Talking Nonsense Solves No Problems: Reply to an Open Response Letter Allegedly Written by the Amazons-August Collective and NAPLA to the New Afrikan Black Panther Party

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The following is an essay Kevin "Rashid" Johnson just sent me and asked me to post. -k

I recently received an “open letter” purporting to be from the Amazons-August 3rd Collective (AA3) and New Afrikan Peoples Liberation Army (NAPLA), which claims to respond to an article I wrote elaborating the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter’s (NABPP-PC) line on New Afrikan Liberation. [1] The said letter, however, doesn’t analyze nor respond to our article at all. Instead it goes to some lengths, building momentum as it proceeds, to ridicule and angle to undermine the motives and character of the NABPP-PC in general and me as a leading member in particular.

The letter proves to be based purely on conjecture, where its authors, (whoever they might actuallybe), admit having little or no factual knowledge or study of the NABPP-PC as an organization, our history, our political and ideological line, our membership, or much else. Yet we are disparaged as unscientific nostalgic adventurists, egotists, glory-seekers, opportunists and more [2]. The letter is obviously geared to lead others to look upon our Party, its work and members with suspicion and ridicule, characterizing us as a threat to the Movement, the People and the struggle that must be “reigned in,” and without a shred of fact to back its critiques.

My first thought on reading this letter was that it reads exactly like a piece of FBI counterintelligence like old COINTELPRO brown mail written by the political police but claiming to originate from some actual or fictitious organization or persyn, which was sent to a targeted group of persyn or otherwise publicized, with the purpose of inciting groups against each other and to discredit groups and their members in the public eye. These are old and well-established pig tactics, and ones any student of pig covert actions would readily recognize, and that seasoned Comrades would be conscious to avoid using themselves or playing into.

I especially doubted the authenticity of the letter when I considered that leading cadre of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) have admonished the Movement against publicly lambasting other groups in this fashion. For example New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO) Chairman Chokwe Lumumba warned the Movement against this in an article [3] I know the actual AA3 and NAPLA are familiar with, because it was referenced in an article written last year by Comrade Sanyika Shakur which they signed onto. [4] Chokwe stated:

“Publicly blasting revolutionary New Afrikan organizations without prior efforts to resolve conflicts and indeed after declining an opportunity to do so behind closed doors (as Malcolm X suggests) has worked to the detriment of the Black Liberation Movement on countless occasions. Garvey vs. the Afrikan Blood Brotherhood, Malcolm vs. Elijah Muhammad, West Coast Panthers vs. NY 21, Panthers vs. cultural nationalists, the Provisional Government Republic of New Afrika Constitutional Crisis of 1969/70 are all examples of the counter-revolutionary consequence of such behavior. The agents of the enemy are drawn to open “wild west” political shoot outs, between revolutionaries like flies are to feces. This type of debate helped to imprison Garvey, discredit the Blood Brotherhood, kill Malcolm, destroy the Panthers and divide the Provisional Government in the 1970’s.

“We emphasize that We do not believe that there should never be public debate or struggle between revolutionary groups. But We do believe that before such exchanges occur, maximum caution should be taken to insure that these debates are not self-destructive.”

He also pointed out that his own NAPO:

“has been engaged in political debate recently with many of the Organizations in the Black Liberation Movement… However, these debates  have been and continue to be carried out in a secure and productive manner.

“They are occurring in a non-public manner, or publicly after notice of the issues, and with preliminary discussion designed to correct gross misinformation and misconceptions in order to minimize the danger of public comment which mischaracterizes on the basis of distortions or mistakes of fact.

“Among genuine revolutionary groups this process helps to minimize enemy provocation and provides a better opportunity for maximum consideration of all factors involves, before any organization has publicly committed itself to that which might easily be shown to be erroneous information or thinking.” [5]

Investigate Then Speak

To the extent this “open” letter is actually the work of AA3 and NAPLA, the NABPP is fully prepared to answer questions or concerns they may have about our organization, line and work.[6] In addition, we can refer them to articles we’ve written and our media that explain a lot of what is questioned or challenged in that letter, including what our purpose is, our history, why and how we originated within the empire’s prisons, why we are an aboveground Party formation and not a clandestine organization, the purpose and functions of leading positions and the election to and revocation of such positions within a revolutionary Party organization, etc. I am also in process of having more of our Party materials posted to my website – rashidmod.com

Reviving the Party: A Dangerous Nostalgia or Rearguard Necessity?

We can certainly understand Comrades’ confusions surrounding the need, role, function and structure of a revolutionary political Party. In fact, Comrade Owusu Yaki Yakubu aka Atiba Shanna spoke to this tendency years ago:

“The movement and its organization must be re-built – by cadres. We look to the past and see that one of our major weaknesses was the lack of attention given to properly selecting and training cadres.  WE claimed to base ourselves on Marxist-Leninist theory (e.g. with respect to party-building), and to be aware of the class dimensions of the national liberation struggle. Yet, we ignored or overlooked the need to use class-based and vanguard criteria in the selection and training of party members and cadres. In point of fact, we were more ignorant of the process of building revolutionary scientific socialist parties than we realized. (There wasn’t much material on this in The Red Book or Mao’s military writings, and by 1970-71, we’d been so disappointed by Huey Newton & Co., and so misguided by our own petty-bourgeois [and lumpen proletarian–Rashid] mentalities and our misinterpretations of certain South American experiences, that we, in effect, abandoned the principle of the need for a party, i.e. the necessity for a party organization if revolutionary struggle is to be effectively generated and successful.)”[7]

Comrade Safiya Bukhari also recognized and emphasized the need to reconstitute a revolutionary NA Panther Party, as the political vanguard of the NAIM in which she’d long been a leading voice and organizer.[8]

As the “open” letter mentions, various groups since the demise of the BPP in 1982 [9] have assumed the name of the original Party. But as Comrade Mumia Abu-Jamal observed in his study and political memoir of his experiences as a member of the BPP, these groups have not built upon or continued the legacy of the BPP.[10] However, in a 2006 article in support of Comrade Hasan Shakur, the Minister of Human Rights of our NABPP-PC until he was murdered by the State of Texas on Black August 31, 2006, Mumia wrote:

“Hasan has joined the newly-formed New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, based in Amerika’s prisons and in honor of his commitment in the face of death, the NABPP has named him its Minister of Human Rights.

“Hasan, through his politicization, has devoted his life to what the NABPP calls “Pantherism,” or a fidelity to the Revolution as taught and practiced by the original Black Panther Party.

“Unlike other recent formations, the NABPP studies the writings of Huey P. Newton Bobby Seale, George Jackson, and other founding and leading members. The words of Malcolm X are important tools for understanding and addressing the challenges of today.

This is refreshing news indeed.”[11]

Political Work Involves Wide Publicity

What defines our work and structure is what sort of organization we are. The NABPP-PC is not an underground (para)military nor a joint political/military organization, but a “legal” aboveground political Party, that aims to be both flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. From the extremes of enemy repression to permissive conditions where open political agitation, education and organizing are possible, Revolutionary Parties have existed, communicated, thrived and ultimately succeeded in defeating oppressive systems under much worse conditions than we find ourselves in Amerika or its prisons.

In revolutionary struggle, especially in its developmental stages, political work takes primacy, which entails educating, and agitating amongst the People. Many in the Movement have instead long given primacy to armed struggle. A tendency that Comarade Owusu Yaki Yakubu also criticized.[12] As Mao Tse-Tung noted, in a struggle for liberation:

“there are various fronts, among which are the fronts of the pen and of the gun, the cultural and military fronts. To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy.”[13]

This is the principle behind revolutionaries publishing their line and analyses as broadly amongst the People as possible, and is what the critics who wrote the “open” letter see in the wide distribution of my art and writings in various media and my having developed working alliances with a wide range of organizations and People.

Doing What We Can: Filling a Void; Leading by Example

Our critics wouldn’t know, because they’ve admittedly done little study of our literature, but the NABPP-PC has repeatedly recognized and publicly acknowledged the limitations that objective conditions place on our ability to be fully integrated with the masses, and be as effective as we’d like in our work. But as Dialectical Materialists, we struggle to understand and work within the laws and limits of objective external conditions, to achieve as much as we can and create more favorable conditions for greater struggle, toward achieving our revolutionary ends. We don’t just “do nothing” because we don’t find ourselves in the most ideal conditions. But we could certainly accomplish much more with the unity and support of AA3 and NAPLA, and vice versa.

We also recognize that today there exists a revolutionary leadership vacuum, and if nothing more we can set an example and offer a blueprint on how a Party organization looks and works, for a Movement that continues to not recognize the fundamental need of a revolutionary Party to lead any revolutionary movement, and for any such struggle to advance and succeed; nor how such an organization is structured and operates. A few articles I’ve written that might be instructive on these points are: “Unity-Struggle-Transformation: On Revolutionary Organization, Leadership, and Cadre Development,” (2012), “On the Vanguard Party, Once Again” (2012), “The New Afrikan Black Panther Party’s Organizational Principles, Policy and Practice: The 3-P’s” (2012), “The NABPP-PC Rules of Discipline and General Directives” (2005).[14]

In any event, we do appreciate and understand the risks and tactical flexibility that goes with this work, and factor that into our line and policies. We are far from naive, reckless or reactionary.

Start from Scratch?!?

