A Simple Spark

McCarthy, Lloyd D. “In-Dependence” From Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley: Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations” Africa World Press, 2007

Claude McKay and Michael Manley may seem like strange bedfellows for a study in 20th century politics. Though both born in Jamaica, a generation apart, they could hardly have pursued more divergent paths. McKay was a queer, Black communist poet who helped spark the Harlem Renaissance. Manley, of mixed African and European ancestry, was born into a politically aristocratic family and would eventually serve multiple terms as Prime Minister of Jamaica. Manley (1924-1997) was born on the inside track to politics and power, McKay (1889-1948) was the ultimate outsider for all of his days. Yet, in often contrasting ways, they both tried to articulate a politics that speaks for the poor and working class people of the African Diaspora, in the Caribbean and beyond.

Lloyd D. McCarthy’s choice of characters for this analytic dual biography/regional history is ultimately rewarding. McCarthy draws attention to the logical connection between growing up on a colonized, hyper-exploited island and Manley and McKay’s eventual embracing of egalitarian, passionately anti-racist politics. McCarthy makes the case that Manley and McKay represent two archetypal political poles of 20^th century Caribbean radicalism. The two would scarcely have agreed on the question of reform or revolution—but McCarthy weaves his narrative in such a way as to make them brothers.

Manley and the Promise of Democratic Socialism

Born to a former Premiere of Jamaica and a well known artist, Michael Manley was given a life of social and political connections across Jamaica. His debut in politics was as a fiery orator in the labor movement, stumping for the union associated with his father’s party. His charisma and famous name pushed him to the front of Jamaican populist politics, with a cult following amongst Jamaica’s working class. Elected in 1969 and riding a wave of popular mobilization, he sought to be the Prime Minister that stood for the poor, stood for Black people, and would speak out against imperialism. His record, ultimately, is mixed; he could take a righteous stand, but rarely followed through. His model of incremental, reformist socialism was no match for the IMF and the structural adjustments that further tore the economy apart.

Manley’s Democratic Socialist model aimed to “Jamaicanize” foreign businesses (state takeover of 51%), expand local capitalism, and nationalize some key institutions. The goal was to reallocate some economic power and provide basic relief to the poor, without scaring away foreign investors or domestic capital completely. Raised as a Fabian socialist, Manley attempted to rebuild Jamaica’s post-colonial economy along mixed public/private lines, not dissimilar to what other moderate Non-Aligned nations were experimenting with at the time. McCarthy overstates Manley’s commitment to socialist politics, claiming he had completely broken with his belief in the free market. The text suffers from a lack of thoroughgoing criticism of Manley’s time in office, choosing instead to highlight his rhetorical pronouncements and stated aims instead of holding them up to his actual record while in office. For all of his indignation at the IMF’s role in global plunder, he was still willing to “structurally adjust” the Jamaican economy when they demanded it.

There is also no criticism of the extent to which Manley’s years in office were business as usual for Jamaican politics: cronyism, patronage, street violence by rival party gangs. None of this changed under the rule of “socialist” Manley. As Arthur Lewin pointed out in Monthly Review in the aftermath of Manley’s (first) fall from power, the Manley administration focused the anger of the poor at the rival [conservative] Jamaica Labor Party, not actual economic elites. In short, Manley’s rule served to “mute class struggle”, containing the rebellious mood to the confines of mainstream, two-party politics. McCarthy credits Manley with inventing a nonrevolutionary, “morally-based”, Democratic Socialism perfectly suited for the Caribbean reality. McCarthy sites his early years as a Fabian socialist, his affinities with international anti-colonial struggles, and his resolute anti-racism as qualities that made his contribution to the Pan African left so unique. In case you were wondering, the author worked high level jobs in Manley’s state department.

There are also undeniably proud moments in Manley’s time in office. His commitment to the liberation struggles in Southern Africa was steadfast and extensive. He even floated the idea of Jamaica sending troops to fight in Southern Africa, and applauded Cuba for doing just that. On the world’s stage, Manley was a loud and colorful voice against colonialism and white supremacy. Manley believed that the struggle against racism, especially in the Global South, was paramount to the struggle for human survival, even above the struggle between workers and capital. He was a product of an era of world wide anti-imperialist struggle, and his political imagination was shaped by these movements. His commitment to smashing the legacy of racism played a role in domestic policy too, with increased state commitments to fighting illiteracy and the gap in health care for Jamaica’s poor Black majority. His government was brought down by both US interference and its own international contradictions, including his straddling both socialist-inspired and free market approaches.

