PW archives 1981: CPUSA leader Gus Hall on the attempted assassination of Reagan

This article is part of the People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.

The following article, written by Communist Party USA General Secretary Gus Hall, was published in the Daily World on April 16, 1981. It appeared just days after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.

While addressing all the media hype around the supposed mental illness of the shooter, John Hinckley, Jr., Hall slams the effort by many press outlets to paper over the would-be assassin’s connections to the right wing. But primarily, he indicts the capitalist system and the ruling class for its own violence against workers, Black Americans, and other oppressed peoples. He scours U.S. imperialism for its wars and campaigns of mass murder around the globe.

Hall points out the “lust for power and profits drives the owning and ruling members of the capitalist class to use any and all violent, corrupt means” to expand their profits. Recalling the Marxist observation that the ruling ideas of any era are those of the ruling class, he pinpoints the violence of monopoly capital as the root cause of the violence that erupts in society.

Today, over 40 years since Hall’s article was published, the rap sheet of U.S. capitalism is far longer. Many more millions have become its victims at home and abroad, and the right-wing forces advocating and using violence to achieve their means have only grown louder and more powerful.

The article has been reprinted in its original form, though it is worth noting that some of the language around mental health issues used at the time differs from descriptions considered appropriate by today’s standards.

 

Behind assassination attempts: Social misfits or misfit society?
Daily World, April 16, 1981
By Gus Hall

On March 30th a demented ex-Nazi, son of an oil executive, emptied his pawn-shop pistol into President Ronald Reagan and three others. Only a few months before, John Lennon was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. We have just marked the 13th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are now recalling with national dismay the long list of murdered and maimed presidents, political leaders, and public figures.

The shooting of the president comes at a time when millions, Black and white, are wearing green ribbons for the murdered and missing Black children of Atlanta; when the ugly specter of lynch-murder returns to haunt us in the city of Mobile; when neo-fascist and paramilitary groups, the Nazi Party, and Ku Klux Klan march, desecrate, and terrorize with impunity; when camps for killers and schools for mercenaries are openly and legally organized to train terrorists in the woodlands of our country.

As one who has been the target of assassins, I am well aware that there are those in official circles and the mass media who are reluctant to even probe for the underlying basic causes, especially when the attacks are directed against the working class and left forces. Many in these same circles are making a concerted effort to cover up the real causes with all kinds of smokescreen theories to divert and discourage people from looking beyond the surface, deeply into the very fiber of our social system, wherein lies the real cause – as well as the cure.

Questions and answers

Reflecting the mass sentiments, the daily newspapers are filled to the brim with articles asking questions and attempting answers. Everyone is asking: “What is there about America that produces such a pattern?” “Why are assassination attempts so frequent?”

And the headline of a New York Times April 5 editorial states, “The symptoms surround us, but what is the malady?” A popular theory portrays John W. Hinckley, Jr. as a “‘social misfit,” a “lone assassin,” a “failure,” and a “well-off dropout.” Also being peddled is an attempt to cover up Hinckley’s right-wing connections, as well as his father’s, by painting a picture of him as a wealthy drifter infatuated with a teenage movie star, intent on impressing her with his Superman act.

Another theory blames the availability of handguns, the lack of gun control, and the strength of the gun lobby. Undoubtedly, the reduction of handguns would reduce the number of killings.

Secondary causes

Many claim that TV violence promotes real-life violence and that there is a tendency toward mimicry – to try out in real life what is portrayed on the movie and TV screens. It is also claimed that we have become “increasingly desensitized, dehumanized, and numbed to the effects of murder and violence that pervade our society.”

And numerous articles have been published pushing the idea of “a violent American mentality which developed in a violent society that goes back to our frontier, pioneering past, and therefore, that violence is inherent in our national character.”

Some of these theories have some truth in them. Many are secondary causes of violent behavior. But they do not by themselves provide the primary, underlying, and basic cause.

While it is true that many of the assassins and would-be assassins have been psychotic, demented individuals, the questions remain: What made them sick? What set them off? And why is their violent behavior so often directed against political personalities? No, the blame cannot be placed at the door of “society in general.” Capitalism is the sick element in our society.

Monopoly class

In any society, the dominant class, the class that rules must accept the major responsibility for the behavior of its people because it is the main influence over the mass patterns of thought.

In our society, it is the class of monopoly capital that exercises domination and control over the press, radio, TV, schools, books, magazines, movies, and even sports – over the culture. The thought patterns, the values, and the morals are those of the capitalist class. The individual acts of violence are reflections of and are stimulated by the policies, ideology, concepts, and behavior of the dominant, ruling capitalist class.

It is the corruption, depravity, and brutal violence practiced and perpetuated by the capitalist class that must be held responsible for the patterns of violence of individuals who live under the influence of this thinking and behavior.

The root cause of corruption and violence is inherent in the monopoly lust for power and profit that propels and motivates the capitalist class and its socio-economic system of exploitation and racism. It is the system of private ownership and the drive for maximum profits at any price. That is the bottom line, the essence of capitalist society.

Nature of capitalism

The lust for power and profits drives the owning and ruling members of the capitalist class to use any and all violent, corrupt means and instruments at their command to maintain and expand their profits, both at home and in foreign lands. This means they will always strive to pay the lowest wages for the longest hours of work – whenever, wherever, and however they can. This is the brutal class exploitation of human labor. This is the violent inner nature of capitalism.

