by MC5
May, 1995
proofread 2003

Boil -- that is what your blood will do when you read the Black Panther Party newspaper from 1968 to 1969. Your class hatred will swell up to make you determined to revive the true history of the Black Panthers. The capitalist media, sell-out Bobby Seale and others seem to get away with murder, as if the printed words of the Black Panthers were all burned and buried. The early issues of this newspaper call out from history, demanding that revolutionaries today speak the truth about the Black Panthers. Maoism literally shouts out of the paper's headlines, articles, reprints and photos.

A yardstick for international comparisons

In less than three years of applying Maoism, a self-consciously youthful party engaged in coordinated armed struggles, obtained the support of the plurality of Blacks as the legitimate leadership of all Black people even according to capitalist television polls, inspired the Puerto Ricans and other oppressed nations to form their own vanguard parties, communicated with admirers from liberation struggles all around the world and inspired the better half of the white student movement of the time. The accomplishments of the Black Panthers were made possible by the mark that previous revolutionaries had made on the consciousness of the world's people. That is the only possible way to explain how the Black Panthers got so far so fast. They outstripped Marx, Lenin and Mao in their first three years of activity; that's how good the Black Panthers were. Only other great leaders such as Jose Maria Sison of the Philippines had comparable or greater success so fast at such a young age, and we are proud to make such a comparison. Huey Newton's party also did not have the advantage of geographic proximity to or similarity of conditions with China.

On the other hand, the Black Panthers obviously had many problems, not the least of which was the coordinated and highly modern state repression that Mao warned about in the imperialist countries, but which the Panthers took too lightly, almost as a matter of perceived internationalist duty to the Vietnamese, to whom they offered support with a Black battalion to fight U.S. troops. The Black Panthers were in a hurry and believed that U.S. imperialism was going to collapse imminently; except in prison they operated in the open. By mid-1969 they were emphasizing the united front against fascism to prepare for the last desperate moves of the oppressor, so great was their confidence in the international situation and their own organizing.

Another problem for the Black Panthers was the division of the white student movement between crypto-Trotskyists trying to use Mao to gut Maoism and other students who eventually realized they had to form their own Maoist parties. However, the biggest problem was not Blacks or the students -- both were on the whole ready for revolution. The problem was that white women and white labor did not want to move for revolution. If either white women or white labor had been ready, there could have been a more evenly matched revolutionary civil war on the scale of previous civil wars and qualitative leaps beyond the lop-sided war that did take place.

In Paris 1968, a white student movement sparked the highly organized sectors of industry into action. The appearance of student-worker unity would seem superficially to indicate that there was a basis for a white working class revolution in France. Upon closer examination, the difference between the French movement and the movement within U.S. borders is telling.

"Danny the Red" openly explains in his writings on the subject that he and other like-minded leaders did not attempt to seize government power. They strolled past the government ministries in their demonstrations when those ministries had already been abdicated. Furthermore, the Communist Party of France had members who were the key military officers in the imperialist government. When one considers this and the combined student street-fighting and worker factory take-overs, clearly the French people had demonstrated sufficient brute force to be able to overthrow the government. This stands as a lesson to all who say it is not possible. On the other hand, it did not happen -- thanks to the predominance of anarchism over Maoism in France at the time. A revolution in France may have sparked NATO intervention and civil war, but the anarchists had no concern for the Vietnamese or others fighting U.S. imperialism and didn't attempt to draw off the imperialist forces that way.

The student movement in France was similar to the one in the United Snakes, but even more inclined to anarchism. In Euro-Amerika, the leaders of the student movement all claimed to be Maoist, even if what that meant was rather new to students with at most two or three years of studying Maoism. The Black Panthers, and to a lesser extent the Progressive Labor Party, were key reasons why the movement was not dominated by anarchism as it was in France.

Although the imperialists of France and the U.S. Empire are equally able to roam the globe in search of surplus-value, and although they share in each other's financial institutions to divide the loot, the movement in France had fewer oppressed nationalities in the lead. U.S. Maoists were relatively stronger.

