Pan-African Internationalism - 21st Century Pan-Africanism, Part 2

 

Life, Struggle, and the Pursuit of Liberation The Dynamics of the African Condition

Abasi Shomari Baruti

January 4, 2012

Overview

It is all too common today to hear people talk about “the” problem with African people. Attempts to identify “what’s wrong with black people” have become both the subject of routine discussions from the confines of barbershops to the ivory towers of academia. There is no mystery as to why people routinely ask and pontificate over this question. The fact is African people live in some of the worst conditions that exist. As a nation of people, African people are on the bottom of society wherever we find ourselves. Politically speaking, we watch what passes for political leadership prove to be corrupt, incapable, or unwilling to fight for the interests of African people and the African Diaspora. Economically, African people are still among the poorest in the world, wherever we are. We suffer from diseases and medical ailments which have long been eradicated in other populations, but that continue among African people due to economic deprivation. Socially, we are characterized as morally bankrupt, super-predators, a “permanent underclass,” and generally seen as the dregs of society. Our culture is used as the stuff of entertainment to the world, but not in a way that upholds the beauty of African culture; on the contrary, our culture is ridiculed as buffoonish and not worth of serious consideration. Violence committed against African people by other African people is held up as “senseless” and a further indicator of the generally low moral character of African people. African students are the most likely to be the least educated and most incarcerated. The list of examples goes on. For the most part, the problem is summed up as being our own fault, and no one else's. We are tried and convicted by outsiders and our own selves as worthless. It is common to hear African people refer to our own kind in the worst kind of ways. No excuse is acceptable to explain the conditions and habits of African people if it does not place the blame and responsibility squarely and only on the shoulders of the masses of African people.

For literally centuries now people have engaged in analysis of what plagues African people and is at the bottom of the abject conditions in which we live and die. Political theorists, sociologists, clergy, economists, and professional thinkers of all stripes have had their say, and what they have come up with, for the most part, has been anything but effective and the symptoms of the problem has been intellectualized to death. Whole industries have sprung up around the diagnosis and treatment of the symptoms of the African condition; many have found their fortunes selling solutions that are supposed to cure what ails us. The bulk of these ‘solutions’ have amounted to so much snake oil. However, it is important that a review of the various notions about what has and continues cause African people to constitute the “wretched of the earth.” The significance of identifying the various lines of analysis about our people lies in the importance of philosophy as a major element of African degradation and liberation.

One line of thinking, one of the oldest and longest surviving theories is that African people are inferior by design. That “God” or “Jehovah” or “Allah” or some deity simply decided to make African people the footstool of the world. From the 14^th century to this day, this theory still survives. It textbooks, advertising, military analysis, and all sorts of places, the notion of inherent African inferiority prevails on in the twenty-first century.

Christian philosophies have summed up African people as being everything from the accursed, hybrid  descendants of renegade angels  to the descendants of Ham, and cursed by his Noah to become the servants of the rest of humanity; especially white humanity. There are even theologies invented by African people which echo these sentiments, capturing the essence of self-hatred and elevating it to a level of universal, cosmic, spiritual truth. 

There are other philosophies which get closer to objective truth, but that still miss the mark by more than a mile. The theories identify that slavery and colonialism has so deformed the African. These ideas recognize the vicious impact that colonial domination and chattel slavery have had on African people as being a real reason for the way African people are today. However, instead of continue to follow this line of thought to its logical conclusions, it doubles back on itself and says that, even in the face of unprecedented social destruction of African people by others, that because slavery and colonialism ended so long ago, that the African should be “over it by now”. This line of thinking attempts to make the case that while African people are largely “disadvantaged” that we should still simply be able to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and become productive members of society. The people who push this brand of social theory, which is so much snake oil, would have us to believe that because African people are no longer subject to outright enslavement on a plantation, that the only explanation as to why we still suffer can only be found in our own midst, and nowhere else.

Then, there is a third line. A truly vicious line in that is has been so thoroughly ingrained in the minds of African people that it plays havoc on our own ability to get a grip on ourselves. There is the position that “Black people are our own worst enemy.” We have been taught, and are now the main carries of, the infectious nonsense that somehow, the main impediment to African development is African people. A significant portion of our community has come to accept that African people cannot “get it together” and offer no better reason that “just because.” We accept the fallacies that come from outside our communities and that traitorous forces, who look just like us, enthusiastically work to transmit these falsehoods into our communities. We hold onto, in lieu of a better set of ideas, these notions about our inability to find unity, to spend our money wisely, to govern fairly, to support each other, and so on, and so forth, and we are convinced that this is evidence enough. These self-hating philosophies are so common among our people that even those of us who are supposedly enlightened, conscious, or even revolutionary still cling to the unconsciously.

What is clear about all of these theories of what constitutes “what’s wrong with black people today” is that they all begin from a particular point of view, and what must be exposed is that these basic points of view stand in opposition to the truth of the matter. Because these ideas about us, most of which begin outside of the African world, are stand on false foundations, we must come to understand that they do not, and cannot effectively answer the question. Because these diagnoses are based on incorrect analyses, they can, at best, only serve to numb us to some of the symptoms of the main problem African people suffer from. At worst, these theories actually contribute the main problem either by keeping it concealed or feeding into it, further compounding the main problem.

What must become clear is that the conditions that African people find ourselves in have a definite cause and a definite solution. Pan-African Internationalism is the distillation of a clear understanding of the dialectics which have led African people to where are and what must be done to transform our collective lives.

The Historical Basis of the African Condition

It has been said that if you do not know your history, you are bound to repeat it. This idea of history being cyclical is not completely true; however, we must come to understand the grain of truth that it reflects. The fact is that, embedded in history are the recollections of how things have happened, and the point from which we have to begin in order to understand the present and the basis from which we work to create the future. 

It has become common for people to talk about the African condition as if it has no historical roots, as if African people simply woke up one day and found ourselves such as we are. In working to figure out the why of our conditions, many of us have completely thrown out the investigation of our history as the correct place to begin understanding, and so we tend to develop ideas that miss the mark. The inescapable reality is that the modern African condition is nothing if it is not the present expression of our historical development. In the final analysis, if we are going to solve our problems, we must begin by knowing our roots and finding out where in the growth of our nation the blight of underdevelopment began and how it has grown up around the trunk of African life. When we do this, we give ourselves the ability to identify the source of our problems and to overturn them.

African history is as old as humanity itself. We are the originators of the human species and are responsible for populating the earth. On this basis, it becomes clear why African civilization and culture was one of the most, if not the most, developed social phenomena in the world. The length and breadth of our history has filled volumes of books and is too far reaching for the purpose and space of this work, however, it must be stated that African history did not begin in a cotton patch in Alabama nor did it start after non-African people came to Africa. 