The NABPP certainly looks to carry forward our People’s centuries old struggle. But it is impossible to advance any struggle across generations without building on the shoulders of those who went before. Indeed, one reason our movements have met with repeated setbacks is because we don’t maintain organizational and historical continuity. Lacking political organizations that retain, build upon, and pass down the memories of our past achievements as well as failures, and thereby enriching our culture and persynality, we find ourselves every few years struggling to reinvent the wheel and repeating the same errors along the way. We suffer organizational and political amnesia. And our critics seek to raise this tendency to a political principle [?!]. “Starting from scratch” is what has us never getting past the opening stages of this race – running only a few yards, falling over some obstacles, then turning around, returning to the starting line and repeating this same process over and over; instead of studying the track, training and preparing, lining up our best runners (and having reserves trained and in place), adjusting to and preparing for changes on the track, in the weather, etc., then running the race, staying the course, and passing the torch to each successive generation of runners until the race is won. That’s organizing to win!

Are We Flippin’ the Scripts of the BLM or NAIM?

The NABPP-PC is a product, part and continuation of the BLM and NAM, and seeks to link and advance them into the larger struggles to overthrow this imperialist system and to achieve genuine liberation, not just for New Afrikan peoples, but our Afrikan peoples the world over and all others who suffer under the yoke and lash of imperialism. This entails a multi-faceted strategy, that requires the sort of political organization and United Panther Movement (UPM) we are struggling to build, and working in alliance with various other vanguard and mass organizations.

As to our stand on the National Liberation strategy embraced by AA3, NAPLA and other RNA affiliates, the NABPP is no more antagonistic to them than was the original BPP. And as we will show, our line is consistent with ones that have long existed within NAIM, indeed we are part of NAIM, which explains in part why we in the NABPP account ourselves “New Afrikan” (which in any event is our People’s Nationality, which exists independent of any organizational or political affiliation.)[15]

We tend to agree with the line advanced by Comrade Huey P. Newton in his September 13, 1969, letter to the RNA, on the occasion of the return of RNA President Robert Williams from exile. In fact we feel conditions today — in particular the replacement of colonialism with today’s far more advanced and refined neo-colonialism – validate Huey’s position eve moreso. Based upon carious critiques we have read of our line on New Afrikan liberation from Comrades who embrace the RNA line, it seems Huey’s letter has been lost or forgotten within RNA circles. It is an important historical document we feel, and therefore bears quoting at length. The letter was entitled Huey P. Newton to the Republic of New Afrika, and read:

This is Huey P. Newton at Los Padres, California 1969, September 13. Greetings to the Republic of New Africa and President Robert Williams. I’m very happy to be able to welcome you back home. I might add that this is perfect timing. And we need you very much, the people need you very much. And now that the consciousness of the people is at such a high level, perhaps they will be able to appreciate your leadership, and also be ready to move in a very revolutionary fashion.

Some time ago I received a message from the Republic of New Africa with a series of questions concerning the philosophy of the Black Panther Party; and very detailed questions on certain stands, and our thinking on these positions. At that time I wasn’t prepared to send a message out. I’ve had to think about many of the questions, and due to the situation here it’s very difficult for me to communicate, so this explains the lapse of time between question and answer. I won’t be able to expound on all the questions but I would like to give some general explanations of the Black Panther Party’s position, as related to the Republic of New Africa.

The Black Panther Party’s position is that the Black people in the country are definitely colonized, and suffer from the colonial plight more than any ethnic group in the country. Perhaps with the exception of the Indian, but surely as much even as the Indian population. We too, realize that the American people in general are colonized. And they’re colonized simply because they’re under a capitalist society, with a small clique of rulers who are the owners of the means of production in control of decision making. They’re the decision making body, therefore, that takes the freedom from the American people in general, and they simply work for the enrichment of this ruling class. As far as Blacks are concerned, of course, we’re at the very bottom of this ladder, we’re exploited not only by the small group of ruling class, we’re oppressed, and repressed by even the working class Whites in the country. And this is simply because the ruling class, the White ruling class uses the old Roman policy of divide and conquer. In other words the White working class is used as pawns or tools of the ruling class, but they too are enslaved. So it’s with that historical policy of dividing and ruling, that the ruling class can effectively and successfully keep the majority of the people in an oppressed position; because they’re divided in certain interest groups, even though these interests that the lower class groups carry doesn’t necessarily serve as beneficial to them.

As far as our stand on separation, we’ve demanded, as you very well know, a plebiscite of the U.N. to supervise, so that Blacks can decide whether they want to secede the union, or what position they’ll take on it. As far as the Black Panther Party is concerned we’re subject to the will of the people, but we feel that the Republic of New Africa is perfectly justified in demanding and declaring the right to secede the union. So we don’t have any contradiction between the Black Panther Party’s position and the Republic of New Africa’s position it’s simply a matter of timing. We feel that certain conditions will have to exist before we’re even given the right to make that choice. We also take into consideration the fact that if Blacks at this very minute were able to secede the union, and say have five states, or six states, it would be almost impossible to function in freedom side by side with a capitalist imperialist country. We all know that mother Africa is not free simply because of imperialism, because of Western domination. And there’s no indication that it would be any different if we were to have a separate country here in North America. As a matter of fact, by all logics we would suffer imperialism and colonialism even more so than the Third World is suffering it now. They are geographically better located, thousands of miles away, but yet they are not able to be free simply because of high technological developments, the highest technological developments that the West has that makes the world so much smaller, one small neighborhood.

So taking all these things into consideration, we conclude that the only way that we’re going to be free is to wipe out once and for all the oppressive structure of America. We realize we can’t do this without a popular struggle, without many alliances and coalitions, and this is the reason that we’re moving in the direction that we are, to get as many alliances as possible of people that are equally dissatisfied with the system. And also we’re carrying on, or attempting to carry on a political education campaign so that the people will be aware of the conditions and therefore perhaps they will be able to take steps to controlling these conditions. We think that the most important thing at this time, is to be able to organize in some fashion so that we’ll have a formidable force to challenge the structure of the American empire. So we invite the Republic of New Africa to struggle with us, because we know from people I’ve talked to, (I’ve talked to May Mallory, and other people who are familiar with the philosophy of the Republic of New Africa), they seem to be very aware that the whole structure of America will have to be changed in order for the people of America to be free. And this again is with the full knowledge and full view of the end goal of the Republic of New Africa to secede. In other words, we’re not really handling this question at this time because we feel that for us that is somewhat premature, that I realize the psychological value of fighting for a territory. But at this time the Black Panther Party feels that we don’t want to be in an enclave type situation where we would be more isolated than we already are now. We’re isolated in the ghetto areas, concentrated in the north, in the metropolitan areas, in the industrial areas, and we think that this is a very good location as far as strategy is concerned, as far as waging a strong battle against the established order. And again I think that it would be perfectly justified if Blacks decided that they wanted to secede the union, but I think the question should be left up to the popular masses, the popular majority. So this is it in a nutshell.

As l said before, I don’t have the facilities here to carry on long discussions. I look forward to talking with Milton Henry [later known as Gaidi Obadele–Rashid] in the near future, if it’s possible, (I know that he has his hands full now) or representatives of the Republic of New Africa, so we can talk these things over. There are many things I heard, things I read, I’m in total agreement with. I would like for the Republic of New Africa to know that we support Robert Williams, and his plight at this time; that we support him one hundred per cent, and we’re willing to give all services asked of us, and we would like to find out exactly what we can do that would be most helpful in the court proceedings coming up, what moral support we could give. Perhaps we could send some representatives, and we will publish in our paper, “THE BLACK PANTHER,” the criminal activities that he’s been victim of for some eight or nine years. I would also like to request of the Republic of New Africa to give us some support to Bobby Seale our Chairman of the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale is now in prison as you know in San Francisco, he has a case coming up in Chicago, and one in Conn., and we invite the Republic of New Africa to come in support. We would like this very much, and whatever moral support they could possibly give, we would welcome it. We should be working closer together than we are and perhaps this would be an issue that we could work together on. The issue is the political prisoners of America, and people as one to stand for the release of all political prisoners; and this might be a rallying point where all the Black revolutionary organizations and parties could rally around. Because I truly believe that some good comes out of every attack that the oppressor makes, so perhaps this will be a turning point in both our organizations and parties. So I would like to say, “ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE, AND MORE POWER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRICA, ROBERT WILLIAMS.”

So, like the original BPP, the NABPP-PC doesn’t negate the right of New Afrikans to secede, the question is at what point is secession a practical and genuine answer to the oppressed condition of New Afrikans – before or after defeating the Amerikan imperialist structure? And in either case the ultimate decision if to secede is one for the People to make . And that decision must be informed so that they know and understand their options pro and contra. Also, consistent with the original Panther line, the NABPP-PC believes – and we have a very developed practical strategy for building a viable movement to deal imperialism the coup de grace – that so long as the imperialist system exists, secession right on its border would not “liberate” us. So there is no major line departure from the original BPP as our critics claim, only the NABPP-PC has gone deeper into the question especially in relation to the development of neocolonialism.

Neither is the NABPP-PC an interloper nor outside the NAIM because we advocate building a socialist Amerika as a precondition to any realistic option for New Afrikan secession, if secession be the People’s choice. We’ll refer to a leading theoretical voice and veteran of NAIMto make the point viz. Comrade Jalil Muntaqim, whose recently republished book We Are Our Own Liberators (Liberators) has been instructive to many in the NAIM, including those grouped around the teachings of Owusu. Indeed, Owusu’s own theoretical writings have been based on Jalil’s work.[16]

In the very beginning of Liberators, Jalil admits that three alternative strategies on New Afrikan Liberation have long existed within NAIM, not just one. They being, in his own words (and presented asquestions at that):

1. Are we to fight for an integrated Social Democratic America?
2. Are we to lead the fight to build a multi-national Socialist United States?
3. Are we to fight for democratic self-determination and independence of a Republic of New Afrika?