This accounts for the two great mysteries and surprises of the French uprising of 1968. One surprise is that it failed despite the momentary but apparent success of the movement. That is explained by a lack of Maoist leadership relative to anarchism. Second, and part of the whole romance of 1968, is that the revolution quickly withered after a few wage concessions and an election. This stems from an incorrect understanding of the political economy of the French working class.

How did a movement so strong turn around so suddenly and then vote DeGaulle back into power? How did so little get left behind from this "revolution"? The romantic aura of 1968 is retraced repeatedly, fueling book and coffee-shop sales.

As Huey Newton explained, the anarchists succeeded in mobilizing the middle-classes while the old revisionist Communist Party did not have much to say to either students or workers politically, never mind the middle-classes.(1) The Old Left revisionists were mired in imperialist economism with little to say about seizing state power or even opposing the government that coopted them. And the New Left organizations were not ready to fill in the gap.

In contrast, the anarchists appealed to the individualism of the middle- classes. In 1968, the middle classes -- the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy -- could clearly see that imperialism was not invincible. From Vietnam, Mao's rising prestige, students fighting police or the anti-colonial struggles throughout Africa, the middle-classes knew that their usual imperialist allies were not unshakable.

The result was not a middle-class identification with the proletariat. Instead, the middle classes went into action on their own: they dissed their government, their trade unions and their school administrations just as the anarchists told them to, but no more. They did not want power, just the aggrandizement of their own class's illusion of independence from the laws of economics -- a heightened individualism of the kind that led Margaret Thatcher to proclaim England a "classless society." This kind of individualism left the power structure in France unchanged, essentially because they didn't believe there was one.

Herein lies the ugly truth: within U.S. borders the Third World-descended peoples and the students were ready to move, but they inspired no such parallel militant movement of workers. The workers of France responded to a middle-class ideology and the Euro-Amerikan workers would have too, but the high profile of the Black Panthers, the alliance with the lumpen element and disciplined vanguard organization all repelled the Euro-Amerikan workers. The movement was too proletarian for the tastes of Euro-Amerikan workers intoxicated by superprofits.

In this Mao erred and succeeded in confusing the imperialist country communist movements -- even though he constantly advised communists from other nations not to take his advice too literally, because ultimately they were responsible for analyzing their own conditions. Ironically, Mao didn't even want to re-establish a Comintern-type organization because he knew the importance of applying revolutionary science within concrete conditions, but still the comrades of many countries followed Mao as if he were a Comintern. But this is not a surprise; it was the tremendous prestige attached to what at the time was called "Mao Tse-tung thought" that created this situation.

On the one hand Mao talked about principal contradictions, national struggles and the need to avoid the straight jacket of class reductionism. He even sanctioned Lin Biao in 1965 to say the imperialists were the cities of the world which had to fall last because of unspecified "temporary reasons" -- which at least some in the Chinese Communist Party believed referred to the thorough corruption of superprofits:

"Since World War II, the proletarian revolutionary movement has for various reasons been temporarily held back in the North American and West European capitalist countries, while the people's revolutionary movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been growing vigorously. " In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population."(2)

Bob Avakian has been calling us Lin Biaoists for more than 10 years because we uphold this line, but there is no other interpretation of history in line with materialism and the truth that the masses make history.

On the other hand, Mao maintained faith that the proletarian parties, once set up, would be able to attract the support of the workers from the imperialist nations. The 1960s proved this was not true with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), China's officially fraternal U.S. party. The PLP attempted a "student-worker alliance," as their expression of Mao's faith in the industrial workers, and degenerated as a result. Throughout the imperialist countries, people who started out as good Maoists slammed their heads against the wall of the labor aristocracy and ended up coming unraveled.

These disoriented former Maoists have a lot to do with today's perception of the Black Panthers, even in progressive circles. In competition with the Black Panthers in the 1960s, the Progressive Labor Party took up the Trotskyist line that "all nationalism is reactionary." They only heeded Mao's incorrect advice on being rooted in the industrial workers. Later, Bob Avakian and some PLP critics with closer ties to the Black Panthers did the same thing. Avakian hems and haws much more, but eventually he also adopted the line that, in the end, all nationalism is bourgeois. He attempted to straddle the Black Panthers and PLP and ended up being a more complicated crypto-Trotskyist than PLP's leaders. Avakian's attacks on Stalin and Mao are more shrouded.

