My Critique of liberal anti gang charity work

[The Red Panther Party]

Time after time in places like bristol, hackney, mosside, kersal, glasgow we anti gang innitiatives are started, they are ran by liberal pro capitalist mainly middle class people.

Alot of these people have good intentions but they try to stop gangs and crime by talking to kids before they join gangs, get youth clubs open, yet they fail to see that the only way to stop gangs and crime is to get rid of the corrupt and brutal system.

If your car engine breaks down, you cant fix the problem by cleaning the interior, you have to fix the engine, the same goes for street gangs, you can clear the streets by arresting the gang members, but unless you fix the broken system, new gangs will just form, sprouting up from the conditions of capitalism, namely poverty, depression and lack of opportunity.

Unless we rid our society of the evils of capitalism, we will never be rid of crime, the members of street gangs are victims of capitalism, we should unite with them against the system, not look down on them as we often do

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Gangs use capitalism. Gangs would not be a quarter of what they are today if drugs and other black market commodities weren't sold on the black market. Not only that but how many gangs do we think would exist if there was no unemployment that forced people to use the black market to get money? I disagree though that we should unite with gangs against the system with how gangs are today. They are capitalistic and follow hierarchies which basically mirror capitalist hierarchy today. So you'd have to challenge the whole gangs structure and meaning before you can even try and get them on your side.

[The Red Panther Party]

Paulmassey and dessie noonan joined in with the bash the rich campaign withy class war,paul massey also started prison riots at strangeways before the later ones in the 90s and he also stopped dealing on the estates, im not denying they are reactionary, but they are still part of the working class, i think cirian murphy putsi it well.

"i asked them what they meant by anti social, were they flooding the estates with low paid jobs, did they make a million pounds, knocking public housing down and making space for yuppie flats for smart arse yobs.

I find it hard to take the double standards, to look down on the people doing time, it seems the rich can rob us all, take our produce have a ball, but when we take it back they call it crime!

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Paulmassey and dessie noonan joined in with the bash the rich campaign withy class war,paul massey also started prison riots at strangeways before the later ones in the 90s and he also stopped dealing on the estates, im not denying they are reactionary, but they are still part of the working class, i think cirian murphy putsi it well.

"i asked them what they meant by anti social, were they flooding the estates with low paid jobs, did they make a million pounds, knocking public housing down and making space for yuppie flats for smart arse yobs.

I find it hard to take the double standards, to look down on the people doing time, it seems the rich can rob us all, take our produce have a ball, but when we take it back they call it crime!
I'm not looking down on people who are doing time. I used to be in a gang(Obviously before I became a communist) and I'm using these experiences to support my views. While I was in a gang you were taught to hate the other people for taking over territory or because they were a perceived threat to taking over territory. These territories were used to sell drugs, guns, to pimp, etc. If this doesn't remind you of capitalism it should. We would fight each other(compete) over land that we would use to sell things illegally. But even within the gangs we followed a hierarchy where those who did more got less like in capitalism. You had "taxes" imposed by the gang where you would have to give a certain amount of your money earned through selling various things to higher ups who a lot of the times weren't the actual ones on the front lines doing this. They would emand "respect" and could impose these taxes through their respect because they had done various things to get that far. I mean you have members in prison getting millions from people selling drugs on the outside who do little more than the CEO's at a corporation do.
This is a very capitalistic like structure which would need to be changed before trying to get them down with socialism.

[The Red Panther Party]

oh yeah what gang were you in lol, ive been around gangs all my teenage years and its fuck all like you say, seems your a don corleone wannabe, street gangs nearly never have a hierachy, the ones that do are organised crime setups and i dont see you as a lucheese mobster :)

[Saorsa]

Gangs are the corporations of the black market. Organised crime in particular operates in a very similar way to corporations, only with a few more severed horses heads.

That said, your local street gang is very different to any kind of mafia set up. Other than dealing a bit of pot, most of the wee street gangs here do nothing much other than smoke the stuff.

[The Red Panther Party]

most criminals i know understand buisnessmen exploit working people,but instead of fighting them they say, well i will get mine without abiding by their rules, they would be sold on communism very easily if some revolutionary agitaters got into the streets, which is what im hoping to do

[A Revolutionary Tool]

oh yeah what gang were you in lol, ive been around gangs all my teenage years and its fuck all like you say, seems your a don corleone wannabe, street gangs nearly never have a hierachy, the ones that do are organised crime setups and i dont see you as a lucheese mobster :)
I was a Norteno, thanks for mocking somebody who has lived that life.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

most criminals i know understand buisnessmen exploit working people,but instead of fighting them they say, well i will get mine without abiding by their rules, they would be sold on communism very easily if some revolutionary agitaters got into the streets, which is what im hoping to do
Except they do abide by their rules.

[Roquentin]

Gangs would most likely be considered by Marx to be part of lumpenproletariat, a class he had a pretty negative view of.

I'd agree with the critique of liberalism, which fails to recognize that gangs, even if you consider them a reactionary force, are a direct product of our economic system rather than an aberration that can just be fixed with some kindness and humanistic morality.

[Crusade]

Gangs would most likely be considered by Marx to be part of lumpenproletariat, a class he had a pretty negative view of.



I never understood this. You(Marx, not you lol) acknowledge capitalism's flaws, but won't reach a hand to the people who fall through the cracks? Once you're corrupted by the system it's game over? It's bullshit. I understand the concerns with starting a movement primarily with this class, but to close your doors to them is absolutely ridiculous. Half the people I know could be considered a member of this class, they've been all ears to everything I've had to say about socialism(including *gasp* Marxism), even if they were critical of it like everyone is at first. In many cases, drug dealing and prostitution are far more difficult than regular work, I'm sure most of them would definitely prefer being a member of the working class. A common misconception is that drug dealers get paid a ridiculous amount of money, when really, most of them are barely making minimum wage. If they could do a job that pays more, doesn't carry a risk of prison, and an ASSURED supply of income, why wouldn't they take the offer for any reason other than not being properly trained/educated?

The obvious concern with focusing on this class would be the clear threat of corruption and criminal elements, like what happened with the Panthers(although many were framed), but a big reason for this is being a Panther doesn't mean you suddenly have a Job, food, and a place to lay your head. With increasing pressure from the FBI, government agents infiltrating the organization, members being offed without posing a threat at all, it's a no brainer that many of the Panthers went back to crime. This doesn't mean that trying to organize a class which has only a life of crime and revolution to choose from is somehow a bad idea and that this class should be ignored altogether. Huey Newton believed most of the working class would end up in this class as time went on. How many people are losing their jobs? How many suburban dads are robbing gas stations? How many people are robbing banks and relying on public aid? Commies won't even have the luxury of ignoring this class the longer we wait.

[Roquentin]

I'd agree with a lot of that, but you pretty much have to admit gangs and organized crime embrace a lot of the worst aspects of capitalism, selling drugs that cripple the ability of people to do much of anything, mercenary killing, prostitution or worse still keeping women as outright sex slaves, and terrorizing ordinary people into giving them money for "protection."

Granted, the role is that of taking actions to make money that the respectable bourgeoisie won't do. This is why only marginalized groups drift towards organized crime, they've been squeezed by the system so hard there's no end to what they'll do to make money.

I wouldn't say that people can't be persuaded to change their lives, but organized criminal activity shouldn't be romanticized.