PANTHER LOVE: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM & SPIRITUALITY By Tom “Big Warrior” Watts

PANTHER LOVE: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM & SPIRITUALITY
By Tom “Big Warrior” Watts
12/15/2019
The term spirituality usually connotes some otherworldly belief system based upon metaphysical idealism, but in the traditional teachings of the Lenni Lenape, I was taught that spirituality does not reside in the beliefs you profess or the ceremonies you take part in but in the choices you make in your everyday social practice. It is from this perspective that I view the ethos called “Panther Love.”
Huey P. Newton expressed the belief that: “what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.” Ché Guevara stated: “Everyday you have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize,” and that: “The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” Of course, dialectics teaches us that everything exists as a unity of opposites. The Lenape have a saying that: “To be for something you must be against something.” You cannot love justice without hating injustice.
One divides into two, so we must recognize that there are just and unjust wars and justified and unjustified acts of violence. We cannot equate the violence of the rapist with the violence of the intended victim fighting to defend herself. We cannot equate the violence of the slaver with the violence of the slave fighting to be free. Materialism teaches us that a material world exists independently of our subjective beliefs or ideas about it. If our species ceases to exist, this material world will continue, though we will have no consciousness of it.
Our existence as sentient beings has a history that exists independently of the stories people have made up and enshrined as religions. Scientific investigation leads to the understanding that we evolved from lower forms of sentient beings, and if we survive, our progeny will evolve into still higher forms of life. We are not the “Crown of Creation.” We are not created in “God’s image,” quite the other way around. Generally speaking, religions presuppose the existence of a “supreme being,” but is this really necessary to keep us from “evil ways?” One can argue that the sheer volume of evil done in the name of God (or gods) demonstrates that such belief is idealist and has no basis in reality.
The purpose of dialectical materialism is to perceive the world as it really is. It is opposed to metaphysical idealism in every way. Karl Marx expressed that: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.” He also said: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” The “dead weight” of religion and philosophy based upon metaphysical idealism holds us back from investigating and seeing the world as it is, and thus being in position to change it in the ways that are possible and necessary.
Liberating our minds is the first step in liberating society.
Things progress from lower to higher forms, from the simple to the complex. At the start of the evolutionary spiral, we see single cell organisms. They differ from inorganic matter in that they are alive and struggling to survive—not just as individuals. Life is struggle, and reproduction is part of that struggle. We are born and we die, but we survive as species through reproduction. We survive and we adapt and evolve. Everything is in process—we are in process. We are struggling to be more than we are, to reach the next evolutionary level and make a qualitative leap from a lower to a higher plane of existence. That is the essence of life.
Each generation sacrifices for the next, so our progeny will have a better life and greater opportunity than we had. This is the “meaning of life.” It is not complicated. We don’t need a priest or a philosophy professor to ponder and explain it—the poorest, most primitive people grasp it quite well. Marx understood it. See how he lays bare the criticism of religion:
“Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
“It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”
- A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844)
Marx summed up that: "Religion is …. the opium of the people." His proposition was that we kick our addiction and face reality in sobriety.
Panther Love is not an opiate but a sober commitment to struggle and overcome all adversity to survive as a species and make the leap to socialism—as the next highest evolutionary level—and indeed, to be “all-the-way revolutionary” and eliminate not only class exploitation, but “The Four Alls”:
“1) The abolition of class distinctions generally. 2) The abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest. 3) The abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production. 4) The revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.”
In short, it calls on us to create a global egalitarian society based upon equality and social justice for all. It is the antithesis of the “pie in the sky” promised by religion, in which we ourselves are called upon to be the creators and our own liberators. Panther Love does not propose that any savior is coming, but that we unite to save ourselves. It promotes self-reliance and giving full play to our own initiative and creativity. It is a spirituality without “spirits” or supernatural beings with superpowers. As Huey Newton put it: “The task is to transform society; only the people can do that - not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.”
The Black Panther Party took radical politics in a new direction thanks to the groundbreaking theoretical contributions of Huey Newton. Writing for the New Inquiry, Gabrielle Dacosta reflects on the intellectual inventiveness of Huey Newton:
“One of Newton’s major theoretical innovations was the idea of ‘intercommunalism.’ He used this concept to characterize the ideological position of the Panthers in 1970. In brief, Newton claimed that due to the nature of imperialism, the nation had ceased to exist as the organizing principle of the world. Rather, power had been concentrated into the hands of a small ruling circle who then exerted a homogenizing influence around the world. In a speech delivered at Boston College in 1971, Newton defined the ‘community’ as ‘a comprehensive collection of institutions which serve the people who live there.’ The ruling circle of the world, he claimed, had expropriated many institutions from the communities of the world, such that they no longer worked in the interest of the people but rather worked for the rulers …
“Newton observed that the ravages of imperialism had created this vast world of the underserved, which had in turn engendered unique opportunities for a kind of fluid solidarity beyond misleading and antique notions of national boundaries.
