As of late, a great deal of discourse has enveloped the political sphere regarding what is to be done in the fight to protect against further encroachments upon women’s rights and queer rights. Indeed, this discourse is rightly deserved — this year has seen the most vicious attacks by reaction upon oppressed groups (furthering their oppression and revealing to us in ever-greater clarity the impossibility of reconciliation between ourselves and our oppressors). However, with continuing the struggle after this great wound, as we recover and prepare our riposte like a wounded duelist, we have a great many options. However, the question is not so much of an enumeration of the paths available to us but of which of these paths we ought to take.
Both queer people and women suffer under the same boot that oppresses BIPOC people and the proletariat within the US, so the complete liberation of one must entail the complete liberation of all the others. The tactics available to the queer and feminist movements are many and quite familiar to us in the context of historical struggle against oppression. They have been used since the dawn of time by groups struggling against their oppressors, however in the context of the United States, with our dire circumstances, we cannot make the fatal mistake of applying a tactic that our material circumstances does not allow us to use — for example, the Peoples Protracted War which is currently being used to great effect in the Philippines. While this is certainly the most effective tactic for building an iron core of revolutionary cadres and effecting change( the act of protracted war being an elongated revolutionary conflict and allowing for revolutionary principles and governance to be implemented concretely — ie the most direct act of revolution), an analysis of the material conditions of the US reveals that the protracted war is a solution that cannot succeed at present — to pretend otherwise is rather delusional.
This oughtn’t preclude us from taking other actions. As Republicans and Democrats alike further their action (or inaction) and make our lives continually worse, it is only natural that we fight back in some way — and in the context of the rollback of Roe v Wade and the intensification of transphobic structural violence in particular, there are a great many tactics we have available to fight back with. To that end, a brief coverage of these tactics is due. From there we will be able to ascertain where to begin.
Initially, we may examine the most obvious action available to us to resist further reactionary measures- participation in government. While many other socialists will rule out this action entirely, we should not be so quick to do so. However, we must also not fall victim to the liberal delusion that we will be able to vote our way out of this mess. Indeed, our elected representatives have had every opportunity on a national level to pass laws protecting our bodily autonomy since it became a pressing national issue and have refused to. We cannot assume that voting will solve our issues. Let us recall that the Nazis failed to win the majority vote of Germany in any election (although they received more votes than either the SPD or KPD, they did not have the majority of the national vote) — and yet were able to seize power anyway, as were the Italian fascists in 1923. Furthermore, simply voting will not affect the billions funneled into the state by political action committees peddling reactionary laws — on the contrary, it will likely steepen their efforts when reaction realises that state power is slipping out of its grasp. However, this is not to discount the possibility of electoral participation: at present, while Texan fascists tighten the rope around the necks of trans people, Massachusetts has thrown its doors open to those fleeing Texas and guaranteed them political immunity from charges the Texan government would levy against them, as well as guaranteeing access to healthcare that trans people would not have in Texas. Similar actions have been taken to secure access to abortion in Massachusetts. This is not to say that Massachusetts will remain this way; should some unfortunate circumstance arise where fascism gains further force in Massachusetts it will be imperative to find some other method to continue fighting aside from just throwing up our hands. What we ought to take away from this is that, particularly in a bourgeois democracy, we should not exclude the possibility of political participation in this wretched system. Participation will open doors: campaigns have the opportunity to spread consciousness and provide some semblance of unity, as well as providing time for the creation of more powerful organs — it is this purpose precisely that political participation serves. In participating, though, we must not lose our vision of liberation nor must we fall victim to the delusion that we can simply vote our problems away. Roe v. Wade was overturned by unelected justices — the electoral process will not alter this.
In addition to this, it is imperative to note that political changes in the interest of progress, particularly on a federal scale in a nation as large as ours, will take an immense amount of time — if it happens at all. Furthermore, political action will do nothing to alleviate the material suffering of millions that have nothing to do with laws: the suffering of the homeless, the hungry, the beaten. Additionally, it will only draw the ire when it is seen that we have nothing material to back up our words — a single action and the experience drawn from it is worth thousands of words. To that end, in order to provide substance to our ideas and to promote some level of unity, we cannot put ourselves aloof of violence to defend ourselves: our backs are against the wall, after all. By this I do not mean indiscriminate, unprovoked, offensive violence like the fascists do — quite far from it. Instead, we must promote the creation of disciplined queer militias (I use queer, but the sentiment is the same regarding feminist and proletarian militias) — in conception, let us recall the functions of the Black Panther Party — to provide mutual aid, political unity, and protection. Let us imagine disciplined militias providing assistance to communities and providing defence against reactionaries at pride events, providing shelter and financial assistance, and so on — these will be able to protect against the efforts of fascists far better than any political action will. At least in some form the state is bound by law and has to some extent a constrainment on force — but the far-right hooligans who advocate for the extermination of trans people do not.
Indeed, this particular tactic, that of grassroots organising with material goals is far from new: in contemporary history, it was promoted by Clara Zetkin when the Comintern was first organising its efforts around anti-fascism. In more recent memory, as I noted above, similar tactics were used by the Black Panther Party to tremendous effect (for example, at its height in 1969 the BPP was feeding nearly 20,000 impoverished children and provided defence for people who needed it) — examples we ought to study and apply more extensively in these dire times.
“At present the proletariat has urgent need for self-defense against fascism, and this self-protection against fascist terror must not be neglected for a single moment. At stake is the proletarians’ personal safety and very existence; at stake is the survival of their organizations. Proletarian self-defense is the need of the hour. We must not combat fascism in the way of the reformists in Italy, who beseeched them to “leave me alone, and then I’ll leave you alone.” On the contrary! Meet violence with violence. But not violence in the form of individual terror — that will surely fail. But rather violence as the power of the revolutionary organized proletarian class struggle.” -Clara Zetkin, The Struggle against Fascism, 1923
In summary, we may note that the tactics available to us principally comprise the usage of civil and political efforts in unison to resist and dull the effects of reaction. On the one hand, these actions are extremely necessary at present — and with all due celerity we must organise mutual aid and disciplined militia groups with the goal of forming a national political body to effectively defend our rights. But on the other hand, we cannot let our liberation languish — if we grow complacent for a moment, perhaps by losing sight of our goal or falling victim to opportunism, in either case due to a lack of discipline from haste, we will be whipped severely for it — both politically and materially. To echo Lenin, from an article by the same name as this one, “On the contrary, it is quite possible, and historically much more probable, that the autocracy will collapse under the impact of one of the spontaneous outbursts or unforeseen political complications which constantly threaten it from all sides. But no political party that wishes to avoid adventurous gambles can base its activities on the anticipation of such outbursts and complications. We must go our own way, and we must steadfastly carry on our regular work, and the less our reliance on the unexpected, the less the chance of our being caught unawares by any “historic turns”.