McKay’s Journey

Claude McKay’s grandparents were born into slavery, and McKay himself was brought up in a rural peasant environment. The language and oral history traditions of rural Jamaica would shape his poetry and prose for decades. It was home in Jamaica that as a young man McKay, seeing plunder and racism everywhere, became curious about radical politics. After immigrating to Harlem, McKay found a growing Caribbean exile community, with quite a few radicals in its ranks. McKay met members of the IWW, the socialist/Black nationalist organization the African Blood Brotherhood, and all manner of agitators and leftist writers.

The year 1919 would change everything for Claude McKay, a year which also carries a morbid legacy for the radical labor movement and especially the Black community. It was the year of the Palmer Raids, when leftists and immigrants were targeted en mass for deportation. It was also know as the Red—with blood—Summer of 1919, when dozens of Black communities were faced with murderous pogroms and ruthless intimidation campaigns. Hundreds were killed in the violence, which also saw Black resistance to the onslaught. Claude McKay, an aspiring poet working as a waiter, grabbed a pen and wrote a poem at work, titled “If We Must Die”. The poem cried out in anguish at the slaughter being carried out against Black people, and insisted that “if we must die” may it be on our feet, not on our knees. The poem was an incendiary call for vigorous self-defense. It struck a nerve with his co-workers and, via publications such as Max Eastman’s The Liberator, found resonance with Black people and their allies across the country. Despite his deepening connections with the Black left, the labor movement, and radical literary circles, McKay prepared to migrate again, this time to London and eventually the Soviet Union.

In the young Soviet Union, it was reported, workers had overthrown bosses and racism was quickly vanishing. Transfixed with such a notion, McKay went to see for himself. As a relatively young, Black communist and intellectual, McKay was greeted warmly by members of the Communist movement across Russia. Indeed he got quite a grand tour of the young USSR: meetings with Leon Trotsky to discuss the National Question, time spent training with the Red Army, speaking engagements at all manner of political events, attending May Day demonstrations, and arguing on behalf of American Blacks at lecterns across the country. He was something of a socialist celebrity, reading his poems to cheering cadres and soldiers. But McKay’s wonderlust (and uneasiness with still persistent racism) pulled him away from the USSR, towards North Africa, and across Europe many times, all the while continuing his work as a poet and novelist.

When McKay returned to Harlem in the mid-1930’s fragments of the Caribbean exile Left had helped give rise to a formidable branch of the Communist Party. Let down by the continuation of bigotry under Soviet rule—particularly anti-Semitism—and the rising authoritarianism of the Stalin era, McKay became burned out on the official Communist movement. By the time the Communist Party had established itself in his old neighborhood, McKay looked at the party as cynically exploiting the political desires of Blacks.

McKay’s vision, as McCarthy spells out quite clearly through pieces of McKay’s prose, poetry, and political writing, was one of Black liberation and socialism. He believed that capitalism and imperialism had robed the Third World—and especially the African Diaspora—of its wealth and dignity. The reclamation of human rights can not come through reform of capitalism, but rather through the emergence of a socialist alternative. He was Afrocentric and a Pan-Africanist long before the ascension of those outlooks, and was an anti-imperialist a generation before those movements would shake the world. For such a slim volume, McCarthy presents the capturing highlights of McKay’s assorted and radical career.

Manley and McKay

Michael Manley, too, believed that capitalism and imperialism had robbed Black people and people of the Global South of their rights and resources. McKay was inspired by the formation of a world revolutionary movement, while Manley had his eye on international possibilities, too. Manley imagined a European Union-style trading block that would help primarily countries of the Global South. McKay believed that only revolutionary action could wrestle power way from the ruling class, while Manley insisted on an inside-the-system approach that sough a middle path between capital and labor. Both identified their Afro-Caribbean roots as being essential early building blocks towards their radical politics. McKay and Manley both saw themselves as voices for the masses of poor and working class people of African ancestry across the globe, and both saw themselves as stemming the tide of generations of cultural genocide and extreme exploitation.

The many simpatico ways these men’s lives and ideas dovetail each others is looked at in great detail and indeed illuminated by Lloyd McCarthy. The unflattering ways they do not line up, however, are glanced past. McCarthy is unable to see the yawning gap between Manley’s socialist-sounding rhetoric and the zig-zag political realities of his administration. It is a bit simpler to analyze McKay’s politics, as he never wielded state power. His vivid mixture of Black Nationalism, anti-colonialism, and radical socialism found a burning expression on the page, but was never tested on the ground. Therefore it is McCarthy’s light, sympathetic treatment of Manley that is the most suspect.

