Mass Struggle or Individual Blame
Fight Systems and Ideas, Win Over the People
I recently watched a video by YouTuber BadEmpanada concerning a phrase regularly used in left-wing discussions, which is “be ruthless to systems, be kind to people”. This phrase is commonly attributed to the late Michael Brooks. BadEmpanada stated that this phrase was harmful for a few reasons. The main argument is that people make up systems, so we must criticize people as systems are not detached from people.
Systems like capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism (which is a stage of capitalism) are made by people and run by people. However, the systems are complex, and people operate in them knowingly and many times unknowingly. Many people are not conscious of how society operates at the systemic level. This is not to minimize the harm caused by systems or the people who operate within them, but to add clarity and context to the discussion.
From the Marxist perspective, people are incentivized, propagandized, and indoctrinated into systems, like capitalism, which harm them and others. Marxists typically referred to this as false consciousness. These are people who are not conscious of class society, of the social relations of production, or of the harm this social arrangement causes to the world and the masses of workers. This is why the masses must be educated; admonishing them for being “stupid” or “horrible” does not educate them on why their participation in the system is wrong or why the system is harmful.
As Lenin outlined, revolution cannot take place through individual action but only through mass movement. The masses must be educated to become conscious of their class and then organized into a movement that seeks to end the harmful systems (primarily capitalism) that plague this world and replace it with socialism. However, this willingness to be educated and organized needs to emerge from agitation. We need to speak to the problems of the working masses in the historical and social context we are in. Effective agitation means meeting the people where they are by actually being there. When a tenant strike is happening, when a general strike is happening, when there are community events, when there are protests, etc. We need to be actively involved in the movement that is there and active within our communities. Even the Black Panthers provided free breakfast and services to their communities, this was significant outreach and helped them to meet people where they were.
The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.
What Is To Be Done? by Vladmir Lenin
After this agitation, we educate and organize the masses as an effective counterweight to capitalism at home and imperialism abroad. People do not spontaneously organize themselves and educate themselves; it takes the most conscious of us to reach out, educate others, and try to organize a meaningful movement.
Dogmatic takes about blaming individuals, and condescending remarks about certain places do not build a movement. It is easy to sit down and belittle others when you are not building towards a mass movement, when you are not a part of the struggle. Part of that struggle is to speak out against harmful ideas, people, and beliefs, but the purpose of that struggle is to build towards something better.
There will always be those who are reactionary, there will always be those who are ignorant, and there will always be those who are conscious with the fewest of us who are trying to take action towards change. We as leftists didn’t just spontaneously become so; we made our mistakes, had/have our biases, and have to resist a society that attempts to marginalize our beliefs and views. We still work towards educating those who are willing to be educated, we still speak towards the suffering people are facing, whether they live in the USA or not. We attempt to organize those willing into the best counter force we can against the system.
The capitalist state apparatus has been successful in culling successful leftist movements on the national and international level. Operations like COINTELPRO helped to diminish leftist movements at home, while military ‘intervention’ helped to diminish these movements abroad. We need to take into consideration this history, the history of sabotage, the history of bloodshed, and the history of manufactured consent when we talk to the people we are trying to get on our side.
While folks like BadEmpanada have a point that Western countries and settler colonial projects (like Israel and the US) gain immensely from their imperialism and that the spoils of imperialism benefit their citizens… That cannot be the only factor in why leftist movements have failed to gain traction in many cases.
Capitalism has a significant effect in that it co-opts movements, gets members of movements to capitulate, indoctrinates the masses with its logic, and destroys those who do not kneel to it. Under such a system, people’s beliefs become compromised and infected by specific trends, whether they capitulate, become pessimistic, support the current system whole heartily, or advocate for gradualist approaches. Revolution is scary, revolution is not easy, and revolution is not convenient. These trends relate to the fears, uncertainties, and harsh realities associated with conducting revolution, but for change to truly happen, it is necessary. It is only through the desperation of the masses that revolution becomes the solution.
A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.
Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
However, this desperation is being felt as more Americans identify socialism favorably as wealth inequality grows, and the affordability of basic necessities decreases. As the contradictions of capitalism grow, so will discontentment with the system.
If we don’t build that bridge between confusion and consciousness, capitalism will. If we don’t give people language for the pain they live through every day, Fox News will. If we don’t offer a political home to the exploited, the right wing, or worse, the nihilism of hopelessness, will fill the vacuum. The masses don’t spontaneously radicalize; they are guided, developed, sharpened over time. They must be organized, not merely awakened. Class consciousness is not a natural outcome it is a construction, shaped through struggle, agitation, organizing, and authentic relationships with real people whose material lives are on the line.
And so our role is not to stand above the people, but with them by being patient, disciplined, principled. We win not by shaming but by politicizing, not by sneering but by showing that another world is both necessary and possible. Revolution is not a spark; it is kindling layered over years until the moment comes when the masses, fully aware and fully fed up, decide that the old world must fall. That is why we must be ruthless with systems and generous with people. Because the system is powerful enough to crush us as individuals, but the people united are powerful enough to replace it. If we do our work right, they will.