CHAZ/CHOP: A Case Study in Communist Failure

Ask any communist why, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they still cling to their beliefs and you will get something along the lines of real communism has never been tried, because real communism involves the dissolving of the state and elimination of state-created hierarchies.

The organizers of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, formerly known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, tried this. They would have their own little commune where they would show the world that they could operate with equality and without state institutions such as law enforcement.

Instead, they provided a small case study of why these communist experiments always end in tyranny and failure.

Naturally, the first thing CHAZ/CHOP wannabe revolutionaries ran into the same problem that Lenin and others ran into, that being that the revolution eventually has to govern. So much for doing away with the state.

The first thing they did as a matter of practical policy was erect a wall to define the borders of their new pseudo-state to keep undesirables out. You might say, they built a wall and got the city of Seattle paid for it.

Like any other other group of left-wing revolutionaries, they attempted to portray to the world that all was was going swimmingly. This included getting useful idiots such as Mayor Jenny Durkan and the national news media to praise it as an exercise in free speech and civil rights activism in the same way Bernie Sanders praises Castro’s Cuba for it’s literacy rates.

However, it also included suppression. Eventually, people will begin to notice that the Utopia you promised them isn’t so Utopian. Revolutionaries, by now entrenched officials determined to sniff out counter-revolutionaries, turn to suppression because the realization that Utopia is actually Dystopia undermines their self-proclaimed legitimacy. Naturally, local reports were full of area residents complaining about intimidation and extortion, and far from free speech, there was press censorship as reporters were asked not to film certain things, because it might make CHAZ/CHOP look bad.

Part of stateless “true communism” involves the dissolving of all hierarchies. But, in the real world this is impossible because hierarchies are not in and of themselves bad things. Politicians notwithstanding, often times people are in positions of authority because they are more experienced and therefore more competent and knowledgeable than their subordinates. Not everyone is competent enough to do everything. The Bolsheviks learned, for instance, that not just anyone should lead troops into battle and that those who do lead troops into battle need to be obeyed. CHAZ/CHOP learned that not everybody is competent enough to grow vegetables.

They also learned that socialism and communism are only capable because of what capitalism produces. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone could only put out its literal dumpster fires with the capitalist city’s fire department.

Ultimately what doomed CHAZ/CHOP was that it became what it claimed to oppose. The experiment in a police-less commune to prove black lives matter and protest police brutality increasingly saw instances of violence and murder, including over the weekend where two black teenagers were shot, one of whom was killed, by the movement’s “security” forces.

Those who took place in the CHAZ/CHOP project began by thinking they were creating a new type of society where everyone would be equal and free from the oppressive institutions of the state, such as law enforcement. What they actually did was turn back the clock to the most primitive form of society: one where the one with the most weapons makes the decisions.

This is real communism. What Khrushchev failed to recognize when he denounced Stalin for his crimes, what Valery Sablin failed to recognize when he led the doomed mutiny aboard the Storozhevoy against the corruption and decay of the Leonid Brezhnev era, and every other person who has iterated some version of “The Soviet Union failed because it’s leaders weren’t really communists or betrayed Lenist principles” is that their ideas require force.

Lenin was a brutal tyrant because he knew he could only achieve his vision by force. Stalin, his successors, and other communist officials, far from deserting Lenin, continued his legacy. Of course violence and oppression by “state” authorities would be what brought CHAZ/CHOP down. It was pretty much inevitable.