McCarthy’s book is a joy to read; a rich look at the 20^th century Caribbean left as represented by two of it’s most charismatic and brilliant thinkers. The author, it would seem, is simply a little too close to the Manley’s legacy to give it a fair, honest appraisal.

# posted by The Abolitionist @ 11:29 AM 0 comments

Bruce “Utah” Philips, who died in May, was a living, singing museum of radical working class culture. Through his songs and stories he connected three generations to the living memory of class struggle martyrs, hobo lore and life, and the radical pacifists and anarchists of the early 20^th century. In addition to being a world beloved folksinger and performer Philips spent time as a peace campaigner, a freight train hopper, and a union organizer. Philips will be best remembered for his countless renditions of the songs of Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Wobblies.

Utah Philips was born into a working class Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio at the height of the Depression. His mother was a CIO organizer and a passion for social justice ran deep in their household. Philips three year stint in the US Army had an equally profound effect on his thinking. He was stationed in post-war Korea, a devastated country swarming with US troops and living under a dubious regime. Deeply jarred by the aggression of occupation and churning with anger, Philips returned home to his resettled family in Salt Lake City, Utah with a drinking problem and an anger problem.

This dark spiral was intercepted by the Ammon Hennacy, a left-pacifist and organizer with the Catholic Worker movement in Utah. Hennacy was quite frank with Philips. He told him he must become a pacifist to save his own life, rejecting violence and hated as a first step. Hennacy brought Philips deeper into the radical milieu around the Catholic Workers’ “hospitality house”, the Joe Hill House. He connected with a network of war resisters, left Christians, and former Wobblies. He took on Hennacy’s teaching of Christian pacifist anarchism, a philosophy that would guide his work throughout his life.

His biding love of folk and country music, particularily of the US West, started early in life. The early 1960’s saw a blossoming of interested in folk music, and Philips increasingly found work playing his guitar and singing at festivals and in coffeehouses. This was in many cases facilitated by his dear friend and fellow folksinger Rosalie Sorells. Also an activist, their collaboration last until Philips final years. Often performing together, Sorrels and Philips made their names in the West Coast folk circuit of the late 1960’s, alongside the late Kate Wolf. Both Wolf and Philips popularized Philips’ songs, including the classic “Rock, Salt, and Nails”, which was also performed by Bob Dylan. Philips let other people interpret his material just as he interpreted the songs of others, an approach common in the folk community. His songs were recorded by American roots music artists from Emmylou Harris to Joan Baez to Waylon Jennings. Legend has it that Johnny Cash wanted to do an entire record of Philips material but Utah turned him down, not trusting the for-profit music industry. His own, independent record label was called “No Guff”.

In 1968, perhaps no longer feeling like the only leftist in Utah, Philips ran for Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. But his connection to the emerging radical perspectives remained tenuous, with Utah preferring 1910’s era class politics to ‘identity politics’. However, Utah would be the first to mention how profoundly he was effected by the women’s movement, a transformation he retold on stage repeatedly. Radicals, Philips maintained, must remain works in progress. In this same period Philips participated in the farmworkers movement and was tremendously inspired by the nonviolent class politics put forward by Ceasar Chavez and others.

Philips felt spiritually and historically connected the labor struggles in the Western US that spanned the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Too often our labor history has focused on the great strikes in the East, such as Passaic, New Jersey (1912) and Lawrence, Massachussets (1912). Philips was committed to keeping alive the memories of martyrs like Frank Little and Wesley Everest. Frank Little, Philips recounted on stage and on record, was an IWW militant who organized lumber workers in the Northwest. He was killed in a predawn raid by a death squad owned by the lumber barrons. Everest met a similar fate in Centralia, Washington in 1919, lynched by company thugs in an organized attack on an IWW hall. In Philips’ songs towns like Butte, Montana and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho come alive as battlegrounds in a pitched struggle between our class and theirs.

Philips songs and stories—and stories were as central to a performance as the songs—envisioned the old West of the IWW with vivid intimacy. He understood this to be part of his role in the struggle, the living tribune of the old IWW struggles to organize lumber workers and miners in the 1910’s. Also connected to his relationship with the Western IWW was his love affair with US hobo life and culture. Hobos are essentially homeless, migratory workers who illegally use freight trains to travel and look for work. In the early 20^th century this subculture was closely connected to the IWW and labor radicalism. IWW organizers would use freight trains in much the same way and often navigated their travels organizing through the West using the hobo network. There is a rich body of songs, jokes, and folk wisdom associated with hobo culture, which served as a goldmine for Philips. His 1973 LP “Moose Turd Pie” was steeped in hobo humor and stories. It is had to imagine the dissemination of hobo culture over the last three generations without Philips, nurturing hobo culture just as he revived the legacy of the Western IWW.