African people, up until about the 14^th century, were building complex, sophisticated, civilizations and cultures which were reflective of the uniqueness of the African cultural genius. There were differences in the way we built our various sub-African cultures; however, ingrained in each of them were certain identifiable cultural practices that united our overall culture and guided our understanding of humanity and its place in the world.

Out of this process of nation building, African society became a significant and critical factor in world trade. We had consistent contact with peoples from as far away as China all the way to the Americas. As a natural part of our participation in commercial and cultural trade with the rest of the world, Africa had been in contact with Europe since long before Rome and Greece. This connection would prove to be the most critical in terms of the future development of Africa. In the mean time, we must be clear that African development had two major aspects that are critical to understanding our present state. First, African people, by the time of the Roman, Han, or Mayan empires, had already establish numerous high-level civilizations, and we were continuing the process of development. Second, African social development was bringing the disparate cultures of African people into closer contact, causing the integration of once isolated peoples on various levels, had this process continued undisturbed by outside forces, it is highly likely that Africa would have consolidate continental wide- nation of some  sort by this point in history.

What this should tell us is that the notions about the “inherent inferiority” of African people are false, and in fact, it is clear that African culture reflects all the hallmarks of any advanced civilization and did so long before other advanced civilizations were born. Furthermore, it should overturn the notion that contact with Europe somehow made things better for the African, when the fact is European invasion retarded and completely stifled the natural and historical development of Africa by African people.

But the question remains: how did we go from the heights of human progress to an overall condition of being at the bottom of society wherever we find ourselves, and on an international scale? This question is the one that both demands we understand history and use it to guide our understanding, as opposed to mythology, fantasy, and cynicism. And it exposes the true nature of our current conditions, which is what we need to deal with the solution to our problems.

Invasion, Enslavement, Dispersal and Colonization

By the 14^th century, Africa was thriving. In every corner of the continent, from the Nile valley, to the Niger delta, to the Cape of Good Hope, Africa stood tall. There were communal societies that had survived for centuries and were beacons of true democracy and egalitarianism. There were warrior kingdoms that had demonstrated such military prowess as to become examples to other nations in waging war. There was scientific greatness such as the Kemetic development of geometry, the Dagon development of Astronomy, the Zimbabwean mastery of architecture, and the masterful grasp of spiritually by the Yoruba. Everywhere you turned, Africa was on the move. We had been engaged in trade with India, the Mediterranean, and even South America for centuries. We had master the art of metal crafting, glass working, and achieved a level of advanced scientific skill in agricultural that produced the kind of abundance that promoted a truly humane society. Again, Africa was on the move. However, over the course of the 14^th century, African came under assault by European power and this was the course of events that would forever change the way African people related to the world.

By the later part of the 14^th Century, Europe began what would become a blood war of dominance against the whole world. Once a place of unending, internecine strife, what came to be known as Europe consolidated, through sheer force of arms, its society into a world menace. Driven by the dynamic tension of its internal contradictions and the growing awareness of wealth beyond its borders, Europe developed a tenuous nation unity based on the shared objective of capturing wealth. Incapable of producing its own wealth and stretched to its own capacities, white imperialism began to seek out wealth elsewhere. It discovered the trading of enslaved Africans, largely being carried out by Arab nations at the time, and negotiated its way into the process. Shortly afterwards, white explorers stumbled upon what they would call “the Americas” in their greedy pursuit of domination over the ancient trading route, known as the silk road. Once they came to understand that they had not found a back route to India, but instead landed on the shores of a land completely new to them, they immediately turned to the task of subduing it. Initially interested in gold and precious metals, the feudal nobility of Europe began to perceive the Americas as a potential source of untold wealth. Eventually, after realizing that they could not martial or sustain the labor power needed to cultivate their newly seized colonies from among their own population, they turned to the enslavement of the native peoples. However, when the filth and disease of the European continued to wipe out the original peoples of the Americas and the stiff resistance of the natives became apparent, the European turned to the African. Long aware of the intelligence and capacity of African people, particularly in agriculture, European imperialist initiated what would become the most gruesome, heinous, crime against humanity that word has ever witnessed in the form of the Great Maafa. Known as the “African slave trade” or “Trans-Atlantic Slavery,” the process of raping Africa and kidnapping scores of millions of people was the first step in the process of European ascendancy as global imperialist. After ravaging the African continent and destroying the fabric of African society, European imperialism then came to realize the wealth of African land itself and completed its domination of African people through the violent colonization of Africa and the brutal extraction of material wealth from the continent and control of African people. “The Scramble for Africa” was the stroke of death for African independence and natural development. The result of this savage attack on African life was, first, the dispersal of African people throughout the world, the destruction of African society and sovereignty, and the subjugation of African people through various forms of colonialism. This process led to the establishment of the parasitic system of international capitalism.

Everywhere African people found ourselves we were the colonial subjects of a hostile and rapacious European imperialism. Out of a desire to justify all of this to European society, the bourgeoisie intellectuals begin to develop the theories that would come to characterize the African, theories that have become entrenched today among us. 

The combination of practical and ideological domination, total domination of every aspect of African life by European imperialism is where our problems begin. Every single problem that African people face in the 21^st Century is tied directly back to the overthrow of African self-determination by European imperialism. Every single manifestation of dysfunction among African people, the world over, is the direct result of enslavement and outright subjugation. Every issue that we face runs right back to the forcible destruction, dispersal, containment, and exploitation of our people and land for the purposes of European profit mongering. This process is known as primitive accumulation, and it is on this pedestal of slavery and colonialism that capitalism stands. It is on the enforced misery, the genocidal attack, and ongoing, forcible domination of African people and other oppressed peoples of the world that European dominance stands. What this means is that the conditions of the world in the 21^st Century are directly tied to the assault on African and the destruction of African civilization that began centuries ago and which exists today.

The Parasite and the Pedestal of Slavery: What’s Really Wrong with Black People Today

To put it another way, what is truly wrong with black people today has little to do with some inherent defect. Our problem is that a parasite has attached itself to us and is draining away our lifeblood, as a nation of people. The parasite is tricky to diagnose, but once it has been identified, we are on the right track to solving our problems. A parasite, like a leach, or a tapeworm, or cancer lives by feeding on the body of its host. A person can go out every day and labor to produce food, bring the food home, prepare the meals, and eat, but you continue to get weaker. The harder you work, the weaker you become. You consult your friends, your pastor, or imam, you talk to your politicians, and they all give you different advice, but none of it seems to work. You eat and you eat but you steadily get weaker and weaker. The problem is the parasite and its relationship to you. Its whole existence, its very life is predicated on not working or laboring, but attaching itself to you and livening of the energy you expend to feed yourself and feed it. It does nothing to aide you; it does not give you strength, or enhance you in any kind of way. It continues to feed on you, unmercifully, and if you do not figure it out soon enough, it kills you. In fact, the parasite is so dead set on doing nothing for itself that it will die with you once it has bled you dry!

