In Defense of Offense

The power structure inflicts pain and brutality upon the peoples and then provides controlled outlets for the pain in ways least likely to upset them, or interfere with the process of exploitation. The people must repudiate the established channels as tricks and deceitful snares of the exploiting oppressors. The people must oppose everything the oppressor supports, and support everything that he opposes. If Black people go about their struggle for liberation in the way that the oppressor dictates and sponsors, then we will have degenerated to the level of groveling flunkies for the oppressor himself. When the oppressor makes a vicious attack against freedom-fighters because of the way that such freedom-fighters choose to go about their liberation, then we know we are moving in the direction of our liberation. The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed Black people are bound to respect. As long as the racist dogs pollute the earth with the evil of their actions, they do not deserve any respect at all, and the “rules” of their game, written in the people’s blood, are beneath contempt. The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. When Black people really unite and rise up in all their splendid millions, they will have the strength to smash injustice. We do not understand the power in our numbers. We are millions and millions of Black people scattered across the continent and throughout the Western Hemisphere. There are more Black people in America than the total population of many countries now enjoying full membership in the United Nations. They have power and their power is based primarily on the fact that they are organized and united with each other. They are recognized by the powers of the world.

We, with all our numbers, are recognized by no one. In fact, we do not even recognize our own selves. We are unaware of the potential power latent in our numbers. In 1967, in the midst of a hostile racist nation whose hidden racism is rising to the surface at a phenomenal speed, we are still so blind to our critical fight for our very survival that we are continuing to function in petty, futile ways. Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles and beer cans at racist police who lie in wait for a chance to murder unarmed Black people. The racist police have worked out a system for suppressing these spontaneous rebellions that flare up from the anger, frustration, and desperation of the masses of Black people. We can no longer afford the dubious luxury of the terrible casualties wantonly inflicted upon us by the police during these rebellions. Black people must now move, from the grass roots up through the perfumed circles of the Black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America. We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used against us daily. The power structure depends upon the use of force within retaliation. This is why they have made it a felony to teach guerrilla warfare. This is why they want the people unarmed. The racist dog oppressors fear the armed people; they fear most of all Black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people it will arm the people against foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between thirty million unarmed submissive Black people and thirty million Black people armed with freedom, guns, and the strategic methods of liberation. — Huey P. Newton, “In Defense of Self-Defense”

Self-defense is something that’s ingrained into the psyche of every living, sentient creature. A dog will bite you if you kick it, a wasp will sting you if you swat at it. Even plants grow self-defense mechanisms such as spikes, toxic chemicals, and bright colors to ward off other organisms that would make a meal of them. No creature will allow itself to be beaten and driven. Pacifism is something that is taught, and it has a class basis like all ideologies that humans adhere to. Pacifism can be rightly described as a petit-bourgeois idealist position. Pacifists are promoted by the existing order because the individuals who benefit from this order know that the pacifists pose no great threat to their continued dominance. Pacifism is anti-communist because Communists realize that violent class struggle and the overthrow, by force, of the ruling class, the settler-colonial bourgeosie and its lackeys, is the only way to advance towards a better world, meaning socialism and ultimately the victory of Communism all over the world. It is counter-revolutionary because in most instances it is used as a cudgel and counter-insurgency tool to stifle the revolution of oppressed and colonized peoples, uphold the continuing imperialist order, and carry our best revolutionaries off to prison. It’s necessary to engage in ideological struggle against pacifist positions both active and…well, passive, because ultimately the consequence of a petty bourgeois, rightist, pacifist line allowed to grow within our organizations is the abdication of the true purpose of these organizations — to wage militant and violent class struggle, to build up the forces of the proletariat, to develop revolutionary base areas in embryo, and build a Party that can rightly be called a vanguard through its correct line determined through constant social practice, study, analysis, and reliance on the masses. Pacifism can not do this because it is a partisan ideology in the service of the enemy.

