Marxists

"Today, self-defense as a system and as a reality has been liquidated by the march of events."

"At bottom Trotskyism is a metaphysic paved with good intentions.* It is based on a belief in the natural goodness of the workers, which is always perverted by evil bureaucracies but never destroyed. There is a proletarian essence within peasants and workers alike which cannot be altered by circumstances. For them to become aware of it themselves, it is only necessary that they be given the word, that objectives be set for them which they see without seeing and which they know without knowing. Result: socialism becomes a reality, all at once, without delay, neat and tidy."

"One may well consider it a stroke of good luck that Fidel Castro had not read the military writings of Mao Tse-Tung before disembarking on the coast of Oriente: he could thus invent, on the spot and to of his own experience, principles of a military doctrine in conformity with the terrain. It was only at the end of the war, when their tactics were already defined, that the rebels discovered the writings of Mao."

"All decisive revolutionary processes must begin and have begun with certain missteps for the reason that we have mentioned: because the existing points of departure are those left by the preceding historical period, and they are used, even if unconsciously."

"We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing the mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play. Each time the curtain rises, continuity has to be re-established. The blame, of course is not history's but lies in our vision, encumbered with memory and images learned in the past."

"The international disputes which united and divided Luxemburg, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Bordiga or Trotsky on these issues represent the last great strategic debate in the European workers’ movement. Since then, there has been little significant theoretical development of the political problems of revolutionary strategy in metropolitan capitalism that has had any direct contact with the masses. The structural divorce between original Marxist theory and the main organizations of the working class in Europe has yet to be historically resolved. The May-June revolt in France, the upheaval in Portugal, the approaching dénouement in Spain, presage the end of this long divorce, but have not accomplished it. The classical debates, therefore, still remain in many respects the most advanced limit of reference we possess today. It is thus not mere archaism to recall the strategic confrontations which occurred four or five decades ago. To reappropriate them, on the contrary, is a step towards a Marxist discussion that has the—necessarily modest—hope of assuming an ‘initial shape’ of correct theory today. Régis Debray has spoken, in a famous paragraph, of the constant difficulty of being contemporary with our present. In Europe at least, we have yet to be sufficiently contemporary with our past."

"In each country that has experienced a revolution a confrontation has taken place between revolutionaries on one side and reformists and future renegades on the other."

"The Revolution is dead. Long Live the Revolution"

"Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves."

"For the capitalist world-economy, the problem of China lies with its huge size. China has a labor force that is larger than the total labor force in all of the core states, or that in the entire historical well0to-do semi-periphery. As China competes with the well-to-do semi peripheral states in a wide range of global commodity chains, the competition eventually would lead to the convergence between China and the historical well-to-do semi-peripheral sates in profit races and wage rates. This convergence may take place in an upward manner or a downward manner."

"It is beyond dispute that, despite all the talks about “sustainable development” or “green growth”, the world continues to head relentlessly towards global ecological catastrophes. We know this as we observe that the global ecological deficit (the gap between ecological footprint and bio-capacity) continue to widen and the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases keeps rising year after year."

"China's dramatic rise as a global economic power is one of the most important developments at the current world-historical conjuncture. Many have wondered how the rise of China will shape the world-historical trajectory of the twenty-first century Will China become the next hegemonic power? If yes, what would the new China-centered global system look like? if not, what would be the implications for the existing world-system?"

"The significant feature of Professor Habib’s Marxist interpretation of medieval Indian history is not that Marxism has absorbed Islam but that Islam has absorbed Marxism."

"I was told by [Mohammed Habib] with considerable pride that Nehru had learnt the history of medieval India “at his feet.” I have yet to meet a more arrogant man whose manners were uglier than his syphilitic face. He was an ardent admirer of Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. He lost his temper and asked me to “go away” when I told him that I did not accept Lenin’s theory of the state."