If this be true, the RNA tendency (the third listed by Jalil) is only one of several within the NAIM, and because we in the NABPP-PC promote the second tendency as a precursor to considering or advancing the third one, does not put us outside of nor make us antagonistic to NAIM. Indeed, according to Comrade Jalil our line and we are no less authentically part of the NAIM than the RNA’s line and the RNA. This, being true, collapses the entire foundation of the criticisms made in the “open” letter. Also, as we have already demonstrated, by founding a NA Panther Party aspiring to carry forward the work and set an organizational example for political leadership of the NAIM, the NABPP-PC has acted consistent with what leading voices in the NAIM (e.g. Owusu and Safiya) have stated is an indispensable need in our movement. And prominent veterans of the original BPP have recognized our efforts to carry on and advance the work of the original Panthers, standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. That we’ve taken this initiative while existing under the harshest and most limiting of social conditions, should inspire advanced NAIM elements to join us in building this organization and making it as effective as it can be, rather than attempting to undermine it.

Exposure versus Protecting Political Leadership

Interestingly, while the “open” letter criticizes us as being too exposed, it goes on to contradict this charge by admitting ignorance of and curiosity as to who our members are, where they are based, etc. Also to question our position or membership with respect to wimyn, gays and transgender people. Since we really have no need to publicize this, not knowing where this letter really originated, we’ll answer the letter by quoting from our founding Rules of Discipline which state in relevant part:

“2) We will practice and promote respect for the rights of individuals, oppressed nations and peoples, including the disabled, wimyn, children, elderly, gay/lesbian, all ethnic and racial groups, and especially the working classes of all nations and nationalities.

….

“10) We will not practice discrimination within the Party’s ranks based upon gender or sexual orientation. All ranks and leadership positions within the Party will be equally available to men and wimyn, and their qualifications being determined by their proven abilities and commitment, and they will be equally respected and obeyed by lower ranks.”[17]

For further elaboration of our line on wimyn’s oppression and the indispensable role of wimyn in revolutionary struggle, see my 2008 article “Wimyn Hold Up Half the Sky!: On  the Questions of Wimyn’s Oppression and Revolutionary Wimyn’s Liberation versus Feminism.”[18]

And I might add, as far as being adventurist and “showing off” with macho posturing, etc., this is something we specifically oppose, and specifically spoke to as counter-revolutionary lumpen tendencies. Again see my 2005 article “The New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter: Our Line.”Also “Don’t Shank the Guards: Legal Recourse to Guards’ Harassment, Brutality and Rape” (2005).[19] Being adventurist and reactionary, by the way, also includes jumping out the window in response to pig provocations, as our critics imply we should be doing, although this was the pig tactic that put Comrade George in their crosshairs.

While we are by no means pacifists and uphold the right to self-defense, we recognize that before one can be a hammer they must first be an anvil. My experience and practice is what has qualified me in the collective judgment of NABPP-PC Comrades to maintain the position of Defense Minister, which is no more an empty “lofty” title than that of the “President” and other “officer” ranks in the PG-RNA. But we again understand NAIM comrades’ unfamiliarity with the structure of a revolutionary Political Party, in particular the organization of a Central Committee and Political Bureau (Politburo) composed of Ministers who preside over specific civil functions and institutions. As Comrade George noted, all many comrades who come to the struggle from the streets relate to is “the gun.” But as all seasoned and successful revolutionary leaders, from Amilcar Cabral to Mao Tse-Tung have emphasized, the gun must be controlled and guided by the Political Party, that indeed the Party is the source of a revolution’s success or failure.

And while political leaders are especially valuable, vulnerable and therefore principal enemy targets, we must structure our organizations so when/if they are successfully targeted we have cadre trained, qualified and ready to pop right up and fill their positions, [20] we can’t completely insulate our leadership from being targeted by the enemy. But we can organize ourselves so we ensure such collective forms of leadership were losing one or a few won’t destroy our organizations, and so that cadre are trained and able to rebuild our organizations’ branches from scratch as necessary, and whenever they may find themselves. That’s the key. And again that is the sort of organizational example we are trying to establish and set for the Movement.

Applying these principles is one of the most frustrating features of Hamas (although a bourgeois organization), that Israel has confronted in trying to crush Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel began its campaign of targeting Hamas’s leadership by assassinating its founding leader Sheikh Ahmed Yasin in 2004. But, as in Yasin’s case, every time Israel has succeeded in assassinating one of Hamas’s leaders, one or more equally qualified members popped right up to fill the position. And Hamas is operating under conditions of military occupation, in what has been called the world’s largest open air prison, namely Gaza strip. Conditions in Gaza are many times worse and more regimented than in any U.S. prison. Yet Hamas has devised, as did Lenin under the repression of the Russian Tsar with his Bolshevik Party, ingenious ways of maintaining secure lines of communication between its cadre and leadership in Gaza, the West Bank and Israeli prisons. The struggle for a Palestinian State is closer to realization than at any prior stage in history since their land was stolen in 1967. Their struggle is “against the law” in Gaza, the West Bank, etc. In fact participation is subject to summary execution. But they have organized to win. If they can do it so can we!

Dare to Struggle, Dare to win!
All Power to the People!

Notes and Added Commentary

1. My article “Black Liberation in the 21st Century: A Revolutionary Reassessment of Black Nationalism” was first published inRight On!, vol. 19 (Spring 2010), newsletter of NABPP-PC, then reprinted in California Prison Focus no. 38, Spring 2012,www.prisons.org. It can also be read at www.rashidmod.com. The article drew its first critical response from Sanyika Shakur in an article “Get up For the Downstroke,” posted at www.kersplebedeb.com to which I am preparing a reply, but have been put off in completing because of prison officials repeatedly taking texts I am using for references to refute the many erroneous positions taken and arguments made in that article. [↩]
2. To the extent that this “open” letter authentically came from Comrades in the AA3 and NAPLA, it reflects a dangerous tendency, also shown in Comrade Sanyika’s article cited in note 1 above, within the NAIM of comrades passing judgments and formulating critiques without performing the slightest investigation of their subject – in this case, the NABPP-PC. One of the slogans that distinguished the original BPP during its most revolutionary stages was, “No investigation, no right to speak.” This slogan was drawn from the teachings of Mao Tse-Tung, who was one of, if not the most important (and feared by the imperialists) revolutionary teachers and leaders of the era. In elaborating this slogan, he explained, when you speak on something without looking into its present facts and history, without knowing its essense, “whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems…” Mao Tse-Tung, “Oppose Book Worship” (1930).
3. Chokwe Lumumba, The Roots of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: Revolution Requires Political Maturity
4. My article “Black Liberation in the 21st Century: A Revolutionary Reassessment of Black Nationalism” was first published inRight On!, vol. 19 (Spring 2010), newsletter of NABPP-PC, then reprinted in California Prison Focus no. 38, Spring 2012,www.prisons.org. It can also be read at www.rashidmod.com. The article drew its first critical response from Sanyika Shakur in an article “Get up For the Downstroke,” posted at www.kersplebedeb.com to which I am preparing a reply, but have been put off in completing because of prison officials repeatedly taking texts I am using for references to refute the many erroneous positions taken and arguments made in that article.
5. Chokwe Lumumba, The Roots of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: Revolution Requires Political Maturity, note 8, p. 34
6. If indeed the letter originated from AA3 and NAPLA, we think the comrades should, in light of Comrade Chokwe’s admonition, do a bit of self-criticism, and we invite them to engage in principled struggle with us on any questions or criticisms they may have, beginning with the principle of working in unity, engaging in principled struggle so that we end on a higher level of unity. This is how contradictions within the ranks of the People are resolved, as opposed to contradictions with the enemy.
7. Atiba Shanna, “Notes on Cadre Policy and Cadre Development,” Vita Wa Watu: A New Afrikan Theoretical Journal, Book 12 (April 1988), p. 10
8. Safiya Bukhari, The War Before: The True Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith and Fighting for Those Left Behind (Feminist Press, 2010).
9. Contrary to our critics’ position that the BPP ceased to exist in 1980, “[t]he year 1982 marks the official death of the Black Panther Party, since that was when many of the Party’s programs, like the once-acclaimed Intercommunal Youth Institute (or primary school), and the publication of the BPP newspaper ceased…” Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004), pp. 232-33.
10. Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004), chapter 10, pp. 227-247.
11. Mumia Abu-Jamal, “No Place to be Reborn: The Awakening,” Right On! Newsletter of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter vol. 4 (Summer 2006), p.4.
12. Atiba Shanna, “On What It Means to ‘Re-Build’ – Part Two: Re-Organization,” Vita Wa Watu: A New Afrikan Theoretical Journal, Book 12 (April 1988), note 6, pp. 39-58.
13. Mao Tse-Tung, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Are,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 3 (Foreign Language Press,1963), p. 69. (emphasis added)
14. The articles can be read online at www.rashidmod.com.
15. New Afrikans are a nation of People whether we have a piece of land we call our own nation-state or not. Political borders, patriotic holidays, national anthems, and a flag are not what makes a people a nation. Chokwe defined a nation thusly:
    “A nation is a people who have shared a long history of inhabitation in a common identifiable territory, while developing a common culture, language and economy; or with regard to economy, a nation is a people who have been collectively subjugated to an imperialist economic system, which has prevented them from developing and organizing an economic life of their own.” Chokwe Lumumba, The Roots of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: Revolution Requires Political Maturity, note 3, p. 12.
    According to the second definition, all the groups oppressed by U.S. imperialism constitute a nation, which would include the multi-national and multi-racial working class; also Afrikan People would constitute a Pan-Afrikan nation (both those in the diaspora and on the continent collectively) under this definition which comports with our analysis set out in my article cited in note 1. As to the first definition, it conforms exactly to that set out by Comrade Joseph Stalin in 1912, which contradicts Comrade Sanyika who, in his article cited in note 1, claimed of the RNA, “We don’t import ideas” and disparaged those who do. Here’s how Stalin defined the nation: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable, community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. “Marxism and the National Question,” (1912). Actually, Stalin’s definition became the standard Marxist-Leninist analysis, and was embraced by Communists and Revolutionary Nationalists the world over. In 1913 Comrade V.I. Lenin wrote that Stalin’s work on the national question should be given “prime place” in revolutionary theoretical literature. Lenin, “The Program of the R.S.D.L.P.,” (1913). And it was under Stalin’s leadership that the International Communist Movement recognized and supported the right of New Afrikans to a national territory in the Southeast U.S.
16. Atiba Shanna, “On What It Means to ‘Re-Build’ – Part Two: Re-Organization,” Vita Wa Watu: A New Afrikan Theoretical Journal, Book 12 (April 1988), note 11.
17. The full document can be read at www.rashidmod.com.
18. This article is posted on www.rashidmod.com.
19. These articles are posted on www.rashidmod.com.
20. Our critics inform us that a Liberation Movement must advance by strategy. True indeed! But what they seem to overlook is the revolutionary Party is the source of the Movement’s strategies. And furthermore, the defense of that leadership falls both to the People and the armed component of the Movement, which like the Party must be mass-based. We might also pull our critics coats to the historically proven reality that the old foco model has proven only to result in disaster, a lesson the Movement hasn’t quite seemed to grasp nor to advance from… again because of the lack of a revolutionary vanguard organization to impart those lessons to it, and formulate more workable and effective strategies suited to the time.

