Philosophizing With Lightning?: A Review of 'Metamodernism: The Future of Theory'

By Peter Fousek

In the opening of his recently published third book, Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, philosopher Jason Josephson Storm writes that, in his latest text, he intends “to philosophize with lightning” (Storm 5). An endnote clarifies the meaning of his metaphor: lightning is both powerfully destructive and brilliantly illuminating. That simultaneously negative and positive character is an apt analogy for the project of Metamodernism, which works to expose the shortcomings of established intellectual practice while creating a new, progressively rooted and analytically oriented theory of the social world as a guide for future scholarship and activism. Writing an academic book review is outside of my normal wheelhouse; nonetheless, having worked as a research assistant for Storm, and as a result having had the opportunity to speak with him about the inspiring implications of Metamodernism, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about the book on a political platform. Because, at its essence, Metamodernism is revolutionary philosophy, culminating in a liberating political imperative.

Transformative social movements require united mass support in pursuit of a collectively held goal. For a progressive, justice-oriented campaign to be effective, it needs a solid theoretical foundation capable of producing a shared understanding of society in the minds of its members, and a corresponding conviction about why and how they should build a better world. The highly influential revolutionary praxis of Marxism is rooted in the theoretical basis of historical materialism; that theory has provided the impetus for wide-scale activism and mobilization, has guided the organization and direction of countless movements around the world. Storm’s theory possesses similar strengths: Metamodernism provides a comprehensive understanding of the social world, motivated by a fervent and fundamental belief in radical compassion, social justice, and egalitarian mutualism. From these values, it establishes a rigorously systematic philosophical mode, with which we may not only analyze and understand our world, but also learn how best to change it in pursuit of those underlying motivations.

Storm’s project is broken up into four different parts: Metarealism, Process Social Ontology, Hylosemiotics, and Knowledge and Value. To demonstrate how the book builds into a call for political action, it may be most effective to work backwards from its final chapters to the theoretical basis for their claims. Metamodernism’s Chapter 7, “The Revaluation of Values,” is its most explicitly political. His focus there is on the role of morals and ethical values in the scholarship of the “human sciences” (Storm 1)–Storm’s umbrella term for disciplines in the humanities and social sciences—as well as the role played by those values in political society more broadly. Breaking from the position that the moral relativism of the postmodern movement has ushered in a post-moral era, he shows that ethical values are a foundational element of the social world, and, consequently, that the study of that world necessitates their consideration and implementation.

When studying processes of social formation and the people who take part in them, it is imperative to analyze the values held by individuals and groups, which motivate their behaviors and influence the beliefs through which they come to understand themselves and their world. Further, Storm argues, if academic and intellectual projects within the human sciences are to offer meaningful commentary and critique, capable of honestly informing us about the nature of our world, they must reflectively acknowledge the ethical values that form the basis of their scholarly position. According to Metamodernism, “we need to bring our values to the surface and submit them to further scrutiny and refinement” in order “to make progress” (Storm 238). This is because moral values are inseparable from the social world, and any attempt to eliminate them only “drove ethics underground,” (Storm 238), thereby concealing a hugely influential element of society and its dynamics. On that basis, anti-moral arguments often serve reactionary political ends, e.g. “attacking social justice as incompatible with scientific objectivity,” (Storm 238) and thereby giving an ostensibly intellectual justification for the silencing of progressive voices.

Storm goes beyond an exposition of the importance of values and the need for their acknowledgement, however. He proceeds to make the claim that, given their centrality, they should serve as both motive and guide for future scholarship in the human sciences, orienting that scholarship towards the creation of a better world rather than towards a deconstructive or otherwise limited understanding of an arbitrarily delineated category of study. In other words, Storm argues that the study of society should be a morally rooted endeavor, with ethically constituted goals. It should not take place in the isolation of ivory towers, but instead should engage and interface with the subject of its study. Scholarship, in the metamodernist view, should be openly and unabashedly political, providing the knowledge and inspiration behind future political action.

The project of Metamodernism is itself an excellent example of such politically invested scholarship. Its first six chapters are dedicated to the establishment of a Grand Theory, a new and comprehensive philosophical mode that attempts to explain the nature of the social world. To that end, Storm opens with a chapter that works to produce an understanding of reality, moving beyond ideological debates disguised as existential arguments in its investigation. The “metarealist” position which Storm arrives at demands a nuanced, multi-modal understanding of reality, which allows for his subsequent study of social construction. Part II of Metamodernism, containing chapters two through four, begins by demonstrating the inadequacies of existing scholarly modes to produce sufficiently meaningful and valid scholarship. These inadequacies stem from a failure to recognize the dynamic, processual nature of the social world and the elements that make it up, which Storm labels “social kinds” (Storm 106). Social kinds are determined by anchoring processes: causal relations which produce a set of characteristics, or power-clusters, that are shared by members of a given social kind. Those power-clusters then endow their corresponding social kinds with causal-relational roles in broader processual networks. Socioeconomic class, for instance, could be thought of as a social kind determined by its relations of production (a causal anchoring process), and characterized by certain economic, social, or political attributes (power-clusters relating to and explained by the anchoring process). Viewing the world through the lens of social kinds enables a thorough, reflective, and progressive method of analysis and understanding, which resists imposed or inherited beliefs and assumptions and works to de-reify social formations and their constituent elements.