"Before writing this book it is clear that Professor Habib drank deep both of the teachings of Sir Saiyid Ahmad Khan and of western intellectual potions of a generation ago. There is the ‘protestant’ view of Islam as against the ‘catholic’—the urge to return to the Prophet and away from the accretions of later ages. There is, too, the western distinction between religion as social and religion as personal, the western urge to study the interpenetration and interaction of religious, social, and economic factors in the life of a society, the organic revolutionary conception of society and. of historical change. The whole tonc of the book is rational, secular, urbane, and dispassionate. The author's political position at the time of publication appears to be that of an Indian nationalist who, though he speaks as ‘a Muslim—for he feels the need to put Mahmud in a proper historical perspective—yet believes that differences in religion are private and personal and to be submerged in the larger unity of Indian nationhood."

"[He was] so conscious of the negative aspects of the medieval Islamic civilization or so sensitive to the devastation that the wars and campaigns of the sultans wrought on the inhabitants."

"The urge among Muslims to justify to their non-Muslim contemporaries (and indeed to themselves) the historical record of their community in South Asia is evident in such works of the nineteen- twenties and nineteen-thirties as Professor Muhammad Habib’s Mahmud of Ghaznin (1927)... In the first, Professor Habib attempts to correct what he says was a then recent tendency among Muslims of the sub-continent to adore Sultan Mahmid as a saint. The sultan is rather to be regarded as a foreigner to India and as an imperialist, not as a mujahid."

"Around 1920 Aligarh historian Mohammed Habib launched a grand project to rewrite the history of the Indian religious conflict."

"No honest historian should seek to hide, and no Musalman acquainted with his faith will try to justify, the wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army. Contemporary as well as later historians do not attempt to veil the nefarious acts but relate them with pride. It is easy to twist one’s conscience; and we know only too well how easy it is to find a religious justification for what people wish to do from worldly motives. Islam sanctioned neither the vandalism nor the plundering motives of the invader; no principle known to the Shariat justified the uncalled for attack on Hindu princes who had done Mahmud and his subjects no harm; the shameless destruction of places of worship is condemned by the law of every creed. And yet Islam, though it was not an inspiring motive, could be utilised as an a posteriori justificiation for what had been done. It was not difficult to mistake the spoliation of non-Muslim populations for a service to Islam, and persons to whom the argument was addressed found it too much in consonance with the promptings of their own passions to examine it critically. So the precepts of Quran were misinterpreted or ignored and the tolerant policy of the Second Caliph was cast aside in order that Mahmud and his myrmidons might be able to plunder Hindu temples with a clear and untroubled conscience."

"In 1330 the country was invaded by the Mongols who indulged in arson, rape and murder throughout the Valley (of Kashmir). The king and the Brahmans fled away but among the inhabitants who remained… Muslim ways of life were gradually adopted by the people as the only alternative…"

"The Hindu feels it his duty to dislike those whom he has been taught to consider the enemy of his religion and his ancestors; the Mussalman, lured into the false belief that he was once a member of a ruling race, feels insufferably wronged by being relegated to the status of a minority community. Fools both! Even if the Muslims eight centuries ago were as bad as they were painted, would there be any sense in holding the present generation responsible for their deeds. It is but an imaginative tie that joins the modern Hindu with Harshavardhana or Asoka, or the modern Mussalman with Shihabuddin or Mahmud."

"The most important fact of the Middle Ages was the rise of Islam. . .. In the thought of the Prophet of Islam as revealed in the Quran and the Hadis (the Prophet's conversations sic) two basic ideas stand out—the principle of unity in the cosmic order and the principle of the brotherhood of those who believed in (the Prophet's) creed. Islam wrought one of the most vital and the most bloodless revolutions in human history. ... Medina under the Prophet was a working-class republic. . . . There was no governing class and no subject people."

"Shorn of Marxist jargon, the thesis propounded by [Mohammad] Habib is very simple - the Turkish conquest of India was a historical necessity, a fortunate event in the history of its people. ... in short, Habib's "historical" explanation is factually incorrect, his understanding of Marxism faulty, and his interpretation of Turkish rule over India a futile effort to eulogize Islam's advent in the sub-continent."