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Reflections on the RCP's "Legitimate Revolt Is Not a 'Conspiracy'"

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Just finished translating this text by the Revolutionary Communist Party - the Quebec-based Maoist organization, not the american avakian outfit - examining post-G20 fallout on the left: http://theredflag.ca/node/18

Legitimate Revolt Is Not a “Conspiracy” provides a pro-militancy critique of the "Trotskyist and revisionist" left and their shameful rush to spit on the Black Block and present themselves as "good protesters". It is a welcome voice of solidarity, and as such the RCP stands out from the morass of shameless sycophants on the left, who just couldn't wait to reassure the state that they were "good protesters".

What the RCP has to say is correct, and refreshing. And even amongst those of us who favor militant action, some of their observations bear repeating. For instance:

The protesters’ stated goal was to attack the fence. This action was about attacking a symbol of power, oppression and exploitation. If the police stopped them, then there were other targets – perhaps less significant, but still symbolic – and a segment of the protesters took them by force. The heavy deterrent force employed by the police was not enough to prevent this legitimate expression of those protesters who attacked other targets – mainly police vehicles, media vans, and big chain stores. Small businesses were not attacked, citizens were not hurt, there was no looting. In point of fact, there has been more carnage at certain Stanley Cup riots in Montreal. In 2008, when the Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, there were 11 police cars that went up in flames.

It is easy to claim that an attack against the fence would have been more meaningful and would have enjoyed greater public support. The political meaning would have appeared more direct and obvious to the masses. We can’t know for sure. What we do know for sure is that the police and the public authorities understood these to be attacks against their power. They understood that this was a political action. No Stanley Cup riot was ever followed by 1,100 arrests!

 Or better yet:

Accusing the revolutionary masses of being agent provocateurs is a dishonest ploy to cover up one’s own refusal to play a vanguard role. It amounts to situating oneself as an elite that hopes to replace the current elite. One denies the role of the masses, their political positions. One denies their capacity to transform society. One denies the possibility that they can make mistakes or score successes, just as one refuses to admit that the bourgeoisie and its authorities can also make mistakes. The elite is supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful; the only logical response is to hope to join it, as the masses are supposedly stupid and easily manipulated. This is what the Trotskyists and revisionists are: wannabe bourgeois full of contempt for the masses.

The RCP's contribution is not surprising - this organization has consistently supported militant action and resistance. Despite political differences on a number of points, these are indeed comrades. So far as the anti-G20 events go, they're on the same page as we are.

That said, the RCP's document is thought-provoking for other reasons, too. Despite - or in fact, because - we are on the same page for the main story, it brings out other areas where we may disagree. Worth examining, perhaps, in the spirit of solidarity and respectful exchange.

As already noted, the RCP is almost the only organization from the "party-oriented" left to support militant resistance. This "party-oriented" tradition - which is entirely of Marxist descent, and which has organizational genealogies going back decades and in some cases much further than that - stands in contradistinction to what i call the movement-oriented left, which is of mixed descent, with Marxist influences for sure, but less consciously so. The movement-oriented left often seems to "have no past" organizational history beyond a few years, and of course is much more likely to want to wave the black flag of anarchism. (It of course suffers from some serious weaknesses too, but we can leave those til another day.)

The RCP text itself does not touch upon this distinction, and that gives it an odd feel. For instance, the torched cop cars and broken windows are not described as the work of political activists, but of "the radical wing of the protesters" or even simply "a section of the masses". To name the key political current behind this militancy would be to name anarchism, which the RCP's text does not do.

This leads to weaknesses.

First, this frames what happened in a much more "organic" light than warranted. It is true, of course, that political activists are not "outside of" society or various social classes, but it is equally true that their (or our) political attacks mean something different than spontaneous outbreaks of popular or working-class violence. As the comrades point out in their comparison with the Stanley Cup riots, in many ways politically premeditated activity is far more important and threatening - but by the same token, as a barometer of where things are at with the "Canadian population", our self-consciously organized activity has to be given less weight, not more.

The desire to blur premeditated political activity into "a revolt of a segment of the masses" leads to a distorted appraisal of capitalist hegemony, but just as importantly it makes one's texts and analyses seem disconnected from reality and propagandistic. With no disrespect intended to the comrades, who i know take seriously the injunction to tell no lies, when many people read this stuff with a dispassionate eye, they go away with the feeling that they have read something dishonest, or at least misleading.


While it is certainly true that many "regular people" joined in the fun on the 26th, it is just as true that some of the rank-and-file or "passive base" of the soc dem and socialist groups did, too. But to the degree that this was rebellion and rage - because for some, of course, it was curiosity and fun - the ideology that held hegemony, not only within the Black Block, but throughout the "radical wing of the protesters", was anarchism. i don't mean that most of the militants were anarchists, but that anarchism is the ideology that most informed the structure and strategy behind the BB in particular and militant anti-G20 resistance in general. To the degree that the 26th was a political defeat for the bourgeoisie, it is primarily anarchism which will take the credit and harvest (or fail to harvest) the bounty.

So what's behind this non-mention of anarchism?

i think it may say something about the division between the party-oriented (or vanguard-oriented) tradition, and the movement-oriented tradition. i say this because it does not seem to specific to the RCP - for instance, this desire to blur anarchist-dominated political activity into "a revolt of a segment of the masses" reminds me of the Sparts and other Trots who, when they want to be sympathetic about anarchist militancy, tend to describe it in terms of "angry" or "frustrated" "youth" or "young workers". (i recall the milquetoast american SWP went through a phase of referring patronisingly to "fighting youth".) Within the "party-oriented" left, there is a tendency to see everything outside of the "party-oriented" tradition in passive sociological terms, maybe more than a "class in itself" but somewhat less than a "class for itself", or at least without conscious political plans or strategies. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

This coyness does have consequences not entirely separate from those mentioned above. For instance, when the RCP states that "The proletariat is not really interested in debates on the evils of Stalin, or the quarrels between different Trotskyist sects," they are certainly correct. But if they are thinking specifically of "proletarians interested in revolution", then i think many of these people are in fact interested in what they've heard about Stalin. Not only is the Stalinist legacy one part - not the main part, but a factor - in why since the 1980s in Canada Trotskyism has enjoyed greater success that Maoism within the shrinking milieu of the party-oriented left, it is also a large factor in why anarchism and other non-Marxist ideas hold sway in the much larger and more dynamic movement-oriented left. (Plus, let's face it: that majority of "the proletariat" that does not care about debates between Trot sects, rarely cares about the GPCR or the Makhnovists either.)

Certainly, given the importance of anarchism within the "revolutionary segment of the masses" who were active on the 26th, i think for communists to dismiss the question of Stalin - by which people often really mean, "what went wrong with communism in the 20th century?" - is an error.

Which brings me to the final point - look at how the RCP ends its text:

To convince the masses in English Canada that communism and revolution go together will require a broad campaign of ideological decontamination to wipe out Trotskyist and revisionist ideology. Maoists in English Canada should take on this operation. While it is certainly true that the surrounding ideological scene is infectious, in deepening the ideological struggle it will be possible to free it from its opportunist tendencies.

Calling for "ideological decontamination" and "wiping out" ideologies is partly a matter of writing style, and i certainly know that anarchists and everyone else can be sectarian too. But this kind of metaphor - incorrect ideas being "contaminants" that must be "wiped out" - can lead to a qualitatively different political stance. One should deal with incorrect ideas differently than one deals with infection. The medical model is not conducive to democratic process. For those of us who cannot dismiss debates of the "evils of Stalin" as irrelevant, this kind of metaphor is not very appealing.

