On Stand Your Ground Law

(Letter)

3 April 2012

Dear WV,

I am troubled by a new position taken up in WV#999 in the article on the racist murder of Trayvon Martin. While upholding the basic Marxist position of opposing gun control (i.e. the bourgeoisie’s monopoly of violence), we say “we oppose the ‘stand your ground’ law, which, in removing retreat as a criterion for self-defense, sanctions vigilantism, including murder.”

As we state in the Programmatic Statement of the Spartacist League/U.S.: “We vigorously oppose calls on the capitalist state to pass laws against ‘extremists’ (e.g., demands to ‘ban the Klan’).” Our answer to racist vigilantism is “for the perspective of labor/black mobilizations, centered on the social power of the trade unions, to stop KKK/Nazi terror... [And] stand for labor-centered mobilizations to protest particular police atrocities.”

The “stand your ground” law in Florida has nothing to do with the state’s monopoly of violence. If a black man, under Florida law, were to lethally shoot a racist vigilante when he “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself”, could not the “stand your ground” law be used in his defense?

What “sanctions vigilantism” is decaying capitalism. In this country no investigation, no police reform, no law, no federal intervention, no black president will rid this country of racist vigilantism, repression and murder. Nothing short of integrated proletarian leadership premised on the understanding that black freedom requires smashing the capitalist system and the establishment of an international socialist planned economy, can eradicate racism, poverty and hunger from the planet.

Comradely,
Martin B.

WV replies:

The objections raised by our subscriber Martin B. are answered in this issue’s front-page article.