{"id":2660,"date":"2019-07-05T19:22:05","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T19:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2019-07-05T19:22:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T19:22:33","slug":"the-panther-and-the-elephant-revisited-by-tom-watts-may-10-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=2660","title":{"rendered":"The Panther and the Elephant Revisited (by Tom Watts, May 10 2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe must create a broad-based United Panther Movement in alliance with revolutionary
\nproletarian Parties (the RCP\u2019s), which includes forces in the communities based upon
\nprogrammatic unity (\u201cThe Elephant\u201d), while at the same time pulling together a hard core of vanguard (\u201cthe Panther\u201d) consisting of the most advanced elements that come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson, \u201cBlack Cats Have Many Lives: Reviving the Panther Vanguard
\nand Building the United Panther Movement\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elephant is large and powerful and is unsurpassed in direct confrontation. The Panther is agile and stealthy and is unsurpassed in indirect confrontation. The Elephant relies on his size, thick skin and tusks to meet his enemy head on, while the Panther blends into the night, exercises patience, and employs the art of surprise and ambushes his prey. His intelligence and cunning are greater weapons than his formidable fangs and claws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the \u201cArt of War,\u201d the ancient Chinese sage, Sun Tzu, proposes that two types of forces and\u00a0maneuvers are called for. He called these CHENG and CH\u2019I. These would be regular and special\u00a0forces and direct and indirect maneuvers. The purpose of CHENG forces is to engage the\u00a0enemy, and the purpose of the CH\u2019I forces is to defeat the enemy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn advancing the cause of Black Liberation, both types of forces, CHENG and CH\u2019I, are needed.\u00a0Or to put it another way, both a vanguard and a mass form of organization is needed. The mass\u00a0form of organization is based upon programmatic unity, and includes people of various political, spiritual and cultural orientations. In the case of the Black Brigade, its basis of unity is service to the Nation of Afrikans in Amerika. The vanguard form of organization is based upon a higher level of unity, application of the Science of Revolution, which is Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and commitment to being a full time revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson, The Panther and the Elephant (2005)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United Panther Movement (UPM) is not an extension of the NABPP. It is not under its
\ndemocratic centralism or subordinate to its Central Committee any more than the elephant is
\nsubordinate to the panther in the jungle. They are different sorts of animals, though they have
\ninterests in common and they are not in competition. The UPM is a revolutionary mass
\norganization. It is not the \u201cB-League\u201d of the Party. The masses are the makers of history. If we were to look for a basketball analogy, we would have to say that the Party is the coaches\u2019
\nassociation, because its main job is to teach and to arm the masses with revolutionary theory.
\nYou don\u2019t get asked to be a coach until after you have proven yourself to be a good player and
\ndemonstrated your understanding of the game. Likewise, the Party will recruit its members
\nfrom within the UPM. But the primary purpose of the UPM is not to prepare comrades to be
\nParty cadre, any more than the primary purpose of a basketball team is to produce good
\ncoaches. The primary purpose of the team is to play winning games, to win game after game
\nand ultimately the championship.<\/p>\n

The UPM is intended to become a mass organization of millions and millions of people and the
\nbackbone of the Worldwide United Front in the World Proletarian Socialist Revolution. To
\nbecome so big and play such an important role, the UPM must build its own democratic
\norganizational and leadership structure. It must be democratic to be inclusive of different
\nideological and political tendencies which can be united programmatically. That is to say, to
\nunite all who can be united at each stage in the struggle. The Party, in contrast, has a definite
\nideological-political line it promotes and operates on. It can unite with and work
\nprogrammatically with other forces that have a disagreement with its line, but it isn\u2019t going to
\ndeviate from its line unless the line is changed through an internal process of democratic
\ncentralism.<\/p>\n

Democratic centralism is intended to combine the maximum degree of inner-party democracy
\nwith absolute unity in action. It requires a high level of discipline and dedication. A comrade
\nmust reserve his or her opinions if they do not conform to the agreed upon line reached by the
\nParty. They cannot freely discuss internal business of the Party outside the Party\u2019s structure.
\nThey have to go through proper channels and not behave like a private individual spouting their
\nopinions, gossiping and telling tales out of school. This is a manifestation of liberalism and is a
\ncorrosive to unity and destructive to the work of the Party. Imagine if you will one coach on the
\nsidelines sending signals to the players contradicting the instructions of the coach in charge.
\nWhat sort of confusion would that cause? It might be a case of intentional sabotage or of lack
\nof self-control and discipline, but in any case it would be detrimental to the team and the
\nchances of playing a good game.<\/p>\n

The Party expects comrades to make mistakes\u2014even the best and most experienced
\ncomrades\u2014and it has a structure to deal with that, to learn from and correct those mistakes
\nand improve and strengthen its ideological-political line in the process. This has been worked
\nout through the practice of revolutionary parties over many decades of struggle. It works. What
\ndoesn\u2019t work is deviating from these procedures, applying a liberal, individualist approach and
\nletting your ego runaway with your reason. Why do people do this? It is because the dominate ideology in any society is that of its ruling class. Bourgeois capitalist society is all about
\nindividualism, self-interest and ego gratification. We were breed to it just like we learned to eat
\ntoo much sugar and salt even though it is bad for our health. We don\u2019t even notice it. We
\nshould be gagging on it, but one gets used to almost anything\u2014in fact we learn to crave it.<\/p>\n

