On Communication, Coordination and Regeneration in Revolutionary Organizational Work (2026) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

The Organization Is a Organism

Every organism or developed machine is a unity of many parts moving and working together. When parts break down or stop operating in their designated roles, the entire structure becomes ill or breaks down. In highly evolved organisms and machines, when parts fail to communicate with and across the larger structure, systems likewise fail to function together and illness or breakdowns occur.

An organization operates much the same as a developed organism and machine, and its moving parts must communicate, coordinate, and operate together in order for it to reman healthy and to determine and perform its designated functions effectively and efficiently.

Communicating and Coordinating Within the Organism

In an organization people are the moving parts that must work together in coordination. Communication is the method by which these people plan, share and coordinate their roles and activities. If the members of the organization don’t communicate with each other and across the systems within the organization, then plans can’t be made and carried out, members’ needs and accomplishments in performing their roles can’t be made known to others, they can’t coordinate their activities and roles, and the organization becomes unhealthy and breaks down.

A revolutionary party is of course an organization, and a highly evolved one became its members must not just work together efficiently and effectively, but they must have a higher level of unity of thought and purpose than other types of organizations. This is based in the shared ideology and purpose of the members of this type of organization, and the group’s need to operate with this unified purpose in a larger society where it stands in complete opposition to the existing dominant systems of power, and seeks to lead the masses in overthrowing that oppressive system.

Survival Through Regeneration

In a 2012 interview, titled, “On the Vanguard Party Once Again” (1), I discussed some of the strengths and weaknesses of certain resilient anti-imperialist organizations. Not all of them were revolutionary however, which means that not all of them had a designated purpose of overthrowing the system that was oppressing and exploiting the people they sought to lead.

For our purposes here, what was important in that discussion, was the ability of certain organizations to survive enemy attacks on their leadership through systemic assassinations and captures. Those groups best suited to survival were the ones whose leadership structure regenerated itself by keeping rank and file members trained and developed in the wings who could pop up and fill the positions of those who were killed or captured. This is one lesson that New Afrikan/Black revolutionary organizations and leaders in Amerika must learn and apply.

As Comrade George Jackson observed, our capitalist imperialist enemies understand that the people operate like herd animals, in that we require leaders to coordinate our efforts to survive, especially in identifying and against external threats. And like the predatory hunters that they are, our enemies understand that if they kill or isolate our herd leaders, the masses will be left uncoordinated and unorganized and will scatter in confusion being easily (mid)led to the slaughter by the enemy and his decoys.

The solution to this problem is that revolutionary leadership must come not from isolated individuals who can be easily picked off, but revolutionary organizations with a collective leadership body that thinks and moves as one (meaning they are united ideologically and politically [2]), and that can readily regenerate itself when (not if), one or more of its leading members are picked off by the enemy.

At the most basic level, it is impossible for such an organization to operate or even exist without its members practicing effective communication and coordination. These are very simple points but very important lessons.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. The full interview can be read at, http://rashidmod.com/?p=353; also published in Panther Vision: Selected Party Writings and Art of Kevin “Rashid” Johnson (Quebec: Kerslebedeb Publishers, 2015), pp. 38-59.

2. In the case of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party, we practice collective decision-making through Democratic Centralism, and are united under the revolutionary proletarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the strategy of Pantherism (Revolutionary Intercomunalism).