"The peaceful Indian Mussalman, descended beyond doubt from Hindu ancestors, was dressed up in the garb of a foreign barbarian, as a breaker of temples, and an eater of beef, and declared to be a military colonist in the land where he had lived for about thirty or forty centuries…. The result of it is seen in the communalistic atmosphere of India today."

"The Quranic conception of God was, and can still be, a revolutionary force of incalculable value for the attainment of human welfare.”"

"We have a good image among the population - we should distinguish between voting and image, not everyone who appreciate us actually votes for us."

"The country faces big challenges and we can address these challenges together with parties from different backgrounds and ideologies who share the concerns and interest as the people of Iraq."

"As far as the government is concerned, the first challenge is to form a government which is based not on an ethnic and sectarian affiliation. We should have a government committed to oversee the reform and social development programmes."

"We are in a country that's in deep crisis at this particular juncture; all indicators are bad, not only in terms of terrorism and security. There is high unemployment; marginalised people; poor social s; very bad infrastructure. All these big challenges constitute a platform under which you can build a very wide-ranging coalition for the ."

"We should give priority to legislation concerning social security."

"We are saying we are for bilateral relations with all countries but based on respect of Iraq's sovereignty and non-intervention in our internal affairs. It is possible to have friendly relations with all our neighbours on the basis of mutual respect. We are saying we can keep balanced relations and we can have trade and other commercial relations with all countries but we don't accept s in our country."

"Since 2003, we are fully dependent on oil. Agriculture, industry, manufacturing have all regressed, accounting for not more than 1.25 percent of GDP. Our strategy is to reactivate agriculture, manufacturing and other productive activity, and at the same time provide protection to the people. In terms of social advancement, we want to strengthen s and . Iraq should not be a consumer-only market for the production activities of neighbouring countries."

"Our party, the oldest in Iraq, was established in 1934. It stands for the rights of working people; for the country's independence; for its development; and of course, in the current situation, we are calling for a change to the - we're calling for a citizens' state based on justice and . We believe that over the past 12 years, the political process was based on an ethnic and sectarian system. I think this so-called "quota system" is responsible for the crisis the country is now facing. It created the grounds for corruption and lack of development. Change should begin by reforming state s to achieve social justice and real socioeconomic development."

"Our interest must not risk Iraq's interests. If we can build an Iraq on the basis of our own independence and sovereignty, I think this Iraq will be respected by others, whether it be the Americans, Iranians or any other country. And this is what we are working to achieve. We have to work with the Iraqi people - so far they have been divided and all other external forces found it easy to intervene because they found receptive ears. What we are saying is that we should reinforce Iraqi unity."

"We had to get rid of occupation and regain and enhance our sovereignty. We have now ended up with a capitalist system. We are calling for social justice, a system in terms of creating jobs and enhancing the productive base of the economy."

"We are saying and insisting that all forces should belong to Iraq's interest first. And this should apply to all forces and I think when we are talking about building the state, building armed forces, loyalty to Iraq's interest - this should apply to everybody. As far as I know all, other political forces including Hashd accept these principles. Iraqis will decide who controls Iraq - no one from outside."

"By 1975, moreover, the Black Panthers had endorsed abortion rights. The organization first reversed positions when protesting the conviction of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American obstetrician-gynecologist convicted for manslaughter in the death of a fetus during a late term abortion. In 1977, the Panthers ran a series of articles criticizing the Hyde Amendment and calling for access to abortion as part of a broader program of welfare rights."

"The Black Panther, the official publication of the BPP, criticized the legalization of abortion in New York in 1970, and equally scathing essays continued to appear throughout the early 1970s."

