An Introduction to the Sunbelt Thesis: a Plan for Maoist Revolution in the US
Tags: Communism, Maoism, USA, Revolution, Politics

The Sunbelt (also spelled Sun Belt or occasionally Sun-Belt) is a region which runs along the Southern border of the United States. This region, because of several key defining political-economic characteristics, is widely considered by American Maoists to be of significant importance in the future waging of a socialist revolution in this country. A socialist revolution in the present day must, of course, be carried out through a Protracted People’s War following the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The militarized and reconstituted communist party and its army must lead the conquest of power by an armed sea of the masses over revolutionary base areas; in those areas the party and the united front of the masses shall simultaneously build up worker democracy and the workers’ government of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat. What the Sunbelt Thesis- a practical plan for the execution of this revolutionary war in the US- tells us is that, for a number of reasons, the Sunbelt is the place where this process can be carried out most efficiently and therefore the place where revolutionary work to prepare for and commence the PPW must be focused.

The Sunbelt Thesis was first popularized by the RGA, who in their work Condemned to Win{1} laid out several points of factual evidence for their thesis that PPW could be most efficiently executed in the Sunbelt, points which will be laid out and explored with greater detail later on herein (although it was reportedly talked of in some form as early as the ‘80s). The idea was picked up and further demonstrated to be correct by other Maoist organizations within the American Red Guards movement, and today is upheld as the most correct and advanced plan for the undertaking of the Maoist revolutionary war in the US. Herein, I intend to elucidate the factual evidence for the thesis, and then to suggest how it may be applied in the now.

POINTS OF EVIDENCE FOR THE THESIS

ONE: OPPRESSED NATIONS

The first point of evidence for the Sunbelt Thesis raised in Condemned to Win is the presence of two of the largest oppressed national groups within the US prison-house of nations within the Sunbelt: the New Afrikan nation in the east and the Chicano nation in the west. The Sunbelt is additionally home to a third major oppressed nation, the Diné people (more commonly known by the Spanish colonial name “Navajo”), although they are not mentioned in Condemned to Win. The proles of the oppressed nations have a distinct position in bourgeois society. They face the same oppression and exploitation as the proletariat in general, but unlike those of the dominant nation, their experience of oppression is compounded by other factors: firstly their exploitation by the bourgeoisie tends to be worse, as they often make up disproportionately high percentages of those in the most exploited jobs; secondly there are countless social factors- police harassment, stigma and sometimes punishment for using their own languages or dialects, et cetera.

These oppressed nations’ proletariat are more oppressed and exploited under capitalism than the proletariat of the majority Yankee nation, and hence are more urgently in need of a new society. Therefore, they are more likely to revolt against the current (bourgeois) society, therefore the revolution will most readily blossom amongst them. Ergo revolutionary work can be most effectively done among oppressed nations and thus the Sunbelt, where the oppressed nations of the US are concentrated, is the most appropriate place to commence the development of the Three Weapons of revolution to build the D. of the P. through PPW.

The crux of this point of evidence (the fact of oppressed national groups’ high revolutionary potential) can be established as fact on significant precedent. Let us not forget that here in the US one of the most advanced communist movements prior to the current Maoist movement was that led by the red line of the BPP (as exemplified by Hampton, and not to be confused with the other, revisionist factions within the BPP), which got as close as it did to the successful construction of a revolutionary movement in this country by appealing to the interests of the intensely oppressed Black proletariat of New Afrika. The Black proletariat, intensely exploited by white capital and criminalized and targeted by the Yankee state, were in need of a source of leadership, stability, and community defense. When the revolutionary movement led by the red segment of the BPP stepped up to provide it, the Black proletariat rallied to their cause and other proletarians soon followed! What this clearly illustrates is that the way to build a mass movement for revolution is to work amongst the most oppressed in society- the proles of the oppressed nations. And so, since the oppressed nations of the US are today most concentrated in the Sunbelt, this is a point of evidence for the Sunbelt Thesis.

