Huey P. Newton defined power as the “ability to define a phenomenon and make it behave in a certain, desired manner”. Mao defined political power as growing from the barrel of a gun. Politics is the art of obtaining, wielding, and growing power. As Marxists we understand that politics is not a neutral thing, outside of class. Machiavelli wrote his well known works from the perspective and in the interests of a partisan of the Italian feudal lords and great proto-bourgeois families of the 1500s. Clausewitz was also a military theoretician in the service of the Prussian aristocracy. Power is obtained and wielded in the service of a class. Neither Machiavelli nor Clausewitz wrote or struggled on behalf of the masses of serfs and proletarians, yet there is still much to be gained from their insight. Mao Zedong studied and modernized Sun Tzu, who was also a servant of the ancient Chinese feudal lords and kings. We see how Mao’s military works are still studied by the ruling class’s attack dogs at West Point, because the art of power and politics is a science and those who have obtained power are the best to learn from. It is in the interests of proletarian class partisans (Communists) to study deeply the art of politics and apply it in the service of our class.

An objective analysis of the state of political affairs in the United States today shows that the Left has no power in the real sense. We meme and joke about guillotines and eating the rich while our enemies are obtaining land, training with weapons, establishing tactical unity, and gaining ears in the White House. There are two reasons for this lack of power. One, we have no mass base. I read a short book a couple days ago called Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict. Issues of the author’s politics aside, this book has some very good and sober critiques of the relationship of the left to masses as contrasted to the far-right and masses. Phil Neel discusses how the III% movement, the Oath Keepers, and similar groups have established mass bases among people with divergent class interests (but are united in their relation to this land and oppressed nations as settlers). The leadership of these movements is comprised of police, soldiers, ranchers, large farmers, small business owners and miners. The rank and file is comprised of people who have lost their land, are unemployed, or who are forced into labor in mines or ranches. So we have a cross-class movement for reaction that is highly armed and willing to use their arms. This is the enemy. Now, take the left. I saw a person advise another leftist who felt “isolated” to form a “study group”. A study group! The hope was that something calling itself a “collective” would arise out of what could be reasonably ascertained would be a group of petit-bourgeois college students sitting around pontificating to each other and self-flagellating! How does this build power? People do not follow ideas, they follow strength. Military theorist Dave Kilcullen explains excellently in Out of the Mountains: “Support for one faction or another simply does not follow ideology. People don’t throw their weight behind those they agree with, and often many in a population can’t be said to have any deep-seated ideological commitment in the first place. Instead, support follows strength, and ideology follows support. Political or religious attachment is often an after-the-fact development, preceded by the capable intervention of a pragmatic, functional partisan group that begins as a small minority of the population.” The idea that having the “correct line” divorced from practice will somehow auto-generate a revolution in the future is the ultra-left version of DSA “communists” claiming that we should engage in electoral politics until the “masses” are ready for the revolution at some undeclared point in the future. Both positions are the pinnacle of divorce from the masses. Both are not dealing with the realities of building power.

We’ve established that people follow and unite with strength. People join DSA because it is perceived as “strong”, meaning that it has a lot of members, resources, and a national profile. It is nationally propagandized as being representative of “socialism”, even though we Maoists know that this assertion is wrong and in the service of the ruling class. People united with the Communist Party of Peru because instead of remaining ensconced behind the whitewashed walls of Ayacucho, Abimael Guzmán not only developed a solid ideological core and base of cadre but used Peruvian government resources (see Kenny Lake’s excellent piece on this, Gramsci and Gonzalo: Considerations on Conquering Combat Positions within the Inner Wall of Hegemony) to send cadre to the masses under the auspices of conducting research and field work. People follow Hezbollah in Lebanon because it provides services, is well armed, and is uncompromising in its mission, shared by the masses of Arabs in the Middle East, to struggle relentlessly against the Zionist state that is killing them and stealing their land and resources. People follow the Taliban and mujahideen instead of the CmPA because the Taliban is the primary force struggling against Yankee imperialism which has occupied their country for 20 years, while the CmPA apparently remains confined to the internet. We have to combat this current weakness and overestimation of the importance of ideas with realism and pragmatism if we are to build power. Power, as Mao said, comes from the barrels of guns, not from the pages of books or the pontificating of study groups.

There are already power players in the neighborhoods and areas that Communists seek to organize. Gangs, crooked aldermen, churches, etc. These people, as Revolutionary Initiative said in Communist Leadership, Mass Work and Building Power, need to either be won over, united with, or neutralized. The Left is currently in no position to neutralize anybody by force, if anything we’re more bent on neutralizing each other. So, it’s essential to build our strength block by block by engaging with the masses on issues of great material importance, work with the existing leaders while maintaining our own political principles (and demonstrating them in practice), and building up a base from which we can neutralize reformist leadership. This base can only be built if we are with the people working alongside them in things other than riots. This is how the right has been able to build proto-mass bases in places like Oregon and Washington. Not through ideological squabbling, but through patient work and politicization through this work. The left must also be armed, and demonstrate an ability to use these arms. These are not toys, they are power building tools. The defense of a butterfly sanctuary by comrades in FTP-OK last month is a good example of using weapons to defend the people effectively. It was organized, disciplined, and had a mass engagement component. Machiavelli said that there is no question of equality between those who are armed and those who are not. Your line can be as correct and true as the days in August are long, but if you have no tools with which to defend it, it might as well not exist.

Material support is necessary. People can not study theory or wield arms if they are starving or facing eviction. The Left has shown an ability to unite around these issues but more work needs to be done and the work needs to become ever more militant and consciously political. If not, this work will be subsumed by reformists and bourgeois NGOs which traffic in the struggles of the people. This is why comrades should not shy away, also, from using legal methods of organizing and fundraising to build a solid material base. The people take us more seriously if we have space of our own where they can come to meet us and a consistent way to distribute goods and services in a collective way. Like I said, we must become pragmatists if we hope to wield real power. Without power, everything we claim is the hollowest illusion.