The two recent, cold-blooded homicides committed by the agents of the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the United States Border Patrol (USBP) in Minneapolis (Minnesota) have rightly caused great anger and generated protests more or less all over the United States spontaneous protests following the numerous, just as spontaneous, initiatives that had taken place in previous weeks with the aim of hindering the repressive action taken by the ICE and USBP. It is naturally a good thing that an increasing number of people feel the urge to react against what is happening. However (under the added pressure of violent material contradictions), this should be accompanied by a clearer awareness of some fundamental issues.
ICE and USBP are federal agencies: this means the armed wing of the central State. That is to say, structures designed for repression, independently of existing governments, which are in turn extensions of the ruling class’s business committees. This is their function, in a society divided into classes such as the society of capital, profit and savage competition. The State is not a disinterested organism: it is a complex structure that answers directly to the need for survival of bourgeois power and thus acts to repress all those phenomena that may threaten the correct operation of capitalism’s main activity – the extraction of plusvalue.
Repression of migrant proletarians and those who support them is an integral part of this State activity and obeys the alternating phases of the capitalist economy: it is no coincidence that it has become manifest to a greater or less intensity according to individual cases, throughout all the various governments that have succeeded one another – a constant feature that has become acute as capitalism enters its imperialist phase. The United States is certainly no exception: on the contrary, as the leading imperialist country, it is the model inspiring all States in the enactment of their anti-proletarian repression. If certain governers or mayors or administrators and local, bi-partisan politicians sometimes act critically towards the central power (only to step back into line when it becomes necessary!), this in no way changes the nature and function of these State organs. It is a game of sides that obeys the previously outlined imperatives.
Demonstrations against ferocious repression are important and welcome! But they must pose themselves the problem of going beyond a spontaneous, instinctive and immediate reaction. This means they must equip themselves not only with a stable organisation capable of surviving over time when faced with the inevitable harshening of conditions produced by the economic and social crisis, but also and above all with a political perspective which, based on a precise analysis of what’s going on and connecting to a tradition of militant struggle that comes from a long way back (yes, indeed: from 1848!), can direct and guide spontaneous indignation and anger towards the supreme objective of overthrowing the capitalist mode of production and its armed wing: the State and its institutional and political-trade union appendages. Otherwise it means entering the dead end of more slaughter and more vain bloodshed.
Minneapolis’s environs are everywhere, and we are working so that these objective may finally be reached.
2/2/2026
