(Offshoot of this discussion on MLK vs Malcom X on violence)
What the Black Panther Party had done breakfast programs, free health clinics, and other mutual aid, but didn’t do the community safety patrols?
We know that the patrols were effective, morally good, and a big part of the BPP’s public perception. We also know that the United States is still racist as fuck, and that black liberation has not been achieved yet.
I see the Black Panthers as one of the most promising leftist experiments in the US. In the spirit of scientific socialism, how do you think the movement would have gone, had the party been less militant?
Would it have just been easier to dismantle? Would it have been seen as less of a threat, so not worth extreme actions? Would the general public have been more or less supportive? Would the black community have been more or less supportive? How would its legacy be different?
My analysis
Partly informed by this interview with the BPP minister of defense
Benefits:
- Community safety: obviously. The patrols were started to address a critical need in the community.
- Recruitment: the militant aspect of the party had massive appeal to folks that had been oppressed for generations. It gave agency and a way to direct the rage into something useful
- Publicity: great way to get into the news, which helps get the message out
Drawbacks:
- Attracted more attention from the feds
- Spooked white people
- Increased risk for party members
Since we have the benefit of hindsight, we know that the feds were a major part of the dissolution of the movement. I assume that if the feds had NOT intervened, the movement would have continued to grow in power and made massive improvements to the lives of black people and Americans in general.
I trust that the BPP members made reasonable decisions to counter CoIntelPro, but I also trust that the focused power of the federal government is able to succeed in whatever fucked up stuff it wants to do. That’s to say: the BPP may have simply been in an unwinnable fight.
Avoiding the eye of sauron for as long as possible is a prudent strategy, and I think a less militant BPP could have drawn less focus from the feds. Mostly, I think they received disproportionate focus because white people saw organized, armed black folks and it tickled the “enemy combatant” part of their brains.
If the party had instead focused on nonviolent mutual aid, I think it could have lessened the suppression efforts, possibly to a point where the fight was winnable. At very least, it could have given more time to grow the organization, so that once more militant actions were needed they would be more powerful.
On the other hand, I think there wouldn’t have been as much excitement about the party. I do not know if having more time to grow without suppression would have been cancelled out by slower growth.
If we were able to run it back, I think a less militant BPP may have ended up making more progress towards black liberation.
I definitely think they would have had pressure to liberalize!
I think there’s some institutional safety that comes from coming off as a mainstream liberal organization. Knowing how the party ended, having that institutional safety seems like it could have been worth the risk.
I have no idea what the ideal strategy would have been.
One can always speculate, but seeing as the universe isn’t deterministic, it’s impossible to correlate failure with an incorrect strategy. Especially when the sample size is essentially 1 in this case.
Reality is, the Black Panthers were always the underdogs relative to the US Government. This is true generally for radical movements. It can fail many times because of this, maybe even just because of bad luck.
But that’s how it always is, isn’t it? A revolution doesn’t happen unless some group, usually starting from the smallest possible minority, decides to roll the dice because it only takes one success (out of many failures) to change history.
Of course we can’t know, but dialectic materialism being an accurate predictor is kinda our whole deal. Individuals are unpredictable, but superstructures can be counted on.
The Panthers predicted that their course of action would succeed, based on their analysis of the material conditions they were in.
It did not succeed.
We are aiming for the same goal, and if we build the same superstructure they did, we will lose in the same way they did.