Psychedelic Marxism: The Ecstatic States of the Body in the White Panther Party around 1970

Abstract

In the late 1960s, new styles of revolutionary politics of ecstasy emerged in the United States. They combined countercultural politics of transforming the subject via the experience of ecstatic states of the body with radical approaches to a fundamental reconfiguration of the societal order. A vital force in shaping such new styles of radical politics was the White Panther Party – an organization that was not only an influential actor in the countercultural and radical landscapes in the United States but also impacted European countercultures. The article examines how White Panthers merged politics of ecstasy with eclectically adapted bits and pieces of various communist ideas and ideologies and, thus, shaped a new style of radical politics that we might name psychedelic Marxism. Furthermore, it traces the changes in how the White Panther Party and its predecessors, the Detroit Artists Workshop and Trans-Love Energies, set states of ecstasy and societal change in relation to each other. Shedding light on White Panthers’ politics of ecstasy allows us to learn more about the ongoing reshaping of countercultural and radical politics during the late 1960s, but also about trajectories of communist ideas and ideologies that have not found much scholarly attention yet.