Blood in My Eye *
Part One

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Broop iNn My EYE
LPart One

GEORGE JACKSON
To THE BLACK COMMUNIST YOUTH
To THEIR FATHERS -

WE WILL NOW CRITICIZE THE UNJUST WITH THE WEAPON.
CONTENTS

Preface
Gregory Armstrong

Blood in My Eye
Gearge Jackson

12
My dear only surviving son,

Iwent to Mount Vernon August 7ch, 1971, o visic the grave
site of my heart your keepers murdered in cold disregard
for life.

His grave was supposed to be behind your grandfachers
and grandmother’s. But I couldn' find it. There was no
marker. Just mowed grass. The story of our past. I sent the
keeper a blank check for a headstone — and two extra sites
~ blood in my eye!!!

PREFACE

In his ineroduction to George Jackson's Soledad Brother, Jean Genet
wrote, “Nothing has been willed, written or composed for the sake of
a book .. it i both a weapon of liberation and a poem of love.” This
book, too, is a weapon, but one encirely willed and purposeful. Tt was
completed barely a week before the author's murder in San Quentin
on Auguse 21, 1971, It was sent out of the Adjustmene Center with
specific instructions for ies publication, almost as if the author knew
that he would never live to sec its appearance in prine. Deseribing it
a few days before the end, George said, *I'm not a writer, bu all of
s me, the way I wane it, the way I see it” What he saw and what he
waneed, the central passion of his lie, was war, the revolutionary war
ofthe people agains their oppressors, war which grew out of “perfect
love and perfect hate™

“I've been in rebellion all my life” he wroe in one of his leters. For
4 young black growing up in the ghetto, the frse rebellion is always
erime. George’ first experience with Amerikan law came at fourteen
when he was arrested in Chicago for stealing a purse. From then on,
his life was 2 constant suceession of arrests, uvenile homes, paroles and
more arrests. At age eighteen he was convieted of stealing $70.00 from
a gasstation. His lawyer promised him that he would make 2 deal with
the D.A. if George confessed to second degree robbery. He told George
it was his only chance because he had a record. “Don' put the court to
the expense of a rial, and they will give you county time Inseead he
was given an indeterminate sentence - one year to life

The firse ime [ was put in prison, i was juse like dying, Just o xist
acallcals for some very heavy psychic adjustment. Being captured
was the firse of my fears. It may have been an acquired characteristic
buile up over centuries of black bondage.!

The tuming point in his life came when I mee Mars, Lenin, Trotsky.
Engels, and Mao....and they redeemed me. For the firs fou years,
Iieudied nothing bue economics and milicary ideas. [ met the black
guersillas, George “Big Jake” Lewis, and James Carr, W.C. Nolen,
Bill Cheistmas, Tony Gibson and many others. We ateempred to

1 Soledad Brtber: The Prison Leters o Geoge Jckion.

PART ONE 7
transform the black eriminal mentality inco a black revolutionary
mentaliey.

He wasn'e alone in his discovery. At the same time, other prisoners
were just beginning to discover Mars, Fanon and Mao, who provided
them with 2 new way of regarding themselves and heir seruggle - 3
new seandard of moral judgmen. “I have been in rebellion all my life.
Tjuse dide'e know it The social insights of Mars and others made
it possible for them to have a sense of themsclves as members of the
human community, members of a revolutionary brotherhood.

In prison, commitment o revolution has special meaning anda special
price. To be identified as a revolutionary by the prison authoritics
means an almost permanene denial of parole, separation from the other
prisoners, soltary confinement (usually in masimum security wings of
the prison), transfrs from one prison to another, beatings, bad food.
I brings down on you the entire punitive and repressive force of 3
completely totalicarian system.

Inside prison George practiced a very special kind of devotion and
love. When convices talk about him, they often use the term *for real”
Many inmates *murder mouth” and “sell wolf tickets” they do a lot
of heavy talking, but when it comes down to the point of action, they
disappear. George, however, was as good as his word. Whenever he
made a statement of some kind. it would be followed by action. If you
were the victim of a racial artack inside prison, there was good chance
that he would en up fighting for you at your side.

Most of his “offenses” inside prison — the reasons why he was forced
to spend over seven years in various forms of solitary confinement,
including the infamous strip cells in Soledad's “0” wing, the reasons
why he was never paroled ~ involve his defense of other inmates. What
made him particularly dangerous to the prison authorities was this
enormous talent as an organizer.

21bid

3 A6by 8 cellwith no prorection from wet weather, deprived o al iems wich
which he migh clean himself forced o catinche scench and lkh caused by
his v body wastes, llowed o wash his hands only once very ive days and
required o slcp on a siffcanvas mas plced diccedyon the cold canvas lor.

s BLOOD IN MY EYE
We have gor to be togecher. We have got to be in 2 position to tell
the pig that if he docsnt serve the food when its warm and pass
out the scouring powder on time, everybody on the tie i going to
throw something at him, then things will change and life will be
easier. You don't gee that kind of unity when youre fighting with
each other. I always telling the brothers that some of those whites
are willing to work with us against the pigs. All they gor to do is
stop talking honky. When the races seare fighting, all you have is
‘one maniac group against another. That's just what the pigs wane.*

It is o coincidental thar the need for unity among revolutionary
groups is one of the major themes of this book.

Try to remember how you fel at the most depressing moment of
yourlfe, the moment of your decpest dejection. That is how I feel
all the time. No matter what level my conseiousness may be, aslecp.
awake, in between. The thing s there and it keeps me moving, pins
myeye to the ball, uptighe, twenty-four hours a day”

“Locked down” inside his cell, George devoted himself to study. His
painfully acquired scholaeship in the fields of Marian economics and
history sivaled that of most college professors. But sometimes, for days
on end, reality eself would vanish from his cell.

Twould be siting in a special locked isolacion cell, sometimes even
with the lock welded shut, and there would be no one to ealk to -
st che sound of sereaming voices. And beeause there is no human
contact, you depend on books. No contace with people. Special
lock welded on the door. Nobody around. I'm sercely by mysclf.
The only friend I had was a book. Sometimes I find myself talking
outloud to the author. [d sort of wake myself up and I'd hear myself
talking o this other person. I guess it was like some kind of wish
fulfllment. When Im asleep at nighe, [ seill find myself talking to
those guys

Typing laboriously on a plasic typewriter, George published position
papers which deale with prison life and revolutionary politics from a
Maxian point of view.

4 Unpublished inteview:
5 Unpublished incerview

6 Unpublished interview

PART ONE 9
He paid a heavy price for his activities. When the prison couldn' break
him through solicary confinement, they attempred to have him killed
by other inmates: “They were forced to frame me and set me up for the
final kill” The word was out among white convicts: *Get Jackson. It
will do you some good” Once he remarked that there had been ewenty
secups on his if inside prison. It ot so that when he lef hiscell he was
always ready to parry an actack. But nothing could mitigate the pain of
confinement. And the years stretched out and a whole decade passed.
In the context of his ife what happened next had a grim inevieabily

On January 13, 1970,a new exercise yard was opened in the maimum
security wing of Soledad Prison. Eighe whites and seven blacks were
skin-searched and sent out into the yard. Predieeably a fight broke
out berween the whites and the blacks. Without any waning, a tower
guard who had a reputation as a crack shot began to fire. He fired four
times and chree black inmates were killed. One white prisoner was
wounded in the groin by a shot that ricocheted.

Black survivors claim that one of the wounded men bled to death on
the conerete floor. Three days later the Monterey County Grand Jury
found that the killings were justifiable homicide. Less than halfan hour
after this verdict was announced on the prison radio, a white guard,
(ot the guard who had fired the shors) was found beaten to death.
Al the conviets in the wing where the killing took place were put
ineo isolation. On February 28, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and
George Jackson were formally charged with the murder.

The prison authorities accused George because, i theie words, “he was
the only one who could have done it With their total power over the
inmate population — the power of parole, solitary confinement, the
power of life and death — they were certain they could get the kind of
estimony they needed when the rial came.

When George's parents came to visic him they used to bring his younger
brother Jonathan. George and Jonathan would gd offto one side of the
visiing room and whisper together. What went on beeween them can
beseen’in this book in the excerpts from Jonathan's correspondence. At
the age of sixteen Jonathan had an exersordinary insight nto the nature
of guersilla warfare. In some of his letters, George was later o refer to
Jonachan as his alrer cgo. After George was accused of the murder of
the guaed on the 16¢h of January, Jonathan began o get his firse tasee

of Amerikan justice

0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
Jonathan himself weote:

People have sad that I am obsessed with my brother's case, and the
movement in general. A person that was close to me once said that
my life was too wrapped up in my brother’s case, and chat [ wasn'e
cheerful enough for her. I¢s rue I don't laugh very much any more.
Ihave but one question to ask al you people and people that think
like you, what would you do if it was your brother

On August 7, 1971, Jonachan Jackson entered 2 court-room in San
Rafacl, California, and ateempred to frce three black convices, one of
whom was on eral for assaulting a guard. He armed the conviets and
took five hostages, including the assistant district attorney and the
judge, still dressed in his robes. He died a few minutes later n a hail of
bullees inside a rented van that was being used for the geraway.

“We're akingover.” he said. At seventeen, Jonathan had already come to
the conclusion that the only way he could affiem his sense of justice was
ac the point of a gun. His experience of life in Amerika had convinced
him chat the only way he could be heard was by an ace of suicidal
daring. “You can take our picures. We are the revolutionarics.” With
these words he announced to the world that he was not 2 criminal,
because he no longer recognized the lgitimacy of white .

When his sister heard the news of his death, she eried out, “But he was
only a boy” Her mother corsected her: “Don't say that. He was a man.
They killed his facher a long time ago. Jonathan wasn't going to let
that happen o him. He was going to live like a man.” Afeer his death,
George wrote in aleteer:

Thaven shed one tear, I'm too proud for that,a beaueiful, beauriful
man-child with a sub-machine gun. He knew how to be with people
Toved Jonathan, but his death only sharpens my fighting spiic

T'm proud just to have known that he was flesh of my flesh, blood
of my blood.

In 2 news conference thee days afeer he said, I loved chat boy. T was
the firse o stand him up in his erib. Not a erib, really. All we had was
abox. T eaught him how to walk; I wanted o teach him how to fly. 'l
think of him now as [ think of Che Guevara.”

PART ONE n
George Jackson'slast book, Blaod in My Eye,speaks with the voice of
the dead, not only the dead George Jackson and his brother, Jonathan,
but che living dead in all of the jails and ghettos of this country. It
speaks with the voices of the men who have already given themselves
up for dead and who have nothing et to give - excep a death for the
people.

It is very much 2 book by & man who considered himself doomed.
In his lase leteers, George wrote about the judicial process as “the
endgame” He had forescen and foretold his assassination at San

uentin 4 thousand times (“ten years of blocking knife thruses and the
pick handles of sadistic pigs”). The fact that the author of this book
lived with his death for so many years gives his book a kind of special
importance. Bue it would be a mistake to consider it simply as the
work of an individual - George alvays refused to consider himself an
individual. Untold chousands both inside and outside prison join in its
proclamation of toral revolutionary war.

This book was written licerally in bedlam, with the author locked
in solitary for a minimum of twenty-thrce and half hours day, in
the midst of raucous sereaming that never stopped the sereams of
prisoners being beaten, the sereams of men ereating from intolerable
pain into madness. It is a book about taking the revolution that George
worked and died for inside prison out into society at arge. His message
o his revolutionary brothers is crystal-clear. Seale your quarrels, come
sagerher, understand the rality of our siuation, understand that fscism
is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that
generations more will die or live poor butchered half lives if you fuil 10
act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in
revolution. Pass on the torch Join us, give up your ife for the people.

George Jackson was shot and killed inside San Quentin on Auguse 21,
1971, The convices who were with him inside the cell block whee he
was being confined have asserced that he sacificed his own life to save
them from an official massacre. This would only have been in keeping
with the character of his entire if.

~Gregory Armstrong
October 15, 1971

7 An afidavic led by che inmates of che San Quentin Adjustment Center shordy
s she author' death.

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
BLOOD IN MY EYE

We must accept the eventuality o bringing the US.A. to it knees; aceept
the clasing offof ritical sections of he ciy with barbed wire, armored
pig carrierscrisscrasing the srects, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns
pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against the daylight sy,
the smellof cordite, house-to-house searches, doors being kicked in, the

Mardy 28, 1971
Letter to 3 Comrade®

My sister has informed me of your release and the political education
class you have formed: From her words and your messages, I sense
that we are seill ogether. We've gone through approximately the same
changes since they separated us ~ the confused flight o national
revolutionary Africa, through the riot stage of revolutionary Black
Amerika. We have finally areived at scientific revolutionary socialism
with the ret of the colonial world. was hoping that you wouldn'e get
erapped in the riot seage like a great many other very sincere brothers.
T have to browbeae them every day down here. They think they don't
need ideology, serategy or tacties. They think being a warrior s quite
enough. And yer, withoue discipline or direction, they'll end up
washing cars, or unclaimed bodies in the city-seace’ morgue. But [ was
almost certain that wouldn't be your destination, brother.

Though 1 no longer adhere to all of Nechayevs revolutionary
catcchism? (t00 cold, very much like the fascst psychology: revolution
should be loveinspired), his firs line contains the incontroversible
eruth, the black revolutionary is twice doomed.

At times [ wonder sbout the present state of revolutionary black
consciousness. I¢s really annoying to hear blacks express right-wing
eraditionalise politieal ideals. | mean the same spiel that you get from

sApn

9 Nechayer,an carly Russian ibilse His catechism can b found n Zero: The
Storvof Trnoriom, by Robere Payne.

i comeade of the auchor’ who must emain anonymous.

PART ONE 13
Wallace, Maddos, Hearst, or Hune coming from black people like
Lomax, Young, Bunche - some recently dead now, thanks to the forces
ofgood. Ithink Lady Lomax s sill round, though, representing Africa
with her Anglo-Saxon vernacular. Her husband, L. Lomax was C.LA.
Did you read The Reluctant Afvican, which was sheer propaganda for
the “owner, disguised in blackface. These are the really dangerous
people. When we leap to destroy the “owner” we'll have these kinds
of iggers to fight. They will use the tctic *white lefewing causes” to
proteet their bosses”“white right-wing cause”

You muse teach that socialism-communalism s as old as man; that
ins principles formed the basis of mostly all the Ease African cultures
(chere was no word to denote possession in the original East African
tongues). The only independent African socicties today are socialstic
Those which allowed capicalism to remain are seill neo-colonics. Any
black who would defend an African military dictatorship is as much
a fascist as Hoover. Are you aware of how the people are iving under
these so-called Africanized fascist culeures? The Congo and the entire
West Coast of Africa excepting Guinea and Mauritania are stil slave
states, dominated by Westernized black right-wing puppers. I'm
thoroughly sick of the old Jess B. Simples™ (young ones too). They'll

be your main source of opposition in communizing the black colonics
here. The “good white people” who own things will always give them
afew inches in theis papers or other media. That’s how fascism works,
influencing the masses and inseicutions through elices

1 talked to several black lawyers when I got this las case of pig killing
hung on me. We started off agrecing, but they abandoned me the
moment 1 attacked Anglo-Saxon law, capitaliom and che Blues, and
then went on to recognize Black Panthers, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou
Toure, Nyerere and Odinga instead of Kenyatta, Lumumba instead of
that liele punk in Echiopia, and Peking instcad of Atlanta or Frectown
Thae will be your main source of opposition - the black running
dog. But it unfair to automacically condemn a black person for not
understanding economic and political subtletics: some are simply
confused in an honest way:

Some of the arguments they pose will center around the despondent

cliche that "Africa will invent something unique, it won't be socialism,

10 Fictional hero of the Langston

1 BLO
communism, or capitalism.” Often they Il leave out the denunciation
of capitalism altogerher. You must explain the cconomic motive of
human social history and bring out that there are only two ways by
which societies can ever be governed and organized for production
of their needs: the various types of totalitarian methods represented
by assoreed capitalst and fascise arrangements, and the egalitarian
method. Egalitarianism is people’s government, and _peoples
government and economies is socialism, dialectical and materialist.
Hon else can soctics be governed? There must be hicrarchies or the
elimination of hicrarchics. Then show that the greatest contributions
o egalitarianism came from Africa,the greatest and the st examples.

Then, comrade, you will encounter the faine-hearted and illogical
eypeslike Ali/Clay,entertainer and ool of the capitalise cliques. Their
line is: “Ain't nobody bue black folks gonna dic in a revolution.” This
argument completely over-looks the fact that we always have done most
of the dying, and silldo: dying at the stake, through social neglect or
in US. foreign wars. The point is now to construct a sicuation where
someone else willjoin in the dying. Ific fails and we have to do most of
the dying anyway, we're certainly no worse off than before.

We find oursclves today forced into a reexamination of the whole
nacure of black revolutionary consciousness and its reltive standing
within a class society stecped in a form of racism so sensitized that it
extends iself even to the slightest variation in skin tone.

The geeat majority of blacks reject racism. They have never found
it expedient, wise or honorable to take on the characteristics of the
enemy. I chink it is vitally important to stress that for blacks a concern
for the “survival” of the race is not, patently nor, definable as racism.

Any explanation for social phenomenon, past, present or future, must
present valid argumenes and proof. As we travel back into history.
honest descriptions and definitions will inevitably overlap. They will
differ depending on their geopolitical standpoine. deally,they should
be colored with as lieele subjective interpretation s possible from
today’ world. The present, due to s staggering complexicis,is almost
as conjectural as the past. We must prove our predictions about the
furure ith action.

S0 ll my comments must be considered the merest supposition — they
muse be considered in just the same way we must consider all other

PART ONE 15
comments in this area. They merit aetention only in that as soon as |
make them it worrt be much longer before I go about proving them. As
aslave, the social phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is,
of course, revolution.

The slave - and revoluion.

Born to a premature death, a menial, subsistence-wage worker, odd
job man, the cleancr, the caught, the man under hatches, without
bail - chat’s me, the colonial vietim. Anyone who can pass the civil
service cxamination today can kill me tomorrow. Anyone who
passed che civil serviee examination yesterday can kil me today with
complete immunity. I've lived with repression every moment of my
life repression so formidable that any movement on my part can only
bring relief, the respite of a small victory- or the release of death. In
every sense of the term, in every sense that’sreal, 'm a slave to, and of,
properey

Revolution within a modern industeal capitaisesocicty can only mean
the overhrow of al existing property relations and the destruction of
all instieutions that directly or indirectly suppore existing property
relations. e must include the total suppression of all classes and
individuals who endorse the present sate of property relations or who
stand o gain from . Anything less than this i reform. Government
and the infraseructure of the enemy capitalist stae muse be deseroyed
o get a the heare of the problem: properey relations. Otherwise there
is no revolution. Reshufile the governmental personnel and forms,
without changing property relations and cconomic instieutions, and
you have produced simply another reform stage in the old bourgeois
revolution. The power to alter the present imbalances, to remedy the
eritcal defects of an advanced industrial state ordered on an antiquated
set of greed-confused motives, reses with control over production and
distribution of wealth. If the one percent who presently control the
wealth of the socicty maineain cheir control after any reordering of the
state, the changes cannot be said to be revolutionary:

The prerequisite for a successful popular revolution s that the
vietors totally junk the old machinery of state. Lenin stressed in
the State and Revolution: “One thing especially was proven by the
commune,viz. tha the working class cannot simply ly hold of the
ready-made state machinery and wicld i for its own purposes” And
again: “the workingclass muse break up, smash the ready-made state

16 BLOOD IN MY EYE
machinery, and not confine ieself merely to laying hold of ie” The
reason is simple enough: A popular revolution means a revolution
by and for the popular classes. lts ultimate aim is o bring all lasses
ineo one, that is, destroy the clas stae!'!

Revolutionary change means the seizure of all chat is held by the 1
percent, and the transference of these holdings into the hands of
the remaining 99 percent. If the 1 percent are simply displaced by
another 1 percent, revolutionary change has not eaken place. A social
revolution after the fact of the modern corporate capitalist state can
only mean the breakup of that state and 2 completely new form of
economies and culture. As slaves, we understand that ownership and
the mechanics of distribution must be reversed. The problems of the
Black Colony and the Brown Colony, those of the entire 99 percent
who are being manipulated, can never be redressed as long as the
necessary resources for their solution are the personal property of an
extraneous minority motivated solely by the need for its own survival

And that extrancous minoricy will never consider the proper solutions

We have this on record from a voice speaking from inside the Fourth
Reich ~ 2 Licutenane Governor of California orating in public on
poverty: “One-third of the population will always be ill-housed. il

clothed, and ll-fed. Many urban problems are realy conditions that we
cannot change or do not want to incur the disadvantages of changing.”
His “one-third” statement was 2 aleulated undersatement.

To the slave, revolution is an imperative, a love-inspired, conscious
act of desperation. It aggressive. It isnt “cool” or cautious. Ies bold,
audacious, violent, an expression of icy. disdainful hatred! It can
hardly be any other way without sasing a fundamental contradiction.

I revolution, and especially revolution in Amerika, is anything less
than an effective defense/attack weapon and a charger for the people
o mount o, it is meaningless to the great majority of the saves. If
revolution is tied to dependence on the inscrutabilicies of “long-range
polities” it cannot be made relevant to the person who expects to
dic tomorrow. There can be no sigid time controls attached to “the
process” hat offersieselfasrelicf,not if those for whom it s principally
ineended are under attack now. If the proponents of revolution cannot
learn to distinguish and eranslate the theorerical into the practical, if

11 John Gerasi, The Coming o he New International (New Y ork: World Pub-
lishing, 1970),p. 0.

PART ONE 7
they continue o debate just how to call up and harness the conscious
motive forces of revolution, the revolueionary ideal will be the losee — it
willbe eejcted.

The principal reservoir of revolutionary potential in Amerika lies in
wait inside the Black Colony.Iessheer numerical strenge, i desperate
historical relation to the violence of the productive system, and the
face of its present status in the creation of wealth force the black
seratum ae the base of the whole class structure into the forefront of
any revolutionary scheme. Thirty percent of all induserial workers
are black. Close to 40 percent of allindustial suppore roles are illed
by blacks. Blacks are sill doing the work of the greatest slave state in
history. The terms of our seevieude are al chat have been aleered.

The Black Colony can and will influcnce the fate of things to come
in the US.A. The impact of black revolutionary rage acually could
carry a lease the opening stages of a socialise revolution under cereain
cireumstances - not discounting some of the complexiies created by
the specter of racism. However, if we are ever going to be successful in
tying black energy and rage to the international socialist evolution, we
must understand that racial complexities do exise.

When the Minister of Defense and Servant of the People” artacks
the strategy of the Amerikan Communise Parey and the liberalleft
evisionists for their failure to devise a policy which takes into account
the special cireumstances of Yankee-style racism, he is not attacking
communism and the collective ideal. He is questioning the Communist
Parey and other less committed sections of the left revolutionary
movement about their awareness of the unique problems presented by
a particularly vicious and immediately threatening eacism.

My brother Jonathan, a communist revolutionary to the core, writing
mein June of 1969, theorized as follows:

We are quite obviously faced with 2 need to organize some small
defenses to the more flageant abuses of the syscem now: I mean this
in a milicary sense. The period of disorganized activity, of iots
and ralles, and purely political agitation/education has come to a
close. The violence of the opposition has brough it to an end. We
cannot raise consciousness another millimeter without a new set
of tacties. Long-range political ploys alone are not practicl for us.
To me, the concept seems to assume that someday in the distant

15 BLOOD IN MY EYE
fuure we'll produce a 700-pound flea to fight the Paper Tiger
That's ot too likely to happen. While we await the precisc moment

when all of apiealisms vietims will indignanely rise to destroy the
system, we are being devoured in family lots at che whim of this
thing. There will be no super-slave. Some of us are going to have to
take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for
selective reealiatory violence. We have numbers on our side i the
whites who suppore revolutionary change can preven this thing
from degenerating into race war. The picture of the UL s a Paper
Tiger is quite accurate, bu there is a greac deal of work to be done
on s destruction and 'm of the opinion that if there is bigjob of
growing to do, the sooner begun the sooner don.

Both Hucyand Jonathan are understandably calling for the programmed
revolution to take inco account the fact of racial genocide. Jonathan s
calling from his grave, adding another voice to the many thunderous
graveyard affiemations which, for us blacks, speeds the revolution to
its ultimate issue. In order to develop revolutionary consciousness,
we muse learn how revolutionary consciousness can be raised to the
highest poine by scimuli from the vanguard clements. We recognize
and appreciate the decades of hard, sometimes dangerous work done
in the name of revolution by the older socialise parties. Perhaps we
wouldn'e exist a all were it not for their effores. It is our sincere wish
o operate in complete harmony with these older groups. But we must
ereate new impeeus and greater intellectual and physical energy if the
forces of reaction are not to win another extended reprieve. A joint

effor will make the task of overwhelming our common enemy enemy
all the simpler. But if our present differences cannot be reconciled
by an honest and fearless search for the correce way, then we will be
forced to take the foundation of correet ideals and theory into our own
hands and build a positive and more practical superstruceure applicable
to the circumstances surrounding our lives. In his Guervilla Wanfire
Lenin wrote: “New forms of seruggle, unknown to the participants of
the given period, inevitably arise as the given social sicuation changes,
the coming erisis will introduce new forms of struggle that we are now
unable to foresee™*

In other words, the old guard must not fail to understand that
circumstances change in time and space, that there can be nothing

Guerrlla Wanfire.

PART ONE 19
dogmatic about revolutionary theory. It is to be born out of each
popular seruggle. Each popular seruggle muse be analyzed historially
o discover new ideas. In the words of John Gerass: *Building from
one to the other, eventually the revolutionary cadse would become
equipped with a theory rooted in experience, broadened by historical
knowledge, ested by comba, and fortified by reflection”"*

After ten o fifteen generaions of laboring on a subsistence level, afeer
ahundred and forey years of political agitation and education, we grow
impatient - not that we fail o understand the risks and complexities of
anti-establishmene warfare. We simply wan to live

We question a strategy that seems to have stopped short of providing a
tacic for growth and for survival. Terror tatics like lynching will never
beallowed to work on us. ferroris going to be the choice of weapons,
there must be funerals on both sides. And let the whole enemy power
complex be conscious of hat!

The superstruceure of any edifice that is as extensive and as lofty as
revolution must be reexamined with each successive layer, for faules,
for possible improvement of method

We have the foundation of our strategy. We have studied Marx and
Lenin for adescription and history of the modern induseralseate. We've
organized our thoughes and trained our bodies for the ordeal of “grave.
digging” Our vanguard elements understand the simple importance of
winning consciousness. OF course education and familiasizacion with
the core issues on a broad basis precede hard revolutionary violence
I people are to understand and elate o revolutionary violence they
muse firse be educated into an acceptance of the face that there is no
alernative, o that the alternative i less inviting than a fight.

Oue whole question is: just what level of consciousness will suppor
the violent revolutionary activity necessary to achieve our ends? And
how will we know when this level i reached? Recall: our Mao teaches
that when revolution il it isn the faule of the people, its the fault
of the vanguard parey. The people will never come to us and say “Let’s
fight There have never been any spontancous revolutions. They were
all staged, manufaceured, by people who went to the head of the masses
and directed them.

13 Gerasi p. it p.42.

0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
The liberalise slogan “You ean'e get shead of the people” s meaningless
From what other position can one lead? From the rear? Rearguard
leadership?tt A typical Yankee innovacion. | think mose of these
irresponsible excuse-slogans are based on dread - a secret wish to avoid
the discomfiture of people’s war. I all the successful class seruggles and
colonial wars of liberation, the vanguard elements did get ahead of the
people and pull. There i no other way in forward mass movement:

Avanguard which fears that consciousness will outserip spontaneity.
which fears to put forth a bold *plan” that would compel general
recognition even among those who differ from us. Are they not
confusing vanguard with rearguard?'*

Tam not implying that the vanguard parey act ou the people’s role.
am not implying 2 *society superior to society” We must never forget
that it is the people who change circumstances and that the educator
himself needs educating. *Going among the people, learning from the
people, and serving the people” is really seaing that we must find out
exacely what the people need and organize them around these needs. 1
the statement implics a “coming from” somewhere else, it substantiates
o superiority bu rather a biological-existential reality. This concept
needs very liele substantiaing beyond the obvious fact of a nation
of slaves who control no more wealth than some clothes, perhaps a
worthless automobile, and a roof of sorts over their heads, but who
have been successfully conditioned to feel rich or at lease contented.

“The task of a revolutionary is to make revolution” The word
“manufacture” can be substituted for the word “make? and the meaning
comes through a liele better for us.

The fascists have deliberately manufactured a false sense of security
by various stratagems. They will never permit conditions to go out
of their control as long as "bread and circuses” appease. We clearly
cannot dodge our responsibilities by giving credence to slogans buile
around “conditions.” Conditions will never be altogether right for a
broadly based revolutionary war unless the fascists are sericken by an
uncharacterisec fit of total madness. Should we waie for someching
that i not likely to oceur at least for decades? The conditions that are
not present must be manufaceured.

L4V Lenin, Selcrd Works.

PART ONE 2
Recall: we had people who felt conditions weren right in the 19305
also. The government’s bead lines were backed up around every corner,
and bascball was at its peak. Private ownership of public property
should have been destroyed in that decade, but the “conditions weren't
righe” The vanguard elements betrayed the people of this nation and
the world as a result of their failure toseize the time. The consequences
were a catastrophic war and a new round of imperialist expansion, chis
time carried out by the greatest imperialise of all time — the Yankee
brigand. There would now be no Indochina “stuation” (to mention
one of dozens of like situations) if we had taken ourselves seriously
then, when all conditions were favorable. It was a slightly below
conscious desire o avoid doing the US. fuether violence, and perhaps a
general distaste for organized violence, in pasticular, that robbed us of
our chance to win on that oceasion when, ironically, a win would have
cost very liele. There wasn't then even the illusion of well-being. In
a report written by Comrade Jonathan Jackson in November of 1969
juse before Fred Hampton's and Mark Clark’s murders in Chicago
and the shoot-out a the Central Avenue Panther headquarters in Los
Angeles,” he says,

I6s come down on us hard now. There are ewenty different breeds
of pigs pacrolling every street in the colony here. I mean every
section of the city that can be said o be predominately Black is
sarurated with the eseablishment’s demented gunslingers, of every
sort. They're all nervous and dangerous as king cobras. Spies.
double agents, entrapment, a war of electronies, house-to-house
searches, doors being kicked in. 1 feel just as you do on these issues.
T'mjuse no going for i, even if it means fighting them by myself.
Ifthey kick down the door of a house I've stopped at they'll all in
dead. The 9 mm Browning weighs something like 2 pounds. I'm
not carrying this extra weight around my belt for nothing, It has a
13-round clip. I keep one in the bareel, 14 shots. Save me a cell on
murderer's row there, | could have 14 murder charges any day now.