Regardless of the good intentions that people may have, no amount of praying, no amount of compromising with the parasite, no amount of singing to it is going to get the parasite out of your system. And so finally, you go the doctor and the doctor tells you the real problem is that you are infected with a bloodsucking, life-draining, parasite. Some of us, even after we know about the parasite continue on praying, voting, signing, drinking, and smoking in hopes that we can get the parasite out or at least learn to live with. However, until the correct antidote is applied to the situation, you cannot e rid of the parasite, and to try to live with it is to practice insanity. To attempt to negotiate a life with a bloodsucking parasite attached to your body is to spend the remainder of your life adjusting to growing pain, weakness, and misery. However, when you take the right kind of medicine, the parasite will be forced to detach itself and it can then be “flushed down the toilet stool of history.”

This is the nature of white power, of European capitalist imperialism. It came into existence as a force that required the blood of others to survive and thrive. It required that African people be enslaved, that the first nations of the western hemisphere be eradicated. It required the resources, technology, ingenuity, and life of other peoples be appropriated, stolen, for its own use. 

Capitalism was born into the world on the backs of everyone and everything not a part of the European ruling class. Had it not been for the brutal rape of Africa, the ungodly destruction of the native peoples of the Americas, capitalism could not have made it past its infancy. Had it not been for the conversion of Asia into one huge drug house, had it not been for the eradication of the Taino peoples of the Caribbean, the aboriginal peoples of Australia, Europe would not have been able to pass from a place of death and misery, a place of poverty to the most power nation in the world.

What we must understand first, before we can solve the problems we face as a nation of people, is the misery of African people is the basis for European bourgeois luxury and vitality. In order for capitalism to exist as it does, it requires, and if need be demands, that there be poor people that it can exploit. It requires a pedestal to stand on. It could not have even existed had it not first accumulated the basic wealth it needed to come into existence full blown. African people are the pedestal upon which white power stands and extends itself throughout the world, and if we are going to improve our conditions this must change.

In the final analysis, the problem with African people today is capitalist imperialism, a rotten, parasitic system that has as its basis the enslavement and colonial domination of African people. Until we regain our ability to be self-determining, until we again totally control our collective destiny, the symptoms of the problem will remain.

Destroy the Barrel: The Answer to Our Problems

In the tradition of the African, particularly in the United States, there is the notion of “crabs in a barrel” which tries to characterize the conditions of African people. The saying is that African people are like crabs in a barrel trying to get out. Whenever one gets to the top of the barrel and is likely to pull itself out, it is pulled right back down by the other crabs. This saying is used to sum up the notion that Africans can move forward because we hold ourselves back. On top of this truly false claim are the even more ludicrous claims about what we must do in order to solve our problems. The religious sector tells us that a focus on our spiritual lives and our “personal relationship with God” is the answer. The politico’s tell us that we have to vote more and continue to try to integrate into the political powerhouse of establishment politics, and our conditions will be forever changed. The economic sectors of our communities tell us that we need to get more jobs, develop businesses, and generally be better capitalist than the capitalists and we can buy our way out of misery. And finally, but not be outdone, there is the social sector which lays the blame on everything from teenage mothers, to children born out of wedlock, to youth fashion, to gang affiliations as our main problems. If only we could get African children to wait until they were older to have babies, get married and stay married, wear conventional fashion in conventional ways, not join gangs, everything would be o.k.

This is utter, unadulterated, nonsense and so a historical and illogical as to humorous if not so tragic.

It must be recognized that in each of these proposed solutions to the crabs in the barrel mentality, which is supposedly at the heart of our struggle as people, represents a grain of truth. However, the simple fact is that none of these things are responsible for our conditions, and so none of them taken separately or even taken together, will end the ongoing destruction of African people.

Beginning from the part of the folk wisdom, which is actually true in the notion of crabs in the barrel, we can see two very simple things. First, no amount of praying, paying, or conforming is going to get crabs out of a barrel. The second thing is this. Crabs only find themselves in a barrel because of someone putting them there, and generally for using the crabs to satisfy their own needs, at the expense of the crabs’ lives. This being the case, no outside force can be expected to liberate the crabs. If the crabs want to get out of the barrel, they must break the barrel up or overturn the barrel. Either way, until the confines of the barrel, the immediate cause of the problem is dealt with; the crabs can never escape their fate as the dinner of the crab catcher.

In addition to this, what the purveyors of the crabs-in-a-barrel philosophy fail to mention is what awaits the crabs on the other side of the rim. Assuming that the crabs could escape the struggle of being in a barrel, just on the other side is the crab catcher – the force responsible for the conditions of the crabs in the first place. To think that somehow or another the critical task of the African is simply to escape falls flat when we come face to face with the existence of the crab-catcher. This is where we begin to see the limitations and outright dishonesty of this line of thinking. It is clear that no matter the individual accomplishments of anyone of us, no amount individual advance is enough to improve our total condition. The crab catcher intends to have a meal of the crabs. For us, capitalist imperialism is the crab catcher, and even if we could get out of the barrel, white capitalism is there, just beyond the gates of our immediate prison, watching to ensure that any one of us who escapes does not intervene with its intentions to have us for its benefit. Furthermore, our history is littered with the broken shells of other “crabs” that got out of the pot, only to be the first ones into the frying pan. The myth of social mobility breaks its head on the glass ceiling of racial caste. In addition, once out the barrel, what crab really goes back in to rescue the other crabs? How many times have we heard the implicit promise to come back and lift up our people from those of us hell bent on “getting over”? Furthermore, the majority of Africans in the pursuit of upward mobility have completely accepted the status quo. To this day, in any section of the African world, you see the lucky few openly unite with keeping the rest of the crabs in the barrel, and actually help guard the pot! So whether we are inside the barrel or out, the conditions are not transformed. Between the crabs in the barrel, the crabs outside the barrel and the crab catcher – the one responsible for the whole thing in the first place – the crab is not safe, and will not be until the barrel is removed, along with the crab catcher.

So for the African, the aim for us has to be to smash the barrel. In other words, reforms, spiritual intercession, economic thrift, or any other form of action is going to solve the problems we face. We must rid ourselves of the bloodsucking imperialism, smash the confines of the barrel of colonial domination, and eradicate the crab catcher one and for all.

