Reverse Engineering Abolition
Sometimes, the best way to figure out a political question is to think about the end goal, then trace your steps backward from the end goal to the present circumstances: reverse engineering. I’d like to try and apply this to abolition.
Define the End Goal
My interpretation of abolition is that it is the absence of prisons and bodies of armed men (i.e. the state), and the presence of a society that collectively and democratically organizes the production and distribution of wealth.
If the goal is to abolish the state, why does it exist in the first place?
The state exists principally to use violence to uphold class rule, where the few benefit from the work of the many. From this perspective, the state is principally a class weapon. Without this weapon, the rulers risk being overthrown because the masses wouldn’t put up with the absurdity.
In our current society, the rulers are the capitalists. We clock in every day at the workplaces that the capitalists legally own. If we try to rise against their class rule, the state steps in and sends armed men to defend the capitalists.
If the state is a class weapon, then the goal of smashing the state actually depends on the smashing of classes.
Abolishing Classes
Classes did not develop overnight and I do not expect them to disappear overnight. Destroying classes will require the deliberate effort of disarming and even repressing the current ruling class, the capitalists, to create space for the working classes to become accustomed to ruling and prevent the capitalist class from clawing back into power.
When the working class is in power, it can begin rationalizing and democratizing production: which opens the door to collective ownership, collective wealth, and collective rule. In other words, this would abolish classes.
A Weapon of Our Own
For the masses to abolish classes, they have to simultaneously engage in class struggle, develop their class consciousness, and the organizations used to carry out those struggles. This will allow the working class to begin democratically controlling production. The organizations of struggle, especially those rooted in workplaces, can become the foundations and scaffolding of a working-class government. This new state must overthrow the capitalist’s government and dominate the capitalist class.
In other words, the working class has to become a class capable of collectively building its own government and wielding it.
This leaves us with the question of how we work with, learn from, and help lead the masses toward their self-emancipation so that they can create the conditions for the end goal of full abolition?
The Starting Line
My sense is that we need to assess which spaces our abolitionist comrades are situated in: neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, organizations, etc.
Based on where comrades are situated, they should push these spaces to join the fight to defund the police, abolish prisons, defund the military, and implement programs that actually benefit society (like Chicago Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez’s Treatment Not Trauma).
To build broad and successful struggles, we need to front-load anti-racism since these politics created a principled unity that built the largest movement in US history.
Within these spaces, we need to struggle for abolitionist perspectives and practices like restorative and transformative justice.
We also need to actively watch for working-class self-activity, like the subtle activity of dibs, the uprising of 2020, and anything in-between that presents opportunities to meet everyday people.
Whether or not the workplace starts as the site of struggle, we need to encourage and empower people to take their organizing lessons and anger back into the workplace because the strength of the working class is its ability to democratically control production.
Further Reading
This article is only intended to be an overview of one socialist perspective on abolitionism. I hope that it can contribute to the current debate around how we define abolition and how we achieve it.
In the spirit of analyzing concrete, abolitionist struggles, what it took to win their demands, and what it looked like to defend them: I recommend reviewing The Black Jacobins, or the US Civil War and Black Reconstruction. None of these examples are perfect, and none succeeded in the ultimate goal. But they still provide concrete lessons for us to build on.
