On the Roles and Characteristics of the Panther Vanguard Party and Mass Organizations (2006)

“[T]he existence of a political vanguard precedes the existence of any of the other elements of a truly revolutionary culture.”

George Jackson, Blood In My Eye (1971)

“A revolutionary party cannot be built on the quicksand of ideological confusion. Obviously there are a lot of people in the Black movement whose political positions are dead wrong, and someone has to have the courage to say it, even if it busts wide open the façade of unity. A political split, like a divorce, is often healthier than trying to live together in the same house when you have fundamental differences … There are political differences inside the Black Movement representing different socio-economic layers inside the Black community. It is better to start the vanguard party from scratch with the serious few … than with many assorted persons who are all going in different directions and who are therefore bound to split at the moment of crisis, just when the need is for maximum organizational strength and unity. This does not mean that those who cannot or will not accept the ideology and discipline of the vanguard party cannot play a role in the movement or in concrete struggles for liberation that will culminate in the taking of power. But their place is in the various organizations of mass struggle, not in the vanguard party.”

James and Grace Lee Boggs,
The Role of the Vanguard Party (1970)

Recurring criticisms and questions have been raised about the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter’s organizational structure. Most of these criticisms and questions have come from veteran comrades of the original Black Panther Party, (and those they’ve influenced), whose negative experiences under the leadership of Huey P. Newton, (the BPP’s co-founder and Minister of Defense), has led them to reject both the need of a Vanguard Party and the decision-making process of Democratic Centralism (DC), both of which we believe are absolutely essential for the success of any revolutionary struggle. Our purpose here is to answer those criticisms and questions.

In order to address these issues, we must begin with analyzing what type of organization the BPP really was and what sort of decision making process the BPP leadership actually applied.

Was the BPP a Vanguard Party?

While we believe the BPP contained many genuine vanguard elements, (comrades who had cultivated a revolutionary proletarian outlook), it also contained many elements who maintained and cultivated un-remolded lumpen class values and perspectives. In fact, BPP leaders Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver in 1970 and George Jackson in 1971 proudly identified the BPP as being a lumpen party. Furthermore, as pointed out by Charles E. Jones and Judson Jeffries in chapter one of The Black Panther Party Reconsidered and by Comrade Sundiata Acoli in his A Brief History of the Black Panther Party, the class backgrounds of BPP members spanned from petty bourgeoisie, to lumpen proletarian, to pre-class high school and college students and many were in fact employed workers. There was no requirement within the Party that its members commit “class suicide” or otherwise develop proletarian class consciousness, despite the fact that in the Black communities different classes, with various different ideological and political views, were contending to influence the direction of the movement.

Membership in the BPP was generally open to all members of the Black communities. All one had to do was walk into a Party office and sign up. This allowed raw elements to join who were not trained and prepared to lead a revolutionary movement, and offered no protection against infiltration by disruptive elements and enemy agents who would undermine the Party’s ability to operate at a high level of ideological, political and practical unity.

So, in essence the BPP, while operating under the banner of a vanguard party, actually combined the features of both a vanguard party and a mass form of organization. This occurred because the BPP’s leadership failed to make the distinction between the different natures and roles of a vanguard party versus a mass organization. They thus combined both organizational structures into one with the result of having many different tendencies pulling in different directions inside the Party. So, while a strong sense of cultural unity and collective willpower was able to hold the Party together in many ways, it ultimately blew apart as a result of the pigs’ inciting these different internal tendencies into factionalism, competition, envy, paranoia and distrust, à la COINTELPRO. This sort of division would have been much harder to accomplish within a genuine Vanguard Party that practiced DC.

What is a Vanguard Party? What is a Mass Organization?

In order to understand where the BPP went wrong in its organizational structure, we must examine the difference between the Vanguard and the mass organizations. We must also understand that the kind of organization that an oppressed people needs is determined by what the people are ultimately trying to accomplish. As Chairman Bob Avakian of the RCP USA has stated:

“If the goal is simply to fan dissent and protest, or to build a movement that may take militantly to the streets around particular outrages, but does not aim to overthrow the system, then one can dispense with revolutionary organization; a vanguard is not necessary, and for that matter there’s no need for revolutionary ideology.