The Party practices and promotes the method of criticism and self-criticism to correct bourgeois
\ntendencies and develop a revolutionary proletarian worldview and consciousness, to correct
\nmistakes and improve our work. Sometimes, it is easier to see the faults in others than
\nourselves, we can grow \u201cnose blind\u201d to our own stink. Our egos can blind us to our own
\nweaknesses and make it hard to own up to our mistakes. Everybody has weaknesses,
\neverybody has some bourgeois tendencies because everything\u2014EVERYTHING\u2014is a unity of
\nopposites. That\u2019s a dialectical law, and it\u2019s a law you can\u2019t break!<\/p>\n

The trick is to \u201cshoot straight despite the wind.\u201d Marksmen call it \u201cadjusting for windage.\u201d We
\ncan\u2019t stop the wind from blowing, but we can gauge and compensate for it and hit our target
\nanyway. Sun Tsu, the ancient Chinese sage who wrote the Art of War said: \u201cIf you know the
\nenemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know
\nyourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know
\nneither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.\u201d Knowing ourselves, our
\nstrengths and weaknesses is half the battle. In the Party or in UPM, we must use collective
\nwisdom to \u201cknow ourselves\u201d not just as individuals but as teammates, comrades, part of a
\nwhole.<\/p>\n

We must recognize each other\u2019s strengths and weaknesses\u2014not to feed into them or play upon
\nthem to make others look bad and by contrast to make ourselves look good, but to back up and
\nsupport one another, to turn weaknesses into strengths and make our Party and our Movement
\nstronger\u2014to win our battles and defeat our enemies. A collective has different members with
\ndifferent strengths and weaknesses. We need that. If we were all alike, what could we learn
\nfrom each other? What unique thing would we have to contribute?<\/p>\n

Right now we are in our formative stage as a Party and as the UPM. We are breaking new
\nground, and laying a foundation to build upon. You could say we are \u201cgoing to school\u201d because
\nwe have so much to learn that we can only learn by doing. We also have so much to teach,
\nbecause to have a basically correct ideological-political line is so critically important. As
\nChairman Mao said: \u201cThe correctness or otherwise of the ideological and political line decides
\neverything. When the Party\u2019s line is correct, then everything will come its way. If it has no followers, then it can have followers; if it has no guns, then it can have guns; if it has no political
\npower, then it can have political power. If its line is not correct, even what it has it may lose.
\nThe line is a net rope. When it is pulled, the whole net opens out.\u201d – (\u201cTalks With Responsible
\nComrades At Various Places During Provincial Tour,\u201d 1971)<\/p>\n

Beginning as a prison-based organization in 2005, we recognized that we would first have to
\ndetermine and formulate a basically correct ideological-political line. We saw that there was no
\none out there we could just align with because we could see they were all making certain
\nserious errors, and we would have to rely upon ourselves to create the vanguard that was
\nneeded. It wasn\u2019t a matter of ego\u2014in fact it seemed like an impossible task we would fail at and
\npay with our lives (at least suffer for)\u2014but we didn\u2019t see any other way. So we went to work.
\nWe came pretty close to the mark (we decided), and so we set to testing our line in practice and
\nseeing how we could improve it. We are still doing that, but with some confidence that we have
\na basically correct line (at least better than the other forces we are aware of), and it is time to
\npull on the \u201cnet rope.\u201d<\/p>\n

This revolution is not going to be like any that went before, because the world is now hooked
\ntogether differently than it was. Huey Newton\u2019s \u201cTheory of Revolutionary Intercommunialism\u201d
\nis the starting point for understand how to deal with this situation. We understand that a lot
\nbetter than we did back in 2005 when we were still calling ourselves \u201crevolutionary
\nnationalists,\u201d and we understand it now a lot better than the original BPP members did back in
\nthe 1970\u2019s, even after they began calling themselves \u201crevolutionary intercommunalists.\u201d
\nRevolution is a process of radical rupture and continuity. There is continuity between our Party
\nand the original BPP, but there is also a radical rupture with the past. We are a more
\nrevolutionary party, and these are more revolutionary times.<\/p>\n

Neoliberalism, what Huey referred to as \u201creactionary intercommunalism,\u201d is the final stage of
\ncapitalist-imperialism. It is the endgame of monopoly capitalism, and it will end in world
\nrevolution or mass extinction. We are fast approaching an historic juncture that will determine
\nif humanity has a future or not. The future can be bright, if we dare to make it so.<\/p>\n

DARE TO STRUGGLE DARE TO WIN!
\nALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe must create a broad-based United Panther Movement in alliance with revolutionary proletarian Parties (the RCP\u2019s), which includes forces in the communities based upon programmatic unity (\u201cThe Elephant\u201d), while at the same time pulling together a hard core of vanguard (\u201cthe Panther\u201d) consisting of the most advanced elements that come …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-2660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-panther-movement","tag-united-panther-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}