15 Tiwo Black Pancher Parey leaders kiled doring a raid by the Chicago police.
Hampron was the chaitman of the Ilinois branch of the pary. A special eport
prepaed by che commission of inguiy headed by Ramscy Clark concluded that
the purpose of the police raid was to “search and descroy” It alo concluded thae
Hampron had been delibracely illed by shors fied ac clos range while he was
otall unconscious. The shoor-ou on Centrs was che resul of polic raid o the
Los Angeles Panther headquarers. The Panchers bacledthe police fo five hours, at
imes ven chrowing the policesown tar-gas canisters bck st che.

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
Tiy to gee the picture ~ down every through street they cruise
st a Few moments apare a¢ most. Sometimes the seupid bastards
are bumper o bumper. Each one of the cruisers has a different
residential street here in the Black communities that seems to belong
to them. s patterned. Let’s say two pig cars, “P1” and *P2. are
both eraveling south on Central. They'll pacrol six to seven blocks
on thae main strect. “P1 will then make a lefc on SOth Sereet, “Pi”
aright on Slse Sreer, ete. e works out so that each couple of square
blocks is in effect always surrounded, cue of, divided. sub-divided.
Repressionis here! I've followed them, seudied them, holed a few of
their cars - you should see how they’ll run when they can'ttell from
exacely what quarter they're drawing fire. We overestimate them, or
perhaps have el sense of our own power.In the short-run, and here
Tmean in an isolated eactical operation sicting within 2 particular
politcal design, with military weapons we could easily out-gun the
establishment’s firse line of defense. What, for example, would the
ity pigs do if they are confronted by a .38 snubbed revolver in the
hand of a brother who's fired that 38 perhaps 10 times in his life?
Then take the same situation but give the brother a flamethrower
(scolen from the military), give the brother an armored van from
inside which he could use said flamethrower, give him also two
comrades in arms, one equipped with an M60 machine gun, the
other an anti-tank rocket launcher. Pigs are punks. Give me 10 cells
armed as I've just mentioned and we could start to enforce some
of the demands of the people. Their present show of strengh is
actually cheir weakness show — they're too visible. Comrades ask
me sometimes what can we do against “al these pigs” | state it
simply — we put chem to deach. They look at me as if to say, *Y.
ou're nuts, man” When | go about my explanation their eyes go
blank, or they are distracted by something five blocks down the
serect. They're not hearing then. So what's happening? The things
Lsay (for us, smil) seem too fantastic for them to even listen. Yet
it doesnt seem faneasec for them to go against the LA PD. with a
snubbed-nosed revolver. There'sa great deal of work to be done -
with ouselves - yet. But the day of the real dragon is coming. Long
live the guerrilalt

Jonachan was sisteen years old then and he had just that year been
allowed to drive a car. He liked to drive, and observe. He had long since
learned to like the fight. Guns and weapons in general were his foree.
T carefully reminded him that even vanguard violence was organized

PART ONE B
violence. He returned one of Fanon’ ines: *Iés time for the talking to
end, and the acting to begin”

In another of his repores,after the Chicago murders of Hampton and
Clark and the five-hour shoot at Black Panther headquarters in Los
Angeles, he writes:

The fact of Amerikan terror, slave existence in general, seems to have
almost destroyed the nervous system of the Black man here. They
arefrightened. and feel they are smart for being so. Those that were
unaffected, those that escaped. those that efused to be intimidated,
dismayed, prudent to the point of cowardice, have cither joined or
supported the Black Pancher Parey! They got down pretty cold.
One point needs to be cleared up, however. I recall you remarking
that in an urban guerrilla sicvation the milicary proper must be
hidden, separate from the political frone, since unlike a clasical
Mao-Giap countryside seruggle where the enemy’s principal forces
are 30 miles down the road, with us the enemy is al around, within
afew moments of srike. There should, feel be one branch that is
purely political, operating the rent serikes, the breakfast programs,
the People’s Bazaars where allsorts of food and clothing, utensils
and tools are sold, hospitals or clnics (free, of course), and what
T will term cortage shops o employ those who will work for the
new medium of exchange love and loyalty — at such things as
the making of the clothing and canning of the food for the People’s
Bazaar. Then there should be the super-sccret branch to enforce.
The milicary,the comrades with the nervous equipment to make the
best use of the M0, che MIG, the flamethrower, the hand grenade,
the mortar, our armored vans and equipment in front and plenty
of gun pores, bullet-proof ires, cte. You dig, one of the large rucks
properly prepared (plastic may be the best armor, 1Y2 inches will
stop 2220 grain shug fired from 245 sub-machine gun: 2 inches to
3inches will proteet you from high-power rifle bullets) - and with
4 heavy armor-piercing, ammo-cquipped M60 portin the frone cab
pointing in the direction that the truck is moving forward along
the serect — is more effective than 2 tank of the Yankee seyle. The
machine gun i the front cab, and one pointing out to the rear from
the erailer, has whatever strect they are moving down in a guerrilla
ambush tactic we'll all angulation. Each one of these guns pointing
frone and back, up the srect and back down it, has the advantage of
beingable to rack that entire street with only a slight back and forth

u BLOOD IN MY EYE
lateral movement. One armor-piercing bullet may render severl of
the unrighteous dead.

And comrade, the pigs are so proud of their new litele ‘copters ~
they're suckers - it’s almost comical to hear them boast and watch
them look to the sky with the pride of power. The pig who will get
up in one of those things is as seupidly suicidal as 2 duck erying
o ourfly a charge of 12-gauge shor. The fierce and beautiful Cong
shoot down a couple dozen of the very biggest and best ‘copers
ankee invention can produce every weck. These things that the
pigs use are toys, siting ducks. One, | mean one, solid or armor-
piercing 30 caliber bullet aimed at any one of several points - the
il rotor, the hub of the main rotor, o even the operator ~ will
reduce $200,000 worth of Yankee invention to scrap.

T was pursuing this joke of a secondary education when the whole
thing oceurred, but acting with my small thing would have hardly
helped much, though it may have helped raise consciousness, some
~ the besiegers attacked from the rear, the idea of it ~ strong!
Miliearily it would have demonstrated to the pigs that the Pancher
Pareyis not out there on the limb alone, and of course i would have
promoted among the people that confidence of ability we always
speak on when together! How would they have fele (the pigs and
the people) if the nameless, faceless, lightning-swift soldier of the
people could have reached up, ewisted the tail of their $200,000
death bird, and hurled it into the streets, broken, ablaze!t I chink
that sore of thing has more to do with consciousness than anyhing
else I can think of. Long live the Panther! Power to the People Who.
Do Fear Freedom.

Jonachan was sisteen years old then, 1 repeat. Consciousness is
the opposice of indifference, of blindness, blankness. Promoting
consciousness involves the general dissemination of the concep that
each of us is pare of a universal action and interaction; that poles
are somewhere connecteds that there are material causes for trauma,
vertigo, degenerative discase. Connections, connections, cause and
effect, claity on their relation and intertelations, the connetion with
the past, coneinuity, flow, movement, the awareness that nothing,
nothing remains the same for long. And ic follows hat ifa ching is not
building, it is certainly decaying - that lfe is revolution — and that
the world will die if we don't read and ace out its imperatives. Not
on its own will it dic, bue rather because the forces of reaction have

PART ONE 5
ereated imbalances that will kill e: “The seeds of ts own destruction.”
Our destruction t00 — in the epach of the Bomb, the nerve gases, the
massive precipitation of industrial wastes.

Consciousness s knowledge, _recognicion, fores

ightcommon
experience and perception; sensibiliy, alereness, mindfulness. It stirs
the senses,the blood: it exposes and suggests: i will objectify, eneage,
dircet. There are no positive formulas for a thing so complex. We have
guidelines only to help us with its growch. This means chat after we are
done with our books,they must be put aside; and the search for method
will depend on observations, correct analyses, erarivity and seizing the
time. Somerime after the December 4, 1969, shoot-out around the
Panther Party Los Angeles headquarters, Jonathan commented on the
“connections” the aftermath:

Have you grasped the significance of the backlash? It has stung the
fascit. The people are in foment, all of them, of al persuasion.
They don't dig midnighe or dawn raiding partis, bullees with steel
jackees, cowardly pigs perched upon their roofs, the same gases
manufactured for use againse the Vieenamese Liberators blowing
back into their faces: Repression. Do you see the effect it has on the
uncommitted? Comrade, Repression exposes. By drawing violence
from the beast, the vanguard parey is demonstrating for the world
to examine just exacely what terms their rule is predicated on -
their power to organize violence, our acquicscence

But check - Blacks are conditioned to acquiesce. They have, in
general, been led to believe that chis system is the product and
property of the “white man. that the white man will protect it with
his al, chat ehe white man is killer,a reflex kille, that all we can
ever hope for is 2 reforming or expanding of the system to include
the few of s who can make ourselves acceptable: “ics t0o big for
us? “you can't fight city hall? *it can’t happen in Amerikkka? and
all of hae shit,pig-shit.

Double check — all of the objecive conditions are present here
in the Black Colony for revolution, the physical thing, | mean,
“want” and “want 10" (¢he real feeling, not the various precenses).
East Los Angeles hasn' changed a bit since you were out. Wares is
sill 2 depressed area. Many of the west-side diserces are sarting to
resemble the older black disticts. The issue of employment is still
the same; we do 30 to 40 percent of the nations work for 1 percent

% BLOOD IN MY EYE
of the returns, and a huge pool of us is always kept unemployed to
reduce the value of the labor of those who are, just ke 10 years
ago, just like 1864-65 when we were thrown on the labor market
hungry, ragged, crowded inco clap-boards, and unhappy. Nothing
has changed since you lefe the sereet, comrade, not in this respeet
ac lease. Pechaps our condition stands out a liele more glaringly.
thar's all.

But you know what's been building. The vanguard has viciously
attacked the “system” — the omniporent system actacked by the
slave. Sort of like the worker bee growing so disguseed with che
qualicy of his life thae he turns and artacks the bear. The other bees
will understand, hey do understand. and all sores of bees, even
those who thought the bear their rightful ruler see him differently
when he foams at the mouth, and bites at his own ail

I dhink you were on the right erack with the idea concerning
repression. I s, it has to be, a pare of the revolutionary process, a
necessary stage in the development of revolutionary consciousness
The situation being as it was and is, the Black experience is what
T'm refering to here. The milder lynch-example type repression is
accepred by us as a necessary part oflfe, but the ne harsher thing
brought on by the political thrust of the vanguard party serves to
show even the mose tractable of the reformers among us that firsely,
the system will not, o actually cannot, meee our demands: secondly.
it clearly illusrates the realterms of our existence under capialism,
the nacure of it, and how foul a picce of the pie would be even if we
could have some.

One fundamental problem remains: the survival of the vanguard
political party and I mean in good form. We must ehink to the
rightcous fielding of a clandestine army!!

Jon

Lenin, Guevara and Fanon, all in their particular fashion, postulate
that before revolution can take place, all other forms of redress
must be exhausted, clearly exhausted. Electoral processes must have
broken down, the confidence of the electorate in any of the old forms
compleeely shattered, confidence in the abiliy of the old system to
honestly organize any aspect of public life must be shaken to the core
Years and years ago it may have been an accepeable tactic to organize
a peoples ticket of solid worker and revolutionary credentials and

PART ONE 2
arm it with an ideal platform — only to be defeated by a mud-slinging
opportunist-warlord, demonserably inferior, scum-swilling pig. Then
pass out pamphlet to explain o the people how the system has failed
them, or speak it in Pershing Square - o, years ago, in the Campus
Hall Today it not a actic - ie's counter-revolution. After forty years
ie’s precey clear that it will not suffice. Years ago, “working with” and
actempring to influcnce union leadership may have been judicious,
but the governmene has long since infilerated and bought off chis
leadership and legislated away the srike. Union-hall speeches and
pamphlet passing are playing a¢ revoluion.

Ieisn' revolutionary or materialist o disconnece things. To disconnect
revolutionary consciousness from revolutionizing activity, to build
consciousness with political agitation and educational issue-making
alone i dealistic ather than materialist. The effect has been reformism
racher than revolution. When any election is held it wil fortify
racher than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we
participace in this lection to win, instead of disrupe, we're lending to
ius credibiliy, and destroying our own. With al the factors of contol
over the electoral processin the hands of the minoriey ruling class, the
people’s party can always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even
extraneous. 1 f these tactics seill give the appearance of revolution to
some afer decades of miscarriage, we are justfied in replacing them as
vanguard.

When people begin o express their disguse at the demagogic and
reformise maneuvers of the vanguard parties, chey will discover in real
action a ne form of policical activity which in no way resembles the

old:

These policis are the politics of eaders and organizers lving inside
history who take the lead with their brains and their muscles in
the figh for freedom. These policis are revolutionary and social,
and these new faces which the native will now come to know exist
only in action. They are the essence of the fight which explodes
the old colonial ruths and reveals unexpeeted facets, which brings
out new meanings and pinpoints the contradictions camouflaged
by these facts. The people engaged in the struggle who because of it
command and know these facts, go forward, frced from colonialism

and forewarned of all actempes at mystification, inoculated against
all national anthems Violence alone, violence committed by the

people, violence organized and educated by its leaders, makes it

% BLOOD IN MY EYE
possible for the masses to underseand social eruths and gives the
key to them. Without that sruggle, without that knowledge of
the practice of action, there’ nothing but a fancy-dess parade
and the blare of the trumpers. There's nothing save a minimum
of readaptation, a few reforms at the top, a flag waving: and down
there at the bottom an undivided mass il living in the middle
ages, endlessly marking time.*

In the general retreae to avoid full commitment, to write the
discomfort ou of revolution, some have raised a debate among us that
has degenerared into name-calling, quoting the same authorities to
validate diamesrically opposed ideas, and ultimacely creating a process
thatis dividing us inco ewo muzually exclusive or contradictory groups.
The overall effect is o reduce us to caricaeure.

Where more than one individual is involved in any life situation, the
fact of subjectivism will always make differences based on opinion and
incerprecation — a problem in exchanges, in reaching the necessary
means for the initiation of collective activity. Some debate will always
be carried on. However, on the basics we muse somehow agree or
nothing will gee done. All opinions are not of equal value, and there is
such a thing as counterproductive revisionism.

Stupidity is not unknown to our long-range political policy makers
Participation in electoral politics organized by the enemy state - after
recognizing that the whole process must be discredited as a conditional
step into revolution, and particularly participation that tends to
authenticate this process - is the opposite of revolution. It taceic for
the ulerarigheists. With history as a guide we could never make such
monumental errors

The history of the US. the blood-soaked, urine-steeped essence
of its being; the wreckage and demise of its human character under
the wheels of a two-hundred-year-old headlong flight with heedless,
frightened animals a the controls of a machine that has mastered them
~ allows for no appeal on a srictly ideologieal level. George Wallace or
Adolf Hieler would fare better at the polls of an honest election than
Huey Neweon and Tom Hayden. But again, what is an honest election
after the fact of monopoly capital?

16 France Fanon, The Wretchedofthe Eardh.

PART ONE 2
Repression s indeed a part of revolution, a natural aspect of antithesis,
the always-to-be-expected defense-aetack reflex of the beleagucred,
toothless tiger. All arguments against this fundamental fact are false
and labored to the poin of being completely illogical. Can power be
seriously challenged without a response? Wil the robber baron, the
tycoon, the Fiihrer allow us to seize his privilege withou resistance?
Can we steal it away from the greatest bandic of all ime with sleight
of hand alone? Incredible! The fascists understand the value of mass
psychology. are familiae with its use, and hold all the important
implements of its effective control. But they are not avare of our
existence and our general strategy regarding the reaching of people.

The whole sicuation can be reduced to 2 minority ruling clique
engaging the people’s vanguard elements for control of the masses
The ruling elique approaches iestask with a "what to think” program
the vanguard clements have the much more difficule job of promorting
“how to think.”

No tactic can be ignored or discounted in such a barele. Power
responds to all threats. The response is repression. IF the threat is 2
small one, the fasist tactic is to laugh it of, ignore it isolaee it with
ies defense mechanism ~ media. The greater the threat the greater the
cortesponding violence from power.

The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to
make isolacion impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression
o affect the normal lfe style of as many members of the socicty as
possible. By compromising and playing ac class war, we lose. If some
effective means of threatening to wield power is ot sed in the opening
stages of revolutionary activiy, epression will concentrace itself on the
vanguard elements only, when the ideal situation is for the people to
fel the raw essence of power. Nothing can bend consciousness more
effectively than 2 false areest, 2 no-knock invasion, careless, panic
sericken gunfire. These will frighten some, anger others. Common sense
alone tels me whom the people will turn their anger againse. Perhaps
for a shore time hey will be angey at us, but since the pig i a pig, it
won't be long before this anger is channeled in the righe direction.

Revolution builds in seages: it isn't cool or romantic; it bold and
vicious; ie’s stalking and being salked ~ the opposition rising above
our level of violence to repress us, and our forces learning how to
counter chis repression and again pulling ourselves above their level

30 BLOOD IN MY EYE
of violence. That process repeats fself again and again uncil finally
the level s reached where the real power of the people is fele and the
ruling clas is suppressed. The power of the people lies in its greater
potential violence. And this power of the people ~ their greater
potential violence — can be brought to fruition only if the conditions
in an urban society are created by the application of the foeo theory.’”
‘The foeo theory ean be effctive only when it does not allow iself o be
isolated from the people, thus exposing iselfto the vastly superior fire
power of the corporate stace

There is no doubt that Fidel’ foco was the moror to the revolution
in Cuba. Bue nor can there be any doub that Fidel’ organizational
genius made sure that the foco remained in the center of the much
bigger revolutionary movement, which it conerolled or guided
for s military and political advantage. The foco may well be
the best tactic to mount the motor, but it needs a long period of
preparation, intensive organizational work to set up an effcient,
eliable machinery which will not only generate the atmosphere

for armed seruggle by focos bue will also guarancee their logistic,
communication, survival programs and propaganda network. The
raditional communist parties of the world claim that they are doing
jse chat - and have been, mostly peacefully, for forty years. Thatis
not what Bejar had in mind when he said there have been “real seages
of hard underground life” Bejar, and New Lefe revolutionaries al

over the world, know very well thae a revolutionary life seyl is 2
warrior’s life seyle. By stages he meant stages of combat, and that
is precisely the way in which revolutionaries can be honed into the
kind of organization capable of eading a people’s war"

We are a an impasse now, because the next level of revolutionary
consciousness and activity cannot be reached without calling down on
the nation a corresponding and perhaps over.reactionary repression.
Andie’s not the people who dread this next level of commitment. They

17 The Facotheory grew outofche Cuban Revolution and rfers o the “more or
essslow building up theough gacrrills warfare o mobile sregic force which

would b the nucleus of peoples army and ofa fuure socialis saee” [Regis
Debray Revoltion i the Revolution Armed Strugele and Politcal Srugelein
Latin Aerica (New York: Monthly Review Prss, 1967).p. 24

18 Gerasi p. it p. 69

PART ONE 31
don't understand the significance of it a yee. The dread, the fear,reses
with some of the old-guard elements. refer you again to Mao: *When
revolution fails..it’ the faule of the vanguard parey”

Some of the fear is an honest fear that revolution will be repressed
entircly. These thinkers have historical references that roll them back
o Europe to the time of Hitler’s Germany and ltal in the twenties and
hirtics. Bue [ say that can never happen here. That was oo long ago,
0o far away, and none of those European countries had thirty million
irate niggers on theis hands. None of that ever had to happen, for the
same reason that we don' have to allow it to happen. All reactionary
movements depend principally on & handful of individuals - sometimes
one individual.

There are many thousands of ways to correct individuals, The best way
is o send one armed expere. | don't mean to outshoue him with logic,
mean cortect him. Slay him, assassinate him wich thuggee, by silenced
pistol, shotgun, with a high-powered rifle shooting from four hundred
yards away and behind a rock. Suffocaion, strangulation, crucifixion.,
burning with lamethrower, dispatch by bomb. Auto accidents happen
all day. People drown, et poleased, breathe nosious gases, get stabbed,
get poisoned with bad water, ratsbane, germicides, hemlock, arsenic,
serychnine, LS.D. 25 concentrate, eyanide, hydrocyanie acid, vieriol

A snake could bite him, nicotine oil is deadly, an overdose of dope

there's deadly nightshade, belladonna, datura, wolfs-bane, foxglove,
aconite, pomaine, boeulism, and the death of a thousand cuts. But 3
curse won'e work.

Were going to have to fight to win. The logic of procrastination has
been destroyed. A people can never be so repressed that they can't
serke back in some way. We will purge the polizoons and fight. Or
just ignore chem. The realicy of power’ automaic defense reflexes
makesit possible for us to measure our own effectiveness. Their efforts
o seriously repress us indicate that we have reached people that we
are finally in the fight. And we cannot ever be truly repressed. There
is quite simply no way for an established government to defeat an
incernal, decermined., aggresive enemy. Especially in an urban society
‘The mechanics,logic, and logiseis of urban people’s guerrill warfare
cannot be defeated

In the opening stages of such a conflict, before a unified lefe can be
established, before most people have aceepted the inevitability of war,

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
before we are able militarily to organize massive violence, we must
depend on limited, selective violence tied to an exact politieal purpose
In the early service of the people there muse be totally committed,
professional revolutionarics who understand tha all human life is
meaningless ifit is not accompanied by the controls that determine its
qualicy. Tam one of these. My life has absoluely no value. I'm the man
under hatches, the desperate one. We will make the revolution. Nothing
can stop us,we are notintimidated by the specter of repression - we're
already repressed. The Black Legion” and their terror leaves us cold,
unafraid. We will meet it with a counter-terror. We'll never, never allow

ourselves to be immobilized by a tactic that actually works beeter for
us. The lynch-murder of a friend - it makes me angey, not afaid. I'm
the next man that must be lynched! My forefather trembled when his
brother was Iynched, but my brother’ immolation means war to the
death, war to the uemost, war to the knifet!

Violence is not supposed to work in Amerika. For no one, that is,
excep the “omnipotent administracor” Bu this has yet to be proved to
my satisfaction since [ know that a bomb is a bomb is a bombs i ewists
steel, shatters conerete and dismembers men everywhere else in the
world. Why not those made in Amerika? A bullet fired from an assaule

sifle in che hands of a Vietnamese liberacion fighter will kill a pig in
Vieenam. Why won'e e kill a pigin the place where pigs are made?

Counter-terrorism is a facet of urban people’ guerrilla warfare. Ies
our logical response to the repressive measures taken by the enemy
state to contain us in the early stages of the rebellion. Our milicary
cadre involved in this activity has the tactical advantage over the
establishment’sterrorises only if we remain clandestine. While working
ac the dircetion of a political front we must remain separate from it
The ranks of these carly soldiers must be absolutely impervious to
infiltration; precautions must be made to keep this cadre impenetrable
o police spies and less committed comrades.

In The Coming of the New International, John Gerassi observed that

As 4 leading pragmatise, Lenin believed thae the only way a
revolution could come about in Europe in his time was by the
ereation of a revolutionary organization. That organization had

19 An armed anct bor trrorsegroup aceve inthe hiries,repucedly financed
by scctions of he automorive induscy.

PART ONE 3
o be tight, well wrained, loyal o ies central committee, dedicated
~ and narrow, not only for ideologieal reasons (hence purges and
sectarian splits were to be encouraged during its formaive years),
but also for security™

And Lenin states that

The more we confine the membership of such an organization to
people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activiey and
who have been professionally trained in the arc of combating the
police,the more difficult it will be to uncarth the organization.”

One of Jonathan's reports contains the following:

1 find it almost impossible to erust comrades, not afeer all of this
They say Gloves Davis - a black pig - killed Fred Hampron, while
he was asleep. | cerainly don't have to mention all the so-called
defectors who are now appearing before government commitcees
cestifying for the state. They were infiltacors to begin with. The
house-niggers who ran to the high sheriff as soon as someone
whispered revole. 1 chink [ hate them worse than I hae the sheriff,
or the "owner”

T'mjust a young slave (you say) trying to understand and cope with
my environment. I know personaliies have no place in revolution
but every time I chink of Davis, Jess B. Simple, Karenga® and the
rest of these murderous turncoat idiots, my wigger finger faicly
inches! Non-persons like Karenga, LeRoi Jones and the other right.
wing blacks are incelligent enough to know what they are doing,
‘We cannot excuse them with the ease that we can excuse the average
brother who has had no opportuniey or inclination to search. The
manele of ignorance doesn'e cover their behavior. They have to
know thae when they actack socialism, the communist ideal, and
revolution that they are no logically (or illogically depending)
aetacking all that is white, ete. They know thae Ho Chi Minh isn't
white or Chairman Mao, or Nkrumah, Lumumba, and Toure. They
know that there isn't but one fight going on acros this planet,the
one between the imperialse forces of capitalism and its victims.

20 Gerass ap. i p. 4.
20V, Lenin, Seleted Works

22 Ron Karenga, hesd of s black naionalise organizarion known as US.

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
They know that i was for work that we were kidnapped ~ what
else do you feed a save for? These Black, Black, Black, Black men
(if you can swallow their shallow shit) have had time to study.
some have eraveled, they *know” that it was capitalist agriculeural
economies that firse caused our pain, and that the only change
since then is the decline of the agricultural elice and the rise of the
modern bourgeoisie. A sweat-shop displaced the planeacion. Could
it have escaped cheir that that all the African states that really
liberated themselves booted out the foreign businessmen and are
now socialise seates?

No, I think the strongest suggestion isthat they are working for the
government, the new house-niggers. And what becter way is there
for them o sell themselves to us than to scream Black, Black, Black,
Black .. Like Tom Mboya, whose whole service for the C.LA. was
o redireet the revolutionary rage of the people into a thing more
compatible with the interests on Western Businessmen. They are
spics — death to spics

Idon'e ehink i s a personaliey clash atal o us o teach these black
pigs that we will not be aleered from our course, that the revard
for counerrevolution s death! We can't continue to expect or wish
for loyalty to the people - we'll have to demand it. And that’s both
from these cowardly fac-mouths who come o us in their disguise,
“culeural nationalism;” and from the class defectors who tommy-
gun us in our skeep.

Tll make an example of Gloves Davis even if 1 have to hobo to
Chicago. They I find him serung-up to a sercee lighe by his heels
with our sign burned in his forchead!!

Teses muse be devised to guard ourselves against the possibilicy of
those fools getting into our separace military groups. There is no
way o stop the infilration of an above-ground policical group,
but we can guard the clandestine army by: 1. eeting no one choose
us (even if they did know about us and could find us): we do the
choosing. 2. Once we choose someone to do the people’s milieary
work they should be isolated and tested thoroughly, and their
background checked. There are patterns to people’s lives, especially
Blacks, that if studied one can easily spot pig tendencies and
connections. Checks could be run through some of our political
people who have friends or sympathizers who own, say, used car

PART ONE 35
36

los or any business that generally deals in credit. A geeat deal can
be learned through the various credit check institutions these days
We'll be using one of their own inseruments for the “real” purpose
that they invented it, against them. (Generally that’s the way it will
be chroughout the war.)

Testing can be developed inco a science-vritten stuff to help
reestablish for ourselves the patcerns of this soldiers background.
Youknow, full commiemene generally comes asa resule of awareness,
and awareness s the product of study and observaion. The things
a person has gone to the effort of reading and analyzing say great
deal about his character. In other words,very few black inteligence
agents will have studied Marx, Mao, Lenin, Fanon, cats like that
“in depth.” You can generall tell what processes a man's mind has
gone through by what he's seudied, observed. So examine, even the
Pose Office willdo tht. Written and oral tests - drugs are not to be
discounted cither, oral teses under truth drugs. Then you have the
uleimate tests, the things that no agent of the eseablishment could
do. Like assassinare the local head of the Gestapo. Bring him out of
isolation blindfolded, arm him, tell him what to do, and where to
go afterward, and wait,ecc. I think you could be fairly sure of him
after a series of eses like these.

Were only thinkingin terms of small, highly erained, super-secret,
counter-Kluist vanguard group. However, dealing with people
you've known over the years and have seen tested in fire already is
best, like me, you and your comeades, and mine. The Blacks who
joined the armed expeditionary forces jus for profit (¢he cats who.
steal them blind and hustle the other suckers). They are serting to
s, to become aware also.

“This Vietnam adventure on the part of the fascist has vasely changed
the whole relationship becween the masses and the ruling class. Can
you deteet the subtle changes? The really ugly side of imperialism
is being demonstrated for not juse the people who suffer s ffecs
abroad, but also to the litele lecpy guy here inside the US. They're
searting now to make the link between foreign wars and forcign
businesses. And they'e better able to make the comparisons and
conclusions. Ho Chi Minh vs. Ky, for example. People are all
searting to saysuch things as “Some form of socialism i the answer”
Time to move, we must show them that resistance is possible, and
that chere is 2 hard lef cadre willing to lead it. Conditions are right

BLOOD IN MY EYE
now, for the beginnings, a least, of a revolutionary culture; these
conditions have always been present here inside the Black Colony
but... no leadership unil now:

I we can keep the Panther alive by protecting the party workers
with a show of underground strengeh, waching the watcher,
assassinating the assassins, 1 think the people will sart o listen to
them. Blacks have grown very eynical toall geoups who make claims
in the area of problem.solving - since there have been one million
groups and no problems solved. The physical conditions are right
for the sart of proteacted war. We have yee to hit on the tacti for
control of artitudes, howevers how to make people organize and
esist the ruin of thei lives. And i’ for certain we'll never figure
out the right tactic if the pigs keep killing off and busting al the
vanguard elements. The time has come ~ Bobby's Seize rhe Time
makes sense. We can'e build a mass movement without finding some
way o stay alive long enough o lee them know we'r here. And that
we're not just out to play on them. That we are finally prepared to
totally commit ourselves to the fight, that we will never abandon
them when the pig moves in with his pistols and paddy-vagons.
that we're willing to ake it to the grave-yard.