“But if the goal is to mobilize the masses to seize power from a murderous ruling class and to establish a new power that enables the masses to run and transform society, then you have to act on the implications of this: a vanguard party becomes essential.”

How else can the masses defeat a highly organized oppressive system controlled by a united class enemy? Accomplishing this requires a highly disciplined, organized and united revolutionary party; one that understands the underlying nature of class society and imperialism, and the stages and forms of struggle necessary to overthrow such an enemy order and replace it with a system that genuinely implements the will of the masses. This form of organization is the revolutionary vanguard party.

The vanguard party must consist of the most ideologically and politically united, advanced, disciplined, and dedicated class-conscious elements of a people’s revolutionary forces. These elements must have developed the class perspectives of the revolutionary proletariat, and apply the scientific method of Historical and Dialectical Materialism to its analyses and practice and to educating and guiding the less-advanced masses in solving socio-economic problems.

The vanguard party must be able to investigate material conditions and social contradictions, taking in a broad view of all relevant factors, drawing their information from all areas and sectors of society, high and low, at home and abroad. This data must be analyzed, then synthesized to draw conceptual conclusions and implement programs and policies that organize the masses to solve their own economic and political problems. The vanguard party must be united in theory and practice in the highest sense, and aspire through guiding and educating the masses to raise mass consciousness up to the level of the vanguard elements. The vanguard party does not seek to be a specialized group operating above and out of reach of the common people, instead it actually lives and struggles alongside the people and educates them in the process of struggle so that they too will become vanguard elements. The ultimate objective is to make the Party and the people one and the same.

Until the masses of people are raised up to the level of the vanguard elements, they are organized into mass organizations. The mass organizations represent and include people of various different political, cultural, ideological and class backgrounds, views, influences and levels of awareness. In the case of New Afrikans, for example, our mass organizations like the New Afrikan Service Organization (NASO) include New Afrikan people of different political, cultural and spiritual persuasions. But they are united by a common objective of carrying out programs that serve the needs and interests of the Nation of Afrikans in Amerika. Many of the members of mass organizations are not even revolutionary minded, but they do recognize a burning need to change and improve the social-economic conditions of Black people.

So, mass organizations will include some open proponents of capitalism, liberals, reformists, activists of various persuasions and everyday apolitical people. But also spread throughout these organizations are cadre of vanguard elements whose role within these organizations is to struggle alongside and learn from the people, to materially serve their needs and interests, to educate, lead and advance their levels of political and ideological consciousness, and to ultimately develop the masses from within these mass structures, to become themselves vanguard elements. As people’s consciousness and understanding are raised, and they prove their dedication through their work and study within the mass organizations, they are recruited into the vanguard party where they become fully committed leaders, educators and servants of the People.

The reality is that no people have ever made a spontaneous and leaderless revolution. In every case where any revolution succeeded (Russia, China, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.), there was a party of vanguard elements that led and organized them. It is unrealistic to suppose that a people can spontaneously unite, rise up and overthrow and then themselves replace the institutions of a highly organized economic system and state. Many ultra-leftists theorize about the possibility, but no one has ever achieved it in practice. It is therefore an idealistic and materially unsupportable premise. (Theory, to be accepted as “truth,” must be proved in practice.) It is no more realistic than expecting that a person with no mechanical study, training or experience could spontaneously build a modern car engine. To develop such a skill, one must be actively instructed over a period of time through study, practice and guidance by others who are advanced in the appropriate technical fields, or they must have had plenty of leisure time, opportunity and hands-on access to the necessary technical information and tools to learn the skills themselves. They must be exposed to or studied in the practice itself to become capable and effective in applying it.

So this is to say that yes, the common persyn definitely can learn to build a car engine, however, they cannot develop the ability instantly and spontaneously without practical exposure or instruction. To claim otherwise would be absurd and we dare say improvable. The same reality exists for a people consciously struggling with a society’s highly developed and complex economic, political, military and cultural processes, in pursuit of first seizing power from the bourgeoisie, and then effectively operating these institutions themselves. This is why the masses need a revolutionary party to lead, organize and raise their collective consciousness to achieve and then successfully administer a revolutionary seizure of power.

