I would never claim that a demand for violence against the system should be off-limits. I think at any point in US history, or in the history of capitalism, violence would have been justified, both in terms of everyday self-defense, and in overcoming the system for something beyond it. You would be right to say this current world needs to be violently destroyed in most cases, but you have a responsibility, if you are a communist, to clarify the context of that violence.

People who are being attacked by ICE, for example, do not have quite that same responsibility, if they have not consciously claimed the transcendent political position. They are totally justified to use violence against ICE without cementing communism in practice. Yet the communist or Marxist is actually there, not to encourage what that individual already knows to do on their own, but to help tie that immediate consciousness of the situation to a new practical logic.

It isn’t because of stupidity or delusion that they lack this objective now. They are rightly, unavoidably concerned with their immediate circumstances. It also makes sense for, say, an individual worker to worry about their labor benefits, too, when we are in crisis. Yet once you are a communist, and you take that objective seriously, the immediate practical consciousness in these situations is a mismatch, just on their own, for the communist aim. You are not demanding subordination from these people fighting their immediate situation, however, but fighting for what you think is possible, while also treating their fight with respect. You do not hide your communist aim or shy away from it. You also don’t demand survival first and put off discussion of aim until later. The people in these situations can do survive against the immediate question on their own.

Those fighting in the immediate situation aren’t just your tools of warfare. In their fight is also the space for you to be remade into a better social creature. You should take the violence of this situation, and your relation to others in struggle, seriously. Why do they need to use violence just to survive, at the discretion of someone off on the sidelines who is not immediately facing violence with them? Why can we just bark orders at people to be violent, when we haven’t established stakes between us? You can make demands, but you have to clarify the link between everyone, which, for communists, should be mutual relation in survival on self-conscious communist terms. Otherwise, you should just let people fight their battles on their own without bothering them.

For communists, the collective concern is not just surviving another day according to the rules of the society we already exist in. It’s to create the practice that halts that society’s reproduction, and negates capital. You can speak up to tell someone to fight ICE—which they will do anyway— when you have some way to demonstrate the bond between the two of you in struggle. We do not need new Maoist military commandos to hide the revolutionary ball. You are not instructing them on how to survive by screaming “shoot the pigs” and then demanding they leave the trickier political matters to the vanguard when that time comes. Explain the communist dimension, fight for it, but do not demand anyone else take your orders. You are in struggle and negotiating with them.

How do you take and share power together? How are you in struggle with them now? How are you dependent on one another? What are you bringing to their fight? What are we doing collectively in fighting this society? What is the unconscious logic in all this fighting, unclaimed in self-defense against ICE so far? We are fighting ICE for reasons beyond survival, or at least you should believe so if you are a communist. You only should speak to others about that survival when you are honest about those reasons.