Can someone sum up what is this special brand of communism of the black pathers? I haven't figured it out yet.
Leninist- Marxists.
Maoism with the peasant focus replaced with a lumpen focus
An urban style of Maoist community organising, aswell as some original ideas like intercommunalism and the mobilisation of the lumpen. Its mostly interesting to me as a really successful and original movement in the modern first world; they got a lot further to revolution than any 'Communist Party' did and I think there's a lot to be learned from their ways
Maoist, i remember seeing a Black Panther poster that said "Maoism makes life equal!" They did alot to build up structure in Black and low-income neighbor hoods.
As we know, Maoism worked in China because of its focus on Confusiousism. What social aspect of the black culture, could the panthers had used to motivate the community in the way Mao did with the peasantry?
It should be noted, though, that Newton's view of "lumpenproletarian" included what we would call the working poor today. Also, with Newton's development of Intercommunalism, the Party started moving away from Maoism as an ideology and developing its own distinct branch of "Marxism-Leninism".
always thought they where Marxist.
The panthers were a mix of black nationalism and communism. There were parts of them that were very interested in Maoism, and that promoted Maoism. For example the early panthers sold red books on the UC Berkeley campus to raise money for their first weapons. Later, the struggle got more complex: as they grew rapidly outside the bay area, there was also an attempt to influence them from the Communist Party. Unable to simply come out and oppose Mao, those most influenced by the CP promoted Kim Il Sung (as a kind of Asian revosionist anti-Mao with strong nationalist creds). I worked with the panthers during those years in a couple cities. And I even heard some try to say "The white communists like Mao, but the black communist like Kim Il Sung." It was Eldridge (not Huey) who developed the theory of the Lumpen (which in their analysis included the lower section of the working class... as miles says "the working poor" along with those in and out of crime, pimping, drug dealing and prison. There is a lot more to say about this of course....
That is, the BPP had a bit of Maoism and also new or different old things in its ideology and program. kasama-rl, can you message me about the opposition of Kim Il Sung to Mao?
we can discuss it here if you want rodrigo.... what do you want to know? In general, Kim Il Sung claimed to be a communist (and even at times took distance from Soviet-style politics in a way that was perceived as "anti-revisionist.") But if you examined his ideology (Juche) closely, it emerged that it was a kind of extreme nationalism (sometimes even bordering on racism in its exclusivity) plus a lot of Japanese style emperor worship. (His ideology even borrowed symbolism directly from Japanese feudal mythology about magic mountains and flying horses.... etc.) At a time when the CPUSA was seeking to make inroads in the Black Panther Party (infiltrate is not to strong a word, but it has anticommunist associations so I won't use it) the CP held classes for leaders of local Panther chapters... (it was CPer William Patterson holding the classes on "Marxist philosophy" and the leader of our local Panther chapter went to the class in Chicago... to study Cornforth's books on dialectica materialism, but... really... to be won over to CP revisionism.) When this local leader came back, it was interesting to engage what he had been trained in. Along with a very mechanical approach (rote-learning really) of a codified version of materialist dialectics, he had been told 'Kim Il Sung is for Black people, Mao Zedong is for white people" -- which was a stupid argument, but clearly was a way of trying to create a division between the Black Panther Party (nationally) and the multinational communist groups that were forming along Maoist lines (largely the Revolutionary Union that I was a member of). The local panther leader was not won over the the CP view... but was (like many panthers) rather demoralized by 1973 by the intense line struggle, repression and infighting within his party (and soon ended up in prison for a number of years.) My point is that Kim Il Sung was used as a banner by the CPUSA revisionists as a counter-narrative -- against the emergence of anti-revisionist Maoism. And as an appeal to those strongly attracted to third world nationalism (neither Mao nor Kim were white, of course, but the CP tried to claim, again, that Mao was somehow for white people, and Kim was somehow more for Black nationalists.)