It’s necessary to build for the offensive. Of course, Maoists know that protracted people’s war goes through three stages, strategic defensive, strategic stalemate (equilibrium) and strategic offensive. Right now, we can be said to be in the stage of accumulating forces, meaning that there has been no protracted people’s war launched. There is no Communist Party worthy of the name. The revolutionary left, meaning the left that is actually dedicated to the goals laid out for us as Communists and who do not fear armed struggle, is small, has a negligible mass base, and is more keen on ridiculous squabbles and polemics that have more to do with asserting the same shit that we’ve been asserting for decades to no real impact than actually developing revolutionary theory and practice. Our job is to carry out propaganda, recruit, educate, build infrastructure, and serve the people. By doing this, we will identify and develop our revolutionary militants, mass organizers, and through class struggle, political education, and constant guidance, we will develop the hard core of cadre for a Party. Founding chairperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison, recently offered some wise words in regards to building for revolution in the United States and other imperialist countries.

It is also unwise to bring arms to mass protests that are supposed to be legal and peaceful and where most of the people are unarmed and are far from ready to launch an armed insurrection. It is wise for the revolutionary party of the proletariat not to declare publicly the intent of building a people’s army before the conditions are ripe for armed revolution.

Whatever are gun licensing laws and no matter how strict they are, there are also among the people those who have the skills, materials and equipment to make firearms discreetly in their private garages and work sheds. In the long-term effort to prepare for people’s war against the fascists and the capitalist state, the people can acquire and make firearms.

While there are yet no conditions for fighting and using the arms in a particular capitalist country, proletarian revolutionaries ought to continue arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses in legal and persuasive ways with the confidence that they have the means of self-defense to fight back with certain success against the fascists and capitalist state when the necessity arises.

Far more important than acquiring or making the firearms is fulfilling the ideological, political and organizational tasks to make the proletariat and its party truly revolutionary. But, of course, it is more important to have firearms before the fascists come to power than not to have any when the fascists are already in the process of taking power.

To repeat the point, for the purpose of emphasis, even in the USA, the people have the constitutional right to have firearms to preclude the state from monopolizing arms and thus allow the citizenry to have the arms to oppose and overthrow a tyrannical or oppressive government when it arises. And there are many particular legal reasons for citizens to bear arms. — “On the Question of People’s War in Industrial Capitalist Countries”

Of course, crashing protests held by liberals, reformists, and revisionists with firearms is the height of stupidity. All this will lead to is arrests, revolutionaries don’t have the habit of getting arrested over and over again. In most countries this is a death sentence, in the United States this will soon be the case. As is declaring the formation of a people’s army with a few dozen people among 300 some odd million people and no mass base in the citadel of world imperialism. However, in the New Afrikan community, where firearms are more common than college degrees and riding lawnmowers, organized displays of firearms in the face of fascist and police terror have the effect of not only rallying the community and demonstrating our strength as a people but also serve as learning opportunities. Every New Afrikan person that is able should have a pistol and shotgun at the very least. They should be skilled in the use of these weapons and if they carry them in public or to a protest should be ready to use them. This is doubly so in the case of those who call themselves Communists. This is building for the declaration of PPW in earnest and the onset of the strategic defensive. Base areas are built by developing alternative structures to ensure and improve the people’s well being and unseating the authority and infrastructure of the old bourgeois state. In Brazil, entire swathes of favelas (shantytowns) are essentially no-go zones for the police and military because extremely heavily armed gangs control these areas. Not just the territory but they also engage in various social service activities to get on the good side of the population and ensure that they serve as eyes and ears.

Of course, we’re not Brazilian drug gangs. Our purpose is to mobilize and lead the masses while also being led by them without tailing behind less advanced elements. Furthermore, we aren’t just interested in sitting in base areas ad infinitum or eventually entering into electoral politics like the EZLN in Mexico. Our goal is to go on the offensive, expand our bases, and drive the imperialists and colonizers into the sea. Self-defense is part of the game because it demonstrates the strength of the armed masses, but the goal of the Communist is to develop the consciousness of the people, not to remain constantly on the defensive. Many leftists fail to realize and prepare for the ultimate necessity of going on the offensive. On the other hand, many seek to go on the offense when neither they, or the masses they claim to lead, are ready, and end up dead or in prison. It’s essential to realize that in the accumulation of forces stage that left and right deviations are fatal. The first literally, the second politically. The masses must be armed. More importantly, they must be prepared to not just defend themselves but their political consciousness must constantly be sharpened on the whetstones of social practice and revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory to ensure that they are more and more ready to advance to a higher stage.