A show of organizational skill and valid anti-cstablishmentism
will alvays bring on violence from the fascise. The people know
this, s0 they must also know that this violence can be countered
before they Il believe and respond. *Let the ruling class tremble at
4 communist revolution.” Thats my favorite line in all of Marx and
Engels. From Fanon it “The time for talking has ended, the time
for acting has begun.” - Long live the guerrila

Jon

‘The counter-terroris, faceless, nameless specialist in all martial ares is
the fiese soldier of the people! His violence will be swife, surprising,
explosive, and tied into a clearly political matrix. In some cases of
assassination, it may be wise to make them appear as accidents, but that

sill doesn'e reduce the politcal conten.

These workers, properly distributed and going sbout their tasks with
secret, flawles precision and in perfect unison with the political fron,
will shake the fascses to their very foundations. Their limited, highly
selective violence i the absolute minimum for enforcing che demands

PART ONE 3
of the people. Anything less will fail. We are not dealing with nice
‘people who will throw down their guns and submit to our will because
we outnumber them; from the vantage point of established power and
history,they know that one armed man can control a thousand.

People’s Waris not polite or proper. It s not possible o limit the scope
and range of violence to what the enemy will bear without reacting,
Anyideal, any activity that may do violence to their control, will never
be permiteed. People’s War is improvisation and more improvisation.
It is organizing the masses around their realisic needs and moving
them againse whatever forces reserce their passage to power. | repeat
ealiseic, day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and
making them conscious of revolution that the world, the universe,
must revolve - that it will stop stagnate, and die for no man’ prvilege.

Ifwe aceepe revolution, we must aceepe all that it implie: repression,
counter-erorism, days filled with work, nervous strain, prison,

Ou present problem as soldiers i t protect our policieal peopleactheir
work and enforce the increasing demands that the people,as a policical
resule, will make upon power. The soldier is the counter-terrorist,the
bodyguard, che first of a military vanguard. The distance beeween him
and the class enemy i a free fire zone. He has to be the baddest and
serongese of our kind: calm, sure, self-possessed. completely familiar
with the face that the only things that stand becween black men and
violent deach are the fase break, quick draw, and snap shot. Tersible
Jonachans teethed on the barrel of the political tool, hardened against
the conerete of the most uncivilized jungles of the planet - Chicago,
St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco - tested in a dozen fires. “Tall
slim youth” . the new nigger, with a gun and the eyes of the hunter,
the huncer of men.

These comrades muse make the fist contribution. They will be the
firse to fall. We gaher up cheir bodies, clean them, kiss them and
smile. Their funcrals should be gala affairs, of home-brewed wine and
revolutionary music to do the dance of death by:. We should be sad
only that it taken us so many generations to produce them. Building
consciousness and revolutionary culture agains the repressive, natural
defense reflexes of the system means taking realistic day-to-day issues
like hunger, the need for clothing and housing, joblessness. It involves
provoking repression ~ feedingon it. The fact of polcieal and political

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
economie prisoners n legions and the processes used by the oppressors
to judge and condemn them muse be used as the rallying cries of
revolution. Economic crime and even crimes of passion against the
oppressors must be understood as rebellion. Even funerals can be used
as an issue, since there will be so many of them, Improvising on reality
is the key principle underlying the building of a united lefe and rasing
the consciousness of the people. e will give us our tactics.

In the Black Colony and other depressed arcas of the country there will
be less difficuley in organizing, mobilizing and aleering the atitudes
of the people toward their class enemies. However,in the areas of the
elass seruceure that can be said to be “making it” affecting artitudes
toward 2 revolutionary change in the system of production and
distribution wil, of course, call for the destruction of their comfore,
the *manufaceuring” of a condition” where they will b cither neutral
or complementary to the revolutionary effore. The psychological efect
ofoursecree army, thereal destruetive effect it can have; an increasingly
pervasive underground press with new emphasis on 2 “mass seyle”s the
popularization ofthe revolutionary culeure and then the elevating of it
both under the direction of an ulra-aggressive policical party — these
thrce, with no clement missing, conneeted to the realistic issues form
the basis of our only hope. There will be no educating, no consciousness,
no revolutionary culeure, no forward movement, without these three
elements working with the harmony of a healthy organism.

To sum up, the existence of a poltical vanguard precedes the existence
of any of the other clements of a truly revolutionary culture. IF the
thruse of this political vanguard is effective (demonstrating realstic,
sincere designs aimed at the overthrow of established power). i will be
aetacked by the builein automatic survival inseinets of the established
power comples, ereating and supporting the need to counterpoise the
violence of power. Without the ability to organize 2 counterforce to
neutalize the violence of established power, antithesis dies. We are
not contending with fools who will allow us to simply walk in and
organize people to war against them. All serious challenges will be
met with pani and repression. That is axiomatic. We must not allow
ourselves to be hunted, imprisoned and murdered. We will never yicld
o terror tactics. We will organize a violence of our own, hidden and
more aggressive. We fight from a position of weakness, but there are
eactical devices that if employed without restraine will afford us a very

PART ONE B
The fascises believe that one guard with a machine gun can control
a thousand men, bue I know that this guard cannoe waech all one
thousand at once. While his attention and gun are trained on 2
gathering of ten who whisper freedom ~ closing on his blind side, my
knife will claim his life. A political theuse is immediately followed
by a hidden miliary thrust in the opening phases of revolutionary
culture, Leadership muse be protected. And it helps people bit by bit
to understand and relate to the necessiy of violence in any plan to
overthrow anything - “overthrow” means violence. In our case it means
pusting o death. This is the as time [l epeat this for those of us who
for one dread or another seem not too recepive: fighting originates
from a well-developed kick in the as.

The prolecariac - the working lass - issil the mose revolutionary class,
and seillthe real gravedigger of capiealise society. However,the notion
that they alone can or must carry the revolution is too ridiculous and
simplistic for any serious consideration at all. The induserial working
force of today’s modern industrial seace may be pivoral in carrying out
a suceessful revolution against that sate, but their power and numbers
have been vastly reduced by such developments s automation, milieary-
corporate elitism, (the connection through marriage of government,
military and corporate heads), the new class of National Guard pigs
(chey broke the postal serke), government-controlled unions,right-to.
work laws, ecc. The argument that centers on the ideal that all workers
muse be politicall educated before the revolution can supporta violent
thruse verges on the absurd. Today nearly six and a half million of them
can't find work. And those who are working scem to be convinced
that foreign wars and armaments spending are more desirable than
unemployment. OF course they should be made conscious of their
exploitation and they must be moved to act in their behalf. Those who
fel chat they are doing well, and those who actually are doing well
should be introduced to the fact of “surplus value™ Waiting passively
for the final verdice of history is not making revolution. I flies in the
face of revolution. I ignores the existence of bread and circuses, terror
from the ight, and the racism and animalism of che ruling-clas pigs. It
doesn'ttake into account the fact that they know we are coming.

23 Surplus labor in Marsan cconomies is che number of hours worker can work
i escess o what s required o provide him with minigum sustenance. The prod-
et of surplus sbor s knowen as surplus value I i the only source of rofcfr the
capicalise and lads o explocason of che worker.

) BLOOD IN MY EYE
They know how to hold on to their privilege, could they have held it
this long otherwise? We are being repressed now. Coures that dispense
no justice and conceneration camps are already in existence. There are
more secret police in this country than in all others combined — so
many that they constitute a whole new class that has attached ieself
to the power complex. Repression is here. Is time to move with

determination. After our victory, no one will escape our ustce with the
now historicall classc line *Well, we didn'e know” Repression is here
now, and we won'e reach the next level of revolutionary consciousness
and activiey until we meet i with a counter-terror and demonstrate to
the people that we are here and resistance i possible

From leteer mailed by Jonathan shorely before his death:

Why do we go for thisold shit, most of the fascis functionarieslive
as unguarded as 1 do. I could slp a knife beeween Max Rafferty's
ribs. The Agnews and Du Pones, the Rockefellers and Morgans,
all of the Getey, Hune, and Hughes types who sneak around in
armored cars and jets are juse as reachable. Anyone who will come
out of his bomb sheler can be had. Imagine what Nixon's armored
car would look like if I stepped out of the alley and hit i with the
anti-tank rocket launcher under my coae ~ a ball of fre. Hell will
be heir reward,

But che guerrilla needs our help. When Jonathan steps forward with
his anti-Nixon rocket launcher,there should be nine more like himsclf,
with assault rifles o close an exit path for him. And there should be a
political infrastructure, a cadre, not far away to explain his actions, and
glean from them the greatest possible overall poliical effect.

Prestige stands beween the masses and a revolt againse their class
enemy. The aura of magic, glamour, luster and splendid permanence
covers the fasciss like protective layer of fat. The slimy scales of
majesty shield and conceal the dilapidacion of the old bourgeois reign
of terror. Although in reality nothing remains but the illusion. They
can seill organize violence, but the Indo-Chinese have proved that to
be noe too formidable.

Our present task i o illustrate this poine forcefuly to the people. The
fasist induserial state can organize a ponderous, mechanized violence,
but ehis systematic industrially based holding action is helpless before
the fluid, mobile, self-impelled averition of people’s urban gucrrilla

PART ONE 2
warfare., With his cechniques fully developed and established, the
urban guerilla launches his attacks on the corporate-military-police
complex with some of these milicary objectives in mind.

~toweaken helocal guards orthe surity systemof the dictatorship,
given the face that we are avtacking and the “gorillas” defending,
which means catching the government in a defensive position with
ies troops immobilized in defense of the entire complex of national
maintenance, with its ever-present fears of an aceack on its strategic
nerve centers, and without ever knowing where, how, and when
that ateack will come:

~t0 actack on every side with many different armed groups, few in
number, each self-contained and operating separacely, to disperse
the government forces i their pursuit of a thoroughly fragmented
organization instead of offeringthe dictatorship the opportunity to
concentrate itsforces of repression on the deseruction of o tighely
organized system operating throughout the country

~ o give proof of it combativeness, decision, firmness,
determination, and persistence in the actack on the milieary
dictatorship n order o permitall malcontents o ollow our example
and fight with urban guerrilla tactics. Meanwhile, the government,
wich all its problems, incapable of haleing guerella operations in
the city, il lose time and suffer endless aterition and will finally
b forced to pull back iesrepressive troopsin order to mount guard
over the banks, industries, armories, military barracks, prisons,
public offices, radio and television stations, Noreh American firms,

gasstorage tanks, oilrefinerics; ships,airplanes, ports, residences of
outstanding members of the regime such as ministers and generals,
police sations, and official organizations, etc.

= to increase urban guerrila discurbances gradually in an endless
ascendancy of unforeseen actions such that the government troops
cannot leave the urban areas to pursue the guerrilas in the interior
without running the risk of abandoning the citics and permitting
ebellion to increase on the coase a5 well as in the incerior of the
country:

~ to oblige the army and the police, with the commanders and
their assistants, to change the relative comforts and tranguilliey of
their barracks and their usual rest for & state of alarm and growing
tension in the expectation of ateack or in search for tracks that
vanish withou a trace:

~ o avoid open baele and decisive combat with the government,

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
limiting the seruggle to brief and rapid attacks with lighening
resules;

~ to assure for the urban guersilla a maximum frcedom of maneuver
and of action without ever relinquishing the use of armed
violence, remaining fimly oriented toward helping the beginning
of rural guerrilla warfare and supporting the construction of the
revolutionary army for national liberation.**

Prestige is an abseract, an intangible. It has no material basis, no
substantial objective reality to be perceived through the senses. One
ean'touch itor taste e, s it or smell i, i can'ebe heard. So how docs
icexise? Subjectively,n the mind's e, after the fact of some conneced
circumstances that may also have been subjective

Were looking for connections; the materialist approach is to examine
things in their ol sequence, sce them in process, not to merely
establish their being in fixed sequential images, but to take in the
staee of being in process: infancy, macurity, decline, things in motion,
processed inco other things in motion. We're conseanely laboring to
determine that which governs, regulates, motivates all the separate
but related and incerrelated processes ~ from the viewpoine that
consciousness is determined by dialeetical, objective developments.
The prestige of power as the subjective effect of a past deed or
reputation, real or fancied, then has a very definice life process. The
prestige of the capitalit clas inside the US. reached s maurity with
the close of the 1860-64 civil war. Since tha time there have been no
serious threas to their powers their exceses have taken on cereain
legitimacy through long usage.

Prestige bars any serious artack on power. Do people attack thing
they consider with awe, with a sense of is legitimacy? In the process
of things, the prestige of power emerges roughly in that period when
power does not have to exerciseits underlying basis - violence. Having
proved and eseablished isel, it drife,secure from any serious challenge
Tes aucomatic defense-aetack instinces remain alere; small threats are
cither ignored away, laughed away, or in the cases that may build into
something dangerous, slapped away. To the masters of capival, the
mose dreadful omen of all is revolutionary scientific socialism. The
gravedigger evokes fear response. Prestige wanes if the frse artacks on

24 Gerassop. i p. 71

PART ONE 2
ies power base find it wa
further arcacks upon ieself.

ing. Preseige dics when it canno prevent

Al intellcctual arguments againse the necessity of counter-violence,
even in the opening stages of 2 Peoples War against an industrial
establishment such as the one in the US.A., are false. We can stop
the debate: prestige must be destroyed. People must see the venerated
inseicutions and the “omnipotent adminiserator” actually under physical
aetack. They must be assured that the heavens will not hurl lighening
boles at the people’s heads for challenging the rights of properey
Then, although international capitalism has shot itsLast bolts, it is not
exacely harmless. I the threat to power is truly revolutionary and the
firse seep into revolutionary consciousness taken with a forceful attack
upon prestige, we must anticipate reaction, accept repression's terror,
and meet it with a counter-terror of our own. The gravedigger needs 3
bodyguard to protect him ac this work, else the grave may be his own.

‘The debate beeween the vanguard elemenes should end. The argument
that cthe prestige of power will le itself o be educared away is o
idiotic to be allowed to stand. Waiting for power to move to its
inevitable collapse is suicidal for all concerned. Blacks and other Third
World peoples have the very imminent prospect of genocidal tactics
to contend with, and we can now all see that the modern induserial
state, motivated by the incerests of exclusive groups of capitalist
masters, cannot regulate itselfto make possible an inclusive production
and distribution of goods, or production without a massive waste of
resources and destruction of al thae stands about. The debate ends,
the action begins. It is not a question of the necessty of violence, but
how to organize it to fit our unique sicuation, to tie it with flawless
exactitude to our policical activity, and to organize it immediately

Comrade George: I read recently from a textbook edited by my
favorite writer W. Pomeroy®? that a city street could actually be
considered as a defile. A convoy of any kind erapped in a defile on
the countryside is easy prey for the forces positioned above and
aboutit

Jonathan

Teis absoluely cereain that every fascist military chinker and official in
the world has devored time and seudy to the works of the greae guerrilla

25 W), Foret Pomeroy auchor of Guerilla Warfure and Marsiom.

w“ BLOOD IN MY EYE
tacticians, Mao, Ho, Giap, Guevara, Pomeroy, Fanon and Nkrumah
‘The fundameneals of People’s War are no secret. Ie would seem that
Giap's Peaple’s Army, Peaple's War or Guevara's Guerrilla Warfire and
the other masterworks on poor people’ war, once published for the
world to seudy, would blune theis cffectiveness at least a lietle — that
is, unel one has seudied in depth and understood. Guerrilla warfare by
ies very nature is invulnerable. Advanced scientific guersilla stracegy.
worked out over the first three-quarters o this century, s not, contrary
to popular image, merely 2 *hit-and-run” haphazard affair. In spite of
the need for improv

daring, i is scientific. The man who labored over s construction had
a5 task the forging of an insteument which would enable an indigent
and weaponless people to resise and overcome a ponderous mechanized
army dependent upon an industrial base and operating on syseematized
thoughe. It is 2 perfect tool, perfect. No establishment army can
countervailit. The best example of this new fighting seyle - the urban
guersilla — is the spectacular suceess of the Tupamaros,the military arm
of Uruguay’ National Liberation Movement. Brilliantly organized.,
they have carried out well-planned operations, such as

ion and mobility and in spite ofits poverey and

burning down plants (General Motors) without harming a single
worker,robbing impregnable ortresses (such as the Casino of Punea
del Este), kidnapping hated officials, ambassadors, and bankers,
seizing whole towns long enough to explain their puspose and
revolutionary commitment, assassinating key repressive agents,such
as the chief of the police’ special squad, sabotaging imperialism's
indusrial-military complexes and raiding police military outposes
to capture arms and ammunition.”

Gerass outlines their fighting stracegy as follows:

The objective is manifold: (1) to threaten the Establishment, cause
it to panic and make serious tactical mistakes, such as resorting to
mass repression which radicalizes the population againse thems (2)
to establish the underground revolutionary apparatus, including
both active participants and erusted bue passive collaborators
(who will later carry ou the liaison communication, logistc, and
propaganda needs of the revolutionary armies in the cities): (3) to
test new reeruits in relative security, for, though police infierators
are bound to creep in and seay in the organization for future need
even if they have to kill their own to do so, the fact that for a long
time urban groups will operate independently of each other keeps

PART ONE 5
sweeping arrests of urban guerrillas down o a minimum; (4) o
demoralize the rank and file and even the officers of the repressive
forces, as they sce themselves constantly bue unexpectedly under
aetack (it is said that to kil policemen indiscriminately is to forget
the working-class background of the cop on the beat; ehisis as sbsurd
as teying to save the ordinary soldiers whom the Vietnamese must
Kill o survive); (5) to panie local capiealises o withdraw their funds
from specific areas, thus hurting the local warlords and politicians
who profic from these investmenes; (6) to frighten away foreign
investors, which will affece the whole bureaucratie oligarchys (7) to
force the US. to constantly extend its intervention, which will tax
s resources, hence discontent at home, and spread its imperialistic
arms, rendering it more vulnerable abroad*

A ehis point, | must make clear that | am cereainly not warning the
military establishment or their capitalise masters, nor am | advocating
the overthrow ofthe established Amerikan government; when | use the
initials US.A. in these observations, it must be understood that I could
quite as casily be rferring to the Union of South Africa (US.A.11)

The government of the US.A. and all thae i stands for, all thae it
represents, must be destroyed. This is the searting poin, and the end.
We have the means to this end; the problem is to develop acceptance
of their use

The firs struggle s one waged within our own minds. We must in all
haste transcend the intellectualinhibitions that preclude suppore of at
lease the minimum level of violence that must develop concomitantly
witheach political thrust;ouraticudes must change efore we can expect
any response from the people, workers, seudents, lumpenprolecariat
We must accep the eventuality of bringing the US.A. to its knees;
accept the closing off of crtical scctions of the city with barbed wire,
armored pig carrcrs criss-crossing the city serects, soldiers everywhere,
tommy guns pointed at stomach level, smoke curling black against
the daylighe sky, the smell of cordie, house-to-house searches, doors
being kicked down, the commonness of death. Then we must learn the
forms of resistance: the booby trap, the silenced pistol and rifle, the
pitting ofseres to slow them down, the wrecking of heavy equipment
o block their effcient movement, false wall, hidden sub-basemens,

26 I, p.65.

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
tunnels (Vietnamese style), destruction of the ertical clements of the
faciliies that support establishment order; we must learn the value of
infileration - it works better for us than i does for the opposition. We
simply seop allowing ourselves to be hunted and do some stalking of
our own; their secret police aren'e really too sccre ac all. Right now
we can go numbering, naming, compiling information on them all ~
they're too visible to be safe. Revolution is aggressive. Juse where are
we? Where is chis country skidding to? In the morning the fighe will

In consideringall of the eseablishment’s protective agencies, even those
that are quasi-secrer, none can hide themselves. Any eseablishment,
inseicution or organization that enjoys prestige, that exists openly
aboveground, is by this definition “weak. or at least vulnerable to
4 decermined ateack. When the purpose of your military tactis is
o build and guard some objeet or poin of supposed advaneage, the
defender can acrually be thoughe of as being under siege, the guard
himselfa standing targee. The foreress and all s resources, mechanized
and human, for all its imposing strengeh, cannor exis for long under
persistent attack deprived of the opporunity o replenish, repair,
renew iself. I the opposing military Forces that have laid the siege are
nameless, faceless, numberless, indistinguishable from all the millions
that exist all bou the eseablishment, when the eseablishmenc’s mlicary
forces sally forth from cheir beleaguered fortress to do batle, what
muse be the resule? They muse cause suffering to the innocent, since
it is imposible for them to know us, thus making new enemies. They
will restrce the freedom of our known or suspected political partics
and projects that are welded to the people, thus restricting the frcedom
of others who may have been neutral or sympathetic to them. They
will make themselves targets for our hidden machine gun, sniper’ rifle
slenced pistol, morear, anti-tank rocket, flamethrower:

Our counter-terrorism will bring on a stage-two fascist repression.
There is no question in our minds - blacks, men under hatches - sbout
the nature of the ruling class the exceedingly violene disposition of
the US.A. ruling clas is well documented with just a glance into our
lives and the order of our deaths. The point i to reveal this *senseless
violence” to the entire revolutionary class or classs.

Counter-terrorism is a mighty tool, and the only one at our disposal in

the opening stages of People’s War. In some cases in other revolutionary
societies this level of violence alone was sufficient to win all the

PART ONE 47
demands of the people. However, 'm sure that here it will not be
sufficient because of the complexiies of the US.A. clas structure and
iusseockpile of potential further violence (many of the small demands of
asizable portion of the population are slowly being met a the expense
ofall the rest of us and the world’ people). A new pig-oriented class
has been ereated at the bottom of our society from which the ruling
elass will be always able to draw some suppore. Consequently our task
will be to move from counter-terrorise actics nto the second stage of
larger guerrilla unit operation.

Over 90 percent of the US.A. population live in cities and towns, and
although some of the principles of classic Mao-Che-style guerrilla
operations must be used to stop the orderly flow of intercity and
incerstate commerce, most of the real fighting must take place inside
the nerve centers of the nation — the cities. This is an entirely new
situation in the development of People’s War. Whereas the clasic types
of the Third World movements generally relied upon the strangling
of provincial capitals where the enemy colonial power tended to
concentrate iself, in urban guerrilla warfare where the colonies can be
said to be sivuated within the city, the process or tactis will be unique.

Though the basic strategy is the same, urban guerrilla warfare differs
from all chat has ever taken place in the arena of guerrilla againse the
god state. There are similarities between our situation and that of the
growing movement of the Uruguayan people, and perhaps we can draw
from cheir experience. But to be realistic, the disparity in size and
population, the relacive strengeh of the enemy state insticutions and
their global sweep, must seriously be taken ineo account. Uruguay is a
colony of Anglo-Amerika; defeat of the Uruguayan government and
a change in the present properey relations would of necessity mean
the defea of a section of the Amerikan imperial infraseructure. The
comparison between ourselves and the Algerian liberation experience
is almose untenable, though there may be some small tactical lessons
to be gleaned from their urban ffort. It musc be kept in mind that
the principal bareles that led to the people’s viceory were fought on
the countryside between massive French mechanized divisions and 3
elassical guerrilla army of the people. The bacele for Algiers was only
aided by the forces within. The people’s ifth colum within the city
of Algiers was not 2 model of perfection simply because the principal
effore, energy and motive forces were located in the classical guerrilla
units that engaged the French expeditionary forces for control of

8 BLOOD IN MY EYE
the countryside. At issue there in Algeria were such things as crude
petroleum (62 percent of the nation’s exports), agriculeural produces
(18 percent), and some iron ore. All these basic raw materials were,
of course, located in the countryside and had to be protected by the
French

The war for control of the LS. A. s unique in that its hearbeat can be
stopped only by placing our primary forces in the valleys and defiles of
s city seeets. US.A. is the colonial master, the center of the imperial
process where the raw materials are worked into finished manufactured
produces to b recirculated back into the exterior and interior colonies.
Ina comparison of the classical forms of wars of lberation fought n the
outlying colonies and the one we must yet formulate, a vital question
is immediately brought to our ateention: Does it work in such a torally
differen secting?

A theoretical examination indicates that it does. In face,urban people’s
guersilla warfare may prove to be an even more effective tool than the
classical ype. The same advantages are present, the same possibilices,
plus some that exist simply because the fight s taking place within the
cites,the nerve centers of the mation.

‘Theenemy culture, the established government, exises st of allbecause
of es ability to govern, to maintain enough order to ensure that a cycle
of sorts exists between the various levels and elements of the society
“Law and Order s their objective. Ours is *Perfece Disorder” Our
aim s o stop the life eyele of the enemy eulture and replace it with our
own revolutionary culture. This can be done only by ereaing perfect
disorder within the eyele of the enemy culture’slfe process and leaving
a power vacuum to be filled by our building revolutionary culeure.

When the fight eakes place within the citis, the disorder will clearly
e haseened — this will have an immediate cffect on the consciousness
of the bulk of the population and wil strain the relationship beeween
government and governed to the utmost.

Ifehe life of the manufaceuring city is o be stopped, it s clear that the
normal processes, a leas, will be slowed by a convoy of establishment
trucks, tanks or troops simply moving in the city’s arteries where
commercial convoys should be moving. The necessary checkpoints will
further slow . Each one of the opposition's own tank shellsthat i fired
inside the manufacturing ey a¢ the elusive guerrilla will destroy some

PART ONE 2
aspect ofthat factory-city and undercut the ability of the esblishment
to produce another tank shell It will not help the fascise cause very
much ac all when the armored personnel carrier o jeep patrol equipped
with 30-caliber machine guns fires into a downtown shopping crowd
ac e elusive guerrilla who has taken refuge among them. The people
juse will not underseand.

The cities of fascist US.A-buile seraghe up and with very liel real
planning or pactern, the ewisting side streets, gangways connecting
roofs, manholes, storm drains, conerete and steel trees ~ will hide 3
guersilla army juse as effectively as any forese. There is the added
advantage that just being in an area doesn't automatically make one
suspeet and fair game, a i the case when an establishment army unit
spots a gachering, no macter how innocent, in an area where guerrilla
movements have been repored in the countryside just being out there
defines them. The fact that the guerrilla can hide himself farly easily
inside large population centers does not mean tha hard work needn't
be done toward the winning of popular suppor. It simply means that
failure to gain “full suppore” for violent confrontation doesn't preclude
violent confrontation. 1 fallthe clements exist hat have made guerrilla
warfare i ies classical style an invincible weapon against mechanized.,
industrially-based armics in un-developed areas,they will be even more
successful in buile-up urban Amerikan conditions.

The faces that make it impossible for the establishment army to
overcome the artacking guerrilla army in spite of the availabiliey of
the knowledge contained in the master-works on guerrilla serategy
~ become clear when we realize that afier the serategy s understood
by the guerrilla chicf, the tacties applicable to his particular milicary
problems “are a product of bis imagination alone? 3 constant creative
improvising. Also working against the esablishment’s general saffsies
own mentalit. They've convinced themselves or have been convinced
by their experience at war with other mechanized armies that “having
the most at the right time” wins war. In other words, they feel that
winning wars depends mainly on gadgets and they presume that they
can dictate the terms and grounds upon which each bactle takes place.
They're locked in on a fixed set of systematized ideas that conflict
completely with the realities of People’s War. Their egos simply will
never allow them to admit that all the ingenuity that has gone into
the development of the bliezkricg has been wasted. A $100,000 cank
ean be deseroyed with ewo dollars’ wordh of materials; a jet is useless

s0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
against che ifleman, and i also can be destroyed with one well placed
burse from an assaule rifle or destroyed on the ground by mortar from
miles away. Then, too, the pilot,years in the making, can be klled with
a knife. The copter as a figheing machine s the mose stupid of all the
costly gadgets: it can be heard from miles aways it can' be armored, a
ten-cent bullet can render it useless. Al of these contraptions require
liquid fucls that will stop lowing whe the production of all the other
commodities stops. Fighting really depends upon the people and small
casily machined portable weapons

Another factor that works to the advantage of the guersilla army is
time. The establishment forces canno surive the prolonged unrest
that i seeadily building, Profics fall, the poine of diminishing returns
is eventually reached; and from there, the establishmene’s force and
energy goes into its las stages of lfe, while our new revolutionary
culture is building musical chairs where cach go-round excludes
some clement of their control factors. The obiectiv, I repeat, of the
destruction of a city-based induseral establishment and ics protective
forces is to create pefect disorder, to disrupe al of their interacting
processes that allow them to produce and distribute goods, and chis
can be done from within the process much more casily than from
withous. Really there s no possibilcy of an established government
ever overcoming a decermined internal enemy.