               One of Philips most widely performed and recorded songs was “Used Up”, which tells the story of a worker at the end of his life.  

I spent my whole life making somebody rich

I busted my ass for that son of a bitch

He left me to die like a dog in a ditch

And told me I'm all used up

He used up my labor, he used up my time

He plundered my body and squandered my mind

Then he gave me a pension, some handouts and wine

And told me I'm all used up

They use up the oil, they use up the trees

They use up the air and they use up the seas

But how about you, friend, and how about me

What's left, when we're all used up

      Philips heart was with the poorest layers of the working class, those that had fallen through the cracks or were discarded by capitalism.  He and his wife created a soup kitchen just three years ago, and Philips maintained close relationship with homelessness activist projects.  Philips had carried with him more than political opposition to the capitalist system, he was emotionally connected to the most devastated.

In 1997 I drove from Western Massachussetts to Detroit, Michigan with a group of friends to take part in a mass mobilization in solidarity with the Detroit Newspaper Strike. The entire drive we listened to dubbed cassettes of Philips live in concert, holding court and rhapsodizing about Joe Hill and Mother Jones. We arrived at the demonstration imbibed with the memory of the great textile strikes, the IWW’s fight for free speech, and the militancy of the world Philips created and currated. That day (which saw 30,000 march on Detroit) put me in touch with a radical working class subculture, with values and visions not unlike those rendered by Philips. His songs were food for struggle, fueling the spirit just as Joe Hill’s songs first did on picket like 80 years before.

A Utah Philips concert was a political event, to be sure. Young fans, punks and activists, sung out loud alongside senior labor veterans and old folkies. His collaborations with contemporary folk icon Ani DiFranco earned him a larger following over the last ten years. Young people radicalized in the era of the anti-globalization protests also took a shine to Philips, eating up his anti-capitalist humor and connection to the past. Utah Philips lived long enough to be a legend in his own time.

One of the performances I saw was at a coffeehouse in Upstate New York in the late 1990’s. Once again, he was performing alongside Rosalie Sorrels. My comrades and I spoke to him at length before the show, totally pulled in by his warmth and irreverent humor. I told him I was from Detroit and he recounted a howling good time he had their once. He had been performing at the Trumbull Plex, a long-standing anarchist cooperative house. Dozens of young anarchists and Wobblies kept him up all night, demanding song after song. He felt a special bond with rebellious people of all ages and was always honored to sing about his heroes and his beliefs, even at 3 am.

Conscious revolutionaries, it is sometimes said, help maintain the living memory of the working class. In Philips life we saw the hobo world meet the anti-globalization scene, the IWW meet the world of folk music, and the folk music community met the radical working class subculture.

# posted by The Abolitionist @ 8:39 AM 1 comments

I’ve been pretty wrapped up in what’s happening in Zimbabwe, I know a lot of you have been too. I want to chance to put down some of what I’ve been thinking.

It needs to be said that this issue is the business of the left because in years past he was one of ours. This is how some of our movements turn out and we should learn from that and be involved. These days there is a split on the international left about Mugabe and the last few years of crisis. It’s been difficult for many of us to really come out against him, as Bill Fletcher remarks in his defense of an open letter that he contributed to. I would really like to draw comrade’s attention to this open letter addressed to Mugabe, signed and co-written by a number of Black progressives in the U.S. It’s widely available online, including Z Magazine’s site. It plainly states that the letter was written by long time supporters of the liberation war and many subsequent years of ZANU-PF rule. In fact the letter only criticizes the recent years, so it’s definitely written by some true blue supporters. But the letter is forthright and unequivocal in its grave concern for the situation in Zimbabwe and its opposition to Mugabe’s rule of late. It’s a protest letter author by outraged former sympathizers and it brings up many key points.

What is really telling is one of the reasons cited for the grave concern is their ongoing connection to trade unions, women’s groups, and other social change institutions on the ground in Zimbabwe. Our friends are telling us that your rule is making it impossible to operate, the letter explains. Also quite damning is the fact that, along with the slew of other injustices mentioned, landlessness is still a major problem. This plainly deflates the rumor on the left that Mugabe undertook a serious effort to carry out land reform in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. It’s pretty obvious to me that his brief land reform efforts came twenty years after they should have, were horribly planned, and not very thorough anyway. Of course not pursuing much needed land reform right off the bat in the early 1980’s was an important concession ZANU leadership made. A meaningful redistribution of land and wealth that truly breaks with the colonial pattern is still needed. The letter frankly states that land reform as it has existed has not been about tackling poverty but rather nepotism. They spell out how the blame for botched, belated land reform, deadly hunger, and food distribution in general lays at the feet of Mugabe and ZUNU-PF.

