Are You a Comrade or an Ally?
More than a month after the nationwide uprising against police brutality began, the work is far from over. How will newfound allies of the Black Lives Matter movement sustain that fire?
For Jodi Dean, a political science professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the author of Comrade, a book on political belonging, the path forward is clear. It involves becoming comrades: people she defines as being on the same side of a political struggle who sustain their relationship through shared politics and shared goals. Dean finds her comrades in the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a communist political party in the U.S.
I spoke with Dean earlier this month about the difference between allyship and comradeship, and the importance of Black leadership. Here are the main takeaways:
A comradely relationship is rooted in shared politics
While allyship assumes that someone’s politics follows naturally from their identity, Dean said, a relationship between comrades is based upon a shared understanding of the world and theory of how to change it. “Political consciousness has to be built,” Dean said. “Anyone's consciousness can be raised for Black liberation struggle, for the struggle for undocumented workers, for the struggle against LGBTQ bigotry, for the feminist struggle … you don't have to be someone who's been in prison to reject the prison industrial complex.”
A shared politics is rooted in a political tradition
Political education, in Dean’s telling, involves taking part in collective study and discussion within a coherent political tradition. For example, contemporary communists in the United States would read works by Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Harry Haywood, and Cedric Robinson, she said. Instead of leaving people to “google it,” comrades might provide people with reading suggestions, study groups, and webinars.
Out with privilege checking
“The language of privilege checking doesn't begin from the fact of being on the same side of a political struggle and cultivating and strengthening that side. Instead, it treats politics as something exclusive, like property or a club,” she said. When someone is told to “check their privilege,” privilege is framed as something that prevents someone from achieving and working for these shared politics. Comrades, however, “value one another, learn from one another, and acknowledge that we each will make mistakes, and that what is important is staying focused and unified in the common struggle.”
The work continues outside of a movement
While movements ebb and flow, Dean says her party’s comradely relations and commitment to specific strategic work, like organizing protests and speakers and writing pamphlets, ensures their organizing is continuous. “We continue doing the same work even as the movement dies down,” Dean said. “So it's about continuing the struggle and being able to move the struggle into multiple [forums of political engagement].”
Militant Black leaders are at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle
It’s crucial for parties to follow and learn from militant, working class Black and brown leaders. It’s “tactically bad and politically wrong” to think a revolutionary struggle in the U.S. could do otherwise, Dean said. She doesn’t believe in increasing diversity within a party in a tokenizing sense, but her perspective is rooted in the fact that most militant struggles have emerged in response to racism and police brutality against Black and brown people. While “comradeship is [a] relation between those who take their equality as vital and necessary,“ says Dean, comrades will bring different experiences and skills to the struggle for change. “The United States isn't going to [adopt] communism in two days … or overcome racism in two days, either,” Dean said. “These struggles are long and we have to have the kinds of political relations that can let them endure.”
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