March 15th Virtual Study Session

Join RSP for a virtual study session of “Malcolm X Didn’t Dish Out Free Bean Pies.” We will hop on Signal to read in turn and discuss the article together.

• Introductions
  • Head count: 5
• Reading
  • Started at beginning
  • Stopped at paragraph “Besides pitching things to the intermediate,”

• Notes, comments, etc.
  • Similar activities by reactionary forces (e.g. Samaritan ministries) of collecting old food and giving it to the needy
    • Bourgeois institutions have monopoly on the resources
    • Ethics are often within the assumptions of liberalism
    • Budgets controlled by the state, reliant on grants, donors, volunteers, etc.
      • Paid staff vs. volunteer labor
      • Paid staff have connections
      • Volunteers don’t have a choice in operations
    • Organizations are not reproducable by volunteers, reliant on specialized skills of paid staff
  • Starvation as tool of the state, food distro as undermining it
  • Other example of police repression: https://www.wtoc.com/2026/03/11/priest-faces-500000-fines-feeding-homeless-amid-lawsuit/
  • Problem of temporariness, just not leading to development of class consciousness
  • Social services in the USA
    • One-sided relationship of producer and consumer
  • Social investigation in Peoria
    • Hypothesis: Social services being also hard to obtain in the first place
  • Homelessness as radicalizing experience
    • Classism on part of social service workers
      • Individual people who are passionate
    • System intentionally designed to be hard to access
    • Peoria has better social safety nets than in other parts of rural IL
      • Due to generally liberal environment and concessions
    • Those who are homeless are ripe for class consciousness as they part of the permanent underclass
      • As well as social workers are themselves often struggling and can be radicalized too
    • Building class consciousness & education for people (without trying to do a quixotic replication of existing social services, which is doomed to failure)
  • Civil Rights / New Left of 60s - 70s
    • How to avoid their mistakes? They were operating in a much more limited field
  • Talking to people!
    • What is stopping us from just talking to people, listening to them, and explaining our views to them?
    • Talking to both those in need of help as well as social workers who can be radicalized
  • Social media
    • Influence vs power
    • Engaging with the Left
      • Either impenetrable theory or shitposting
    • The Right has been able to monetize their propaganda
      • They have views that can be communicated based on existing prejudices
    • The Left has to deconstruct existing prejudices while also putting forth their own ideas
    • There isn’t as much accessible Leftist theory as a result
  • Avoiding replication of dependency/passivity of the masses
    • BPP - Free Breakfast Program used specifically as consciousness-raising measurement, not specifically for charity
      • So that people understand what they deserve
  • Ex. Community Potluck or other gathering could be a touchpoint to understand people’s viewpoints, then to also educate too
  • Revisionist organizations as locking up the advanced masses
  • “A better world is possible” vs. “a better world is waiting to be built”
    • Seizing the means of production, seizing housing
    • Appropiation of what is already there - we are not starting from scratch!
    • Especially in context of the USA
    • Being able to pitch an ideological vision to people
  • If the goal is to unify the proletariat into a movement/party/organization/etc. then communists have to reckon with the different levels of development
    • Education towards cooperation AND initiative AND creativity
    • As well as get actually good at propaganda and communications
• During Civil Rights movement, contradictions between nationalities ran higher
  • BPP and Young Lords had more appeal as a self-defense nationalist organization
  • Modern day, racism is more hidden and thus viewed as individual problems
    • Drive towards integration and assimilation into American imperialism
    • Black national bourgeois and comprador classes
• White chauvinism is dominant in the USA communist (and leftist) movement
  • Part of opportunist and revisionist hegemony in USA Marxist scene
  • Segregation in Peoria on race and class lines
  • Siloing of issues, lack of united front
    • Hobbyism, amateurism, people just pick an issue that is important to them and join an org
    • Due to middle class makeup of organizations
    • No coherent theory of capitalism as a unitary system