In all, though, i gotta repeat, the RCP's statement on the anti-G20 events is a welcome voice of solidarity. My criticisms are not criticisms of the document - which is overwhelmingly good - so much as questions and observations regarding the relationship between different traditions of struggle.

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What In the Hell... Responding to Hammerquist on Leninism

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A response to Don Hammerquist's Lenin, Leninism and some Leftovers, by Nate from What In the Hell blog:

[What In the Hell] … did I think of Hamerquist’s piece on Lenin?
I took a whole mess of notes on Don Hamerquist’s recent essay on Lenin and contemporary radical organization. Then I beat those notes into a slightly less jumbled thing, trying to work out what I think is going on in the piece and what I think of it.

The essay is doing a lot.

I’m convinced by a very weak version of Hamerquist’s historical argument to take Lenin and the early 20th century Russian experience more seriously. I think I ought to know more about all of that than I do, and the same goes for anyone who is like me, because of Lenin’s historical importance. I’m sympathetic to a weak version of the political argument to take Lenin seriously - Lenin accomplish impressive things, thus radicals should try to learn from him. But I’m not convinced of a strong version of either argument - I’ve got no sense of the relative importance of Lenin and the Russian experience in relation to other historical moments, and no sense of the importance of Lenin in relation to other people who’ve built organizations and so on (though I can’t think of any other examples along these lines, except the little bits of stuff I’ve read by the WSM in Ireland the FdCA in Italy, smaller organizations with less world historical importance I admit). There’s more in the essay, a lot more, a lot of which I appreciate - the criticisms of Lenin, for instance, and of the USSR and so forth, but as an anarchist those parts don’t have much force for me. The Lenin stuff faces at least two directions, trying to get people reject Lenin to take him more seriously and trying to get people who think they take Lenin seriously to have a more critical and nuanced Leninism. I’m in the first camp, so the latter stuff is a bit of a non sequitur for me. That’s it for me and the piece in relation to Lenin. The real force of the piece for me is elsewhere than the Lenin question (as either historical or political issue, or both).

I’m open to a project that the piece suggests a few times but doesn’t develop, though I’m only partly open. It refers to “necessary discussions and joint initiatives within and between circles that should be able to move ahead” among the left today, as part of “the development of a working political and intellectual framework for the distressingly small cadre of radicals that are committed to liberatory working class revolution.” I agree that we need “the collective political practice necessary to test and evaluate alternative strategic initiatives.” The problem is who is “we” and who ought to be. The piece suggests someone or some people “self-conscioulsy bring together social anarchists and those Marxists and Leninists that could live with the lower case ‘m’ and ‘l’.” I’m open to that, depending on the terms of the bringing together. I think more dialog is good, and more comradely and respectful relationships despite differences. At the level of political unity and real organization, however, I’m pessimistic about the prospects for this. This is in part becase of some disconnects I have with the piece, and in part because I’m pessimistic about the level of political agreement needed for practical collaboration.

I have two main disconnects with the piece. One of these is a strong disagreement, the other a milder one. I’ll cover that first. As far as I can tell, Hamerquist is still for the seizure of state power. If I’m wrong, then great. If I’m right, then I don’t agree, and I think this will set some limits to the collaboration that Don seems to want, limits that I’m okay with but may be short of what he wants, I don’t know. I don’t have a strong argument here, I admit, I just don’t buy seizing the state as emancipatory project. Don says that “The real test of whether a seizure of power has initiated a trajectory towards socialism is whether working class and popular self organization and self rule is expanding.” This includes “the essential requirement that there be significant concrete steps toward replacing the administration of people with the administration of things.” I think a common anarchist assumption is that no seizure of power could in the long run meet this test. That’s a hypothetical, I don’t know how to prove it. I could imagine a philosophical argument along the lines of “the state is a form of alienation akin to what Marx described and what’s more it’s a contagious and inertial one that resists withering away” but I’m already bored by the prospect of trying to make an argument like that, and it’d be cheap as well. For now all I’ll say is that I think the seizure of the state as key piece in a project of liberation is a hypothetical as is “seizing the state is incompatible with all projects of real liberation.” I don’t know how to assess these against each other and I’m pessimistic about the prospects of fruitful discussion that could do so.

The other disconnect is about insurrection. I’m not sure what to make of this issue, or how to discuss it. This is I think one of the key political issues in the piece and that Hamerquist wants to discuss. He refers to “rapid, but temporary and reversible shifts in political potentials in epistemological break situations, particularly those with insurrectionary possibilities.” I’m of two minds here. On the one hand, this doesn’t speak to me at all. On the other, it does. I’ll start with the disconnect and come back to the other version of this later.

One of the biggest problems that the piece is concerned with is the relationship between insurrections and organizations (between spontaneous and willed activity?), but it only partially engages with this issue. It more seems to just say “This is a problem that needs to be dealt with” than saying much on how to deal with the problem, or giving examples of way this has been dealt with in the past. The main engine for changing people (as far as I can see) articulated in the piece is insurrection. I don’t think this is because Hamerquist thinks that’s all that changes people, I think it’s a matter of scale - those things will change more people more, if organizations are around to capitalize on them.

This is one of the biggest disconnects for me in the piece, the issue of insurrection, the scope of the implied stuff the piece can imagine. Maybe this is just me being conservative or maybe limits of my experience but smaller scale fights seem hard enough (perhaps I’m a crypto-gradualist) and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the large sort of tectonic shifts that the piece seems to suggest are possible and which communists need to be prepared to take advantage of. I’ve not read much about previous insurrections and attempts to respond to them, and those that I’ve heard others talk about seem frankly over-rated to me. I might not be being fair here, though, as my in my head I’m equating all this insurrection talk with spontaneism and with struggle chasing - there’s an upsurge so we lefties rush to get there; for every new development there’s the new question “how do we radicals relate to it?” Of course that’s valid, but with the little I know about about examples I’m interested in of big conflagrations it seems to me there’s often some long term behind the scenes stuff that happens. I’m much, much more interested in - and think that our class has much greater need of - that sort of work than in the “how do we as radicals relate to this?”, a question tied in my experience to often relatively short term (say, 6-12 months at the longest) stints of doing political work. A lot of conflicts with management (successful ones that add to the ability to fight management better in the future) involve a lot of planning and preparation prior to the beginning of the conflict (think of the work that goes into preparing for a boxing match vs the time of the match itself). I’m more interested in that preparation to fight management kind of work than I am in the “the strike is on, we need an emergency flying squad meeting” kind of work.

As I think I said, maybe I misunderstand Don on insurrection, maybe it’s not spontaneism or anything like that. Even if it’s not, I’m pretty sure I *do* understand him right in that the insurrection stuff involves ideas of big groups of workers changing their minds at once. I can’t rule out that possibility but I’m deeply pessimistic about it. I don’t have anything like Don’s breadth and depth of experience or knowledge of history, but I feel like I’ve never experienced anything like what he’s describing or intimating in the stuff on insurrection, the ““rapid, but temporary and reversible shifts in political potentials in epistemological break situations” involving a great many people. I’m tempted again to formulate a hypothetical principle with regard to my gut level impulses and my trust… this principle would refer back to Don’s communists from the Manifesto, the ones who represent the future of the class or as I put it the ones oriented toward the class for itself (perhaps belonging to the proto- class for itself?), it would go like this: communists can count only on growth that they (we?) create through communists’ efforts; furthermore, individual conversation and relationship building between existing communists and noncommunists is key to this process; thus there is a rate of growth to expect which would be a function of the number of communists, the time they put in, and the degree of efficacy they have, working with noncommunists patiently and as individuals, and there’s a level of time required to work on noncommunists to move them in the way they need to be moved. Expectations about change above that level or outside the scope of these efforts can’t be eliminated, but can’t be proven. Don might say that this principle (I haven’t committed to it, it’s a hypothetical) would abandon the idea that the class enacts its own emancipation. I don’t think that’d be true, though, as the communists in question are working class ones, creating new working class communists.

I’m wandering. In short, I don’t trust there to be meaningful seismic shifts among the class in itself. Don will probably say I’m not even engaging then with the problem he’s after, and am a gradualist. Maybe so. Short of evidence that I’m wrong, I’ll stick with my pessimism for now. I suspect that a lot this is simply generational. I was born in the late 70s, I came of age really in the early 00s. My frame of reference is smaller and I’ve just never lived through anything that I can think of at all approaching an insurrection, a potential one, or a general offensive by the working class.

All of that said, there is a way in which I like very much what Don says about insurrection, but in a way that I think makes it no longer about insurrection. I’ll get back to this.

The parts of the piece that most spoke to me are the discussions of democracy and participation, and of the “general principles for the relationship of communists to the mass struggles of working people.” (Oh, and the stuff on workplace activity. I agree with that stuff entirely and so have nothing to say on it except that I wish it was longer and that more people would read it and take on that perspective.)

