{"id":370,"date":"2012-12-02T14:14:16","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T14:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=370"},"modified":"2013-06-30T00:51:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T00:51:40","slug":"reparations-or-revolution-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"Reparations or Revolution? (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction <\/strong><\/p>\n

During the weekend of June 22, 2007, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), sponsored a gathering in Philly.\u00a0 The aim of the conference was to build and channel a broad base of mass energy towards winning reparations for Blacks in Amerika; to repair the ongoing suffering and negative effects we’ve suffered as a result of slavery, segregation and racism.<\/p>\n

In light of the amount of work put into this conference and the overall campaign, we thought it important to say a few words on the question of reparations, to challenge the focus of this energy and to contrast it with working towards revolution.\u00a0 As revolutionary nationalists and internationalists, we feel working towards revolution should be the main focus of the New Afrikan Nation in Amerika.<\/p>\n

No one can argue that the past exploitation of Black people in Amerika did not enrich the white capitalists or that it played an insignificant part in making the U.S. today’s sole imperialist superpower.\u00a0 Moreover, the capitalist ruling class continues to super exploit and oppress Black people in the U.S. and internationally.\u00a0 The point and the solution, however, is not to beg for a monetary settlement but to settle accounts by putting an end to the system of capitalist imperialism altogether.<\/p>\n

This means revolution, and we believe that this should be the focus of our energy and what we are down with organizing.\u00a0 It is not a simple task, but it is pure idealism to believe that the U.S. government is going to pay out trillions of dollars to Black people simply because we make a compelling moral argument that they should.\u00a0 At best all they will give is a carefully worded apology.<\/p>\n

What we see within this talk about keeping money in the Black community is a plea by aspiring Black capitalists to get a bigger piece of the profits made off the exploitation of the Black masses.\u00a0 There is nothing new about a section of the Black community profiting in this way.\u00a0 It is the same old neo-colonial trickery that was used to derail the revolutionary struggles of people of color throughout the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Capitalism is the problem, and there were Black people all along who profited from our exploitation going back to our ancestors’ enslavement back in Afrika.\u00a0 There were Black overseers on the plantations and even some Black slave-owners.\u00a0 Historically, Black businessmen and gangsters have fronted for white businessmen and gangsters in the Black community, and this is still the case.\u00a0 Black \u201cillegal capitalists\u201d are a big part of the problem in the Black community, but so too are the \u201crespectable\u201d Black bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n

We’re not saying that there is not some room for making tactical alliances in furtherance of building a united front against capitalist imperialism, but this class cannot lead us to liberation.\u00a0 Their class interests don’t go that way.\u00a0 These Black bourgeoisie and bourgeois nationalism cannot lead to the liberation of Black people in Amerika anymore than they have in Afrika.<\/p>\n

The Nation of New Afrikans in Amerika is in a unique situation.\u00a0 We cannot achieve our national liberation by separating from the white supremacist United States nor by integrating with it\u2014only by overthrowing it and putting an end to capitalist imperialism.\u00a0 So long as this system exists, it will maneuver its money and power and its military force and neo-colonial agents to keep us down and exploited.\u00a0 Divided, the colonized people who have struggled for national liberation could not escape the bonds of neo-colonial economic and political domination.<\/p>\n

Much less could we secede from the U.S. and form our own republic in the Black Belt South.\u00a0 Such dreams and schemes are a diversion from what must be done.\u00a0 We must pull the system down.\u00a0 Black people are not the only ones exploited and oppressed by capitalist imperialism\u2014the whole world is!\u00a0 This comes down unevenly\u2014with some people being more oppressed and more exploited than others\u2014but almost everybody stands to gain from proletarian socialist revolution and sweeping capitalist imperialism onto the trash heap of history.<\/p>\n

With the U.S. economy in crisis, where would reparations come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. government and economy is headed towards bankruptcy.\u00a0 In fact it is running on borrowed money now!\u00a0 Whereas the U.S. used to be the #1 lender nation, it is now the #1 debtor nation.\u00a0 As the national debt grows, more and more of the GNP must be channeled towards servicing that debt.\u00a0 The U.S. ruling class is doing to the U.S. economy what it has done to the 3rd World.\u00a0 It is cannibalizing it.\u00a0 How will it get out of the crisis it is creating?\u00a0 It won’t.<\/p>\n

