I'm a revolutionary Pan-Africanist who lives in the Pacific Northwest. That's the social equivalent of a shark living in a lake. The fact that this region of the country, particularly Portland, Eugene, and Seattle, are seen as bastions of liberal thought and practice doesn't help the situation. Actually, it makes it often more challenging. The majority of European Marxist groups in this region are knee deep in white supremacist ideology. Within the All African People's Revolutionary Party, we consistently study Marx, Lenin, Engels, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Mao, Le Duan, Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro, etc., as much, if not more than most of those groups. Yet, that doesn't prevent most of them from preaching to us about "true Marxist" thought as if the history of Europe is the history of the entire world. Then, when we initiate conversations about our African political ideologues like Nkrumah, Ture, Cabral, Sobukwe, Biko, Sankara, etc., there are crickets from them, every single time. And the Marxists aren't even the most irritating. This region is a hotbed of support for so-called theories of Anarchy, but yet, the overwhelming majority of people up here who are claiming that way of life cannot articulate a concrete perspective of how what they are doing is going to change the conditions for the masses of people today, especially African and other people of color. In other words, my principle argument for these folks since I've been up here is that from a philosophical standpoint, I see a lot of similarities between communism, which I believe in, and the Anarchy they say they want. Both societies have yet to happen (so stop saying communism has failed. That's like saying relationships have failed). Both are based on an exceptional level of mass consciousness that creates an altruistic society where the need for state institutions is no longer necessary. That leads to my critique for them, which none of them seem to be able to answer, which is how we get there? For us who are Nkrumahist/Turiests, the answer is the socialist stage is the bridge between capitalism and communism. We cannot have what we need overnight. It will take generations to get there. Generations of very hard work.
So, its the people in the latter category (Anarchy) who being dominant in this region, pose the most headaches. Primarily due to many of their insistence that revolution isn't a process that will take years. They keep advancing the notion that revolution and insurrection are the same thing. Or, at least that spontaneous insurrection (which is how they are defining it) can lead to revolution. They are always talking about seizing the moment as if a spontaneous uprisings due to a police shooting is going to extend into a mass revolutionary effort. Of course, anything is possible, but that is most likely an extremely unlikely result that is based mostly in an idealistic perspective of the world that is devoid of material analysis. There is also a very bourgeois element to it that dismisses the need to actually do organizing work to create the correct conditions for revolutionary change to take place.
Insurrection is spontanenous eruption. The people, tired of the repression of the state, rise up in righteous indignation. We Africans know all about that because we have by far carried out the overwhelming majority of these types of uprisings. In fact, Kwame Ture was succinct when he said "Africans have been burning down this country from plantations to cities." So, we hardly need Europeans, who for most part have never lived, organized in, and/or participated in the type of urban conditions that produce the uprisings, to tell us the potential of those occurrences. There are plenty of other posts here where I have described clear differences between revolution and rebellion. What I will say here is that there are concrete material reasons why none of the hundreds of slave revolts as we call them, have evolved into the revolution these people keep waiting for. The answer is simple. You cannot create revolution without revolutionaries. Being a revolutionary isn't like becoming a Christian. The gospel of Christianity permits you to violate every sin 100 times in a single day and then repent those sins, claim Jesus as your personal savior, and you are born again and now a Christian. Being a revolutionary works differently. You can't have a spiritual experience while breaking a window or throwing a burning cocktail and transform from a knucklehead into a revolutionary. You have to engage in protracted social revolutionary struggle to transform yourself and that process cannot be divorced from your work to organize with others. This is the process that creates the new woman and man that Kwame Nkrumah talked about. In this scenario, the role of the state in a socialist society is to provide everyone with the resources to successfully carry out that transformation. This is scientific, not emotional. Its collective, not individualistic. Its tough and firmly rooted in material conditions. Not evasive and rooted in idealism. The decision making processes within the All African People's Revolutionary Party are the most advanced mechanisms for involving everyone and encouraging all to participate in society that I've ever witnessed. Anyone who claims our practices are authoritarian doesn't know much about us. I''d stayed up all night in to many meetings debating decisions before many of these European critics were born (in the movement and/or the world) to be swayed by that confusion.
