POINT OF THE
SPEAR - Editorial by Chairman Omali Yeshitela
The History
and Role of the Proletariat Party of the Black Working Class
Reprinted from June 1985 issue
of The Burning Spear
Political parties have not
always existed in human society. Indeed, they represent a rather
new, one might say modern, feature of human society. They emerged
with the development of capitalism in Europe where there was a growing
bourgeois defined assumption of democracy that was rooted in the ascendancy
of the bourgeoisie to power.
The existence of political
parties is recognition of class contradictions in society and the role
of the political organization of the people as means of acquiring and
keeping political power.
For African people, both on
the Continent and elsewhere, political parties are even more recent.
This is because the European bourgeoisie came to power in Europe off the
slave trade in Africa. Even as it was promoting democracy for itself
in Europe, it used every available resource to immobilize and disorganize
the African. Hence, class contradictions within Africa never reached
the level and sharpness of Europe except as an extension of the power
of the emerging European bourgeoisie in the form of African slave-catchers,
etc.
For Africans then, the external
enemy became such a dominant force, that it served to unite the broadest
sectors of our community as one oppressed community while muting or making
secondary the contradictions within our community.
Within the U.S. this state
of affairs was generally summed up as the white people against the black
people. When, by some chance, there was a white individual who acted
differently, who did something that apparently supported the demands of
black people, or when there was an African who betrayed the demands of
black people, or our movement, our people, would generally sum this up
as due to the personal qualities of individuals involved. This was
a "good" white man or a "bad" or "Uncle Tom"
black man.
The features of class began
to achieve definition as early as the first quarter of this century. (The
Garvey-Dubois controversy and the communist articulations of the African
Blood Brotherhood are examples.) But it was only in the sixties that
the actual objective conditions emerged sharply enough for the class contradictions
to become consolidated within our oppressed colonized community, and to
achieve a solid foundation upon a material base.
This is because the movement
of the sixties had, as an immediate influence, the concrete, material
developments of the fifties. It was during the fifties that the alliance
between our movement and the liberal bourgeoisie consolidated itself in
mass struggle and achieved a revolutionary character. It activated the
African victims of U.S. colonialism as conscious participants, impacted
on the consciousness and practical life of all the peoples within the
U.S., overthrew the immediate form of capitalist rule of a sector of the
white ruling class in the South, and achieved legal democratic rights
for African people.
This struggle came to sharp,
definitive political life in the South in the fifties because of the convergence
of two important factors — one subjective and the other objective.
The subjective factor was the
longing by colonially oppressed Africans for freedom from foreign rule,
for dignity, and for a better life without brutality and material want.
The objective factor was the tremendous growth in the production capacity
that followed the second imperialist war to re-divide the world between
capitalist powers. The war resulted in the U.S. becoming the world's greatest
power and the possessor — either directly or indirectly — of
the colonial raw materials which were previously held exclusively by European
powers.
This growth in production capacity
multiplied the need for industrial workers almost overnight. These
workers could only be found in the South among the African toilers who
were trapped in an economic form of the capitalist system which was labor
intensive and required the most oppressive and backward political methods
for its maintenance.
It was the struggle to acquire
these workers, absolutely necessary for capitalist expansion and imperialist
economic development, that led one sector of the white ruling class to
support and encourage the black movement of the South against the particular
form of capitalist rule then prevailing in the South. And because it was
a struggle against a particular form of capitalist rule and not
capitalism itself; because of the strategic location of the black petty
bourgeoisie which was also only interested in partial revolution, the
alliance between our movement and the liberal white ruling class consolidated
the leadership of the black petty bourgeoisie over our movement.
African Proletariat Born
But the outcome of this alliance
was something that neither the liberal bourgeoisie nor the black petty
bourgeoisie could clearly anticipate- namely the emergence of an African
proletariat right in the bowels of America itself. This proletariat rapidly
became conscious of aims which were not only in contradiction with the
aims of colonial white power, but were increasingly being revealed as
in contradiction with the aims of the colonized liberal black petty bourgeoisie.
And as these contradictions in aims began to crystallize, so too did contradictions
in ideology and tactics begin to crystallize.
The generally, though inconsistently
materialist philosophy of "black nationalism" began to challenge
the idealist and obscurantist philosophy of the liberal black petty bourgeoisie.
