Summing Up the African Liberation Movement in the 21st Century
Abasi Shomari Baruti
January 4, 2012
Just over a decade
into the 21st century, things are critical for African people. Capitalist
Imperialism has continued to experience the crises that have convulsed it since
its initiation as a dominant global political economy. Each period of instability
following on the heels of the previous crisis with shorter and shorter
intervals. The march of capitalism in the form of rehashed variations of the
ideologies of exploitation has continued and has completed its dominance of the
globe. All of this has had a brutal impact on the masses of poor and working
people in every section of the world with any semblance of industrial
development, and now threatens even the most remote cultures that have yet to
be overwhelmed by the avaricious passions of the profit machine. The propaganda
of the bourgeoisie has proclaimed the ongoing supremacy of capitalism and
western decadence and dared anyone to opposed what it would have us to believe
is the finality of its existence. Central to the continuation of this culture
of death, destruction, rape and robbery, stands the African.
Long the recipient
of the rawest end of bourgeois social organization, we have witnessed the
continuation of the special predilection of the ruling classes for African
blood, sweat, and tears. In the forty odd years since the military defeat of
the African revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and ‘70s, the
counterrevolution has refused to let up in its policy of containment and
destabilization of the African working class. It has continued to spit on the
legacy of our thrust for freedom, and kick in the teeth of the generations that
have followed in the wake our Diaspora-wide resistance. The grand strategy of
counterinsurgency seemingly perfected, the vicious ruling class throughout the
white world has dug in and made industry out of the demoralized African masses,
even finding a handsome profit in the process. As slick as first-rate con men, the
sell-out class has produced two generations of neo-colonial stooges who have
gladly helped to hold up the empire as the surrogate masters of their working
class brothers and sisters. With little shame, the negro-colonialist have fine
tuned the hustle of upward mobility and advanced the cause of assimilation and
integration into an almost sublime art form of the most grotesque proportions.
And on the periphery of the African world stands the remnants of the
revolution, struggling to find its feet. Rudderless, torn into innumerable
splinters, the ghost of the African liberation movement has been able to do
little more than replenish its ranks with an insignificant number of forces.
Even the vast majority of these forces have been little more than placeholders,
forcing the truly sincere and committed to bear the brunt of the temporary
failure of our struggle for freedom. In addition, even in the face of our most
valiant efforts, the African liberation movement has has held back the threat
of becoming irrelevant, we have avoided becoming merely a footnote in the
historical development of the dispersed African nation.
Yet, forty years
later, the surviving revolutionary soldiers of our parent’s generation languish,
even transition into the next form of life, in the worst torture camps capitalism
has ever dreamed of, adding further injury to injury. The African woman
continues to be the subject of triple oppression with no relief in sight. The
African child is now the object of a well-oiled from-the-cradle-to-the-
In the final
analysis, the African nation and it’s revolution is in critical condition;
after a nearly four decades of stagnation, it is short on vitality, long on decay,
and rife with abject confusion – the leacy of vicious counterrevolution from
outside and within. Nonetheless, the masses of our people look on,
uncomprehending and uncaring, focused on how they can be the next to win the
lottery of status upgrade and just maybe get an opportunity to at least pretend
to live the high life. This is one side of the dialectic that characterizes, in
part, our struggle for freedom this side of the glorious period of the 1960s.
It is out of this
recession in the African revolution that the living tendency, long held hostage
by its own desire to honor the past, is beginning to emerge. Opposite the dying
tendency is the living tendency. In spite of the contradictions, we have been
able get into the arena and help win victories that have sustained the
relevance of the African liberation struggle. We have been able to feed and
protect the ideals of the past and, in some cases, even develop them into
ideological tools better shaped to guide our action today. In many places, the
emerging, but unconsolidated, vanguard of this period of our fight has been
able to push the decrepit elements of the struggle to return to form, even if
briefly. We have lit a fire under the complacent and have openly derided the
embarrassing and clownish personality cults parading as true leadership. This
new tendency has taken up the old guard’s vigilance against the
negro-colonialist’s attempts to leverage our struggle and exploit the misery of
our people for their own personal benefit. We have stood face to face and billy
club to bullhorn with the armed wing of the state, showing no fear and defying
the will of the bourgeoisie; reflecting the best spirit of our elder warriors. The
emerging heart of the African freedom fight has resolved social contradictions
that remained to us to figure out. In spite of the growing reaction within our
own movement, from Oakland, California to Soweto, Azania, in the face of the backsliding,
formerly honored leadership of yesteryear, this courageous new tendency has
demanded life and fought to get a foothold in a struggle that has listed and
lulled for half most of our lifetimes.
We have refused to
let the failures demoralize us; we have been continually encouraged and
emboldened by the victories that have defined the struggle in the late 20th
and early 21st century. We have refused to allow the sectarian
political tribalism to determine the depth and breadth of our political lives. Objective
conditions have continued to set the stage for a resurgence of the African
revolution, and it is the living tendency, the other end of the dialectic of
African liberation, which is positioning itself to achieve the goal of “Freedom
Now!”
Within this new,
living, vibrant current is where a contingency of forces have begun to nail
down the blueprint for African revolution in the 21st century. From
the iron clad commitment to advance the struggle combined with the first steps
of a new tendency, a spark promises to ignite the African liberation movement
and return it to the raging fire of revolutionary struggle. Pan-African
Internationalism, 21st Century Pan-Africanism, stands on the
foundations of our ancestors who carried the work of developing revolutionary
theory, strategy, and tactics before they were cut down by the
counterinsurgency or transitioned into the next life. It has finally arrived at
the point where it can say to the past, “we have learned from you and now we
are ready to add to you.” Pan-African Internationalism stares the future
straight in the face and gives full expression of the real interests and
articulations of the struggling masses of African people. It is a clarification
of the contradictions and missteps of the past and attempts to better illuminate
those spaces where the pace and intensity of daily struggle kept our forbears
from giving their full attention. It is a testament to and distillation of the
best ideas and practices of the previous periods and a synthesis of praxis with
a clear understanding of the needs of the struggle in the present and in the
future. It is a critique of the logic of African liberation theory thus far,
and a specific renovation of Pan-Africanist thought and practice. In the end,
Pan-African Internationalism claims to be the highest expression of African
revolutionary theory and the best refinement of the strategy and tactics of
African liberation, in short, the best way forward.
As the guiding
ideology of a small section of the emergent tendency of the African liberation
movement, Pan-African Internationalism sets as its task the establishment of an
effective vanguard formation capable of leading the struggle for independence
in an effective and sustainable way. We commit to the work to resurrect the
fighting spirit of the masses of African working people and develop it past the
high water mark of the previous periods. Pan-African Internationalism takes on
the critical tasks of organizing the Diaspora into a tight-knit, global
revolutionary movement, liberating Africa, and realizing the objective of
revolutionary nationalism as a basis for the effective development of
proletarian internationalism. We expose our strategy for establishing dual and
contending power, a sorely missing element in our historical struggle and the
infrastructure necessary to advance the movement in quantity and quality. And
finally, Pan-African Internationalism lays out what we understand to be the
best methodology for direct and decisive engagement with the exploiting classes
within and outside of the African nation, with an aim of achieving final
victory. If we are correct in our analysis, Pan-African Internationalism is not
only highest expression of African liberation theory and the aspirations of the
masses of oppressed, exploited African workers; it is a blueprint for the
building of the final phase of our struggle. We take the position that
Pan-African Internationalism is the razors edge of the sickle that will finally
reap freedom in the hands of a conscious, mobilized African working class: a
hammer in worldwide anti-capitalist revolutionary struggle.
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