Transforming the gangster mentality into a revolutionary one is possible
because they are two sides of a coin. As an intermediary class the
lumpen can act out both bourgeois ethics (in the form of gangsterism) or
proletarian ethics (as revolutionaries).
The lumpen implementation of bourgeois ethics is the gangster. The
gangster in many ways imitates the most ruthless aspects of bourgeois
behavior, allowing them to be potential tools of the imperialists. Yet
there are aspects of the collective identity, the discipline, and
perhaps most importantly the connection to an oppressed nation, that you
see in both the gangster and the revolutionary. This is what
distinguishes the lumpen organization (L.O.) from the criminal gangs
made up of correctional officers and police departments.
The lumpen implementation of proletarian ethics is the revolutionary.
The lumpen revolutionary may be more adventurous and tend more towards
left errors than the proletariat. Regardless, choosing the proletarian
road, means reforming oneself to take on proletarian morality. The
collective action and rebelliousness of the lumpen organization must
mature into pure dedication to the people and a strategic approach to
protracted peoples’ war against imperialism.
We discussed these two roads in our review of J. Sakai’s
“The
Dangerous Class and Revolutionary Theory”.(1) As we said then,
there are two roads today, the communist and the capitalist. The
capitalist is the old road, the decaying road.
So when comrades keep bringing up this question of “how do we overcome
the gangster mentality,” it is essentially a question of how do we move
the lumpen off the old capitalist road and into building the new
communist one.
Our critics might counter, “wait a minute, plenty of people give up a
violent gang life without becoming proletarian revolutionaries.” And
they are correct. But this also has not put a dent in the presence of
the gangster mentality in our society, has it? Individuals aging out of
gangs and integrating into bourgeois society does nothing to combat
gangsterism because the motivation, the causes are still there. Even
those who reach out to dissuade youth from taking the same path only
provide a band-aid. A class of people, excluded from the means of
production and distribution, living in an economic system driven by
profit, will keep reproducing the gangster mentality. Until we can
replace capitalism with a system where everyone has a productive role to
play and peoples’ needs drive our society, instead of profit, only then
can we truly overcome the gangster mentality.
A few years back, in ULK 51 a comrade summed up some
discussion around this topic among USW comrades:
“Today’s youth show the same apathy, indifference and nihilism as the
youth of 1955. It was the civil rights movement that awoke the youth of
that era. USW comrades struggled over what today can take the place of
the civil rights movement. War, environment and imperialist expansion
were three good starting points to organize around. We lumpen youth have
more stake in the future environment and it is us who fight the wars. It
helps to understand that those starving to death and suffering/dying
from preventable diseases are our people. We must fulfill our destiny or
betray it. All this nitpicking and betrayal between sets/sides
contributes to humankind suffering. We must overcome this flaw.
“The principal enemy we must defeat is the glamorization of gangsterism.
A revolutionary or a gangster? What are we? Can the two coexist in a
persyn and still be progressive? Gangsterism plants fear by oppression,
and revolutionaries are in struggle against oppression. This internecine
violence we perpetrate between sets is what the pigs want us to do. They
sold us this shit in Scarface and we’ve built on to it and made
it our own. Overcoming the glamorization of gangsterism will take
proletarian morality, conscious rap, exposing the downsides and ills of
gangsterism, the glamorization of revolution, revolutionary culture, and
possibly to redefine the word gangsta. Gangsters are parasites and
revolutionaries are humankind’s hope. It’s as simple as that. We need to
leave the lumpen mentality for a proletarian one. Many true
revolutionaries were once gangsters. Gangsterism is a stage, basically.
“Self-respect, self-defense and self-determination define transitional
qualities of a revolutionary. Bunchy Carter, Mutulu Shakur and Tupac all
transcended the hood and grew into progressives. What we are seeking as
USW is opening up the spaces for gangsters of all walks of life to enter
the realm of anti-imperialism and begin a transformation of mind,
actions and habits to develop into the model of a revolutionary gangsta
with the capability of forwarding the cause of the people. We must
understand our potential. It is us, we reading these ULKs, that hold
imperialism in our fists. A real gangsta is one who has gone
revolutionary and has kicked off all the strings of social control -
mental illness, drugs, fantasy, despair, escapism, etc.”(2)
A program for overcoming the gangster mentality involves a multi-pronged
approach. We must expand and develop the membership of the vanguard
cadre organizations. Simultaneously we must organize the lumpen masses
around a minimal program of unity. As K.G. Supreme of USW stressed in an
article on this topic, it is revolutionary nationalism and
anti-imperialism that provides a viable group identity and movement to
rival that of the current L.O.s that dominate the terrain.