The letter also states that its signers “represent a long tradition of opposition to unjust laws “. Another pretty cutting point, considering Mugabe’s use of painstakingly legislated authoritarism. The letter also points to the fact that the government has done precious little to combat AIDS, which you should not be surprised is another major social catastrophe.

The letter also makes sure to mention that there is indeed a vibrant struggle against oppression in Zimbabwe. As the letter states again and again, this is faced with raw police brutality. Nevertheless, the letters authors state their belief that there can be a peaceful solution to the crisis. They also say that the result of the peaceful end to the crisis needs to be the removal of Robert Mugabe and his replacement with a “more broadly supported government upholding the democratic rights of all”. I think some of this is fairly naïve. I don’t doubt that a popular mobilization can defeat Mugabe, so we agree there. But it’s hard for me take seriously the plea that Mugabe “find a way to work with others in and outside of your government to create an effective process for a transition”. I don’t think Bob’s going out like that. We all saw Morgan Tsvangirai’s bloody head last year, and that was before the election. I think more violence is in store before he leaves. I think the authors know that, too. Check out more commentary on the letter on The Black Commentator website, which is always packed with great essays and news.

Another thing that has sometimes prevented me from coming down hard on Mugabe in the past—and I think this goes for a lot of leftists, too—is the political unsavoryness of major parts of the main opposition groups platform. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is a somewhat plural party that favors freedom of speech and is supported by trade unions. That’s the good news. It’s also a neoliberal party that is generally in favor of limited privatization. As far as them getting Western backing as Mugabe constantly points out, it’s true. This is simply not the party socialists would prefer to be rooting for, to say the least. Critically, then came out against land reform. This was not a good move politically at the time and many potential supporters were hesitant to support them for a long time because of this.

With all of those reservations I am damn pleased that the MDC has taken the parliament and—intentional delay aside—seems to have taken the presidency. ZANU-PF is an entrenched clique and with an autocratic president that needs to be dislodged after 28 years in power. MDC is the only force able to make that happen right now. As a modest bright side, there are socialists in the MDC as barely influential as they are. The International Socialist Tendency (anchored by the British Socialist Workers Party) has a number of comrades on the ground and has fielded candidates on a MDC ticket in the past. Needless to say they are operating underground now.

It is pretty widely believed that the 2000 election was stolen (sound familiar?). It is in the eight years since then that the MDC has really been in a fight for survival, essentially because it is a viable threat to the state. The police state tactics I have mentioned have been ramped up and let us not forget the urban clearance of a few years back. MDC’s base is mostly urban and quite obviously Mugabe’s campaign to ‘beautify Harare’ by bulldozing entire neighborhoods of makeshift city housing and market stalls was aimed at ‘softening up’ the part of the population with a history of challenging him. It’s classic state intimidation, creating social fragmentation as an organizing deterrent. In recent years the discontent with Mugabe has spread to the countryside. This was writing on the wall, loyal to Mugabe as the rural base has been. But the hunger is just too much. With the exception of a shrinking chunk of rural people and war veterans, there’s not really a sector that Mugabe can thoroughly depend on anymore.

Back to the split on the left. There of course is the ‘enemy of my enemy of my friend’ approach. This tendency is epitomized by Workers World Party, but frankly it is fairly widespread on the international left. For Kim Jong Il to contemporary Iran or Sudan, do not expect a word of criticism. Of course we are Marxists and considerably more honest about what we can plainly see. In addition to being defended on simple defencist grounds, Mugabe and ZANU-PF are also defended based on a series of myths.

First there are the romantics that cannot see past the 1970’s. Sure what’s not to like about old school Mugabe? But for them it end there. Somewhat related to that camp are the nationalist romantics, the same comrades who would never dare criticize Sekou Toure or Ethiopia’s Megitsu either. Again, stuck thirty years ago. For the younger generation there is the myth of the recent land reform attempts. I’ve already made known my feeling towards this dashed promise, but not everyone makes the same appraisal. Of course as socialists and anti-imperialists we know damn well why farms need to be taken out of nearly exclusive white hands and collectivized. This was always supposed to be a part of the Zimbabwean Revolution, going back to its earliest incarnations. For some it’s symbolic importance and historic necessity make any effort worth exalting. Any revolutionary has a knee-jerk approval of colonized people freeing the land. But we have to recognize the dissonance between what we wanted and what we got. Part of why people can still love Mugabe is they are not interested in sorting out these contradictions.

