“Pay Us Enough To Live!” The Battle Cry of Social Democracy

“All you had to do was pay us enough to live. All you had to do is pay us enough to [expletive] live.” These were the words of Chamel Abdulkarim, who allegedly set fire to the Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Southern California, destroying the facility. Additionally, he recorded himself lighting fires, he stated, “If you’re not going to pay us enough to [expletive] live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this [expletive].”

The damage was massive, a 1.2 million square-foot warehouse worth approximately $500 million in damages is certainly disruptive. The goal allegedly was to directly harm the bottom line of “the billionaires,” and even if this is a drop in the bucket, it’s without a doubt successful in hurting the bottom line.

But only the bottom line. Abdulkarim’s statements have permeated social media over the last week, capturing the hearts and minds of people who are all collectively feeling an incredible weight, politically and economically. But it is our duty as revolutionaries to emphasize this is not revolutionary work. This propaganda of the deed style action has done, and will do, very little on mobilizing the working class to action as a class. Instead, all that has been done is to promote the total destruction of infrastructure as a tactic, as part of a larger strategy; paying people enough to live.

Communists have a bigger vision. We deploy many tactics, but our long-term strategy is for revolution. Our objective is not to hollow out warehouses, but to seize them. Our goal is to not force an agreement for the capitalist class to pay the proletariat enough to live, but to eliminate the capitalist as a class entirely. We need a revolutionary strategy.

We need revolutionary tactics to accomplish this. We need to prepare the working class for revolution and for the seizure of power. We need a revolutionary party. “Pay us enough to live!”, this is the battle cry of social democracy. The battle cry of the revolutionary working class? REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION! WORKER REVOLUTION!