revolution, ULK
Issue 64.
(12) “Wage, Labor and Capital”, by Karl Marx.
(13)Lucius
Couloute, August 2018, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly
incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative.
(14) “Newsom
Orders Sweeps of Camps”, by Ethan Varian, The Mercury News, July 26,
2024.
(15) “Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán”, by a
MIM(Prisons) Study Group, 2015, 2021, pg. 14.
(16) V.I. Lenin,
“Left-wing communism – an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31,
pg. 50.
(17) “The Wretched of the Earth”, by Frantz Fanon.
(18)
“Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army”, pg. 111.
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