The "dream" of a better day in America as a consequence of the
moral regeneration of whites of the oppressor nation was challenged by
the nightmare of the U.S. objective reality and the demand for Black Power
to determine our own black destiny. The liberal philosophy of non-violence,
a philosophy necessary for the support of the liberal white ruling class,
met its fate in the same flames of black rebellion that consumed city
after city as the first, full-fledged generation of the black proletariat
came to political life as colonized workers becoming conscious, if barely
so, of its separate class interest.
It is during and subsequent
to this period that we begin to see the emergence of revolutionary black
parties. It is during and subsequent to this period that we begin to understand
the nature of political parties — not as simple associations of people
who have the same general beliefs, but as repositories of
particular class interests, as class parties, as the political instruments
of particular classes, as the projectors and protectors of the will and
interests of particular classes, as the concentration and concretization
in political form of the economic interests of particular classes.
Fundamental Class Interests
Political parties are organizations
of the most advanced representatives of a particular class. The tasks
of political parties are directly tied to the material interests of the
classes they represent.
Sometimes elements of a particular
class are not aware of their own class interests.
Sometimes elements of the capitalist-colonialist
white ruling class, for example, are drunks or drug addicts, or even insane
as is a member of the Kennedy family and as was the notorious Howard Hughes.
Sometimes elements of the ruling class are wife beaters, bed-wetters,
or lazy ignoramuses who are unconcerned and disdainful of the interests
of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class.
However, it is the advanced
elements and representatives of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class,
organized in political parties, which look out for the political interests
of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class, organized in political parties,
which look out for the interests of the entire class — this includes
the interests of the drunks, wife-beaters, etc. It is this fact which
makes them the "advanced" elements, the activist elements.
What then are the interests
of the U.S. capitalist-colonialist class? The most fundamental interest
of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class is the perpetuation of the
capitalist system and itself as the ruling class. This fundamental interest
gives rise to other interests:
Economically it gives rise
to the interest in the elimination of all economic competition, both domestically
and internationally; the interest of dominating the natural resources
and markets of the entire world.
Politically it gives rise to
an interest in restricting the political liberties of the peoples of the
entire world, an interest in crushing any political liberties which do
not facilitate the economic domination of the U.S. capitalists, and which
might lead to the development of an independent political expression which
would challenge the hegemony of U.S. capitalism.
Ideologically it gives rise
to an interest in idealism and obscurantism; in keeping the oppressed
and exploited peoples, especially the black working class, separated from
an understanding of their material interests; in keeping the oppressed
and exploited peoples ignorant of science and a scientific approach to
an examination of contradictions of class exploitation and national oppression.
Ideologically it gives rise to an interest in Ideological Imperialism,
the imperialist domination of ideology that is consistent with the economic
domination of the capitalist social system.
During the sixties, when black
political parties began to emerge among the colonized African people,
it was because the pressures of class contradictions among the colonially
oppressed peoples ourselves began to crystallize and revealed a colonial
society that was much more complex than before.
Before the achievement of legal
democratic rights it was all of "us" (blacks) against "them"
(whites). The U.S. government itself was not generally recognized as an
agent of a particular class and social system and our movement, under
the leadership of the black petty bourgeoisie, courted the various U.S.
presidents assiduously, hoping to find a "good" one who was
sympathetic to the general, democratic aims and demands of the movement.
But with the achievement of
legal democratic rights by a movement which was winning its own concessions
in a decade of the most vicious struggle, the basic aspirations of the
black petty bourgeoisie, (which was growing due to the effectiveness of
the movement and the intervention of the liberal white bourgeoisie) were
realized. However, this decade of struggle had also thrust a new generation
of fully mobilized black workers into the scene as the main social factor
in the U.S. North American political life. The aspirations of the workers
were not realized by the achievement of legal democratic rights. The attempts
to moderate the Black Liberation Movement, to decelerate it and direct
it toward liberal bourgeois democratic sops, were met with the cries of
"Burn, Baby Burn," in Los Angeles and "Black Power"
in Mississippi.
The crystallization of the
different aspirations embraced by different social elements within our
movement gave fuel to a movement to build independent political parties
among the colonially oppressed African population.
But although it was the pressure
of class contradictions within our colonized society which gave
birth to the party-building movement, our inexperience in this area frustrated
our efforts, and more often than not, we were unable to build parties
which clearly identified the class interests they served and the relationship
the interests of this particular class had to overthrowing the colonial
oppression of our whole people.