Hamerquist makes what are to my mind really good points about democracy and participation. He points a view that tends to see “greater democratic participation as the answer to most problems without fully appreciating its limitations and the resulting importance that revolutionaries collectively formulate and advance their own positions and confront the underlying issues in their own name.” He writes later that “[m]ost episodes of mass and class struggle include elements of a struggle for ‘better terms’ within capitalism, for reforms, as well as at least an implicit struggle against the capitalist system. Clearly moments occur in mass struggles when participatory majorities tacitly or explicitly acknowledge their subordination in exchange for selective concessions and a circumscribed security.” Hamerquist notes that radicals are usually in the numerical minority most of the time. He agrees with anarchists that there can be no “substitute for the actual change in the collective understanding of what is and what is possible” on the part of large groups of people. This can only occur “through the experience of active resistance to the power of capital and from the construction out of this resistance of a popular alternative.” He says that “The introduction of notions of general ‘objective’ interests of some broader social group in so situations can sometimes be helpful or even necessary, but it is no substitute for decisions that the actual participants in the struggle can recognize as their own.”

I think it’s important that “recognize as their own” is not the same as “make for themselves.” He says “Participatory majorities” in this sense are not necessarily numerical majorities. He adds that “even in early stages of struggle formally democratic procedures within it will not always promote the expansion and intensification of the struggle.” I think that is absolutely correct. In at least some contexts “a democratic and participatory approach will result in decisions that will not move the struggle forward, at least not in the opinion of the revolutionary grouping. So there may be moments in a struggle when a confrontation with democratically expressed ‘common sense’ is important.” Some of the time formal democracy can “substitute lowest common denominator approaches that accept the logic of capital for much less comfortable and less popular initiatives that might challenge this logic.” He points out that this does not “mean that revolutionary groups should always urge the fight forward.” There are times when digging in an holding ground is the better move for the long range than always pressing onward. We should be aware that “waves of enthusiasm can promote tactics that are not sustainable and objectives that are not attainable,” which “can result in significant and predictable setbacks.” It is possible that there can be “militant majorities that do not properly calculate the gaps and unevenness between what they are willing to do at a given moment and what they and others, possibly not so directly involved, will support over time.” This means “there will be (and have been) points where it may be necessary and important to retrench, to consolidate advances and accept necessary losses, even while additional victories still seem attainable to many participants in the movement. It will be certainly be unpopular, but it may be right to question or even challenge a militant majority under such conditions.”

About those general principles for communists in mass struggles, these are tied to the issue of democratic participation. It seems to me that at least some of the issue here is about what the class is that we orient to. That sounds clunky, of course. What I mean is, I think this is about how we work out our relationship to the class in itself and the class for itself. We have to work with and deal with people where we find them and be able to build relationships with people. We have to take people as we find them. At the same time, as radicals we can’t leave people as we find them. Our goal has to be to make people different. (I’ve tried to address this a bit in some blog posts occasionally, trying to think in my limited way about - and hopefully in a way that helps me be a bit better in - my limited experiences with doing some of this stuff, and have gotten a bit of feedback.)

That goal can sit uncomfortably with our democratic sensibilities. One version of a democratic sensibility involves consent - people affected by a decision should get to make the decision. That’s a sound principle. Like many sound principles, it has its limits. This issue of making people different is one area where we can see such a limit. How can someone consent to being made different? There are some ways, I suppose, but … if someone is not yet who they could and should be, and who they could and should be is a lot better than who they are, then, really, they’re not qualified to make the decision not to achieve their potential. (I had a much loved family member try to commit suicide once. That family member simply was not qualified to make the decision to die. Period, end of discussion.) I’m tempted to posit a hypothetical principle here, an inverse proportion between the change needed and the ability of the person needing the change to consent to it - people who most need their views changed are least qualified to consent to having their views changed. This is true for the class as well - we don’t ask the class in itself to give permission to the class for itself to come out and play.

I think this is the same issue, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been in situations working with people who I see are formally my equal (they get a vote, they get equal rights, etc) but who I don’t see as substantive equals. Let’s say me and another comrade work together and we have a lot of experience with workplace struggle and revolutionary ideas. Let’s say we work with a group of people who have varying levels of experience less than we do (and people with more too, what the hell). There’s a balance to be struck with less experienced people. There is a sort of managed transparency, so to speak. If a first effort by a comrade and coworker is absolutely useless or counterproductive I think it’s still important to find a way to say something constructive, for the sake of developing that person or at the very least to help them really take the criticism on board. This means a conscious effort to find ways to sincerely express a silver lining along with criticisms. There are also discussions that have to happen sometimes, something like - “how do we get this comrade to be less socially awkward?” “maybe the issue is lack of confidence” “that could be, let’s push the comrade to speak publicly a few times, to feel less shy” “do you think they’ll succeed?” “At first? No. But if we have a plan to deal with the aftermath and give the right feedback, then yes, eventually.” This kind of thing has to be approached in a circuitous fashion and not directly through democratic means.

As Hamerquist puts it, there is an “unevenness in consciousness and development in the working class.” He see this as something he has in common with Tom Wetzel (I think Tom is quite good on this point, leadership development and so forth, and the need to recognize and actively take steps to work against informal hierarchies based on what people walked in the door with). For Don this is why there’s a “need for an organized minority to motivate and consolidate organizing projects that advance and expand the general struggle.” The piece says that this requires “a degree of ‘representation’ of the interests and potentials of social groups that are not organized and politically unified by a revolutionary organization that hopefully is.” I agree. But I don’t see what we gain by calling this representation. To be totally honest I wonder if this is partly a sort of, well, I don’t want to call it a trick but I can’t think of a better word. It wonder if this is an attempt to square democratic impulses with the discomfort of the fact that in some instances full transparency and democracy would be a mistake.

It’s on this stuff about the class for itself and about participation that I find that Hamerquist’s remarks about insurrection do resonate with me very much. At the end of the piece he states that “The development of mass revolutionary sentiment is not an extended and uniform process, but the result of sharp breaks and new normals that produce a strata of revolutionaries today that may not even have been the reformists of yesterday. These are not people who are discovered through a process of patiently arguing and convincing, but people who create and discover themselves through the unexpected leaps in perception and self conception that happen in actions, fights, struggles.” The “revolutionary organization should work to precipitate” this kind of occurence, he argues. At a large scope, I’m pessimistic, as I said. But at a smaller scope - a much smaller one, one so small that Don may be annoyed that I connect it with his remarks on insurrection - this describes exactly my orientation toward mass work.

People are not made communists head first, at least not all are and those who are made head first often have to have their feet and guts and hearts catch up. Many people are made communists first below the neck, and their ideas catch up. I think in saying that, in a way I’m agreeing with some of what Don is saying: “people (…) create and discover themselves through the unexpected leaps in perception and self conception that happen in actions, fights, struggles.” Personally, I think even more so when one is in the fight because one has a direct/material/economic stake in it, and deep human ties to people who have such a stake in it. There is a heat that is generated by struggles, and the closeness of a struggle to the heart of one’s social position/social existence, the higher one’s potential to experience this heat. Standing in solidarity with someone else’s workplace action is great and transformative. Taking action on one’s own job can be even more so - at least the first few times anyway. I say this because it seems to me relevant to what I mentioned before and only clumsily articulated, about the difference between relating to struggles that are happening vs the slow work of building struggles (on this, I find the term social insertion really annoying, as an aside), and because I’ve known radicals who put lots of time into various conflicts where others risk a great deal, which is great and necessary, but who aren’t themselves in conflicts facing at all analogous risks. (The working class radical movement I’d like to see is one mainly of people facing such risks connecting up with each other.) Maybe I’m just being moralistic.

Anyway, about struggles transforming people… one thing I learned from the STO’s writings is that it’s a mistake (one I used to make) to just leave it to the struggle to change people. Struggle is a necessary raw material, but not a sufficient one. Radicals have to relate to nonradical people who experience struggles, to make sure the right lessons happen (for the radicals too). It also seems to me that at levels much smaller in scale than insurrection, we can create these situations. We can build walkouts and other job actions and strikes. We build them in terms and conditions not of our choosing, but we can build them. I’ve seen this at an admittedly micro scale within my involvement in the IWW. This to my mind is what radicals should be doing, at least in work with people my and younger generations and the strata I’m familiar with.

Addendum

I just realized a key mistake I made. I don’t know if I disagree with Don on insurrection or not, I think I don’t, I think I misread the piece. I took the insurrection talk not only as a political point but as a … for lack of a better word, a conjunctural point, like such a thing might be on the agenda quite soon. I don’t know if Don actually makes any such claim about the timing of all this. The pessimism I referred to in my reply is my pessimism about *when* something like that could happen, I think it’s a long ways off, but I mistakenly make it sound like I’m pessimistic about it happening at all. I think that makes a difference for the issue of gradualism, I joked that I may be a crypto-gradualist. That still may be the case, but I’m not a gradualist in principle - which would mean for something like “the change we want can happen slowly over time, slow change over time is sufficient” - I just think that situations along the lines Don describes or implies are a long way off. Thus, slow change over time is our likely best possibility for a while but is not itself going to be sufficient for the sorts of changes we want.

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Dave Renney: Scattered thoughts on the Leninist Party and Don’s Paper

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Dave Renney:

In 1914 after the collapse of the 2nd International and the start of WWI, Lenin spent a year studying Hegel. His notes are published in his Abstract of Hegel’s Science of Logic.

Among other things he emphasized the importance of the subjective and its relation to material conditions that contradicted his earlier formulations of materialism. He essentially discovered for himself Hegle’s dialectic.

This had to have an impact on the way he viewed the organizational question as he was trying to make some sense of what German Social Democracy did to the global communist movement.

What attracted me to the “Forest” side of the old Johnson-Forest tendency was the effort made to go beyond “workerism” that Don saw in that tendency.