Having established an understanding of social kinds, Storm goes on to produce a corresponding theory of meaning in Metamodernism’s Part III. Chapter 5 proposes a “minimal metaontology,” (Storm 164) which pairs ontology with semiotics, language with material reality. The metaontology of Chapter 5 considers language to be a medium in which the mind interfaces with the world, facilitating a dialectically constitutive relationship between the two. The sentient mind, according to Storm, understands the world semiotically. From the interaction and engagement between the mental and physical emerge concepts of meaning, as the mind, through experience, comes to recognize certain signs as the signifiers of power-clusters, and thus of social kinds. Thus, meaning and understanding are predicated on mind-body interdependence, rather than dualism. Further, because people can externalize the contents of their consciousness via the materialization of cognitive signs, thought is a collective process which utilizes “public concepts,” (Storm 201): the already materialized signs that influence and inform our individual understandings of self and social world.

This brings us to Part IV, which crescendos into Chapter 7. Chapter 6, “Zetetic Knowledge,” (Storm 209), establishes a theory of “humble, emancipatory knowledge” (Storm 215) which allows for the possibility of uncertainty while resisting a denial of our ability to know things at all. Storm’s theory of knowledge incorporates doubt, but resists the kind of crippling skepticism which refuses to move past an initial stage of doubting. His incorporation of doubt is a subversion of certainty; this means that we cannot assert that we do not know. Rather, using the metamodernist mode of analysis based on causal anchoring and processual power-clusters, we can evaluate the relative truthfulness of any knowledge claim by analyzing it using evidence-based abductive reasoning, working backwards from hypothesis to cause while ruling out any alternative explanations. This abductive method of knowledge creation enables us to discover the unobservables which underlie the evidence which we attempt to explain.

Metamodernism is worth reading in full; the depth and systematic construction of Storm’s latest monograph make it difficult to summarize. Nonetheless, the outline above at least hints at the underlying revolutionary motivation of the metamodernist project. In the latter sections of Chapter 7, Storm explicitly states the values that have inspired and guided his philosophy. He argues that our sociopolitical activity should be motivated by a central, collective conviction: to promote universal human flourishing through collectivism and equity. “This,” Storm asserts, “has concrete implications for the kind of state or community we need to call into being…I want to call for a politics dedicated toward compassion, so that injustice can truly be overcome” (Storm 269). In a society presently dedicated to callous individualism, a compassionate politics is necessarily revolutionary. It demands that we work to alleviate the suffering of all those who go this journey of life alongside us, that we prioritize the wellbeing of all above any other concern.

This revolutionary political imperative, the pursuit of universal human flourishing, progresses naturally from the theory outlined earlier. It provides a guiding motive value to situate and inspire work in philosophy, the human sciences, and more broadly in our social formations and activity in general. If values are an omnipresent element of the social world, then we must reflect on those that influence us. If certainty of knowledge is impossible, then our values ought to reflect a corresponding humility; if the social world is dynamic, composed of innately processual social kinds, then our morals should be similarly accommodating, striving to cultivate the multiplicity of sentient life and the societies that it produces. Most importantly, metamodernism provides us with a critical-reflective lens through which we may arrive at a deeper understanding of our world and our positions in it.

That understanding is one which compels us to engage in a continuous, dynamic process of personal and societal cultivation and therefore demands empathy, egalitarianism, and the pursuit of collective good. It allows us to recognize the economic and political elements that reinforce injustice and inequality, and offers us the ability to overcome those elements by exposing and deconstructing detrimental social kinds and establishing alternative ones instead, rooted in metamodernist values. In Storm’s own words, “in order to actually produce meaningful change, we need to know how social kinds come into being and how their properties are glued together” (Storm 275). Metamodernism seeks to do just that, integrating an extensive knowledge of past and present, history and thought, with a moral imperative meant to goad and guide sociopolitical activism in pursuit of a more equitable, humane society. To transform the world, we must first understand it, and, in addition, understand what it could be.

Childhood and Exodus

By Richard Allen

Originally published at Theology Corner.

…Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:3 (NRSV)

The praxis of the linguistic animal does not have a definite script, nor does it produce a final outcome, precisely because it continuously retraces anthropogenesis.