What did happen immediately
was the creation of certain party formations which were capable of raising
various principles of unity which went beyond the limitations of the liberal
black petty bourgeoisie in the struggle against U.S. domestic colonial
oppression of our whole people. Those who could unite with the militant
anti-colonial principles, which clearly distinguished them from the liberal
black petty bourgeoisie, associated themselves into the same party and
were able to characterize themselves as revolutionaries or ambiguously
as black nationalists. Those sectors of the movement which were trapped
within the limitations of reform under U.S. colonialism were characterized
as Uncle Toms and sometimes as the black bourgeoisie.
In any event none of these
parties was capable of raising up the interests of the black working class
as the hegemonic interests of the party. Although it was the pressure
of the black working class resistance and struggle which was pushing this
party-building process forward, it was essentially petty-bourgeois nationalists
— often revolutionary — who were leading this effort. The black
working class was yet to seize hegemony of its own revolutionary movement,
although history was pushing events in that direction with growing urgency.
The Black Panthers, First
Black Workers Party
The emergence of the Black
Panther Party in 1966-67 came closest to being that party. It represented
the first time in the history of our movement that a black political party
had identified itself as a socialist or communist organization, with communist
or socialist revolutionary objectives.
Inherent in this declaration
is the assumption of a worldview with the interests of the black working
class at its center. Certainly the vast bulk of its membership was
working class and its 10 Point Program and Platform raised what were the
fundamentally working class demands.
But the Black Panther Party
—although it gave the colonially oppressed black working class more
experience in leading its own struggle than any organization before it
— muddled its own effectiveness with an ideology which mystified
the character of the black working class under colonialism by identifying
unemployed black workers who often had lumpen proletariat tendencies as
the lumpen proletariat, thereby raising up conceptually a non working
class element as the leadership of the Revolution.
Nevertheless, the Black Panther
Party provided the closest thing to a revolutionary center that our movement
has ever experienced and, although incorrect on some essentials, introduced
the question of class struggle to our movement that became briefly generalized
within a large sector of the black working class itself.
Parties of the White Ruling
Class
The parties of the white ruling
class within the U.S. are the Democratic and Republican parties. The objective
of the Democratic and Republican parties is the perpetuation of the capitalist
social system which rests upon the foundation of African oppression. Although
both of them are capable of prattle about democracy, the democracy they
talk about is only a description of the form assumed by organs of coercion
(police, army, courts, etc.), the State, in exercising capitalist rule.
Neither the Democratic or Republican
Party is capable of talking about over throwing the capitalist social
system itself — whether its form is democratic, openly dictatorial,
or monarchist, thus allowing for genuine socialist democracy with ownership
and authority in the hands of the working class majority. Moreover,
for all their prattle about democracy, neither party will ever be able
to bring about the democratic self-determination of the broad mass of
African people, precisely because the capitalist social system within
the nation state boundaries of the U.S., perhaps more than any place else,
rests upon the foundation of African oppression going back to the days
of what is called slavery.
However, the Democratic and
Republican parties have been excellent tools of the white ruling class
precisely because they have appeared to give the exploited workers and
oppressed peoples a choice, precisely because they have appeared to provide
the exploited workers and oppressed peoples alternatives and freedom of
democratic participation in the political life of the U.S. nation-State.
The Republican and Democratic
parties have been excellent political tools of the white ruling class
precisely because they have allowed the white ruling class to monopolize
political, economic and ideological power over the mass of workers and
oppressed peoples while obscuring the class interests which are served
by the Republican and Democratic parties. Hence, the exploited workers
and oppressed peoples — who, like sectors of the bourgeoise, are
often ignorant of their class interests- are usually found attempting
to pursue their interests within the parties of the capitalist-colonialist
ruling class.
Within the U.S. and most capitalist
countries there are generally, but not always, more than one capitalist
party. Within the U.S., this allows the bourgeoise to wear two hats
and to assume the "good cop," "bad cop" routine.
In this way, the bourgeois social system protects itself by passing political
power to one bourgeois party when the other has come into disrepute with
the people.
The fact that the people can
vote one or the other bourgeois party in and out of power (bourgeois democracy)
gives the impression of political free will by the masses and acts as
a social pressure release valve, blunting the development of class struggle.
Actually the people have not
exercised free will, which presupposes information and science. Freedom
is the recognition of necessity, which is prerequiste to exercising free
will. Within the U.S. and other places where more than one capitalist
party dominates the political life of the people, elections are means
of non-violent struggle by different sectors of the ruling class for control
of the State.