Avakian wrote at least three articles for the Black Panther newspaper in the period reviewed. He also appears to have hand-written an ad for the paper advertising his Bay Area Union organization in a self-conscious attempt to follow Black Panther advice to "form your own party." At the time, Avakian clearly bought into Mao's workerist thesis and went about organizing industrial workers. Not surprisingly, as a result, he moved even further away from the Black Panther Party. Avakian eventually watered down his criticism of the Black Panthers in a pamphlet "summing up" the Black Panthers, but that was years later, in a period of sentimentality regarding the dead Panthers, after Avakian's own self-criticism for earlier economism and as a result of MIM's attack.

PLP and Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party-USA (RCP-USA) have done much to distort the image of the Black Panthers. They have succeeded to such an extent that many people believe the Black Panthers were narrow nationalists and never tried to be Maoists. The truth is that the PLP and RCP-USA were and are crypto-Trotskyists while the Black Panthers were the genuine Maoists. We will review the distortions of the historical record after first making clear what MIM upholds and what we do not.

Omali Yeshitela of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) has criticized us because we uphold the young Huey Newton, but not the APSP, while Huey Newton in later years endorsed the APSP. Unlike most of our critics, Omali Yeshitela is partly correct. The APSP can indeed lay a claim to what MIM calls the late Black Panthers and APSP rightly defends that claim against those who continued the Black Panther Party but took it in a clearly reformist direction into the 1970s and 1980s. Once Bobby Seale sold out the struggle, we can mark a clear end of Black Panther history. The Panthers, after losing their best leaders, were not even a shadow of their former selves.

MIM is willing to let the APSP have the later Panthers, when they were more eclectic and toned down their communism. MIM upholds the original Black Panthers, from their foundation in 1966 to 1969. While some relatively good books from the Black Panthers continued to come out in the early 1970s, on the whole things were already going downhill by the end of 1969. We uphold some Black Panther articles that APSP of today would not. The difference is a matter of timing. The APSP can claim they uphold the concentrated experience and wisdom of the late Black Panthers. MIM upholds the earlier stage that generated the huge success in the first place.

Myth #1: The Panthers were "narrow nationalists"

The reactionaries and the crypto-Trotskyist former Maoists attack the Black Panthers for being nationalists. Although the Panthers denied it repeatedly till they stopped denying it, the reactionaries said the Black Panthers hated whites and substituted one racism for another. The crypto-Trotskyists chimed in that the Black Panthers isolated themselves from their class allies among whites. All these claims are as false as the printed word is black. The Black Panthers willingly gave up Stokely Carmichael's support by opposing Black capitalism, and they had two comrades give up their lives in opposing the narrow nationalism of US's Ron Karenga. How many members of PLP were killed in the line of duty opposing white racism?

Countless BPP articles criticized "cultural nationalism," or "pork-chop nationalism," and in a way consistent with Maoism. The Black Panthers applied Fanon, but only in a way consistent with Maoism and in specific to Black people. The consistent theme is that culture has to be revolutionary to support the people.

The Black Panthers hated the slogans "Black is beautiful" or "I'm Black and Proud." They believed that these ideas were used as a substitute for a real culture of struggle. "Those who believe in the 'I'm Black and Proud' theory -- believe that there is dignity inherent in wearing naturals; that a buba makes a slave a man; and that a common language; Swahili; makes all of us brothers." This led to an emphasis on sleeping with people who had the right hairdos. "On the way to and from this shopping and spending they are still observing the oppression and exploitation of their people -- in different clothes. Cultural nationalism manifests itself in many ways but all of these manifestations are essentially grounded in one fact; a universal denial and ignoring of the present political, social, and economic realities and a concentration on the past as a frame of reference."(3)

Sometimes people say "it's a Black thing" to mean cultural nationalism. Other times we hear this about the Panthers in the same breath as the lie that they weren't communists. This lie comes after the fact, taking advantage of the repression of the Black Panthers and the inaccessibility of their old writings. That is the very common method of distortion used against the Panthers today.