Paolo Virno, When the Word Becomes Flesh: Language and Human Nature (2015)

By any reasonable metric, I am a bad Marxist. I never finished reading the first volume of Capital. Moreover, my entrance to the Marxist ecosystem came through a circuitous route, beginning with Christian appropriators of Derrida, slowly working through assorted figureheads within twentieth-century critical theory, and settling on the Italian autonomia movement as my base framework. Clearly, orthodoxy is not my strong suit. Likewise, one might also say that I am a bad Christian. I tend to bristle at vehement defenses of objectivity and static truth within Christian discourse. Certainly, it would be unfair to label oneself as “Christian” without basic affirmation of specific theological assumptions. However, suffice it to say, I find inventiveness a far more enticing approach than mere acquiescence to “the way things are.” Truth, at least the sort of truth necessary for spiritual or political liberation, needs more emphasis on radical potential compared to aged rigidity.

One of the underlying questions common to any version of Marxist thought and practice is: how does one exit an oppressive environment? What tools, paths, and ideas aid the quest for liberation? How do we actualize liberation? Furthermore, we see that this question assumes any oppressive environment exists within tangible, fleshly materiality. In other words, even in spiritual or religious contexts, oppression always takes material form, despite any connection to metaphysical or revelatory ideas. It affects our bodies and consciousness. We sense this cognitively and feel it physically. It changes the material nature of our existence. Put simply, if oppression always takes a material form and alters our tangible experience of the world, then liberation will always respond in like kind. If oppression is material, so too is liberation.

Returning to the initial question—how does one exit an oppressive environment?—it seems clear that a turn toward static truth is not necessarily the wisest decision. How can we solely rely upon elements and ideas of old in order to actualize the liberation we seek for oppressed peoples? In my view, a turn toward inventiveness, the process of creating “new” truth by “resting” within the expansive field of pure potentiality (more on this later), carries within it greater capacity for liberation. This is not to say what passes for orthodoxy in any tradition, spiritual or otherwise, holds no value. Rather, at some point we must return to a new understanding of subjectivity and being in our way of analyzing the world so that we can more easily see through the structures which sustain oppression. We must recognize that as conditioned subjects within the ecosystem of late capitalism we learn to make basic assumptions which arguably sustain the very structures that sustain oppression, even if our intention resists that assumption (I’ve written more about this here).

In his latest piece for Cultural Politics entitled “The Aesthetics of Exodus: Virno and Lyotard on Art, Timbre, and the General Intellect” educator and activist Derek R. Ford uses Virno’s analysis of potential, performance, and the “general intellect” in conjunction with Lyotard’s treatment of art and music to describe an “exodus” from subjectivity as such toward a “de-individualized,” fugitive retreat from capitalism. Ford offers an erudite reading of both Virno and Lyotard, and his use of aesthetic theory to ground this fugitive act toward exodus carries great potential for liberative politics. My goal in this response is to expand upon Ford and Virno’s work. As an (informal) student of Virno and the Italian autonomia movement more broadly, I share similar conclusions to what Ford suggests. Say what you will about the sometimes fraught relationship between postmodern thought and Marxism (in this case, represented by Lyotard) or autonomia and Marxism (represented by Virno) there is certainly no shortage of radical, liberative possibilities when these respective traditions encounter each other.

More specifically, Virno’s treatment of infancy and the radical potential inherent to language should be a necessary component of any radical politic. Ford describes Virno’s reinterpretation of the “general intellect” in Marx’s writings as “indeterminate,” preferring instead to read the general intellect as pure potential rather than “particular knowledges and thoughts.” As I’ve written elsewhere, Virno’s understanding of “potential” as an unlimited field of productive praxis—since the linguistic animal speaks but does not exhaust the potential of the speech-act—represents a helpful corrective to aged assumptions common to the most militantly orthodox Marxists among us. In short, by recognizing a space wherein praxis finds its potential before actualization allows for a renewed understanding of how much power we have in the pursuit of liberation or “exodus” (both for the individual and the multitude). If I consciously remain aware that my speech does not ever touch the boundary lines of pure potential, which lies in wait before the utterance, then I can find new ways of living and being through the field of potential, boundless and unformed as it is. However, in order to more clearly see the usefulness of said potential, we must all undergo “desubjectification.”

In Virno’s text When the Word Becomes Flesh: Language and Human Nature, he describes the speech-act as ritualistic. “The ceremony of the voice, the occurrence of speech, makes the speaker visible as the bearer of the power to speak” (p. 56). Language is performative, similar to the virtuosity of a musician playing an instrument or an actor transforming into another character. There is something ethereal to the act of speaking, where we enact cultural and environmental rituals unconsciously, expressed through the declarative utterance (“egocentric”) “I speak.” We bring to presence the power of language’s potential as we speak. Additionally, Virno brings the “egocentric” language of children into play just a few pages over, “The child, when verbally announcing what he or she is doing, is not describing an action, but completes a secondary, auxiliary action (the production of an enunciation), whose goal is the visibility of its subject” (p. 63). When one speaks, they perform two tasks: first, they consciously emit vocalized sounds; second, they unconsciously enact “anthropogenesis,” or the production of the subject. This second task, which Virno describes as an “auxiliary action,” is where we find the liberative potential of human language. It is how the subject presents themselves as a subject, or how they “individualize” themselves, which means that behind any form of language (intelligible or otherwise) there lies a space of limitless potential, the potential for speech, which cannot be exhausted. If the multitude understands the power of potential then they can more easily engender new speech to actualize liberation.

