The January 6th Riots
I've been sitting on a draft of this since January 9.
On January 6, deluded Trump fanatics Trump invaded the U.S. Congress building, briefly stopping legislators from confirming Trump's electoral loss. (The Anarchist Communist Group calls this the Bud Light Putsch in its fine analysis.)
As usual, the left has rallied to the defense of the capitalist state and its ideological crutches. Even if they didn't always say these words out oud, the left vilified the mob as "unpatriotic," "anti-democratic," and "anarchistic."
If only they were!
In fact no capitalist mob can claim those noble adjectives.
The rioters were very much
Patriotic, because they were motivated by a love of state and nation, even if their ideal state has a different leader, Trump. They draped themselves in the U.S. flag and symbols of the American War of Independence.
Democratic, because the mob included people of all classes who sought to protect their vision of the "Republic," the false community of the capitalist state.
Statist, archistic, not only because they accept the state as such, but because its members were the most fervent admirers of the current totalitarian state: its military and its police, its violence against people of color and immigrants, of the prophesied clash between the American and Chinese states, its attempts to forbid topics from university curriculum, etc.
Now, in contrast to this interclassist horde, whose violence against the state was incidental and had the worst of motives, the revolutionary working class will live up to all of the left's slurs. When it takes action, it will be
Unpatriotic, because the revolutionary working class has no fatherland and is resolutely internationalist.
Anti-democratic, because the revolutionary working class has no desire to bind together all people as equals in the fictional community of the democratic state. The working class must act anti-democratically in its revolution: it has no reverence for the opinions of the placid majority, it abolishes the rights and privileges of the rich, it wields power to expropriate and oppress the capitalist class in the process of abolishing classes and class society.
Anarchistic, because the working class understands that the state is ultimately an product of class society. By destroying class society, the working class abolishes the state forever. Per Bordiga: "We don't want to free the State, we want to put it in chains, and then strangle it. ... In place of the anti-State [of Bakunin] -- and this is the height of dialectical thinking! -- will be put the new State (Engels), whose purpose will not be freedom, but repression, but which will need to arise only to finally die once and for all, having attained the abolition of classes."
Treasonous, because the revolutionary working class makes no common cause with the state of the exploiters, instead working to destroy it.
Violent, because as Pannekoek said, "the armed violence of the masters cannot be overcome in Tolstoyan fashion by patient suffering. It must be beaten down by force."
Etc, etc.