FRSO's Program: An Informal Review

Alright, my babies. We’ve heard from the ‘orthodox’ Marxists from the DSA. We’ve heard from the crypto Marxist-Leninist party. Now let’s hear from the Maoist-tendency Marxist-Leninist party, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. I have a friend who had visited a meeting in his current city, and the main thing with which he walked out of there was that they on one hand are really into the Kingdom of Hawaii, and on the other hand think that American Indians (whether on a collective or tribal basis) haven’t yet developed a national identity with which they can act as a nation to bargain for self-determination. However, it was just my luck that he had told me about this after I had already bought their program—but having been spoiled, I was all the more excited to learn about how big of a deal this really was for the party and about what other weird hills they had to die on. How did the FRSO come about anyway?

Freedom Road has a proud past. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a tremendous upsurge in the struggles of African Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans, and other oppressed nationalities. At the same time, a powerful student movement arose, which drew inspiration from the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people, the resilience of socialism in China, and the revolutionary movements against colonialism and neocolonialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The result was the creation of a powerful new communist movement. While this new movement of young communists had some real accomplishments, it lacked staying power. In 1985, some of the best elements of this great upsurge came together to create the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Later we were joined by some members and leaders of the Communist Party USA [!], who shared out commitments to revolution and socialism [?].

Over the years we have faced challenges, from within and without. In the late 1980s and 1990s, a section of our leadership decided that they did not want to be revolutionaries, so they abandoned Marxism-Leninism and split from our organization [!!]. Later, in 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used the pretext of our anti-war and international solidarity work to launch a protracted campaign aimed at our destruction [!!!]. We met these challenges, overcame adversity, and have grown. We appreciate the veteran revolutionaries in our ranks and are glad that most of our members are young.

Introduction, pp. 2–3

Ah. Okay. One appreciates optimism at a time like this. Let’s see what they got!

Theory

The FRSO preoccupies itself with two major struggles which—you know, I know, every single one of us knows—are intertwined: monopoly capitalism and national oppression. Monopoly capitalism, a.k.a. the imperialist stage of capitalism, is the point at which all a country’s capital becomes concentrated in an incestuous ratking of banks which in turn finance all or most industrial enterprises. This national capital has nowhere to expand but outward, by exporting finance to other countries’ industries, chaining their capitals to its own and imperializing the people of that country as a bloc (regardless of class, since even the national bourgeoisie of the developing nation are indebted to foreign finance capital). Resulting from this, the few imperialist nations divide the world between themselves and compete for control over the developing nations to extract resources (incl. labor), expand market share, and thus valorize their respective national capitals.

There’s some weirdness I noticed in the FRSO’s recounting of this history. The first is they seem to subscribe, if not theoretically then at least rhetorically, to the notion of uneven development: that the economic disenfranchisement of what we call developing nations originates first of all from uneven social and technological development across the world, as if each country on its own would’ve eventually reached the same state of affairs if they had only developed at the same rate. I understand the truth-basis of that view, but I think it’s very outdated and limited in analytical scope. Hasn’t the consensus been (for a while!) that imperialist capitalism emerged on the back of old-fashioned colonial imperialism, and that ‘developing’ countries weren’t historically lagging behind but were in fact ‘developed’ to become cheap repositories of resources and labor for burgeoning imperialist countries? I don’t just mean Wallerstein’s world systems theory, but also like Walter Rodney or Rosa Luxemborg or even late Marx. Maybe I’m being pedantic, but it feels like an oversight and a sign that the FRSO is tilting at windmills.

The second is that the FRSO identifies specifically monopoly capitalism as the great satan of our global situation, even paraphrasing Lenin in referring to imperialism as “the highest and final stage of capitalist development” (p. 13). I don’t want to be the sort of idiot that’s like “Your analysis is old!” and leave it at that but, come on, that was over a hundred years ago and we are well past the situation Lenin analyzed in his own time. There’s no longer a bunch of imperialist countries competing or colluding to divide the rest of the world. That isn’t been the case since before WWII, after which all the ‘developed countries’ with their powers combined ushered in a grand new liberal world order headed by the United States as guarantor and protector (especially contra the alternate socialist world order headed by the Soviet Union). That situation has since broken down since daddy came home in 2024, but it was true as of the program’s publication in 2022. That’s not to mention that even if monopoly capitalism were the big bad of our time, it’s not its own root cause. Whenever I hear someone blame monopolies for capitalism’s worst excesses, it always gives “support small businesses!” and seems lacking in critical scope.

Finally, the FRSO’s favorite selection of oppressed nations (within as well as without the geographical bounds of the United States) is a little strange. Surely enough, they pick the Black Belt, the Chicano Aztlán, and the nation of Hawaii as the primary nations oppressed by the United States—fair since these certainly “are deprived of their basic democratic rights, including the right to exercise political power within their national territories and the right to self-determination—up to and including separation” (p. 14). They talk about these nations in terms of geographical area, in which case Hawaii makes the most sense to be included and discussed, but it seems besides the point for black people (who were imported en masse as slaves and live throughout the United States, even if the Black Belt as a region is specific predominantly black) and for Chicanos (whose defining trait is being descended from Mexicans who lived in Southwest America before it was conquered; and the Aztlán thing seems like some post hoc, “this land was promised to us 3,000 years ago” nationalist myth type shit that is besides the point of them being Mexican). Shouldn’t we conceptualize nations relationally rather than geographically, especially when we invoke notions of internal and imported colonies? Outside the territory of the United States, the text also specifically lists Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Palestine as sites of revolution against American imperialism. Look, I love my people, and they need liberation, but one of those things is not like the others. Just deeply unserious.