Likewise, Ford is correct when, in tandem with Virno, he writes:

Through the acquisition of language, the child is separated from their surroundings through individuation, hence the significance of “I speak.” By learning language, we encounter the disjuncture between the world and ourselves because we discover that we can change the world and that the world can change us.”

Through childhood and the development of our linguistic faculties, we undergo conscious and unconscious individualization, a gradual understanding of our distinction from the world even as we recognize our place within it and its effects upon our life. The problem lies in the ways capitalism forms our respective identities or individualization as we practice the act of speech. This conditioning teaches us prescriptive or authoritative ways of speech which only serve to reify existing structures and assumptions. Thus, while in a general sense, despite these oppressive restrictions upon the way in which the individual speaks under capitalism the individual never truly loses access to pure potential behind the utterance, exodus allows us to retreat from the confines of capital in order to learn new ways of speaking. Because the capacity for speech is limitless, the potential for new language to unlock liberation awaits us, so long as we make an exodus from capitalism. The way out is through a regression of sorts or a “de-individualization,” a return to childhood. In Ford’s words, “As a recursive state, childhood…is the return to potentiality in order to actualize differently.”

Turning our attention toward the biblical text cited above, when asked who deserves recognition as the “greatest” in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus responds with a seemingly odd analogy. Bringing a child to his side, Jesus instructs his followers that “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (emphasis added). At first glance, Jesus’ words seem to refer to obvious differences in societal status (the child being one of the “lowest” members of society) as a way to highlight the necessity of humility when responding to the divine. However, in light of what Ford and Virno suggest in reference to childhood, we see an expanded, materialist vision of the spiritual insight Jesus offers. Childhood is not merely a state of simple humility, although it includes this dimension. Instead, childhood is the closest any of us come to understanding and accessing the pure potential of language. Put another way, childhood is the closest we come to the innocence of simply being human in the world, unburdened by the demands we experience later in our life through capitalist individualization. If childhood is where we learn language, then the only way we can actualize liberation under the confines of the world is to learn to speak differently. In the same way that the only way one can “enter” the kingdom of heaven is to become like a child, the only way we can “enter” liberation is to, in some sense, leave “adulthood” or what passes for our being as we age. I must emphasize that all of this takes place within material form. None of this regression is possible in the abstract. It relies upon the physical and biological capacity to speak.

Thus, I contend, in what I believe to be a shared pursuit of both Ford and Virno, that the only way to liberation is through an exodus of being, leaving behind and stripping away the linguistic assumptions of late capitalism. By returning to a state of being closest to the often untapped potential of speech, we can more easily learn new words, new phrases, and new public utterances which aid the quest for liberation. This process de-individualizes from the world in order to fashion a radical understanding of subjectivity over and against the assumptions made toward subjectivity through capitalism. As Ford states:

Exodus subverts the dominant ideology of individuality by posing childhood as a project that connects the individual back to the general intellect in its potentiality rather than its potential actualizations.

In short, in order to progress, we must first regress and mine the fields of potential we have long forgotten; we must become like children in order to retrace our steps in the pursuit of justice and liberation for all. As mentioned earlier, what passes for orthodoxy tends to reify existing structures and assumptions. Orthodoxy will not save us. We must remake the world entirely, and the only path toward this vision is through childlike inventiveness.

Let us all make the exodus from subjectivity, individualization, and being toward the horizon of pure potentiality, where like children, we have the chance to form ourselves.

An Ideal Blueprint: The Original Black Panther Party Model and Why It Should Be Duplicated

By Colin Jenkins

The rise of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late 1960s signified a monumental step toward the development of self-determination in the United States. In a nation that has long suffered a schizophrenic existence, characterized by a grand facade of "freedom, liberty and democracy" hiding what Alexis de Tocqueville once aptly described as "old aristocratic colours breaking through,"[1] the BPP model provided hope to not only Black Americans who had experienced centuries of inhumane treatment, but also to the nation's exploited and oppressed working class majority that had been inherently disregarded by both the founding fathers' framework and the predatory nature of capitalism.

