Imhotep Fatiu of the Baltimore-based Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement and Dedrick Muhammad, co-author of the recently-released State of the Dream Report 2012 joined us this week. This report concludes, among other things, that by 2042 the United States will fully mirror South African apartheid with an overwhelmingly powerful White minority ruling over an impoverished majority of African/Latin/Indigenous people. We talked about this, scientific pan-Afrikanism v. socialism and had a special Stevie Wonder tribute to the now late Don Cornelius. All that and more on this week’s show!
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Peace,
Great intro with Stevie and brother Don Cornelius. Thanks for the show. I think we need to look at the development of Capitalism and industry in Europe and internationally. Marxism is a revolutionary science of analysis and action, Marx took from everyone ie Hegel etc and expanded it to the developing class formations in a shift from feudalism to capitalism. From my humble viewpoint, I felt brother Imhotep rejection of socialism, is based on a eurocenteric orienation to socialism, which should be challenged, but not discarded as yourself (Jared) and one call made the point. I consider myself to be a black marxist, tying my ethnicity to my political ideas. I strongly believe the socialist left in the US is problematic on a number of fronts, Marxism in my viewpoint is a method that demands it to be expanded particularly in the epoch we are living through, questions Marx didn’t face when he and Engles were doing their. I think the recent poll about Youth and African-Americans approval or support for the ideas of Socialism is interesting, it maybe on a very low level, but i think it flows from our historical position as being trailblazers in the struggle for freedom and justice in the US and internationally. I think our history with Marxism, Socialism and Communism demands more attention. We need a critical analysis of Stalinsim, Maoism and even Cuba to understand the grave and fatal theortical mistakes and their contributions to the black freedom movement. I have been reading and studying about Hubert H. Harrison, African Blood Brotherhood, and historian Gerald Horne, they combine an analysis of race and class which i think is the key question in this deep crisis of Global Capitalism. I think brother Dedrick and the State of the Dream 2012 report is vital. That data is key for our work.
Brilliant show Dr. Ball! I could hear the earnestness in your studio guest’s voice, but I think I agree with the latter sister’s call in terms of the critique of this brother’s analysis. It sounded a bit cultural nationalist. It made me think of a quote from Wretched of The Earth by Fanon (It’s from the chapter On National Culture, I think the brother would do well to read the chapter and the book before he talks about lifestyle choices as a means of liberating Africans around the world):
It is clear therefore that the way the cultural problem is posed in certain colonized countries can lead to serious ambiguities. Colonialism’s insistence that “niggers” have no culture, and Arabs are by nature barbaric, inevitably leads to a glorification of cultural phenomena that become continental instead of national, and singularly racialized. In Africa, the reasoning of the intellectual is Black-African or Arab-Islamic. It is not specifically national. Culture is increasingly cut off from reality. It finds safe haven in refuge of smoldering emotions and has difficulty cutting a straightforward path that would, nevertheless, be the only likely to endow it with productiveness, homogeneity, and substance. (154-155)
Fanon is a very good starting point (and that’s an understatement), for the brother to alleviate the concept that veneration of an ossified culture is a foregone conclusion to liberation. If he was correct in his approach, then in that case do we stop speaking English because it’s European? Should Fanon not have written Wretched because he wrote it in French? I think your guest spoke English if I’m not mistaken? He comments on electoral politics was naive at best and contradictory and delusional at worst. His critique on Nykrumah…interesting? Like I said I believed the brother to be truly sincere therefore an critique of his analysis was done with no malicious intent. Thanks again for your work Dr. Ball.