Revolution is the Only Solution

In understanding the real problem that we face, we must come to understand, further, that nothing less than complete destruction of capitalism and bourgeois society will suffice to resolve the problem of African degradation, for good. Until the entire edifice of capitalist imperialism is completely done away with, we cannot proceed to the work of building a world that is truly equitable and just. 

However, one of the main issues we face was fumed up by the courageous, indomitable Harriet Tubman. When asked about how many enslaved Africans she led to freedom, she famously replied, “I’ve freed hundreds of slaves. I could have freed hundred more if only I could convince them that they were slaves (check for accuracy of quote).” What must be clear is that a significant part of our struggle to overturn our current conditions and achieve the best life possible for our people is the fight to win back the hearts and minds of African people. There is a psychological phenomenon known as the Stockholm syndrome that illustrates a critical aspect of the African condition. The psychological ailment is, to put it simply, the process of a kidnapping victim developing such a warped connection to their captures, out of an instinctual drive to live, that causes the kidnap victim to actually become a defender of the kidnaper. Instead of resisting the kidnaper, after a period of time, the victim begins to relate to the victimizer in a positive way. The victim begins to identify with its victimizer, and defends the kidnapper against anything and everything that would harm the kidnaper. Another form of this syndrome is the Battered woman Syndrome, where a woman who is being severely, and sometimes brutally, abused physically, psychologically, and emotionally begins to protect her abuser. In both cases, the conditions that the victim finds themselves in are so severe, and the manipulation of the aggressor so effective, that the natural drive for life is perverted into an unholy desire to protect the criminal from justice. This is an almost exact reflection of the mental state of massive numbers of African people.

After centuries of such thorough and routine physical and psychological violence by our oppressors, we have come to identify our oppressors as the pinnacle of humanity. Many of us desire nothing more than to emulate our oppressor and so no longer resist our oppression, but merely plead and beg our romanticized masters to be kinder and gentler. However, in every generation, there is the rebel, the incarnation of the righteous indignation and relentless drive for freedom. It is this section of the dispersed African nation that keeps the subjugation of Africa and African life from being complete.

For the African that would resist, it must become understood that until resistance is elevated to the highest principle of the African view of our bondage, we cannot let up in our struggle. We must fight to make revolutionary struggle the main trend among African people. We must master the work of convincing our people that the only way to fix things for ourselves is to transform society, completely. We must overturn any notion that society, as it is, can be “fixed” or reformed. We must win our people to the position that status quo is rotten, decaying, and on its last legs, and that until it is forced to finally pass away, we can expect no lasting peace, no genuine relief. We must also be clear that until those of us who dare to struggle for freedom become the leaders of African society, the culture of resistance that must overtake African people everywhere cannot ascend. African freedom m fighters are the highest development of African life at this point in our development; the “best sons and daughters of Africa,” and if we are to achieve our historical task of winning the masses of African people to unite with the unequivocal necessity of African independence through self-liberation, we must unite ourselves. This unity must come on the basis of a clear-sighted view of the world that truly equips us with the ideological weaponry we need to manifest our patriotism to Africa in the real world and a decisive way.

Pan-African Internationalism is the application of correct revolutionary philosophy to the struggle for total African liberation, an objective that is critical to the final destruction of all forms of oppression and exploitation. In short, it is scientific revolution within the context of the African world. Above all things, it is a guide to action. In its theoretical form, it is the refinement of ideas, based on the practical experience of the past, into the correct understanding of the present and the future. In its practical form, it is the manifestation of African independence through self-liberation. It is, on the one hand, clear about the conditions necessary for African emancipation in the current period, and on the other hand, the basis for the continued development of effective revolutionary ideas and action.

Pan-African Internationalism is not a dogma but a living strategy; rigorous struggle in the real world is the only thing that makes it valid. The demands of our work are the sole standards that will determine its relevance. If, in the crucible of struggle, we find it to be fatally flawed, then it is no better than spitting in the wind – an exercise in futility, and we must immediately discard it. On the other hand, with a strong faith, informed by clear analysis, that Pan-African Internationalism is the correct way forward, once it has achieved its end – once Africa and her peoples are truly free and self-determining – it must meet its natural demise. At that juncture, it must give way to a new theory that is in step with the rising tide of a new period of life; a reality that all genuine Pan-African Internationalist revolutionaries should be fighting for.

In the final analysis, our task is clear and the only thing that can truly keep us from our end goal is ourselves. Hundreds of years removed from the first blow struck for African liberation, the struggle has continued to rage on. The warriors, known and unknown, who went before us and who struggle today have cleared a path for our freedom. It remains the duty of the present generation to end our struggle. Equipped with the razor sharp sickle of Pan-African Internationalist theory and the devastating hammer of a conscious and mobilized African working class, we can and we must smash the shackles of oppression for all time.

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Pan-African Internationalism - 21st Century Pan-Africanism, Part 1

 Summing Up the African Liberation Movement in the 21st Century

Abasi Shomari Baruti

January 4, 2012

Just over a decade into the 21^st 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-penitentiary-to-the-grave machine. The vultures and bottom feeding parasites of bourgeois society continue their brazen, parasitic political exploitation of the African masses, while the lumpen petty-bourgeoisie grow fat and wealthy on the trap of economic extraction in the form of advanced merchant capitalism, usury, the illegal drug trade, and so on.

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 20^th and early 21^st 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 21^st 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, 21^st 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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The Black Power Defined

Martin Luther King Jr.

June 11, 1967

When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance only when they have accumulated the power to enforce change. The powerful never lose opportunities-they remain available to them. They powerless, on the other hand, never experience opportunity-it is always arriving at a later time. 

The nettlesome task of Negroes today is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naiveté to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of good will that it implored us for our programs. 

We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried the blemishes of our inexperience.

This is where the civil rights movement stands today. Now we must take the next major step of examining the levers of power which Negroes must grasp to influence the course of events.
In our society power sources can always finally be traced to ideological, economic and political forces.

In the area of ideology, despite the impact of the works of a few Negro writers on a limited number of white intellectuals, all too few Negro thinkers have exerted an influence on the main currents of American thought. Nevertheless, Negroes have illuminated imperfections in the democratic structure that were formerly only dimly perceived, and have forced a concerned reexamination of the true meaning of American democracy. As a consequence of the vigorous Negro protest, the whole nation has for a decade probed more searchingly the essential nature of democracy, both economic and political. By taking to the streets and there giving practical lessons in democracy and its defaults, Negroes have decisively influenced white thought. 