As we grind our way through the tail-end of a neoliberal storm, it has become clear that in an age of extreme inequality, unabated corporate power, and overwhelming government corruption at all levels; we have a war on our hands. Not a war in the traditional international sense, but a domestic class war; one that has decimated our communities, our hopes for a better future, our children's educations, and our collective physical and mental well-being. The aggressors in this war are powerful - so much so that resistance often seems futile, and the opposition insurmountable. Multi-trillion dollar financial institutions and multi-billion dollar corporations pulling the strings of the most powerful politicians - Presidents, Senators, Congress members, and Governors alike - all of whom have at their disposal the abilities to print money at will, control markets through fiscal and monetary policy, deploy powerful militaries anywhere in the world, and unleash militarized police forces to terrorize our neighborhoods.

Despite this juggernaut of an enemy, working-class resistance has not subsided. And although it took a proclaimed "economic crisis" to wake many from their slumber, developments within activist and direct action circles have been positive over the past half-decade. The Occupy movement sparked much-needed discourse on income inequality and corporate/government corruption while setting up the fight for a $15 minimum wage, which has caught on like wildfire throughout the country, and especially among the most vulnerable of the working class - low-wage service sector workers. Anti-war protestors who made their presence felt during the Bush administration - only to disappear after Obama's election - have begun to trickle back with the gradual realization that nothing has changed. And anti-capitalist political parties throughout the Left, though still small and splintered, have gained momentum and membership while successfully plugging into some mainstream working-class consciousness (Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative's rise in Seattle; the Black Autonomy Federation's regrouping of grassroots, anti-authoritarian struggle; the International Socialist Organization's ongoing solidarity with folks like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Ali Abunimah and Amy Goodman; the Socialist Party USA's growing relevance; and the Party for Socialism and Liberation's relentless battle in the trenches of anti-war, anti-police brutality, and anti-racist activism).

These developments, while positive in many respects, have ultimately been limited. Some of these limitations are due to external factors that continue to plague the American public: a general deficit in education and knowledge, a lack of class-conscious analysis, and the inundation of corporate media and propaganda, to name a few - all of which pose elements that are difficult, if not impossible, to control. Other limitations are due to internal factors which are largely controllable, such as organizational structures and approaches. It is regarding these internal shortcomings where the original Black Panther Party model becomes invaluable and should be held as a standard blueprint for all organizations and parties seeking revolutionary change.

The following is a list of attributes, both tangible and conceptual, that made the BPP an effective model for true liberty and self-determination; and, consequently, a substantial threat to the status quo of ever-strangling corporate and governmental power. Organizations and parties of today, whether through piecemeal or wholesale consideration, would do well to take this ideal mix into account.

Theoretical Foundation and Internationalism

Despite constant grumblings regarding the "inundation" and "worthlessness" of theory from within the modern Left, a glance at the operational effectiveness of the original BPP lends credence to its usefulness.

The BPP was firmly rooted in revolutionary political philosophy, most notably that of Marxism - a tool that is needed to understand and properly critique the very system which dominates us - capitalism. "Capitalist exploitation is one of the basic causes of our problem," explained one of the party's founders, Huey P. Newton, and "it is the goal of the BPP to negate capitalism in our communities and in the oppressed communities around the world."[2]

The BPP's ongoing exploration of theory allowed for the development of a crucial class component that perfectly balanced their fight against institutional racism. This helped create the notion that the fight for racial justice could not be won outside the confines of economic justice and class division, something revolutionary counterparts like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X would also eventually realize.

Stemming from Marxism was the method of and adherence to "dialectical materialism," which "precluded a static, mechanical application" of theory and allowed the party to adapt to the constantly developing environment while maintaining a mission based in class and racial oppression. "If we are using the method of dialectical materialism," argued Newton, "we don't expect to find anything the same even one minute later because one minute later is history." [3] Regarding the party's embrace of this method, Eldridge Cleaver noted, "we have studied and understand the classical principles of scientific socialism (and) have adapted these principles to our own situation for ourselves. However, we do not move with a closed mind to new ideas or information (and) know that we must rely upon our own brains in solving ideological problems as they relate to us." [4]

The Party's belief in "international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender" led them to form bonds with various minority and white revolutionary groups. "From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production." This approach was echoed by Fred Hampton, who urged all to resist fighting racism with racism, but rather with (working class) solidarity; and to resist fighting capitalism with "Black capitalism," but rather with socialism.

Through this theoretical base, "Newton and the BPP leadership organized with the intent of empowering the Black community through collective work," Danny Haiphong tells us. "Each concrete medical clinic, free breakfast program, and Panther school were organized to move community to confront the racist, capitalist power structure and embrace revolutionary socialism and communalism."