And the next paragraph on the same page talks about the history of “genocide and stolen land” against the indigenous peoples of America—conspicuously not considered as one or even multiple nations! I couldn’t believe this early into the text they were staking the very same strange position that they told my friend about. It’s not as woke a position anymore, but American Indians did for a time coalesce around a shared identity as various peoples made indigenous (remember: indigeneity is a relation!) by American colonization, up until it became en vogue to balkanize indigenous identities as particular cultures tied by blood to one’s own ancestral land. My partner and I talked about how fucking conspicuous it is that this new understanding only emerged after the American Indian Movement had been systematically fucked by the federal government, and this suspicion was confirmed for us by a veteran comrade who witnessed it all go down. I don’t know. Blackness in America is also a category established relationally, inclusive not only of various West African cultures whose people were trafficked and enslaved, but of all dark-skinned people who migrated here after slavery’s abolition, all with various relations to their respective original culture. Blackness is still a real identity imposed upon and/or embraced by its members, as well as a useful and highly legible category of analysis. Why are we acting like American Indians cannot (not to mention, have not) constitute a nation in that sense, when it has similarly been imposed upon them through colonialism and both embraced by them as historical identity for collective organization? They can, and have.

Practice

Their platform is fine. Not super specific except as pertains to national oppression, which as we’ve seen is both their whole deal and something they’re not especially insightful about. They want to make discrimination illegal (so brave) and enforce multilingual standards in government (actually cool, okay!). That’s it. Well, there is one more thing… their ideas of socializing the economy are straight out of the nineteenth century.

The working class will occupy the commanding heights of the economy, taking control of the factories, utilities, transportation networks, big technology monopolies, big retail stores, banks, and other major financial institutions. In short, wealth means to produce [?] and distribute the things we need and want—will be placed at the service of the working people. Human needs—such as food, healthcare, housing, and education—will be produced and provided for the people, not for profit.

It struck me while reading this that the United States does not command a particularly productive economy. Just 8% of the workforce is employed in manufacture, and though we produce 16% of manufactured goods worldwide, our trade balance in 2022 was at a deficit of over $1 trillion dollars (alternatively: we import 150% as much commodity value as we export). Both liberals and conservatives understand this, though the latter seem to not understand that this ‘deal’ benefits us since it means (first) we’re exporting our capital all over the world and (second) the population can live relatively cushier lives employed in positions of service rather than in production—great for a consumer base to purchase the imported goods and keep capital circulating. You might find the below data useful, which I had sourced from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, plus some refactoring since some of their categories are either nonsense or misleading.¹

• Unskilled Work 49%
  • Agriculture 0.9%
  • Mining 0.3%
  • Utilities 1.2%
  • Construction 4.8%
  • Manufacture 7.5%
  • Retail 8.8%
  • Logistics 6.9%
  • Support Services 6.3%
  • Food & Lodging 8.4%
  • Other Services 3.9%
• Skilled Work 34%
  • Professional Services 6.4%
  • Education 8.3%
  • Healthcare 13.6%
  • Government 6%
• Random Bullshit 16%
  • Military & Police 1.5%
  • Self-Employed 5.8%
  • Management 3%
  • Finance & Sales 4.4%
  • Arts & Entertainment 1.5%

By my count, less than 20% of workers are directly employed in production (slightly over 20% if we count logistics, i.e., transport and storage). If you want to socialize the economy and presumably stop depending on imports, you need to lop off ~10% from other sectors (though if you employ the 4% of the unemployed working population, of course, less of a problem) and that’s not even to speak of capital goods and raw materials. The FRSO is not specifically guilty of oversight in this regard—most parties are—but any socialist program for the United States must account for how the country is (materially speaking) a parasite on the rest of the globe. I doubt as a result that it’s even possible to reduce the workweek except for service positions which we might be better off making redundant. But who wants to work on a field or in a factory? Imperialism isn’t just about a country throwing its weight around, and labor aristocracy isn’t just about workers accepting the state of things for how it passively benefits them. Never mind whether an agrarian or industrial country can have socialism within itself. Can a first-world country ween off of what resources and labor it extracts by force from the third world? First-world socialism needs to reckon with what they are really asking of first-world populations.

It’s more likely in any case, though, that they won’t have the choice to ween and will need to decide whether to violently crash out or become self-sufficient. This is the most honest and realistic angle for first-world socialism. It’s not to say working conditions can’t or shouldn’t be improved—they can and should—but it’s not going to be luxury space communism.

Conclusion

No socialist (etc.) party in the United States matters on the national scale. You are better off organizing locally, and you might end up working with people from various parties on that level of things. Regardless and unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve found a single political program from any party which isn’t debilitatingly stupid or useless, so I don’t feel inspired to join any of them even if I know and trust local members.

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1. Examples of bullshit: “Information” includes both customer services representatives and telecommunications utility workers; and “Wholesale Trade” includes both sales representatives and actual freight workers. ↩︎