TWO: FASCISTIC BOURGEOIS GOVERNMENTS, AND THE REVOLT AGAINST THEM

The second point raised by RGA is that the states of the Sunbelt (especially in and to the east of Texas) are plagued by oppressive, often fascistic reactionary governments. Generally led by the quasifascist Republican Party, state and county level governments in these areas are consistently unapologetic about their service to the bourgeoisie at the expense of the masses, providing very little in the way of protection or care to the proletariat and routinely brutalizing oppressed groups. One may think that this fact, which of course makes life for the oppressed proletariat harder, would thus make revolutionary organizing harder and therefore make these areas the worst places to prepare for and commence the PPW. But in reality the opposite is true: the more directly antagonistic the contradiction between the proles and their interests and capital and its lackeys (the state) and their interests becomes, the more likely the revolt of proles becomes. Fascistic state tyranny may be an attempt to increase the power of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and prevent revolution, but it always fails because the fundamental and inescapable trend of history is toward proletarian revolution, socialism, and ultimately communism. Capitalism is a system riddled with contradictions that make its functionings muddled and impractical, so of course the attempt of the bourgeoisie to preserve capitalism does not work as intended.

Reactionary tyranny can do nothing to stop us! The most dangerous enemies of the revolution are actually the most insidious ones, the social-fascists who use deception and phony progress to delude the masses into inaction. But the fascistic reactionaries who tyrannize and mistreat the masses only enrage them, their cruelty teaching the masses not to trust bourgeois social institutions and fanning the flames of proletarian revolt. The more the state mistreats the masses, the more the masses understand they must overthrow it, and thus the easier it is for revolution to germinate and bloom! It is for this reason that the most advanced revolutionary campaigns in the world today- in Turkey, in India, in the Philippines, in Peru- are taking place under brutal fascists- Erdogan, Modi, Duterte, and the successors of Fujimori. And for the same reason, revolutionary war in the US will flourish in the areas most plagued by reactionary government- which are in the Sunbelt.

THREE: WEAPONS FOR REVOLUTIONARY PURPOSES AND THEIR AVAILABILITY

“Political power grows from the barrel of a gun” -Mao Tse Tung

Let there be no confusion or ambiguity, the revolution must come through People’s War and that war must be waged with weapons. Ergo, sooner or later, those attempting to launch the revolution must consider the question of acquiring a stockpile of arms for the coming war. Now, it is true and indeed Mao himself pointed out that it is not arms but people who win wars, and that the weapons of the People’s War need not be of the highest quality, as long as the fighters wielding them have the passion and commitment to win. Remember that the war of national liberation in Vietnam showed us that a simple punji stick, with righteous fury and the correct ideology of the people behind it, is mightier than all the guns of the imperialists. But even so, in the US it is a fact that effective and almost military-grade firearms are in some parts of the country available to the public, and so it would be foolish for the revolutionary movement not to take advantage of this fact. Good guns are not necessary for People’s War, but they will sure help!

When considering this question in the US context, it is of course necessary to look at the differences in the availability and accessibility of firearms between the various states. Interestingly, the question of the masses’ right to firearms is one of the few issues on which the Democrats are the worse of the two bourgeois parties and the Republicans infinitesimally the better- that is, Republican-controlled states are, generally speaking, places where it will be easier to build up stores of arms for the People’s War. And, as was mentioned in the previous section, there is a concentration of Republican state governments in the Sunbelt, especially its eastern half (i.e. Texas and states east of it). Ergo, the Sunbelt is a region in which it will be easy to build up stores of arms for People’s War. This can be observed on a map:

This map from Brady, a liberal organization dedicated to the destruction of gun rights, shows the “grades” each state received on their gun law “scorecard”- which gives a lower score to states where guns are easier to acquire- in the year 2013. The vast majority of states partially or entirely in the Sunbelt received F’s, and only two- California and Colorado- received passing grades. And of course, what is bad for liberals like Brady is good for communist revolutionaries. These F-graded states are the places where we can most easily acquire arms for the oncoming PPW. Thus the higher occurrence of these states in the Sunbelt than other regions is another point marking it as an ideal place to begin the armed campaign.

