Workers Party of Massachusetts

WORKERS PARTY STATEMENT ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Pundits across the political spectrum are reacting to the shooting of Charlie Kirk by condemning “Political Violence.” A gunshot is one form of political violence, but the majority of political violence in the country is much more quiet, systemic and insidious. And there is nothing that makes one gunshot materially worse than these ongoing systemic attacks.

A starving child is political violence. Dying from exposure due to a systemic lack of housing is political violence. Lack of access to healthcare is political violence. Students being beaten and arrested for speaking out against injustice is political violence. But politicians and the media continuously refuse to condemn this much more common kind of violence as it only affects us–the working class. 

The Workers Party will not debate about political violence within the parameters that are set by the oppressors. We must analyze why these events happen in context and not in a vacuum. Systemic violence is political violence. There is profit to be made in upholding private, bourgeois ownership of necessities and creating artificial scarcity, and disunity in those opposing these violent systems. The innumerable proletarian deaths at the hands of the bloodthirsty capitalist machine is the result of this unequal system. 

Individual assassinations of reactionary mouthpieces like Kirk are not meaningless–they reflect the intensity of our political moment. When the people are suffering immense systemic injustice, loud bigots make themselves easy targets. But targeting these mouthpieces and their tailored messages isn’t real material progress. Adventurism–individual terroristic action–can be cathartic but it is not revolutionary. Collective action and vanguard organization are the only effective route to liberation. Abandon the two party system and join the Workers Party of MA or a local socialist organization in your state today! 

“If terror is going to be the choice of weapon, let there be funerals on both sides.”

-George Jackson