The Huey P. Newton Reader

Knowing how to struggle is the essence of winning. Recognizing ills is fundamental; recognizing how to overcome ills is mandatory. If we acknowledge the U.S. rulers as the prime oppressors, not only of America’s internal masses but also of the world’s people, then we must decipher the phenomena that allow for world domination so that it can be overcome.

To clearly discuss this crucial issue—crucial to the survival of us all—we have only to observe the form that this U.S. world domination takes. Consider the U.S. protein industry for example. The U.S. capitalists can yield more milk, cattle, and heifers than anyone, because of advancements in the biological and husbandry sciences. With such advancements, man is becoming less dependent upon the natural forces of nature. This particular example alone demonstrates how the crucial issue of our time is the control of technology.

Technological advancements have been gained through expropriation from the people, including slavery proper but also chattel slavery followed by wage slavery. With this expropriation, a reservoir of information was created so that Americans could produce the kinds of experimental agencies and universities that created the information explosion. Every serious thinker knows that scientific and technological developments do not grow in a straight line. They develop exponentially by leaps and bounds.

We thus see that it is because of the expropriation of the world that the technology exists, and the reactionary intercommunalists—the U.S. capitalists/imperialists—are able to dominate world markets. They set the pace, enabling themselves to discredit socialism and communism via foreign aid made available—or unavailable, as the case may be— to developing countries. American capitalists discredit wars of liberation, especially the establishment of what we call provisional revolutionary governments, by pouring in the very bounty they stole into the puppet administrations they set up. This is why they keep talking about “Vietnamization”; because, they say, “We will supply them.” They can supply them.

It is for these reasons that I always make reference to a Latin phrase: trespass de bonis asportatis. In the old English law, this referred to a particular kind of trespass that included the expropriation of someone else’s goods. Usually, it was a charge made against landlords, who had illegally seized a tenant’s possessions. The landlord might ship these belongings to a storage facility or distribute the tenant’s articles as he saw fit. In many respects, this is precisely what the U.S. rulers have done with the goods of the people of the world; not with the lock and key of the landlord, but with the gun. This abundance of bounty from robbery has built a monster of technology. In the future, however, this will be good for us, because the same supercapitalists will be our supply sergeants. We will feed India, and all of Africa will spring up as one breadbasket.

Yet this leads us to the question: Why does Africa need contributions from a small continent like North America? Simply put, it is the result of the technology question. If so-called revolutionists would start thinking in terms of this relationship, they would see that Africa will blossom and spread her wings, but only spread her wings when we learn to get from her natural resources a maximum yield. With the poor land in the United States, American capitalists produce more than Africa is producing now. However, this phenomenon develops only after they break the people and expropriate the raw materials and wealth. At that point, the technology is applied, at leisure, to the spoils. The loot is abstracted and removed to the technological institutes.

Another question arises: Why do the tyrants fight? They fight simply because of the need of the ruling, reactionary circle of the United States to sell the products of their technology to more and more people for capital gains. Consequently, they fight in Vietnam not for the land or for the raw materials found there. Rather, they fight because they need the people! Western capitalists need people in order to have buyers at too-high prices for their now overexpanding market. As socialism spreads inexorably, human resources are applied in order to uplift and benefit all, which cuts out the middle man, the capitalist. The capitalists therefore will not stand for it, because once he is cut out, the whole exploitive warfare state is doomed. If you do not have a buyer for all of the consumer goods that you produce, then what is the purpose of producing more? The monopolist wants himself as the only producer, and he wants the entire world as his consumer. If he cannot sell to you, then he will fight any force that resists him in order to push his product upon you. He will perform this task in an attempt to make it impossible for you to resist: that is, to make you an offer you cannot refuse.

The situation is a technology question, because the answer to the dilemma lies in the control of that vehicle to which we have all contributed through the exploitation of our lives and labor. Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in particular, could have shared with their brethren in the Western world. They would have been willing to share.

How do we settle it? The settlement does not lie with the liberation of territory, per se, even though we do not stand against that. The Black Panther Party would certainly support the liberation of any territory by those with the correct vision or ideology. We would not support, however, the liberation of territory strictly for the purpose of allowing a national bourgeoisie to take the place of the colonizer. Besides, the national bourgeoisie cannot even exist without relying upon the Empire. He needs trade; he needs support to keep him intact, or else the people will struggle again. Therefore, if it is a question of liberating a geographical location in order to free the people, then that struggle must be waged with the idea that freeing the land will free the people only to the degree that they will not have to consume what they do not want to consume, and to the degree of providing the people with the ability to make strong coalitions to develop their resources and technology. This would position everyone to enact the actual overthrow of that force that oppresses all of us. When the people unite for that purpose—to gain the strength necessary to move against the reactionary control of the technology, in order to expropriate it and then make it available to all—then the question of liberating land will be placed in proper perspective.