Then of course there are the lefties who remember his anti-imperialist rigor and determination, not to mention his professed socialist politics. He was basically like Che with a better strategy. But let us remind ourselves, for example, of Mugabe’s past dealings with the IMF. Let us look at some of the unbearable social ‘belt-tightening’ that his regime has undertaken. He has not been any recognizable variety of leftist in ages. But his credentials from past eras are good enough to maintain our good will, some of our fellow socialists maintain.

For example I will draw comrades attention to a small but active Black nationalist group based in Brooklyn called December 12^th Movement. Politically they are a pretty interesting group, promoting a socialist-tinged version of classic 20^th century Black nationalism. They wear the Red, Black, and Green. They are involved with reparations activism, against police brutality, and definitely stress Pan-African solidarity. They are typical of many of Mugabe’s contemporary defenders, although with more enthusiasm than most. For them Mugabe is not just a defendable president, but really a vibrant symbol for what the African Diaspora really needs. It is a mirage, we know, but to them it is potent. We are going to talk to people in our daily lives who look at Zimbabwe this way and we should understand the reasoning and be prepared to talk.

For me, Robert Mugabe is kind of like Elvis. There are the early years spent making headlines for shaking up the system. The rebel that changed history. Then there are the awkward middle years featuring a couple of hits (68 Comeback Special, attempts at land reform) and lots of disappointments. Then comes the late years: embarrassing long-time fans, in a sad spiral downward. Then there are the late, late years spent dying on a toilet.

Here’s to hoping the Zimbabwean people kick the corpse of the thrown.

# posted by The Abolitionist @ 7:56 PM 0 comments

“The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service 1967-1980”

by David Hilliard Atria Books, 2007

“Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas”

Rizzoli, 2007

By Brad Duncan

It has now been 40 years since the ‘year of the heroic guerrilla’ when the militant spirit of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s found its most daring expression. Everywhere—it seemed—the revolution had come, and it was time to pick up the gun. The colonial world was shaken by a ‘tri-continental’ (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) armed independence movement and the inner cities of the major imperialist counties burned with rage and radical hope. Alongside the face of Che Guevarra no single image encapsulates these struggles quite like the stylized black panther, seen on thousands of berets, leather jackets, and movement newspapers. The Black Panther Party brought together serve the people volunteerism with a commitment to armed self defense in the face of extreme state persecution. They were at once an effort to meet the immediate needs of the urban Black communities and an attempt to foster hope for something much more radical.

Although their community ‘survival programs’ delivered clothes and groceries to thousands, the most successful Panther endeavor was their passionate effort to communicate the ideas of the Party and the movement through visual art and Party publications such as The Black Panther newspaper and the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service. Two new books, one collecting front pages and articles from the Party paper and one looking specifically at the art of Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, give an unprecedented look in to these facets of the Black Panther experience.

The two books cover much of the same territory, as Douglas’ art filled countless issues of the paper and epitomized its’ politics.

David Hilliard was one of the first Panthers, recruited to the nascent party by his boyhood friend Huey Newton. His new book looks at the Party’s newspaper and specifically hones in on the period between 1969 (dubbed ‘year of the Panther’ by the paper) and 1972, when the movement suffered a debilitating split. With very little in the way of additional commentary, save for a few introductory essays, we are left to read the papers as they appeared. The paper published for thirteen years without missing a weekly issue. The Panthers have no one but themselves to thank for that as they had to build their own press when commercial printers continually caved under state pressure and stopped printing.

From owning their own press the Party grew the paper on an international level, with each weekly issue acting as a line of communication to movements internationally. Leftists and activists of color around the world subscribed or read handed-down copies. Subscriptions were the most essential revenue stream the Party had, especially as the movement begun to ebb in the early 1970’s. Although the paper could readily be found in shops in the Black community or in movement centers by far the easiest way to get a copy back in ’69 was to find one of the thousands of Panthers selling it on the streets of just about every major American city. Lenin would have been proud—the paper truly was the scaffolding of the Party.