The availability of firearms is especially prominent in Texas, which is widely seen as the heart of American gun culture. Gun shows, gun collecting, gun selling- all are part of Texan identity, and all make Texas a good place for us to acquire arms for revolutionary warfare. Of course, American gun culture is not really our friend. It is a deeply reactionary culture, filled with chauvinist and reactionary attitudes and individualist ideas about the right of a single person to assert their individual will by force- this is why, as the map additionally shows, gun crime is unfortunately also common in Texas. Gun culture has however done one very good thing- in Texas (and the Sunbelt in general) it has made guns easy to get. In this way, it is the proverbial capitalist who has sold us the rope with which we shall hang them- it has made it easy for us to get guns, and with these guns we shall build a socialist society that will (through cultural revolution) destroy gun culture and the bourgeois superstructure of which it is part. So, thanks to this mistake of our enemy, Texas is an excellent place to go about preparing for the armed campaign.

This is just one way in which Texas is special for our purposes. Texas is the largest state in the Sunbelt, and the most populous state entirely within it. It is also centrally located. One could reasonably call it the heart of the Sunbelt: large and central, it is natural that a movement in that region would focus heavily on it. It is also the meeting point of the continental US’s two largest oppressed nations, with the end of the “Black Belt” sub-region generally regarded as the territory of the New Afrikan nation being in the east of Texas and with much of Texas being occupied by the people of the Chicano nation. The revolutionary potential of both nations is a significant factor in the question of revolution in Texas, unlike any other state. So, the points of weapons-availability and of revolutionary organizing among oppressed nations both indicate that the way to begin organizing for the PPW is with a focus on the Sunbelt generally and Texas specifically.

FOUR: A LANDSCAPE FOR GUERRILLA WAR

The final fact raised by RGA is one of simple topography and geography: Texas, which again is the heart of the Sunbelt and will likely be home to the first Revolutionary Base Areas of the coming revolution, is a vast open landscape like few others in the US. Texas, and a fair amount of the Sunbelt west of it as well, contains swathes of land with very little development and population- and thus very little in the way of state surveillance or entrenched mechanisms of state enforcement. The Sunbelt’s deserts are vast, and the state’s presence in them is small and relatively weak. There are miles and miles of land unsurveiled by the state, too far away from cops or soldiers or major political centers to be firmly monitored. In these spaces, it is possible for the People’s Army to move unseen from one base area to the next, evading the state and avoiding confrontation and thus minimizing battles and casualties. Consider how effectively these spaces have been employed by cartels and drug-runners as avenues for avoiding state attack. Of course, cartels and drug-runners are reprehensible parasites and the enemies of our cause. But nonetheless, their use of these spaces proves how useful they can be. These spaces of undeveloped nigh-infinite desert provide a theatre for the safe and secret movement of red troops and weapons, and a place where party leadership can hide out from the state in an emergency. A landscape providing access to such spaces is a great asset to a guerrilla campaign, and focusing the early stages of the revolution on the Sunbelt will give us such a landscape in the earliest phases of the war, when the forces of revolution are most vulnerable and therefore most in need of places to move and hide out secretly. Strategically, the western Sunbelt is the perfect landscape for guerrilla war.

Now, it must be clarified that in raising this point neither I nor the RGA are suggesting that PPW is a simple matter of secretive guerrilla groups moving around unseen in the background and striking occasionally. That is more the stuff of the impotent strategy of Focoist adventurism. PPW is Protracted People’s War, and must be waged by and with support of the people, of the broad oppressed masses of the country. In citing undeveloped and unpopulated land as a good theatre for the movement of guerrillas, we are not suggesting that socialism can be built out in the Mojave wastes by just a few dedicated guerrillas. That is absurd. Socialist base areas must be conquered and built up into functioning socialism by the power of the whole masses; they must obviously be built up in areas where the workers are. The guerrillas and the party must go into areas where workers are discontent and the state is weak and lead the workers via the united front in taking control of the area and building up the D. of the P. That is how a socialist Revolutionary Base Area is conquered, and how we go about spreading the D. of the P. across the country. But when it comes to moving between these base areas, or striking strategically to destroy troops coming to attack them, or protecting and hiding important party leaders, then the ability of certain members of the party and people’s army to vanish into the desert will be a tremendous asset.

