By Baiqi Xiong, YCL-LJC member in Toronto
Political slogans are born out of mass movements and represent the political interests and demands of specific mass movements. They serve as a yardstick for testing the maturity of the proletariat. But the slogan itself is not scientific analysis, it is a simple description of the present situation by the masses; more profoundly, it represents the contrast of class power.
Take “abolish the police” for example — this slogan, now making headlines, was born out of mass movements of the United States, more precisely Minneapolis, and it is a projection of the fruits of established movements. Rather than just being a request to abolish the police, behind the slogan is a mass movement in the United States that has developed enough to actively disrupt the machine of violence, systemic racism, and police brutality.
If we look at the situation in Minneapolis, this slogan is a reflection of previous physical achievements; that protesters were able to demolish the local police station is the reality of their material situation. We must recognize that, although class power and mass mobilization caused this slogan to become popular, it was not the popularization of the slogan that caused changes in local material conditions. Like I said at the beginning, political slogans are born out of mass movements, and they represent the political interests and demands of specific mass movements. Political slogans serve as a yardstick to test the maturity of the proletariat.
We should recognize the inherent limitations of a political slogan, and especially of building a movement around a slogan, because slogans are born of specific environments, specific material situations, and the local organization and power of the working class. A slogan can only represent the interests of a certain stage and maturity of the mass movements. Of course, slogans may be reused across county lines, across borders, and across political lines, but these slogans continue to represent different ideas and have different connotations based on the variety of material bases in which they are employed (in this case, the confusion around whether “abolish the police” genuinely means police abolition or simply reform, and what this police abolition could look like in reality, reflects this).
For example, the movements against police brutality in Minneapolis and Portland serve currently to protect previously-made advances in material conditions (such as the destruction of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct, and the attempts to disband and reform), whereas in cities like New York City or cities across Canada, movements tend to be weaker, less cohesive, and have made fewer material gains, thus the essence of their campaign tends more towards simply cutting the police budget rather than disbanding and abolishing these departments.
For the above reasons, as Marxists, we should join these movements and bring forward understanding of the material reality, rather than simply organize around a catchy political slogan. History is created by the broad proletariat and as a class, the proletariat will naturally experience transition from immaturity to maturity, from unorganized to organized, from class-in-itself to class-for-itself. Slogans in line with the interests of the proletariat will change with the development of the struggle and the maturity of the proletariat.
Although it is easy to be cynical about misunderstandings within movements, differences in goals, and current trends towards slogan-based organizing (or worse, sloganeering), it should be the goal of Marxists not to decry the shortcomings of certain movements but to inject class analysis and understanding of material conditions into these movements. It is true that in our current age it is much easier to simply post a hashtag, Carrd, or black square on Instagram than to physically organize and educate. It is necessary then to look beyond the catchy slogan of a movement and to urge others to do so as well — slogans are an incredibly effective tool to organize large masses of people across the political spectrum, but to really advance a movement, the movement must have a set list of goals relevant to their local situation, and must be able to provide materials with which to educate the interested masses. History is developing and things are changing — we should be ready for it; we must be ready for it.