By cheir very nature, the *holder” or “owner” and his guard are exposed
and vulnersble. A comparison between their mode of existence
and that of the people’s vanguard elements employing al the subtle
scientific principles of urban guerrilla warfare will demonsteate clearly
where the real power lies. Top-heavy establishmene organizations
that exise openly are always a reflection of the men who staff them
OF primary interest to the guerrila are the bureaucratic institutions
that serve o protcet the right of the wrongdoers to do their wrong -
the local and federal pig establishments. The complexitis of the class
seructure have shifted somewhat since the time of Marx and Lenin.
Presently within the working class, there exists an ultra-right section
at the bottom of this structure which feels that all of its demands on
life can be me by che exising order. In fact,the working class of ULS.A.
1971 can be sealistically divided into ewo mutually exclusive and
conflicting sections, one right-oriented and conservative, the other lefe
to neutral. One explanation for this phenomenon is the loss over the
years (to fascist nationalistic propaganda and state-controlled unions)

PART ONE 51
ofaclear-cut class consciousness. I effect, it can be said that thisright
oricnted sector of the working class is 2 new class, a new pig class. In
their ranks we find a factory or conseeuction worker, the ubiquitous
civil service employee, the retired military carcer man, the man who
sell used autos o insurance, the stock clerk or longshoreman about to
be replaced by a machine. All of these individuals are no clearly in the
new pig class — some only have just one foot in the grave. As yet they
only have pig tendencies and can sill be redcemed. Oueright pigs must
be cither neutralized or destroyed (killed). From the new pig class (a
section of the working class whose demands are small and are being
Slowly mee by the capiralist masters), the government draws its greatest
support. The forces of counterrevolution make themselves felt on the
sereet level through this new class, while above this clas, in the loosely
defined petit-bourgeois level and upper-middle-class professionals
and seudents, we can find some very real revolutionary consciousness!
There are explanations for this complex inverced stratification of
revolutionary potential: the history of the US.A. and its immigrans,
the emphasis placed on subversion of the workers' movement (the
unions) by the ruling clas, and the apparent (not real) stabilizing of
the economy with fascist Keynesian controls and redoubled imperialist
expansion, all can be carcfuly treated to explain the present confusion
and contradictions in the class struggle - but mose of this I leave to
Comrade Newton who has handled it well so far. This isa comment on
what to do with what we have and what we are realisticall faced with.

The top-heavy bureaucratic agencics that exist with quasi-social
sanction ~ and in particular the ones that are given over to the
maintenance of lw and order — draw their principal personnel from the
pig class and consequently are an expression of that classs mentality: a
stagnant, even atavistic meneality hat s completely dependent upon
regimen and rote to perform the simplest of funcions.

First of all, the opposition is stupid. However, let me qualify this
seatement with the observation that they make up for what they lack
in brains wich sheer brutalty. As 2 resule of their original drawback
(seupidity). they have expanded to massive proportions, and tied
themselves irevocably o a technology based on massive and equally
fauley machines to the point now that it is impossible for them ever
o hide any of their movements, o move with any real speed, or to
change themselves in response to any change in our attack. The very
nature of their apparatus, its supposed legality and its sze, tends to

52 BLOOD IN MY EYE
weaken it. Their growing demand for personnel leaves them helpless
0 stop us from infiltrating them. Their cyberneties cannot overcome
the fact that men, especially of the pig clas, are eyelic. They think,
function and live in cycles. This is more to their detriment than ours.
Their science of control eurns upon them to weaken and wreck their
own institutions. How can 1 massive department or bureau o egiment
with hundreds of personnel ever coordinate any activiey withoue the
serictest regimentation, without a masive meeting place to familiarize
themselves with procedures, without badges or uniforms to identify
each other, without systematized patterns of thought and behavior,
without dependence on clear-cut orders. Simple pigeypes can only learn
o function by rote and in cycles. Procedure must be drilled into them
and only seldom if ever changed. I is quite casy for a pig to perform 3
particular function the same way, time after time, once he has learned
the function; it is not so easy o vary, especially when there are geeat
numbers of the same types of individuals involved. What would be the
result if each pig were given a different job each day in differen area
orif he had to vary his code every week or think for himselfjust one
eight-hour shifez Chaos. i wercn' for the sergeant or lieutenant and
a routine, when the average pig ran out of gas, his car would have to be
pushed out of the serect by the citizenry; when his bullets ran out he
would have only a club until he could check with he captain.

Cyelic men equipped with only a ew learned responses can be watched,
elocked, photographed and anticipated. Their code isn' really a code at
all. They are finished! A pigis a foolt They have numbers over the small
vanguard element and the social icense to kill - but once we decide on
the proper action, we will find that our enemies are vulnceable

For the soldirs of the people, the guerrllas, though they also must
operate with the tightest structure and in complete harmony with
their politieal branch, cycles are not a factor in their operations. The
subtleties and fundamentals of urban guerrilla warfare can be broken
down o their simplest terms this way:

Mabitity
Only the light, portable, easily machined or easily stolen weapons
are employed by the guerrlla under normal circumstances. On rare
occasions, he may hire or commandeer a piece of heavy equipment
for an isolated o special purpose (which fies in with the improvised,
extemporancous nature of this form of combar). The bomb in all its
various forms, banglor, morear,satchel charge, hand grenade; the anti

PART ONE 5
tank rocket launcher, the sniper’s rifle, the light machine gun, the
slenced pistol, the flamethrower, the poison dart, poison bullet, the
crossbow, the knife, the fise - all form the guerrilla arsenal. Provision
must be made to move men and equipment in spite of the condition
of today’ strcees and roads in the cities. Thar means making use of
the new four-wheel drive civilian-type jeeps, station wagons and
motorcyeles. The bicycle will regain popularity. Heavy vehicle, the
jeeps, erucks, vans (al ordinary-looking family o commereial-looking
vehicles bue armored with cither plasic or steel) can be cither rented
or commandeered. All dwellings should be rented and expendable
They should be equipped so that when forced to leave by tunnel or
other hidden exies, the plce can be burned to create fucher confusion
for the attacker and destroy evidence. Food and clothing should be
purposely simple. Clothing must always be available for disguises
Although part of the guerrill’s function is to hijack and commandecr
food in nonperishable form from the enemy culeures and stockpiles,
he should also learn to identify the food plants that grow wild all over
the country ~ even in backyards and vacant lots. He should also learn
o wan less.

Infieration

Right now we can be placing our soldiers inside the various police
and military and prison staffs. Our more gifted and betcer-cducated
comrades could end up in the intelligence nits of the army and police
our major source of weapons should come from our men placed in the
military under seemingly ordinary circumstances. This is our enemy’s
greatest weaknesss any establishment’s greaest weakness is the need
for personnel o resise the people. This lays them open to infltraion.
The guerrilla army that operates within the city is necessarily small, so
we stop infiltration by being very selective and conducting thorough
and murderous eses and making full use of the principles underlying
departmentalization.

The Ambush

The only form of atack employed by the guerrilla forces s the ambush,
the surprise ateack. There must never be any front lines, or defending
of territory. The only engagemenes that are carried to completion are
the ones that we are winning; after an initial attack f the enemy regains
himself and counterattacks, we disengage and simply go home to await
the next opportunicy when we can catch him asleep, with his women,
moving in convoys, on the toilet.

st BLOOD IN MY EYE
Camouflage
Nothing ever appears ouewardly as it is. The armor (sheets of plastic
o steel) i fixed inside the vans and trucks in such a way as to make
them appear normal when viewed from without. The milicary safe
house — with tunnels leading in all dircetions and conneeting with
other houses, a storm drain, 2 manhole with bulleeproof and aireight
plexiglass window, encasements inside the house camouflaged with
heavy curtains, sooms with doors that a really booby traps that work
from the inside ~ must be made o look like any other house along
the block. We must dress and equip ourselves with weaponry that will
allow us to move even in units of dozen o more without appearing to
e anything other than privace citizens pursuing their private interests
We will make use of all forms of disguise: mailman, policeman,
telephone repairman, priese, nun, National Guardsman. This principle
will soon have them shooring at cach other or turning the innocents
against chem. The resule - perfece disorder!

Autonomous nfiastructure
If it is our eventual goal to wear away the eseablishment’s abiliy to
produce and diseibute goods, to feed its war machine, or organize
any sort of sacial activity: then, of course, we muse, at the same time,
provide ourselves with the means of performing these functions on at
lease a subsistence level. Both the military and ehe policical arms of the
liberation movement must think of the provisioning of their vanguard
elements and the people during the dark days when we stop the
machine. Miliary supplies are stockpiled in advance with food staples.
Depression-days’ foraging and war-years’ liberation gardens muse be
reintroduced and refined. The military muse depend on the people for
food. e musealso prepare to feed the people from the enemy’s supplies.

Then you have the very healthy, spontancous mass looting. Perfect
disorder! At some point in the development of the overall struggle
revolutionary culeure it will have to become totally independent of
the old enemy culture in keeping with Che's theory of molding the
new society around the struggle againse the old. We will strt from
the beginning to build our own infraseructure in every possible area:
people’s scores, hospitals, banks, buses, army. This dual power, chis
building of political infraseructure and the military is succincely stazed
bythe Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton

PART ONE 55
We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level
of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would
be necessary to serve their intereses in survival by developing
progeams which would help them to meet their daily needs. For
2 long time we have had such programs not only for survival, but
for organizational pusposes. Now we not only have a breakfast
progeam for schoolchildren, we have clothing progeams, we have
health clinics which provide free medical and dental services, we
have progeams for prisonees and cheir familics, and we are opening
clothing and shoe factories to provide for more of the needs of the
community. Most recenely we have begun 2 testing and rescarch
progeam on sickle-cell anemia, and we know that 98 percent of the
vietims of this disease are Black. To fal to combat this disease is to
submit to genocide; to batde it s survival

Al these programs satisfy the deep needsof the community but they
are no solutions to our problems. That is why we call chem survival
progeams, meaning survival pending revolucion. We say that the
survival program of the Black Pancher Parey is like the survival
kit of a sailor stranded on a rafe. It helps him to sustain himself
until he can ger completely out of that situation. So the sursival
programs are not answers or solutions, but they will help us o
organize the community around a true analysis and underseanding
of their situation. When consciousness and understanding is aised
0 2 high level, chen the community will scize the dime and deliver
themselves from the boor of their oppressors.””

In following this strategy we at once “fll a very real vacuum” that
already exises in the Black Colony (brown and poor white too), where
the people are not being fed, clothed., provided with adequate medical
treatment or transportation facilities. This will create the consciousness
that comes from the introduction of people’s governmene. It will help
the people to understand the force and energy of revolution. “W ¢ are
organizing them around their needs.” We will not disteact them with
such empey questions as who wil be clected from which political parey
Al political partis, as things stand. will suppore the power comples.
Any individual elected wil cicher be a supporter of the established

27 Huey P, Neweon, Black Capitaliom ReAnayzed,p.C (supplement from) Black
Panther Incercommunal News Serviee Sarday, June 5. 1971

s6 BLOOD IN MY EYE
politics — or an “individual” What would help us, in fact, is to allow
as many right-wing elements as possible to assume “policical” power:
The warnings that “our thruses toward self-determinacion will bring on
fascism” are irresponsible — or better, unrealistc. The fasciss already
have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose
them and combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists
is like choosing which way one wishes to dic. The holder of so-called
high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling
corporate clas. It is to our benefie that this person be openly hosele,
despotic, unseasoning, We are not living in a nation where lefi-wing
parties hold eighey out of two hundred seats in a congressional body.
o even cight out of ewo hundred. This is 2 huge n:
by the most reactionary and violene ruling class in the hiscory of the
world, where the majority of the people just simply canno understand
that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world. They
have been hypnotized into believing that eriticism of the expansionist
policies of imperialism is really isolationise or injurious to both the
US.A. and the world:!

ion dominated

We are faced with wo choices: to continue as we have done for forty
years fanning our pamphlets against the hurricane, or sarting to build
4 new revolutionary culture that we will be able to eurn on the old
culeure, Collectively we have that choice: the Black Colony as it sits
out here alone has no such choice. In a report from Jonathan Jackson
in carly 1970, he said,

We are not going to wait uneil the US.A. artacks the people of the
US.A. or Angolz, Mozambique or any of the other African nations
in foment. We can't waie. We shouldn't even allow this thing to
happen in Indo-China. Bank of America, Chase Manhatan,
First National City Bank of N. Y, Irving Truse Co., the Morgan
monopoly, Manufacturers Hanover Truse, Continental Il National
Bank, First National Bank of Chicago, Bankers Truse Co., and a
dozen lesser fems all have greae financial interests in the US.A.
now. In 1966 the US.A. investment in one small African nation was
5667 million. Is almost doubled since then. In 1968, 70 t0 75% of
all goods from the US.A. entered the US.A. duty fice. Soon we'll
be asked co fight the people of the US.A. because they'e gerting
their people’s army ogether ... No ~ I'm not waiting for them to

attack s new part of Africa or Asia, I'm entering the war now - on
the side of the Vitnamese!

PART ONE 57
The Black Colony, US.A., has litele choice. We must enter the war on
the side of the majority of the world people, even if it means fighting
the US.A. majority. We fight to live. And we'ee learning to fight; il
be a war, o the knife if necessary:

We can'e wait until the generation that chinks of blacks as niggers and
the rese of the world as gooks, chinks, spies, etc., has been educated
away: Tt may be the reverse that happens: we niggers and gooks may be
blown away fiese. Or if we suevive, what will we inherit? A deserc?

IVl mass what people we can; perhaps that won't be the whole lower
elass. We'll mass ourselves and any ally we may be able to draw from the
whole class struceure, and we'll aetempt to wage a war on property and
property rights. Essentially thatis the figh, but, even then, some men
will die as i all forms of war. Bu if we cannor draw the support that is
necessary for such a war, then we see a positive benefi for the majority
of the world’s people in the reduction of this whole country to a vast
wasteland, and a graveyard for two hundred million of history's most
damnable fools!

In People’s War, urban seyl, each political move toward organizing
people around their realistic needs will support a_ corresponding
military move. This unity of polities and war will increase the
overall revolutionary consciousness by degees to a poine where mass
consciousness can be said to exist.

The Black Panther Parey is the largest and mose powerful political force
existing oueside establishment politis. It draws this power from the
people. It the people’s nacural, poliical vanguard. Now let us assume
the existence of small, tightly knie, totally commited and separate
military vanguard such as Jonachan Jackson attempted to build.

Jonachan was my brother and closest comrade. T knew him. He was
the real super-nigger. He worked at it, hard. He took complete contol
of himself, he leamned every weapon in the human arsenal, from the
flying side-thruse foot actack and the quick-draw snap shot to the
manufacture and use of the morear. He knew six thousand ways to kil
2 man, hirey with the simple stroke of an empry hand or foot. He was
seventeen years old when he dicd in the service of the people, on the
side of the black colonies and with the courage of the whole colonized
world. Lee’s assume where Jonathan is concerned that ... ur bactle cry
reaches some receptive car, and another hand reaches down to take up

s BLOOD IN MY EYE
our weapon..” We have two perfectly harmonious fiscs: the lefe “frone
£am’ of the Black Panthers political thrust, and the left “back ram’” of
the Auguse 7eh movemen

Lee’sfurtherassume that this nation s one huge ciey that we can callbyis
sightful updated name Johannesburg. This clarifies the understanding
of urban People’s War, the concept of “the true internaionalism? and
the connections, interactions, processes and effects of a people at war
under the leadership of a vanguard which wields a double-edged sword
against an isolated enemy element. All the cities of this country can be
treated as one interconneeting entity, due to the necessity of exchange
and inceractions caused by specialization. We can now deal with them
as a single entiy because of the national character of the vanguard
parey and revolutionary consciousness within the inner Black Colony
All Anglo-Western cities are generally the same when they are reduced
to the eritical features that support them. I could be talking about
London, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Seatele, Paris, Berlin or Rome instead of Johannesburg.

Mao pictured the US.A. as the city of the world surrounded, besieged
and slowly strangled to death by a third force under arms. Using Mao's
theoretical springboard, 1 wish to make furcher comments on the
hypotherical super-technological city-state and ies vlnerabilicy.

Any honest expere in the overall srategy and logisties of classic
Western mechanized warfare — the war of the industriallybased.,
established seate will admie that the scientific guerrilla force must
be ounumbered ten to one in manpower by the mechanized force if
it s to be contained at all. The establishment arms, the defenders of
property, of the industrial comples armed with the tools and weapons
of heavy industry, must field ten men for just one guerrilla: ehis point
is a strong indication of the relacive effectiveness of the two fighting
styles. Recent reports (March of 1971) coming in from the Indo
Chinese theater describe such debacles as eighey US.A. 40-ton tanks
racing in wild retreat before the guerrillas. Puppe soldiers and US.A.
mercenaries in their haste to disengage from the peoples forces are
lashing themselves to the runners o rescue helicopters. Disaster forthe
man with the most and best equipment is theeatening and imminent.
Now is the time for us to fill the streets with our protest, clog the
tunnels and back stairs of covert totaliarian government with every
weapon at ou disposal

PART ONE El
The effectiveness of rallics and mass demonstrations has not come to
an end. Their purpose has diacritically aleered, but the general eactic
remains sound. Today the rally affords us the opporeunity to effect
incensive organization of the projects and programs that will form the
infrasteucture of our communes. Ifthe mass rallies close, as they have
in the past, with a few speeches and a pamphlet, we can expect no more
resules than in the past: two hours later the people will be Amerikans
again (instead of people). But going among "the people” at cach
gathering with clipboards and pens, and painfully ascertaining what
cach can coneribut to clear-cut, carcfully defined political projects,is
the distinetion between intensive organization and the seerile, stlted
actempes to build new unions (rank and e, etc) or elect a socialist
legishaeure.

However,as we stare the projects that will eventually move the workers
and the whole community into open conflict with the ruling clique, my
own personal observations lead me o the independent conclusion that
the political vanguard and even ies early project need to be defended
Clearly the political cadre needs protection from the enemy culture’s
military, ies secree police and vigilante "death squads”

Armed seruggle is at the very heart of revolution. If the problems of
the people cannot be redressed because the necessary resousces are in
the hands of a relatively few families and individuals, ie means we are
going to have to scize this properey. Seizing property has always meant
some form of war, some form of armed seruggle. If history is our guide.,
it clearly records that nothing of any great value has ever changed
hands without a suruggle, or at least a show of, or threat of, violence.
Men simply don't surrender what they think of as their privilege and
property except by force. History itslf is cconomically mortivated elass

seruggle.

There s simply no way to compare this society or its historical
experience with that of a tiny colonial country like Chile: Allende is
not seizing property; his government is “buying property” Uncil the
Chilean ruling capivalis class is suppressed. the Chilean revolution
is as meaningless as the Swedish experiment. Socialist governments
which attempt to coexist with capitalist economics completely forget
the cconomic motive of human social history. Revisionism has given
birch o countless socialistie” hermaphrodites, ahvays to the deeriment
of people’ power, Strained, cortured definitions of socialexistence and
organization have trapped the people in so many contradictions that

& BLOOD IN MY EYE
most have given up all hope of harnessing the modern induscrial stace
or even understanding . England before the Tories or between the
Tories is “liberal socialise” Miliary dictatorships, clearly totalitaian,
are ruled by cliques traveling under the designation "revolutionary
council?” etc. No argument has any substance if it conflcts with the
objective conditions, the clear, incontrovertible facts. In our case, these

faces can be read from the nation’ dailies ~ in the obituary section.
Blacks who seriously advocate revolution are killed. Blacks who actack
property relations are slated for the graveyard or the prison camp. Ies
2 national culeural tradicion. Since these are the faces, it follows thae

An oppressed class which does not serive to learn €0 use arms, to
acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot
forger, unless we become bourgeois pacifsts or opportunists,
that we are living in a clas society, that there is no way out of this
socicty, and there can be none, except by means of the clas sruggle.
In every clas society, whether it is based on slavery, serfdom, or as
ac present, on wage lsbour,the oppressing class is armed

The vanguard cannot stay alive long enough to. effect 2 broad
consciousness unless it possesses the latent threat of force. They're
going to claim that our clothing projects, the people’ bazaars, the
people’s stores and decentralized cottage industres are frones for
stolen property. The establishment wil claim that the vanguard party
is feeding and clothing people with goods stolen from the old enemy
culture, They Il caim that we're buying it from the city-state’s lumpen
who steal everything they can sel,or that we'e ripping it offourselves.
OF couse, this wil be used to juseify an aack upon our political
projects, our infraseructure. The assaules will be justified by them in
4 dozen different ways, whether we establish ourselves in storefronts
or in our homes. They will attack us ~ behind the fire ordinance,
the sanitation department, the anonymous tip. The establishment's
mercenaries will break in shooting, and all of us who are nor killed will
g0 to jail, for violating the fir ordinance, resisting areest, ateempring
murder and receivingstolen properey,etc. Itsas predictable s nightfall

T'm convinced that any serious organizing of people must carey with it
from the stare a potential threat of revolutionary violence. Without it,
the eseablishment forces will succeed in isolating the policical organizer

28 VL Lenin, Seleted Works.

PART ONE 6
and closing down his projece before the people can fee its benefies
Self.determination requires a small, hidden, highly erained army
equipped with the very best and most destructive of military weapons,
and a bodyguard of counter-terrorists.

The vanguard parey distinguishes itself in the service of the people
and superimposes itself over the old culture chroughoue the city.
state. Tacties designed to further the development of revolutionary
consciousness must be based upon the prevailing state of class and race
antagonisms created out of the new relacionship. We can be cercain
that the nucleus of a clandestine army wil already exist by then
The government’s represive agencies will also be well infilrated by
blacks and other revolutionary people. Infilration is the work of the
professional revolutionary. Infiltrating the establishmene’s protective
agencies will also tend to neutralize the ruling class’ actempt to isolaee
the black vanguard commune from the larger body of he clas seructure.
Al efforts to isolate the vanguard community muse be resisced. The
Black Colony must actively invite other revolutionary people to follow
their example. We must give refuge o the refugees, and evencually
work out some means to coordinate our operations with theirs at every
level. However, we cannot delay our own preparations toward a united
black revolutionary culeure. No one will undertake to aid us unless they
sense the power of our movemen. It i blacks who must play not only
the role of iberating the Black Colony but also the leading role in the
liberation of the whole city-seate. To expect that someone else will ke
the full responsibiliy for our own liberarion is suicide. We'll be asked
tobe “patient” for another one hundred to one hundred and fifty years!
Well gee stuck with long theoretical explanations on consciousness or
objective conditions when its clear that consciousness will not grow
unless there is someone among us willing to feed it

Consciousness grows in spirals. Groweh implies fecding and being
fed. We feed consciousness by feeding people, addressing ourselves to
their needs, the basic and social needs, working, organizing tovard
2 united national lefe. After the people have ereated something that
they are willing to defend, a wealth of new ideals and an autonomous
subsistence infrastruceure, then they are ready to be brought into
“open” conflict with the ruling class and its supporters. This conflict
must extend to every level of capitalise production and diseribuion.
Consciousness of our power will grow, 15 a result of this mass contact
with the ruling forces. There is no question that people muse be

@ BLOOD IN MY EYE
organized and educated to the benefits of people’ government before
they can successfully move againse their class enemy. However, there
seems to be some question a5 to how seriously we should take ourselves
and our work of organizing. When we meet resistance, should we
acquiesce, withdraw, wait it out or incensify? Should we meet violent
reaction with a more determined violence? The type that put eighty
tanks to flight in Laos? In other words, if the fascises don' like what
we're doing and artack us through lynch mob (the police forces and
judicial branch of their government), should we relene? Or should we
accep their violent reaction as a nacural response to our challenge and

Every step, every stage toward a unified black commune will meet geeat
resistance. This resistance will come in some form of violence.Itis clear
that if we don't learn to overcome all resistance, no forward movement
will be made. Discovering ways of meeting and overcoming resistance,
demonstracing to ourselves that “we can. is a fundamental antecedent
to the growth of revolutionary consciousness because we'l be under
aetack every sep of the way. One hundred years ago it would have been
the same. One hundred years from today i will be the same. We'll ake
our mule and forey acres now, collectivize them, defend them, invite
other revolutionary people to follow our example, make allies-then
leap to destroy the fascists’ pseudo-mass-eulure from within.

s the people move into more significant areas of anti-establishment
projects they will be hurled violently into contact with the defenders
of the present state of property elations at the level of production,
distribution and properey righes in general. Then we will discover that
their power and their new fightingseyle actually depend on their geeater
potential for violence. The size and complesity of a thing are not an
index of itsserengeh. This struck me forcefully one evening s flipped
through one of the nation’s news weeklics and spotted a photograph of
a huge self-propelled 155-mm cannon lying o icsside,ies bareel spiked
forever. A man on foor, armed with a rocket that weighed less than four
‘pounds, had deseroyed i

The larger and more complex the city-state, the more it is dependent
upon all related pares. The cannon was hit at it base, in the moving
pares ofis ereads, which were destroyed and the death machine fll of
its own weight. How can the super-technological state operate without
electricity or power, without water, transport, communications,
sewage systems, utilicies? None of these can be protected; their sheer

PART ONE &
size alone makes it impossible. How can the establishment proteet an
electrical supply line and the thousands of transformers, ecc? Effective
positioning of the guards is milicarily impossible. A man every twenty.
five feet up and down the million miles of line can'e protect it (it would
also break the class that paid for the proection). since 2 break at any
‘one point renders powerless huge sections of the area served. The cost
of supporting the guards would bankrupe any nation. The guerrllas
would simply overwhelm the guardians point by point. I hink this is
the essence of the poor man’s war,the essence of the guerrill stracegy.
the protraced war of the worker bees.

The only valid form of union activity is sizure of union leadership by
any means necessary. We muse call stekes to enforce our demands on
capital. To enforce the strike we must stop the planes power source
Standing in the gateway with a placard and a pamphlee alone will
not dull'a worker' short-term incerest in wage slavery. The very first
impulse i to car! With right-wing union leadership gone and the black
worker revolutionized through his coneact with the black commune,
even the fascists who exist without any sense of community o class
consciousness can possibly be won over or at lease rendered neutral
Eicher way, chey won't be able to break serikes with the power lines
down.

The power of our militry strategy sitting beside our policical
infrasteucture depends on constane arcack, actack, - aeack.
Improvisation, aggression. An attack on property, the utliies that
feed the super-seate, indirect and direct attacks at the productive point
and distribution system. As 1 stated, the Western military experts
admit tha the mechanized establishmene guard must ouenumber the
aetacking worker by ten to one. What they cannot afford to admi is
that even with this numerical superioriey they cannot win. They'ee
learning this in every theater of combat. In clas war, they could never
even raise a ten-to-one numerical superiority! Even if they suceeed in
employing the degenerate elements of the lower clas (created by along
history of counter-positive mobilization of reactionary mass society)
as mercenaries or vigilantes in the early stages, the advantage is sl
ours. At ten to one, we seill enjoy serategic, milieary superiority if we
are attacking, because they must defend so many different points vieal
o the order and continuity of theie life-support system, all at the same
time. The points to be protected will ahways outnumber the units who
are available to protect them.

o BLOOD IN MY EYE
The super-technological city-state has geown so complex that it is
completely dependent upon ies thousands ofrelated pares. It has grown
50 large that no force can be fielded to proteee al s vital pares. The
essence of the guerrilla technique is o cripple and finally stop the life
Support system of the enemy class or state. The advantage of the anti
establishment force can be best understood by picturing the need for
the eseablishment forces to spread themselves thin in the vain atcempt to
proteet the mechanical base of their source of power, which, of course,
works out to be the various forms of productive and nonproductive
property. The mobile “have-no” the attacker, can concentrate his
forces (even though initiall they are numericall inferior) to actually
outnumber and overwhelm the thinned-out forces of the establishment

by attacking at one or ewo points a a time. In Mao’ Selected Works, Vol
11 he speaks of ingenvity and mobility as necessary qualities of any
guersilla operation.

The ancients said: *Ingenuity in varying actics depends on mother
wie’; dhis “ingenuiey” which is what we mean by flesibility is
the contribution of the intelligent commander. Flexibilty docs
not mean recklessness; recklessness muse be rejected. Flexibility
consists in the intelligent commanders ability to take timely and
appropriate measures on the basis of objective condicions after
“judging the hour and sizing up the sitvacion” (che “stuation”
includes the enemy’ situation, our sicuation and the terrain), and
chis lexibiliey is “ingenuity in varying tactics” On the basis of this
ingenuity, we can win more victories in quick-decision offensive
warfare on exterior lines, change the balance of forces in our favor,
gain the initiative over the enemy, and overwhelm and crush him so
that the final victory will be ours*

Ifthere are ewenty poins i the city-stace o be protected, and ten units
ofprotection, clearly an attacking force of one could destroy ten of the
ewenty poines without opposicion. The ten points that remain and are
guarded by the ten unics of protection must now meet the attacker on a
‘one-to-one basis. The term “ateack” explicitly means “first serike? and
“fise strike” translates into “advantage.” Total repression and genocide
are not possible if we organize ourselves for survival first — if we first
construc the commune, 3 sense of community, a common interest of
elass. The objective conditions are present. To postpone ou liberation

29 Mao Tic-tung, Slctd ks

PART ONE &
with the excuse that the *people aren'tready” s to underestimate them;
in effece it like saying they don't have the mentality to act in their
defense. The repeating shotgun is the deadliest weapon in the world
for close-range usban fighting. They are simple to make, maincain and
use. Anyone can be effective with the seatter gun; one simply points
and squeezes the erigger: if the thing to be shot is moving, follow
through with your swing. Tanks are obsolete. They can be rendered
harmless with a dollar’s worth of grenade, propelled from the muzzle
of the shotgun by a blank careridge. Then, s a tank moves down any
city sereet it has placed itself in 2 defile. On a cost-effectiveness basis,
the most deseructive weapon i the gasoline bomb. Enough gasoline,
soap shavings and potassium chlorate could lip a ank over on its side,
or thrown from the windows of our defles, the gasoline bomb could
incinerate the largest army

We can only be repressed if we stop thinking and stop fighting. People
who refuse to seop fighing can never be repressed — they cither win or
they die - which is more atteactive than losing and dying, The primacy
of politics remains but we must now prepare for armed confroneation.
By no seretch of the imagination can we hope to overthrow so
determined an enemy without force.

We Will Wint

George

& BLOOD IN MY EYE
Broop N My Eve
Part Two

CONTENTS

The Amerikan Mind

Amerikan Justice

Toward the United Front
After the Revolution has Failed
Fascism

Classes at War

The Oppressive Contract

Afeerword
Huey P. Newton

13
19
2
34

64
My dear only surviving son,

Iwent to Mount Vernon August 7ch, 1971, o visic the grave
site of my heart your keepers murdered in cold disregard
for life.

