Your letter of resignation as the Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party came, I think, about one year too late. As a matter of fact, since the day of your appointment to that position - February 17, 1968 - events have proven that you were not cut out for the job in the first place. Even then it was clear that your position on coalition with revolutionary white organizations was in conflict with that of the Black Panther Party. But we thought that, in time, even you would be able to shake the SNCC paranoia about white control and get on with the business of building the type of revolutionary machinery that we need in the United States in order to unite all the revolutionary forces in the country to overthrow the system of Capitalism, Imperialism and Racism.
I know these terms are kicked around like lifeless bodies and that it is easy to allow the grisly realities behind them to become obscured by too frequent repetition. But when you see the squalor in which people live as a result of the policies of the exploiters, when you see the effects of exploitation on the emaciated bodies of little children, when you see the hunger and desperation, then these terms come alive in a new way. Since you've made this trip yourself and seen it all with your own eyes, you should know that suffering is colour-blind, that the victims of Imperialism, Racism, Colonialism and Neo-colonialism come in all colours, and that they need a unity based on revolutionary principles rather than skin colour.
The other charges which you make in your letter - about our new-found ideology, our dogmatism, our arm-twisting, etc. — seem to me to be of secondary importance, because, with the exception, perhaps, of the honourable Elijah Muhammad, you are the most dogmatic cat on the scene today, and I've never known you to be opposed to twisting arms or, for that matter, necks. In many ways your letter struck me as being an echo and rehash of the charges brought against the party by the bootlickers before the McClellan Committee. And since you chose this moment to denounce the party, we - and I am sure many other people outside the party - must look upon your letter in this light. The only point in your letter that I think is really you is the one about coalition with whites, because it has been this point on which our differences have turned from the very beginning. You have never been able to distinguish the history of the Black Panther Party from the history of the organization of which you were once the chairman - the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. It is understandable that you can have such fears of black organizations being controlled, or partly controlled, by whites, because most of your years in SNCC were spent under precisely those conditions. But the Black Panther Party has never been in that situation. Because we have never had to wrest control of our organization out of the hands of whites, we have not been shackled with the type of paranoid fear that was developed by you cats in SNCC. Therefore we are able to sit down with whites and hammer out solutions to our common problems without trembling in our boots about whether or not we might get taken over in the process.
It has always seemed to me that you belittle the intelligence of your black brothers and sisters when you constantly warn them that they had better beware of white folks. After all, you are not the only black person out of Babylon who has been victimized by white racism. But you sound as though you are scared of white people, as though you are still running away from slave-catchers who will lay hands on your ody and dump you in a bag As a matter of fact, it has been precisely your nebulous enunciation of Black Power that has provided the power structure with its new weapon against our people. The Black Panther Party tried to give you a chance to slogan now have to our people's struggle for liberation? Is denouncing the Black Panther Party the best you can do to combat this evil? | would think that your responsibility goes a little further than that. Even though you were right when you said that LBJ would never stand up and call for Black Power, Nixon has done so and he's bank-rolling in with millions of dollars. So now your old Black Power buddies are cashing in on your slogan. In effect, your cry for Black Power has become the grease to ease the black bourgeoisie into the power structure.
& Yau the pasty of Pre rig toe of the Black Panther rescue you from the black bourgeoisie that had latched on to your coat tails and was riding you like a mule. Now they have stolen your footbal and run away for a touchdown: six points for Richard Milhouse Nixon.
In February 1968, at the Free Huey Birthday Rally in Oakland, California, where you made your first public speech after returning to the United States from your triumphant tour of the revolutionary countries of the Third World, you took the occasion to denounce the coalition that the Black Panther Party had made with the white Peace and Freedom Party. What you called for instead was a Black United Front that would unite all the forces in the black community from left to right, close ranks against the whites, and all go skipping off to freedom. Within the ranks of your Black United Front you wanted to include the Cultural Nationalists, the Black Capitalists, and the Professional Uncle Toms, even though it was precisely these three groups who were working to murder your shit even before it broke wind. (Remember what Ron Karenga did to your meeting in Los Angeles?)
You had great dreams in those days, Stokely, and your visions, on the top side, were heroic. On the bottom side, when it came to the details of reality, your vision was blind. You were unable to distinguish your friends from your enemies because all you could see was the colour of the cat's skin. It was this blindness that led you to the defence of Adam he came under attack by his brother jackals in Congress. And it was this blindness that led you to the defence of that black cop in Washington, D.C., who was being fucked over by the whites above him in the Police Department for whom he carried his gun as he patrolled the black short vour habit of looking at would end up in the same bag with Papa Doc Duvalier, Joseph Mobutu, and Haile Selassie. Yes, we opposed that shit then and we oppose it now even more strongly, especially since the Nixon Administration has stolen your programme from you and, I think, included you out And now you are going to liberate Africa! Where are you going to start, Ghana? The Congo? Biafra? Angola? Mozambique? Sout Africa? If you are not aware of it, i think tha you should know that the brothers in Africa who are involved in armed struggle against the Colonialists would like nothing better than for you to pack up your suitcase full of African souvenirs and split back to Babylon. They have never forgiven the fat-mouthing you did in Dar-es-Salaam when you presumed to tell them how to conduct their business. It seems to me that you are now trapped between the extremes of your own rhetoric. . On the one hand, you have cut yourself off from the struggle in Babylon, and on the other hand, you are no bout to become the Redeemer of Mothe Africa.
The enemies of black people have learned something from history even if you haven't, and they are discovering new ways to divide us faster than we are discovering new ways to unite. One thing they know, and we know, that seems to escape you, is that there is not going to be any revolution or black liberation in the United States as long as revolutionary blacks, whites, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Chinese and Eskimos are unwilling or unable to unite into some functional machinery that can cope with the situation. Your talk and fears about premature coalition are absurd, because no coalition against oppression by forces possessing revolutionary integrity can ever be premature. If anything, it is too late, because the forces of counter-revolution are sweeping the world, and this is happening precisely because in the past people have been united on a basis that perpetuates disunity among race:
and ignores basic revolutionary principles and analyou are peeved because the Black Panther Party informs itself with the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism, but if you look around the world you will see that the only countries which have liberated themselves and managed to withstand the tide of the counterrevolution are precisely those countries that have strong Marxist-Leninist parties. All those countries that have fought for their liberation solely on the basis of nationalism have fallen victims to capitalism and neo-colonialism, and in many cases now find themselves under tyrannies equally as oppressive as the former colonial regimes.
That you know nothing about the revolutionary process is clear; that you know even less about the United States and its people is clearer; and that you know still less about black people.
people that denies the humanity of other people is doomed. It was an undying love of Committee in its attempt to destroy the Black Panther Party.
Well, so long, Stokely, and take care. And Clayton Powell, that Jackal from Harlem, when beware of some white folks and of some black folks, because I assure you that some of both of them have teeth that will bite. Remember what Brother Malcolm said in his Autobiography:
"We had the best organization that the black niggers ruined it!" POWER TO THE PEOPLE! man has ever had in the United States and An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory - 9/6d
new left review and a provisional agreement was signed in 1957. However, the PL did so well in elections that the Us reverted to its previous tactics: a