The murder of George Floyd on May 25th by Minneapolis PD was an intolerable act that is still having repercussions across the nation, and is setting the stage for renewed confrontation by Black people and workers against the authoritarian capitalist state.

The reformist leadership coming from the Democratic Party and nonprofits have criticized the riots and outbursts as hurtful to the movement and unconstructive when it comes to achieving its goals. In a recent press conference on the events, Rep. Ilhan Omar said, “I realize our frustrations are warranted, our despair is justified, but today our priority needs to be to minimize harm. We can’t let the violence committed against one Black man give way to more destruction. You can’t say you care about Black lives, and engage in fires that endanger Black lives.”

But in truth the criticism of the rioting which took place is an ahistorical criticism that does not take recent history into understanding. Anyone can see there have already been peaceful demonstrations year after year, killing after killing—and yet the

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“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” -Karl Marx, Preface to French Edition of Capital Volume I

Fellow DSASF member Alex Biancardi recently posted an article on Medium entitled “What Should We Do About Zombie Karl Marx?” Though Biancardi’s article does not mention Red Star San Francisco by name, there’s no doubt that his piece illustrates a split existing within DSA as the organization tries to reckon with its own history, with the history of the socialist movement, and with the future of the working class struggle.

I think that a critique of Biancardi’s piece is an excellent opportunity to highlight some major theoretical departures between Biancardi’s view of Marxism and how most of those who identify as Marxists or revolutionary socialists actually approach the work we’re doing here in DSA. In Red Star San Francisco, we see critiquing and engaging with the openly-advanced positions of our comrades in DSASF not as petty factionalism, but as the process by which our chapter can clarify its positions on important issues and more coherently develop

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COVID-19 has thrown the capitalist order into crisis. The Sanders campaign has been defeated. Once the quarantine lifts, where do we fight?

These are dark times. The COVID-19 outbreak has plunged the US working class into uncertainty, fear, and chaos. As I write this, the toll of infected and dead are rising at an exponential rate.The country’s already murderously threadbare healthcare system has been stretched to its breaking point. Makeshift hospitals are being constructed in New York City’s Central Park, military hospital ships are being deployed to major coastal cities, and the reality of the staggering amount of suffering and death we face is beginning to set in. We should be clear - every death and every suffering and sick person should be laid at the feet of capitalism, which has left us so utterly unable to deal with this crisis.

Among those not yet sick, the luckiest among us contend with boredom, monotony and cabin fever as they work from home. Companies are already pioneering new forms of employee surveillance, chaining workers to their computers. Others now face financial uncertainty as their workplaces close and bills come due. Especially hard hit are

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Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Joe Biden is a disappointing but predictable outcome of an insurgent left-wing campaign conducted within the auspices of the Democratic Party. Bernie’s candidacy was a once-in-a-lifetime, near-perfect alignment of factors that turned the unthinkable into the immediately possible.

However, even with so many aspects of the campaign working in our favor—Bernie’s relatively consistent record and skeleton-free closet, a weak pool of other candidates, the increasingly broad popularity of left-wing policies—the Democratic Party machinery not only outmatched us, but is now attempting to co-opt our movement.

The fact that Bernie managed to get so far within a party apparatus so transparently and fiercely opposed to his candidacy speaks to the potential of a re-energized working class movement. At the same time, the fact that this energy was nonetheless defeated proves that social-democratic change, much less socialist transformation, will never happen from within the “nicer” party of capital.

Feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde once said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The US left has tested this thesis in the most favorable conditions we will ever see and found it to be correct. We must refuse to

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As it now seems that each passing Tuesday may bring further confirmation that Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential race, a particular era of left organizing is coming to a close. Bernie’s 2016 presidential run, which sparked new life in the US left, and his 2020 run, which was at least a distant glimmer on the horizon for much of the intervening years and which has dominated political life on the left for the last few months, were unlikely catalysts for a reinvigorated socialist movement.

But it certainly does not seem like there is another Bernie waiting in the wings. Bernie is an anomaly; his political trajectory is, of course in some sense, the product of the material conditions of the last few decades, but if this were the dominant reason for his unique political role we would expect to see more people like him. There are high-profile politicians with similar politics, but none who have any real shot at becoming president for the foreseeable future. The door to the highest office of the foremost imperial power seems as though it is about to close indefinitely for the left, and the left ought

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