In this regard, the vanguard party must consist of a hard core of committed revolutionaries who scientifically understand the various economic, political, military, cultural and historical conditions that underlie present society and its various levels of development; who recognize the changes and forms of struggle necessary to overthrow the oppressive system in the ebbs, flows and weaves inherent in the developments of revolutionary struggle; and who have the ability to organize the masses to seize the reins and administer the institutions of the new mass-based society that must smash and build itself upon the ruins of the bourgeois society. As Amilcar Cabral pointed out, while the vanguard party is needed to lead a revolutionary struggle, “our problem is to see who are capable of taking control of the state apparatus when the colonial power is destroyed.” This is a key question. The answer, as Cabral observed, is the mass-based revolutionary party.

So, in essence, the vanguard party is the administrative nucleus of the aspiring and rising revolutionary society. When out of power, the Party acts as the political embryo, which guides and organizes the people’s struggle to ultimately seize power from their bourgeoisie and imperialist oppressors.

And of course we do not claim that less-advanced elements won’t find their way into a vanguard party, because they will. Unity of opposites and uneven development exists within all social phenomena, including a revolutionary party. People are always going to have different levels of understanding of Historical and Dialectical Materialism and how to apply it. What is important is that the center is consolidated while uplifting and educating the cadre and party rank and file in an ongoing way. Envision an escalator where people get on at ground level and go up in stages floor by floor. There will always be new people getting on and therefore unevenness at each successive level of a vanguard party. The deeper understanding will be at a higher level.

These are the distinctive features and functions of the vanguard party versus the mass organizations. The fact that the BPP failed to make these distinctions and organize the Party accordingly, created the internal conditions that allowed the government to destroy it.

Actually, despite his organizational genius, Comrade Amilcar Cabral made a similar error in structuring the vanguard party of Guinea-Bissau, the PAIGC. Too many aspiring bourgeois elements were allowed to enter the leadership levels of the PAIGC. Therefore, all these aspiring capitalist elements had to do was neutralize the advanced class-conscious elements like Amilcar, (through assassinating him in 1973), and his brother Luis Cabral, (through a coup that sent him into exile), and these elements took over the Party and derailed Guinea-Bissau’s revolutionary advances.

Did the BPP Practice Democratic Centralism?

The questions remain whether the BPP applied DC and whether DC is the correct decision-making process of a vanguard party.

“Every comrade … should help the masses to organize themselves step by step and on a voluntary basis to unfold gradually struggles that are necessary and permissible under the external and internal conditions obtaining at a particular time and place. Whatever we do, authoritarianism is always erroneous because, as a result of our impetuosity, it makes us go beyond the degree of the masses’ awakening and violates the principle of voluntary action on the part of the masses.”

Mao Tse-tung, 1945

Quite a few BPP veterans, especially those on the East Coast, are still smarting from Huey’s unilateral purges of committed Party cadre, beginning in 1970 when the BPP split into the pro-Huey West Coast and pro-Cleaver East Coast factions. Huey had reached an icon status as a result of the massive nation-wide campaign led by BPP cadre (1968–1970) to free him from prison on charges of killing a cop. An unintended consequence of this campaign was a centralization of the Party’s decision-making powers in Huey. As some Comrades point out, the BPP became in reality “Huey’s Party,” instead of the “People’s Party.” What’s worse, is that many of these Comrades mistakenly equate Huey’s centralized power as an expression of DC, when in fact the BPP did not practice DC. Indeed, Huey’s purges of BPP cadre occurred because he was unaccustomed to, and unwilling to accept, criticisms from the Party’s rank and file. Whereas criticism of this nature is an essential feature of DC. What Huey practiced was a form of Commandism or Authoritarian Centralism, which is the very opposite of DC.

BPP veteran Mumia Abu-Jamal described the process aptly:

“Despite the ideological claim that the Party functioned under the principle of criticism and self-criticism, the Party hierarchy in fact functioned much like any other group in bourgeois society, that is, according to the principle of power dynamics: those who have power strive mightily to keep it—period.

