[Langalibalele]

African Dialectics:
Build a Black Revolutionary Palenque

by I. Langalibalele, and dedicated to Troy Davis (Long Live Troy!)

While certain people may show their skill at dissecting sentences and grammatical construction as a form of analysis, I never believed SOA was ever intended for conducting English classes. Sons of Africa disseminates information and views of interest to African people, far as I have determined, which is why I choose to post here.

So while the grammarians dissect my sentences to prove me in error, my overstanding depends on another form of analysis called African materialist dialectics. That involves the study of history thru the filter of African Internationalism, which holds that international African unity is the highest expression of Black Political Power. Dialectics studies motion, change, contradictions, opposites and harmony in society. Dialectics studies the primary movement which defines society. Materialism studies no subject outside of scientific theory. So in that spirit, I strive to extend an analysis which serves African people in our struggle for bread, peace and Black Power.

What continues to transpire within the Imperialist economic mode is of utmost importance for us to grasp. The reaction to my posts by Amexem Moor Empire, which claims to exist in some other world, distracts from the core dialectic. When you don’t kno the flavor, don’t dip into the Kool Aid. Amexem Moor Empire may go on with their astral projections and walking thru walls, nobody aims to interrupt that. If they pertain to another world, blessed be their beatification. However, we who must swim with the lampreys -- bloodsuckers that have rigged this capitalist system -- have to devise strategies to cope with, then master and ultimately defeat the system of worldwide Imperialism.

Those who remain interested in the dialectical approach may muster the courage to take on Imperialism. And for those who strive to build a society of maroons or a kilombo republic, that is, a fighting black community, this agitational-organizational work strives to accomplish that.

Amexem Moor Empire’s veiled threats will not delay this work nor discourage or intimidate anyone who fights for African liberation. I have been told many times by many different detractors to guard my statements -- while going about my own business -- but never have any comrades ever made that caution. I have been jumped, attacked, threatened, chased, arrested, jailed, tried and sentenced in the liberation struggle. I am not unique in this experience, as many others have gone on the street and made struggle with Imperialism and its lackeys, only to suffen ever more severe consequences. Amexem Moor Empire may not kno the flavor of the Kool Aid at today’s fish fry, but they will not stop the African uprising.

So the work to deepen this analysis, and therefore the overstanding of all people, moves forward despite some poisonous efforts to hold it back. If people must fear any coming world economic collapse, and all indications point in that direction, the only prospect for social stability comes thru mass proletarian organization. Indeed, if Imperialism collapses without a socialist revolution to bring it down, all the forces of reaction will be unleashed. That is what happened in the two world wars of the last century. During the Second World War, triggered by the Great Depression, eleven million people were immolated in Europe alone.

We must keep in mind, with every boom there follows a bust, and for this primary reason militants of all nations must take heed. Today we find globalism dominated by a militarily rapacious United States, dragging its racist European cousins in tow, causing shock waves to economies thru its own bankrupt domestic policies, followed by buzzard-like IMF/World Bank austerity measures.

The neo-conservative theory of supply-side demand, astonishingly dubbed “voodoo economics” by a reactionary who later went on to preside over the same policies, cannot exist without political backing. Which makes explicit the axiom that politics is concentrated economics, and shows capitalism to be -- as the great Lenin characterized it -- a bloodsucking excrescence on humanity.

Obviously, voodoo economics propounded by Milton Friedman and embraced by US neo-conservatives promotes fascism. Where Friedman’s Chicago School implemented its theories, fascist dictatorships arose in Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay. Extending the fascist trend, the Bush Administration’s so-called war-on-terror is a colonial expedition imposed on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and other countries, including America.

Never forget, the US created both Taliban and Al Qaida, beginning with the Carter Administration. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who quietly called the Iraq War a colonial invasion, was architect for smuggling arms and finances into Afghanistan. Right-wing reactionary Pat Robertson, who called for the assassination of Venezuelan presisdent Hugo Chavez two years ago, raised funds to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the then-mujahiddeen, now Taliban. The media still consults Robertson. Ronald Reagan called the mujahiddeen “freedom fighters”. Big Daddy Bush (41) maintained business ties with the Bin Laden family up thru 11 September 01. His administration financed and armed the mujahiddeen. Meanwhile, Bush 43 dispatched super lackey Colin Powell to Durban, South Africa to derail the historic August 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Powell showed up to buck dance for Israel’s abominable record in Africa and Palestine, and to defend international US racism. Then, days after 9/11, Bush secretly smuggled the Bin Laden family out of the US on a Saudi-bound military jet. The Islamo-fascism that US ideologues claim to oppose is a fascism which they nurtured, cultivated and seeded thru their own intimate aid programs and foreign policies.