His grave was supposed to be behind your grandfachers
and grandmother’s. But I couldn' find it. There was no
marker. Just mowed grass. The story of our past. I sent the
keeper a blank check for a headstone — and two extra sites
~ blood in my eye!!!

THE AMERIKAN MIND

Frankenstcin’s need for a servant was an expression of his diseased ego, 0
he reated a demented, ugly reature, pathologically strong and huge.

Dear Greg'

My sister has informed me of your release and the political education
class you have formed: From her words and your messages, I sense
that we are seill ogether. We've gone through approximately the same
changes since they separated us ~ the confused flight o national
revolutionary Africa, through the riot stage of revolutionary Black
Amerika. We have finally areived at scientific revolutionary socialism
with the ret of the colonial world. was hoping that you wouldn'e get
erapped in the riot seage like a great many other very sincere brothers.
T have to browbeae them every day down here. They think they don't
need ideology, serategy or tacties. They think being a warrior s quite
enough. And yer, withoue discipline or direction, they'll end up
washing cars, or unclaimed bodies in the city-seace’ morgue. But [ was
almost certain that wouldn't be your destination, brother.

The breakdown of establishment-conditioning usually oceurs first
ac the universiey level. Students refuse to accepe the lie that our
exploitation of the world' peoples is actually beneficial to them. They
begin to refuse their share of che spoils. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
lefe the campus to form the Black Pancher Party. The Seudents for a
Democratic Society gave birth to the Weatherman.

The rise of socio-political institutions to their present form
and complexity was noe the result of chance. The corporation,
the university. the unions, the mass media, the foundations, the
associations, the coures, the prisons, the army (police-narional and
incernational, uniformed and disguised) from their beginnings were
formulated as enforcers of state centralism. An examination focused
on the history of allthe major socio-politcal nstitutions of the United
States (a study in the genetics of hicrarchy) would certainly uncover
the totally cconomic motive underlying the foundations of these

1 Afiend of the author

PARTTWO 5
inseicutions. For my purpose, T would broadly divide the major socio.
political insticutions into ewo classes, one designed by the state to
move people into certain actions, and the other to discourage, curtail
or completely deny certain other actions. The unintellgible vastness of
these institutions makes it seem impossible that they could be owned
and operated by a relacivly small number of men; but the truch of his
can be demonstrated by documented evidence and

irrefueable case studies. The modern industrial, corporative, city.
based state could never function a¢ all without hierarchical control
and an accepeance by the people of the controlling hierachy. Prior
conditioning” of course! The “effects of ubiquitous self-negation
inbred since childhood; of course, again! Certainly “the pervasive
nihilism of capitalist man .” But these are simply “effeces”

Western civilization is dying because it tied into an cconomic system
that was decadent a hundred years ago. This system was cereainly the
calculated ereation oaaaasaa specific minority class. The rise of the
manufacturing class was not sponeaneous. It i perpecuated beyond the
stage of decadence in spite of fits of ouerageous disorder. lesseemingly
remarkable abiliy to return from ersisis not proof of nacural durabiliey
Rather it is proof of adestructive will to power at any cost.

Frankenstein's need for a servant was an expression of his discased ego,
50 he created a huge, pahologically serong, demented, ugly creature.
He censored the beasts activiey by making him under-incelligent. He
erceted institations flexible enough to keep the giant working, but
sigid enough to forestall any groweh of his mental faculties. A brain
was geudgingly attached to the beast to provide a way for it o act. The
bease worked and foughe the enemies of his creaor. The beast was
content to watch the creator flourish. He lived through his ereator.
And when he finally saw himselfas he was, he wene mad.

The corporation, the foundation, the associacion, the mass media,
the state-controlled unions, the universities and primary schools are
all designed to move people into very specifically pre-ordered and
monitored actions. The actual monitoringis done by a broader segment
ofthe sratified slave state but the pre-orderingis done by the one-tenth
of one percent, the ruling class and governing elie of the corporative
arrangement. The careful observer can sec. immediarely how the
guiding instructions are held togecher by red tape and rubber bands
5o that they can be very flexible when necessary. The corporation’s flea

6 BLOOD IN MY EYE
market and the mass media are relatively new techniques of control, as
are the instivutional foundations and most of the associations.

‘The foundations, whether family or corporate, are tax-exempt financial
mechanisms, ostensibly established for altruistic influcnces in the
fields of are and culeure generally. They subsidize scientifc rescarch,
higher education, educational TV, exc. The Rockefelers alone control
thirteen such foundaions, through which they also control the oil
holdings of ninety to a hundsed nations in the Third World countries

mainly - holdings variously estimated in value from ten to fourceen
billion dollars. Similar foundations are controlled by the Fords,
Kelloggs, and Camegies, ctc., ete. When the international business
incerests of these family financial institutions are threatened, the “eax.
supported” international police are activated. Afier the C.LA. fail,the
special forces are called upon. When necessary, the Marine Corps and
infancry incervene.

Comrade George

PARTTWO 7
AMERIKAN JUSTICE

Forthei freedom 9 prey on the world pesple, no matter e cast in bood.
Dear Greg,

For their freedom to prey on the worlds people .. whatever the cost
in blood.

In order for capitalism to continue to rule, any action that threatens
the right of a few individuals to own and control public property
muse be prohibited and curtaled whatever the cos in resources (the
ineernational wing of the repressive inseiutions has spent one and one.

half willion dollars since World War I, whatever the cost in blood
(My Lai, Augusea, Georgia, Kene State, the Pancher teals, the frame-up
of Angela Davis)! The national repressive inseiutions (police, Naional
Guard, army, etc.) are no less determined. The mayors that curse the
rioters and the looters (Mayor Daley of Chicago has ordered them
summarily exceuted in the steets) ignore the fact that their bosses have
loored the world!1!

I refuse to make any argument with seatistis compiled by the
inseicutions and associations thae | indice. Yet it is true that even
official figures prove the case against capitalism. The Federal Bureau
of Investigation compiles and indexes almost allinformation on crime
in the United States - 1 have the figures as it states them right here:
Vital Statistics - FBICrime Report - propesty crimes, 7 percent of the
total in 1969, 28 percent of these crimes oceurring in the ghetto. Since
1960, the number of men and women prisoners in state and federal
penientiaries has fluctuated slighely around the quartee-million mark.
These statisties conceal the living raliey

This is my eleventh year of being shoveled into every major prison in
the most populous sate in the nation - and the largest prison system in
the world. What T have scen in these eleven years is he living scuation.
The experience is quite different from the columns of figures neatly
arranged to give the impression of well-studied, detached, scientific
and caleulated analysis. Hidden are the facts that, at each inseicution
T been in, 30 to sometimes 40 percent of those held are black, and
everyane of the many thousands I've encountered was from the working
or lumpenproletariat clas. There may be a few exceptions, but I simply
have not met any of them in my cleven years. Where | am confined now

s BLOOD IN MY EYE
in San Quentin Prison, California, awaitingrialfor ewo alleged crimes™
convietion on cither of which would subject my lungs to the poison
gas erearment, there are seventeen clls in what is cuphemistically
called “the adjustment center” but s far more accurately known as the
hole. The A./C. is San Quentin's wriple maximum security, and all of
these cell ae filled-eleven of them with black men - every one of them
without exception from the working class.

T've been arrested, interrogated o investigated more times than 1 care
o count. I'e learned een times more about the process than the most
expertsingle groups of inquisitors. From the frst moment I'm brought
into this scenario, | attempe to establish control over the exchanges
that will ke place beeween myself and my captors, Depending on the
sieuation, one learns to feign cicher indignation, surprise, idioey, or
fear. Ac times the peasant-philosopher face will work. 1 don'e chink |
am an exception atall, as most blacks learn by age fifteen how to handle
the cretins who hire out as guns for the privileged. There is only one
type of inquisicional sicuaion that I personally cannor control the
sessions that begin with violence. In those cases, guile fails and blacks
learn to fight multiple opponents while handeuffed, or at leat learn
how to protect the groin area. 1 simply have never managed to develop
atechnique against nine armed men who are fascinated with damaging
my private parest! But, I'm seill earning!

“Allblack people, wherever they are, whatever their crimes, even crimes
against other Blacks, are political prisoners because the sysem has
deale with them differently than with whites. Whicey gets the benefie
of every law, every loophole, and the beneit of being judged by his
peers — other white people. Blacks don'eget the benefit of any such jury
trial by peers. Such a rial is almose a cinch to result n the convietion
of a black person, and it’s a conscious poliical decision thae blacks
don't have those benefits” (Howard Moore Je, attorney; offcial “of”
the court, but not “for” the court ~ he's in a position to know ~ he's
honest, black, and dedicated enough to tel).

The purpose of the chief repressive insitutions within the totalitarian
eapiealise seate i clearly o discourage and prohibic cereain activiey,

2 The author was under indiccmen for two counts: frst-degree murder,
and assaul on 2 non-inmare causing death which, under Section 4500 of
the California Penal Code, aucomaticaly involves a sentence of death upon

PARTTWO 9
and the proibitions are aimed ac very diseincdly defined sectors of the
class and race sensitized society. The ultimate expression of law is not
order its prison. There are hundreds upon hundseds of prisons, and
thousands upon thousands of s, et there is no social order, no social
peace. Anglo-Saxon bourgeois law is tied firmly into cconomics. One
can even pick that out of those Vital Staristis. Bousgeois law protects
property relations and not social relationships. The culeural teats of
eapiealse society that also tend to check activity ~ (individualism,
areifical politeness juxtaposed to an aloof rudeness, the rush to learn
“how to” instead of “what is”) - are secondary really, and intended for

those mild cases (and groups) that require preventive measures only
The law and everything that incerlocks with it was constructed for
poor, desperate people like me.

Jonachan, my younger brother, understood ehis poine perfectly. The
purpore of the raid on the Marin County Courthouse was more
significant by far than its caleulable effects. T knew him well,since he
was and sell is my alter ego. He went to liberate and to educae with
aggressive and free action. He knew that as he proceeded in liberating
there would be more action. He wasn't a speechmaker, and neicher am
L Escape from the myh, the hoas, by moving people into action against
the terror of the stae - counter-terrorism — is the real significance of
the Auguse 7th affair. To Jonathan, the striking exposure was "audacity.
audacity, and more audacity” Theory and practice, stracegy and tactics
were based in his mind on actual confrontation within “ehis” particular
historical developmene. He muse have caleulated that foco army
activity that was hidden and nameless, operating where the objective
conditions for revolution already existed and had existed for a dozen
decades, would survive and grow if, at the same time, the Black Pancher
political apparatus continued to develop s autonomous infrastructure.
Proof of his theory was bule right into the action: five desperate men
were offered arms a5 2 means to freedom three took them.

Proof of the role of law within the totlitarian-authoritarian
elationship was also built into the action. In fie of reckless, mindless
gunire, one hundred automated goons shot through the bodies of a
judge, distriet attorney, and three female noncombatants to reestablish
control over all activity. To prevent certain actions, no cost in blood
is too high. It would scem that so much free fire would be diffiult
o explain, but i is not. Freedoms are invariably being protected with
this gunfire. Freedom must then be interpreted a thousand separate

0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
ways, but it actaally comes down o freedom for a few familics and
their friends-freedom o prey upon the world.

Acceptance of enslavementis deeply buried in the pathogenic character
types of capitalism. It is a resul of the sense of dread and ansiety
which is the lot of all men under capicalise rule. Compulsive behavior
and disordered obsessional longings are actually made synonymous
with “character” in our disordered society. But to emphasize these
conditions before examining the insticutions from which they spring
is o confse effect with cause and furcher cloud the point of aetack. So
far, cultural analyss has established that the psychosis is so ingrained.
the institutions so centralized, chat what s needed is toeal revoluion,
the armed struggle beeween the have-nots with their vanguard and the
haves with cheir hirclings or macabre freaks that live through them,
civil war between at least these two sections of the population is the
only purgative. Total revolution muse be aimed ac the purposeful
and absolute destruction of the state and all present institutions, the
destruction carried out by the so-called psychopath, the outsider,
whose only remedy is destruction of the system. This organized massive
violence directed at the source of thought control is the only realistic
therapy.

Analyss of the oppressed mentalicy and the psychopathic personality
that accrue from contact with the prevaricacions of Amerikan culure
muse be carefully inegraed with the analysis of the source. Simple
incerprecation of effccts tends to_caleify - it certainly promotes
defeatism. *Action makes the frone” One can quietly refuse to accept
the conseictions of bourgeois culeure, can reject himself, hate the self
and wurn inward. By so doing he accomplishes form of individual
revolt, but here again we find another unconscious manifestation of
the thing we hate-individualism — 3 now atitudinal inserumentality
of bourgeos culture. We cannot escape ~ one simply cannot reject
constrictions without rejecting and putting to death the constrictor.
An armed actacker cannot be ignored. Gandhi and the gurus were all
abject fools. T would cereainly be dead if, when eriical flash points
macured, [ hadne backed my rejection with blows. I would hate to have
been a Viernamese in My Lai wichout armes. I hate encounters like the
one at my last court appearance on April 6, 1971." when the enemics

30n April 6, 1971, ac a preliminary hearing of the Soledad Brothers”
murder trial. 2 bailiff persisced in jabbing George Jackson in the ribs

PARTTWO n
who actacked me had all e weapons. T would hate to run inco freaks
who have Mike Hammer/). Edgar Hoover complexes without being
armed. My pledge is o arms, my cnemies are inseicutions and any men
with vested interests in them, even if that interest is only a wage. If
revolution means civil war - | accept, and the sooner begun the sooner
done.

1 don't think the enemy can be identified any more carefully than this
Furcher identification muse be made in the process. I feel elated that
my brother died with two guns in hand. I'm going to miss him and all
the others, though death in our sicuation is only a release. I miss people
incensely. | miss him incensely, bue he and the others who sought
frcedom did ac the throat of the principal repressive insticution of the
empire - they died making real actempes a¢ freedom.

Iparaphrase Casto on wia after Moncada: I warn you, gentlemen,
have only begun!”

despite repeated warnings Finally Jackson wheeled around and decked
the bailiff with a karate blow to the head

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
TOWARD THE UNITED FRONT

A new unitarian and progressive current has sprung up in the
movement centering on politial prisoners. How can this uniearian
conduct be developed further in the face of determined resistance from
the establishmene? How can it be used to isolae reactionary elements?

Unicary conduce implies a *search” for those elements in our present
situation which can become the basis for joine action. It involves
4 conscious reaching for the relevant, the entente, and especialy, in
our case, the reconcilable. Throughou the centralizing authoritarian
process of Amerikan hiscory,the ruling classes have found it necessary
to discourage and punish any genuine opposition to hierachy. Bu
there have always been individuals and groups who rejected the ideal of
ewo unequal societies, existing one on top of the other.

The men who placed themselves sbove the rest of socicty theough

gl
developed two principal insticutions to deal with any and 3l serious

fortuitous outcome of circumstance and sheer brutality have

disobedience - the prison and instieutionalized racism. There are more
prisons of all caegories in the United States chan in all other countics
of the world combined. At al times there are two-thirds of a million
people or more confined to these prisons. Hundreds are deseined to be
legally exccuted, thousands more quasi-legally. Other thousands will
never again have any freedom of movement barring revolutionary
change in all the insticutions that combine to make up the order of
things. One chird of a million people may nor seem lke a great number
compared with the total population of two hundsed million. However,
compared with the one million who are responsible for all the affairs
of men within the extended state, it constitutes sriking contrast
What Iwant to explore now are a few of the subrle elements chat I have
observed to be standing in the pach of a much needed uniced front
(nonsectarian) eo effectively reverse this legitimatized rip-off.

Prisons were not instieutionalized on such a massive scale by the
people. Most people realize that crime is simply the resule of a grossly
disproportionate diseribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of
the present state of property relations. There are no wealchy men on
death row, and so few in the general prison population that we can
discount them altogether. Imprisonment is an aspect of class struggle

PARTTWO 13
from the outset It s the creation of a closed society which attempts to
isolate those individuals who disregard the seruceures of 1 hypocritical
establishment as well as those who actempt o challenge it on 2 mass
basis. Throughout ies history. the United States has used its prisons
o suppress any organized effores to challenge it legitimacy ~ from its
actempes to break up the early Working Men's Benevolent Association
to the banning of the Communise Party during whac I regard as the
fascit akeover of this country, to the attemprs to destroy the Black
Panther Party

The hypocrisy of Amerikan fascism forces it to coneeal s attack on
politcal offenders by the legal fiion of conspiracy laws and highly
sophisticated frame-ups. The masses must be taughe to understand
the erue funceion of prisons. Why do they exist in such numbers?
What s the real underlying economic motive of erime and the official
definition of ypes of offenders or victims? The people must learn that
when one “offends” the oealicarian sate it is patently not an offense
against the people of that sate, but an assaule upon the privilege of the
privileged few.

Could anything be more sidiculous than the language of blatancly
political indictments: “The People of the State .. vs. Angela Davis
and Ruchell Magee” or “The People of the State ... vs. Bobby Seale
and Ericka Huggins.” What people? Clearly the hicrarchy, the armed
minoriey:

‘We must educate the people in the real causes of economic erimes. They
muse be made to realize that even crimes of passion are the psycho.
social effects of an economic order that was decadent a hundred years
ago. All rime can be traced o objective socio-economic conditions
~ socally productive o counterproductive aceivity. In all cases, it
is determined by the cconomic sysem, the method of economic
organization. “The People of the State ... vs. John Doe” i as tenuous
as the clearly policical frame-ups. I¢s like stating “The People vs. The
People” Man againse himself. Offical definitions of crime are simply
actempes by the establishment to suppress the forces of progress

Prisoners muse be reached and made to understand that they are
vietims of social injuseice. This is my task working from within (while
T'm here, my persuasion is that the war goes on no mateer where one
may find himself on bourgeois-dominated soil). The sheer numbers of
the prisone class and the terms of their existence make them a mighty

1 BLOOD IN MY EYE
reservoir of revolutionary potential, Working alone and from within 2
stecl-enclosed society,there is very litl that people like myself can do
to awake the restrained potential revolutionary outside the walls. That
is part of the task of the “Prison Movement.”

The “Prison Movement; the Auguse 7th movement and all similar
effores educate the people in the illegitimacy of establishment power
and hin at the ultimate goal of revolutionary consciousness at every
level of seruggle. The goal is abways the same: the creation of an
infrasteucture capable of ieldinga people’s army.

Each of us should understand that revolution is aggressive. The
manipulacors of the system cannot or will not meee our legitimate
demands. Eventually this will move us all into violent encounter
with the system. These are the terminal years of capitalism, and as we
move into more and more basic challenges to its rule, history clearly
forewarns us that when the prestige of power fails 2 violent episode
precedes ies transformation.

We can ateempt to limit the scope and range of violence in revolution
by mobilizing as many partisans as possible at every level of socio
economie life. Bue given the hold that the ruling class has on chis
country. and its history of violence, nothing could be more cereain
than civil disorders, perhaps even civil war. | don'e dread eicher. There
are no good aspects of monopoly capital, so o reservations need be
recognized in s destruction. Monopoly capital isthe cnemy. I crushes
the lfe force of all of the people. It muse be completely destroyed, as
quickly as possible, utterly; orally, ruthlessly, relentlessly destroyed.

‘With thisasacommon major goal it would scem that anti-establishment
forces would find letle difficuley in developing common initiacives and
methods consistent with the goals of mass socicey. Regretfully,this has
not been the case. Only the prison movement has shown any promise
of cutting acros the ideologieal, ra des that
have blocked the nacural coalition of lefe-wing forces ac all imes in
the past. So chis movement must be used to provide an example for the
partisans engaged at other levels of struggle. The issues involved and
the dialectic which flows from an understanding of the clear objective
existence of overt oppression could be the springboard for our entry
ineo the tide of inereasing world-wide socialist consciousness

i culeural barri

PARTTWO 15
In order to create a united lefe, whose aim is the defense of political
prisoners and prisoners i general, we must renounce the idea thac all
participants must be of one mind, and should work at the problem from
asingle party line or with asingle parey ine or with asingle mechod. The
reverse of his is actually desirable. “From all according to ability” Each
partisan, ousside the vanguard clements, should work at radicalizing
in the area of their nacural environment, the places where they pursue
their normal lives when not atending the ralles and demonserations.
The vanguard elemenes (organized party workers of all ideological
persuasions) should go among the people concentrated at the rallying
poine with consciousness-raising srategy, promoting commiement and
providing concrete, clearly defined activity. The vanguard clements
muse search out people who can and will contribute to the building of
the commune, the infraseructure, with pen and clipboard in hand. For
those who aren'eready to take that step, a “packet” of pamphilets should
be provided for their education.

Al of his, of course, means that we are moving, and on a mass level
Not all n our separaee dircctions ~ but firmly under the disciplined
and principled leadership of the Vanguard Black Panther Communist
Parey. “One simply canno act without 4 head” Democratic centralism
isthe only way to dealeffectively with the Amerikan ordeal. The central
committee of the people’s vanguard party muse make its presence fele
throughout the various levels o the overall movement.

With the example of unity in the prison movement, we can begin
to break the old behavioral pacterns that have repeatedly allowed
bourgeois capitalism, es imperialism and fascism, to triumph over the
lase several decades. We tap a massive potential reservoir of partisans
for cadre work. We make it possible to begin to address one of the most
complex psycho-social by-products that cconomic man with his private
enterprise has manufactured-Racism. I've saved this most critical
bartier to our needs of unity for lase. Racism s a matter of ingrained
raditional attitudes conditioned through instivutions. For some, it is
as nacurala reflex as breathing. The psycho-social ffects of segregated
environments compounded by bitter class repression have served in the
past o render the progeessive movement almost oally impotent.

The major obstacle to a united lefe in this counery is white racism.
There are three categories of white racises:the overt, self-sacisfied racist
who doesn'e atempt to hide his antipachy; the self-ineerdicting racist
who harbors and nureures racism in spite of his best effors; and the

16 BLOOD IN MY EYE
unconscious eacist, who has no awareness of his raist preconceptions.
Ideny the existence of black racism outright, by fat | denyit. Too much
black blood has flowed becween the chasm that separates the races.
Ies fundamentally unfair to expect the black man o differentiate at 3
glance becween the various kinds of white raciss. What the apologises
term black racism i cither a healthy defense reflex on the pare of the
sincere black partisan who is attempting o deal with the realstic
problems of survival and elevation, or the racism of the government
stooge organs.

Asblack partisans, we must recognize and allow for the existence of ll
three types of racists. We muse understand their presence as an effect
of the system. It i the system that muse be crushed, for it continues
to manufacture new and deeper contradictions of both class and race.
Once it is destroyed, we may be able to address the problems of eacism
ac an even more basic level. Bue we must also combat racism while we
are in the process of destroying the syscem

The selfincerdicting racise, no matter what his acquired conviction
o ideology, will seldom be able to conribute with his actions in any
eally concrete way. His role in revolution, barring a change of basic
character, will be minimal throughout. Whether the basic character of
a man can be changed ac all is sill question. But .. we have in the
immediacy of the “Isues in Question” the perfect opporcunity to test
the validity of materiaise philosophy again, because we don'e have to
guess, we have the means of proo.

‘The need for unitarian conduce gocs much deeper than the liberation
of Angela, Bobby, Ericka, Magee, Los Siete, Tijerina, white draft
esisters, and now the indomitable and faithful James Care* We have

4 Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, Ruchell Magee. Los Sicte de
12 Raza ase the seven Chicanos who were acquitced in San Francisco of the
charge of killing a police officer, and who continue to be harassed by the
police. Reis Tijerina i a Chicano leader imprisoned for his sczemp co reasere
Mexican-American ownership by righ of trary grane to large traces ofland
in the Southwese. James Carr was with George Jackson during most of his
years in prison. While on parole he reporcedly artempred to come to George’s
asistance during che violent aicrmath of the Soledad Brothers’ hearing on
Apal 6. He was srreseed and now faces the possibiliy of recurn to prison to
complece hislfe sentence.

PARTTWO 17
a fundamental srategy to be proved — tested and proved. The activity
surrounding the protection and liberation of people who fighe for
us is an important aspeet of the struggle. But i is imporeant only if
it provides new initiatives that redirect and advance the revolution
under new progressive mechods. There must be a collective redirection
of the old guard — the factory and union agitator — with the campus
activist who can counter the ill-effects of fascism at its raining site,
and with the lumpenprolecariat intellectuals who posses revolutionary
scientific-socialist attieudes to deal with the masses of street people
already living outside the syseem. They muse work toward developing
the unity of the pamphlet and the silenced pistol. Black, brown and
white e all victims together. At the end of this massive collective
seruggle, we will uncover our new man, the unpredictable culmination
of the revolutionary process. He will be better equipped to wage the
realstruggle, the permanent seruggle after the revolution — the one for
new relationships between men.

15 BLOOD IN MY EYE
AFTER THE REVOLUTION
HAS FAILED

Afier the killing is done, the ruling elass goes on about the business of
making profits as usual.

ON WITHDRAWAL

SYLLOGISM, . argument with two premises and 2 conclusion;
a logical scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and
minor premise and a conclusion which must logically be true if the

~Merriam-Webster

After revolution has failed, al questions must center on how new
revolutionary consciousness can be mobilized around the new set of
elass antagonisms that have been created by the authoricarian reign of
teror. At which level of social, policical and cconomic life should we

begin our new attack?

First, we, the black partisans and their vanguard party,the old and new
lefe alike, must concede that the worker’s revolution and its vanguard
parties have filed to deliver the promised changes in property
elaions or any of the insicutions that support them. This must be
conceded without bitterness, name-calling, or the intense rancor that
is presendly building. There have been two depressions, two great wars,
erisis. The mass pycho-social national cohesiveness has trembled on
the brink of discuption and disintegration repeatedly over the lase ffty
years, threatening to ly apare from its own concentric inner dynamics
But ac each crisis it was allowed to reform tsclfs with cach reform,
revolution became more remote. This is because the old lefe has filed
o understand the true nacure of fascism.

We wil never have 2 complete defnition of fascism, because it is
in conseant motion, showing & new face to fie any particular set of
problems that arse to threaten the predominance of the eradicionalise,
capiealise ruling class. But if one were forced for the sake of claity to
define it in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word

PARTTWO 19
would be “reform We can make our definition more precise by
adding the word “economic. “Economic reform’” comes very close to 3
working definition of fascst motive forces. Such a definition may serve
o clrify chings even though it leaves a great deal unexplained. Each
economie reform that perperuates ruling-class hegemony has to be
disguised as a positive gain for the upthrusting masses. Disguise encers
as third stage of the emergence and development of the fascise stae.
The modern industial fascist seate has found it essential to disguise
the opulence of its ruling-classleisure existence by providing the lower
classes with a mass consumer’s flea market ofits own. To allow sizable
portion of the “new state” to partiipate in this flea markee,the ruling
class has established currency conerols and minimum wage laws that
mask the true nature of modern fascism. Reform (che closed cconomy)
is only a new way for capiealism to protect and develop fascism!

After the German SS agents o alian Black Shirts kick in the doors
and herd Jews and Communist partisans to deah camps, afee Peg-Leg
White’s Black Legion terror and the Guardians of the Republic” and
their offspring legitimize the EB.L, in other words, after the fascists
have succeeded in crushing the vanguard clements and the threat they
pose is removed, the ruling class goes on about the business of making
profits s usual. The significance of the new fascist arrangement” lies
in the fact that chis business-as-usual is accompanied by concessions
to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of
ereating a buffer zone beeween the ruling class and the still potentially
revolutionary segments of the lower classs.

Corporative ideals have reached their logical conclusion in the U,
The new corporate seae has fought its way through eriss aftr crisis,
established ies ruling elites in every imporcan instiution, formed its
parenership with labor through its elites, erected the mose massive
network of protective agencies replete with spies. technical and
animal, to be found in any police state in the world. The violence of
the ruling class of this countey in the long process of s trend toward
authoritarianism and its last and highest seate, fascism cannot be
sivaled in its excesses by any other nation on earth today or in history.

With each advancement in the authoritarian process and stenghening
of the ruling classs control over the system, there was a corresponding
weakening of the people’s and workers' movement. And incellectuals
sill argue whether Amerika is a fascist county. This concern is typical
of the Amerikan lefes flight from reality, from any truly extreme

0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
position. This is actually a manifeseacion of the authoricarian process
Secping into its own psyche. At this stage, how can anyone question
the existence of a fascist arrangement? Juse consider the awesome
centralization of power, and the proven fact that the largest pare of
the Gross National Product is in the hands of a minute portion of the
population

Ofcourse, he revolution has faled. Fascism has temporarily succeeded
under the guise of reform. The only way we can destroy it i to refuse
to compromise with the enemy seace and ies ruling class, Compromises
were made in the thireies, the forties, the fifies. The old vanguard
parties made gross srategic and cacti

moment, the last revelation about oneself, not many members of the
old vanguard choose to risk their whole futures, chei lives, in order to
alker the conditions that Huey P. Newton describes
life”

erors. At the existential

destructive of

Reformism was allowed. The more degenerate clements of the working
elass were the fiese to suceumb. The vanguard parties supported the
capiealistic war adventure in World War 1L Then they helped to
promote the mass consumers” market that followed the close of the
war, the flea market that muted the workers more genuine demands
Today we are faced with a clearly different sec of class antagonismes, the
complexitis of a particularly refined fascise cconomic arrangement,
where the controlling eltes have co-opted large portions of the lowly
working class

When we ask ourselves, Where will we atack the enemy seate? we
are answered, Ac the productive point. The next logical question is,
With whom and what will we attack the fortified entrance of the
productive and distributive system in a nation of shoresighted,
contented, conservative workers? Obviously, the fascist movement is
counterrevolution at it very center. Fascis reformism is a caleulated
response to the classic, scientificsocialist approach o revolution
through positive mobilization of the workingelasses. From iesinception,
the fascist arrangemen has attempred to ereate the illusion of a mass
society in which the traditional capitalise ruling class would continue
o play s leading role. A mass society that is no a mass societys 3
mass society of authoritarians whose short-term material interests are
perfectly suited to the development of the perfect toraltarian seate and
centralized economy. The mose precise defnitions of fascism involve
the concept of “scientific capitalism. or “controlled capivaliom.” 3

PARTTWO 2
sophisticated, toralitarian, “learned” response to the challenge of
egalicarian, scientific socialism. After its successful establishment
in Spain, Poreu - gal, Greece, South Africa and the United States of
America, we are faced with the obvious question of *how to raise a new

We are faced with the task of raising a
revolutionary consciousness in a mass that has “gone through” acontra
positive, authoritarian process.