“So when Huey received letters full of criticism of his leadership, he struck out at those he thought were angling to undermine his rule of the organization. When Eldridge received letters critical of Huey’s leadership, he felt a sense of affirmation. Neither apparently questioned the authorship of this critical correspondence.

“Why would they? Why should they?”

We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (2004), p. 208

In answer to Brotha Mumia’s closing questions, we must point out that if the BPP was accustomed to practicing DC, then Party leaders would not have taken offense to criticism nor would they have allowed it to generate factionalism. Indeed, secret criticisms of the sort described by Mumia would not have been tolerated, but the letters would have been turned over to the Party’s Chief of Staff (Bobby Seale) for investigation as attempts to incite inner-Party rivalries and factionalism. DC demands that criticisms of Party members be made openly, and assures all Party members at all levels the right to criticize any other member’s actions. The very object of DC is to preserve unity and prevent divisiveness and factionalism.

That the BPP did not practice DC is further demonstrated in Huey’s belief that he owned his leadership position in the Party; that he was not subject to recall or being held accountable for his actions; and that he could unilaterally expel those who criticized or exposed his conduct or failure to meet the obligations of his leadership. Under DC, Party leaders are elected to their leading positions and are likewise subject to recall by vote.

So that we don’t repeat the errors of the past and so that comrades today can dispense with the mistaken view that the BPP practiced DC, it is essential that we explain what DC is.

What Is Democratic Centralism?

The basic principles of DC are expressed in V.I. Lenin’s slogan, “freedom to criticize, unity of action.” I repeat, “freedom to criticize, unity of action.” The Democratic component of DC means all Party members are free to criticize, debate and discuss internal matters of Party decisions, policy and direction in open sessions, and final decisions on such matters are reached by majority vote of all Party members. The Centralism component of DC means that once decisions are reached by majority vote, all members must uphold that decision. Those who disagree with the decisions must still abide by them, they must reserve their personal opinions, but they are free at the next session to raise the issues again and struggle to change the Party’s views and vote on the matters.

Furthermore, no individual Party member has unqualified power. Indeed, all Party members must answer to the Party itself and to the public criticism of the masses.

Many sincere comrades stereotype and reject DC as an organizational fetish of “Leninist” parties, based upon the practices of parties who’ve claimed to practice DC but actually did not. Many Leftist parties applied commandism much like Huey did and called it DC, leading many to erroneously equate DC with those bourgeois forms of authoritarian centralism.

Many on the Left also reject DC as a peculiarly “Leninist” ideology, not realizing that not only did the concept pre-date Lenin, but that DC was an organizational form embraced and practiced by Lenin’s opponents such as the bourgeois liberal Mensheviks who adopted it in November 1905, a month before Lenin’s Bolsheviks adopted it. Indeed, in its 1905 resolution, “On the Organization of the Party,” the Mensheviks state that, “the RSDLP must be organized according to the principle of democratic centralism.” The Bolsheviks, a month later, elaborated on DC in their resolution, “On Party Organization,” and gave a very different picture of DC than what the Left depicts it as today. That resolution states: “Recognizing as indisputable the principle of democratic centralism, the Conference considers the broad implementation of the elective principle necessary; and, while granting elected centers full powers in matters of ideological and practical leadership, they are at the same time subject to recall, their actions are given broad publicity, and they are to be strictly accountable for these activities.”

In fact, DC was never in dispute between the opposing Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the RSDLP (Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party), neither in definition nor practice. At a 1906 unity conference both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks adopted a resolution by vote that stated “All party organizations are built on the principles of democratic centralism.” The committee report adopting this resolution was written by a Menshevik, Zagorky-Kokhmal, who stated that all Mensheviks and Bolsheviks accepted this resolution, “unanimously.”

In actuality, none of Lenin’s contemporaries in the Social Democratic movement criticized DC, not even Rosa Luxemburg, who strongly opposed features of “Leninist” organizations. Features, which her failure to adopt into her German Communist Party, left its entire Left wing—Luxemburg included—open to assassination.

