Five years ago, the world watched in horror as a racist cop kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, snuffing out his life. His tragic murder would ignite the largest mass movement in US history.
The bourgeois parties and mass media would have us forget the true significance of these events—and for good reason. This was the closest the country has come to an all-out revolutionary upheaval in modern history. It sparked fear in the hearts of the ruling class, and sent Donald Trump scurrying into an underground bunker below the White House.
The spark that lit the flame of revolt
Initially, the four Minneapolis police who participated in the extrajudicial murder planned to quietly file it away as a routine event: “Man dies after medical incident during police interaction.” They literally expected to get away with murder, as cops often do.
This time, however, a tipping point was reached. Outrage at the economic crisis, botched response to the pandemic, and a never-ending stream of police brutality had been accumulating beneath the surface. The heinous killing of George Floyd was the spark that lit the flame of revolt.
The outrage detonated in one city after another, until the entire country was engulfed in protest. Fully 10% of the adult population—some 26 million people from virtually every demographic—participated directly in the mass upsurge. More than 7,300 protests were recorded in over 2,000 US cities. Solidarity protests also erupted worldwide.
The breadth and depth of the movement was unprecedented. Curfew was enforced in 200 US cities, with tear gas deployed against demonstrators in at least 100. Over 14,000 protesters were arrested in June of 2020 alone. National Guard troops were mobilized in 30 states—the largest military operation outside a war in US history.
Minneapolis protestors stormed the Third Police Precinct and lit the building on fire. A week later, a Newsweek poll showed that 78% of Americans sympathized with the anger behind the protests, and 54% felt that the burning of the precinct was justified—a de facto act of insurrection. The poll’s findings provided a graphic example of the speed at which mass consciousness changes under the impact of earth-shaking events.
Not only were soldiers patrolling major US cities, but there were embryonic instances of revolutionary self-organization. Spontaneously, ordinary people took up arms to defend their neighborhoods against the threat of right-wing vigilantes, looters, and police terror. In Minneapolis, improvised committees and patrols sprang up in poor and working-class neighborhoods to maintain safety, clean up the streets, check on vulnerable neighbors, and distribute food and supplies.
These events left an indelible imprint on the consciousness of millions. The idea of revolution in our lifetime is no longer abstract. / Image: The Communist
How the movement could have won
Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy active-duty soldiers to suppress the population. But the more serious strategists in the Pentagon publicly opposed him and convinced him otherwise.
The rank and file of the armed forces come overwhelmingly from low-income working-class households. There were already instances of National Guard troops refusing deployment or fraternizing with demonstrators. An order to fire on civilians risked producing an utter breakdown in the chain of command. If they played the “send-in-the-troops” card and it didn’t work, they would be out of cards altogether.
The ruling class was off-balance, and the potential for things to get out of control was evident. In this context, a revolutionary communist party with sufficient numbers and roots in the working class could have gained an echo by demanding that the labor movement mobilize its full strength for an all-out general strike.
The neighborhood defense committees that sprang up sporadically could have been coordinated and extended into mass assemblies in every city across the country. These organs of popular decision-making and control, made up of union members, unorganized workers, the unemployed, and students, could have been linked up nationally through a network of democratically elected and recallable delegates.
This would have marked the beginning of what Marxists refer to as dual power—the embryo of a future workers’ state in opposition to the state of the capitalists. In short, the protest movement to end racist police terror could have succeeded only by escalating into a mass revolutionary struggle to overthrow the status quo and form a workers’ government.
Despite the colossal outpouring of energy, the movement did not achieve even its most modest aims. / Image: Joe Piette, Flickr
June 2020 was only a dress rehearsal
Tragically, the movement lacked such a clear class-struggle program and coordinated leadership. The labor leaders did nothing to mobilize their millions of members or or build for a general strike.
The Democratic Party cynically co-opted the movement, using empty platitudes about “police reform.” The revolutionary aspirations of the millions who poured into the streets found no representation in the 2020 election, which resulted in a razor-thin victory for Genocide Joe. Any token gestures or promises were reversed as soon as the mass pressure ebbed.
Trotsky once said that “without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box.” Despite the colossal outpouring of energy, the movement did not achieve even its most modest aims. The system’s deep-seated racism remains fully intact. Nothing fundamental has changed in the capitalist oppression of humanity.
Nevertheless, these events left an indelible imprint on the consciousness of millions. The idea of revolution in our lifetime is no longer abstract. The contradictions that produced the movement have only intensified. June 2020 was only a dress rehearsal. The Revolutionary Communists of America are building the party today for a successful revolution tomorrow.