The new vanguard clements seem to agree chat withdrawal from the
enemy stace and ies social, politcal and cconomic lfe is the first seep
toward its destruction. The new vanguard elements seem to agree that
the new revolutionary consciousness will develop in the struggles of
withdrawal. However,afee this poine, agreement grows vague and i all
butlost ina sea of contradiction. The contention turns on one primary
question — the scope and range of violence within the revolutionary
process.

Afterthe lengehy and clearly unnceessary ideological bacte that laid o
restadirect approach to revolution by the white or black worker, we are
now faced with an equally unnecessary ideological batdle over which
of the various communal (revolutionary culeural) approaches has the
stronger revolutionary validity. The problem is compounded by the
almost apolitical withdrawal of the growing Weatherman faction, and
their estranged alles on campus to organic food gardens and a lfe of
sex, music and drugs. Their Nictzschean-Hegelian withdrawal mimics
the European historical experience of the las five generations. In our
equation, this must be considered che minor side of the syllogism.
Though revolution is in fashion, the realitic, cohesive synergism
seems as et impossibly remote.

On the other side of the equation, we have Huey Newton's concept
of black communes see well within the huge population centers of the
enemy seate. This concepe accepts any level of violence that will be
necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers. These
communes willbe tied to one another by a national and incernational
vanguard parey and joined with the worlds other revolutionary
societies. They are the obvious answer to all the theoretical and
practical questions and problems about an Amerikan revolution ~ a
revolution that will be carried out principally by blacks.

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
The question I've asked myself over the years runs this way: Who has
done most of e dying? Most of the work? Most of the time in prison
(on Max Row)? Who s the hindmost in every aspect of social, poltical
and economiclifc? Who has the least short-term interest - o noiinterest
acall - in the survival of the presen state? In this condition, how could
we believe in the posibility of a new generation of enlightened fascises
who would dismanele the basis of their hierarchy?

Just how many Amerikans are willing to accepe the physical destruction
‘of some pares of their fatherland so that the rest of the land and the
world might survive in good health? How can the black industrial
worker be induced to carey out a valid worker’ revolutionary policy?
What and who will guide him? The commune. The central ciy-wide
revolutionary culeure. But who will build the commune that will guide
the people into 2 significant challenge to properey rights? Carving
out 3 commune i the central ciy will involve claiming certain rights
as our own — oue frone. Rights that have not been respected to now
Properey righes.Iewill involve building a political, social and economic
infrasteucture, capable of filling the vacuum that has been lefe by the
establishment ruling class and pushing the occupying forces of the
enemy culture from our midse. The implementation of this new social,
political and economic program will feed and comfort all the people
on at least a subsistence level, and force the “owners” of the enemy
bourgeois culture cither to tie their whole fortunes to the communes
and the people, or to leave the land. the tools and the market behind.
IF he will nor leave volunearily, we wil expel him we wil use the
shotgun and the anti-tank rocket launcher!!

Who will build on an ideal thac begins with force? The vanguard party
is now nation-wide. But vanguard parties cannot build revolutions
alone. Nor can a vanguard party expece full pareyline agreement
before it moves in the direction of the people. Revolution i illegal. Ies
against the aw. I¢s prohibited. I will noe be allowed. I is clear thae he
revolutionary is a lawless man. The outlaw and the lumpen will make
the revolution. The people,the workers, will adope i This mus be the
new order of things, after the fact of the modern industrial fascist stae.

In blacks, the authoritarian traits are mainly the cffects of terrorism
and lack of intellectual stimulation. The communal experience will
redeem them. At present, the black worker is simply choosing the
less dangerous and complicated strategy of survival. All classes and
all people are subject to the authoritarian syndrome. It is an aavistic

PARTTWO B
throwback to the heed instinets. But it requires only the proper traums,
the proper eco-sociological set of circumstantial pressures to bring
forth a revolutionary consciousness. Racism enters, on the psycho.
social level,in the form of a morbid, raditional fear of both blacks and
revolutions. The resenement of blacks, and conscious or unconscious
tendencies to mete out pain to blacks, throughout the history of
Amerika's slave systems, all came ino focus when blacks began the
move from South to Noreh and from countryside to city to compete
with whites in induserial sectors, and, in general, engage in scacus
competition. Resentment, fear,insccurity, and the usual isolation that
is patterned into every modern, capitalist industrial society (the more
complex the produces, the greater the division of labor; the higher the
pyramid, che broader its base and the smaller the individual brick tends
o feel) are multiplied by ten when racism, race antagonism, s also 3
factor. There is cerainly no lack of evidence to prove the existence
of an old and buile-in character assassination of programmed racism
(what class controls the nation’s educational facilities, prines the
newspapers and magazines that carry the lieele cartoons, and omies or
mistepresents us to death?) has always served to distrace and defuse
felings of status deprivarion suffered by the huge sectors juse above
the black one. Then also to account for the scemingly dual nature
recognizable in the authoritarian personality (conformity, but also 3
serange lacent destructiveness). racism has always been employed as
a pressure release for the psychopathic deseructiveness evineed by 3
people historically processed to fear, o feel the need for a decision
maker, to hate freedom.

The revolutionary is outlawed. The black revolutionary is 2 doomed
man” All of the forces of counterrevolution stack up over his head
He's seanding in the tanketrap he has dug. He lives in the cross hairs.
No one can understand the feeling but himself “From che beginning”
of his revolutionary consciousness he must use every device to stay
alive, Violence is a forced issue. I¢s incumbene on him. The very first
political progeams have had to be defended with ducls to the death
The children breakfase programs haven't been spared. The next round
of commune building could cause the third great war of the century

We must build wich the fingers of one hand wrapped around a gun (an
anti-personnel weapon). We cannot leave the cental cty. This must be
understood by the other revolutionary people i we are to move together
to conclusive action. The war wil be fought in the nerve centers of

u BLOOD IN MY EYE
the nation, the cities where Angela was finally caprured as she was at
work for the revolution, where Huey was found hiding and working
by the government’ propaganda apparatus. We cannot withdsaw from
the cties. In order to complete the revolutionary syllogism, the fascises
must be forced to withdraw. And under cover of the guns which force
their withdrawal, we will build the new black communes. A BLADE
INTHE THROAT OF FASCISM,

PARTTWO 5
FASCISM

Its most advanced form is here in Amerita.
Comrade John.*

juse finished rereading Angels analysis offascism (she's a brilliant,
beautiful revolutionary woman - ain'e shett). I've studied
your letters on the subject carefully. It could be producive for the
thrce of us to get together at once and subject the whole question
t0 a detailed historical analysis. There is some difference of opinion
and interpretation of history between us, but basically T chink we are
brought together on the principal points by the fact that the three of us
could not meet without probably causing World War 11

Give her my deepest and warmest love and ask her to review these
comments. This is not all tha I will have to say on the subject. Il
constantly return to myself and reexamine. I expect | will have to
carry this on for another couple of hundred pages. We'l deal with the
questions asthey come up, but for now this should provoke both of you
o push me on to a greater efore.

The basis of Angelss analysis i tied inco several old lefe notions that
are at lease open to some question now. It is my view that out of the
economi erisis of the last great depression fascism-corporativism did
indeed emerge, develop and consolidate itslf into its most advanced
form here in Amerika. In the process, socialise consciousness suffered
some very severe secbacks. Unlike Angela, T do not believe that chis
realization leads to a defeatise view of history.

An understanding of the realiey of our situation is essential to the
success offuture revolutionizing activity. To contend that corporativism
has emerged and advanced i not to say that it has triumphed. We are
not defeated. Pure fascism, absolute totalitarianism, is not possible
Hierarchy has had six thousand years of eial. le will never succced
for long in any form. Fascism and its historical significance is the
poine of my whole philosophy on policics and its extension, war. My
opinion is that we are ac the historical climax (¢he flash poine) of the
toulitarian period. The analysis in depth that the subject deserves

5 Joha Thoene,the author’s awyer

% BLOOD IN MY EYE
has yee to be done. Important as they are, both Wilhelm Reichs and
Franz Neumann's works® on the subject are limited. Reich tends to be
over-analytical to the point of idealism. I don't think Neumann teuly
sensed the importance of the anti-socialist movement. Behemarh is too
narrowly based on the expericnce of German National Socialism. So
there is so much to be done on the subject and time is running out. IF1
am correet, we will soon be forced into the same fight that the old lefe
avoided.

6/20/71
e s noe defearist to acknowledge that we have lost a batele. How else
can we “regroup” and even think of carrying on the figh. At the center
of revolution i realism. To call one or two or 2 dozen setbacks defeat
is t0 overlook the ebbing and flowing process of revolution, coming
eloser to our caleulations and then receding, bue nevr seanding seill
I ching isne building, i muse be decaying. As one force emerges,
the opposite force must yild: as one advances, the other must retreat.
There s a very significant difference beeween recreat and defeat. Tam
not saying that our parents were defeated when I contend that fascist.
corporativism emerged and advanced in the US. At the same time it
was making its advance, it caused, by its very nature, an advance in
world-wide socialise consciousness: “When US. capitalism reached
the stage of imperialism, the Western greac powers had already divided
among themselves almose all the imporeant markets in the world. At

6 The Mass Poychology of Fscim, by Wilhelam Reich; Bebeomath: The Structure
and Practice of National Sacialio, by Feanz Neumans.
L Mankind i biologicalysick
2. Poliics s the irrarional expression of hissickness.
3. Whatever cakes place in social life is accively or passively voluncarily o
involuncaely, deermined by the struceure of mases of people
4 This character struccur s formed by socio-economic processes, and it
anchors and pesperuates hese processes. Man's biopathic character serucrure
is, 2 it were, e fosslizacion of the auchoritaian process of history. I is the
biophysical rproduction of mass supprcssion.
5. The human scruccure s animated by the contradiccion berween an intense
longing for and fear offreedom.
6. The fear of freedom of masses of people is expressed in the biophysical
rigidity of the organism and the inflxibilicy of the characeer.
7. Bvery form of social leadership is merely the social expresion of the one or
the other side ofthis sructure of masses of peaple.

W Reich, The Mass Piycholagy o Fscism

PARTTWO B
the end of World War IT when the other imperialist powers had been
weakened, the US. became the most powerful and richest imperialist
power. Meanwhile, the world situation was no longer the same: the
balance of forces beeween imperialism and the socialist camps had
fundamentally changed; imperialism no longer ruled over the world,
nor did e play a decisive role n the development of the world situation”

(Vo Nguyen Giap).

In my analysis, P simply taking inco account the fact that the forces
of reaction and counterrevolution were allowed to localize themselves
and radiate their energy here in the US. The process has ereated the
economie, political and cultural vortex of capitalism's lase re-form. My
views coreespond with those of all the Third World revolutionaries
Andif aken in the international sense, they are aggressive and realistic

The second notion that stands in the way of our understanding
of fascist-corporativism is a semantic problem. When I am being
incerviewed by a member of the old guard and point co the concrete
and steel, the tiny clectronie listening device concealed in the vent,
the phalans of goons peeping in at us, his barely functional plastic
tape-recorder that cost him a weeks labor, and poine out that these
are all manifestations of fascism, he will invariably actempt o refuee
me by defining fascism simply as an economic geo-political affair
where only one political pary is allowed to exise sbove-ground and no
opposition poliical actvity i allowed. But examine that definition of
toualitaianism, comeade. No opposition parties are allowed in Ching,
Cuba, North Korea or North Vietnam. Such 2 narrow definicion
condemns the model revolutionary societis to toralicarianism. Despite
the presence of political partis, chere is only one legal politics in the
US. - the politics of corporativism. The hierarchy commands all state
power. There are thousands of ways, however, to attack it and place
that power in the hands of the people.

/2071
Al levels of struggle muse be conceived as inclined planes leading
inexorably to a point where armed conflct will engulf ewo or more
sections of the people. Armed struggle or organized violence is the
nacural outcome of a sequence of historical events that have matured
o the poine of impasse. This is not to say that war is for us the only
immediate recourse or the spontancous result of a breakdown i lesser
forms of politicalactivity. [ have always tried to emphasize that through

% BLOOD IN MY EYE
every stage of political mobilization there muse be a corresponding and
equal milieary mobilization of the people’s forces. One i inexcricably
tied into the other, and not simply for the reason unwiteingly put
forward by the old guard that fascism allows for no valid opposition
political activity, though there is some truth in that position. My
position s based on historical precedents that indicate the probable
scope and range of violence in an Amerikan revolution.

In the present clas struceure we represent the group with the greatest
revolutionary potential. We are black ~ the significance of which
needs very liele analysis here, though I will go into the mechanies of
race at lengeh later in dealing with the contextual structure of fascist
hicrarchy. But mainly my position is rooted in the long history of
the Amerikan business oligarchy’ penchant for violent repression of
any forces that have threatened its centralst movement, and in the
very nacural defense reflees of any form of state power. Although, as
victims of one of history’s most brutal contradictions, as the poorest
of the poor, as blacks, it is quite justifiable and completely posible
for us to destroy this country as a modern nacion-state, to ateack it
with totally destructive counter-sweep of frustrated retaliscory rage
that is not our purpose. As revolutionaries it s our objective to move
ourselves and the people into actions that will culminate in the seizure
of state power. Our real purpose is o redeem not merely ourselves but
the whole nation and the whole community of nations from colonial
communiy cconomic repression.

The US. has established itslf as the moreal enemy of all people’s
governmene, all scientific-socialist mobilization of consciousness
everywhere on the globe, all anti-imperialist activity on earch. The
history of this country in the lase fifty years and more, the very
political and military mobilization distinguish it as the prototype of
the incernational fascist counterrevolution. The US. is the Korean
problem, the Vieenamese problem, the problem in the Congo, Angola,
Mozambique, the Middle Ease. It the geease in the Bricish and Latin
Amerikan guns that operate against the masses of common people

nacure of all its fundamental clements, and its economs

621m
The nature of fascism, its characteristics and properties have been
in dispute ever since it was first identified as a distinee phenomenon
growing out of ltaly’s state-supported and developed industies in

PARTTWO 2
1922, Whole librarics have been writeen around the subject. There
have been a hundred “party lines” on just exactly what fascism is. But
both Marxists and non-Marxists agree on at least ewo of ies general
factors: s capitalist orientation and its anti-labor, anti-class nature.
These two factors almose by themselves identify the US. as a fascist
corporat

An exace definition of fascism concerns me because it will help us
idenify our enemy and isolate the targets of revolution. Furcher, it
should help us o understand the workings of the enemy's methodology
Selingthis question of whether or not mature fscism has developed
will inally clear away some of the fog in our iberation efforts. This will
help us to broaden the effort. We will not suceeed until we fully accept
the fact that the enemy is aware, determined, disguised, totalitarian,
and mereilessly counterrevolutionary. To figh cflectively, we must be
aware of the fact that the enemy has consolidaed through reformist
machinacion the greatest community of selfinterest that has ever
existed.

Ourinsistence on military action, defensive and recaliatory has nothing
o do with romanticism or precipitous idealisti fervor. We want to be
effective. We wane to live. Our history teaches us that the suceessful
liberation struggles require an armed people, 2 whole people, actively
participating in the seruggle for their liberty! The final definicion of
fascism s seill open, simply because it i seill a developing movement.
We have already discussed the defects of trying to analyze 2 movement
outide of its process and s sequential relationships. You gain only a
discolored glimpse of a dead past.

No one will fully comprehend the historieal implications and serategy
of fascist corporarivism excepe the true fascist manipulator or the
researcher who s able to sash hrough the smoke screens and disguises
the fascises st up. Fascism was the produce of class struggle. It is an
obvious extension of capitalism, higher form of the old struggle
capiealism versus socialism. I think our failue to clearly isolate and
define it may have something to do with our insistence on a full
definition — in other words, looking for exactly identical symptoms
from nation to nation. We have been consiseently misled by fascism's
nationalistic trappings. We have failed to understand its basically
incernational character. In fact it has followed international socialism
all around the globe. One of the mose definite characteristics of fascism
isits international qualiey

30 BLOOD IN MY EYE
627
The erends toward monopoly capital began effectively just afeer the
close of the Civil War in Amerika. Prior to its emergence, bourgeois
democratic rule could be said to have been the predominan political
force inside Amerikan society. As monopoly capital matured, the role
of the old bourgeois democracy faded in process. As monopoly capital
forced out the small dispersed factory setup, the new corporativism
assumed policical supremacy. Monopoly capital can in no way be
incerpreted as an extension of old bourgeois democracy. The forces of
monopoly eapital swept across the Western world in the fese half of
this century. But they did not exist alone. Their opposice force was also
acwork, ic. “internaional socialism” - Lenin's and Fanon's - national
wars of liberaion guided not by the national bourgeois but by the
people, the ordinary working-class people.

At core, faseism is an economic rearrangement. It is inernaional
capiealism’s response o the challenge of inernational scientific
socialism. It developed from nation to naion out of diffring levels
of waditionalist capitalismts dilapidation. The common. feature
of all instances of fascism is the opposition of a weak socialist
revolution. When the fascist arrangement begins to emerge in any of
the independent nation-states, it docs so by defaule! It i simply an
arrangement of an established captalist economs.

perpeaee snd g s scomomy’s rles by chesmflving
and weighing down, diffusing a revolutionary consciousness pushing
from below: Fascism must be scen as an episodially logical stage in
the socio-cconomic development of capitalism in a state of eriss. It is
the resul of @ revolutionary thruse that was weak and miscarried - 2
consciousness that was compromised. *W hen revolution fails . it the
faule of the vanguard parties”

s clear dha class struggle is an ingredicnt of fascism. Ie follows that
where fascism emerges and develops, the anti-capicalist forces were

weaker than the traditionalist forces. This weakness will become even

more pronounced s fascism develops! The ultimate aim of fascism is
the complete destruction of all revolutionary consciousness.

6/23/71
Our purpose here is to understand the essence of this lving, moving
thing so that we will understand how to move against it. This observer
is convineed that fascism not only exists in the US.A. but has risen out

PARTTWO 31
of the ruins of s one eroded and dying capiralism, phoenixclike, to its
most advanced and logical arrangement

One has to understand that the fascist arrangement tolerates the
existence of no valid revolutionary activity. It has programmed into
its very nature a massive, complex and automatic defense mechanism
for all our old methods for aising the consciousness of a potentially
revolutionary class of people. The essence of a US.A. totalicarian
socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass
participacory socicey. We must rip away its mask. Then the debare can
end, and we can enter a new phase of sruggle based on the development
ofan armed revolutionary culkure that will riumph.

On May 14, 1787, the Constiutional Convention with George
Washington presiding officer, the work of framing the new nacion's
constiution proceeded with fifty-five persons and only two were not

employersitt

There have been many booms and busts in the history of capicalism
in chis nation and across the Western Hemisphere since its formation.
The accepted method of pulling the stricken economy out ofits stupor
has always been to expand. Ie was pretty clear from the oueset that the
surplus value factor eventually leads o a poine in the business eyele
when the existing implementation of the productive factors makes it
impossible for the larger factor of production (Iabor) to buy back the
“feuies of its abor” This leads to what has been erroncously termed
“overproduction” It is, in fact, underconsumption. The remedy has
always been to expand. to search out new markets and new sources
of cheaper raw materials to recharge the economy (the imperialist
syndrome)

Conflics of intereses develop, of course, beeween the various Western
nations and eventually lead to competition for these markers. The
result s always an ever-inereasing international centralization of the
various eapitalist’elites, world-wide cartel: International Telegraphic
Unions (now International Tele-communications Union), universal
postal union, wwansporarion, agrieultural, and scientific synd:
Before World War I there were forty-five or fifty such international
syndicates, not counting the purely business careel. The incernational
qualicy of capitalism is nor happenstance. I i clearly in the intereses
of the ruling class to expand and unite. I am one Marsist-Leninist
Maoise-Fanonise who does not completely accepe the idea that the

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
old capiralist comperitive wars for colonial markets were actually
willed by the various rulers of each nation, even though such wars
stimulaced their local economies and made it posible to promote
nationalism among the lower classes. War taken to the point of
diminishing rerurns weakens rather than strengehens the participants,
and if the rulers of these nations were anyching at all they were good
businessmen. Expansion, then, which often led unavoidably to war,
was the wraditional recourse in the solving of problems created by a
vacuous, uncontrollable system, which never considered any changes in
ies arrangement,ies essential dynamies, uneil it came under a very real,
dircerly threatening challenge from below to it very existence. Fascism
in s carly stages s a rearrangement of capitalst implementation in
response to a sharpening, threatening, but weaker egalicaian socialist
consciousness. I regional or national economie erisis the traditional
remedies also include measures which stop juse shore of massive
expansion on the incemarional level. Traditional controls short of
expansion and war have always existed in the form of government
incervention, tariff, public expenditure, government export subsidy
and limited control of the capital market and impore licenses, and
monopolics have always used government to help direce investment

PARTTWO 3
CLASSES AT WAR

Mobilization and Contramobilization

Enough time has passed now since the emergence of fascism, the
extreme criss that precipirated i, and the hostilicies that caused s early
development to view it with less of the coloring that sensationalism
and war propaganda necessarily create. We should now be able, after
time has somewhat dulled the raumatic exchanges of debate and
seruggle, to analyze fascism objecrively its antecedents, its prime
characteristies, and its goal. I denying s ideological importance I am
not suggesting that all of ies advocates (of the especially early period)
were opportunist or deranged individuals reacting o a personal threat
o their own situation within the society. A great many of the early
fasist intelleceuals were responding to a very real social situation. As
incelligentsia, keepers of the particular nation's system of values, art
forms and political thoughe, they flt it was their responsibiley to
actempe to resolve a growing social problem. My insiscence upon the
non-importance of ideology indeed rests squarely upon this point
that most of the fascis intellectuals were reacting to the uprootedness
and social disintegration of the particular moment, and with each
change in the face of this state of affais they were in large pare
forced to repudiate mose of their former ideology. Weigh is given to
this observation by the face that carly fascism included an amalgam
of expressionists, anarcho-syndicalists, fururises, Hegelian idealises,
theoretical syndicaliss, nationalists and, in the case of the Spanish
Palange, intellectual anarchiss.

The whole theme of this early face of fascism was not merely anti
communist but fundamentally a general indictment of decadence,
bourgeois decadance. Fascism also absorbed some socialsts. In 1914
the Fasi di Azione Rivoluzionaria formed itself out of a geoup of super.
nationalist patriots fvoring lealian intervention in the war against the
Central Powers. Benito Mussolini, leader of the exereme syndicalist
faction of the Socialist Party, supported them vehemently in his
newspapee I Popolo d lalia, and of cousse this resuleed in his expulsion
from the party.In March 1919, afeer the deep disillusionment and unrest
caused by che lealian participation in the war, Mussolini formed the firse
el fascio. The intellectuals that supported him did not do so out of 3
sense of the usual role of the inelleceual in society (i.e. to educate, to

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
set che values of that society) in a time of extreme social disintegration
and economic crisis. Men like Benedetto Croce and Arturo Toscanini,
and others like Giovanni Genile and Gabricle D'Annunzio (one of
Taly's greatest poets), supported Mussolini almost ou of desperation
ac what they felt to be 2 destrueiv national breakdown. All four were
elivise and may have also fele chat their seatus as intelleceuals was also
threatened. Recall, the Russian revolution had shocked the world to
ies foundations about this time. The general distegard of the Socialist
Parey for any are form or scientifc activiey that did not serve the stace,
and its tendency to factionalize and procraseinate alienated many of
the nation’s top intelleccuals.

But the final reason why the importance of ideology in fascism must
be denied is the face that it exises in more than one form. In fact,
historically it has proved to have thee different faces. One “out of
power” that tends almost to be revolutionary and subversive, anti.
capiealist and anti-socialist. One “in power but not secure” — this is the
sensational aspeet of fascism that we see on sereen and read of in pulp
novels, when the ruling class, through its inserumental regime, is able
o suppress the vanguard party of the people’s and workers’ movement.
The third face of fascism exists when it is “in power and securely s0.
During chis phase some dissent may even be allowed. In lealy, Trilussa
the poet wrote and published more bitter and biting satires aracking
the political regime than can be found in any of the so-called liberal
democratic states. In April 1925, three years after the fascise March
on Rome, Benedetto Croee was able to publish a clearly anci-fascist
manifesto.

The finished produce, che actual fascist arrangement, is diametrically
opposed o s original ideology. The regime turns openly eraditionalist
and idiots like Mussolini reccive the favor and compliments of other
idiors like President Roosevelt, Bernard Shaw, Du Pone, Kennedy.
and H.

notion of new spiritualistic man and the theory of the ethical stae.
The ideals of obedience and ereativity, authority and freedom, are so
coneradictory of each other, so mutually exclusive, that the ideology of
fascism could never be taken seriously

Wels. This stems from an inevitable conflict between the

The preudo-intellectual origins of ascism can be traced allthe way back
to ancient Greece. The German National Socialise apologise Alfred
Baumler and expressionist Gorefried Benn both recognized Hegel, 2s
did some of the Iealian ineelecuals and Easeern European fasciss. The

PARTTWO 35
Western Europeans, however, fvored the primitive, withdrawn ideals
of Nietzsche or a confused combination of Nicezsche and Hegel with
a bt of Plazas philosopher king added for window dressing. Actually,
there have been as many different fascist ideals and arrangements 2
there have been fasist societies. Which brings us to the relevant point
ofinquiry. The importance or form of a particular political regime can
never be understood simply as it stands alone. It social and economic
past muse be investigated and clearly defined before the distinctive
being of the political realm takes shape.

e wasn'e uneil the mid-nineteenth century that Germany and,. laly
reached nation-state status. Their heavy industrial sectors were rapidly
expanding and coming into conflie with the traditionalise cconomic
sectors. Though there were some clashes of interest within the
extended family of the ruling classes at the point of their emergence
into Western bourgeois culeure, the section controlling the largest
share of the GNP in all cases finally succceded in gaining an even
greater hold over the direction of the economy, with class interest
generally working a compromise. The final resule always involved a
higher degee of entralzation of power and control. L term this contra:
positive mobilization. It occurs when the capicalist industrial sector of
particular society succeeds in alering the preexisting equilibrium in
ies favor. The period in question was characterized by the movement
of masses from the twaditional agriculeural sector into the sweat
shops (large and medium) of the cities. A policy was designed by chis
capiealise class to limie the range of choices of the newly mobilized
masses. Bue “the specter of communism” was “haunting Europe” The
working masses began to organize and exert increasing influence in the
ealm of politics. This we will term posicive mobilization.

So 4 threesided political struggle opened the twentiedh century
Actually it was a two-sided seruggle: the proletariae againse the ruling
elass. Amultitudeofeonflicts exsted withinthe rulingclas,particularly
between the older eraditionalis secors and the manufacturing class
Within these two factions there were a number of separate interest
groups. The corporative ideal had its roots in this conflice. Elcie,
conservative cconomises like Pareto theorized around such concepts as
“governing eltes? and “general equilibrium ” The object of course was
o diffuse the posicive mobilizacion of the working class. The system
fnself was oseensibly designed to balance the interests of al economic
classes and substructural groups. However in fat,its principal purpose

36 BLOOD IN MY EYE
was 1o check the growth of the vanguard parey’s influence on the
working class. In its beginning, especially in laly. it was too vague and
difficult to control. General equilibrium was never reached and class
seruggle went on unabated. Class consciousness sharpened and the old
bourgeois democratic seates, torn from within and in conflict with
each other, rushed toward their own ruin.

There is another form of mass mobilization thae has strong socio
economic significance. Ie lies beeween positive and contra-postive
mobilization. It involves the men who were uprooted to serve in
nationstate wars. Those who were recruited from the agriculeural
sector generally gravitated to the cities after their release, further
dislocating the economy in favor of the modern sector. The traditional
agricultural sector was forced to mechanize (modernize) and pull
marginal land out of production. In some areas agriculture collspsed
altogether. The result was the need to import foodseuffs and other
agriculeural products. This may or may not have damaged the overall
economy, but in any cas it represented another function turned over
to the modern sector:

After World War L, international capitalism wene chrough an expansion
phase of the business cyele. At its base were the regenerative effccts of
war on capitalist production and speculation. But the boom was bricf.
The great war had eaken the whole business of destruction of surplus to
the point of diminishing retuns. The years 1920 to 1925 were spent in
recession and depression across the Western world. The few years that
followed ~ from 1925 to 1929 ~ business “roared” back to recovery and
expansion. Industrial manufaceuring around the Western world and
pares of the Third World (Japan, Argentina, Brazil) increased by 25
percent. The volume of world trade inereased accordingly. However,
an increase in the ares of agriculeural production, under the strain to
modernize without a corresponding increase in the abiliy of the geeat
laboring masses to buy back what was being produced, precipitated a
sharp fallin the price struceure of foodseuffs in one of the world's argest
agricultural centers, the United States. It was underconsumpion (not
overproduction), and it led to the fatalstock market crash of 1929, The
whole Western world went into recession and deep depression.