If the question of liberating land is not placed in this context, then those who struggle run the risk of engaging in meaningless battle and, worse, failure. The most devastating war of our time is the Vietnam conflict. If we look closely at the meaning of this war, we might ask what does “Vietnam will win” mean? It is inevitable that U.S. military force will be expelled from Vietnamese soil, the ultimate alternative being the complete genocide of the Vietnamese people. Projecting this inevitability, let us consider the question of “socialist construction” in Vietnam, which necessarily includes the developing of the Vietnamese market in relation to world trade. As far as the country’s future ability to trade and sell on the market, it is a very dismal picture, especially when you compare it to the state of California, and what that state can overproduce and sell abroad for a lesser price. The cost to the nation or territory with less technology—to produce, to refine, and to ship—would obviously be greater than the cost for such a process to one in possession of advanced means. Thus, even with the liberation of land, the Vietnamese will remain dependent. There is an undeniable interconnection to everything among all the territories in the world. That is why we say that there are no longer nations; there are only communities under siege by the reactionaries. This is where we get the term reactionary intercommunalism.

The picture I draw is not a very pretty image. As for the people in Vietnam, I would predict that, after the so-called liberation, the average per capita income will likely be much lower than the lowest echelon in the United States. Of course, the American people look at that situation and remark that our Empire, with its overexpanded capitalism, is better than what they arranged for themselves over there. Further, it might be said that we could have built more hospitals and schools for them. Sadly, this is the truth. However, the sadness is due not only to the overexpansion of capitalism, which turned into imperialism and then into an Empire with its reactionary intercommunalism, but to Americans themselves enjoying a higher quality of life than everybody else, at the expense of everybody else.

The only way to really liberate Vietnam, if not the whole world, is to crush the U.S. reactionary ruling circle, thereby making the technological vehicle available to everyone. This is what the concept of “peaceful coexistence” means: peaceful co-optation. If the freeing of the land is part of a people’s strategy, then I have no criticism. If national liberation wars are just strategies to mobilize the unconscious peasants or workers, I would agree with that, too. However, if the people are laboring under fantasies that they will be liberated through troop or arms withdrawal with the U.S. reactionary ruling circle staying intact, then they are living in romantic finalism. By their own conclusion, they will condemn their very liberty, because the United States does not need their territory. That is not the question. The people of the oppressed territories might fight on the land question and die over the land question. But for the United States, it is the technology question, and the consumption of the goods that the technology produces!

The picture becomes even more grim in the face of the open agreements recently made between the two most powerful countries in the world: the United States and the Soviet Union. Arms and trade agreements between these two monsters can only make clearer the predicament that the world’s people face, especially the people of the Third World. This ultimate compromise on the part of the First Workers State presents an even more difficult situation for those engaged in so-called national liberation struggles. They must ask, “Does peaceful co-existence socialism work?”

Russia’s first mistake came in the form of an incorrect analysis: that socialism could co-exist peacefully with capitalist nations. It was a blow to the communities of the whole world that led directly to the crippling of the people’s ability to oppose capitalist/imperialist aggression and aggression’s character. Remember, the capitalists claim that as soon as you agree to accept their trade and fall under their economic ideology, then they will agree to have peaceful co-existence.

The Russians allowed this to happen through naïveté or treachery. Regardless of how this came about, they damaged the ability of the Third World to resist. They could have given the Third World every technique available to them long ago. With the high quality of Soviet development at a time when the United States was less advanced than it is today, the Russians could have built up the necessary force to oppose imperialism. Now, all the they can do is whimper like whipped dogs and talk about peaceful co-existence so that they will not be destroyed. This presents the world with the hard fact that the United States is the only state power in the world. Russia has become, like all other nations, no more than a satellite of the United States. American rulers do not care about how much Russians say that they are the Soviets, as long as Ford can build its motor company in their territory.

