Power to the People: Rethinking the Black Panther Party on it's 50th Anniversary

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party. Formed in Oakland in 1966 by Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party would become one of the most iconic black movements of the 20th Century and inspire millions the world over. Often the party is remembered for the gun-toting images of Newton and Seale dressed as Urban bandeleros, violent altercations with the police and protesting the release of Huey Newton from prison for allegedly shooting a police officer in a late night altercation in Oakland. Whilst these images are potent they should not take away from the great intellectual contributions that they made and the noble strides that they took to develop a politics and a social programme for their peers.

Today, I want to remember the Black Panther Party not as the gun-toting youth

that they were in 1966 or the campaigning group after the imprisonment of Huey Newton but as the serious political and intellectual force that they became as the matured. I want to bring the focus to the days of the Black Panther Party after release of Huey Newton. It was during this period in the 70's that I believe the Black Panther Party made its greatest contributions. 

Whilst in prison Newton thought intensely about the future of the party against

the backdrop of a full on assault by the US state being waged on the party members on the outside. In the midst of this open conflict Newton, behind bars, began a feud with members of the party that had ramped up the rhetoric of clashing with the state. In response to their antics he decided to reformulate the party that he had founded and for which he had acted as main theoretician. In this period Newton rethought much of what he had started in 1966 and his political ideology and strategy. It is during this period that I believe that Black Panther Party made the greatest contributions to black thought and politics and it is for this period that they must be honoured and recognised as perhaps the greatest black political force to ever exist.

On release from prison Newton began to reformulate the Black Panther Party as a party of the lumpen proletariat. In this sense they challenged Marxist orthodoxy by arguing that the lumpen proletariat were the most revolutionary force in the society and in particular the black community. According to Marx there were four social classes, the bourgeoisie, the petit bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat. For Marx it was the proletariat or working class that were the revolutionary class with the potential to change the world. Whilst all other social classes including the lumpen proletariat or poor or displaced workers were counter-revolutionary. Marx in his communist manifesto described the various traits of the classes and described the lumpen proletariat as a drop out class that struggled to sell their labour for capital in the marketplace; they were hustlers, youth, ex-convicts, part-time workers, single mothers, those on welfare and the underemployed, the most excluded in society. Marx considered the lumpen to be simply some times illegitimate capitalists and often irregular workers, without a stake in human society who could never be engaged in revolution.

Newton thought differently; he identified the brothers on the block as the Lumpen Proletariat, he saw that they shared many of the characteristics of Marx's description of the lumpen proletariat and set about creating a political party that represented that class as a revolutionary class. Strikingly, unlike many Newton believed that his peers who had been written off by society could find hope and agency and the self-esteem to change their own conditions and the world. 

In doing this the Black Panther Party became a new voice for what they believed to be an expanding class in a way not dissimilar to the Labour movement at the beginning of the 20th Century. Huey Newton coined the term "revolutionary intercommunalism" for his radical philosophy; a philosophy that has not been explored enough by black academics. 

In his philosophy Newton uses the dialectical method used by Marx to argue a counter-philosophy to Black Nationalism and Marxism placing the Black Panther Party in a different intellectual and political realm from much of what is often written about the party. Too often the critiques that the party made of Black Nationalism and Marxism that were central to the parties identity are ignored and the Black Panther Party is depicted as either a Black power movement or a Marxist one. The Black Panther Party have been hijacked by both black nationalists and socialist parties alike all at great detriment to the very interesting political philosophy that the party stood for. A philosophy that could not be more timely considering the police killings of those of that social class today, and the mass incarceration rates and destroyed neighbourhoods that the "underclass" experience. There has perhaps been no more important time for a powerful voice to speak to the self-interests of the "Hood".

Often the depictions of the Black Panther Party revolve around the very early days of the party but do not focus on the maturity of the party that arose after the release of Huey Newton from prison. It was under Newton's orders on release from jail that the party moved away from the militancy and gun-toting that had wreaked havoc on the party and began the survival programmes that included free breakfast, free shoe and healthcare centres and the innovative Inter-communal School. It is also during this period when Bobby Seale ran for Mayor and Elaine Brown for Councilwoman; setting a new precedent in black politics that would pave the way to the election of Barack Obama today. By the 70's the Black Panther Party were a much more sophisticated and mainstream organisation than in 1966. They had developed a sophisticated ideology that is still today an interesting contribution to Marxist thought.

During this year there have been attempts to compare the Black Panther Party to the Black Lives Matter campaign. Comparisons that I believe are unjustified. For me, I do not think that protest movements and a highly organised political party with a groundbreaking political philosophy can be compared.

I believe that the Black Panther Party would have been closer to Obama today than to Black Lives Matter. They may have been to the left of Obama but would have seen the sense in his approach and the tradition of community organising that he arose out of. For Black Lives Matter or any other protest organisation to be compared to the Black Panther Party Party they would have to become a political party speaking for the lumpen proletariat or those more modernly termed the "underclass". They would have to find candidates that can act as spokespersons for the lumpen proletariat in mainstream politics. It is the black underclass that are experiencing the issues of gun violence, imprisonment, poverty, drug infested neighbourhoods and police brutality; it is the underclass that have the major black urban issues that need to be solved. 

Developing a clearer understanding of the Black Panther Party beyond the media images and the gun-toting propaganda of its early days to a more sophisticated analysis of the Black Panther Party' ideology, methodology and their ground-breaking urban political strategy post 1970 is I believe the best way for us to celebrate the legacy of the work of the Black Panther Party in its 50th anniversary. 

Power to the People!