>>2919316I could directly dismantle multiple essays and post them, but instead I will respond only in general terms to the same points and failures of analysis.
There is a major flaw and a failure of theory in the inability to see the uprising as a function of class struggle. Despite the liberal elements of the co-optation forces, the struggle against police and prisons has been occurring and escalating for years under the growing prison structures, with the growing surplus populations being targeted by this system and forced into the machinery of capitalist prisons. This is the main center of class struggle in the United States; it is the greatest contradiction, and it is a very clear and violent aspect of American capital, just as industrial labor used to be the very clear and violent contradiction of American capital.
Nearly every Marxist-Leninist organization has failed to be in touch with reality outside of its academic circles. Some of them have claimed that "the riots and adventurism echo the same sentiments of far-right opportunism, and the levels of destruction and looting of goods have nothing to do with the struggle against prisons. Many adventurist currents such as ultra marxists and anarchists think this type of behavior is more worthy than actual organizing." Well, I am a ML who likes to study modern history as it relates to today and now, and this is false. The anarchists have been organizing against police violence heavily from small cities to large ones, down to being in contact with the families of victims of police violence. They were the main force struggling against liberal co-optation of anti-police and anti-prison movements, and the IWOC (Incacerated Workers Organizing Committee), a committee of anarcho-communists in the IWW, helped to orchestrate the largest prison strikes in US history, which were coordinated by multiple prisons. Riots occurred in prisons, and anarchists essentially connected them all to a larger movement. They educated many prisoners. This was not long before George Floyd, and it happened after Ferguson. What people do not always mention is that anarchism was peaking with interest in the Black community during this era, which was not always true (it used to be alien) and this was the moments that led up to the uprising. This is why the media tried so hard to whitewash anarchism during this time. I saw the local media say "white anarchists are using peaceful protests as human shields".
Why do so many Marxist-Leninists glaze over the context and oversimplify it? Why would they not observe reality and instead consider truth?
Another thing, one of these dorks actually did a report-back complaining that people did not seem willing to engage in political discussions or take their flyers, and instead responded with "a were busy attitude." My friend, there are literal standoffs going on, and your idea of contributing is to sell newspapers? This is a huge lack of situational awareness. It is actually a display of the working class adventuring beyond the people who are supposedly the self-proclaimed vanguards of struggle.
The constant criticism of looting from Marxist-Leninists shows that most of these people do not know much at all. You see, most working-class people in the urban USA no longer have a direct connection to industrial production, and the working class and labor are more atomized. So capitalist domination manifests in people's relation to the commodity and to social reproduction, so resistance to capitalist domination is not going to appear the same way it did under Lenin. It is going to appear in ways relevant to the function of capitalism.
The George Floyd Uprising was multiracial, and its poorest and working-class elements were its most militant. The issue is that these people are too academic, and this is not an anti-intellectual stance. You can be an academic and grounded in political reality, but this does not grant you the ability to fully grasp things. You cannot learn some things in school. If there is to be a vanguard, it has to be led by organic intellectuals, poor people, not just academics, otherwise, the theory will always fall short when it comes to praxis. The formulas need to be updated, not repeated. That is what made Lenin profound, was his ability to adapt Marxism to the relative situation.
Perhaps, a new party must be formed, a true party.