In reference to this, I would like to quote two statements:

Wherever death may surprise us, it will be welcome, provided that this our battle cry reaches some receptive ear, that another hand stretch out to take up weapons, and that other men come forward to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato of machine guns and new cries of battle and victory.

Let the flag under which we fight represent the sacred cause of redeeming humanity, so that to die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil, to name only the scenes of today’s armed struggles, be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, or even a European.

Each drop of blood spilled in a country under whose flag one has not been born constitutes experience for those who survive to apply later in the liberation struggle of their own country, and each nation liberated is a step toward victory in the battle for the liberation of one’s own country: Each and every one of us will pay on demand his part of sacrifice, knowing that altogether we are getting ever closer to the new man whose figure is beginning to appear.

—CHE GUEVARA

It is our goal to be in every single country there is. We look at a world without any boundary lines. We don’t consider ourselves basically American. We are multi-national; and when we approach a government that doesn’t like the United States, we always say, “Who do you like; Britain, Germany? We carry a lot of flags.”

—ROBERT STEVENSON Ford’s Executive President for Automotive Operations, Business Week

We have difficulties selling a progressive political line to not only the hard hats but also to blacks. It is because the evil of the reactionary ruling circle is often hard to pinpoint. It becomes more difficult when those people in the proletarian group, those who are fully employed, are happy just to have a job with a higher wage than anyplace in the world. The U.S. ruling circle has succeeded in what Hitler attempted to do. His vision was to rob Peter to pay Paul, even though he used the Jews at that time, like white Americans used blacks, to build the state. He expropriated from the Jews right in their own country, making other Caucasians hate them. This was all done as a forward thrust to shackle the world, and, in turn, raise the economy of Germany. The average German supported the Nazis, because Hitler was giving them something they had never had before. And they were not concerned at what expense.

Although the United States participated in Hitler’s defeat, American capitalists took up the same Weltanschaung, the same line. They have raised the standard of living, using the same method Hitler instituted, beginning with the generals and “crooks-in-arms,” what we call our military contractors, or our military states such as “California-Lockheed.” As U.S. capitalists began raising the standard of living for everybody, they even became somewhat disinterested in their own political line. They may even disguise their fascist moves by making big circuses of political administrators in the arena of human rights. Still, the capitalist keeps the shackles on the workers. The situation becomes highly complex, for the U.S. capitalist has been able to spread out his entire operation. You put together his machinery in parts, thus you are not building a bomb, you are building a transistor. They raise the standard of living through transistors in order to further rip-off/sell its goods to the workers and the people of the world. This began with industrial advancement, going arm-in-arm with forcing people to buy.

As Hitler accommodated the German people with the idea that he would start to minimize the forward assault (offensive; aggressive wars), because that would get them into trouble, so the U.S. capitalist will accommodate “stop” the war, as long as he still controls all the world. The Empire will make the people of the world adjust themselves to whatever kind of exploitation is required for consumption, because he is building a gigantic technological empire, starting with the advancements in the latest war equipment. Just as the German people saluted “Heil Hitler!” we now have the average U.S. worker, the hard hat, waving the American flag.

What would Hitler have done? “Let’s stop the crucifixion of the Jews.” The United States will stand for civil rights, and “stop the crucifixion of blacks,” because now the imperialists can let blacks share in it. The U.S. capitalists will say, “We will continue to rip-off Southeast Asia; we’ll continue ripping off Latin America and Africa.” With the acceptance of the sharing will come the end of our whole political-type ideological war, because the people of this nationalist empire will have a bid in the shackling of the whole world. This is the reason why politics at this stage is so complicated. For in reality, it is non-politics. It does not matter who takes over, as long as the people with the big interest, those that get the big money, can pay off enough people to keep them quiet. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it in World War II. He delivered a job and a guaranteed income based on the war effort. Everybody rallied to the war. Americans, black and white, who had hated the government only two years before that, turned right around and saluted.

At present, however, corporate America can boast that if you are a Communist, you can run for president. What they will not add is that this is so because the president is relatively unimportant. The technological question is unopposed—as far as who benefits from it, because we all do on one level or another—that so it becomes very difficult to deal with. It is difficult for us to move against that mythical, politically reactionary ruling circle, or to point out the target, because it relates back to the statement that we have to deal with in the end, that “Ye, who is not guilty, cast the first stone.” It is difficult to cast the stone, because those holding the stone can say, “Will I be out of a job; I’m looking for a job. Will I join the forces that cannot hire me at all? Will I be fired from General Motors?”