Lacking sufficient access to television, publications and broad forums, Negroes have had to write their most persuasive essays with the blunt pen of marching ranks. The many white political leaders and well-meaning friends who ask Negro leadership to leave the streets may not realize that they are asking us effectively to silence ourselves. More white people learned more about the shame of America, and finally faced some aspects of it, during the years of nonviolent protest than during the century before. Nonviolent direct action will continue to be a significant source of power until it is made irrelevant by the presence of justice. 

The economic highway to power has few entry lanes for Negroes. Nothing so vividly reveals the crushing impact of discrimination and the heritage of exclusion as the limited dimensions of Negro business in the most powerful economy in the world. America’s industrial production is half of the world’s total, and within it the production of Negro business is so small that it can scarcely be measured on any definable scale.

Yet in relation to the Negro community the value of Negro business should not be underestimated. In the internal life of the Negro society it provides a degree of stability. Despite formidable obstacles it has developed a corps of men of competence and organizational discipline who constitute a talented leadership reserve, who furnish inspiration and who are a resource for the development of programs and planning. They are a strength among the weak though they are weak among the mighty.

There exist two other areas, however, where Negroes can exert substantial influence on the broader economy. As employees and consumers, Negro numbers and their strategic disposition endow them with a certain bargaining strength. 

Within the ranks of organized labor there are nearly two million Negroes, and they are concentrated in key industries. In the truck transportation, steel, auto and food industries, which are the backbone of the nation’s economic life, Negroes make up nearly twenty percent of the organized work force, although they are only ten percent of the general population. This potential strength is magnified further by the fact of their unity with millions of white workers in these occupations. As co-workers there is a basic community of interest that transcends many of the ugly divisive elements of traditional prejudice. There are undeniably points of friction, for example, in certain housing and education questions. But the severity of the abrasions is minimized by the more commanding need for cohesion in union organizations. 

The union record in relation to Negro workers is exceedingly uneven, but potential for influencing union decisions still exists. In many of the larger unions the white leadership contains some men of ideals and many more who are pragmatists. Both groups find they are benefited by a constructive relationship to their Negro membership. For those compelling reasons, Negroes, who are almost wholly a working people, cannot be casual toward the union movement. This is true even though some unions remain uncontestably hostile. 

In days to come, organized labor will increase its importance in the destinies of Negroes. Negroes pressed into the proliferating service occupations-traditionally unorganized and with low wages and long hours-need union protection, and the union movement needs their membership to maintain its relative strength in the whole society. On this new frontier Negroes may well become the pioneers that they were in the early organizing days of the thirties. 

To play our role fully as Negroes we will also have to strive for enhanced representation and influence in the labor movement. Our young people need to think of union careers as earnestly as they do of business careers and professions. They could do worse than emulate A. Phillip Randolph, who rose to the executive council of the AFL-CIO and became a symbol of the courage, compassion and integrity of an enlightened labor leader. 

Indeed, the question may be asked why we have produced only one Randolph in nearly half a century. Discrimination is not the whole answer. We allowed ourselves to accept middle-class prejudices against the labor movement. Yet this is one of those fields in which higher education is not a requirement for high office. In shunning it, we have lost an opportunity. Let us try to regain it now, at a time when the joint forces of Negroes and labor may be facing a historic task of social reform. 

The other economic leader available to the Negro is as a consumer. The Southern Christian Leadership Council has pioneered in developing mass boycott movements in a frontal attack on discrimination. In Birmingham it was not the marching alone that brought about integration of public facilities in 1963. The downtown business establishments suffered for weeks under our almost unbelievably effective boycott. The significant percentage of their sales that vanished, the ninety-eight percent of their Negro customers who stayed home, educated them forcefully to the dignity of the Negro as a consumer. 

Later we crystallized our experiences in Birmingham and elsewhere and developed a department in SCLC called Operation Breadbasket. This has as its primary aim the securing of more and better jobs for the Negro people. It calls on the Negro community to support those businesses that will give a fair share of jobs to Negroes and to withdraw its support from those businesses that have discriminatory policies. 

Operation Breadbasket is carried out mainly by clergymen. First, a team of ministers calls on the management of a business in the community to request basic facts on the company’s total number of employees, the number of Negro employees, the departments or job classifications in which all employees are located, and the salary ranges for each category. The team then returns to the steering committee to evaluate the data and to make a recommendation concerning the number of new and upgraded jobs that should be requested. Then the team transmits the request to the management to hire or upgrade a specified number of "qualifiable" Negroes within a reasonable step of real power and pressure is taken: a massive call for economic withdrawal from the company’s product and accompanying demonstrations if necessary. 

At present SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some twelve cities, and the results have been remarkable. In Atlanta, for instance, the Negroes’ earning power has been increased by more than twenty million dollars annually over the past three years through a carefully disciplined program of selective buying and negotiation by the Negro ministers. During the last eight months in Chicago, Operation Breadbasket successfully completed negotiations with three major industries: milk, soft drinks and chain grocery stores. Four of the companies involved concluded reasonable agreements only after short "don’t buy" campaigns. Seven other companies were able to make the requested changes across the conference table, without necessitating a boycott. Two other companies, after providing their employment information to the ministers, were sent letters of commendation for their healthy equal-employment practices. The net results add up to approximately eight hundred new and upgraded jobs for Negro employees, worth a little over seven million dollars in new annual income for Negro families. In Chicago we have recently added a new dimension to Operation Breadbasket. Along with requesting new job opportunities, we are now requesting that businesses with stores in the ghetto deposit the income for those establishments in Negro-owned banks, and that Negro-owned products be placed on the counters of all their stores. In this way we seek to stop the drain of resources out of the ghetto with nothing remaining there for its rehabilitation. 

The final major area of untapped power for the Negro is the political arena. Higher Negro birth rates and increasing Negro migration, along with the exodus of the white population to the suburbs, are producing the fast-gathering Negro majorities in the large cities. This changing composition of the cities has political significance. Particularly in the North, the large cities substantially determine the political destiny of the state. These states, in turn, hold the dominating electoral votes in presidential contests. The future of the Democratic Party, which rests so heavily on its coalition of urban minorities, cannot be assessed without taking into account which way the Negro vote turns. The wistful hopes of the Republican Party for large-city influence will also be decided not in the boardrooms of great corporations but in the teeming ghettos. 

The growing Negro vote in the South is another source of power. As it weakens and enfeebles the dixiecrats, by concentrating its blows against them, it undermines the congressional coalition of southern reactionaries and their northern Republican colleagues. That coalition, which has always exercised a disproportionate power in Congress by controlling its major committees, will lose its ability to frustrate measures of social advancement and to impose its perverted definition of democracy on the political thought of the nation. 