The Party's Ten-Point Program and platform, which evolved slightly over the course of several years, rested on demands that focused not only on historical roots to the daily injustices faced by Black Americans and oppressed communities, but also took on an international scope that allowed for understanding macro-systemic causes, and particularly those associated with capitalism. As Cornel West explains, "The revolutionary politics of the Black Panther Party linked the catastrophic conditions of local Black communities (with the disgraceful school systems, unavailable health and child care, high levels of unemployment and underemployment, escalating rates of imprisonment, and pervasive forms of self-hatred and self-destruction) to economic inequality in America and colonial or neocolonial realities in the capitalist world-system."[5]

"It was the politics of international radical solidarity ... Because of the tremendous hostility that the Vietnam War was generating, youth organizations in Germany, France and Sweden created solidarity committees for the BPP. We would travel back and forth; and they raised money for us. There were liberation movements in Africa who read our paper and contacted us," says Kathleen Cleaver. The Party even established its own embassy in Algeria, a nation that had no diplomatic ties with the United States at the time. With a firm understanding of political economy and geopolitics, the party possessed a "big picture approach" that has become a necessity, especially in today's world of globalization, neoliberalism, and multinational corporate power.

Praxis and Direct Action

"They (the people) can do anything they desire to do," Newton professed, "but they will only take those actions which are consistent with their level of consciousness and their understanding of the situation. When we raise their consciousness (through education), they will understand even more fully what they in fact can do, and they will move on the situation in a courageous manner. This is merging your theory with your practices." [6]

The BPP didn't just talk about change, they actively pursued it. Their presence was felt in the neighborhoods for which they lived and worked. They walked the streets, talked with folks, broke bread with neighbors, and cultivated a sense of community. Their numerous outreach efforts were well-planned, beautifully strategic, and always multi-pronged - combining basic and pleasant human interaction with education and revolutionary politics. They were the perfect embodiment of solidarity, often times rejecting notions of leadership and superiority to create a radical landscape where all were on equal footing. The sense of empowerment felt by all who came in contact with them was unmistakable.

In an effort to curb police brutality and the indiscriminate murders of black youth at the hands of racist police tactics, the party regularly deployed armed citizen patrols designed to evaluate the behaviors of police officers. They coordinated neighborhood watch programs, performed military-style marching drills, and studied basic protective manuevers to ensure measures of safety and self-preservation for citizens living in oppressed communities.

In January of 1969, in response to the malnutrition that plagued their communities, the party launched a "Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren" program, which was introduced at St. Augustine's church in Oakland, California. In a matter of a few months, the program had spread to other cities across the country. In April, the Black Panther newspaper reported on its progress and effectiveness:

The Free Breakfast for School Children is about to cover the country and be initiated in every chapter and branch of the Black Panther Party… It is a beautiful sight to see our children eat in the mornings after remembering the times when our stomachs were not full, and even the teachers in the schools say that there is a great improvement in the academic skills of the children that do get the breakfast. At one time there were children that passed out in class from hunger, or had to be sent home for something to eat. But our children shall be fed, and the Black Panther Party will not let the malady of hunger keep our children down any longer.

By year's end, the program had blanketed the country, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. To compliment this, the Party "launched more than 35 Survival Programs and provided community help such as education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to poor people." This type of tangible solidarity and assistance is needed today. Food drives, safety programs, neighborhood watch, and basic accessibility and assistance should not represent things that are beneath revolutionary politicking.

Intersectionality

Due to their solid theoretical framework, the Party was able to deploy a proto-intersectionality that allowed them to go beyond issues of racial oppression and police brutality in order to address broad roots and common causes. In doing so, they were able to redirect the emotional rage brought on by targeted racism and channel it into a far-reaching indictment of the system. This created the potential for broad coalitions and opened up avenues for unity and solidarity with revolutionary counterparts, especially with regards to Black women.

Despite stifling elements of misogyny and sexism, the emergence of women as key figures in the Black Power movement was ironically made possible through the BPP. One of the party's early leaders, Elaine Brown, pointed to a conscious effort on the part of female members to overcome patriarchy from within party lines. "A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant," explains Brown. "A woman asserting herself was a pariah… It was a violation of some Black Power principle that was left undefined. If a Black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding Black manhood."[7]

Leaders like Brown, despite carrying this heavy burden of being drawn into a fight within THE fight, were incredibly important to the party's mission and became highly influential members, local leaders, fierce orators, and public representatives for the party-at-large. Brown made impressive runs for Oakland City Council in 1973 and 1975, receiving 30% and 44% of the vote respectively. In 1977, she managed Lionel Wilson's Oakland mayoral campaign which resulted in Wilson becoming the city's first Black mayor.

Regarding the dynamics of sexuality and gender in the party, journalist and activist Annie Brown tells us:

The BPP had an open mind towards sexual expression as well as the roles women could play in social change organizations. The embrace of female empowerment and varied sexual identities within the party allowed for women like Angela Davis, to rise to prominent positions of power within the party while other radical organizations of the time such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and The Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) saved leadership roles for men, and forced women to remain in the background.

