by Tyler Rosen
Short-sighted, adventurist actions being carried out by individuals are on the rise in the
United States. Historically, many of these “lone wolf” tactics have been carried out by
older, right-wing extremists.(1) However, today, these actions are increasingly being
carried out by youth whose exact motivations are not clearly explained with ideology but
rather better explained by their own personal frustrations with a bankrupt system
that is capitalism. In short, the crisis of capitalism we are facing today which began
in the 2008 recession, and has vacillated between relative booms and busts, is
reaching its sharpest peak.
How this Crisis is Being Felt:
Life for the average American is declining. Homelessness is at a record high with a
documented 18 percent increase of homelessness from 2023 to 2024.(2) The
unemployment rate since the economic restabilization after the COVID-19 pandemic
has been steadily rising.(3)
The threat of a third world war is rapidly increasing. The NATO provocations against
Russia since 2014 that led to the 2022 escalation of the conflict between fascist
Ukraine and Russia, the western-backed coup in Syria in December 2024 that
placed in power a Jihadist Al-Qaeda splinter group into power, the genocide of
Palestinians by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and regime
destabilizations in Venezuela and Bolivia by the Trump administration, and saber
rattling against China are all making the prospect of a global war seem inevitable.
Democracy is being attacked by fascist-minded forces. Everyday, the Donald Trump
regime passes more diktats curtailing civil liberties, eliminating concessions that
make life more bearable, rolling back labor rights, attacking education, and evermore
militarizing police and federal agents.
It would be an understatement to say that people are increasingly feeling agitated and
powerless. When desperation bubbles up to a critical point, it is not strange when it is
expressed in a violent and unorganized way. Recent shootings of the United Healthcare
CEO and a far-right influencer are examples of this desperation.
A Trend as Old as Civilization
It should be noted that this phenomenon is not a new one. As the capitalist mode of
production faces a crisis, the disenchanted petty bourgeois radicals, maintaining their
distance from mass action, are more likely to engage in individual actions. Comrade
Gus Hall wrote in 1970:
Fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence are infantile. Acts of
individual terror at a moment when mass actions and movements are possible and
necessary, are actions in the service of reaction. They are damaging to the revolutionary
movement. These “communiqués from the underground” and other threats of violence
become the most convenient cover for acts of violence by police provocateurs, by enemy
agents. Police agents blow up buildings–but the blame is placed on the “Left radical
movement.” The fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence
become the canopies under which the enemy conspires to create new Reichstag fire
situations.(4)
Comrade Gus Hall, 55 years ago, clearly described the phenomenon. Those, radicalized by the
ever worsening crisis of capitalism, who do not have a deep connection to mass movements
and the working class are bound to channel their frustrations in individualistic manners. The
issue is that these individualized actions have negative impacts for the mass movements that
tirelessly struggle for progressive change. Though these actions should be seen as the
symptoms, not the disease itself, of a decaying society, organized communist youth must be
ready to educate and organize the disorganized in order to channel mass frustration in a
positive direction. Lenin stated it best when he asserted:
We believe that even a hundred regicides can never produce so stimulating and
educational an effect as this participation of tens of thousands of working people in
meetings where their vital interests and the links between politics and these interests are
discussed, and as this participation in a struggle, which really rouses ever new and
“untapped” sections of the proletariat to greater political consciousness, to a broader
revolutionary struggle.(5)
Only the unity of the working class with other democratic masses into an anti-monopoly coalition
will set society back on the correct path.
References:
(1) Jensen, Michael. 2023. “The Link Between Age and Extremism.” ASA Generations. March.
https://generations.asaging.org/link-between-age-and-extremism.
(2) https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/
(3) https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm
(4) Hall, Gus.1970. “Crisis of Petty Bourgeois Radicalism.” Political Affairs.
(5) Lenin, Vladimir. 1902. “New Events and Old Questions.” Iskra.