So for dozens of such reasons, in November 2001 the Little Haiti Black Radical Congress (Pittsburgh, Pa.) held America’s first and perhaps only anti-war conference to formally oppose the Afghan invasion by this terrorist, empire-building police State.

The post-911 police State came down on people in ways we had not seen since the Sixties’ Black Power Movement. Muslim and Arab prisoners, caged seven years in total isolation at Guantanamo Bay and held without trial, were reduced mentally and physically by a regimen that violated international standards of conduct. Not only that, but this concentration camp for Muslims and Arabs tested the strength of US democratic standards and, just like in the Sixties, found them racist and flabby. Some prisoners suffered torture, sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation. Others underwent renditions, where CIA and other State Department personnel delivered them to repressive client states for unrestrained torture. Clearly, this intimidated the mainly Muslim and Arab community from raising any strong, sustained dissent.

How could these alleged fighters be so dangerous if they were trained in jungle gym camps, as the US claims; or are they CIA-brainwashed operatives who have undergone a mind wipe in Guantanamo to keep the world off the trail of history’s biggest inside job? They may pose no threat whatsoever, but simply are victims that US imperialism needs to convince its constituency.

Never forget, Luis Posada Carriles continues to enjoy asylum in the US, wanted in three Latin American countries for the 1973 terrorist bombing of a Cuban jetliner bound for Caracas, Venezuela, which massacred 273 aboard.

Leaving these tracks, fascism had already tiptoed into American society, on a path blazoned by the Clinton Administration’s so-called war-on-crime, which imprisons over one million African men. An anti-democratic chess move which tested the waters, the prisons have been a major source of capital. America depends on divisiveness between its colonially oppressed nationalities to keep this juggling act going. It depends on divisions within the African community -- as well as between it and the Arab and Latino communities -- to exploit a disunity bred from capitalist relations. That is the only way Imperialism can maintain a democratic cover while remaining committed to anti-democratic schemes.

Never forget, US prisons have become a major economic sector, and it is the first place where armed guards enforce labor compliance. Fascism itself is defined as a capitalist emergency regime which maintains armed managers to enforce production quotas. Sometimes the quotas may be merely in preserving the labor reserve (unemployment). These managers can be the police or the army. They may be stationed in the workplace or on the street.

Thus is Friedman’s lassez faire theory implemented thru the apparent paradox of neo-liberalism (“imperialism thru democracy”) during Democratic Party rule, or neo-conservativism (“democracy thru imperialism”) when the GOP wields power.

Just look at the deception. As gas prices fell last July for the first time since 07, the media attributed it to strong statements by Bush and Bernanke on a Monday; then on the following Friday they correctly reported that prices fell because of the lapse in demand by frazzled consumers. Obviously, the imperialist media still needs people to believe in the neo-cons’ failed policies, then slowly realizes the absurdity of that stance.

And home foreclosures continue to rise. The Miami Herald broke a story which partially revealed the corruption of the banking and finance industry. Over 11,000 convicted felons in Florida swindled borrowers out of $85 million. The biggest swindle was by a crook who grossed $37 million. The Florida banking industry encouraged these felons to become brokers.

Meanwhile, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- both of which the Fed declared had sufficient liquidity -- received billions from a Senate-approved cash package so that they might pay the quarterly dividend to their shareholders. The horror compounded when both corporations went bottom up to the tune of $510 billion, and into government receivership. Financial institutions continue to tumble like a house of cards, as the State supplies golden parachutes for financial executives, shareholders and speculators.

Never forget, these are the least people who need money. People need to ask about the real motive behind the so-called bail outs. There is no health plan for poor people, no child care for working mothers, no national maternity leave, no legislated cost-of-living adjustment, no guaranteed benefit plan. No increase in GI benefits or improvement in care for disabled vets. Yet the vast amount of dollars accrued in government coffers derives from the wallets of every day working people. These monies are paid by 150 million working parents and individuals who cannot depend upon their government to provide housing programs, schools, college educations, job training, welfare, unemployment benefits, strike benefits, job security, a funeral. The government undermines all those things, even paying companies to relocate in other countries.

