Today is the day that George Floyd was lynched by police in 2020, sparking the largest protests in American history. I can't recall seeing a Marxist analysis of this, so I thought I would say something. Anyone should feel free to critique me or add their thoughts.
I actually still haven't seen the entire video of his death and have no intention of ever watching it. At the time I was still reeling from the total defeat and capitulation of Bernie's second presidential campaign; I had donated hundreds of dollars as well as many hours of volunteer time in the belief that a Bernie presidency would save lives via universal health care. I attended in person the caucus in my area that decided which candidate would receive which state delegates; Bernie won a slim majority of votes but Biden received the majority of delegates. I knew many of the people at the caucus and was shocked (but of course should not have been) at their behavior. A third supported Biden, a third supported Warren (who had already thrown in the towel), and the rest supported Bernie. The Biden supporters in particular appeared to be especially embarrassed and would not make eye contact with me, though I had known some of them since childhood. I already considered myself a Marxist at this time, but witnessing the theft of state delegates with my own eyes finally convinced me that participation in bourgeois elections in the USA was totally pointless, at least within the Democratic Party. It was an extremely depressing time.
George Floyd's death was horrifying, but the huge protests that followed and the many violent actions taken against the police and both the petite and haute bourgeoisie, the solidarity among Americans of all races (especially younger Americans and especially the proletariat and labor aristocracy) was truly shocking, even if many liberals soon joined the protests in order to sabotage them (by reporting violent protestors to the police, for instance, or by protecting businesses from violence). Until 2020 happened, I really hadn't been sure that Americans were capable of such an upheaval, although as history has repeatedly taught us: it can happen here. Burning down the Minneapolis police precinct and imprisoning George Floyd's murderers were the greatest achievements of this period, but I can recall seeing a video of a guy somewhere in upstate New York driving a pickup truck at high speed into a crowd of police, and scattering their bodies like bowling pins. I haven't been able to find this video anywhere of course and I know nothing about who that guy was. I participated in many protests, all of them totally peaceful, and was surprised by the large number of people involved (I live in a rich, white, liberal area), but also by the large presence of the police and the way they all essentially seemed to be dangerous buffoons (though they are never depicted as such in corporate media).
We have to ask: why did this happen and why did the protests peter out? Police murder about three people in the USA every day; these murders are often caught on camera and are often impossible to justify even by the staunchest defenders of the police. Yet for some reason, George Floyd's especially heinous death sparked what might have become a revolution. It's obvious to say that the pandemic played a major role here: it was an uncertain time for everyone, the economy was collapsing, and many people had lost their jobs and were stressed far more than usual. I've always thought that the suspension of sports—obviously a symptom of the pandemic—also played a massive role. Sports function as one of society's biggest distractions, one of the acceptable ways for frustrated people to funnel their energy, and without sports, that energy still needed somewhere to go, and the protests provided an outlet for that energy. The general lack of slop on TV must have been a significant factor.
Why did the protests fail to turn into a revolution? Without a revolutionary party, there can be no revolution. Now as then, there is no party I am aware of in the USA that is organizing toward violent revolution. (The PSL does not have an underground terrorist or guerrilla force that I know of.) The BPP is the last party that attempted this, and the police destroyed them a long time ago. The protests petered out because no one had the organization necessary to move them in the direction of revolution: no one was advocating that we should raid police stations (or the homes of reactionaries who own fifty guns and thousands of rounds of ammo) in order to arm ourselves. No one was advocating for us to take and hold territory, to seize control of water, power, and telecommunications, and drive out the police and military and their hangers-on. No one was ready.
Because of our failure, I think we can all agree that everything is even worse than it was in 2020. The vast majority of the population believes that covid magically ended a long time ago; the reactionaries have been gleefully murdering incredible numbers of children in Palestine for fifteen months. All of this could have been prevented, and much more, if we had succeeded. But we weren't ready. As I said, I hadn't even known that such a huge uprising could happen in the USA, and when it happened, I had no idea where it would go. But as Marx and Engels wrote, it can take many years, sometimes decades of struggle before a society is ready for revolution. America is also a settler-colonial empire—a bigger and far more successful "israel"—and huge numbers of Americans (at least 70%) have been bought off by the spoils of empire and have no interest in sacrificing their quality of life for a world that works for everyone rather than just a few.
All this being said, there will be another crisis—or a confluence of crises—that makes doing things in the old way impossible for both the ruling and subordinate classes. Another huge uprising will eventually take place in the USA—maybe this summer, maybe ten years from now. The question is: will we learn from our mistakes and be ready when it occurs?