Most history books end their look at the Panthers in the early 1970’s, and there is some justification for that. The movement was deathly effected by state harassment and murder as well as internal rifts, rendering the Party halved by 1973. By the mid 1970’s the Black Panther Party was simply no longer able to have a national impact the way they had in 1969-70. It will come as a surprise to some of you that the Party soldiered on until 1980, and so did The Black Panther Newspaper.

The issues of the paper featured in Hilliard’s book reveals in plain view both the incredible promise of the Party and the insidious handicaps the Party faced. The paper demonstrates the powerful solidarity that was being built between the Panthers and other liberation struggles, such as the Asian-American group I Wor Kuen (formerly the Red Guard Party) and the American Indian Movement. Clearly internationalism was infectious as news from the frontlines of Vietnam and Mozambique appeared in nearly every issue. It is also clear from these issues that the Panthers sought to extend their ideas and influence to every aspect of urban, working class Black life. There are of course the reports of the horrors of ghetto life, but in addition the paper ran extensive critiques of ‘Blaxploitation’ films, controversies in Black art, and reportage on health issues such as sickle-cell anemia and nutrition.

The political handicap most on display here is the cult-like appreciation for the central Panther leaders, namely Huey Newton. Not only is Huey’s face on nearly every masthead, but by 1971 the paper is referring to “the invincible thoughts of Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense and Supreme Commander…”. Undoubtedly the Party popularized movement heroes, but they also raised some to a level that no human being can reach. Invincible thoughts? The writing was on the wall and Panthers had a leadership-worship problem. This style of regime wrecked havoc on the movement internally.

Another key Panther misstep was the emphasis put on armed struggle. Although armed self defense against the police was a central feature of early Party life, changing gun laws and state violence meant that the Panthers used their weapons less and less as the Party matured and changed. But a glance at one of Emory Douglas’ posters or newspaper covers would suggest otherwise. There are machine guns in nearly every image, generally held high defiantly. This guerrilla pose did not match reality—not only was the American radical scene not ready for a guerrilla army the Panthers’ didn’t have one anyway. The posters and art work make it seem as if the Panthers were a mass paramilitary force with the power to win demands with physical force. It is very easy to understand why weapons were a powerful visual image for oppressed people in a time of repression and resistance. It is quite another for a political movement to make boasts it can’t follow through on. The Panthers had some shotguns, but they were never a real armed force. Emory Douglas’ beautiful guerrilla art could not change this. Nor could his powerful images of armed rebellion alone create the kind of conditions and popular consciousness it would take to lead a successful armed revolutionary movement in the US.

The front pages Hilliard chose to include give us a look at the Party’s rapid political development from a general ‘Black power’ standpoint, through a Maoist phase and guerrilla phase, and eventually to Huey Newton’s idea of ‘intercommunalism’. Each phase has its own contradictions, to be sure. This is illustrated by support for Soviet-allied African liberation struggles in one issue and a cartoon depicting the USSR as an equal imperialist power alongside the US in the next issue. This eclectic mix of radicalisms was not specific to the Panthers but rather ran through much of the New Left and subsequent New Communist Movement.

There are a dozen of more new books out about the Black Panther Party, including the excelled Black Panther Party Reconsidered published by Black Classics Press. But these two books say the most by presenting the Panthers as they presented themselves to the world--through their Party press and newspapers.

(below: issues of The Black Panther from 1969)

# posted by The Abolitionist @ 6:24 PM 1 comments

From Ike to Mao to Chairman Bob

"From Ike to Mao: My Journey from Mainstream America

to Revolutionary Communist"

Insight Press, 2006

Around 400 pages into his painfully self-absorbed and unfunny autobiography Chairman Bob Avakian briefly considers the issue of personality cults. Funny, that—as his Revolutionary Communist Party focuses almost solely on the “ideas” of this one man. He spells it out pretty simply: workers accept that some people are special. Some basketball players are simply the best, some scientists are simply brilliant, and some Maoists are bigger than others.

Ostensibly, this tome tells the story of a wholesome American boy. A young, cherubic sport-enthusiast who loved mom and the President. The New Left intervened and before long he was shrill, ambitious leader of the Maoist “new communist movement” collective based in the Bay Area called Revolutionary Union. At this point the story could belong to many left-swerving baby boomers. Like thousands of others, as SDS collapsed “Marxism-Leninism” beckoned. It was now time to build a ‘party of a new type’ which—it was hoped—would successfully replicate the parties of the old type.

