Panther Intercommunalism: A Strategy for Revolution in the Era of Neoliberalism By Tom “Big Warrior” Watts

Panther Intercommunalism: A Strategy for Revolution in the Era of Neoliberalism
By Tom “Big Warrior” Watts

"If revolution does not occur almost immediately, and I say almost immediately because technology is making leaps (it made a leap all the way to the moon), and if the ruling circle remains in power the proletarian working class will definitely be on the decline because they will be unemployables and therefore swell the ranks of the lumpens, who are the present unemployables. Every worker is in jeopardy because of the ruling circle, which is why we say that the lumpen proletarians have the potential for revolution, will probably carry out the revolution, and in the near future will be the popular majority. Of course, I would not like to see more of my people unemployed or become unemployables, but being objective, because we’re dialectical materialists, we must acknowledge the facts."
Huey P. Newton, Speech at Boston College, 18 November 1970

We live in a very different world today because there is a technological revolution going on, and it has caused a new stage in the Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution. At the same time, there is a political economic counter-revolution going on—a war on the poor, and a revolt of the rich against paying taxes and providing for the needs of those it cannot profitably exploit as workers. Overt fascism is on the rise and it has two faces, one Republican and the other Democratic. It is a bipolar fascism with a split personality—at war with itself—and at war with the world. Ideologically, it is hooked on post-modern idealism and denial of objective material reality. “Left” or right face, it embraces the worldview that all reality is subjective and ideas can be controlled and manipulated to shape reality.
One the one side we have the 3rd wave industrial technology that is bursting with new ideas on interfacing with the material world to harness basic forces of Nature—like wind, rain, tides, ocean currents and solar power. On the other side we have a monopoly capitalist ruling class married to fossil fuels and global monopolization of nonrenewable resources. The scarcer they become, the more valuable they are and new technology is a threat to making super profits. Capitalism is a “one trick pony.” It is all about reproducing itself at the highest rate of profit. Capital is drawn like iron filings to a magnet wherever the rate of profit is highest. The new technology lowers the rate of profit. It reduces the number of workers that can be profitably exploited as workers. Socialism has an answer to this problem, employ everybody to do useful things whether they generate profit or not.

Some of the partisans of the new technology have an idea, pay everybody a guaranteed income. Workers can still be paid more. This is not unlike the idea behind the dole in England. After WWII, the English ruling class had to choose between exporting manufactured goods or capital, they chose capital. Masses of working class people were set up in council houses with a steady income and free time to hustle what they could. This is the basic idea behind the welfare state the rich class is revolting against. They’d rather bring down the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse then feed the poor and provide them with free housing and free and decent healthcare.

Contradiction is inherent in all things, that’s a universal law. But some contradictions are more important than others. In any complicated set of contradictions, there is always a principle contradiction, the one that dominates the others and exerts the most influence. If you can’t figure out which one that is, you’re going to misunderstand what’s really going on. You are going to be wrong in your expectations and interpretations of what’s actually happening and why. You are not going to be off by an inch, you are going to be off by a mile!

After careful study and discussion, the Central Committee of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC) has determined that the principle contradiction in the world today is between the need of the monopoly capitalist class to consolidate its global hegemony and the chaos and anarchy—including the threat of a nuclear war—they are unleashing by attempting to do so. They are at war with the world—and threaten to destroy it.

It’s funny, but in the language of my Lenape ancestors—the root word for “to own” is one that means “to destroy.” It’s funny because in the language of my white Anglo-American ancestors, “property” comes from the root word “proper” meaning “good” because in Lenape “good” comes from the root word for “common.” This difference expressed the different world outlooks of these two peoples coming from different stages of social evolution. To the primitive communalist Lenape, what was good was to be shared in common, and to attempt to own something, was to destroy the fabric of the social contract and upset the relationship between humanity and nature. The new technology lends itself better to sharing than owning and seeks to consciously reduce the ecological footprint of humanity on nature.

The monopoly capitalist ruling class are not all of one camp, nor of one mind. Some are pitching their money to one side or the other of the contradictions in the political realm. But it is important to remember that even the capitalists are slaves to capital. “Money talks—in fact its giving orders, and you can’t afford to miss a word.” Capitalists who fail to deliver the highest rate of profit to their investors, smell like death. They are moribund, and capital is withdrawn from them as investors go looking elsewhere for the sweet smell of success. To get that high rate of profit, capitalists become cutthroat and ruthless in their competition, or they collude like gangsters to divide up the markets for monopolistic exploitation. They cut workers’ wages and they jack up prices, and when the investors are happy—they reward themselves with fat bonuses and extra perks like private/company jets.

In one sense: “The system isn’t broke, it was built to work this way,” but in another sense, it is out of control and dysfunctional. That’s part of the chaos and anarchy being unleashed. Not only is the system dysfunctional but it makes people dysfunctional. The real problem with school shooters isn’t guns, its people wanting to shoot up schools. The problem of Nazis holding rallies in the park is not parks or rallies—it is that we have Nazis. We have to look at what this society (based upon this political-economic system) produces. We have to ask: “what is the fruit of this tree?” And we have to get to the root of the problem. This leads us to the primary basic contradiction which is between the socialized and globalized nature of the mode of production and the private ownership of the means of production.

Free competition leads to monopoly. That is the whole point of the game Monopoly. You start out with equal amounts of money and equal opportunities, and in a few hours there is a winner and everybody else is in jail or broke. It takes a bit longer in the real world, and we don’t all start out with equal money or opportunities. But the problem isn’t the lack of a level playing field, the problem is the game ends up the same. Free competition leads to monopoly. And the problem is also, the monopoly capitalists get to make and change the rules. It is a monopoly capitalist dictatorship.

