Bulletins and News Discussion for February 19th to February 25th, 2023 - The Shadow of Suharto - COTW: Indonesia

I don't have books that disprove your idea besides general Marxist and Maoist works, but approaching from a Maoist perspective, I would critique the first part of your thoughts because I think it falls way to deeply into great man theory.

If the communist movement faltered because of the death of people like Fred Hampton, then the movement was weak to begin with and probably would have faltered anyway had those people stayed alive/true to the cause. Successful communist movements do not rely on strong role models, as you put it. You can have all the strong role models you want but it really means nothing if: a) the internal strength of the vanguard party is weak, b) the relationship between the vanguard party and the oppressed masses is weak, c) the unity of the united front is weak, d) the conditions necessary for revolution simply aren't present (crises, specifically)

• As formulated by Huey Newton with his theory of "revolutionary suicide", but also just by intuition, the death of a great number of people, civilians and revolutionaries alike, is inevitable in revolutionary war. Any revolutionaries like Hampton that were killed by the state may have been killed later on when the movement shifted to people's war. How many "great, strong" revolutionaries do you think were killed during the Long March? A proper vanguard party and united front should be prepared for this inevitability by maintaining strong internal unity, linking themselves firmly with the masses, political education etc. Or do you think the solution would have been to wheel Fred Hampton in like a bulletproof steel vessel or something, lest he be destroyed?
• There were plenty of great revolutionaries who existed contemporaneously to Fred Hampton -- he certainly wasn't the only "great revolutionary" of his time. Many of them either a) fell to revisionism (Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver) b) were killed, imprisoned, or exiled for life by the state (Imam Jamil al Amin, Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur) c) or just died of natural causes after a life of being a successful revolutionary (Kwame Ture).
• The New Left of the 60's, and their organizations and revolutionaries, were plagued by a great number of internal issues (misogyny, improper political education, splits/lack of unity, lacking security measures, adventurism), and these issues led them to be especially susceptible to being vanquished by the state powers. IMO this is what actually led to the downfall of the BPP and the other 60's orgs, not so much Fred Hampton's death.

and in a formal sense, by pushing parents and teachers that would pass those revolutionary behaviors and lifestyles down to their students to the periphery of livelihood and often killing them through social murder.

Don't know what you mean by this, you could either elaborate using more accessible/clear language, or I can accept it if the question isn't meant for me lol.

There's a recent Black Myths podcast episode that sorta covers your question. It's split into 3 parts titled "Myth: Prison is Built For Profit."

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wseiTnOWTJU: This directly addresses the myth of prisons being build for profit. The primary function of prisons isn't to get people to make shoes for Nike, which is what I thought as well. People hyperfocus on the loophole in the 13th amendment when that's not the actual primary function of prisons. By reducing the problem of prisons to unpaid/underpaid labor, you're implying that if prisoners got massive pay raises, it would somehow solve the problem of prisons.

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ41L09n6ig: This goes over the historical conditions which lead to the modern carceral system as well as the political economy of modern prisons using Californian prisons as a case study. There's a lot of details that further undermine the "prisons are build for profit" like how much of the push against private prisons is actually lead by prison unions who see private prisons as invading their turf or how prisons are developed on shitty land that otherwise have no commercial or residential value.

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfHrlKpdwgQ: This answers the actual primary function of prisons (and which answers your question), which is as a form of domestic counterinsurgency. The interviewee explains how the state originally thought just taking Black revolutionaries off the streets and shoving them into overcrowded prisons was enough except that since those Black revolutionaries were all concentrated in a few locations, they had the critical mass to form organizations within the prison walls and those orgs would then begin to radicalize the other prisoners until there's a second critical mass which led to prison revolts like Attica. So, the original impetus for having more prisons was simply to make sure prisons would never reach a critical mass of Black revolutionaries. Ideally, each prison would just have a single Black revolutionary locked up in solitary confinement completely isolated from other prisoners. Of course, once the prisons are build, they became a space to be filled with prisoners.

He goes into so much detail like how prison reforms would only be applied to select prisons so what prison you would go to is used as a carrot and stick. If you were a good citizen who did as you were told, you get to go to the "good" prison but if you were a dangerous radical, you can rot in the shitty prison. This is used as a means of disciplining people. In the last part, he goes over how a lot of programs from people outside are co-opted by the carceral system to perpetuate the carceral system. So, you have people who want to help, but they would help by volunteering for programs that were created by the prisons themselves. This was a means of destroying prison orgs because they don't want prisoners to organize among themselves.

read althusser's on the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses. its a really really great work that applies marxism-leninism to the superstructure and actually expounds in great depth the specific way that the ideological state apparatuses work.

what you are referring to is the education ideological state apparatus and your analysis is correct. the superstructure is two apparatuses: the repressive state apparatus (cops & laws) and the ideological state appratuses (education, religion, familial, media, news, unions, +). we need to be able to combat our way up the ideological state apparatuses, but our strength within them is only as strong as the level of class struggle that flows around and through them.

its a really great work that anybody with a glancing interest in understanding the superstructure must read in order to actually understand what the superstructure is, where it comes from, and what functions it holds. also makes many critical analyses on the role of ideology itself and the critical importance of the reproduction of ideology to any state.