At bottom, corruption and abuses of power are essentially impossible when DC is observed, since all Party members, leaders especially, are subject to criticism, exposure and recall through open democratic processes. Leaders are elected to their positions based upon demonstrated qualifications and integrity, and are subject to having their powers revoked for failure to live up to their responsibilities, also by majority vote.

So, in summing up the errors of the BPP’s organizational practices, and recognizing the actual role of the vanguard party and its appropriate decision making process, we must disagree with those comrades who reject the need of a vanguard party and the role of DC as such a party’s correct method of deciding its policies and practices. In actuality, what these comrades oppose from their experiences in the BPP are tendencies that we too oppose, and were not genuine examples of the type of party and practices that we promote as essential for leading an oppressed people in a revolutionary struggle.

This is not to say the BPP got it all wrong, because it didn’t. Actually, the Party was right on in much of the mass work it accomplished—in mobilizing the people around their needs and showing them through example and participation that we can solve our own problems, that indeed we must. It was just in its internal organizing and in its attempts to perform as both a vanguard party and a mass organization that it erred. The Party came into being spontaneously, in response to immediate crisis in the New Afrikan communities, and consisted primarily of youth. It didn’t have the time, experience or prior examples to rigorously work out its program and structure, but today we do. And we are determined not to repeat yesterday’s mistakes.

A Consensus on the Need of a Revolutionary Vanguard

The essential need of a Vanguard Party stands above all other organizational forms in revolutionary struggle. This has been acknowledged and proved by the successes of all revolutionary movements.

Lenin recognized it, and committed most of his work to building the revolutionary Party.

What few people realize is that until 1917 Lenin rarely addressed himself to a mass audience, either in writing or speaking, nor appeared on a public platform. Instead, he concentrated his extraordinary abilities and energies on the task which he concluded was decisive to the success of the Russian Revolution: the building of an apparatus of dedicated, disciplined revolutionaries to lead the masses in the struggle for power.

“For the revolutionary movements developing today in every country, the great contribution of Lenin was the clarity with which he put forward and acted upon his fundamental convictions regarding the vanguard party: 1) that the purpose of a revolutionary party is to take absolute power in order to revolutionize the economic and social systems as the only way of resolving fundamental popular grievances; 2) that it is absolutely essential to build a revolutionary vanguard party if you are not just playing with the phrase; and 3) that a revolutionary party can only be built by a) unceasing ideological struggle, b) strict discipline, c) organized activity of every member, and d) merciless self-criticism.”

James and Grace Lee Boggs, The Role of the Vanguard Party

Lenin’s organizing work paid off in dividends enabling his Bolshevik Party to not only seize power in Russia, achieving history’s first working-class revolution, but it survived the most extreme repression at the hands of the Czar’s secret police, and the world’s imperialist powers that promptly invaded Soviet Russia (1918–1920).

“Why was it that the Bolsheviks (for example) could be so heavily infiltrated, suffer many busts and setbacks of all kinds, and yet remain strong enough—effective enough—to seize power in 1917? There’s probably no single or simple answer, but a few things stand out:

“There was a significant level of ideological training and consistency among leadership and cadres, and extensive political education.

“There was a certain type of organizational structure, disciplined practice of principles, methods and style of work.

“There was a relatively secure system of communications.

“There was a mass-based infrastructure, and broad, active connections to the mass movement.

“The party construction began at the center, and spread outward.”

Vita Wa Watu: a New Afrikan Theoretical Journal,
Volume 11, p. 30 (1987)

In pursuing the anti-imperialist and New Democratic aims of the Chinese Revolution, Mao Tse-tung acknowledged the essential role of the Vanguard Party.

“If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”

“Revolutionary Forces of the World Unite,
Fight Against Imperialist Aggression!” (November 1948)

“A well disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such a Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party—these are the three main weapons with which we have defeated the enemy.”

“On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (June 30, 1949)

Mao’s vanguard party walked its talk. Not only did it repel a Japanese imperialist invasion, defeat the imperialist-backed puppet bourgeois KMT army and seize power in 1949, empowering and improving the living conditions of China’s millions, but with a peasant army—and fresh from a civil war—it repelled the day’s most powerful combined military forces, (the U.S. and UN), from its borders in the Korean War (1950–1953).