No wonder leading ruling class figures are talking about the \u201cEnd Times\u201d and \u201cRevelations.\u201d\u00a0 Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism, and globalization has only sped up the decline . So in the face of this growing economic crisis, how can any sane persyn imagine that the U.S. government would borrow trillions more to pay for the past exploitation of Black people?\u00a0 And who would be the caretakers of this vast sum of money?\u00a0 This is just pandering to the Black capitalist element with dollar signs in their eyes.<\/p>\n

It’s a diversion from the real need of the Black masses to end their exploitation and oppression by organizing to make a revolution when a truly revolutionary situation presents itself\u2014as it will.\u00a0 Since 1987, when N’COBRA was founded, the situation for the masses of Black people in Amerika has steadily declined.\u00a0 Unemployment has risen, and so has incarceration for millions of Black and other oppressed people.\u00a0 Social service programs have been dramatically cut, and social problems have dramatically worsened.<\/p>\n

But instead of rebuilding the Vanguard Party and mass movements of the 60s and 70s, many Black activists shifted towards accommodation with capitalist imperialism and the U.S. government.\u00a0 Stripped of its nationalistic rhetoric, that is just what this reparations movement is about.<\/p>\n

Imperialist payoffs as classic neo-colonialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether given out in the name of \u201ceconomic aid,\u201d \u201cdebt forgiveness\u201d or \u201creparations,\u201d large sums paid out by the imperialists to \u201cimperialist-approved\u201d leaders of oppressed people is a classic neo-colonialist tactic.\u00a0 It serves a purpose\u2014namely that of propping up their control over the oppressed people and countries.\u00a0 The aspiring capitalists of oppressed nationalists serve to hold in check and divert the oppressed masses from the struggle for their liberation from all oppression and channel their energy into substituting one master for another\u2014a master through whom the imperialists can rule indirectly.<\/p>\n

This has happened across the 3rd World, from Afrika to Palestine, to Latin America, to Native America; from Cape Town to Harlem.\u00a0 The native bourgeois act as front men in the exploitation of \u201ctheir own\u201d oppressed masses.\u00a0 Is this national liberation?\u00a0 We think not!\u00a0 It is classic neo-colonialism, which is the preferred means of domination by the U.S. Empire.\u00a0 It can then talk about promoting \u201cDemocracy\u201d and \u201cIndependence,\u201d while reserving the \u201cright\u201d to effect \u201cregime changes\u201d whenever it suits its interests, and dollars are more cost efficient and less obvious means of control than colonial administrators.<\/p>\n

If the oppressed people choose leaders the U.S. doesn’t approve of, it can cut off payments, as the U.S. did when Hamas was elected last year by the Palestinians.\u00a0 And then there is the option of sanctions and U.S. invasion and occupation as in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

India under British rule was an early archetype of neo-colonial domination, and the U.S. learned from this model.\u00a0 Under British domination, India was administered by Indians for 200 years.\u00a0 This \u201cJewel of the British Empire\u201d was primarily administered by an Indian elite and garrisoned by brutal Indian soldiers who oppressed the Indian people.<\/p>\n

Even under Apartheid in South Afrika, it was Black soldiers and police who did most of the dirty work of oppressing the people.\u00a0 But more revealing is that after the fall of Apartheid, a native Black elite was substituted for the white colonial settler regime and given a cut of the profits from the exploitation of the still miserably poor Black masses while, the local white elite and imperialists continue to control the economy.<\/p>\n

This neo-colonial process is how the U.S. keeps Latin America under its thumb and controls its wealth of resources.\u00a0 These countries are run by imperialist agents who receive U.S. \u201ceconomic aid\u201d and depend upon a military system that props up the local elite and allows U.S. economic exploitation of their oppressed masses.\u00a0 The poor are kept poor and \u201cin line.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same would be the case with New Afrikans, if we did manage to convince the U.S. Government to pay us reparations.\u00a0 It would go into the hands of the Black bourgeoisie elite for services rendered to the Empire.\u00a0 But they don’t need to do that.\u00a0 Not when straight up exploitation and oppression are doing just fine.<\/p>\n