The problem, finally, is at what point will the centralization, coupled with the welfare state, no longer be useful in its reactionary form? Moreover, how long will it take the people to see it? Americans are in a position of dependency on the people outside the U.S., those who are getting ripped off. How long will the U.S. imperialists have the ability to pull the masses? They have already shot down the First Workers State. Now it seems that even the Second Workers State is threatened. The world is in a predicament, and we do not have a world policy. We, the people, do not have a worldview. Why is Ford one of the biggest philanthropic foundations in the world? Is it because they are kindhearted? If you go to Ford, you can get almost any kind of program you want, in relation to social welfare or a job program. You show them anything that makes sense, and as long as you do not oppose the economic principle of the United States, they will fund it. We just read Ford’s policy statement, “We carry many flags …. We don’t even consider ourselves America…. We consider ourselves multi-national…. We don’t respect boundary lines ….”

American leaders under the right circumstances will support civil rights. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all stood behind the quickest solution to the so-called problems of racial discrimination. They even promoted equal employment. We have all reaped benefits, whether or not these crumbs were given intentionally, and it is the result of having enjoyed these benefits that U.S. rulers are in the position to allow a little “liberation.” Nevertheless, these benefits affect not only the people inside the United States but also the people of the world, including the so-called socialist world. They, too, are bombarded with the same imperialist propaganda, leading socialist people to question the very concept of the new state, the so-called revolutionary socialist state, that cannot provide what the United States can through consumer trade. In fact, there is already a problem within these socialist territories relating to the people’s consistent support of the ideology. Even the strength of the people to fight the “introduction” of U.S. capitalists to foreign markets is beginning to crumble.

In other words, a worker in Korea may presently accept the state’s drive to work harder, to push production for everybody. The United States government is saying the same thing: “We’re producing for everybody; we’re giving out the goods.” The difference, however, is everybody in America has a television, a car, and a relatively decent place to live. Even the lowest of the low do not live anywhere near the level of the poor of the world. Even the average person, the average “nigger,” in the United States does not live as low as the average Chinese. Those who support the so-called socialist states will begin to be swayed by the introduction of a U.S. consumer market into their socialist countries. This becomes an even greater problem, because reactionary intercommunalism would then infect the very people of that part of the world, as well as blacks and other people in this country. It is a technology people question, and that is why the United States will fight hard for an introduction to new markets abroad.

The U.S. imperialists have a serious problem presently in their efforts to reach that point of commerce. It is why they set up puppet governments; so that when the introduction comes, they will be able to pay off those people under the reins of control in the first place. They need a reliable force of compradors, as it were, and cannot afford to pay-off everyone to the point of complete acquiescence. If they can make this first step, they will have the necessary force to keep the people in line. After all, they cannot send U.S. troops everywhere.

The situation in the First Workers State provides the best example of a struggle for sovereign territory deteriorated into a struggle to accommodate the needs and desires of the people with concessions to U.S. technology, its might, and the infiltration, thereby, of imperialist ideology. One need only take a look at the Russian people today—the so-called “socialist people” hopping around for tips. Or consider those people who went through the 1917 Revolution, only to end up dreaming of mink coats and two-car garages.

It is important to realize that there is not so much of a deterioration, for the continuity is not broken. If one recalls Lenin’s statement in 1917, when he had had trouble mobilizing a basically peasant country, one can see why and how such a development occurred. In order to move the peasants against the feudal lords, he said something for which many scholars criticize him, because it created a problem for Stalin when he had to try to nationalize the farms. First, Lenin said, “Break thy shackles, want and dread. Bread is freedom; freedom bread.” However, even with this slogan, the peasants could not be moved. Finally Lenin said, in essence, “The Land is Ours, Seize the Land.” When he said that, the peasants rose up, like a mighty storm. Later, when it was necessary to actualize this, Stalin ended up slaughtering many peasants, because they demanded, “The Land is Ours!” Stalin attempted to make the people understand that it was necessary to collectivize the land in order to build the necessary industrial state. His methods may be criticized but are not the issue here. For it was after Stalin that the Russian state began to fall into its present condition of decay.

With such information, one can begin to realize the dialectics of the entire structure. We would not be in trouble at the moment had liberated territories built up their land and overthrown the United States with proletarian international revolution, intercommunal revolution. It did not happen, and a great deal is dependent upon the American people understanding this complex nature of the matter in order to move forward.