Therefore, as opposed to different
social forces organized into their own independent class organizations
and engaged in conscious class struggle, one against the other, the two-party
system (within the U.S.) mobilizes the various class and national forces
into the sevice of one sector of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class
engaged in intra-class struggle with another. The two-party system obscures
the class interests of the exploited workers and oppressed peoples and
reduces the peoples into reserve forces of one sector of the bourgeoisie
or another.
The question of class struggle
within the U.S. has always been difficult enough even without the two-party
duplicity of the bourgeoisie. This has to do with the parasitic nature
of the capitalist system. Within the U.S., this parasitism stems from
a social system built on stolen land, the massacre of hundreds of thousands
of Native people and the enslavement of African people.
Hence, all social forces or
classes which have benefited from the development of the "New World,"
which have found general happiness and freedom from political oppression
and material want, have done so at the expense of the life, liberty and
development of Native and African peoples.
Hence, a material, economic,
basis for the politcal unity existing between the U.S. North American
bourgeoisie and the U.S. North American (white) working class. It
is a political unity directed against the African and Native peoples,
in defense of the capitalist social system.
Hence,the parasitic nature
of the capitalist system.
The parasitic nature of the
capitalist system is the basis for the political and ideological leadership
of the modern U.S.-based African proletariat. It is the only social
force which has the exact combination of qualities which makes it an absolute,
volatile opponent of the capitalist social system.
Along with the Native people,
the oppression of the African people represents the foundation upon which
the capitalist social system rests. The 19th century philosopher, Karl
Marx, termed this economic relationship "primative accumulation,"
"an accumulation not the result of the capitalist mode of production
but its starting point." The African population exists as a
domestic colony upon which the U.S. capitalist system was founded.
Not only is the black population
a colonial population within the belly of the U.S., a factor with explosive
social connotations in and of itself, the African population is also essentially
working class in social composition. Estimates of the working class
composition of the black population range from 88 to 94 percent.
Moreover, the ideological foundation
of U.S. and world capitalism has, as its basis, the material foundation
of U.S. and world capitalism. Racism or white nationalism, the ideological
foundation of U.S. and world capitalism led by U.S. capitalism, has as
its basis "primitive accumulation," the material foundation
of the U.S. and world capitalist social system.
The class struggle against
the capitalist-colonialist social system is centered in the colonized
African population within the U.S. The colonized African population within
the U.S. constitutes the true proletariat, the working class that, through
its own experience in life, has come to understand that the bourgeois
parties are opposed to the interests of black working people.
When the black working class
was organized into its own party in the sixties, when the Black Panther
Party was the legitimate representative of the black working class, the
black working class presented such a formidable opponent to the U.S. capitalist
social system that the chief of the secret police arm of the bourgeois
State declared the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to the internal
security of the U.S. since the Civil War.
When the black working class
was organized into its own party in the sixties, with its class and national
interests summed up in the form of political program opposed to bourgeois
rule, the Democratic and Republican parties had to call into force the
repressive arms of the capitalist-colonialist State. The Democratic
and Republican parties of the bourgeoisie were incapable of engaging in
successful ideological and non-violent political struggle with the black
working class.
Indeed it took an all-out urban
war against the black working class in the sixties for the re-achievement
of capitalist class peace and the current facade of a two-party system
representing the class interests of all the people.
This war saw the black workers
stand up alone against armed regular police organizations as well as the
armed forces usually reserved for U.S. foreign policy intervention.
In Detroit this included the 82nd Airborne Division. And in urban
areas throughout the U.S. military tanks and an assortment of other sophisticated
military armaments were deployed against the unarmed black working class
communities.
In addition to the immediate
task of putting down a massive movement with insurrectionary characteristics
similar to that presently occurring in occupied Azania (South Africa),
the military offensive of the capitalist-colonialist ruling class (directed
by the Democratic and Republican parties on various levels) was designed
to destroy the class organizations of the black working class, to destroy
the indepedent black working class organizations, and particularly to
destroy the Black Panther Party.
The U.S. ruling class used
its military power, its State power, to crush the independent, revolutionary
capacity of the black working class, the only social force which made
it necessary to defend the capitalist social system, the only social force
which was capable of challenging the bourgeoisie for power, the fundamental
question for any revolution.
