The Black Panther Party's War of Position, Neoliberal Passive Revolution, and the Origin of the Prison Industrial Complex in the U.S. and Canada

Chris Harris

doi:10.13169/groudevepanacrit.3.1.0017

Abstract

This paper contributes to the debates on Neoliberal Passive Revolution in the U.S. by examining the legacy of the Black Panther Party's war of position against internal colonialism, which culminated in the rise of neoliberalism to contain the racial crisis in America. Gramsci's (1971) theory of working class organic intellectuals, passive revolution, and the war of position in civil society to win proletarian hegemony in fascist Italy, is utilized as a framework to analyze the historical significance of the U.S. Black Panther Party. The party's war of position, under the ideological leadership of Panther leader Huey Newton, transformed race relations in America, by challenging White ruling class hegemony in working class African-American communities throughout the country. The Panther war of position was defeated, but it was ultimately responsible for the ascendancy of the neo-liberal passive revolution that was carried out by the ruling class to contain the African-American working class; while incorporating the African-American middle class into U.S. civil society and political society on an unprecedented level. This paper hopes to contribute to the development of Toronto's prison abolition movement to end mass incarceration in Canada. For this to occur, I will discuss the historical context of the prison industrial complex in the U.S., which inspired its formation in Canada over the last two decades. In Canada, neoliberalism took the form of a counter-reformation: a restoration with no progressive element. The Canadian imperialist bourgeoisie organized the prison industrial complex differently than the U.S. But mass incarceration was introduced by the Canadian state with the same intention to occupy and contain African-Canadian communities, to reduce their ability to transform Canadian capitalist imperialism into a socialist workers state organized on the principal of self-determination for the Indigenous and African nations.

Highlights

Gramsci’s (1971) theory of working class organic intellectuals, passive revolution, and the war of position in civil society to win proletarian hegemony in fascist Italy, in this paper is utilized as a framework to analyze the historical significance of the U.S Black Panther Party
This paper contributes to the debates on Neoliberal Passive Revolution in the U.S by examining the legacy of the Black Panther Party’s war of position against internal colonialism, which culminated in the rise of neoliberalism to contain the racial crisis in America
In the neoliberal counter-reformation, the “old” is a return to laissez-faire capitalism, the “new” is the consolidation of a trans-national capitalist class and global neoliberal political-economy, whose technological advances accelerate capital flight to undermine the economic power of labor unions gained under the previous welfare state capitalism.Coutinho asserts there is not a single progressive reform during the neoliberal age, only the elimination of labor and welfare rights gained from the previous Keynesian welfare state passive revolution that preceded it

Summary

Introduction

Gramsci’s (1971) theory of working class organic intellectuals, passive revolution, and the war of position in civil society to win proletarian hegemony in fascist Italy, in this paper is utilized as a framework to analyze the historical significance of the U.S Black Panther Party. Coutinho contends U.S neoliberalism is not a passive revolution, but a “counter-reformation”, a neoconservative capitalist restoration with no progressive reforms.4 These Gramsci scholars do not theorize how the ‘60’s Black Power Rebellion produced a crisis in race relations that was responsible for the emergence of neoliberalism to contain the racial crisis in America. They fail to account for how U.S neoliberalism began as a passive revolution against the African-American nation—a neocolonial project that implemented a progressive liberal Black capitalist reform of bourgeois civil society to improve the African-American middle class’s political and economic power on the one hand; and the institutionalization of right-wing racist policing in working class African-American communities on the other. Due to the highly developed nature of industrialized capitalist nations, the organizations of civil society were ideological “fortresses” and “earthworks” that held consensual control over the masses and defeated revolutionary movements even in times of great economic crises. As a result, for Gramsci, the war of position must be waged through mass mobilization, socialist cultural projects, communist education, and popular education in the “superstructures” of civil society, he likened to “the trench-systems of modern warfare.” While the war of movement is concerned with conquering state power, the war of position is a long-term preparatory phase of

Rodney 1990

12 Gramsci 1978

32 Foner 1970

34 Newton 1970

Findings

Conclusion