"we became involved in the Black Panther Defense Committee. My parents were doing various kinds of support activities for the Panthers. They lent them the car for the breakfast program and various things. My dad was teaching history class to the Young Lords…the Panthers themselves were very young. They were teenagers. I’m trying to remember — Bobby Rush — Fred Hampton was 21 when he was killed. You know, they were all very young and so they were kind of, you know, these strutting, macho boys who were coming into a kind of political power that they had not had access to before. So there were all kinds of dynamics that were icky about it, but you know, I don’t remember the details of what we did with them, as it wasn’t for that long of a period."

"We're gonna make our own revolution because we're sick of revolutionary posters which depict straight he-man types and earth mothers, with guns and babies. We're sick of the Panthers lumping us together with the capitalists in their term of universal contempt-"faggot.""

"I think the most probably visible historical example of mutual aid in the U.S. that people talk about a lot is, of course, the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast programs and health programs, which were a vital part of the party’s work. And it’s a good example of how social movements often, pretty much always, centrally organize mutual aid, because people come into social movements to get immediate needs met, and they also desperately want to help others facing what they’re facing. And when they’re there, they can build a shared analysis: Hey, why don’t we have food? Why don’t we have shelter? What systems are in place that we all actually want to get to the root causes of?"

"In the 1960s I was part of a number of Black revolutionary movements, including the Black Panther Party, which I feel partially failed because of the authoritarian leadership style of Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and others on the Central Committee. This is not a recrimination against those individuals, but many errors were made because the national leadership was too divorced from the chapters in cities all over the country, and therefore engaged in “commandism” or forced work dictated by leaders. But many contradictions were also set up because of the structure of the organization as a Marxist-Leninist group. There was not a lot of inner-party democracy, and when contradictions came up, it was the leaders who decided on their resolution, not the members. Purges became commonplace, and many good people were expelled from the group simply because they disagreed with the leadership. Because of the over-importance of central leadership, the national organization was ultimately liquidated entirely, packed up and shipped back to Oakland, California. Of course, many errors were made because the BPP was a young organization and was under intense attack by the state. I do not want to imply that the internal errors were the primary contradictions that destroyed the BPP. The police attacks on it did that, but, if it were better and more democratically organized, it may have weathered the storm. So this is no mindless criticism or backstabbing attack. I loved the party. And, anyway, not myself or anyone else who critique the party with hindsight, will ever take away from the tremendous role that the BPP played in the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s. But we must look at a full picture of out organizations from that period, so that we do not repeat the same errors."

"I admired the personal courage and commitment of individual Black Panthers I got to know, but I was not a fan of their politics. With the Panthers you found this curious mixture of selfless dedication and some of the worst aspects of street culture. They maintained discipline in their party "with a stick," as their own phrase had it. In Los Angeles they would run classes every Saturday in "political education" in which their members had to memorize sections of Mao's little red book. If they failed to memorize their assignment, they were beaten up. The same thing would happen if they failed to sell their weekly quota of their party newspaper. The Panthers picked up the Maoist slogan "All power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and made an ideological fetish out of it. That phrase has to be one of the stupidest things Mao ever said, because what power really grows out of is the organized consciousness of millions of people. At some point guns may become important tactically in the revolutionary process in some countries, but that isn't where power comes from-and a good thing, too, because revolutionaries are always going to be outgunned by the forces defending the old order."

"In Berkeley and Oakland, "Free Huey" was the call. I found the militancy and relevance of the Panthers' program irresistible. The Black Panther Party's "10-Point Program" called for black freedom and the power to determine the destiny of the black community. The program demanded jobs, housing, education, an end to white exploitation of the black community, an end to police brutality, instigation of trials by peer juries, and freedom for incarcerated blacks. Most interesting of all, the Panthers revived a demand enunciated by Malcolm X just before his death-a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite to determine whether blacks wanted to be part of the United States, or form a separate nation. The Panthers began calling their program "intercommunalism.""