Avakian, like Forest Gump with a little red book, paints himself in to the middle of the action. According to From Ike to Mao Avakian was even asked to join the Black Panther Party’s “secret national leadership” by none other than Eldrige Cleaver. The Panthers weren’t ready for him, Avakian intones, because his revolutionary vision chaffed against the Panthers conservatism. At one point Avakian concocts an unverified story about taking the ‘two line struggle’ right into a Panther meeting. He barbequed their pork-chop nationalism with his white-hot MLMTT.

One particularly telling anecdote comes from unity meetings held between Avakian’s RU and a number of majority Black and Latino groups. In a debate over who should represent RU, Avakian insists it should be him—because he’s white. These Black and Latino comrades needed more white people in their lives, due to their head-in-the-sand nationalism. They needed to “get comfortable” with white leadership. But then again the RCP aligned itself with Boston’s anti-busing movement, so let’s not be too surprised. Did I mention they opposed homosexuality and extramarital cohabitation, too?

Eventually, after a couple years attempting to pull other collectives into its orbit, the RU decided to go it alone and declared itself the official revolutionary vanguard of the US proletariat. Or at the very least the vanguard of the lumpenproletariat.

Of course Avakian’s RCP—and eventually it was solely Avakian’s—was not alone. From possibly hundreds of Maoist-influenced collectives, nearly a dozen made similar declarations. By the dawn of the 1980’s the “new communist movement” consisted of a handful of self-declared vanguards.

But don’t read this book to learn that history. Read Max Elbaum’s excellent Revolution in the Air. All you’ll get here is an infantilizing, hand-holding walk through why the RCP triumphed.

(above) American Maoism for beginners

A lot of people will claim the RCP went through a long ultra left period in the 80’s and 90’s. I don’t think so, I always mention the Shinning Path at City Council meetings. And where did the black motorcycle jackets and red kafeiyas go? And why is there basically only one photograph of Chairman Bob made available? Are we to believe he’s anti-revisionism’s Dorian Gray?

This book does not give you any of the inside scoop you were hoping for. No peeks inside rigorous criticism/self-criticism sessions, no believable snapshots of life with Bob the Exile in Paris, and definitely no hints as to what keeps the Avakian cult crawling along. All we see here is that one highly eccentric individual runs the show over at the RCP, and boy are his ideas important.

What I want to know is why is a split from the mid-1970’s given so much ink? After Mao died the RCP was divided over the new leadership in Beijing. Avakian, true to his Cultural Revolution roots, supported the ousted Gang of Four while the other 40% of the group still supported China’s government. It’s not that interesting, but it takes up a quarter of the book. Is Dengist Menshivism really a hot topic inside today’s RCP? I thought surely the RCP’s 1978 book “Revolution and Counter-Revolution: the Revisionist Coup in China and the Struggle in the RCP” cleared up any lingering questions about the dreaded “Jarvis-Bergman clique”.

Not surprisingly, this book does nothing to explain what the RCP is today and why, over the last two years, Avakian has gone from being undeniable leader to positively cultish Godhead. Avakian was always one to plaster his face around town, but there now exists a climate of total worship inside the RCP. It’s cultivated, clumsy, and curious.

Word on the street is it’s a cushion against a bombshell.

Let me explain.

If there is a successful Maoist movement in the world right now it is clearly the Nepalese movement. Of course in the true tradition of neo-Stalinism they ended up joining the capitalist government right when victory seemed certain, but that’s for another article. Anyway, everyone loves the Nepalese—they keep Maoism relevant. The RCP passionately promoted the Nepalese movement for years, selling their publication, covering their every utterance in their press, and otherwise publicly associating themselves with this broadly supported Maoist movement.

But here’s the problem: the Nepalese are on to Avakian. They may share an international—the Revolutionary International Movement—but they no longer feel the love. The Nepalese charge that Avakian is a cult leader whose ideological contributions amount to smoke and mirrors. Sensible, right? For the last couple years the Nepalese have been preparing to call Avakian out on the carpet, which would shatter the RIM. By the time the criticism/self-criticism hits the fan, Avakian hopes, he’ll be properly insulated from the criticism, thus saving his fiefdom.

Neither does this bland, creepy autobiography address the RCP’s transition from confrontationalist pose in the 1980’s to the celebrity loving “world can’t wait” fear mongerers they are today. It’s a long way from hailing peoples’ war to handing Sean Penn an orange jumpsuit.

(above) The paranoid liberalism of today's RCP, celebrities sold separately

Remember these are the folks whose newspaper masthead featured weapons well into the 2000’s, and here they are with pro-Democratic Party, lowest common denominator pandering. How does this happen? Well, how did it happen to the Nepalese Maoist movement?

# posted by The Abolitionist @ 12:58 PM 0 comments