If the Black Panthers were just a "Black thing," then why did they have all that international news in their newspaper, offer to fight for the Viet Cong, call for Third World solidarity, follow Mao, print articles from whites, Chinese and people of all other nationalities, support their Latino and Puerto Rican comrades and even run an article in Chinese once? The Black Panthers helped Latino and Puerto Rican comrades print their own newspapers; the inserts are included with the Black Panther papers. The Black Panther papers also had their own articles about the Latino comrades.(4)

Right into 1969, the Black Panthers were saying they were internationalists. "Not only are we for the right of self determination, but we're also internationalists."(5)

From the beginning the Black Panthers focused on Vietnam, which is why Huey Newton offered to organize fighters to send to Vietnam to help the Viet Cong. They referred to Vietnam as the "highest manifestation" of U.S. imperialist violence. That's not narrow nationalism.

When the Black Panthers asked for support in the effort to free Huey Newton and other leaders, they did not stop in the Black nation. Panthers including Bobby Seale went to Sweden for support and made sure to criticize the Swedish government for not opposing the Vietnam War. Moreover, they called on support from the African, Latin and Asian brothers and sisters. In the same pages, they made a determined effort to support the Arabs against Israel. Articles such as "Third World Appeals for Huey's Freedom" belie the claim that the Black Panthers were just narrow nationalists.(6)

Myth #2: The Panthers didn't fight revisionism

In line with the narrow nationalism charge, there is the charge that since the Black Panthers only cared about national struggle, they ignored the struggle against revisionism. This lie is countered by the truth that the Black Panther newspaper ran articles from Mao's Chinese press service verbatim.

The Black Panthers demonstrated a detailed knowledge of who supports revisionism and who doesn't throughout the period reviewed. In one article, they wrote about Albania: "TIRANA--Today's 'bashkimi' (unity) in a commentary entitled '30 years after Munich' strongly denounced Soviet revisionism and U.S. Imperialism for their collusion to re-divide the world into their spheres of influence and to plot another Munich."(7)

The Black Panthers also linked the U.S. bombing of Laos to Moscow: "Trends in this country to form closer ties to the Soviet Union and the experts of the Soviet Union to reciprocate are further indications of revisionism, which has led the people of Russia and the people under her control, i.e. Hungary, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Romania, East Germany and Yugoslavia closer into the gaping jaws of colonialism and the searing teeth of capitalism and has produced the aggressive movements of Russian troops and cut out movements of Russian troops and diplomatic barks thrown at our brothers in China."(8)

Myth #3: Panthers had no class thing

If the Black Panthers were just narrow nationalists who didn't oppose revisionism, the same slander and libel would continue to add that the Panthers didn't grasp the class contradiction within U.S. borders. In truth, the Panthers shared Lenin and Mao's ambivalence about the labor aristocracy workers and wondered how bad the situation was and how far the labor aristocracy would go in opposing revolution. On the other hand, for a time they took Mao's official line on class. Those who oppose the Black Panthers of this period are only opposing Mao's line, not defending it.

Black Panther interviewer: "It's true, is it not Huey, that racism got its birth through economic reasons so that one group could superimpose its economic power over another."

Huey Newton: "I would agree with that. It think the prime thing was the economic rape of Africa."(9)

In the same issue of the paper, the Black Panthers celebrate the fifth anniversary of Mao's statement on the condition of Blacks in North America. Under a picture of Mao in a later issue, an article explains some of the things that have happened since Mao's statement. The article is so Maoist in content that MIM cannot be sure that it was not written by the Chinese news services, because it appears that the Black Panthers sometimes ran articles from Hsinhua without crediting it.

