There is an intense class struggle going on in the world today. This battle has actually been raging for thousands of years, but the stark separation between the haves and have not's, particularly within the African world, are exposing those class divisions more now than ever. To be able to understand and interpret these class contradictions, it's essential to have a class analysis of the forces at work today. The masses of African people, like all other communities, can be scientifically identified and categorized by evaluating the relationship of each segment of our community to the owner class, or the class of people who own and control the process to produce the products society needs to survive and develop (e.g. food, water, heat, fuel, natural resources, etc.). So the owner capitalist class is represented by entities such as Chevron, Shell, British Petroleum, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Chase Manhattan Bank, Barclays Bank, you get the idea. Those are the entities that control and dictate how resources are developed, who has them, and the price you pay to get them. These forces determine the value of labor and they manage the process of producing these resources. So, since these forces are in control of the processes from which we exist, it makes sense that society be defined based on everyone's relationship to these people who are in power. Let's discuss those definitions here, starting with the bourgeois or the class Sekou Ture called the "anti-people's class." The bourgeois class of African people are the people who serve as the appointed representatives for the owner class. These are the people that imperialism (the owner class's international program to maintain control) anoints as it's public relations face. You know, Barack Obama, Conde Rice, Ken Chenault, Patrice Motsepe, Colin Powell, Youseri Museveni, Paul Kagame. All of them are either presidents of countries, top advisors to presidents, or corporate leaders. All of them support and enact policies that serve the interests of the owner class. All of them pose as friends to the masses when their paychecks and/or shares are signed and produced by the very enemies of humanity. Most people reading this will never be a part of the bourgeois class. In fact, you will never even cross paths with anyone from that class unless you happen to attend an event where they are speaking (and you would most often have to pay handsomely even to do this). You will mostly read about them or watch them on television, but besides that, they are completely insulated from you. After the bourgeois class, it is necessary for imperialism to have an established class of people to uphold the policies and pronouncements of the bourgeois. This segment of people who uphold bourgeois policies are the middle management class or the petit-bourgeois. They are the next level within the anti-people's class. The role of the petit-bourgeois class is to insure the interests of the capitalist owner class is always represented. This class is represented by those Africans who graduate from college and become managers. They're responsibility is to become gate keepers for the capitalist system. Make sure the workers work. Punish them if they don't. Snitch on them. Never trust them. If they call in sick, demand that they produce a note and hound them to get back to work. Never, under any circumstances, demonstrate any solidarity against racism. In fact, it's ok if a petit-bourgeois African gripes about racism in private, but in public, tow the line for the master because by doing so you "insure" your loyalty reward. This is the reason the African manager is often harder on African people than the White one because they must always demonstrate their commitment to carrying out the functions of their job as middle managers for capitalism. All of the classes taken in college prepare folks to become a part of the petit-bourgeois class with the reward of making a high salary, having vacations, owning homes, and being in a prestigious position within society. Everyone who pursues "higher education" is enticed with the opportunity to serve as a member of the petit-bourgeois class because in a capitalist society, this is really the highest level you can realistically achieve. Now, the next class after the petit bougeois is the class Sekou Ture called "the people's classes." First within this group of classes we have the workers class. Whether public sector, trade, factory, and service worker, these are the people who perform the labor that makes society function. These are the street sweepers, janitors, fry cooks, bus drivers, mail carriers, teachers, laborers, unemployed people, etc. These people are the backbone of every society and the heart and soul of the African community as they are for every other community. The workers have a vested interest in being opposed to the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois because the anti-people's classes work overtime to oppress and exploit the working class, but the anti-people classes have the advantage of controlling propaganda so they always have the ability to entice working people with the prospect of letting them into the privileged classes as a method of curtailing dissent. This is the role of anti-people's class produced propaganda like "How to Marry a Millionaire" or "Pimp this House" or the idea that if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery and transform your life. This is propaganda designed to woo the working class into having faith that if they play their cards right, one day, they can achieve the status of joining the anti-people's class. The working class constitutes the majority, if not everyone, that most people know. They are your neighbors, the people sitting on the bus next to you, the people at the laundry mat. They are the people at the restaurant you eat at and the people serving you at the restaurant. You see them shopping at the supermarket and they are the people working there. You have more contact with them than any other people. Then, in the less technologically developed areas of the world you have the peasant class. This is the group of people who have no organized relationship to the owner capitalist class e.g. they don't work directly for them in the sense of earning a paycheck. For example, the peasant class may grow food on their own land and sell it on the side of the road. The peasant class is probably the most misunderstood of all classes, but there are literary millions of peasants in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. There are 500 million of them in China alone. They are an essential element of society because although they may have less of a direct relationship to the owner class, they are continually exploited by them and once organized, the peasant class has proven to be a major force for bringing about revolutionary changes. The last class segment