PUTTING THE THESIS INTO ACTION: PPW IN THE USA

PREPARATION

The putting into action of the Sunbelt Thesis (i.e., the waging of PPW in the US) requires as a prerequisite the existence of a legitimate vanguard party in this country. To be truly called a vanguard party, let it be clear, an organization must have not just a correct philosophy but also an intimate connection as a leader to the broader masses and their struggles, and furthermore must be developing through that connection towards readiness to launch the revolution (which, in the modern day, means launching PPW). As such, while there are comrades working hard to establish a vanguard in this country, one does not yet exist. So, we as Maoists must first of all understand the work that must be done to establish the Party and join in that work before we can talk of undertaking People’s War.

Building up a party into the Party is at heart about applying Mass Line leadership. The communists who seek to commence leading the struggle and ultimately the revolutionary war must move among the masses, learn what it is they are suffering from and what struggles they need leadership in, and then work to aid the workers on these bases. If the workers are hungry, the proto-party should work to feed them. If the workers are being mistreated by landlords, the proto-party should encourage rent strikes and anti-rent activism. But the Party must of course be more than a charity or a mass organization. The party must not merely alleviate the immediate needs of the masses but learn from observation of their conditions what must be done to wholly liberate them in the long term, and must then seek to propagate amongst the masses attitudes conducive to those goals. By spreading these attitudes, attitudes of readiness to follow the Party into the fray of revolutionary war and out into the other side of socialism, the proto-party builds up support around itself- support which coalesces into the United Front and People’s Army- and becomes a genuine Party; it becomes a respected and important leader to the masses and, by leading the People’s Army in building up arms and troops and the United Front in building up mass support, it moves towards readiness to launch PPW. Once the Party’s leadership judges conditions are right, the United Front is large and ready enough to build up the workers’ government in Base Areas following Party leadership, and the People’s Army is ready to march out to conquer those Base Areas through force, the Party shall send out the call and the PPW shall begin.

Of note: As was aforementioned, building up the mass support of the Party can be done effectively and productively by focusing Mass Line efforts amongst oppressed national groups. This does not mean, however, that those seeking to build the Party should work only for and among some national groups. The Party is not the party of any one nation or of any limited group of nations, it is the party of the whole proletariat of the country. To found a supposed “communist party” for only the proletariat of some nations within the country is in reality to found a counterrevolutionary organization that will only divide the proles against eachother along national lines and distract from and obscure the shared cause of building up the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and socialism. Stalin, in Marxism and the National Question, criticized the Bundists and early Austrian socialists for this foolish over-focus on some national groups over others, which is at best a grave mistake and at worst a knowing and malicious effort to divide the workers’ movement against itself, and proved that it can only lead to the fungus of national-chauvanism and inter-nationalistic animosity and strife infecting the movement and rotting it from within{2}. The groups today that have organized in this way- the fascistic New Afrikan national chauvinists of the BHO and NBPP, the eclectic false Maoists of the MCP-OC, the Red Nation with their apparent belief that only indigenous people can functionally combat capitalist ecological destruction- indeed are proving more successful at starting childish fights between themselves and departing on flights of repulsively bigoted fancy than at preparing for or launching revolution. No, the leaders of the revolution must be a Party of no one nation but of the whole country’s proles. There can (and should!) be Maoist mass organizations focused on promoting revolution amongst specific groups, but they must be within the United Front behind the Party’s leadership and must be secondary and subordinate to the Party of the whole proletariat. In a prison-house of nations, national divisions must always be secondary, must never be more prominent in truly revolutionary ideology than the fundamental dialectical conflict between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The builders of the Party should devote a degree of special focus to organizing among the specially oppressed, but never forget that the Party must always be a leader and a friend to the entire proletariat of the US. The cause of revolution is the cause of the whole proletariat, and so the Communist Party as leader of that cause must be a party for the whole proletariat!

STAGES OF PPW

There are three stages in the conquest of power for the masses through PPW, outlined in relation to the Chinese anti-colonial People’s War by Mao in On Protracted War{3}. Mao said, “The first stage covers the period of the enemy’s strategic offensive and our strategic defensive[,] the second stage will be the period of the enemy’s strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counter-offensive[, and] the third stage will be the period of our strategic counter-offensive and the enemy’s strategic retreat.” Today, students of Maoism commonly refer to these phases more succinctly as Strategic Defensive, Strategic Equilibrium, and Strategic Offensive. These three basic phases are generally the path that any PPW will follow, and thus the topic of PPW in the US has been divided into three sections concerning each of the respective phases (specifically how they will likely play out in the US, as in other countries there are different phenomena to be accounted for which are not a concern here (e.g. building New Power in semicolonized countries)).