"Such insights seem perceptive, and even iconoclastic, in light of the dominance of internationalism in the radical political thought—particularly anti-imperialist and Marxist strains—of the ’60s and ’70s. The Panthers called themselves ‘revolutionary intercommunalists’ in order to distance themselves from traditional socialist ‘internationalist’ labels, which reaffirmed and legitimated the idea of the nation. Calling themselves ‘intercommunalists’ allowed the Panthers to frame the importance of the community in relation to a revolutionary vision for the wider world. It allowed them to retain a grasp on the local when the rest of radical thought seemed to be moving global.
"Such insight pivoted upon Newton’s critical observation about the state’s neglect and abandonment of the black American community. From this, Newton was able to identify simultaneously what the imperialist project had wrought for the subjugated peoples of the world.”
Newton’s “Theory of Revolutionary Intercommunalism” was not just an ideological and political contribution to traditional Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, he recognized the necessity of spiritual transformation as well:
“After the people possess the means of production we will probably not move directly into communism but linger with Revolutionary Intercommunalism until such time as we can wash away bourgeois thought, until such time as we can wash away racism and reactionary thinking, until such time as people are not attached to their nation as a peasant is attached to the soil, until such time as that people can gain their sanity and develop a culture that is ‘essentially human,’ that will serve the people instead of some god. Because we cannot avoid contact with each other we will have to develop a value system that will help us function together in harmony.” (Newton, Huey P., “Speech at Boston College,” Nov. 18. 1970)
What are we to understand by his reference to an “essentially human” culture? Bourgeois apologists are fond of portraying “human nature” as individualistic, selfish, greedy and violent. Preachers tell us this is why we need religious salvation and politicians say it is why we need close police surveillance and correction. But scientific investigation of humans in our natural state leads us to opposite conclusions. Primitive human societies are highly communalist and individualism is barely existent. People were around for millennia before there is any evidence of inter or intra community violence. Only in the later stage of primitive communalism do we see any evidence of tribal conflict and violence. It is private property and inequality that promotes this corruption of “human nature.”
Our physiology is not reflective of a violent nature. We have neither claws nor fangs, and we had to invent substitutes to become hunters and study and mimic what comes to predators by instinct. The transition from simple gathers to hunter-gathers took a very long time and necessitated a division of labor between men and women. Women continued the gathering tradition, herding and carrying their children as they wandered in a group seeking edible plants and roots while the men were able to wander farther afield seeking game. The introduction of fresh meat and the ability to make fire to cook it represented a qualitative leap in both technological and physiological development.
It not only required considerably less chewing to survive but enabled our big brain development and development of speech. It can be said that it made us “truly human.” Over time, hunting gave rise to herding and animal domestication and gathering gave rise to gardening and simple agriculture. These revolutionary developments in the mode of production were reflected in revolutions in social evolution. Some humans took the path of pastoralists which led directly to patriarchy. Others became farmers and settled on fertile land near water. Eventually, these too overthrew “mother right” and became patriarchal. Not only were women overthrown, but so was communalism and private property was instituted as the “strong man” converted the collective ownership of the means of production (the land or herds) to his private ownership.
Society divided into classes, with the bottom class being slaves. The state was born as a special body of armed men to enforce the ruler’s will, and priests too became a class whose job was to sanctify the inequality in “God’s name.” All the world’s great religions are rooted in this flim-flam justification for enslavement and therefore their “truth” is illusory and false. It is part of the problem and not the solution. Culture, of which religion is a part, is stamped with the “brand” of a particular class. As Mao explained: “In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.” The same is true of spirituality.
Panther Love is by its nature partisan but none-the-less true, because only one class can be true to the highest interests of humanity and therefore be “all-the-way revolutionary.” Only one class can—and must—choose to struggle against all oppression because its class interests can only be fulfilled by the elimination of classes and making the leap to the next highest level of human social evolution. It is spirituality free from mysticism and deceit, because it has no hidden agenda or need to mislead. Its only purpose is to assist us in becoming fully and “essentially human.”
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!