After addressing these early pockets of misogyny and hyper-masculinity, the party was shaped heavily by women, to the point where it "transformed gender roles in the Black Power movement," and paved the way for similar developments in other grassroots movements in the U.S. In researching for her forthcoming book, "What You've Got is a Revolution: Black Women's Movements for Black Power," Historian Ashley Farmer found the Party's newspaper regularly "defied gender roles by depicting women as strong, gun-toting revolutionaries," while female party members were heavily involved in setting "a community-focused revolutionary agenda that supported programs for daycare, groceries, and housing."

In addition to celebrating women as "tough revolutionaries," the newspaper included an "explicit focus on women's issues" throughout its publication. For years, Women Panthers assumed leadership roles and " turned toward local-level activism, providing food, housing, and health care in local black communities." The inclusion of women as active participants in the struggle was eventually, if not initially, embraced by founding members. As Historian Robyn Spencer writes, "Seale and Newton didn't exclude African-American women in their rhetoric or in their involvement. The message became: Black brothers and sisters unite for real social action."[8] This development within the party's evolution led to a membership that was majority (roughly two-thirds) female by the early-1970s, a desirable goal for a modern Left that still possesses a troublesome androcratic identity.

Discipline

Despite constant meddling from the FBI and its COINTELPRO program, which sought to "disrupt, confuse and create tension within the organization," the BPP's organizational structure was solidly built, baring a slight resemblance to that of the Nation of Islam. Some BPP chapters operated with military-like discipline, a quality that tends to be lacking on a loose and often times hyper-sensitive Left (even amongst Leninist organizations). This was accomplished with a good mix of horizontal leadership and chapter autonomy, which allowed for creativity, initiatives and actions throughout the organization, while also maintaining the discipline necessary for taking broad action and staying focused on the big picture.

The party recognized the severity of the situation for oppressed and working-class communities within a racist and capitalist system. The system's inherently predatory nature regarding social and economic issues provided a glimpse of a society based in class division, and the daily brutalization of communities of color at the hands of the police confirmed the presence of an all-out class war. In this sense, the party organized for this purpose - equipping themselves with ideological ammo, building poor and working-class armies through community outreach and education, arming themselves for self-defense, and operating their mission with a high degree of strategy and discipline.

Mao Zedong's revolutionary military doctrine, "Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention," was highly influential in the party's daily operations. These "rules of engagement" emphasized obedience to the needs of oppressed peoples as well as conducting actions in a respectable and honorable manner (Be polite when speaking; Be honest when buying and selling; Return all borrowed articles; Pay compensation for everything damaged; Do not hit or swear at others; Do not damage crops; Do not harass females; and Do not mistreat prisoners). "There were some aspects of Chairman Mao's thought that had helpful and sensitive application for the life of the Panthers in the ghetto," explained Cleaver.[9]

In addition to Mao's "little red book," the party made Che Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare" required reading in all of its political education classes. Recognizing the similarities between the Black struggle in America and the struggle of the colonized in many parts of the world, party members studied anti-colonial resistance and Regis Debray's foco theory of revolution, which posited the idea that "vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus (in Spanish, foco) for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection." While the BPP didn't apply this in the same manner as a revolutionary peasantry would in taking up arms against an imperial force, they were able to use many points as a foundation for unity and self-defense, if not merely for inspiration in battling forces of oppression. Said Newton:

… all the guerilla bands that have been operating in Mozambique and Angola, and the Palestinian guerillas who are fighting for a socialist world. I think they all have been great inspirations for the Black Panther Party… they are examples of guerilla bands. The guerillas who are operating in South Africa (against Apartheid) and numerous other countries all have had great influence on us. We study and follow their example."

This disciplined approach allowed the party to establish clear targets for opposition, while also dissuading reactionary behaviors that were dangerously counterproductive and counter-revolutionary. An example of this came in a message released to members through the organizational newspaper in 1968. The message was in response to news of frequent quarrels with hippies:

"Black brothers stop vamping on the hippies. They are not your enemy. Your enemy, right now, is the white racist pigs who support this corrupt system. Your enemy is the Tom nigger who reports to his white slavemaster every day. Your enemy is the fat capitalist who exploits your people daily. Your enemy is the politician who uses pretty words to deceive you. Your enemy is the racist pigs who use Nazi-type tactics and force to intimidate black expressionism. Your enemy is not the hippies. Your blind reactionary acts endanger THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY members and its revolutionary movements. WE HAVE NO QUARREL WITH THE HIPPIES. LEAVE THEM ALONE. Or - THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY will deal with you."

Such focus is crucial and should be a primary goal for a modern Left that is often intensely and frustratingly sectarian.