STRATEGIC DEFENSIVE

Being that the Sunbelt Thesis is largely on on how to start PPW in this country, it and the various important features of what it means for the movement which were outlined as evidence in part one are most relevant in the first stage of the war. Applying it how RGA and other US Maoists have espoused will be key to waging PPW in this early stage. In this stage, the basic nature of the conflict between the two powers, the bourgeois state and the rising foundations of the future D. of the P., is that the state occupies and controls the whole country and the revolutionary forces are sowing the seeds of revolution covertly and carefully under their noses. What this means is that the Party and the People’s Army must move about the country ( making effective use of the wide open spaces of the Sunbelt’s Deserts) leading the creation of early foundations for worker-democratic government in various areas. Then, they must leave the capable masses of the United Front to grow those foundations into burgeoning bodies of proletarian power by directing them towards the communist cause. As time goes on, these armed forces moving around the country (the Party and Army) will go on to build up stores of arms for the conquest of Base Areas and will aid the United Front in the areas where seeds of the workers’ state have begun to grow in forcefully destroying the bourgeois state and other institutions of capitalist rule in those regions and thus giving sole control over them to the workers via the new organs of worker-democratic governance- creating Revolutionary Base Areas. Throughout this phase, the mode of the war waged by the militarized Party and the People’s Army is mobile These leaders of the charge must move carefully around the country from one Base Area to another and from one place on the verge of becoming a Base Area to another, working to lead the founding of the new socialist society in those areas. The reason this stage is called the Strategic Defensive is because the primary goal of our movement in this stage is to make and defend Base Areas in the areas where the state is weakest and the conditions are most favourable, but not yet to go into a full pitched battle with the state.

On the conquest of power for the proles in a specific area (i.e., the founding of a Base Area), it must be noted that the primary means of political-economic conquest is not the destruction of bourgeois institutions but the building of proletarian ones. Of course it is necessary to bring down the wrath of the proles fatally upon their oppressors and to liquidate totally the institutions of oppression, but that is a secondary goal which can be most served through the pursuit of a primary goal: the building by the United Front with Party guidance of local institutions of worker government that strive to take over control of economic and political life in the area. To prioritize the killing of capitalists over the building of worker-democratic institutions when deciding how the Party and Army should lead the people in the areas where they operate is a fallacious approach, known as “annihilationism” or the “annihilation line.” This line was promoted by Charu Majumdar, a founding leader of the CPI(ML) (predecessor of CPI(Maoist)) and the Naxalite Maoist revolutionary movement in India, who taught that the primary feature of waging a guerrilla war was “the annihilation of class enemies.” To Majumdar, the role of the Party leaders when they came to an area was to encourage the masses there to “annihilate” their main oppressors, and the resultant alarm would lead the rest of bourgeois power to flee from the area and make conquering it easy. This line was mistaken, and criticism and examination have revealed it to be counterproductive{4}. Majumdar was a truly great comrade and a Great Leader of the revolutionary cause in India, but on this point he was wrong. The primary goal to be pursued in conquering a Base Area is the construction of worker-democratic institutions, and it is through this primary pursuit and these institutions that the secondary goal of ousting bourgeois power will be achieved.

As one can see in the first of the above paragraphs, the various distinctive features of the Sunbelt will indeed be very useful in building up our first Red Base Areas in this country. Once enough Base Areas have been conquered in this way, once the D. of the P. is in control of one part of the country and the bourgeois state is relegated to its own part of the country, we enter the second stage of the war.