There are those who want to protest and seek to reform this rotten system and those who was to end it, overthrow and bury it, and move on to build a new, radically different kind of system based upon serving people’s needs through socialist ownership of the basic means of production and people’s power.\u00a0 The New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter and our allies are quite clear where we stand and on the absolute need for revolution.\u00a0 That is what our ideological and political orientation\u2014\u201cPantherism\u201d\u2014is based upon.<\/p>\n

Yes, we will and do protest the many outrages perpetrated by this system, and we do demand certain reforms, but not as ends in themselves and not to reach any accommodation with imperialism.\u00a0 We do so only to build a truly revolutionary movement and to create more favorable conditions for struggle.\u00a0 We need to agitate, educate and organize to this end.<\/p>\n

To make revolution, we must have a revolutionary vanguard party that is steeled in struggle, a mass movement that builds mass revolutionary consciousness, and a revolutionary united front that is both national and international.\u00a0 The Party must be guided by the most advanced revolutionary theory and organized along tried and proven revolutionary lines to facilitate the maximum amount of democratic discussion and unity in action.<\/p>\n

The Debt We Owe\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A nation is a continuum.\u00a0 It includes those who have passed on and those yet to be born.\u00a0 As a nation, the most fundamental question we New Afrikans should be asking is: \u201cWhat do we owe our ancestors and to future generations?\u201d<\/p>\n

To those whose bones lie at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and under the black soil of the South, to those who will come after us bearing our DNA, we owe our life’s blood.\u00a0 We owe the determination to carry the struggle against exploitation and oppression forward to victory, so that our progeny will not labor for exploiters or suffer cruel oppression because of the color of their skin.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Nation, we owe it to our class\u2014to all who labor for their daily bread\u2014here and around the world\u2014to break the chains of servitude and subjugation\u2014to bring to an end the Epoch of Exploitation\u2014and to advance humyn social evolution to a higher stage.<\/p>\n

The system of capitalism\u2014which arose with the kidnapping and enslavement of our ancestors from Afrika\u2014will only perish when we New Afrikans rise to lead the world proletarian revolution.\u00a0 Can anyone put a price on that?<\/p>\n

Capitalist imperialism is the final stage of capitalism.\u00a0 It is capitalism in its most rotten and decadent form\u2014rotten ripe for revolution.\u00a0 It imposes poverty on the masses worldwide to serve the enrichment of a small class of social parasites.\u00a0 It destroys the natural environment and wastes precious resources.\u00a0 It devalues humyn life, destroys families and communities, and promotes alienation and shallow individualism and consumerism.<\/p>\n

It is the final stage of the long Epoch of exploitation that began with the overthrow of Mother Right and the imposition of Patriarchy.\u00a0 Slavery was thousands of years old before it brought our ancestors to Amerika.\u00a0 So who owes the descendents of the slaves of Afrika, Asia and Europe reparations?\u00a0 The evolution of class exploitation with all its suffering\u2014wars, rapes, tortures, hunger and poverty\u2014the suffering of slaves, serfs, tenant farmers and wage slaves\u2014has brought us to this point it time when it can be finally ended once and for all.<\/p>\n

The possibility of social justice for all is now a reality if we but dare to SEIZE THE TIME and take history into our own hands.\u00a0 The globalization and socialization of production and advances in technology cry out for liberation from private ownership to serve the needs of all humanity.\u00a0 The possibility of providing everyone on the planet with a decent standard of living, with decent health care and persynal liberty exists now.<\/p>\n

All that is needed is the courage and conviction to take the power into our hands to do it.\u00a0 The Nation of New Afrikans in Amerika has the moral responsibility to stand up and lead this revolution.\u00a0 We who live within the \u201cBelly of the Beast,\u201d the sole imperialist superpower that was built upon the backs of our ancestors, we owe it to them, to our posterity and to ourselves not to seek accommodation with capitalist imperialism but to dig its grave and bury it!<\/p>\n

In the words of our late comrade, Hasan Shakur, an innocent man murdered by the state of Texas because of the color of his skin: \u201cThe sooner begun the sooner done!\u201d<\/p>\n

All Power to the People!<\/p>\n

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction During the weekend of June 22, 2007, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), sponsored a gathering in Philly.\u00a0 The aim of the conference was to build and channel a broad base of mass energy towards winning reparations for Blacks in Amerika; to repair the ongoing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-party-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}