By far, the largest contradiction I see from working up here is that most people are not in organizations, and that's not the most egregious part. The worst thing is that most of those people brag about that. They say ignorant things up here like "I'm not trying to organize anyone. I'm trying to resist" as if organizing people in the community to build capacity against the system isn't resistance. These people say other strange things like "the alternatives to organizations are working with people who agree with you on a local level to make change." That's like saying the alternative to the number 6 is a half a dozen. People are so individualistic that their seems to be a dominantly idealistic and very individual impression of what an organization is. That it has to be a structured group with Roberts Rules of order, minutes, and officers. How sad.
I honestly don't know how much longer I'll live here, but don't get me wrong. I like it here. I have actually met many good organizers here from all backgrounds. Currently, we are working with many strong, firmly based European activists and there is a great level of work taking place within those circles. And, many of those good White folks are not in alignment with the people I've described here. We will continue challenging the idealism up here because we know that as long as these people have such limited and warped views, the real victors will be imperialism, which has a 500 year history of establishing and maintaining very materialist based methods of control over the masses of humanity.
So, its the people in the latter category (Anarchy) who being dominant in this region, pose the most headaches. Primarily due to many of their insistence that revolution isn't a process that will take years. They keep advancing the notion that revolution and insurrection are the same thing. Or, at least that spontaneous insurrection (which is how they are defining it) can lead to revolution. They are always talking about seizing the moment as if a spontaneous uprisings due to a police shooting is going to extend into a mass revolutionary effort. Of course, anything is possible, but that is most likely an extremely unlikely result that is based mostly in an idealistic perspective of the world that is devoid of material analysis. There is also a very bourgeois element to it that dismisses the need to actually do organizing work to create the correct conditions for revolutionary change to take place.
Insurrection is spontanenous eruption. The people, tired of the repression of the state, rise up in righteous indignation. We Africans know all about that because we have by far carried out the overwhelming majority of these types of uprisings. In fact, Kwame Ture was succinct when he said "Africans have been burning down this country from plantations to cities." So, we hardly need Europeans, who for most part have never lived, organized in, and/or participated in the type of urban conditions that produce the uprisings, to tell us the potential of those occurrences. There are plenty of other posts here where I have described clear differences between revolution and rebellion. What I will say here is that there are concrete material reasons why none of the hundreds of slave revolts as we call them, have evolved into the revolution these people keep waiting for. The answer is simple. You cannot create revolution without revolutionaries. Being a revolutionary isn't like becoming a Christian. The gospel of Christianity permits you to violate every sin 100 times in a single day and then repent those sins, claim Jesus as your personal savior, and you are born again and now a Christian. Being a revolutionary works differently. You can't have a spiritual experience while breaking a window or throwing a burning cocktail and transform from a knucklehead into a revolutionary. You have to engage in protracted social revolutionary struggle to transform yourself and that process cannot be divorced from your work to organize with others. This is the process that creates the new woman and man that Kwame Nkrumah talked about. In this scenario, the role of the state in a socialist society is to provide everyone with the resources to successfully carry out that transformation. This is scientific, not emotional. Its collective, not individualistic. Its tough and firmly rooted in material conditions. Not evasive and rooted in idealism. The decision making processes within the All African People's Revolutionary Party are the most advanced mechanisms for involving everyone and encouraging all to participate in society that I've ever witnessed. Anyone who claims our practices are authoritarian doesn't know much about us. I''d stayed up all night in to many meetings debating decisions before many of these European critics were born (in the movement and/or the world) to be swayed by that confusion.
By far, the largest contradiction I see from working up here is that most people are not in organizations, and that's not the most egregious part. The worst thing is that most of those people brag about that. They say ignorant things up here like "I'm not trying to organize anyone. I'm trying to resist" as if organizing people in the community to build capacity against the system isn't resistance. These people say other strange things like "the alternatives to organizations are working with people who agree with you on a local level to make change." That's like saying the alternative to the number 6 is a half a dozen. People are so individualistic that their seems to be a dominantly idealistic and very individual impression of what an organization is. That it has to be a structured group with Roberts Rules of order, minutes, and officers. How sad.
I honestly don't know how much longer I'll live here, but don't get me wrong. I like it here. I have actually met many good organizers here from all backgrounds. Currently, we are working with many strong, firmly based European activists and there is a great level of work taking place within those circles. And, many of those good White folks are not in alignment with the people I've described here. We will continue challenging the idealism up here because we know that as long as these people have such limited and warped views, the real victors will be imperialism, which has a 500 year history of establishing and maintaining very materialist based methods of control over the masses of humanity.
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