For most of the sixteen years
subsequent to the military defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties
the bourgeoisie has expended a tremendous amount of energy and resources
in keeping the black working class politically disoriented and disorganized
— unable to come together organizationally in its own class interests.
The methods for this have ranged
from open white ruling class bribery of non-proletarian social forces
to naked terror against the black working class itself. Evidence of the
black working class in the popular culture has nearly disappeared.
Michael Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Prince, and Lionel Ritchie have become
the stereotypes of the acceptable African within the U.S. On the
occasions when black working class elements are allowed to emerge as acceptable,
it is as followers of Jesse Jackson into the Democratic party or as fictionalized
pathetic, poor black working class children who make it out of capitalist-colonialist
poverty through being adopted by well-to-do white petty bourgeois families.
A significant sector of the liberal black petty bourgeoisie accepted neo-colonial
roles in the bourgeois Democratic party as payoff in material resources
and prestige for administrating the black working class in areas where
white direct colonial rule would be unacceptable to the black working
class masses. While the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign was
the highest expression of this manifestation, the bombing of a black working
class community in Philadelphia by a black mayor and a black city manager
was the sharpest expression of the political significance of this manifestation.
The white women's and homosexual
movements have become virtual scabs on the Black Revolution, offering
themselves up for part of the booty of parasitic capitalism, demanding
and receiving favors and privileges as their price for class peace under
capitalism. Not only are these movements incapable of raising up
and supporting the Black Liberation Movement which is the quintessence
of the class struggle within the U.S., they are also absolutely incapable
of raising the question of women's oppression within the context of class,
the only way such oppression will ever be overcome.
The black petty bourgeois neo-colonialist
puppets and the women's and homosexual movements are conscious opportunist
movements which offer up the battered carcass of the collective black
working class to the altar of capitalism as offerings of class peace for
the privileges of themselves as anti-proletariat social forces.
They all attempt to mute and obscure class struggle and call on the people
to join with the Democratic party to acheive their aims.
This is the general condition
that the black working class has been struggling to overcome for the last
16 years. With the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties, our
independent working class organizations were destroyed and the mass of
black workers disorganized and dispersed. A variety of petty bourgeois
social forces, mostly tied to the Democratic party, has united with the
white ruling class in assuring class peace. This means the muting
of class struggle which has the interests of the black working class at
its center.
It is within this context that
the existence and struggle of the African People's Socialist Party acheive
significance.
Building the APSP
Organized in 1972 from surviving black working class organizations of
the sixties, the African People's Socialist Party has been striving
to pull the best elements of the class back together after our defeat
of the sixties. While we are a revolutionary Party, we understand that
our task for the period is not to make the Revolution, but to build the
revolutionary capacity of the only consistently revolutionary social force
within U.S. borders, the black working class. This means that our
primary task is to build the African People's Socialist Party itself.
However, having said this,
we must also talk about our strategy for building a truly revolutionary
working class Party. This is necessary because at least one petty
bourgeois U.S.-based African organization claims party-building as its
main task. This party does this in a fashion which does not distinguish
its main task from its general aim. Hence the "task" of
party-building has for all practical purposes, become its general aim,
and the slogan of party-building is used to obscure class struggle, to
maintain the class peace which is necessary for successful bourgeois colonialist
rule.
For the African People's Socialist
Party, fundamental to the task of Party-building is the need to smash
the class peace. Otherwise, sectors of the black working class might
remain ensconsed within the Democratic party of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise
those African workers who have turned their backs on the two parties of
the bourgeois colonialists will be unable to see that it is not enough
to turn our backs on the bourgeoisie, but that we must join and support
our own independent parties in order to achieve our own separate class
interests.
Therefore, for the African People's Socialst Party, the task of Party-building
is always of a process which is deeply rooted in solving the concrete,
that is to say, practical, problems of the Revolution for the period.
Obviously one of these problems, indeed a key, even fundamental problem
is the reorganization of the black working class into its own independent
revolutionary Party. Thus, we are not talking about the task of Party-building
for its own sake. For us the task of Party-building is for the purpose
of solving the most fundamental problems of the Revolution.
Nor is this simply a play on
words. We are informed of the practical problems of the Revolution
by our ability to sum up the period in which we live and assume the task
of Party-building.
Such a summation informs us
that objective conditions for revolution are ripe. The U.S. capitalist-colonialist
class is engaged in several undeclared wars, in pursuit of which the ruling
class is itself divided.