The NAACP presses on with its class action lawsuit against Credit Suisse, Deutche Bank, Countrywide and others for predatory lending practices which exploited blacks and Latinos. Forced to purchase adjustable rate mortgages when interest rates hovered at 5.5%, these rates were bound to become locked in when they rose to 11%. With the faltering economy, rising prices and slumping job situation (the US lost 500k jobs last year), people did not buy more house than they could afford, as the reactionaries puppet-mouth a million times like Hitler’s famous lie. No, they were swindled by the same crooks who went into oil speculation when the president deregulated the industry.

So, while in the Nineties, the fastest growing economic sector was the prisons industry built on the back of one million Africans; in the New Millenium it has to be financial swindles and Fed bailouts.

Last year’s credit crisis caused tremors in Europe and Japan; this time the effects are being felt in Asia and Africa where food shortages and inflationary currency spikes have threatened the shaky stability of many societies. With maize being grown now for bio-fuel and genetically-engineered crops being unfit for human consumption, future mass starvation is likely. It is important to overstand that Imperialism has a certain lag effect where the crises hits other areas before it will reach or be felt within the Imperialist centers. The lag between what goes on in Asia and Africa may be months or even years before it reaches the US. By then the crisis may be corrected .

Still, if the US Supreme Court does not anticipate social instability, explain the timing of its recent ruling which minimizes restrictions on gun ownership.

People continue to believe in Capitalism as if it came from heaven and will last forever. That belief relies on the Imperialist lag, where developing nations get hit first and hardest. Yet manna did not even last forever, and the Bible claims that it was sent from god.

A threat to the two-party State arises from the very authoritarian character of the ruling class (a numerically insignificant minority) and its need to consolidate as much power as possible in this crisis situation. How can democracy be a limited resource when theoretically it uses the maximum political coin to unite society? Because that is not how bourgeois democracy operates. This system manipulates the masses for the selfish ends of a social strata which wields power and owns wealth far out of proportion to its size. Imperialism dragged the world into a pivotal, militaristic conflict on two battlefronts, which has already begun to transform the American political landscape. No democratic process oversaw that development.

The torpor and lack of resolve by the American fighting man who does not believe in his mission swamps Imperialist ambitions. It tears a schism in a society which has concentrated the greatest fortune and force in history into the hands of a few people. A vast international social fabric contributes to the exotic wealth of a few nations, which themselves see instability arising thru rampant looting and rape of the economy by bankers, stockholders, and government officials. This breakdown derives from the political deception and ideological treachery of capitalism.

The Hollywood version of a post-capitalist society depicts people living as survivalists -- Costner in Waterworld, Gibson in Mad Max, and Fishburne and Co. in The Matrix, for example -- still behaving as capitalism conditioned them before its collapse. In the post-apocalyptic view, Hollywood envisions a society which holds onto the antagonistic relationships which have been shaped by class society. That may happen without a movement united by the self-led proletariat.

More likely, as in the two world wars, the forces of reaction will seize initiative, which in that case the masses may need to organize until the next crisis weakens Imperialism. The bourgeoisie will struggle for power over the meager resources that remain. The most important prize for them is control of labor. What ever faction controls the producing classes will rule the earth. Which means outright slavery for those of us who toil for a living. It means more rape by the US government, which already takes our money and uses it against us. It means entrenched racism in a post-racial society, which means the African proletariat must lead the anti-imperialist movement.

Capitalism is a finite system. Capital itself has a finite duration and limited usage. You cannot use money for everything. Money cannot buy love, health or happiness. Living as a survivalist is no life for most people, and not doable for the vast numbers who populate cities and suburbs. Therefore, developing our humanity is the most precious resource that society must cultivate.

This points the way for revolutionary organizers who must transform unions, neighborhoods and other zones into committees of resistance. And that way is thru the stony heart of the ruling class with the spear of Black Liberation. The self-led African revolutionary has to build the black community into a sphere of duel and contending political power. Our struggle has to be defined as one for black liberation, after examples set by 1803 Haiti, modern Cuba, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.

In guarding against racism, we have to assume leadership not only over the black working class but the entire US working class. Our ideas and views must be articulated clearly and forcefully, because it is the marginalization of our people which exposes racism and those who have practiced it for so long must not be allowed to declare its end. When we acquire duel and contending power, when we have our own apparatus and infrastructure, we will decide for ourselves whether or not racism has been smitten. African people must refuse to accept a second-rate political system with a poor economy and a dependent culture as the consequences of self-determination.