The Negro vote a present is only a partially realized strength. It can still be doubled in the South. In the North even where Negroes are registered in equal proportion to whites, they do not vote in the same proportions. Assailed by a sense of futility, Negroes resist participating in empty ritual. However, when the Negro citizen learns that united and organized pressure can achieve measurable results, he will make his influence felt. Out of this conscious act, the political power of the aroused minority will be enhanced and consolidated. 

We have many assets to facilitate organization. Negroes are almost instinctively cohesive. We band together readily, and against white hostility we have an intense and wholesome loyalty to each other. We are acutely conscious of the need, and sharply sensitive to the importance, of defending our own. Solidarity is a reality in Negro life, as it always has been among the oppressed. 

On the other hand, Negroes are capable of becoming competitive, carping and, in an expression of self-hate, suspicious and intolerant of each other. A glaring weakness in Negro life is lack of sufficient mutual confidence and trust. 

Negro leaders suffer from this interplay of solidarity and divisiveness, being either exalted excessively or grossly abused. Some of these leaders suffer from an aloofness and absence of faith in their people. The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man’s contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to the white man into the white man’s representative of the Negro. The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him. 

I learned a lesson many years ago from a report of two men who flew to Atlanta to confer with a Negro civil rights leader at the airport. Before they could begin to talk, the porter sweeping the floor drew the local leader aside to talk about a matter that troubled him. After fifteen minutes has passed, one of the visitors said bitterly to his companion, "I am just too busy for this kind of nonsense. I haven’t come a thousand miles to sit and wait while he talks to a porter."
The other replied "When the day comes that he stops having time to talk to a porter, on that day I will not have the time to come one mile to see him." 

We need organizations that are permeated with mutual trust, incorruptibility and militancy. Without this spirit we may have numbers but they will add up to zero. We need organizations that are responsible, efficient and alert. We lack experience because ours is a history of disorganization. But we will prevail because our need for progress is stronger than the ignorance force upon us. If we realize how indispensable is responsible militant organization to our struggle, we will create it as we managed to crate underground railroads, protest groups, self-help societies and the churches that have always been our refuge, our source of hope and our source of action. 

Negroes have been slow to organize because they have been traditionally manipulated. The political powers take advantage of three major weaknesses: the manner in which our political leaders emerge; our failure so far to achieve effective political alliances; and the Negro’s general reluctances to participate fully in political life. 

The majority of Negro political leaders do not ascend to prominence on the shoulders of mass support. Although genuinely popular leaders are now emerging, most are still selected by white leadership, elevated to position, supplied with resources and inevitably subjected to white control. The mass of Negroes nurtures a healthy suspicion toward this manufactured leader, who spends little time in persuading them that he embodies personal integrity, commitment and ability and offers few programs and less service. Tragically, he is in too many respects not a fighter for a new life but a figurehead of the old one. Hence, very few Negro political leaders are impressive or illustrious to their constituents. They enjoy only limited loyalty and qualified support. 

This relationship in turn hampers the Negro leader in bargaining with genuine strength and independent firmness with white party leaders. The whites are all too well aware of his impotence and his remoteness from his constituents, and they deal with him as a powerless subordinate. He is accorded a measure of dignity and personal respect but not political power.
The Negro politician therefore fines himself in a vacuum. He has no base in either direction on which to build influence and attain leverage. 

In two national polls among Negroes to name their most respected leaders, out of the highest fifteen, only a single politician figure, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, was included and he was in the lower half of both lists. This is in marked contrast to polls in which white people choose their most popular leaders; political personalities are always high on the lists and are represented in goodly numbers. There is no Negro personality evoking affection, respect and emulation to correspond to John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, Earl Warren, and Adlai Stevenson, to name but a few. 

The circumstances in which Congressman Powell emerged into leadership and the experiences of his career are unique. It would not shed light on the larger picture to attempt to study the very individual factors that apply to him. It is fair to say no other Negro political leader is similar, either in the strengths he possesses, the power he attained or the errors he has committed. 

And so we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with an enthusiasm that enables us to rally support for them based on confidence and trust. We will have to demand high standards and give consistent, loyal support to those who merit it. We will have to be a reliable constituency for those who merit it. We will have to be a reliable constituency for those who prove themselves to be committed political warriors in our behalf. When our movement has partisan political personalities whose unity with their people is unshakable and whose independence is genuine, they will be treated in white political councils with the respect those who embody such power deserve. 

In addition to the development of genuinely independent and representative political leaders, we shall have to master the art of political alliances. Negroes should be natural allies of many white reform and independent political groups, yet they are more commonly organized by the old-line machine politicians. We will have to learn to refuse crumbs from the big-city machines and steadfastly demand a fair share of the loaf. When the machine politicians demur, we must be prepared to act in unity and throw our support to such independent parties or reform wings of the major parties as are prepared to take our demands seriously and fight for them vigorously. 

The art of alliance politics is more complex and more intricate than it is generally pictured. It is easy to put exciting combinations on paper. It evokes happy memories to recall that our victories in the past decade were won with a broad collation of organizations representing a wide variety of interests. But we deceive ourselves if we envision the same combination backing structural changes in the society. It did not come together for such a program and will not reassemble for it. 

A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others. 

If we employ the principle of selectivity along these lines, we will find millions of allies who in serving themselves also support us, and on such sound foundations unity and mutual trust and tangible accomplishment will flourish. 

In the changing conditions of the South, we will find alliances increasingly instrumental in political progress. For a number of years there were de facto alliances in some states in which Negroes voted to a moderate position, even though he did not articulate an appeal for Negro votes. In recent years the transformation has accelerated, and many white candidates have entered alliances publicly. As they perceived that the Negro vote was becoming a substantial and permanent factor, they could not remain aloof from it. More and more, competition will develop among white political forces for such a significant bloc of votes, and a monolithic white unity based on racism will no longer be possible. 

Racism is a tenacious evil, but it is not immutable. Millions of underprivileged whites are in the process of considering the contradiction between segregation and economic progress. White supremacy can feed their egos but not their stomachs. They will not go hungry or forgo the affluent society to remain racially ascendant. 

Governors Wallace and Maddox whose credentials as racists are impeccable, understand this, and for that reason they represent themselves as liberal populists as well. Temporarily they can carry water on both shoulders, but the ground is becoming unsteady beneath their feet. Each of them was faced in the primary last year with a new breed of white southerner who for the first time in history met with Negro organizations to solicit support and championed economic reform without racial demagogy. These new figures won significant numbers of white votes, insufficient for victory but sufficient to point the future directions of the South. 