What is amazing about Trump is not that he got elected. It is that he and his billionaire cabinet so accurately represent the ruling class in this period of history. The real question is not “is he insane?’ it is “is this system he represents totally insane?” it is crazy to think that the most ruthless men with the lowest and most selfish of motives should hold the reins of power in society at this stage in historical development. It’s crazy to think this is going to work out well. It’s not crazy to go against this system, it is crazy not to.

The U.S. stopped being a nation and became a globe-reaching empire some time ago. It dominates the world militarily, it dominates the world economically and it dominates most of it politically. It runs the world the way gangsters run a syndicate. It takes over oppressed countries and restructures them, their institutions, their infrastructure and culture, then blames them for becoming a “failed state.” Anywhere you go there is Coca-Cola and 7-11’s, KFC and Subway. English is the language of business, and American Express is honored everywhere. The world has become a network of communities dominated by an internet of transnational corporations and banks. Wall Street is the hub of this global infrastructure. This globalized economy works daily and hourly to consolidate the ruling class’ global hegemony and channel the wealth to their pockets.

Our strategy must be to globalize our resistance and create a situation of dual power so we can—when a revolutionary situation presents itself—seize the power and the means of production for the people. This requires patient protracted struggle, building from the grassroots up, community by community. We need to transform our communities into revolutionary base areas; culturally, socially and politically—we need to create our own economic networks to support our movement and our people, and we need to build global revolutionary intercommunal solidarity. Out of the chaos and anarchy, we need to create a new order based upon people’s power and cooperation.

Ideologically we must counter post-modern idealism with historical dialectical-materialism, asserting that an objective reality does exist independent of our subjective ideas and “reality rules!” We must defend real science against pseudoscience and ignorant superstition and prejudice. We must demonstrate that humanity does have a bright future—if we dare to make it so. What they declare to be “human nature” is nothing more than the corrupt, self-centered values they instill in humanity that are dysfunctional and counter to the higher interests of humanity and our collective survival. We are in a war for the “hearts and minds” of the people, and we must put our whole hearts into this struggle. We must concede nothing without a struggle, and take back everything we need to advance our collective struggle for survival and ultimate victory.

In this epoch, there are fundamentally two classes and various socio-economic strata with varied relationships to the means of production. There is the bourgeoisie—the monopoly capitalists, and the proletariat—the wage slaves. Between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the strata of the petty-bourgeoisie—or “middle class” that often aspires to become big capitalists but are mostly being pushed down into the ranks of the proletariat—and there is the strata of the lumpenproletariat—the “raggedy slaves” or unemployables, the “broken workers” who are compelled to survive by any means necessary. Some aspire to become bourgeois themselves by becoming “illegal capitalists” through “organized crime” syndicates, but mostly they end up dead or in prison. As neoliberalism takes its toll, the competition at the top gets sharper and the bottom gets bigger and broader. More and more people are pushed into dire poverty and the ranks of the lumpen.

Pantherism speaks to the lumpen particularly, offering an alternative to the criminal mentality and a parasitic existence. Instead of feeding upon the people as predators there is the alternative of serving the people and becoming assets to the communities. This requires both raising political consciousness and building organizations that consciously serve the people and the communities. These may be set up as non-profit or for-profit enterprises, as coops or social clubs—the forms can be varied, but the point is to network and build alternatives that create public opinion in favor of revolutionary change, serve the survival needs of the people and create a duality of power in the communities and intercommunally. We need to build proletarian class consciousness and a proletarian world view because only the proletariat can become “all-the-way revolutionary” as a class. It is necessarily the “last class in history.” Before classes disappear, it will absorb all the other strata in the period of socialist transformation and reconstruction.

As Huey said: “the lumpen proletarians have the potential for revolution, will probably carry out the revolution, and in the near future will be the popular majority,” but it is through adopting proletarian ideology that it becomes revolutionary. It takes a revolutionary people to make revolution. People have to become the change to make the change. This requires study and it requires struggle, but most of all it requires participation in the political and class struggle. It is in the struggle that people come to see their place in the world and identify their true friends from their true enemies. Everybody tries to manipulate the masses and create public opinion to serve their interests, because the masses are the real power in society. The bourgeoisie own the mass media, they dominate the institutions of higher learning and academia. We must create our own alternative media and liberation schools. We must transform the prisons into “schools of liberation” and incorporate political education into everything we do.

For the most part, our struggle must be carried on openly and involve the masses in the communities. The greatest danger is slipping into reformism and tailing the masses, but we must also guard against ultra-“Leftism” and adventurism. Our best security is to win the support of the broad masses of people and make clear that we are exercising our legal rights, but we know “legalism” is an illusion and this is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We cannot let ourselves be intimidated and become paralyzed with fear. “Politics is war without bloodshed,” but not without risk and sacrifice. We can’t promise people they won’t be harassed, even “set up.” It has happened before, but what is the price of doing nothing?

Only a few of the 2 ½ million incarcerated people in the U.S. are there for political activity. People get shot by the police every day for being black or brown or just poor. People get harassed for no good reason. Meanwhile, the oceans are dying, the planet is becoming polluted and the sustainability of human life is threatened. If there is to be a bright future, we must dare to struggle and dare to win! If you care about the future and what we are leaving to our grandchildren and generations yet unborn, then step up and join in the struggle for equality and social justice for all. Dare to be a Panther!

DARE TO STRUGGLE DARE TO WIN…
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!