As for Amexem Moor Empire and other shrill “Official-Responses”, as there arise debates about which world we live in, it shouldn’t confuse the self-led proletariat or the revolutionary movement. Any debate about not living in a class society, or a question about bringing racists or other reactionaries into this work, must not trip up the advanced section of the African working class. Degenerate attacks on our theory thru semantics or syllopsism (circular logic) or other subjectivist deflections has to be pushed to the back of the line so that urgent, day-to-day priorities can be addressed. The “what do you mean by what world” arguments can be dramatized in the more superficial forums.

While the world changes and folks carve out pockets and enclaves, that does mean anyone lives in a world unaffected by the larger society, and any pretense to such a world is delusional. While Amexem Moors may raise an artificial struggle with this viewpoint, remember Troy Davis, who was legally lynched by US imperialism. Troy is due to be murdered tonight, Tuesday 23 September 08. He never received a fair trial, evidence which could have exonerated him was suppressed by the courts, and the system has at the last moment granted him a stay (this very evening).

Amexem Moors may consider themselves Pan Africanist or Garveyites, who knows. However it is important to define Garveyism in modern terms rather than how it served history in 1916 or 1940, if we are to build a successful Maroon Society. The world has leapt forward any number of generations from that period, and in so doing has become unrecognizable from what it was then. If people do not live like they did in 1940, nobody certainly will go backwards to the days of sackcloth-wearing prophets or sword-wielding dervishes. That will not emancipate African people; Africans refuse to go there, and only suckers will accept such a primitive lifestyle.

Then there are criticisms of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Well, if they made mistakes, we have learned from them and moved ahead by avoiding their pitfalls and congratulating their valiant efforts in service of Africa. However, they had developed a theory much advanced from Garvey and from DuBois’s 1940s Pan Africanism.

Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah transformed Pan Africanism into a revolutionary theory, and we must appreciate his special contribution. Because when DuBois initiated the First Pan African Congress it was not scientific, it was not socialist and it was not revolutionary.

Never forget, anyone who fails to acknowledge the primary role of change is foolhardy. Change and transformation are dialectical processes. Just the discussion pertaining to the capitalist economic crisis illustrates the rapidity of changing circumstances and the need to prepare society for drastic, antagonistic transformations.

Malcolm X became the man who advanced Garvey’s idea. He took Garveyism to the next level, at least in North America. He introduced the critique of Imperialism and the concept of solidarity into Black Nationalism. So if we lapse to recognize the necessity of development, we have no right to call ourselves Pan Africanists or Garveyites. Of course, no democratic congress of Pan Africanists codifies this definition, but we cannot just hold onto bare fundamentals promulgated by those trailblazers and stagnate where they were forty, sixty or one hundred years ago.

If we accept science when it comes to jumping on the information highway, then turn around and place revolutionary theory in a time capsule, that does a disservice to African people. As much as we admire Marcus Garvey, WEB DuBois, George Padmore, Henry Sylvester Williams and Malcolm X, we must advance their knowledge. It was they who advanced the African militancy of our one great ideological predecessor, Edward Wilmot Blyden, the Apostle of Blackness.

Do not repudiate the great theoretical works upon which our analysis depends. Do not reject the accumulated political wisdom of such thinkers as Nkrumah, Cabral, Rodney, E. Franklin Frazier, Cheik Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Huey P. Newton, Frantz Fanon, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Winnie Mandela, Cynthia McKinney and Akua Njeri.

Nobody has a theory superior to theirs when nobody has proven to have a sharper, more accurate viewpoint than they, and no other path has ever liberated African people from colonialism. Period! All the preachers, imams, grand poobahs, community leaders, history teachers, conspiracy buffs and five percenters combined have not liberated one African from colonialism. Pan Africanism and scientific socialism have defeated white power in the Caribbean and in Africa. African freedom fighters armed with this theory have whupped ass on the battlefield. They have defeated UDI Rhodesia, decolonized Mozambique and Algeria, and defeated apartheid South Africa. I only strive to extend their great theory, and the errors I make may nobody pay for them in blood, except the Imperialists.

Today, such great thinkers have labored over a theory which has been proven in the fire. We kno what it takes to liberate African people. Only a cacophony of half-baked analyses has drowned out the revolutionary voices. Such can only assist Imperialism in its quest to exploit African labor.

For the masses of working people to avoid slaughter and disaster, we must rise above the cacophony of opportunists and agents provocateur. We cannot wait for collapse to set in but we must hustle to gain power for African people. We have a responsibility to forge greater and broader unity thru our revolutionary theory. By building Committees of Resistance in neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and even prisons, people acquire power in their own name. A fighting, black palenque, built by the workers for the workers, is the only guarantee against Imperialist repression and warfare.