The conditions of existence
for the black working class is reaching new, even higher, levels of desperation,
and the use of overt police terror against the colonially oppressed black
workers is becoming more blatant every day.
The general crisis of imperialism,
of which the above are evidence, and which the election of Ronald Wilson
Reagan as U.S. president was designed to confront, continues unabated,
nationally and internationally.
However, it is in the area
of subjective forces where the revolutionary prospects are weak. Key to
this weakness is the general state of disorganization of the black working
class. This state of disorganization is facilitated by opportunism
on every level: by so-called revolutionary parties which are fearful of
class struggle and black working class hegemony over our own movement;
by silver-tongued, bourgeois-sponsored, neo-colonialist black petty bourgeois
stooges whose prestige, appearance of power, and material resources are
dependent upon their ability to speak for the masses of unorganized black
workers; by the "communists" and "socialists," and
"leftists" of all stripes, who can wear such appellations only
for so long as the black working class is voiceless and cannot impress
our own version of class truth upon the political life of the U.S. nation-state;
by the women's and homosexual movements and by every social force which
remembers the undiluted power of the Black Revolution of the Sixties,
with the same fear and trepidation as the U.S. bourgeoisie in whose interests
they faithfully serve.
Therefore, in practical terms,
Party-building means, first and foremost, concrete work designed to activate
the best of the class into political motion around concrete programs with
the immediate aim of achieving absolute political hegemony over our movement
and class in the process. Therefore Party-building means providing leadership
for the class even when the Party is small and has not yet fully achieved
its desired capacity.
For example, although a small
Party, the African People's Socialist Party has been able to ignite a
movement in Oakland, California which is daily achieving a social character.
This movement, with the Party at its center has been able to mobilize
social forces of various nationalities into the service of the black working
class and away from absolute unity with the bourgeois colonialists.
Among the forces mobilized
by the Party are elements of the black working class, who although not
in the Party, are capable (due to the Party's leadership) of enhancing
their organized fighting capacity around real, concrete, social needs.
This movement has successfully challenged the basic assumptions of bourgeois
property relations and, for the first time since the sixties, has put
the bourgeoisie on the political defensive in a struggle with the black
working class.
In addition the African People's
Socialist Party was able to put an initiative on the electoral ballot
in Oakland which won 25,000 votes, which was 20 percent of the total cast.
Thus, a small Party, in the process of Party-building, was able to provide
leadership for African and other working class elements which is greatly
disproportionate to our physical size. But more than this, the voters
who were won to a working class stance in that election had to go against
the leadership of the bourgeois colonialist parties with whom they are
registered.
The Party-building process must awaken the black working class to practical
participation in its own political life. Hence concrete struggle,
real, practical leadership of the class is a must, even when building
the Party. But all concrete, practical participation will not be
within the Party itself. The Party must be capable of mobilizing and leading
the various social forces of various nationalities into strategic motion
if it is to be worthy of the name "party."
Therefore, even when we are confronted with a period such as today —
when the last significant political lesson to be summed up by the black
working class is military defeat, and although obviously restless, the
masses of black workers have not yet concluded that their own interests
as summed up and concretized in the Party, are worth the risk of life
and liberty as suggested by membership in the Party — black workers
must still have the leadership of the Party available to them and must
still be able to claim the Party as their own.
The African People's Socialist
Party is engaged in a Party-building process and we think the people should
have some idea of what that means.
The black working class and
our allies should have some idea of what parties are and what it is they
do, what their functions are. We think our supporters should have
a better grip on what it is you support and whether your support is what
it needs to be.
In the first place we are a
revolutionary black working class Party, the only such Party in the U.S.
We are organized together around a common General Program and policies
which were arrived at during our First Party Congress, which is the highest
organization of the Party and is comprised of representatives of the entire
membership.
Our General Program and our
policies are the practical, concrete, representatives of our revolutionary
theory of African Internationalism. African Internationalism is
Pan Africanism developed to its highest stage, Pan Africanism during the
age of imperialism, Pan Africanism which united the African workers of
the world in a revolutionary process in unity with the revolutionary aspirations
of all the workers of the world.
The theory of African Internationalism
is ever developing with the new experiences of the international working
class, African and otherwise. It is based on a scientific method of investigating
and analyzing social life and the particular characteristics its development
has acquired for African people whose current oppressive circumstances
have their bases in the slave trade which was a fundamental feature in
the development of world capitalism.