has the potential to be either a part of the people's class or the anti-people's class. This segment is known as the lumpen class or the criminal class. This element consists of those folks who's relationship to society is defined by an institutionalized criminal relationship of prying on the working class. An example would be the Mafia who earn money by controlling drug sales, prostitution, gambling, and other vices that the working classes utilize as a method of attempting to maintain their sanity in the face of daily exploitation. The lumpen is a criminal class relationship. This shouldn't be confused with the many "wannabe gangstas" or small time crooks in our communities. The lumpen represents a class of people who are organized to represent generations of criminal activities that pry off of working people. History has proven to us that the three class segments that bring about revolution are the working class, peasants, and revolutionary intelligentsia. By revolutionary intelligentsia, we mean those people who are tracked to become middle managers or petit-bourgeois, but they commit class suicide and turn against the interests of capitalism. Instead, they decide to dedicate their life and skills towards working in the interests of the masses of people. Examples of this are people like Kwame Nkrumah and Kwame Ture - gifted philosophy students, Franz Fanon - a psychiatrist, and Assata Shakur - who joined the Black Panther Party while in college. All of these folks were student activist leaders and exemplary examples of revolutionaries.
So, now that we have established a class vision from which to view the process in which people function, we can now define and discuss the differences between African revolutionaries and black power pimps. Revolutionaries, be definition, are people who fight to transform society from an exploitative one to one of service to humanity. Revolutionaries must be highly politically educated, disciplined, principled, selfless, honest, fearless, and hardworking. True African revolutionaries provide information to the masses of our people because they want the people to be empowered to take control of their own destiny. Revolutionaries carry out their work in a way so that the work isn't focused on them, but on the objective of transforming society. Revolutionaries give much more of themselves then they ever receive. In fact, that's their life mission. There are many examples of genuine African revolutionaries from Kwame Nkrumah to Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Teodora Gomes, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Assata Shakur, etc. Revolutionaries are always interested in spreading the message of organization because they understand that history is only made by the masses of people and not individuals. On the other hand, black power pimps are the people who exploit the fearless image created by revolutionaries to advance a program that is really only designed to bring about advancement for them on an individual basis. The black power pimp (bpp - not to be confused with the BPP for Black Panther Party) demonstrates their selfishness and lack of integrity by having a focus that is polarizing and not designed to bring about true unity among African people. The revolutionary is skilled at bringing together all segments of the African community, even those segments she/he may not agree with, because she/he understands that the people coming together is more important than her/his individual judgments about who is worthy and who isn't. The bpp isn't really interested in bringing together all segments of the African community, although she/he talks up unity all the time. Instead, this person is primarily interested in exploiting segments of the community with a message designed to stir up false hopes of empowerment (under capitalism) - while rewarding the bpp for delivering the message. If you pay close attention, you will notice that the bpp never promotes mass organization among African people when it's clear this is the only solution. The bpp doesn't promote this because the minute Africans start taking responsibility for ourselves and organizing against the forces that oppress us, there will no longer be a reason for you to buy the bpp's books, dvds, and other feel good propaganda. The bpp knows their material is like masturbation. It feels good, but produces nothing. So, they will never promote mass organization because the minute you start down that path, feeling good is no longer enough and the bpp's purpose and ability to capitalize and make money off our oppression is eliminated. You see, for the revolutionary - the people's class proponent - the people are the end all by themselves. For the black power pimp - the opportunist of African suffering - the people are no more than a means to an end.
The value of having a class analysis is that you can understand that the black power pimp can very easily function in the ways described above without having any overt desire to exploit the masses. Since class lines are blurred, a race analysis e.g. "I am interested in the masses of Black people" can easily mean anything. This is demonstrated by the various definitions attributed to our movements and periods of history. The "Black Power" movement. The "Pan-African" movement. In a bourgeois sense, black power can be defined as individual power and advancement within the capitalist system. As black visibility and symbolism. As having a black president (who serves the interests of white supremacy and international capitalism/imperialism). By the same token, Pan-Africanism, in a bourgeois sense, can be defined as Black people all over the world having unity. It is the class analysis that gives our nationalism focus and integrity by calling into the question the reasons Black people, African people, need to unite and what we are uniting to do. With a revolutionary people's class analysis Black Power and Pan-Africanism can only mean the movement to unite African people worldwide to fight for one unified socialist Africa as a means of making an African contribution to the worldwide struggle for justice and human progress. So remember, revolutionaries advance this definition of Black Power and Pan-Africanism. Revolutionaries are organizers who work with our community to prepare to make this definition our reality. Black power pimps are mobilizers who just appear to spread their message and then they leave, with your money, but not infrastructure to organize our people. So, the next time you are wondering how to make a determination between a genuine African revolutionary and a black power pimp, ask yourself; Are we leaving the room with a call for us to become involved in a specific effort to organize our people for collective forward progress or are we leaving the room with the only clear result being you having a full range of emotions and someone else having a full pocket?
