What is sloganeering?

Sloganeering is the reduction of Marxism to pithy phrases and chants.

We must not sloganeer!

It is all very well to demonstrate. Demonstration can form the foundation of a party’s campaign for action. We cannot permit demonstrations to take the place of

meaningful action. We must always be aware, however, of the paucity of demonstration. Chanting slogans on the grounds of the state house is sloganeering. Do we mean to take action on those slogans? Why not? There are many reasons a party would be unable to act: lack of funds,

lack of support among the masses, lack of trained cadres, lack of weapons. If we do not mean to act, we should not be present! We will only degrade our capacity to engage meaningfully in the struggle while showing ourselves to be impotent. In this way we exhaust our resources and

split ourselves off from the masses. We are exposed as frauds. This is the curse of liberal activism.

All actions can be given a distinct character as either liberal or economic. Liberalism insists that political action be confined to the sphere of “persuasion.” When a liberal

says persuasion, they mean speech-acts. The constellation of permitted liberal action includes peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, flyering campaigns, door knocking, and signature gathering. What is the purpose of these activities? “Raising awareness.” What does awareness do? In

itself, nothing. The masses are aware of their own plight, and they know (more or less) who is to blame. Slogans alone can do nothing, unless they urge the masses to action.

How does a Marxist achieve action? Through economic pressure. Marches are nothing if they do not apply

economic pressure to the base of petit-bourgeois and bourgeois businesses. Concessions are not won through “persuasion” except of the kind that says openly: submit, or lose your profits. Can we force the US government not to invade Venezuela or Iran by standing on a street corner

and exposing its lies about those countries? We cannot. Can we stop even a single troop carrier through these demonstrations? We cannot. The US government and its masters bow only to economic force. If we are not prepared to disrupt the economy, we must have a concrete plan to do

so in the near-future. If our demonstrations do not shut down businesses and directly bleed the petit-bourgeoisie, they should be designed to build mass support to do so shortly.

Our real enemies, the class-conscious vanguard of the fascists, know exactly how to threaten and

achieve power: through its exercise. The letter agencies and the right-fascist militias are acutely aware of how little a liberal demonstration can achieve. They do not limit themselves to sloganeering. We must be prepared to use every weapon in our arsenal to counter them!

Marxism is a doctrine of action!