Tiwo countries were litle affccted by the general break-down: Russia,
which had takentselfoffehe wheel witha successful socialist revolution,
and ltaly, which had established a strong economic centralization that
tended to close her economy off from the other bourgeois states. laly

PARTTWO 3
had already established fascism shorely afeee World War I during the
1920-25 cconomic erisis. That war had mobilized millions of lalians,
most of whom were uprooted from over-traditionalise sectors of
the proletariae. They had gone through the changes that most other
Western countries were bout o adopt. The key element that made
the economie policy of fascist arrangements unique was the emphasis
on “reform through government intervention The opposice of Adam
‘Smichs “invisible hand” working to coordinate economic activity. The
opposie of the French revolutionary batele cry “laissez faire”

Big business was in crisis, of course, after the shore boom following
World War I. The giant careels and the national industrial and financial
monopolics were starved to the bone in both periods of fascist
rearrangements (the early twenties and al ofthe thities). This gave the
movement its seemingly middle-class antecedents. Where large-scale
manufacturing was not in complete control, its staining to emerge
as the dominane force within the economy was resisted by the perit
bourgeois, the landed classes and the medium proprictor. Here we see
fascism in s out-of-power “stage one” We hear its language sounding
deceptively anti-capitalise: “parasitc capitalism. “illegitimate capit
“rapacious capital” etc. ete. This was true in ltaly and with early
fascism, in Falangise Spain and in Germany

Mussolini, who see up the firse successful fascit regime, was 2 man
erained all of his lfe in the revolutionary tactics and serategy of
scientific socialism!! His deparure from the international socialist
movement dated from the moment he gave his unreasonable support
02 nation-state war in which the working class of one or more nations
was manipulated into the murder of the working clas of other nations
by the rulingclasses of he respective states.

His opposition to the Socialist Parey and his participation in reformist
capiealism were no doubt due to the factionalism and basically
reformise acttude of the Socialise Parey. In spite of the fact that the
Socialises won 156 seaes in the Chamber in the elections of 1919 (over
50 percent more than the nexe largest political party, the Catholic
Popular Party) and won majoriciesin the councils of 2,202 communes
and 26 provines (there were 8,507 communes and 69 provinces)
in the general adminiseration elections of the following year, and in
spite of the face that the Socialise General Confederation of Labor
had grown from 300,000 members before World War I to almost
2.5 million members in 1920, the Socialists il scemed powerless to

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
solve the nation's cconomic problems with the promised revolution.
In 1920 the Socialse Parey seized control of all the nation’ steel
manufacturing planes bue, incredibly, recurned them to the privae
incerests. Several accounts claim that the workers couldn't run the
planes - bueifche makers of seel can't make seecl .2 Obviously it was
problem of dircction and management in the vanguard parey. There
were strikes, slow-downs, lockouts and the kinds of disorders that
precede revolution (or counterrevoluion). In the years following the
war and during the carly depression of 1920-25 Il could have gone
either socialist or fascist. There were parcisans enough in both partics
o lead the uprooted, disintegrating socicty into a new dicction. The
difference was in the nature of the leadership. along with the question
of who would be willing to commit their whole foreunes and fucures
o the bartle

Mussolini took his Black Shirt army and moved to the fight killing and
suppressing his opposition for the interests of an alarmed induserial
eraditionalise clite. He was well educared in the science of positive
mobilization, which made him the nacural architect of a contra
positive mobilizacion inended to diffuse the working-class movement.
He “seized power” in 1922 with the full suppore of the northern
indusrialsts, the petic bourgeois, and the older traditionalist agrarian
incerests. The 1921 elections lefe his party with only 35 seats out of
a possible 535 in the parliamentary body. But by applying violence
judiciously and scienificall as he had learned from Lenin, he was able
o force the abdication of the king and the constitutional monarchy
and form the firse political regime representing the new dircction of
capiealise development. “Eyes right” — he pumped bullets into the old
lefe and nevw life ineo capitalism. The people were to exist solely for the
seate (¢he ruling class). This was the very antichesis of socialism. This
period marked the "second face” of fascism, “the dark night” when it

Butit went on to developa “closed economy” with dirceted invesement
in public works projeces. It proceeded to il the cconomic vacuum
with surplus capital and super-nationalism.

“Believe, fight, obey:” State-protected industries, mainly in munitions
and shipbuilding. Trly extended her power facilities and opened new
marginal agriculeural land for its new slaves. New educational faclities
and new “educators” (out of 1,250 university professors only ewelve
refused to take the academics’ oath of loyaley to the regime in 1931)

PARTTWO B
were also pare of the reforms. Taken all together the reforms turned out
o be extreme reaction. The government of 1870 had scized the papal
seates. The regime brought back the old religion. In 1929, in spice of
the unrewarding experiences of World War I, the regime was allowed
to make war again in Afica, in Europe. This marked the “third face” of
fascism — in power and secure.

Thepointhere isthat fascism emerged out of weaknessinthe preexisting
economic asrangement and in the old left. And the weakness must be
assigned to the vanguard parey, not the people. The People’s Party
fuiled co direct the masses properly with positive suppression of their
class enemies and their goons. Mussolini was able to proclaim that
fascism held the only solution to the people’s problem ~ by defauls
Fascism, the new arrangement, the rearrangement, the strengehening
and reforming of aissez-fae comperitive capitalism, was anti-socialist
from ius inception. It actempted to concel the reality of clas seruggle
by disguisingtselfas a new solution to “naional problems” by deifying
the interests of the “whole state” — which turned out to be the interests
only of the staee’s rulingclasses.

Fascism s alwvays a response to a threat to the establishment. Any anti
establishment actions taken by the seriely political arm of a forming
fascist arrangement are simply attempes to centralize or upstage
the capicalis induserial sector — cither to establish it, as in Spain, or
modernize it, as in those cases where marginal productive interests are
absorbed or destroyed by the arrangement. It s significant to note that
o fascis regime “in porcer” has advocated the abolition of any form
of private ownership. The fascis regime and private ownership work
hand in hand. No modern policical regime can exis for long without
the cooperation of those who control the means of production.

The shock troops of fascism on the mass political level are drawn from
members of the lower-middle class who feel the upward theuse of the
lower classes more acutely. These classes feel that any dislocation of
the present economy resulting from the upward thrust of the masses
would affect their status fiest, They are joined by that sector of the
working class which s backward enough to be affected by nationalistic
erappings and the loyaley syndrome that sociologists have termed the
“authoritarian personality” One primary aim of the fasist arrangement
is to extend and develop this new pig clas, to degenerare and diffuse
working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man’s herd
inseinees, Development and exploitation of he authoritarian syndrome

) BLOOD IN MY EYE
is at the center of toulitarian capitalism (fascism). I feeds on a small
but sl false sense of lass consciousness and the need for communiey
The collective spiit in fascism is 2 morbid phenomenon that geows out
of the psychopathology of mob behavior.

With each development in the fascist arrangement, the marriage
beeween the political elte and economie elie becomes more apparent.
The integration of the various sectors of the total cconomic elite
becomes more pronounced. The Rumanian Iron Guard was no
exception. It would have eventually bedded down with the “owners™
and “financiers” and integrated the archaic sectors of the tradicionalist
eapiealise elites with the modern sectors had it not encountered the
Red Army

The generals and colonels of the various Latin Amerikan fascist
regimes are atcempting contra-positive mobilization and functioning
as an instrument to balance the interests of the traditionalist with the
the neo-colonial nations. I is very misleading
to regard them as the “ruling class” of such nations, o to consider
them as pare of a populistic movement. As in Rumania and Spain,
staee intervention simply serves the best interests of a diminishing
eapiealse ruling class by reseructuring it and destroying the people’s
labor movement. Capitalst policical regimes cannor exist of their
own. Without the support of government, capitalism simply could not
prevail. Peron was a fascise. The peace he worked out becween labor
and “owner” was subele and disguised but nonetheless fascise in that
it appeased and diffused the worker’ resentment of the nomworker
and effected a quite efficient counter-positive mobilization. Peron
maineained an_ apparene popular appeal throughout his years a5
head of state because of the vanguard party’s willingness to setele for
reformism and tokens in a less than junior partner relationship with
capital. His arrangement of the fascist state was indeed singular, Like
the US.A., the original structure of the society in which he had to
work his scientific manipulations had only one available sector large
enough and uprooted enough (withoue strong lee dircction) to carry
his movement — labor. Peron the fascist found his serongest support in
labor. He was finally deposed when he lost the favor of the economic
elite. At heart all fascise manipulators are elitst and revere private
ownership. They are backward and reactionary to the ultimate extreme
of self-destruction. Peron might have held on to his position had he
chosen to serve the laboring class honestly and make it a genuine power

more modern sectors

PARTTWO a
base for the society ~ one which truly embraced their intereses — by
nationalizing the productive faciliies and turning them over to labor's
management. But fascists would racher dic or flee than support the
total revolution. So they must b slain!

The very firse step in establishing the “whole interest of the state”
the combine, the corporate stae, is to dismantle the working-class
movement and replace it cither with state-controlled organ or no
organization at all. The corporate laws passed in Ialy in 1934 served
only tosanction the complete destruction of the prolecarian movement.
At the same time they set up an auomatic defense mechanism against
furure labor activiey. In disputes, labor was represented by men sworn
cither to the sate or without the skill and intelligence to effect lsbor's
demands. The manufacturing class had long since licerally married
inco the regime. In Iuly the fascist parey cadre spread throughout
the nation organizing people lefe aimless by the failure of the positive
mobilization of the socialist vanguard partics: people who had dropped
out, defected; people who became uprooted and unemployed either by
the war or the deflaced cconomy. This organizing must be considered
contra-positive. mobilization in that its inent was to inflate the
capiealist economy and deflate the worker’s and people’s influence and
control over the cconomy. With easy credit,inflationary financing, and
increased government sponsorship of public works projects, fascism
in Taly, Germany and Japan succceded in reconstructing capitalist
productive insticutions and eraditional property relations. After the
takeover, ltaly recovered rapidly from the 1920-25 postwar depression.
The ordinary complexities created by inflationary budgeting did not
immediately manifese themselves because of the preexisting state of
the economy. The untapped productive factors ~ capital and labor
~ were grinding to a standstill. Cost of living and cost of production
under those circumseances did not immediately rise to the point of
eriss (diminishing recurns for capital, decrease in real wages of labor).
Later in both lealy (1925-26) and Germany (1937-38) his inflaionary
budgeting showed damaging tends and set off a chain reaction in
Germany that may have evencually led o its downfall. However,
the heart of the fascise economy s an atempe at control through
centralization: monopoly capital coneol, price fixing, wage freczes,
and carefuly balanced foreign trade

The firse currency erisis stimulated by ltaly’s inflationary policics
(initated in 1925) resuleed in the seabilizing of the lia by decree in

2 BLOOD IN MY EYE
1927. A controlled deflacionary period followed. effected through
the banking systems which the regime influenced by decree or
advice. Private interests protected themselves from cotally deseructive
competition by using the regime as referce. After the Great Depression
and the internacional rise of fascist sates by default, refinements in its
simple currency conerol methods were introduced. The replacement
of compe
more standardized. The Germans realized that inflationary currency
conerol would have ltle real effcct on the expansion of heavy industey
without also controlling the capital market. Direction of investment

fon with cooperation among the private interests became

was also a key factor in the arrangement. Again, the regime functioned
as 2 centralizing, mitigating influcnce. Real wages began o fall and
induserial production rose. Considered againse the Gross National
Product, investment rose 25 percent by 1937 in Germany. The same 25
percent figure held true for Japan in che middle and late thirtcs. From
15 percent of GNP atthe lowest point of the Grear Depression n fascist

Taly, annual average invesement in industry rose to 19 or 20 percent
in the years 1936-40. Because ltalian fascism was already established
when the entire Western capital market’s banking systerm failed, there
was a sizable amount of quasi-government ownership. The “Industrial
Reconstruction Institute” established by the regime was quite simply 3
financialinstitution, a huge bank. It also indireetly owned orinflucnced
large sectors of the nation’s heavy industry — 2 furcher hine at an
upward thrust of the middle casses to fill i sections of the eraditional
ruling class destroyed by the forces of the business cyele. In general,
the developments and experiments in controlled capitalism resuleed
in 2 concentration of economic power in the large monopolies. The
eriss in Geeman foreign exchange murdered the small businessman
‘Small agricultural unies eended to disappear because of low wages, low
consumption and large increases in the ares of agriculeural production.
The necessity for government intervention increased s the interests
of the private elites generated new tensions. The breakdown of the
big industial paceen into scetions, the regulation or elimination of
real competition except, of course, for labor when it was shore, and
the control of lsbor organizations basically comprised the whole of the
new fascist “economic arrangement” which attempred to reduce the
vast straca of classes and clas interests of the preexisting stae of the
economy to just the two principal clases - the haves and the have-nots

The psycho-social dimensions of fascism become quite comples,
but they can be simplified by thinking of them as pare of a collective

PARTTWO 2
bargaining process carried on betweenall the licesof he particular stace
with the regime acting as arbitracor. The regime’s intereses are subject
o those of the ruling class Labor is a parener in this arrangement. At
the head of any labor organization in the fascist seate, there is an clice
which s tied to the interests of the regime - and consequenly ied also
o the economie status quo.

The trappings of this pseudo mass society are empry, cheap, spectacular
leisure sports; parades where srangers meet, shouteach other down and
ofen trample each other to death on the way home; mass consumption
of worthless super.suds or aspirin: itualisic, ultea-nationalisti events
on days to glorify the idiots who died at war or other days to deify
those who sent them out to die. A mas society that is acrually a mass
jungle

At its core, fascism is capivalistic and capitalism is international
Beneath its nationalise ideological trappings, fascism s always
uleimately an international movement. Many of the fascst regimes
that failed or lacked thrust ~ the Belgian Rexises, the Dutch NSB.
(National Socialise Movemene) Japan's arrangement, Rumanids Iron
Guard — were all essentially too imitative and inflexible. Even the
toualitarians muse be supple and responsive if they are o survive.
Peronism was imicative as was the Brazilian integratistas. They were
emulating their colonial maseers in the US.A. So one fascise regime
falls o another more cfficient fascist regime.

Tiwo factors muse be seriously considered when analyzing the two
largest fascit states in Latin Amerika - Brazil and Argentina, Their
dependence on foreign trade and their neo-colonial status, which
involves dependence on “foreign investment” When expores fall as
they did during the depression of the thirtis, the value of the national
currency muse also fal, and it follows that impores automatically
decrease. The batele to balance payments begins, necessitating massive
governmeneal intervention which leads inexorably to inflationary
domestic economic policy and sometimes to a conflct of interest with
the ruling clas of the parent nation. Concern for balance of payments
determines internal economic moives. The deficit financing, the
actempe to control incomes (by controlling labor), price fixing,
government stockpiling of ageiculeural surpluses, posiciv direction of
investment and the balancing of the interests of the dualistic cconomy’s
elies can all be pointed to as evidence of an atcempt to employ the
centralise controls that characterize the classic ascise arrangement.

w“ BLOOD IN MY EYE
The fiese fascis regime of Brazil was headed by Vargas. I lasted from
1930 t0 1945. Coffee expores formed 70 percent of the nation’s GNP
prior to Vargas' takeover and the Depression. When incernational
trade (especially in agriculeural goods) collapsed, Vargas was forced
to attempe experiments with the so-called closed economy. New
incernal markets had to be ereated, investment and morives relocated,
induseialization actempeed. But all of this planning, chough successful
0 an extent, was sill basically imitative and did not aceurately reflect
the realities of the nations inability to accumulate capieal.

It is extremely important not o confuse the three faces of fascism
when seudying Latin Amerika. The second phase (in power but not
securc) is the really significant pare of the whole fascit episode.

Regime after regime has filed to increase internal demand or unseat
the eraditionalist landed elie in favor of the small induseral interests:

this means a permanent dependence on forcign trade and invesement
for machine tools, for weapons to control the people’s movemenes,
and for raw materials to feed their light industries and flea markees.

Consequently we sce these areas as the most glaring dichotomy of
Socio-cconomic injustice. In the shadow of their plush beach resores
which aterace degenerates from all over the Western world, lterally
within ifle shor, live the people who service these vacation-resort
complexes in disease-infested corrugated tin shanties on hillsides
constantly ravaged by mudsldes. A strange combination of the first
ewo phases of fascism. Without the massive military aid of the United
States, Gestapo “death squads and the most intensive righist terror,
the guns of liberation would by now have certainly illed the strcets and
foreses with blood "o the horse’ brow” I is important never to lose
sigh of Latin Amerika’ neo-colonial status. A victory for the people’s
liberation armies entails a vietory over international capitalism and
especially a vietory over their colonial masters. The puppet regimes
of these areas cannot move firmly into phase three of the fascist
arrangement for two reasons. The people are willing to use arms and
are learning to use them more effectively, and because the regimes are
imitacive, not indigenous, they do not reflect the real interests of the
naions’elites, but rather the interests of the ruling clites of he parent
imperial nation, the US.A.

Germany atcempted to rearm, deflace itscusency, and at the same time
continue to meet the war-swollen demands of heavy industry. It inally
ell of s own weighe. The fascist economic arrangement filed under

PARTTWO 5
the pressure of war in Geemany, in Auseri, in lealy and Japan, as lacer
it failed the frse regimes in Brazil and Argentina. The principal failing
was very much the same that broughe down laissez faire. The capitalist
business eyele cannot be controlled. Inflationary spasmodic atcacks,
regional recession and depression pursuc capitalism in allitsforms like
a nemesis, break itsspiri, reduce s top-heavy bureaucratic backbone
o jelly. Inflation, at first the key to regeneration afeer an extended
collapse, ultimately leads to complex problems that seem to be beyond
regulacory remedy. To control it by compressing wage demands always
turns out to be politcally unsound.

Class consciousness in Germany was better developed than in any
other European nation before and after the fascist takeover, so
consciousness “alone” is obviously not the factor that decermines
which way a disintegrating society will develop ~ fascist or socialst
The task of defusing the people’s bor movement and balancing it in
favor of the few special individual heavy industrial frms (Reichswerke
Hermann Goring-Krupp) and the vieal incerests of the increasingly
important chemical industry (I. G. Fasben, ecc.), fell to the regime.
sponsored Labor Front. s firse atempr to appease labor came in the
form of slightly improved working conditions, meaningless slogans
like “Strengeh through Joy” which cchoed the Anglo-Amerikan work
echic. Even after the forcible suppression of the vanguard party by the
Gestapo in the firse years of the regime, the potential political power
of labor (due to the workers' importance in the production of heavy
armaments) was such that really effective measures for controlling
it were not devised throughout the tenure of the Third Reich. Wage
inereases couldn'e be avoided. Rigorous state controls replaced mild
repression and propaganda only after the Sudententand affsr of 1938
and the accentuated armaments drive of 1939. Because wages could
not be suceessfully held down (¢he individual firms were after profies,

bear in min
designed to attrace a shrinking labor market), measures were taken
o limit the movement of laborers from place to place, and the other

onsequently they devised many indircet incentives

factors of production were openly channeled into the armament
sectors by stringent government intervention. All idealistc, ideological
pretenses were dropped. Racism and the incerests of the milicary-
industrial comples formed the economic and psycho-social mortives of
the society and shook it apare. The German cconomy was already in
ruins by the time the Reich expanded into Russia. This expansion itself
was a symptom of the economy’s deach-directed lack of discipline. Ies

3 BLOOD IN MY EYE
own internal contradictions and deceits destroyed it. An induseral
military-based economy must expand to live, must foribly balance rade
in its favor o survive. No amount of logic or dissent can influence
the men who have vested interests in the life of such an arrangemene!
Only organized violence and armed seruggle could have scopped them
before they lost cheir minds and destroyed so many lives. The counter-
terrorism of the socialist parties’ vanguard and the proper direction
of the people’s consciousness could have changed the whole course of
history over the lase fifty years. Once fascism moves into s hird phase
and contra-positive mobilization (the psycho-social antithesis of lower.
elass mobilization) insinuates iself echnologically with weapons and
control of the means of the people’s subsistence, imiting their vision
o their own personal short.term interests with propaganda and empty
promises, “only he who does not fear death of one thousand cuts” can
then unseac the Fuchrer

The United States was not existing in 2 vacuum when fascism first
swept the Western world on the heels of two great depressions. My
reading of history indicates that the US. was in greater economic,
social, and political crisis after the 1929 stock market crash than
any other Western country excepting possibly Germany. The same
trends, the same experiments, the same internal bactles were fought
by the same forces for the dircction of the nation's economy. The
extreme cconomic eriss of the carly thirties brought working-class
revolutionary consciousness o ies very peak. All serious commentary
on this period reflects a profound lack of confidence in the workability
of capitalism. This avalanche of criticism came from sectors of the
middle- and right-oriented thinkers as well as the lefi - juse as i did
in Italy, Germany, Rumania and the other fascit storm centers. But
of course the middle and rightist intellectuals were thinking in terms
of a new direction for capicalist growth, not in its abolishment - a
“New Deal? much like those of Nazi, Fascie, and Falangist Europe. No
serious or honest seudent could miss the likeness. ED.R. was a fascist.
His stated, documented congeaeulatory messages to Mussolini were
not simply diplomatic gestures. Joseph Kennedy's adviee to England

to surrender to German expansion did not necessarly originate in
Kennedy's mind. He was official ambassador of the US. to England

There was positive mobilization of workers and the lower class, and
highly developed class consciousness. There was indeed a very decp
economi crisis with actendant seikes, unionizing, lockouts, breakins,

PARTTWO 47
call-outs of the National Guard. The lower class was threatening to
unite under the pressure of economie disintegration. Revolution was in
the air. Socialist vanguard pasties were leading it There was terrorism
from the right from groups such as Guardians of the Republic, the
Black Legion, Peg-leg White-type storm troopers and hired assassins
who carried out the beginnings of a contra-posicive suppressive
mobilization. Under the threat of revolution, the ruling clas,true to
Marxian theory, became allthe more co-opeive and dangerous. ED.R.
was born and bred in his ruling clas of families. His role was to form
the frse fascist regime, to merge the economic, political and labor
elites. Governingelites/corporative state/fascism — hisrole was o limit
competition, replace it with the dream of cooperation; to put laissez
fuire to rese, and initiate the accepeance of government intervention
ineo economic affaies.

A great many of the early trends of Amerikan history prepared the
way for the ultimate success of fascism in its highese form. From the
very beginning of Amerika existence as an independent nation-state
there were localized labor organizations that attempred o further
the interests of their class by influencing the social, political and
economi life of the new nation. Ie wasn'e until the second half of the
nineccenth century tha labor took on a national character and began
to make its presence felt in the cconomic lfe of the nation. Even then,
it was resisted by the violence of employers and government working
together. Mary’s definition of history as a broken, twisted. sordid
spectrum of clas struggles is substantiated by Amerikan labor history
The earlies significant struggles between labor and capital began in
the 1790s on the Ease Coase i cities like New York, Philadelphia and
Baltimore where murual-ad crafe societies attempred to gain higher
wages and shorter working hours. Resistance from employers and their
backers in government to these mild organizational effores forced the
establishment ofthefist trade unions,the Philadelphia Peinters Union,
the New York Typographical Union of 1794, Journeymen Cabinet
and Chair Makers of 1796. The firse wage stike was organized by the
Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoe-makers) of Philadelphis.
I lasted ten or cleven weeks in 1799 and was broken by right-wing
errorist activity,

The laying to rest of laissez faie, the shackling of Adam Smich's
“invisible hand really began during the Civil War in the US. The
pecit-bourgeois dream of countless contending private proprictorships

8 BLOOD IN MY EYE
somehow managinga mellifluous blending of private and state interests
~ when long-range plans could seill be made by wage workers to be
proprietors one day - became a nightmare with the advent of the mass
manufacturing process. At the opening of the Civil War, che US. was
ranked fourth among the world' indusrial seates behind the English
empire, the German states and France. By 1870 che US. indusrial
manufacturing plane had doubled the value of its products. The
number of factory workers drawn out of her sectors of the cconomy
caused the industral work force o nearly double during this sume
period. Improvementsin the ares of agricultural production drew some
workers from the countryside and sent others westward toward the
closing frontier. The craftsman lose his privileged cconomic position
with the appearance of newly invented mass production machinery

This new machinery and the factory setup in general made individual
workers more expendable and made it possible to reduce their share
of the profits. By the mid-1890s the US. was producing one-third of
the world’ manufactured goods, and was on its way to becoming first
among the world induserial sates

The expansion of LS. industey out of the demands of the Civil War
involved a complex concentration of several violent and predictable
capital mandates. The old wraditional sector of the landed aristocracy
was broken; machine tools transport, and communications boomed
(che basis ofthe indusrial state and, of course, an industrial eliee, when
raw materials — coal,iron and other ores - are not acking): the price or
value of lsbor sheank; and the “drive” toward monopoly accumulation
was firmly established.

This period of capital accumulaion, invention of new machinery.
its use in expanding factory setups, the “closed economy” ereated
by Republican government legislation, and the direction of cereain
amounts of capital through government contrace were in pare the
beginnings of a new chapter in the authoricarian process of Western
history. Indusrial centralizacion, 1 mean the refined tatics of
monopolized capitalism, may have been developed right here in the
us

This is the logieal place to question some of the old lefes historical
assumptions abou the lase hundred years of ife. Analyses of the old
lefe are completely confised by the differences becween bourgeois
democracy and monopoly capital and their manifestations on the
Amerikan scene. They seem to feel thae both can coesist in the same

PARTTWO 2
society. Actually one simply grows out of the other. Monopoly capitalis
the central objective of corporative fascism. Prior to the Civil War and
the emergence of the trends toward monopoly capital, Amerika was
dominated by bourgeois democratic cconomics and political rule. The
economy was based upon the diverse ownership of many thousands of
factory units and a political arrangement o reflect that fact.

However, with the emergence and expansion of monopoly capital
after the economic impecus of the Civil War, bourgeois democracy
nacurally began o fade. Bourgeois democracy, the political rule of
the bourgeoisic, simply cannor exist afer the emergence of monopoly
capital. Monopoly capital has its own political expression. It develops
as bourgeois demoeratie policical rule declines.

The roots of corporativism-fascism were laid with the expansion of
monopoly capital inco the gian cartels, corporations and interlocking
eruses. The owners of the largest share of a nation's GNP will always
conerol the politicallfe and government of the state. Monopoly capieal
is corporativism (Fascism!).

1 donfe think anyehing that ever happened in Italy, Spain, Germany
or any of the other capitalise states can match the centralizing process
that the US, went through in the lase hundred years. Even the so-called
public uilties (A.T. & T, the Santa Fe, the Pennsylvania RR, Western
Eleceric, Western Union) are owned by financial instications that, on

examination, always turn out to be controlled by a few families who are

descendanes of the induseial expansionists of 1865.95

The eraditional Anglo-Saxon concep of law (founded on the latent
principle that the haves must always be protected from the have-nots).
though it did not actack labor as openly as in England, effectively
prohibiced the emergence of any really srong labor movement uncil the
close of the ninetcenth century. e did not prevent the war-profitcering
Rockefeller petroleum_combination from forming. It didn't stop
Western Union from taking over the telegraph industry. Ie didn't stop
‘Samuel Slacer and the “Boston Associates” from tying up all the New
England texcile interests. The transcontinental railroad hookup (May
19,1969 — Union Pacific and Central Pacific) could have never been
accomplished without government and commercial cooperation.
Corruption and lawlessness were the basis of their commercial success,
but no one was charged or punished by lav. Any individual, on the
other hand. who joined with someone else to effect an increase in his

s0 BLOOD IN MY EYE
wage was guily of conspiracy. That same law i still used to protece the
same intereses today. Anglo-Saxon law supporeed EB. Gowen of the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and s coalsubsidy in cutting wages
and breaking unions, just as it supported the KKK in reconstructing
Southeastern US., King of the Baltimore and Ohio, Tom Scott of the
Pennsylvania, William Vanderbilt of the New York Ceneal. Every time
T hear the word “law” I visualize gangs of militiamen or Pinkertons
busting strikes, pigs wearing sheets and caps that ie over their pointed
heads. I see a white oak and a barefooted black hanging, or snake eyes
pecping down the lenses of eelescope rifles, or conspiracy trals

Revolutionary change always involses the complete alteration of the
seructure of property relations and the institutional subseructures that
support them. It Leads from hierarchy to mass society:

The ruling class in the US. is composed of one million men and
their families — the Rockefelers, Vanderbils, Morgans, Mellons, Du
Pants, Hunes and Geteys, Fords and their minions and dependents.
They use the ivy League universities and clite law schools as private
schools for their offspring and as training grounds for their corporate
hirclings. They rule with iron precision through the miliary, the
ClLA. the EBL, private foundations and financial inseitutions. Their
control of all the media of education and communication compriscs
an extremely effective system of thought control. At the time when
this ruling class was forming a hundsed years ago, the Incernational
Working Men's Parey supported strikes that asked only for reformist
measures, alchough it was aware, even at that time, that reform was
not the solution and it quietly advocated the scizure of the materials
of production. The dichoomy beeween the longing for true freedom
and the fear of itsresponsibiliy was apparent even then. Easly radicals
excused themselves by claiming that they were “exploiting the inherent
contradictions of monopoly capical” They hoped thae the masses
would spontancously awaken to the fact that capicalism had grown
decadent. But capitalism reformed itself, apologized to no one, and
wen on to build a necwork of national and international centralization
that seands unrivaled by any hicrarchy past or presen.

Reformism isan old story in Amerika. There have been depressions and
socio-cconomic political erises throughout the period that marked the
formation of the present upper- class ruling circle and their controlling
elies. Bue the parties of the left were too committed to reformism to
exploit their revolutionary porential

PARTTWO 51
The latest round of capitalism reform, the latest redircetion of its
energy, was ies highest and last form. The struggles of the thiics,
forties and fifties completed the toualitarianization of the counery and
perfected the system of total mass social deception. I've had learned
men tell me thae controlled capiealism, monopoly capital, fascism,
corporativism, or whatever your vernacular, is a form of “welfare.
seate-ism.” This s preciscly what we were intended to believe: that the
political takeover by monopoly capital was actually an advance in the
welfare of the common people. Even the old lef promores the li that
valid concessions have been made by the ruling class, as if deceptively
better working conditions and illusory wage increases were Marxism.
A erue Marvise revolution abolishes the wage syscem. The true welfare
seace would be the final and highest stage of social development, where
the world and the state are one, where the material and psychological
needs of the masses have been met and policical regimes have ceased
o exist. The New Deal and the resulting military induserial complex
as welfare-state-ism — 1 swear [l serangle the next idiot who repeats
that line.