"One of the problems the Panthers faced was that their founding leaders, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, were either on trial or in prison for most of the late 1960s and early 1970s. That left control of the party pretty much in the hands of Eldridge Cleaver, an unstable character who led it close to the brink of destruction. After Huey and Bobby got out of prison and broke with Cleaver, they shifted their emphasis from "self-defense" to "survival programs." The place where they did most to implement the new strategy was in Oakland, the only city where they were able to build any kind of a base. There they functioned as a kind of free-lance social welfare agency, providing free food, clothes, and health care services to the community. We obviously didn't have anything against people receiving those kinds of services, but our idea had always been that the role of radicals was to organize people to demand that such benefits be provided by the government. Radicals shouldn't be in the position of competing with the churches as dispensers of charity. At the height of the Panthers' "serve the people" phase, Bobby Seale came down to Los Angeles to speak at a fundraising event in some wealthy white supporter's house. He was standing up at one end of the room explaining why this free-groceries strategy was the key to political success, and the rest of us were literally sitting at his feet. I think I was one of the few skeptics in the room, and I asked him, "How is the Black Panther Party different from any church running a soup kitchen?" He didn't know who I was, and when he turned to me he said, "I'm afraid I can't explain it to you because you don't understand dialectical materialism." That got a big laugh. The problem with the Panthers' approach to politics, in both its early and later stages, was that they were always substituting themselves for someone. When their emphasis was on military confrontation, they were substituting themselves for mass revolutionary activity, and when their emphasis was on free handouts, they were substituting themselves for the welfare department."

"One militant black group, however, endorsed me strongly-the Black Panthers. National chairman Bobby Seale said I was the best social critic of America's injustices to run for President from whatever party," and promised that the Panthers' full membership would work for me. More than one supporter wanted me to disavow the Panthers' endorsement, but I flatly refused. "The Black Panthers are citizens of the United States and they have a right to endorse whomever they decide to endorse," I told reporters in Sacramento, where we got word of the action. "What has happened to them as an oppressed group in America has led them to the conclusion that perhaps with me there is hope." From where I stood, it was a highly hopeful sign that this group appeared to be emerging into an active participation in elective politics; they were acting according to a principle that I had always strictly maintained: that the way to change the system must be to work within the system. To disavow their support would have been arrogant and inconsistent with my strongest principles; if failing to do so cost me any votes from whites and moderate blacks, so be it. They are my brothers and sisters too, and I was pleased and proud at their action. One thing that gratified me was that the Panthers had succeeded in rising above sex prejudice, something that many blacks find difficult; they were supporting me because of my positions and my programs, without regard to my being female. This showed that in some ways they were farther along the path of political maturity than some of the moderate leaders of elements of the black community, who, I am convinced, never took me seriously as a candidate because they were not capable of taking any woman seriously as a potential leader."

"The civil rights movement tended to be focused on integration, but there were those who said, "We don't want to assimilate into a sinking ship, so let's change the ship altogether." The emergence of the Black Panther Party marked a moment of rupture, and we are still in that moment. The party had two different kinds of activism: grass-roots activism that helped to create institutions that are still working-for example, the Agriculture Department now runs free breakfast programs. On the other hand, the posture of self-defense and monitoring the police. If one looks at the party ten-point program, every single point is as relevant or more relevant fifty years later. The tenth point includes community control of technology. That was very prescient. It's about using technologies rather than allowing them to use us."

"While Chicanos in the Southwest sought to emulate the paramilitary style of the Black Panthers by forming groups such as the Brown Berets, it was Puerto Rican organizations like the Young Lords Party that most self-consciously modeled themselves on the Black Power movement."

"I had read a pamphlet about voter registration in Mississippi, how the people in Lowndes County had armed themselves against Establishment violence. Their political group, called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, had a black panther for its symbol. A few days later, while Bobby Seale and I were rapping, I suggested that we use the panther as our symbol."

"When we first started, we had a police alert patrol. We would patrol the community; if we saw the police brutalizing anyone we would put an end to it. Usually, the police wouldn't brutalize anyone if we were on hand because we were armed."