It is true that the Negro vote has not transformed the North; but the fact that northern alliances and political action generally have been poorly executed is no reason to predict that the negative experiences will be automatically extended in the North or duplicated in the South. The northern Negro has never used direct action on a mass scale for reforms, and anyone who predicted ten years ago that the southern Negro would also neglect it would have dramatically been proved in error. 

Everything Negroes need will not like magic materialize from the use of the ballot. Yet as a lever of power, if it is given studious attention and employed with the creativity we have proved through our protest activities we possess, it will help to achieve many far-reaching changes during our lifetimes. 

The final reason for our dearth of political strength, particularly in the North, arises from the grip of an old tradition on many individual Negroes. They tend to hold themselves aloof from politics as a serious concern. They sense that they are manipulated, and their defense is a cynical disinterest. To safeguard themselves on this front from the exploitation that torments them in so many areas, they shut the door to political activity and retreat into the dark shadows of passivity. Their sense of futility is deep and in terms of their bitter experiences it is justified. They cannot perceive political action as a source of power. It will take patient and persistent effort to eradicate this mood, but the new consciousness of strength developed in a decade of stirring agitation can be utilized to channel constructive Negro activity into political life and eliminate the stagnation produced by an outdated and defensive paralysis. 

In the future we must become intensive political activists. We must be guided in this direction because we need political strength, more desperately than any other group in American society. Most of us are too poor to have adequate economic power, and many of us are too rejected by the culture to be part of any tradition of power. Necessity will draw us toward the power inherent in the creative uses of politics. 

Negroes nurture a persisting myth that the Jews of America attained social mobility and status solely because they had money. It is unwise to ignore the error for many reasons. In a negative sense it encourages anti-Semitism and overestimates money as a value. In a positive sense, the full truth reveals a useful lesson. 

Jews progressed because they possessed a tradition of education combined with social and political action. The Jewish family enthroned education and sacrificed to get it. The result was far more than abstract learning. Uniting social action with educational competences, Jews became enormously effective in political life. Those Jews who became lawyers, businessmen, writers, entertainers, union leaders and medical men did not vanish into the pursuits of their trade exclusively. They lived an active life in political circles, learning the techniques and arts of politics. 

Nor was it only the rich who were involved in social and political action. Millions of Jews for half a century remained relatively poor, but they were far from passive in social and political areas. They lived in homes in which politics was a household word. They were deeply involved in radical parties, liberal parties, and conservative parties — they formed many of the. Very few Jews sank into despair and escapism even when discrimination assailed the spirit and corroded initiative. Their life raft in the sea of discouragement was social action. 

Without overlooking the towering differences between the Negro and Jewish experiences, the lesson of Jewish mass involvement in social and political action and education is worthy of emulation. Negroes have already started on this road in creating the protest movement, but this is only a beginning. We must involve everyone we can reach, even those with inadequate education, and together acquire political sophistication by discussion, practice, and reading.
The many thousands of Negroes who have already found intellectual growth and spiritual fulfillment on this path know its creative possibilities. They are not among the legions of the lost, they are not crushed by the weight of centuries. Most heartening, among the young the spirit of challenge and determination for change is becoming an unquenchable force. 

But the scope of struggle is still too narrow and too restricted. We must turn more of our energies and focus our creativity on the useful things that translate into power. We in this generation must do the work and in doing it stimulate our children to learn and acquire higher levels of skill and technique. 

It must become a crusade so vital that civil rights organizers do not repeatedly have to make personal calls to summon support. There must be a climate of social pressure in the Negro community that scorns the Negro who will not pick up his citizenship rights and add his strength enthusiastically and voluntarily to the accumulation of power for himself and his people. The past years have blown fresh winds through ghetto stagnation, but we are on the threshold of a significant change that demands a hundredfold acceleration. By 1970 then of our larger cities will have Negro majorities if present trends continue. We can shrug off this opportunity or use it for a new vitality to deepen and enrich our family and community life. 

We must utilize the community action groups and training centers no proliferating in some slum areas to crate not merely an electorate, but a conscious, alert and informed people who know their direction and whose collective wisdom and vitality commands respect. The slave heritage can be cast into the dim past by our consciousness of our strengths and a resolute determination to use them in our daily experiences. 

Power is not the white man’s birthright; it will not be legislated for us and delivered in neat government packages. It is social force any group can utilize by accumulation its elements in a planned deliberate campaign to organized it under its own control.

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Why Political Education Must Be a Basic Function of the Pan-African Internationalist Movement

By Nnamdi Lumumba

To be free, the oppressed must be organized in their own interests. To be organized, the masses require access to skills and ideas that not only inform them of the world in which we live in but also of the ideas that we most embrace to transform the world. The oppressed most have leaders and institutions that serve their interest and when these instruments cease to serve the people, the masses must be armed with correct ideas so they can remove these forces. None of this can be done if the masses of colonized and oppressed African people are not engaged in a consistent process of political education.

As Pan-African Internationalists, we must take seriously the need to politically educate and agitate the masses of African people. We must do this in all mediums available to us to challenge the goliath mass media of the U.S. imperialist state. We most build a dual and contending mass education system that actively struggles for the hearts and minds of our oppressed and colonized people.

Whether you read a book, watch a video or listen to music, people are always being bombarded with socio-political views. The vast majority of views in media are the ideas of the parasitic white ruling class and its neo-colonial stooges. These serve as mis-education tools against the interests of the masses of African working class and other poor people. To counter this, the people political education.

Political Education is the process of elevating human consciousness to be able to perceive and interpret phenomenon so participants can be conscientious actors in determining their economic, political, social and spiritual reality. Political education, like any legitimate form of education is for the upliftment of humanity and the greater development of the individual to serve the collective.

Unlike the training disguised as education in the U.S. education system, the process of education makes people more capable of thinking independently not simply reciting information by rote.  Education makes it more possible for people to understand their condition and to transform their condition.

The goal of political education is to produce human beings who are conscious of the social, economic, political and spiritual issues that impact their lives and equip them to resolve those issues. We should be vested in this process as it speeds up the overall struggle by the masses against injustice and humiliation at the hands of the ruling class and the African petty bourgeoisie. Without such education, the masses will continue to engage oppressive conditions but not have all the tools they need to plot a conclusion that liberates us from oppression.

The process of carrying out political education by Pan African Internationalists should teach participants personal and organization discipline. Political education process should develop leadership and communication skills. The participants should be able to demonstrate greater capacity to sum up the world and defend any solutions they put forward to resolve the crisis in the world.