So, now that we have established a class vision from which to view the process in which people function, we can now define and discuss the differences between African revolutionaries and black power pimps. Revolutionaries, be definition, are people who fight to transform society from an exploitative one to one of service to humanity. Revolutionaries must be highly politically educated, disciplined, principled, selfless, honest, fearless, and hardworking. True African revolutionaries provide information to the masses of our people because they want the people to be empowered to take control of their own destiny. Revolutionaries carry out their work in a way so that the work isn't focused on them, but on the objective of transforming society. Revolutionaries give much more of themselves then they ever receive. In fact, that's their life mission. There are many examples of genuine African revolutionaries from Kwame Nkrumah to Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Teodora Gomes, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Assata Shakur, etc. Revolutionaries are always interested in spreading the message of organization because they understand that history is only made by the masses of people and not individuals. On the other hand, black power pimps are the people who exploit the fearless image created by revolutionaries to advance a program that is really only designed to bring about advancement for them on an individual basis. The black power pimp (bpp - not to be confused with the BPP for Black Panther Party) demonstrates their selfishness and lack of integrity by having a focus that is polarizing and not designed to bring about true unity among African people. The revolutionary is skilled at bringing together all segments of the African community, even those segments she/he may not agree with, because she/he understands that the people coming together is more important than her/his individual judgments about who is worthy and who isn't. The bpp isn't really interested in bringing together all segments of the African community, although she/he talks up unity all the time. Instead, this person is primarily interested in exploiting segments of the community with a message designed to stir up false hopes of empowerment (under capitalism) - while rewarding the bpp for delivering the message. If you pay close attention, you will notice that the bpp never promotes mass organization among African people when it's clear this is the only solution. The bpp doesn't promote this because the minute Africans start taking responsibility for ourselves and organizing against the forces that oppress us, there will no longer be a reason for you to buy the bpp's books, dvds, and other feel good propaganda. The bpp knows their material is like masturbation. It feels good, but produces nothing. So, they will never promote mass organization because the minute you start down that path, feeling good is no longer enough and the bpp's purpose and ability to capitalize and make money off our oppression is eliminated. You see, for the revolutionary - the people's class proponent - the people are the end all by themselves. For the black power pimp - the opportunist of African suffering - the people are no more than a means to an end.
The value of having a class analysis is that you can understand that the black power pimp can very easily function in the ways described above without having any overt desire to exploit the masses. Since class lines are blurred, a race analysis e.g. "I am interested in the masses of Black people" can easily mean anything. This is demonstrated by the various definitions attributed to our movements and periods of history. The "Black Power" movement. The "Pan-African" movement. In a bourgeois sense, black power can be defined as individual power and advancement within the capitalist system. As black visibility and symbolism. As having a black president (who serves the interests of white supremacy and international capitalism/imperialism). By the same token, Pan-Africanism, in a bourgeois sense, can be defined as Black people all over the world having unity. It is the class analysis that gives our nationalism focus and integrity by calling into the question the reasons Black people, African people, need to unite and what we are uniting to do. With a revolutionary people's class analysis Black Power and Pan-Africanism can only mean the movement to unite African people worldwide to fight for one unified socialist Africa as a means of making an African contribution to the worldwide struggle for justice and human progress. So remember, revolutionaries advance this definition of Black Power and Pan-Africanism. Revolutionaries are organizers who work with our community to prepare to make this definition our reality. Black power pimps are mobilizers who just appear to spread their message and then they leave, with your money, but not infrastructure to organize our people. So, the next time you are wondering how to make a determination between a genuine African revolutionary and a black power pimp, ask yourself; Are we leaving the room with a call for us to become involved in a specific effort to organize our people for collective forward progress or are we leaving the room with the only clear result being you having a full range of emotions and someone else having a full pocket?
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