“Cultural Freedom is the best weapon for defeating the gangster
mentality. Cultural freedom that is geared in nationalist liberation of
oppressed nations, and exploiter nation suicide for members of the
euro-amerikan oppressor nation. As Marcus M. Garvey of the African
nationalist organization, UNIAACL said, ‘Power is the only argument that
satisfies man.’”
And as Pilli discusses in
“Love
Your Varrio by Liberating Your People,” we must embrace the
oppressed people, communities and organizations. And we must encourage
growth within them. Communists are not here to attack the gangsters or
the addicts, that is what the bourgeois state does. We are here to guide
others down the same path of education and growth that we have found.
United Struggle from Within has long put forth the slogan, “Unity from
the inside out.” This embodies the dialectical process of developing
unity within one’s own thinking so that one can better build unity with
others; that an organization must struggle within its membership to
build unity before it can unite with others in the nation; and that a
nation must build unity before it can properly unite in its own
interests with other oppressed nations.
“Unity-struggle-unity” is a related slogan that depicts how we should
approach building unity among the people, addressing contradictions
amongst the people. We can’t be all unity, we must challenge, question
and struggle. But we start and end with unity, so that we can grow in
that direction.
“Each one, teach one” is a slogan that stresses the role of education,
especially in these early stages. It also embodies the truth that we all
have things to learn from each other. Education and learning are a
central part of our program for building the cadre and the masses.
These slogans, and others, should be actively built around. Comrades
should study and popularize the 5 points of the United Front for Peace.
We should organize events and study programs around Black August, the
Commemoration of the Plan de San Diego and the September 9th Day of
Peace and Solidarity. MIM(Prisons)’s Free Books to Prisoners Program
offers study materials around all of these topics. We also offer
correspondence study courses, which all comrades wishing to work with
USW should join. We offer a wide array of revolutionary literature for
your own independent study and for prison-based study groups.
While uniting around study groups and education is important for
building cadre, most people will only be able to unite with us around
concrete battles. It is up to comrades on the ground to determine what
winnable battles exist where you are. What are the masses’ righteous
demands and how can we mobilize them to achieve them? How can we build
Serve the People programs locally by pooling resources and helping
others out? It is in these concrete battles that we gain mass support,
and we learn to organize, lead and challenge injustice.
We believe we have the correct theoretical basis and the framework of a
program for this stage of the prison movement. But there is much to be
done to experiment and learn from. As K.G. Supreme stresses, the lumpen
masses must get deep into the gangster mentality, understand it so as to
transform it.
“It is important, in defeating the gangster mentality, that those
serious about raising the consciousness of the subjects of gangsterism,
first come to terms with the mentality as a lifestyle from the vantage
point of inside the mind of a first world gangster. Approaching the
subject from any other angle would be an inferior method promised to
fail in producing any significant impact in the social behavior of those
that are the target. The investigation into this gangster mentality
should be led by those who are infected with the mentality. This isn’t
to say petit bourgeoisie nationalist groups cannot support the
leaderships of those struggling against the gangster mentality. It is to
say that the petit bourgeoisie nationalist must not seek to dictate the
leaderships that struggle to defeat the gangster mentality, as to not
contaminate the nationalist liberation objective, spreading culture
indifferent to the destructive culture, spread by the bourgeoisie.
“…As more and more ground level leaderships disconnect themselves with
the lifestyles that encourages behavior motivated by the gangster
mentality, there becomes a need to replace the un-natural behavior with
disciplines motivated by reconnection with natural lifestyles that are
in harmony with the growth and development of a parasite outkaste of
society, matured into a productive component of the internationalist
objective to end national oppression by the exploiting nations in
independent nations. Only culture that promotes national liberation
struggles, applying political methods in interest of the oppressed can
be relied on to replace the mentality of gangsterism… Emotions do not
dictate the course of action in gradual transformation from unconscious
behavior to conscious population. Instead the culture of educating
against defeatist mentality, borns the scientific approach of the
analytical prisoner, who in turn of reversing the gangsterism pop
culture for a popular culture of upliftment in nationalist liberation
objectives that free the available remedies of exploited and nationally
disadvantaged, free themselves. The key to defeating the gangster
mentality is investments in engineering techniques that make
anti-imperialist culture popular.”