Without anywhere disagreeing with Mao, and referring to him as "our great leader," the Panthers adopted the position that the Black nation is just another oppressed nation. It fits within Maoist theory as an oppressed nation, not as an imperialist country needing long, legal struggle. "At present, the Black American struggle is, in the main, taking the form of violent struggle."(10)

The Panthers point to violent outbreaks by Blacks in 120 cities in 10 days. They also say that the assassination of Martin Luther King after Mao's statement changed the climate: "The fact that an exponent of non-violence like the clergyman Martin Luther King fell a victim to the violence of the white racists is itself a hard and bitter lesson."(10)

They go on to quote important parts of Mao's article: "In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle." This reminds us of problems the Euro-Amerikan labor movement was having. While Lenin said "politics is concentrated economics," he also said that no struggle that is not political and opposing the government is a class struggle of proletarians. Just because politics boils down to economics doesn't mean we can ignore politics. Likewise, the revisionists reading Mao take the above quote to mean that since national struggle boils down to class struggle, then we can ignore national struggle, when Mao clearly stated the opposite. In "On Contradiction," Mao explains that class struggle may take the backseat to national struggle under conditions of occupation and war. In other words, superficial class struggle will take the backseat to what are really more important class struggles.

The article continues: "The broad labouring sections among the white people of the United States have common interests with the Afro-Americans." Quoting Mao further, they say, "The contradiction between the Black masses in the United States and U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class." (11) Elsewhere we will handle the fact that what Mao predicted about the white workers did not come to pass.

Myth #4: The original Panthers weren't Maoists

Headline titles, beginning quotations, ending quotations, whole pages of quotations, book ads, regular printing of Mao's "Eight Points of Attention" and the "Three Main Rules of Discipline," record ads and Hsinhua and Peking Review articles from the Chinese Communist press reprinted -- all of these paid homage to Mao's works. One would have to be blind not to see all the effort in applying Maoism.

Before the Black Panthers existed, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), with its multi-"racial" working class approach, obtained recognition from Mao as the vanguard within U.S. borders. This caused the only jab against Mao found anywhere in two years of the Black Panther paper. "PL, with Mao's support, has done everything possible to slander, expose and jail every Black nationalist leader. PL used the prestige of Chinese support and urged Malcolm X to work openly."(12) PLP broke with Mao in 1971 and said the break dated back to 1969. Elsewhere, we will look at the changing relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and its fraternal parties within U.S. borders.

The Black Panther paper of this period was as clear as could be that the Black Panthers were Maoists and internationalists, not just revolutionary nationalists. Page 1 of Oct. 19, 1968 has one article and it starts in bold print headlines: "Chairman Mao's great statement points out direction of struggle of the Black people in the United States." Again, the paper goes over the statement from Mao of Aug. 8, 1963 concerning Black people.

In the same issue, an article on Japan exclaims in all capital letters: "Long Live Mao Tse-tung's Thought!" Then it quotes Mao again in a typical statement: "The Japanese revolution will undoubtedly be victorious, provided the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism is really integrated with the concrete practice of the Japanese revolution."(13)

The extent of this dedication includes a good practice of criticism and self- criticism. Having run a photo of Mao and Lin Biao together, later issues of the paper made an apology to Chairman Mao. In one mystery of foresight, the Black Panthers spoke of Lin Biao as "purged" long before it became official.(14)

The Black Panthers loved to run articles hailing Mao from all over the world. They showed that liberation fighters everywhere were taking up "Mao Tse-tung thought." Examples included the statements from the Pan-Africanist Congress, the Bechuanaland People's Party, ZANU of Zimbabwe, a New Zealand party, South West African communists -- all of whom supported Mao Tse-tung Thought and opposed Soviet revisionism.

We don't know how much clearer the Panthers could have been when they said, "Revolution Depends On Mao Tse-Tung's Thought" in their article on Southwest Africa.(15)

The Panthers did not only adopt Mao as their leader, they also saw China as a key ally of the world's people. "Now with the advent of the People's Republic of China on the scene as an alternative supplier of essential goods, the United States is no longer in a coercive position. The non-white nations can now go to China for their needs. This freed them from the strings which forcibly attached them to the United States."(16) The Black Panthers did not take a narrow nationalist view where international aid is necessarily refused, especially where the result will be greater dependence on U.S. imperialism.

Myth #5: The Panthers were just charity workers

Many now want to remember the Black Panthers as only a breakfast program for children or medical clinic, devoid of revolutionary content. Again and again, even making it a front page headline, the Panthers said, "youth make the revolution," and "Feed the youth and they will feed the revolution."