No means of making money are too brutal, too bloody. The use of goon squads, police, and frameups was rampant during the union organizing drives of the 1930s and they are still used against strikers and organizers. Thousands of workers have been murdered and maimed fighting for decent wages and working conditions. The Ludlow Massacre, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Rosenbergs are but a few vivid examples of capitalist murder and violence.

The closing of plants, the laying off of thousands of workers, and the resulting destruction of whole communities is nothing but criminal monopoly inhumanity against workers and their families. The callous corporate disregard for the lives, health, safety, and working conditions of the workers in mines, mills, factories, and farms of our country is capitalist class violence.

The production and selling of defective and dangerous consumer products are typical of corporate greed, the Ford Pinto being only one small example of a product that kills. Our land, air, and waters are being polluted and poisoned knowingly by corporations who are saving billions at the expense of the health and well-being of our people and natural resources

Almighty dollar

There is no patriotism, and no national human interests in the executive suites of the Fortune 500.

The only interests, the only loyalty they have is to the “almighty dollar.”

We must not separate the violence of contemporary monopoly capital from the roots and history of U.S. capitalism, upon which our system is built. Looking back to the beginning of capitalism in our country, we must study the genocide, rape, and pillage of the lives, lands, and rich resources of the Native American Indian peoples and the enslavement, exploitation, and racism against the Afro-American people.

The true brutal nature of U.S. imperialism was exposed when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of elderly, children, and women – contaminating the wombs of the women with radiation poison for generations to come.

The U.S. imperialist lust for profit and power continued unabated in Korea, where “Operation Killer” was the master plan of General Matthew Ridgeway for the destruction of that country.

Vietnam War

Methods of mass murder and destruction reached a zenith during the Vietnam War when the U.S. attempted to carry out the policy of General Curtis LeMay to “bomb them back to the stone age.” And carried out it was, with the use of napalm and Agent Orange, ghastly weapons which the U.S. consciously dropped and sprayed the Vietnamese people with, poisoning, burning, and killing thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children.

The Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the mining of Haiphong Harbor, and the thousands of My Lais injected into human history the ultimate, conscious, concentrated use of the most terrible weapons of mass annihilation and torture. It was the planned attempt to wipe out a whole people, an entire nation.

And yet, these heinous crimes were glorified by the late U.S. Cardinal Francis Spellman during a visit to Saigon, when he publicly stated: “War, in fact, has brought out the noblest instincts and the best traits of human courage and endurance in the annals of history!”

The Vietnam War and the depravity of such public figures as Cardinal Spellman is why the American people are now determined to stop the intervention and aggression against El Salvador with the slogan, “No More Vietnams!”

International terrorism

The Bay of Pigs invasion, blockade of Cuba, attempted assassinations of President Fidel Castro, support of counterrevolutionaries attempting to destroy the Afghan revolution, the “rescue mission” in Iran, and years of support of the U.S. puppet Shah Pahlavi against the Iranian people and revolution, the assassinations of Premier Patrice Lumumba and President Salvador Allende and the counter-revolutionary activity against Chile, the support and aid to all the fascist military dictatorships in the world, including apartheid South Africa are nothing but U.S. imperialist violence against all movements and peoples fighting for national liberation.

U.S. international terrorism is on a rampage throughout the world in its vain efforts to hold back and turn back the forces of national independence and socialism. Behind the myth of “the Soviet menace,” assassination, counterrevolution, torture, mass murder, and terrorism are the hallmarks of U.S. imperialism.

The history of our country is soaked in the blood, sweat, and tears of all the victims of U.S. monopoly capital. And today, the world lives under the ultimate violence of U.S. capitalism – the terrible threat of nuclear annihilation. Nuclear confrontation threatens the world’s very existence – because U.S. monopoly capital refuses to accept a nuclear military balance with the Soviet Union because the dominant monopoly circles refuse to reject the drive for world domination, nuclear superiority, and a first-strike capability.

This is U.S. capitalist insanity, a nuclear insanity which seeks to create and mass produce ever more terrible weapons of mass destruction such as the neutron bomb which “only kills people and leaves buildings intact.”

In the final analysis, the source of all terrorism, all mass murder and violence, and the source of all corruption is the futile but destructive attempt of U.S. monopoly to dominate and exploit the world.

Monopoly capital has no morality, no humanity, no sense of brotherhood, loyalty, or patriotism. Its only god is private profits. Its creed is to feed the greedy by starving the needy. Its slogan is “profits before people.” It is the basic philosophy behind the anti-people, anti-working class economic program and budget of the Reagan administration.

Outlaw hate groups

Hinckley seems mentally disturbed. But he began his path to assassination in the American Nazi Party. Racism is a part of the Nazi and Klan mentality that produces a Hinckley and the killers of King, Malcolm X, and countless Black victims of racist violence. That’s why the Nazi Party, the Klan, and all right-wing groups practicing and preaching hate, bigotry, and prejudice based on religion and race must be outlawed.

As the very fabric of capitalist society decays and crumbles, violence becomes more and more prevalent, more and more a part of the crisis of everyday life. More and more, capitalism resorts to violence to defend itself because it has lost all semblance of a humane society.

Individual acts of violence are methods of a class that history is rejecting. The working class, the carrier of all that is progressive and the class that is leading the way toward social progress and a socialist society free of violence, relies on masses in motion, mass movements, and mass struggles.