STRATEGIC EQUILIBRIUM

As we enter the second stage, the basic nature of the conflict changes- from the state occupying the whole country and the revolutionaries working covertly under them, to a confrontation between two state powers with their own territories and forces. The D. of the P. controls one part of the country, the bourgeois state controls the other, and the two states are at war. The goal in this phase, then, is to gradually take away more and more regions from the bourgeois state’s territory and bring them into the territory of the workers’ state by making them into Base Areas. There are at this time essentially three kinds of territory in the country: red territory, bourgeois territory, and contested territory (per Mao, “…the enemy base areas…, our base areas…, [and] the guerrilla areas contested by both sides){5}. It is the contested areas where the struggle at this stage will be focused (although of course, per Gonzalo’s concept of United People’s War, there must be a movement across the whole of the country and organizing in every area to some extent). Along the line between the borders of the bourgeois and red territories, there will be a stretch or stretches of land where neither holds firm control anymore, as the bourgeois state will (based on the precedent of the war in China) have focused itself primarily on maintaining control in its heartland and thus its power on the edge of its territory will be weak. Under these circumstances, the Three Weapons will move into these areas and cement proletarian power there- the Army driving the bourgeois state’s troops back into their own territory, the United Front building up firm organs of worker self-government to take over in their absence, and the Party leading and guiding these efforts through democratic Mass Line leadership- growing the red territory and shrinking the bourgeois territory through a slow process of guerrilla war. The revolutionaries shall by guerrilla efforts push the zones of contested territory that mark the borders further and further inwards toward the heart of the bourgeois territory, further and further out from the initial Base Areas in Texas and the Sunbelt, growing the red territory and shrinking the bourgeois until the vast majority of the country is red.

As Mao acknowledged in On Protracted War, this will be the longest and slowest phase of the war. The process of pushing the border north out of the Sunbelt and taking over the whole country will be slow and grueling, and it will be at times demoralizing. Comrades will be lost. Gains made will be lost as the bourgeoisie push back, and sometimes it may seem that the grueling stalemate will go on forever with no victory in sight. But we must not be depressed or disillusioned by the hardships of war. We must not capitulate to the enemy, seeking phony resolutions through the bourgeois nonsense of peace accords. The cause we fight for is a legitimate one, the most legitimate one of all, and its victory is inevitable: the cause of the advancement of history into communism, into a global society rid of injustice, oppression, exploitation, and every other social contradiction. We must therefore keep fighting, must seek not compromise but total victory! No matter how brutal the war is, the infinite beauty of our goal is worth it all. Every comrade who dies in the war will have saved an infinite number of future people from dying at the hands of capital, just by fighting. Therefore there must never be any doubt that the war is worth waging! Never lose hope! Never give in! Keep pushing the line north, until victory is in sight!

STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE

Finally, when the vast majority of the country has been brought under the workers’ power and only a few of the enemy’s most secure strongholds remain, we enter the third stage. Once the state’s zone of control has been cut down and limited to only its last few bastions (if the reader will allow conjecture on my part, perhaps the areas around New York and DC), they will be effectively surrounded by red territory and the revolutionary forces may launch a full assault on the heart of bourgeois power from all sides and finally complete the conquest of the country. With the enemy disorganized and demoralized at a fraction of their old glory, the final crushing blow will now be easily delivered. From out of the red territory the Three Weapons shall come all together and move into the last bourgeois citadels from all sides in the full strength of their numbers. There they shall meet the United Front organizers who have been hard at work within the bourgeois heartlands at gradually eroding the hegemony of bourgeois power (recall that in waging United People’s War as taught by Gonzalo there must be organizing for all parts of the country, not just those where our efforts are focused in the first two stages) and together the combined forces of the revolution shall easily destroy the last vestiges of the bourgeois state and establish worker governance in their ashes, then come together to finally cement the power of the D. of the P. with the formal organization of the country-wide proletarian government. In this way the revolution will be waged in this country.

IN CLOSING

Of course, this has been only the vaguest of outlines of how PPW in the US may unfold. We can outline the general trajectory of the future with precedent from the past and evidence gleaned from analysis in the present, but in the end war is chaotic and uncertain and waging it requires flexibility and an ability to adapt to change. What should be clear, however, is that the various fortuitous characteristics of the Sunbelt will be very helpful to revolutionaries there, especially during Strategic Defense. It is therefore only logical and scientific to conclude that the Maoist movement in the US should direct our efforts to prepare for PPW in accordance with the Thesis, preparing to begin the war in the Sunbelt (likely Texas). Let me be clear, it is not necessary that every Maoist in the country relocates there nor is it not worthwhile for revolutionary activism to occur elsewhere, but in general we can conclude that the primary area of focus in preparing for revolution in the US should be the Sunbelt and that that revolution should be prepared for and waged in accordance with the Sunbelt Thesis.

SOURCES