An article by Landon Williams explained the original view of the breakfast program: "The chain was broken: a free breakfast program was born in Oakland. To the half-baked, the narrow-minded and the avaricious fool, this may seem as though the Black Panther Party now endorses reform action and is no longer interested in revolution."(17)

Myth #6: The Panthers didn't have a vanguard party structure

After one article in the newspaper suggested how to organize "rip-offs," Huey Newton and the Central Committee acted swiftly in following issues of the newspaper. First there were criticisms of the whole idea of having rip-offs as just an action of "provocateurs" and various fools. Then there was a purge that went into 1969.

The purges of 1969 followed Mao's advice of combating liberalism and ultrademocracy. They adopted the strategy of raising the ideological level of the membership and not taking in new members. This was especially important because later in 1969 the BPP changed strategies and emphasized its united front against fascism, as Mao signaled it should by among other things references to Nixon's fascism.(18)

"The governing body of the Black Panther Party, which is our Central Committee, has decided that in order to preserve democratic centralism and to destroy ultrademocracy in our ranks, that it is of absolute necessity to understand the decadence of ultra-democracy. In conclusion, we say that all those who aspire to opportunism are directly related to the repudiation of the dictatorship of the proletariat."(19)

During this purge, Bobby Seale mustered his most radical stuff before copping out entirely shortly thereafter. He attacked cultural nationalism, opposed Black capitalism, defended white revolutionaries, supported purges and drew the line on accepting new members.(20)

David Hilliard also took a strong role at that time. According to Hilliard, "we relate to what Lenin said, 'that a party that purges itself grows to become stronger.'" Addressing fears of Stalin that white radicals and others were raising, Hilliard said, "the one thing we respect about Stalin, is that Stalin was able to capture the will of the people. He was able to put forth the will of the people more so than anyone else."(21)

Hilliard had a poster of Stalin on his wall. The Chinese probably supplied the poster as they did many graphics used on the pages of the Black Panther newspaper. The connection between the Chinese Communists led by Mao and the Black Panthers was both ideological and highly concrete. Just as in the 1960s, tiny Trotskyist sects criticized the Black Panthers for "Stalinism," so today the crypto-Trotskyists hide behind their own alleged Maoism or "Marxism-Leninism" and libel and slander the Black Panthers as part of their continuing plot against Maoism.

Notes:
1. Dated references are to the Black Panther newspaper. Nov. 16, 1968, p. 12.

2. "Long Live the Victory of the People's War!" Sept. 3, 1965.

3. Feb. 2, 1969, p. 6.

4. See "One Pig Dead -- One Wounded: Brown Brothers Beat the Heat," May 11, 1969, p. 4; "Persecution of the Young Lords," May 19, 1969, p. 14.

5. Aug. 9, 1969, p. 13.

6. Sept. 14, 1968.

7. Oct. 12, 1968, p. 8.

8. "Why We Support China," April 20, 1969, p. 20. See also "Washington/Moscow Collaboration Intensified," March 3, 1969, p. 8; "Nuclear Fraud Betrays People's Interest," March 31, 1969, p. 11; "Inducing & Forcing Arab People to Surrender," March 31, 1969, p. 15.

9. March 16, 1968, p. 18.

10. May 18, 1968, p. 11.

11. May 18, 1968, p. 25.

12. "Imperialism, White Chauvinism and PL,:" April 20, 1969, p. 7.

13. Oct. 19, 1968, p. 4.

14. October 26, 1968.

15. Oct. 12, 1968, p. 8; Nov. 2, 1968, p. 2; Dec. 21, 1968, p. 18; March 16, 1969, p. 12.

16. Sept. 14, 1968, p. 3. See also twice reprinted article from Peking Review, "The Just Struggle of the Afro-Americans Is Sure to Win," May 25, 1969, p. 14.

17. "Reform or Revolution?" March 3, 1969, p. 12.

18. The turning point for that is seen in the May 31, 1969 issue, when they started the practice of printing lengthy quotes from Georgi Dimitroff in 1935 on the united front.

19. Jan. 25, 1969, p. 17.

20. March 3, 1969, p. 10. See also "What is Ultra-Democracy?" Feb. 2, 1969, p. 14.

21. April 20, 1969, p. 18.