Al the ingeedints for a fascist sate were already present: racism, the
morbid traditional fear of blacks, Indians, Mexicans: the desire to
inflict pain on them when they began to compete in industrial sectors.
‘The resentment and the seedbed of fear is patterned into every modern
eapiealsesocieey. It grows out of a sense of insecurity and insignificance
that is inculcated into the workers by the conditions of lfe and work
under capitalism. This sense of vulnerability is the breeding ground
of racism. At the same time, the ruling class actively promotes racism
against the blacks of the lower classes. This programmed racism has
always served to distract the huge numbers of people who subsist at
jse a slighely higher level chan those in 2 more debased condition (in
the 18705 cthe serikes frequently ended in anti-Chinese or anti-black
lynchings). It conforms to dual requirements of the authoritarian
personaliey (conformity accompanied by compulsive sadism). Racism
has served always in the U, a5 pressure release for the psychopachic
destructiveness evinced by 1 people made fearful and insecure by a way
of life they never understood and resented from the day of their birch,

Inche US., World Wasr 1 was the principal cause of the total breakdown
of the working-class movement and its revolutionary consciousness,
which had been buile up by the crisis years of the thirties and all that
wen before them. Lesser actempts at suppression had been made

52 BLOOD IN MY EYE
prior o the war through the eypical reformist policies of modern
fuscist regimes. The cconomy had been closed, banks regulated,
deicie spending had been practiced on projects like TVA and CCC.
The arms race that eventually culminated in the fascist milieary.
indusrial-complex-based economy broke the closed cconomic ideal.
Tiwo conditions distinguished the successful eseablishment of fascism
in this country. The old vanguard parties copped out and supporeed
4 nation-state ruling-class war which wasted the blood and energy of
their prolecariats. At the time, rsistance to the war would have seemed
like simple common sense. I £ Scalin gave the order to suppore the ULS.
wareffore, he was fool. In any case, the old vanguards’suppore should
have been for the people’sseruggle inside the US.

With a letle more patience and sacrifce, Stalin could have evencually
marched to the Adantic. With all o Europe in ruins and the German
economy already in its final stages of disintegration with the US.
presence in Europe, capitalism could be dead today. Instead, US.
imperialism rose to behemoth proportions. Afte the war, international
markees opened in Europe, Affica and Asia with the flea market
of radios, TVs and novelries here at its center. For the sake of these
trinkets and baubles, the labor clites diffused the righteous demands
of the peaple. Consensus politics formed s a result of their defection
simply solidified the totaliearian regime with all the opinion-molding
faciliies under the ruling classes Elections and political parties have
no significance when all serious contenders for public office are fascist
and the electorate is thoroughly misled sbout the true nacure of the
candidates. One cannot say all the people who vore are unaware, just
as one cannot say the twelve hundred professors who backed Mussolini
were all frightened. Those who are aare and sell do nothing
constructive are among the most pachetic vietims of the totalitarian
process.

The necessary shock troops and tools for creating the false contra.
positive psycho-social basis of a fascist-type pseudo-society were in
shore supply in this country prior to and during the process of the
fascist takeover. There was litele of this consciousness among the
middle clases, so the first tesror came from the specially formed and
hired goons of the Du Pans and Rockefellers, the Black Legion, the
Guardians of the Republic, the EB.L They destroyed the already
disintegrating vanguard. leaving the degenerace clements of he working
elass a the only available mass. Clas relations were slowly altered as a

PARTTWO 5
resule of this action by the co-opted Iabor sectors. Governmen agents
were sent to infiltrace scatcered labor movements. The disguise was
complece. The satifaction of labor’s shor.term economie interests
was made possible by the giant consumers’ markee and the milicary
complex. Ties were formed beeween rulers and labor leaders. The clites
of the proletarian movement were compromised. A ruling class and
ins governing clites were centralized and were carcfully co-opeive. A
fascit arrangement! Death and prison for all who obiect ~ fascism in
ies final and secure seate. It has happened here. And the only recourse
is an appeal to arms. The corporative state allows for no genuinely
free political opposicion. They only allow meaningless gatherings
where they can plant more spies than participants. They feel secure in
their ability to mold the opinion of a people interested only in wages.
However, real revolutionary activiey will draw panic-stricken gunfire
Or heart actacks. So what is to be done after a revolution has filed
After our enemies have created a conservative mass socicty based on
meaningless electoral politics, spetator sports, and a 3 percent annual
rise in purchasing power srictly regulated to negate isclf with 3
cortesponding rise in the cost of living. Wht s to be done about an
expertly, scientifically caleulaced contea-positive mobilization of the
entire society? What can we do with a people who have gone through
the authoritarian process and come out sick to the core!!!

There will be a fighe. The fight will take place in the central cties. It
will be spearheaded by the blacks of he lower class and their vanguard
parey, che Black Pancher Parey. Real union activity will climinate the
corporative ties becween the regime - ruling class and labor. People at
the top will be removed and the guy with the programmed mind will
have no union bos to think for him. He wil remain neutral o join us
in ou fight to librate him. We will work this artack at the productive
level indiscely by firs building our central-city communes, which will
revolutionize the all too conservative black laborer. We will build these
communes againse all resistance, the pamphlet in one hand, che gun in
theother. Inblacks authoritarian traies are mainly theeffectsof eerorism
and a lack of intellcctual stimulation. They have been choosing the less
dangerous and complicated mode of existence, survival. All classes, all
people are subject to the authoritarian syndrome. It requires only the
proper sce of cco-sociological circumstantial pressures to turn blacks
around and reawaken their revolutionary consciousness. We're hungey

st BLOOD IN MY EYE
Ou overall task is to separate the people from the hated state. They
must be made to realize that the interests of the state and the ruling
class are one and the same. They must be taught to realize that the
present political regime exists only to balance the productive forces
wichin the society in favor of the ruling class. It is at the ruling class
and the governing eltes, including those of labor, that we muse aim
our boles. The average workingman will simply withdraw or watch
with secret satsfaction or actvely join in when we bring his union boss
under attack. We blacks have lived with terrorism for generations. It no
longer affccts us. T willinensify. We must prepare a counter-terrorism
A man can never be s0 repressed that he cannot strike back in some
way. But it muse begin now The Rand Corporation does 80 percent
of s work for the military-induseial-intelligence complex; 750 or
more colleges offer police science courses; 247 additional colleges offer
associate degrees in law enforcements 44 offer bachelor degrees. The
Nacional Guard numbers 390,000. The C.LA.D. (Counter Intelligence
Analysis Detachment) — the 113th milicary intelligence group — is
designed for the surveillance of private citizens. The police state sn't
coming - i€s here, glaring and threatening

How do we raise a new revolutionary consciousness against a system
programmed against our old methods? Revolution is against the law:
Tewill nor be allowed, not in significant form. Thae makes the true
revolutionary an outlaw, and the black revolutionary a “doomed man”
s blacks, we must function as the vanguard in any hostlities. We
must use a new approach, unite and revolutionize the black central
city commune, and slowly provide the people with the incentive to
fight by allowing them to create programs that wil meet all of their
social, politcal and economic needs. We must il the vacuums lefe by
the eseablished order. We muse push the selers offour land when they
won't cooperae with the new communal lfe of our system. We must
learn from the people, we must learn from the workers, the discipline
they are so highly skilled in. In return, we must teach them the benefics
of our revolutionary ideals. We muse move blacks to the forefrone of
a really producive assault on the outside enemy reactionary culeure,
not only on the production level, bue in all significant arcas of
property relations. We must promote and support enforced ren serikes.
Merchants must come over to our side, or face the appropriation of
their property for the commune. We must build a subsistence cconomy
and a socio-political infrastructure so that we can become an example
for all revolutionary people

PARTTWO 55
Fascism has established ieselfin a most disguised and efficient manner
in this country. It feels so secure that the leaders allow us the luxury of
fine protest. Take protest too far, however, and they will show their
other face. Doors will be kicked down in the night and machine-gun
fire and buck-shot will become the medium of exchange.

Tam an exeremise, a communist (not communistic, a communist), and
T muse be destroyed or I willjoin my comrades in the only communist
parey in chis counery,che Black Panther Parey. I will give them my al,
every direy fighting trick in the annals of was. Nothing wil defea our
revenge and nothing will countervail our march to victory. We come to
our conclusion: the only historical recourse that isleft to us. Freedom
means warmth and protection against harsh exposure to the elements,
It means food, not garbage. It means truth, harmony, and che social
elations that spring from these. It means the best medical ateenion
whenever s needed. It means employment that is reasonable, that
coincides with the individual necessities and feelings. We will have chis
freedom even at the costof total war:

s6 BLOOD IN MY EYE
THE OPPRESSIVE CONTRACT

First women and children in a ditch in Vietnam, ultimately executions in
the civic centers of every look-alike county i his couniyy.

Dear John Gerass

s you know, I'm in a unique policical posicion. 1 have a very nearly
closed futuse, and since | have always been inclined to get disturbed
over organized injustice or terrorist practice against the innocents
wherever ~ I can now say just about what I wane (I've always done
juse about that), without fear of self-exposue. I can only be exccuted
once. No macter what I do,they will always explain me away with the
face of my eleven years in prison and my supposed loss of contace with
objective realiey: So I rage on aggressive and free (¢he action on April
6). When I am denied or corrected ~ I ahvays understand — but rage
on. All on the principle that the ideal must be demonstrated that the
oppressed mentality mus be taughe by example to escape the mych, the
hoax that repression can work against the collective consciousness of
the commune, and to prove that ideals canno be killed with violence.
S0~ I'mduty bound to take the occasion of your letter to respond with
what an rishman once termed “the sweet taste of sedition”

Tl go straighe back to our vist and the hour they allowed us to deal
wieh all the years. T took your casual remark concerning “the outlaw”
back to the cll with me, tooled with it a bit, and clarified it in my own
hand. 1 have 2 hundred related questions (I am alive and learning!).
Outlaws, of course, I thought. Revolution will not be tolerated, it is
against the law in the coulitarian corporative stae. The revolutionary
must certainly reconcile himself with one day becoming an outlaw:

Then my thoughts turned to the oppressive contract in_general
Ies the nacure of cancer to expand. You've seen a greae deal of it
firsthand - US. expansionism since World War Il - ve only studied
it vicariously. But we sce the same conclusions: millions of outlaws
in the Union of South Affica, Jordan, Indochina and here. Summary
executions not of uniformed soldiers but ordinary people. First
women and children in a ditch in Viemnam, ultimacely exceutions
in the civic centers of every lookalike county in this country

PARTTWO 57
And that's the principal contradiction of monopoly capitals oppressive
coneract. The system produces outlaws. It also breeds contempt for the
oppressed. Accrual of contempe s its fundamental survival rechnique.
This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace evencually
being worked out becween the o antagonisti classes,the haves and
the have-nots. Coexistence is imposible, contempe breeds resisance,
and resistance breeds brutaliey, the whole geowing in spirals that must
cither end in the unceonomic destruction of the oppressed or the
termination of oppression.

Hiscory s clearly a long continuum of synthesizing elements. The
imbalances of the oppressive contract, ideals so fundamentally
contradictory, and forces so mueually exclusive can only resule in the
dissolution of the agents of that contradiction.

The corollary of the contract is quite simply malignancy. It seikes
firse of all in the region of the brain. A search for a non-discased
mind chrows one hard against one of the greatest hiscorical/biological
calamities imaginable. Excuses can be made for some workers ~ blind
defense for the system that s victimizing them, brainwashed by the
National Advertising Council’s porerait of the silene majority as well
off in comparison to the barbarian world. Their mindless behavior
can also be explained by their ignorance of labor hiscory. But even
the nationlistic conditioning received in massive doses from birth
cannot. completely explain why man would turn againse himself
Even the workers' shore.term cconomic advantage is only a partial
explanation. We must look for the root causes in the psycho-social
effect of competitiveness and racism. The huge mass of blue-collar
workers scem to be working totally against themselves in their suppore
of a system owned and controlled by a tiny minority. Actually,their
contradictory behavior is explained by feclings of loyaley to race, by
their identification with the white hicrarchy and by their economic
advantage over the oppressed races. They may be oppressed themselves,
but i return they are allowed to oppress millions of others.

‘The economic nature of racism is not simply an aside. Builein physical
features exclude blacks from participation, exclude them forever.
These features cannot be changed. It is the relationship that must
change. Racism is 2 fundamental characteristic of monopoly capital
When the white self-congratulatory racist complains that the blacks
are uncouth, unlettered; that our areas are run-down, not maintained;
that we dress with loud tastelessness (a thing they now also say about

s BLOOD IN MY EYE
their own childen), he forgets that he governs. He forgees that he buile
the schools that are inadequate, that he has abused his responsibility
to use taxes paid by blacks to improve their living condicions, that
he manufactured the loud pants and pointed shoes that destroy and
deform the feet. If we are not enough like him to suit his tastes, is
because he planned ic that way. We were never intended to be pare
of his world. I¢s a slly contradiction for him or us to dwell on the
subject of comparisons beoween the enemy culeure and i creation, the
subeuleure. The only way the exploiter can maineain his position is to
ereate differences and maintain deformitics

Iisthe sense of the finaliey of their exclusion from solid social-economic
participation that forces our youth away from the crippled family unit
into the streets. le causes the excessive importance of meaningless
elationships and the prevalence of anti-communal behavior which is 3
psycho- social response to the loss of - and longing for - community

The diseased mind ... it’s slowly spreading throughout the oppressed
organism. Even the “magnificent savage? the mindless overman is
dying from the almost total anemia. Where is the Black Man? sec him
inscparable from the Black Female, but where is he now? How he has
survived atall s almost beyond any rational explanation.

Early L understood the altemnatives of the black situation: assimilion,
meaning accepeance of the oppressive contrace; ossification or life
below, beyond, outside of sacicty or revolution. But John, I admit
to some confusion over the issue of white racism growing out of my
experience in prison. My mind has vacillated between the historical
references: African feudalism and Afeican communalism ~ I know
that we Afficans were the firse communises (). Edgar Hoover calls

it “primitive communism” in one of the glossaries of his anti-people
books). Dr. Du Bois deale with it in The Philadelphia Negro 1 think
(I can'e quite remember now) in a posicive manner, so I never had
any of the really serious hang-ups in accepting revolution. But — |
think for a while [ sincerely fele that Europeans were not capable of

communistic unitarian behavior. I fe this, however, only briefly, since
unitarian, progressive conduct seems to be a problem for al of us after
hundreds of years ofseeadily centralizing capiralism and. in some areas,
after thousands of years of hicrachy: I've always understood that the
new cultural-nationalist attempes to return o the pre-slavery past of
Aftican feudalism can only leave the average black man more uncertain
and insceure than ever. It i difficult to understand why such negarive,

PARTTWO El
acadenmic and obscure exoricism exists when there are definice examples
of historical coneibutions which could be used to analyze and give
meaning to our present and our future.

The commitment to total revolution must involve an analysis of both
the economic motives and the psycho-social motives which perpetuate
the oppressive contract. For the black partisan, national structures are
quite simply nonexistent. A people without a collective consciousness
that transcends national boundaries — freaks, Afro-Amerikkkans,
Negroes, even Amerikkkans, without the sense of 3 larger community
than their own group — can have no cffect on history. Ultimately they
willsimply be climinaed from the scene. Without the collective sense
of community, without its movement (Bobby Hueton, the shoot-out
on Ceneral, August 7)” and inseicutions (our survival projects® that
will now grow into infrastructure), we simply never will b an cffective
force

During the nationalise period of the collective oppressed mentality
promoted by the establishment, the movement is frozen, static. This
is the level of development favored by the oppressor, the areless empty
ideals of the pscudo-nation, love and respet for a fly
song or bear, the fervent belief in a bond or organization which arises
outof a thwarted longing for real community. The establishmene docs
everything in its power to ensure that revolutionary rage is redirected
inco empry outlers which provide pressure releases for desires that
could become dangerous if allowed to progress. At this stage in the
development of monopoly capicalism, thee are two alternacives:
aggressive revolutionary activiey or calcification. Conservative society.
black or white, is decadent society; due to the absence of creativiey and
movement, conservacive socity always burns ieself out.

a nacionalistic

7 Theee inseances of armed black reisance: Lil Bobby Hurton was killed in he
accemath o prolonged shoor.out wich the Oakland policethaenvolved Hiridge
Cleaver Hutzon was shot nd killed shortly ser cmerging from the bisemens of .
house o surrender, naked, as he police had demanded, and with boch his hands in
the . Pliceclaimthey shos him when he atsemped o cscape. The shoor-out on
Centralis described n previows note th signifcance of Auguse Tch i described.
in the insroduction,

§The new programs ofche Blck Pancher Paey which include ree medica linics,
breakfise programs, cooperative fccoris, housiag, iberacion schools and prison
projects.

& BLOOD IN MY EYE
Your letter got right at the heare of that principle. The whole ideal
of cultural nationalism has been all bue smothered now. It was
basically conerived out of the loss of community and the terms of the
oppressive contract — coercive conformity and indulgent flexibiley to
the demands of hierarchy. But we must al realize that the oppressive
coneract cannot be broken as long as any sore of hicrarchy exists to
perpecuate the sensicized relationships of Amerikan tribalism, classism
and racism. Society is rendered impossible by such relationships. The
establishment of society through inter-communalism’ will require that
the social contract be completely altered. Clearly alteration cannot
take place unless hierarchy i destroyed. Can we expeet the hierarchy to
do away with ieself 22

Then the real undereaking a present is the unconditional frecing of the
people. We plunge beyond ideological debate before this immediate
task. The black man and the black female must be, as [ have mentally
ordered things, completely joined togecher in the act of liberation!
Taccept my black mama with all her fears for my lfe that border on
hysteria a times. Bue I also realize that it s the “role of the living.” of
all the innocent, to discover unicary practice and conduce and move
against the insetutions that close on the oppressed.

Those who have more regard for their own egos or selfincerest
than they have for building a united progressive lef, and those who
abandon community altogecher in favor of petey interests, are in direct
opposition o our real interests They are attempting another form of
escapism. They're flecing the objective conditions of their real lfe and
will eventually reach the ultimate contradiction of facing their facher
or brother,or old classmate, comrade, or wife, over the bareel of a gun.
Or they will find themselves in no man's land, cast ou by the people.
suspeeted by their crime pastners.* But, regarding the eriss juse pase)
in the parey." as Huey Neweon reminds us, there is always a positive
side to cach negative. The confused resentment and reverse racism of
the black partisan will eveneually lead to a new, more productive and
ereative contribution. Already we realize that there was no split in the

Huey Nowtor cocep o he sevosiomey sl of l e pprened
peoples ofthe wrl

101In prison acgot, mans most trusted companion.

11 The deparcure from the Black Pancher Parey of Eldridge Cleaver and some
of his ollowers in Algera and New York.

PARTTWO 6
parey, only a defection. The parey has come out of it stronger. We can
now bring our strategy and tactiesinto realistic conformity with our
total objective situation. Recall we discussed Jonathan and guersilla
serategy i the urban situation at lengeh over that piece of paper with
circles and lines, arrows and question marks.

T guess now that he is dead, and the guily are safe from the muscle of
his mind and arm, i is saf to reveal some of is thoughts and functions
within che masix of the parey and movement. He fele as I did that
the military and policical branches, though married in purpose and
dircetion, in these opening stages should function separately from
each other for very obvious reasons. In undeveloped countries, the
establishment’s military-serike forces are not more than thisty miles
down a dire road in the provincial capital. They're ahways within a few
momenes of strike. The urban guerrilla, however, can mingle with the
enemy and remain invisible and invulnerable. In our present situation
there is no contradiction between the milicary thinking and action and
the primacy of politics. The situation allows for such aceivity as the
Auguse 7th movement, because it can be accomplished without giving
the enemy-state forces the precext they need o move in and deseroy the
political apparacus under the very convenient and much used Anglo
Saxon conspiracy laws. The primacy of policics will continue as long
as the military reads, picks up and works well within the prevailing
political matri. So Jonathan’s raid on the milicary and judiciary that
Friday was at once an expression of his own aggressive consciousness
and that of the party. It is easy to infer all of this in retrospect that
Jonachan was head of a clandestine army which saw the Black Panther
Parey as its political leader. Operating on his own, he was able to at
lease actempt to support some of the minimum demands of the people
without placing Huey Neweon and David Hilliard in jeopardy of loss
of movement or death, ic., persccution in courts

Tha this is our only recourse at the presen level of developmen is
a0 abvious to even divell on. It will not be possible, however, in the
advanced stages of revolution. Just a glance at the present level of
consciousness and the status of the survival infraseruceure wil reveal
the ertor of Cleaver’s analysis that no separation should exist even now
beeween milieary and political cadre, between military and policical
action. You know [senthim a message suggesting hat unitarian conduct
depends on a principled discipline and submission to democratic
centralism instead of the egoism that sent him first againse his Muslims

@ BLOOD IN MY EYE
(¢hrough the Sacramento Bee Pig press that time), then against the
Peace and Freedom Party, even against the progressive elements of the
C.P. through his unreasoned actack on the magnificent Angela Davis
Recently he has even atacked the dedicated, overworked and brilliant
Charles Garry. I seems to be a pactern wih the man. You recall the
actack he launched against Fidel and Cuba, and those accounts that
seemed disparaging of his hoses which have reached the pig press here
from time to time.

My personal message to him was mild, considering that he was in fact
Leaving his old comeades open to aetack again. [ sent aleter reminding
him ehae his behavior while n prison was far from exemplary and had
that section of ie signed by Ulysses MeDaniel and Clifford Jefferson,
two of the oldese (cime in) and most respected black partisans in
the California concentration camp system. 1 then listed some of his
behavioral paceerns since his release - a more complete st than the one
jse given ~ thae did no indicate that he had changed much. 1 finally
asked him simply to show proof now that he was not a compulsive
disrupter or agent provocateur. A very mild request, I feel. He returned
with a very scurrilous and profane set of invetives — in short, a piece
of vendetta. Tell him that seven thousand miles, the walls of prison.
steel and barbed wire do not make him safe from my special brand of
discipline, ell him that the dragon s coming

The sub-structured prison movements are gaining momentum. My
trial is set for early August, 1971, cherell be hearings in beoween
of course. If they are ac all like the last,” you'll et to sce my special
bastardized seyle of martial ares. I working hard to stay in form. |
wasn'eat my best at the lase showing. Ill clean them all next eime they
aetack. Artend - let me see your style.

‘Your comeade in aems - “He who does not fear the death of 1,000 cuts
will dare unseac the emperoe”

George Jackson

12 The hearing of April 6, 1971

PARTTWO &
AFTERWORD

Statement by Huey P, Newton, Servant of the People, Black Panther
Party at the Revolutionary Memorial Service for George Jackson

Power to the People. Power to our fallen comrade Brother George
Jackson, member of the Black Panther Parey. Firse, because many
people are wondering, I would lke to explain the conncetion be. tween
Brother George Jackson and the Black Panther Parey.

When T went to prison in 1967 I met George. Not physically, but
through his ideas, his thoughes and words. He was at Soledad Prison
ac the time: T was a

lifornia Penal Colony. George was a legendary
figure chroughout the prison system, where he spent most of hislife.
met George through his spiric. Shorely afier learning about him I got
word through the prison grapevine that he wanted to join the Black
Panther Pary:. At his request he was made a member of the People’s
Revolutionary Army with the rank of general and field marshal. He
was putin charge of the prison recruiting, and was asked to go on with
his life a3 a revolutionary example, which was the most imporeant ching
that one can ever do, because that eannot be killed

T say chat the legendary figure i also a hero. George Jackson was my
hero. He set 2 standard for prisoners, political prisoners, for people
He showed the love, the strengeh, the revolutionary fervor thats
characteristic of any soldier for the people. He inspired prisoners,
whom I later encountered, to put his ideas into practice and so his
spirie became a lving thing. Today | say that although George's body
has fallen, bis spisic goes on, because his ideas live. And we will see that
these ideas seay alive, ecause they Il be manifested in our bodies and in
these young Panchers’bodies, who are our children. So it a true saying
that there will be revolution from one generation to the nes. This
was George' legacy, and he will go on. he will go on into immortaliey.
because we believe that the people will win, we know the people will
win, as they advance, generation upon generation.

What kind of standard did George Jackson see? First, he was a strong
man, withoue fear,determined. full of love, strengeh, and dedication to
the people’s cause. He lived a ife that we must praise. No matter how

o BLOOD IN MY EYE
e was oppressed, no matcer how wrongly he was done, he il kepe the
love for the people. And this is why he felt no pain in giving up his lfe
for the people’s cause

The state iselfsees the sage for the kind of contradiction or violence
that occurs in our world, particulasly n the prisons. The rulingcicle of
the United States has terrorized the world. The state has the audacity
o say they have the right to kill. They say they have a death penalty
and it legal. But Isay by the laws of nature that no death penaley can
be legal - ies only cold-blooded murder. It spurs all sorts of violence,
because every man has a conerace with himself, to keep himself alive
ac all costs. Legally the state can only confine someone, subject to
correction acalaer date. Evenif the state does wrong it could give iself
the semblance oflegality by leavingopen the posibiliy of rectification.
But of course with the death penalty, with the kind of
see in our community where the police are also the executioners, we
don't have this chance of negortiation. They have the audacity to say
that people should deliver a lfe to them without a seruggle. None of
us can aceept that. George Jackson had every right to do everything
possible eo preserve his lfe and the lfe of his comrades,the lie of the
People.

folence tha we

Even afeer his death, George Jackson s a legendary figure and a hero,
Even the oppressor realizes this. To cover their murder they say that
George Jackson killed five people, five oppressors, and wounded three
in the space of thirey seconds. You know, sometimes like to overlook
the face that this would be physically impossible. But afeer all George
Jackson s my hero. And I would like to ehink chac it was posible; 1
would be very happy thinking that George Jackson had the strength
because that would have made him superman. (OF course, my hero
would have to be a superman.) And we will raise our children to be like
George Jackson, o lve like George Jackson and to fight for freedom as
George Jackson fought for freedom.

George’s st statement, the example of his conduct at San Quentin
on that tereble day, lefe a standard for political prisoners and for the
prisoner society of racist, reactionary America. He left a standard
for the liberation armics of the world. He showed us how to ace. He
demonstraced how the unjust would be eriticized by the weapon. And
this will certainly be erue, because the people wil take care of that.
George also said once that the oppressor is very strong and he might
beat him down, he mighe beat us down o our very knees, he might

PARTTWO &
erush us to the ground, but ic will be physically impossible for the
oppressor to go on. At some point his legs will get tired, and when
his legs gee tired, then George Jackson and the people will tear his
kneccaps off

But firse the seate sets the scene for such violence, you see. And some
people say that we can'e gee rid of this kind of physical conflce with
more of the same. Well, T would take issue with this (we can use that
example of the oppressor stomping George Jackson down to his knees;

he can't go on). We will realiace with violence against his violence. Ies
erue that we'll be hure by his violence bue we're determined not to let
him wipe out the people. We know that he cannot wipe out the people.
because we wil fight on. We will tea his legs off, we'll ear his head
off and we'll ake the example from George Jackson. In the name of
love and in the name of freedom, with love as our guide, we'll sle every
throat of anyone who threatens the people and our children. We'll do
it in the name of peace, i this is what we are forced to do; because as
so0n as it over,then we can have the kind of world where violence will
no longer exist.

So we will be very practical. We won't make statements and believe
the things the prison offcials say - their incredible stories about one
man killing five people in chirey seconds. We will go on and live very
realiscically. There will be pain and much suffering in order for us
o develop. But even in our suffering, | see a strengeh growing. I see
the example that George set living on. We know that all of us will die
someday. Butwe know that here are two kinds of death, the reactionary
death and the revolutionary deach. One death is significan and the
other is not. George cereainly died in a significant way, and his death
willbe very heavy, while the deaths of the ones that fel chat day in San
Quentin will be lighter chan a feather. Even those who support them
now will not support them in the fueure, because we're determined to
change their minds. We'll change their minds or clse in the people’s
name we'll have to wipe them out thoroughly, wholly, absolutely and
compleeely. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

& BLOOD IN MY EYE
Blood in My Eye was completed only days before the
author died from bullet wounds during an alleged escape
attempt from San Quentin Prison, California. Arrested
at the age of cighteen for allegedly taking part in the
robbery of a gas station neteing $70, George L. Jackson
was sentenced to one year to lfe in prison. At the time of
his death he had served cleven years behind prison walls,
seven of those years in solitary confinement. This book
testifies to how those years were spent, and why.

Written with the memory of his slain brother, Jonathan,
constantly before him, it is an apocalyptic vision of
America. It speaks to the poor, the jailed, and the
disenfranchised throughout the world. Jackson's message
to his revolutionary brothers is clear: *People are already
dying who could be saved, generations more will dic or
ive poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Discover
your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the
torch. Join us, give up your life for the people.”

Blood in My Eye takes up where Soledad Brother let off, and
introduces the reader to the life force that was George L.
Jackson.

CHIABC.TUMBLR.COM
Blood in My Eye was completed only days before the
author died from bullet wounds during an alleged escape
attempt from San Quentin Prison, California. Arrested
at the age of cighteen for allegedly taking pare in the
robbery of a gas station netting $70, George L. Jackson
was sentenced to one year to life in prison. At the time of
his death he had served eleven years behind prison walls,
seven of those years in solitary confinement. This book

testifies to how those years were spent, and why.

Written with the memory of his slain brother, Jonathan,
constantly before him, it is an apocalyptic vision of
America. It speaks to the poor, the jailed, and the
disenfranchised throughout the world. Jackson's message
o his revolutionary brochers is clear: “People are already
dying who could be saved, generations more will dic or
live poor bucchered half-lives if you fail to act. Discover
your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the
torch. Join us, give up your life for the people.”

Blood in My Eye takes up where Soledad Brother left off, and

introduces the reader to the life force that was George L.
Jackson.

CHIABC.TUMBLR.COM