The formulation was roughly that the drive by the working class for self development through liberation became a movement from practice that was a form of theory. But there also needed to be a simultaneous movement from theory that was a form of philosophy that met this movement from practice. The movement from theory that addresses the movement from practice was seen as the job of the revolutionary organization who viewed the working class as not simply the object of the organizing project but its subject. The synthesis of these two movements should produce a second negation that articulates what the revolution is for - concretely the new society. All of this drew on Marx’s insights that man is not only determined by history but is its creator.

Unfortunately saying all of this is one thing. Making it concrete through revolutionary practice is another. And no one including Raya could really figure it out. She was working on a piece called “the philosophy of organization” when she died - very unfinished. And N&L degenerated into something that bore no relation to the lofty formulation that had attracted me.

But in this context I believe that many of the issues you point to that historically distorted or defeated Lenin’s intentions can be discussed in relation to the dual rhythm - one from practice and the other from theory. Also important is clarity about the goal of the revolutionary project as human self development rather than simply state power let alone “party building.” (I think this is a key revelation that is reflected in Lenin’s notes on Hegel but abandoned in the heat of the post 1917 onslaught). The tension between democratic participation and centralism can be transcended if there is clarity of this sort. The same can be said about the insertion of retrogressive subjective conditions (ruling ideas) and objective conditions that threaten the entire revolutionary project. (Which is what happened to Lenin).

Regarding objective conditions, I think it important to realize that the concept of “the point of production” changed drastically during the 1980s and most of us missed this. Now the point of production is scattered all over the place to the extent that a single workplace loses its strategic significance for capitalism as a whole.

Also, changes in the organization of capitalism have also obscured the point of production as a place where the contradictions of capitalism are the clearest. For example, the cubicle with a computer is similar in some ways to your machine station at SW but it carries with it the illusion that you are not really working class (I am currently enjoying the book by Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft that elaborates on this point).

All this is to say that organizing action groups at the point of production is not as clear to me when your product is produced in many different locations at the same time or when there is no tangible product (a credit default swap produced in a series of cubicles).

These developments suggest to me the importance of international coalitions and of neighborhood-workplace alliances (like Jobs With Justice without the union domination and with a revolutionary agenda or organizing the unemployed at this moment).

Regarding subjective conditions I think that the dominance of ruling ideas is being strengthened especially in the U.S. by complicated divisions that obscure class. Identity politics, for example, which we are feeling with a vengeance these days substitutes race for class as does the division among immigrants based on legal status and language skills. The formulation of the IWW which was recently brought up in another context by Noel that “the working class has no nation” seems particularly important in developing immigration work perspectives.

Given the current form of global capital, we need to focus generally on class trumping nationalism so that revolutionary organization needs to be organized on a global basis - a return to some sort of International Communist Movement.

Finally, I believe that we are about to see changes in the organization of global capitalism at least as momentous as occurred with the Bretton Woods Agreement in the 1940’s and the rise of neo liberalism, global finance capital, and the global assembly line in the 1980s. It means to me that a revolutionary organization needs to be in a position (as we were not in the 1980s) to see and analyze these developments and adjust strategic perspectives accordingly.





Dave Ranney 9-17-09

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Noel Ignatiev: C.L.R. James on the Marxist Organization

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Noel Ignatiev: The attached is an excerpt from an introduction I wrote to a book that is supposed to be coming out this year containing two articles by CLR James. I am submitting it with two aims in mind: (1) to correct a misreading of James that has gained currency among some who oppose him as well as some who support him; (2) to contribute to the discussion of Lenin and the role of Marxist organization. Please circulate it along with this note to the relevant parties.


James’ rejection of the vanguard party, however, did not lead him to reject Marxist organization. For proof, one need only recall the great attention and energy he dedicated to building Facing Reality, an avowedly Marxist organization headquartered in Detroit with branches around the U.S. (These efforts are recounted and documented in Marxism for Our Times: C.L.R. James on Revolutionary Organization, edited by Martin Glaberman.) But what would the Marxist organization do? This is where it gets difficult. I once asked him that question and got from him the reply, “Its job is not to lead the workers.” Very well, I said, but what was it to do? For an answer, I got the same: It was not to act like a vanguard party. It was obvious that James was not going to elaborate with me, a person who might for all he knew carry with him the vanguardist prejudices of the “left” he had been fighting for decades. I would have to extrapolate the answer from his works. To these, then, I turned.

In Facing Reality, coauthored by James, Grace Boggs and Carlos Castoriadis, in the section “What To Do and How to Do It,” it says, “Its task is to recognize and record.” That is a start. Over the next few pages, Facing Reality lays out a plan for a popular paper that will document the new society as it emerges within the shell of the old. As should surprise no one, it is most concrete when discussing what was then called “The Negro Question in the United States”:

For the purpose of illustrating the lines along which the paper of the Marxist organization has to face its tasks (that is all we can do), we select two important issues, confined to relations among white and Negro workers, the largest sections of the population affected.

1) Many white workers who collaborate in the most democratic fashion in the plants continue to show strong prejudice against association with Negroes outside the plant.

2) Many Negroes make race relations a test of all other relations….

What, then, is the paper of the Marxist organization to do?…

Inside such a paper Negro aggressiveness takes its proper place as one of the forces helping to create the new society. If a white worker… finds that articles or letters expressing Negro aggressiveness on racial questions makes the whole paper offensive to him, that means it is he who is putting his prejudices on the race question before the interests of the class as a whole. He must be reasoned with, argued with, and if necessary fought to a finish.

How is he to be reasoned with, argued with, and if necessary fought to a finish?

First by making it clear that his ideas, his reasons, his fears, his prejudices also have every right in the paper….

The paper should actively campaign for Negroes in the South to struggle for their right to vote and actually to vote…. If Negroes outside of the South vote, now for the Democratic Party and now for the Republican, they have excellent reasons for doing so, and their general activity shows that large numbers of them see voting and the struggle for Supreme Court decisions merely as one aspect of a totality. They have no illusions. The Marxist organization retains and expresses its own view. But it understands that it is far more important, within the context of its own political principles, of which the paper is an expression, within the context of its own publications, meetings, and other activities in its own name, within the context of its translations and publications of the great revolutionary classics and other literature, that the Negroes make public their own attitudes and reasons for their vote. [Published 1958; given the massive disenfranchisement of black people in 2000, 2004 and 2008, which no major or minor candidate has chosen to make an issue, it might not be a bad thing if revolutionaries, without abandoning their view of the electoral system, were to join in a campaign on behalf of prisoners’ right to vote--NI.]

Such in general is the function of the paper of a Marxist organization in the United States on the Negro question. It will educate, and it will educate above all white workers in their understanding of the Negro question and into a realization of their own responsibility in ridding American society of the cancer of racial discrimination and racial consciousness. The Marxist organization will have to fight for its own position, but its position will not be the wearisome repetition of “Black and White, Unite and Fight.” It will be a resolute determination to bring all aspects of the question into the open, within the context of the recognition that the new society exists and that it carries within itself much of the sores and diseases of the old.

While the above passage focuses on the role of a paper, it provides a guide for other aspects of work. James’s approach was in the best tradition of Lenin (whom James much admired). Lenin, it must be remembered, did not invent the soviets (councils). What he did, that no one else at the time was able to do, not even the workers who invented them, was to recognize in the soviets the political form of the new society. The slogan he propagated, “All Power to the Soviets,” represented the intervention of the Marxist intellectual in the revolutionary process. In basing his policy on the soviets, those “spontaneous” creations of the Russian workers, he was far removed from what has come to be understood as vanguardism.

I recall once in the factory, a group of workers walking out in response to a plant temperature of one-hundred degrees-plus with no fans. Our little group, schooled in the teachings of James and Lenin, understanding that the walkout represented a way of dealing with grievances outside of the whole management-union contract system, agitated for a meeting to discuss how to make that walkout the starting point of a new shop-floor organization based on direct action. That was not vanguardism but critical intervention.

Another example from personal experience: I once worked a midnight shift in a metalworking plant. There were two other workers in the department on that shift, Jimmy and Maurice. Maurice had been having money troubles, which caused him to drink more than he should, which led to missed days and more trouble on the job, which led to troubles at home, etc. I came to work one night after missing the previous night, and Jimmy told me that Maurice had brought a pistol to the plant the night before, planning to shoot the general foreman if he reprimanded him in the morning about his attendance. “Did you try to stop him?” I asked. “No, what for?” queried Jimmy. “What happened?” I responded. “When the foreman came in,” explained Jimmy, “instead of stopping to hassle Maurice, he just said hello and kept going to his office. He doesn’t know how close he came to dying.”

I, of course, did not want Maurice to shoot the general foreman because I did not want him to spend the rest of his life in prison for blowing away an individual who was no worse than the generality of his type. Jimmy looked at matters differently: for him, Maurice’s life was already a prison that could be salvaged by one dramatic NO, regardless of the consequences. Who was right? Well, I had read all the books and knew that ninety-nine times out of a hundred nothing would come of Maurice’s action: the plant guards or the cops would take him away or kill him on the spot. But on the hundredth time, something different might happen: the workers would block the plant guards, fight the cops, and the next thing you knew you had the mutiny on the Potemkin. The new society is the product of those two kinds of knowledge, Jimmy’s and mine, and neither could substitute for the other. As a person who had decided to devote his life to revolution, my job was to Recognize and Record the new society as it made its appearance.