In Guinea-Bissau’s revolutionary struggle for national liberation from Portuguese colonialism, Amilcar Cabral acknowledged the essential role of the vanguard party.

“[W]e must try and unite everybody in the national liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonialists. It is imperative to organize things so that we always have an instrument available which can solve all the other contradictions. This is what convinced us of the absolute necessity of creating a party during the national liberation struggle.”

The Politics of Struggle (May 1964)

But as Cabral admitted, “we are not a Marxist-Leninist party.” The fact of Cabral’s failure to organize the PAIGC as a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, left it internally weak and vulnerable to destruction by bourgeois elements as occurred when he and his brother were neutralized by the rightists inside the Party.

George Jackson acknowledged the indispensable role of the vanguard party in any people’s revolutionary struggle, and especially the one that must occur here in Amerika. In fact, all of Comrade George’s military proposals surrounded protecting the vanguard elements at their work in organizing and educating the masses.

“Recall: our Mao teaches that when revolution fails it isn’t the fault of the people, it’s the fault of the vanguard party … There have never been any spontaneous revolutions. They were all staged, manufactured, by people who went to the head of the masses and directed them.

“The liberalist slogan ‘you can’t get ahead of the people’ is meaningless. From what other position can one lead? From the rear? Rearguard leadership?!! A typical Yankee innovation … . In all the successful class struggles and colonial wars of liberation, the vanguard elements did get ahead of the people and pull. There is no other way in forward mass movement … .

“I’m not implying that the vanguard party act out the people’s role. I’m not implying a ‘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 stating that we must find out exactly what the people need and organize them around those needs.”

George Jackson, Blood In My Eye (1971)

The same was acknowledged by the Vietnamese, the Colombians, and every other movement for revolutionary overthrow of oppressive conditions under capitalism and imperialism. And every reverse in the gains of those movements took place because of capitalist elements infiltrating and subverting the vanguard parties, or errors in their internal structures allowed external forces to cause internal destruction. Comrade Mao was the first to point out the importance of waging ongoing struggle inside of vanguard parties to prevent their subversion and destruction by bourgeois elements, or bureaucratic errors. The vanguard party is indeed the motor of a people’s revolution.

Is the NABPP-PC a Vanguard Party?

The NABPP-PC was founded under uncommon conditions. Being based as we are amongst prisoners confined across the U.S. Empire, it is difficult, if not impossible, to function as a genuine vanguard party that can lead and organize the masses on society and practice DC. We are not idealists, but dialectical materialists, and therefore do not deceive ourselves and the people about our practical limits.

Because of our material limitations, we exist in reality as only a pre-party formation: the embryo of a genuine revolutionary vanguard. The scope of our work is limited and defined as it should be. As set out in one of our founding position papers, “Our Line,” we aspire through our practice and example to develop the actual NABPP on the outside within our oppressed communities, and ultimately into a Vanguard Party of Afrikan people worldwide. Our Party will take root as our cadre re-enter society. As Uncle Ho once wrote in a poem, “what becomes of a Nation when its people come out of confinement? … when the prison gates open the real dragon will fly out!”

The NABPP won’t be real until it can hold a founding Congress, draft a Party Programme, and elect a free world Central Committee and Politburo. Then DC can be fully implemented. At that eventual stage, the Prison Chapter will be one of many Chapters within the Party.

At the present stage, we are able to practice limited forms of DC, with our focus on Transforming the Razor Wire Plantations into Schools of Liberation and organizing around serving the material and spiritual needs of oppressed people in the inside.

As a pre-Party structure, we are struggling to outline a blueprint of the ideological and organizational basis upon which our broader struggle must be built. Earlier efforts gave us examples and lessons to build on—our object is this time to get it right, and organize to win!

As we’ve stated before:

“We who are inside the ‘Belly of the Beast,’ may perish inside these razor-wire fences and stone walls, but not without first illuminating the path forward for our sisters and brothers, our sons and daughters. If we can offer nothing but our dying breath, it will be to say: ‘DARE TO STRUGGLE AND DARE TO WIN!’”

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!