Political education must be seen as an ongoing process. It cannot be treated as a process that only new forces engage in. Ho Chin Min once warned that once you stop progressing in your studies, one does not stagnate but instead regress.  Political education must become a way of political and social life for forces committed to changing the world.

Pan African Internationalists must recognize that political education is fundamental to human and organizational development. We most actively struggle to counter the mis-education that the capitalist-imperialist social system permeates about ourselves, other people and about the nature of U.S. society.

Pan African Internationalist organization requires politically, socially and emotionally developed cadre and mass workers who are capable of producing revolutionary transformation. The struggle needs organizers who are confident in their ability and rights as human beings to be free on their own terms.

Political education will facilitate greater unity and clarity in the liberation work. The chaos experienced under colonial domination is purposefully maintained by imperialism so the masses will struggle amongst ourselves instead of against it to solve our problems. African people in the grip of colonial madness often see themselves as their own worst enemies while their real national and class enemies are able to rob us blind of our resources. People often criticize African behavior in colonial situations to be like that of crabs in a barrel but no one ever dare criticize the ones who forcefully place crabs in the barrel to begin with.

In the final analysis, the value of political education will be measured on its ability to empower human beings to take control of their lives. It is more than just giving them skills to perform as more efficient cogs in the capitalist machine. It is about giving people to ability to see, define and create the world in which they want to exist in

As a minimum, political education most provide the participants with the ability to think and sum up the world in their own words. It must also provide them with the confidence necessary to engage imperialism on a variety of issues. Genuine cadre forces should have the ability to transform a condition or situation to advance the needs of poor and oppressed people. Lastly, the masses and its leadership should develop a greater unity with the struggles of all poor and oppressed peoples against oppression of all forms.

Political education must not be seen as a secondary function or even worst as an optional function. We must commit ourselves to carryout Political Education as consistently and creativity as we can. It is a process which will pay us back ten-fold for our time and effort.

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Electoral Politics and The Class Struggle

By Nnamdi Lumumba, UPP State Organizer

African people worldwide exist during a time of great crisis both internally to our own communities and externally under international capitalism. Parasitic capitalism under the control of the international white ruling class and in alliance with neocolonialist ruling class elements in oppressed nations are fighting a desperate struggle to maintain the system of imperialism. In oppressed nations, neocolonialism stands as the last line of defense keeping the masses from attacking imperialism directly to liberate themselves from the parasitic relationships set upon us that rob us of the ability to live as full human beings.

The struggle of African workers and poor people to overthrow neocolonialism is a fundamental task in our liberation. In many places, it is not White people that commit crimes against the people but African petty bourgeoisie elements which keep the people in poverty and desperation. The class conscious sector of the African working class most strive fully and completely to unseat neo-colonialism and to raise the political consciousness of the masses to their full stature as makers of history.

One such area that most be contested is the electoral arena. Electoral politics in Africa and the Americas have been traditionally dominated by elements of the African petty bourgeoisie. The African petty bourgeoisie participates in electoral politics not to advance the interests of African people and the African community but to fill their own pockets and those of their class.

There should be no safe place for the African petty bourgeoisie to attack the people, we most elevate the consciousness of the masses of African people to understand that the election process is not about democracy but instead a struggle for power by the ruling class, that currently international capitalism is in crisis and that the capitalist parties are  working to maintain the wealth of the ruling class at the expense of all workers and poor people and finally that the African working class must rise to assume leadership of the African community's struggle for liberation. The electoral process is a form of political struggle that offers the vanguard of the African working class space to wage open class struggle with the African petty bourgeoisie and white ruling class for influence and power over the African community.

The first myth spread by the white ruling class is that the voting is equivalent to freedom and that change can be made at the ballot box. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Based on a concrete analysis of the real world, we assert that the election process is not about democracy but instead a nonviolent struggle for power by the ruling class. The so-called “two-party system” of the U.S. is in fact a two-headed single party system dominated by capitalist/imperialist parties. In practice it is like being given the choice of one slave master or another, no matter who is chosen, the slave can never vote to have freedom!

To be more specific, elections are used as a means for different sectors of the ruling class to struggle non-violently for control of the state apparatus. The state apparatus are the courts, legislature, police, schools and other government institutions that enforce the laws of the ruling class. Candidates are tied to various local, regional and national interests that fund and support candidates to forward their agenda. The participation of independent or populist candidates is minimal and limited as the two ruling class parties make it difficult for non-mainstream candidates and parties to participate and win elections.

In places around the world where the state apparatus is weak, political killings, coup d'etats and civil wars are carried out by contending sectors of the ruling class to gain power. Elections rarely take place and if they do, they are shame elections. The instability created by these contests are not good for overall economic growth and profit, so the capitalist forces in the West do all they can to regularly hold elections and to win working class participation in the elections.

We most also be clear that elections are used by the ruling class to legitimize the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The political parties that compete against each other represent the same social class. They represent the interests of the capitalist class. The issues and solutions that African working class and other working and poor people need are never put forward.

International capitalism is in crisis and the capitalist parties will look to maintain themselves at the expense of the workers and poor people.

Both major parties are legalizing the assault on African people, workers and poor people via the political process. Attacks on welfare, social security, Medicare are becoming popular targets by politicians to take away from the masses in an effort to preserve the interests of the ruling class. Funding for education, recreation and other services are being cut while increases in police and prisons are being passed in preparation of locking down more African and other oppressed peoples.

Candidates from both major parties are apologists for the increasingly repressive policies being implemented to protect the ruling class. Black democrats have openly abandoned the African community, only looking out for their middle class friends and supporters. Liberal candidates have been driven towards the political right in support of wars, spending cuts and other policies which attack colonized, oppressed and exploited people.

The African working class most rise to assume leadership of the African community's struggle for liberation and economic and social justice.

The mis-leadership of the African middle class has helped facilitate the escalation of the theft of the human and material resources of the African community. African politicians at the federal, state and local levels now lead the charge in creating and implementing policy that serves the interests of the capitalist class at the direct expense of the African community. The economic crisis for imperialism has been held at bay by draconian policies which have cause depression era unemployment, unprecedented lost of homes for African families and the widening of the wealth gap between African and White families.

The African working class most seizes all the democratic space possible to put forward its solutions to the crisis in the African community and to organize the community to defend itself. Electoral politics is not the only legitimate form of political struggle. The African working class most learn to strategically use all methods of political struggle to advance its agenda. The major of African people have been effectively demobilized and de-politized by the mis-leadership of the African middle class, they most have the opportunity to hear and participate in new ideas and politics if they are to be organized in their own interests.

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