In 1969, a black worker at a Los Angeles aircraft plant, Isaac (“Ike”) Jernigan, who had been harassed by management and union and then fired for organizing black workers, brought a gun to work and killed a foremen; then he went to the union hall and killed two union officials. Our Chicago group published a flyer calling for workers to rally to his defense. Not much came of it until… the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit reprinted our flyer in their paper. A Chrysler worker, James Johnson, responding to a history of unfair treatment including a suspension for refusing speedup, killed two foremen and a job setter, and was escorted from the plant saying “Long Live Ike Jernigan.”

The League waged a mass campaign on Johnson’s behalf, including rallies on the courthouse steps, while carrying out a legal defense based on a plea of temporary insanity. The high point of the trial came when the jury was led on a tour through Chrysler; it found for the defense, concluding that working at Chrysler was indeed enough to drive a person insane. (This was Detroit, and many people already knew that to be true.) Johnson was acquitted and sent to a mental hospital instead of to prison; as an added insult, Chrysler was ordered to pay him workmen’s compensation. Such was the political power contained in the simple words, Recognize and Record.

The task of revolutionaries is not to organize the workers but to organize themselves to discover those patterns of activity and forms of organization that have sprung up out of the struggle and that embody the new society, and to help them grow stronger, more confident, and more conscious of their direction. It is an essential contribution to the society of disciplined spontaneity, which for James was the definition of the new world.

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Tom Wetzel's Reply to Hammerquist

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Tom Wetzel:

Okay, here is my reply to Don. In general I would say that a feature of WSA’s politics is that we don’t believe in over-emphasizing the role of the political organization because we see the mass organizations as the instrument through which the working class emancipates itself. That said, we’re “dual organizationalist”, so we do see a role for a revolutionary political organization. I would also agree with Gambone that it would be desirable for such an organizing to have a certain theoretical and practical unity consistent with being a horizontal organization.

Myth of Worker Rule in Russia

I’m not sure how Don conceives of “soviet power,” but his references to the Russian revolution “degenerating” suggests he may think there was some time when the working class was actually in power in Russia. I think the working class was never in power in Russia.

Here it’s necessary to examine the critique of the major soviets that Pete Rachleff provides in “Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution.” Rachleff shows that the major soviets in St. Petersburg and Moscow had been set up as entirely top down affairs by the Menshevik party leaders. Power was concentrated in the executive committee and later in the even smaller presidium. They tended to treat the plenaries as rubber stamps.

The Russian trade unions, set up by the Mensheviks, were also highly centralized. This is why the workers organized the shop committee movement, which was based on assemblies in the plants.

And the Bolsheviks never opposed this top down organization of the major soviets.

But not all soviets were organized this way. As Israel Getzler describes, the Kronstadt soviet was based on regular weekly assemblies in the ships and workplaces and the plenaries of the soviet were the actual place where decisions and deliberation took place. But in Kronstadt in 1917 the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were not dominant. The libertarian left was dominant...particularly the alliance of syndicalists and maximalists.

Sam Farber (a Marxist sociologist who is a member of Solidarity) points out in “Before Stalnism” that Russian Marxism in its Menshevik and Bolshevik forms never advocated direct or participatory democracy. Farber says the Bolsheviks were so focused on capture of the central government they didn’t emphasize participation of the people in the making of decisions.

We see this deficiency also in “State and Revolution”. Lenin never advocates workers self-management. On the contrary he points to the German post office as a model for a socialist economy.

Russian Marxism seems to have taken over from social-democracy an interpretation of democracy as indirect or representative democracy...electing people to make decisions for you.

In 1908-09 there was a tendency in the Bolshevik power that did borrow from syndicalism an emphasis on direct worker management and direct worker participation. A Marxist-syndicalist group. This was the circle around Alexander Bogdanoff. But Lenin had them expelled. They later became the “Workers Truth” group.

I can’t see that the Russian working class was ever actually in power. Why, then, the focus on Lenin?

Don refers to one-man management, Taylorist work organization, the top down professional army as aspects of the “degeneration” of the revolution. But these trends were, I think, in Bolshevism from the beginning. In Nov 1917 the Bolshevik government set up the Supreme Council for National Economy... a group entirely appointed from above, to work out a plan for the whole economy. It had various party members, experts and union officials. This body eventually became Gosplan. But a statist central planning body of this sort is already incompatible with workers’ self-management of industry.

There was an alternative conception. The regional soviet of factory committees of St. Petersburg proposed a national congress of the factory committees to develop a national economic plan from below. This was fought out at the First All-Russian Trade Union Congress.

Only the libertarian left delegates...the syndicalist/maximalist alliance...supported this proposal. The Bolshevik and Menshevik delegates voted against it.

What Replaces the State

Anarchism traditionally said ambiguous things about political power. I think among class struggle anarchists nowadays, this is no longer the case. I think we generally agree that the working class takes power, in the economy and in society in general.

I don’t think Bookchin’s idea of a loose confederation of self sufficient communities is an adequate conception of the new social regime. I think there would need to be a federation that consolidates its hold throughout the revolutionary territory...a unitary but horizontal form of control. This would not be a state if we understand “state” in the way Engels does, as a bureaucratic apparatus that is effectively separated from control by the mass of the people. I tend to envision the political power as rooted in base assemblies in worklaces and neighborhoods and then congresses of delegates from these assemblies...with the right to refer matters back to base assemblies in cases of controversial or very important issues.

Social Insertion

Here I will point out that Don mis-interprets what I meant by “social insertion.”

I did *not* assume that the activists are “declassed” elements. It’s a question of focus. Anarchist activists with an inward focus on anarchist only projects or protest hopping may be from working class origins. Some of them are sort of declassed...students from middle class backgrounds...but not all.

To take an example, the organization Amanecer in California has the “social insertion” concept.

For them this means a focus on workplace organizing at rank and file level and community organizing. They are of working class origin. Some of them here in the Bay Area are salting targeted workplaces. They also have a substantial people of color membership...more so than the typical class struggle anarchist group.

Due to this kind of misconception, I see that it would perhaps be best if I avoided the term “social insertion” in the future.

Vanguard and Mass

Don refers to types of situations where the revolutionary activists may be in a setting, such as a workplace, where they have a different view of what should be done, or are confronted with conservative attitudes and ideas. I agree that critiquing such attitudes and ideas is one of the tasks for a revolutionary organization. I also agree that a revolutionary organization, to be effective, needs to have a kind of horizontal discipline and unity...a certain level of unity in theory and practice.

And publicizing our ideas generally in society as well as in particular organizational contexts is one of the tasks we face.

However, I think there are two errors that need to be avoided:

1. Over-intellectualizing the nature of the problem.

2. Seeing the separation between vanguard and mass as a static situation that continues into the revolution.

Here is what we say in the WSA’s political statement:

“We advocate an approach where activists work to spread widely within the rank and file of movements and mass organizations the self-confidence, knowledge, skills and opportunities for decision-making participation needed to make self-management an effective reality. We want mass organizations to be self-managing and we work for this aim in such organizations and to counteract bureaucratic or authoritarian tendencies.”

The point about developing broadly within the working class the knowledge, self-confidence and skills to be activists, organizers is about both the “organic” process of working class leadership development and also is essential for mass organizations to continue to be self-managing.

The anarcho-syndicalist unions in Spain in the ‘30s were run through mass assemblies and elected shop steward committees...they had few staff or paid officials, who were basically just clerks or organizational coordinators. This type of mass self-managed form of unionism could not have survived without widespread agreement with revolutionary ideas and many rank and file workers having developed the ability to participate effectively. In this context, the Spanish anarchist concept of *capacitacion* -- developing capacities of rank and file working class people -- is relevant.

This was part of their conception of the development of the class into a class “for itself.” One of the things that supported this were the neighborhood centers or ateneos where there were classes, debates, talks, literacy classes, and so on.

“Representing”

Don talks about the revolutionary organization having the responsibility to “represent” the broader class interest, or interest of all the exploited and oppressed, and an internationalist perspective. Although we should strive to do this, it is unrealistic to expect that we would not make mistakes. Any small group consists of people who have had only certain kinds of experiences... been subject only to certain forms of oppression. Thus I think we have to allow that there may never be a single vanguard organization that “represents” everyone adequately.

The point to the diversity of social movements is that it is the participation of the oppressed themselves who develop an understanding of their situation.

Thus I think that an adequate overall “represetnation” can only be created by the kind of mass process that I called a “labor/social movement alliance.” This is where the various mass organizations that have arisen in the various areas of struggle come together and gain acceptance of their agenda, their concerns, among the others...the reality of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” We can work towards that sort of process happening...such as organizing venues where people from different backgrounds come together and exchange their views in a mutually respectful manner.

But a complete and adequate representation in this sense is only likely to emerge in a revolutionary situation.

Also, I would point out that the idea of “class” or “solidarity” unionism is also to represent the interests of the working class as a whole in this way. It need not be a feature of only a vanguard organization.

Insurrection

I don’t see why a vanguard political organization has to take the responsibility for organizing an insurrection...in a situation where this would make sense. We are of course very far away from anything like this occurring here in the USA...and so I don’t see a need to talk about it...certainly not publicly.

But in the case of Barcelona in July 1936, the smashing of the army was organized by the workers defense committee of the CNT. They coordinated the efforts of the 3,000 armed workers of the CNT neighborhood defense groups, and even the rank and file police who sided with the working class took direction from them. And the workers defense committee was set up by a mass syndicalist union federation with 350,000 members.

It’s always been a syndicalist position that any armed force of the revolution has to be controlled by the democratic mass organizations of the working class...if the working class is to end up in power when the dust settles.

Even in the case of the insurrection in Russia in Oct 1917, this took place under the auspices of the St. Petersburg and Kronstadt soviets, not the party.

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