The scientific method of investigating
social life employed by the African People's Socialist Party is called
dialectical and historical materialism. By dialectical we mean that our
approach to the investigation of all phenomena is all-sided, considering
past and present, and the relation of phenomena in motion to all other
phenomena, even as phenomena comes into being and dies out of existence.
By materialism we mean that our analysis, our interpretation of phenomena
receives its information from the investigation of the phenomena itself
that it does not acquire an explanation of phenomena outside the phenomena.
By historical materialism we mean the application of the principles of
dialectical materialism to the investigation and interpretation of social
life.
The opposition of the African
People's Socialist Party to the U.S. government and the capitalist social
system which rests on our colonial oppression is total and absolute.
There are no circumstances under which we would ever find the foreign
domination of our people or the economic exploitation of our class acceptable.
We are convinced that capitalism, the social system built off the slave
trade and the theft of life, liberty, and resources of the non-European
peoples of the world, where the world's resources are concentrated in
Europe and the U.S. and are owned and controlled by a minority of non-working
capitalists, is on its death bed.We believe that the future belongs to
the dispossessed workers of the world who, when armed with a revolutionary
theory and led by a revolutionary Party, represent the conscious, subjective
forces of history necessary for the overthrow of capitalism and the advent
of a new social system organized under the leadership of the working masses,
the real producers of all material wealth.
This new social system will
end production for profit and rule by a non-working minority whose private
ownership and control of the means of production guarantee such authority.
We believe that the new social system which will follow capitalism, the
one the white ruling class and all its hangers-on attempt to suppress
with the oppression of the black working class, is communism — a
social system which demands labor according to ability and guarantees
the material resources of life and its reproduction according to need.
Thus we recognize that the
African People's Socialist Party, the advanced, conscious detachment of
the black working class, is, like the class itself, locked in a life-and-death
battle with the U.S. capitalist social system.
Hence, the members of our Party
must represent the advanced sector of the black working class. They
must constantly strive for a discipline that is steeled by conviction
and that is self-induced.
As the advanced detachment
of the black working class, the African People's Socialist Party assumes
the responsibility for advancing the cause of the whole class which at
any given time may be battered by ignorance, drug addiction, alcoholism,
demoralization, etc.
Hence, the members of the African People's Socialist Party must become
professional revolutionaries, individuals whose real profession is revolution
and whose vehicle for carrying our their profession is the African People's
Socialist Party, the organization of professional revolutionaries.
The African People's Socialist
Party recognizes that the colonially oppressed African workers are the
most consistently revolutionary social force within the U.S., but that
the African working class will not achieve revolutionary working class
consciousness on its own accord, that alone the African working class
will at best acheive nationalist consciousness.
Therefore, it is the task of the African People's Socialist Party, even
as it is being developed to full capacity, to intervene in the day-to-day
struggles of the African working class, to forge deep lines in struggle
and to lead the class to an ever higher, ever closer understanding of
African Internationalism, the science of black workers' revolution.
In such a Party as the African
People's Socialist Party, a revolutionary African Internationalist Party
based on a revolutionary working class theory, a Party of professional
revolutionaries, all distinctions between workers and intellectuals, laborer
and "professional" lose their significance as we are welded
into one by the common cause of a proletarian future that is being advanced
by the Party of the colonially oppressed African working class.
On one side stands the bourgeoisie
and all the institutions which serve to preserve its rule. On the
other side stands the international working class and the Party of its
most advanced representatives, the African People's Socialist Party.
Together, these two social
forces represent the great contest of our days. Seperately they represent
the past and the future. The conscious representatives of these two great
social forces are choosing sides. Every day makes such a choice
by the black working class and our allies a critical choice.
The bourgeoisie will not explain
the relationship of political parties to class struggle in the manner
we have just done. Most of the so-called revolutionary parties are
incapable of doing so. But for us the matter is clear. The future
will prevail. The urgent matter is for all those who have thought they
have enjoyed a neutral seat as spectators in this contest, to take up
the call, to Take the Great Leap Forward and grab the future in your hands
to help shape and mold it in this lifetime for this generation.
Those who can must join the
African People's Socialist Party; those who cannot must support us.
BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY
OF THE AFRICAN WORKING CLASS!
BUILD THE AFRICAN PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST PARTY!
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