An All-Inclusive, Working-Class Orientation

Perhaps the most valuable of the BPP's attributes was its common acceptance and inclusion of the most disenfranchised and oppressed of the working classes - the unemployed, the poor, and those alienated by the criminal justice system through racist and classist laws and law enforcement practices. This approach stood in contrast to the overly-Eurocentric package that housed orthodox Marxism, and openly defied the highly romanticized, lily white version of working-class identity espoused by many Leftist organizations throughout history - often symbolized by the white, chiseled, "blue-collar" man wielding a hammer.

Over the years, Marx's assessment and discarding of the "lumpenproletariat" - a population that he described as "members of the working-class outside of the wage-labor system who gain their livelihoods through crime and other aspects of the underground economy such as prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers, and gamblers" - had been accepted by many on the Left. However, the BPP's familiarity with Zedong and Guevara led them away from this commonly accepted notion, and their philosophy paralleled that of Frantz Fanon, who in his ongoing analysis of neocolonialism, deemed the lumpen to be "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people."

The BPP recognized similar dynamics within the United States - particularly the relationship between Black, poor, and disenfranchised populations and the power structure - and viewed this as a microcosm of international colonialism. In their eyes, the American "peasantry" wasn't tilling fields and cultivating crops - it was the homeless lying in the streets, the unemployed standing on the corners, the racially disenfranchised left with no options in life, and the unlawfully imprisoned masses behind bars. They saw potential in society's castaways and embraced the idea of a revolutionary class made up of displaced workers who were never given a chance to participate in the labor market.

Newton, particularly, was a firm believer in the revolutionary potential of the 'Black lumpenproletariat' in the United States, and viewed this notion as an important challenge to the "bourgeois nature" of the Southern Civil Rights movement, which he believed had become completely reliant on a reformist-minded, Black middle-class leadership that was too concessionary and did not properly represent a revolutionary working-class orientation.

Today, at a time when over 20 million able-bodied Americans have been forced into the "underground economy," and another 2.5 million are incarcerated, the idea of drawing society's castaways toward class-conscious political movements is ripe. Narratives that focus on the erosion of the "middle class" are not only insufficient, they're irresponsible. Our true struggle lies with the multi-generational poor, the unemployed, and the imprisoned victims of the draconian "Drug War" and prison industrial complex.

A Winning Formula

The BPP model could be summed up with the following formula: (THEORY + INTERSECTIONALITY) + (PRAXIS + EDUCATION) = CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS = REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE. Like no other, the party successfully blended a heavy academic foundation with a non-academic approach, using community outreach programs to serve basic needs while also educating and promoting class consciousness. Their crucial "Survival Programs" sought to satisfy immediate Maslovian needs without losing sight of the ultimate goal of uprooting and transforming society from below.

"All these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problems," explained Newton. "That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution. We say that the survival program of the Black Panther Party is like the survival kit of a sailor stranded on a raft. It helps him to sustain himself until he can get completely out of that situation. So the survival programs are not answers or solutions, but they will help us to organize the community around a true analysis and understanding of their situation. When consciousness and understanding is raised to a high level then the community will seize the time and deliver themselves from the boot of their oppressors." [10]

The party also wasn't afraid to display physical prowess and utilize the art of intimidation in their struggle. In fact, they saw this as a crucial component necessary to counter reactionary and senseless violence from racist citizens and police officers. They provided security escorts for Betty Shabazz following Malcolm's death, and sent thirty armed members to the California State capitol to protest the Mulford Act. This approach, coupled with similar tactics of self-defense used by the Nation of Islam, proved to be a vital compliment to the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights movement, ultimately allowing its "more palatable elements" to secure legislative victories. Furthermore, it challenged the notion that reactionary and racist conservatives had a monopoly on intimidation and violence - a notion that has gained an increasingly strong foothold over time, and should be challenged again.

The BPP's model is needed today. A firm foundation of knowledge, history, internationalism, and political economy is needed. A concerted effort to bond with and assist our working-class communities and disenfranchised sisters and brothers is needed. An infusion of authentic, working-class politics which shifts the focus from 'middle-class erosion' to 'multi-generational disenfranchisement' is needed. The blueprint is there. Let's use it.

Notes

[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Penguin Books edition, 2004: p. 58

[2] The Huey P. Newton Reader, Seven Stories Press, 2002. p 229

[3] Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy. Routledge, 2001, p. 30.

[4] The Huey P. Newton Reader, p 230

[5] The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs, the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. Edited and with an afterword by David Hilliard. University of New Mexico Press, 2008

[6] The Huey P. Newton Reader, pp. 228-229.

[7] Johnnetta B. Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities. Random House, NY: 2003. p 92

[8] Robyn C. Spencer, "Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California," Journal of Women's History, 20 no. 1 (2008), 3.

[9] Cleaver and Katsiaficas, p. 30.

[10] To Die for the People: The writings of Huey P. Newton, City Lights Books, 2009.