Riots Don’t Change Systems, by Pete Dolack

Rise up, capitalism IS the crisis

Image by staticgirl via Flickr

by Pete Dolack
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Systemic Disorder, Feb. 3, 2021
February 4, 2021

You say you want a revolution? There are no “lessons” for anyone on the Left to draw from the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol building in Washington.

If we were to set aside for a moment the fascistic nature of the mob, egged by on former President Donald Trump and his minions (which I am not suggesting we actually do), there is nothing to be taken in the abstract. Apparently there are some folks who, while certainly not condoning the political outlook of the insurrectionists, believe the example set might provide something of a template for how to achieve very different goals.

Even before we get to what should be an obvious observation — the Trumpite mob was enabled by some Capitol Police officers and law enforcement agencies largely share the insurrectionists’ politics while not hesitating to crack down violently on Left demonstrations, no matter how peaceful — governments and economic systems are not overturned by mobs storming the headquarters of the government. Any change to a better world by Left-led social movements can’t succeed without having a large majority of the population behind them with a significant number willing to act on the desire for systemic change in well thought out moves and not simply be passive supporters. There is no shortcut to organizing.

As comforting as it may be to believe that any form of economic democracy, whether we call that socialism or something else, can simply be voted in, that path isn’t available. History has amply demonstrated that peaceful roads will meet with massive counter-attacks, from the Paris Commune in 1870 through Salvador Allende’s democratic election in 1970 and right up to today with the Bolivarian Revolution. That, on the other hand, doesn’t mean we are condemned to wringing our hands in frustration and doing nothing as capitalism continues to immiserate more people and destroy the environment.

Everything of human creation has a lifespan and everything of human creation can be changed or removed by human hand. Slavery, feudalism and other systems of the past were not natural, they were not ordained — they were products of human imagination. Capitalism is not the end of history. It is nothing more than one more system of repression, one more system of organization. It is no more permanent than slavery, feudalism or any other system of the past. If this were not so, there would not be so much frenetic activity put into convincing us that “there is no alternative.”

A serious movement needs to use a wide range of tactics and approaches wielded by cohesive organizations bringing together movements in broad alliances that provide scope for people with specific issues and oppressions to advance their goals simultaneously with rooting these in larger understandings of their structural causes and the systemic crises that must be tackled. The days of telling people that you need to “wait your turn” and, anyway, “your oppression will be solved once we have a revolution” need to be definitively over. On the other hand, splintering into a myriad of groups working only on specific issues in isolation from one another is a guarantee of ineffectiveness in terms of tackling the overall systemic problems that underlie so much of what we fight.

Masses in motion in 1917

It’s a myth that the October Revolution in 1917 Russia was the work of a small conspiratorial clique that violently took power. A contingent of Bolsheviks walked into the Winter Palace, then moved through hallways until they found the room where the remnants of the Provisional Government were meeting and simply arrested them. Hardly a shot was fired in St. Petersburg (then known as Petrograd).

How could it have been that simple? Because the entire country was in motion and support for the deposed government had evaporated. The urban masses in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in other cities, had swung behind the Bolsheviks. In the countryside, where political support remained with the Social Revolutionaries, there was tacit support for the revolution — peasants had actually defied the Right Social Revolutionary leadership (the SRs having just split into two) by taking land from landlords and the aristocracy and redistributing it among themselves, actions strongly supported by the Bolsheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, who would soon join the Bolsheviks in a coalition government.

All this could have happened because Bolshevik, Left SR and Interdistrict Organization agitation had turned the Russian Army, which led to the disarming of the police, who melted away. Russian soldiers and sailors took control of their units, refusing to follow orders by their officers, and even disarming them, putting control of the army and navy in socialist hands. This was most clearly demonstrated when the army chief, Lavr Kornilov, attempted a coup against the Provisional Government. Train tracks were torn up to block military movement into St. Petersburg, and Aleksander Kerensky, leader of the Provisional Government, had to call on Bolshevik militants to defend the capital. Enormous work over years, in extremely repressive conditions, was behind all this.

And what of the February Revolution that preceded the October Revolution?

Neither the Bolsheviks or any other party played a direct role in the February revolution that toppled the tsar, for leaders of those organizations were at the time in exile abroad or in Siberia, or in jail. Nonetheless the tireless work of activists laid the groundwork. The Bolsheviks were a minority even among the active workers of Russia’s cities then, but later in the year, their candidates steadily gained majorities in all the working class organizations — factory committees, unions and soviets. The slogan of “peace, bread, land” resonated powerfully.

