Coco Smyth

Coco (Cole) Smyth is a Columbus Ohio activist. He was a member of the International Socialist Organization.

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement radicalized Coco Smyth, a founding member of Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists. “John Crawford was murdered by police in my hometown of Dayton,” he said. “Though I had identified as a socialist since high school, this explosion of struggle convinced me that I needed to get organized.”

After moving to Columbus, Smyth joined the International Socialist Organization. “For four years I poured countless hours into learning the history and theory of Marxism, organizing in social movements, and working to build a solid organization with comrades in the ISO,” he said. “Unfortunately, the national organization dissolved in mid-2019. Many of us from ISO decided to form Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists to continue our work locally, while learning from past errors and experimenting with a different approach and model of organizing.”

Smyth sees revolutionary socialism as distinct from social-democratic politics, which promotes liberal reforms within the framework of capitalism. “Ultimately our aim is to help bring the working class to power in the United States and throughout the world,” he said. “We call ourselves revolutionary socialists because we believe the only means of taking power for the vast majority is to seize it along with the vast majority. We seek to establish a world without classes, where society is controlled in a genuinely democratic fashion, without oppression, poverty, starvation, and inequality.”

In the near term, the practical work of CORS involves fighting for tenants’ rights and “combating the reign of police terror in Columbus,” Smyth said. “We believe the key task of socialists today is to get rooted in our workplaces and communities, acting as an organized radical element within every struggle which breaks out. We need to do long-term work to establish ourselves as the people our communities go to discuss how to fight the injustices and oppression we experience in our daily lives. This difficult work is absolutely necessary to organize our class and build a new mass communist party worthy of the name. Without such a party we will never be able to channel the masses disillusionment, despair, and anger into the weapon needed to vanquish the dictatorship of capital.

“We don’t think we can destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools,” Smyth said. “Consequently, we reject supporting the Democratic and Republican parties and their representatives,” Smyth said. “The progressive energy, particularly around Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, has to be broken out of the shackles of the Democratic Party and the limitations of Bernie’s politics if it is to become part of an effective force for socialism.”^[1]