On one particular day, tens of thousands of women textile workers walked out, then went to the metal factories and asked the men working there to join them. They did, the strike spread and within two days a general strike took hold. In another five days, the tsarist régime was finished — one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships brought to an end. Why that one day? Why that one strike among many that had broken out in recent weeks and over years? We can never know with certainty. The most we can say is that on that particular day, Russians finally had enough. This was an amazing feat, overthrowing an autocratic régime that had endured for centuries. Here, too, police considerations are part of the equation — some of the troops sent by the tsar to put down the rebellion refused to fire or even took the side of the people.


Masses in motion in 1979

One more example. The Sandinistas took power in 1979 at the head of a broad coalition encompassing wide sections of Nicaraguan society, despite the efforts of Nicaragua’s corporate elite — industrialists and agricultural exporters — who wanted Somoza removed but retain his extremely repressive system. The United States government, under Jimmy Carter, was working toward the same goal, having decided that Somoza had become too much of a liability. Therefore, Sandinistas argued, the task was to build its own multi-class coalition, going beyond peasants and blue-collar workers to include other social groups, including church groups and social christians.

Although Sandinistas developed an insurrectionist strategy in an underdeveloped country of the Global South, their strategy has broad applications for the developed countries of the Global North, for similar social complexities and differentiations exist there. While no theory can be transplanted whole to another place or time, organizers explicitly acknowledged, and acted upon, the fact that workers are not only blue-collar factory employees, but are also white-collar and other types of employees in a variety of settings, in offices and service positions, among others. Any revolution that seriously attempts to transcend capitalism, which means eliminating the immense power of the capitalist elite, has to include all these varieties of working people, those regularly employed and those precarious, if it is to succeed in the 21st century.

Strikes alone would not be enough. In September 1978, Sandinista forces attacked the National Guard in several cities, including León, sparking uprisings in each of them. Although the Sandinistas were forced to retreat, thousands left with them in long columns, demonstrating that they would not abandon the people who supported them and the cause of building a better world.

On June 4, 1979, Sandinista calls for an “insurrectional general strike” shut down the country. Coordinated attacks began in a series of cities, isolating units of the National Guard and forcing the Guard to stretch its forces too thin. By July 16, almost every major city in Nicaragua was in insurgent hands and the régime was about to topple. The U.S. government this day was still trying to negotiate a deal to block the Sandinistas from assuming power with the Roman Catholic archbishop of Managua, various members of the anti-Somoza corporate elite and the Junta of National Reconstruction — this last maneuver was an effort to get the Junta, the government in waiting that had recently been formed, to add a member of the National Guard and a member of Somoza’s Liberal Party. With Nicaraguans solidly behind them, the Sandinista could easily say no to the U.S. maneuvers.

On July 17, dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled the country after years of waging war on his country’s people and muscling in on so many businesses that even sizable numbers of Nicaragua’s bourgeoisie wanted him gone. Years of tireless organizing by Sandinista militants, often at the risk of their lives, led to that day. Two days later, on July 19, the Sandinistas marched triumphantly into Managua, the capital, having already captured control of much of the country in the late stages of the insurrection.

This success was not the product of a random mob attacking a government building, but patiently building a mass movement that became strong enough to topple a deeply corrupt, extraordinarily brutal dictatorship.

A disorganized group of people, even if they had the goal of bringing into being a better world that we would agree with, has no chance of success. None. Trying to create an alternate history or counter-factual by substituting good people for the fascists acting out an absurd fantasy is a sterile exercise, and one undertaken in an absence of historical knowledge. It would be a service to humanity and the health of the Earth if capitalism and the governments upholding it through violence were swept into the dustbin of history. But that will take monumental organization, getting a healthy majority to back the vision of a better world, linking hands across borders and solidarity across movements. That is as far removed as can be from a mob egged on by an aspirant fascist.

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From the archives:



Ralph Nader: What It Takes To Create Social Change Against All Odds

We Can Do Better Than Capitalist Formal “Democracy” by Pete Dolack

What Was The Paris Commune? by The Anti-Social Socialist

Caleb Maupin: The Actual Nature of Revolution

Abby Martin and Brian Becker: The First Time The Red Flag Was Waved + Caleb Maupin: Why Did The Russian Revolution Happen?


3 thoughts on “Riots Don’t Change Systems, by Pete Dolack


  2. Dolack’s essay is pretty good. It recounts, among other things, the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. I would add this comment: I was a young man in 1979, but I knew nothing of that revolution, because the internet did not exist back then. Today the world is on full display to those who look for it. I have great hopes that the sleeping giant is awakening.

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