This issue of e-flux journal presents one of the most remarkable, and overlooked, conjunctural texts to come out of the Black Power movement: “Black Power: A Scientific Concept Whose Time Has Come,” by , an autoworker, organic intellectual, and lifelong revolutionary activist.1 In this text, which first appeared in the

01/09 spring 1967 issue of the radical black nationalist journal The Liberator and was later included in his 1970 collection, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker’s Notebook, Boggs perceptively analyzes the rising tide of black struggle in the Northern cities in the wake of the civil rights movement, and places these events in the context of anticolonial Patrick King national liberation projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.2 đđđđđđđđđđBlack Power had always been ambivalent as Introduction to a political slogan since Stokely Carmichael propelled it onto the nationwide stage during the “Black Power: A March Against Fear in June 1966. Black Power formulated a pressing need – that black people Scientific in the United States obtain actual economic and political power beyond integration – but there were many potential routes to achieve that goal. Concept Whose Boggs attempts to not only refine the concept, arguing that it is grounded in the “specific Time Has Come” historical development of the United States”; he also advances a set of tactics and a long-term revolutionary strategy of social struggle with the by James Boggs aim of establishing black political power.3 Boggs and his wife and close collaborator, Grace Lee, had already elaborated their particular understanding of Black Power in practice. In 1965, they helped form the Organization for Black Power in Detroit, which was a coordinating group of grassroots activists that looked to establish a concrete program for black self- determination centered in the cities, and one of the countless organizing projects the Boggses would initiate over the course of the 1960s and ‘70s: other initiatives would include the Inner City Organizing Committee, the Committee for Political Development, and the National Organization for an American Revolution.4 In the rich political context of Detroit, the Boggses acted as a “resource base” for a new generation of African-American radicals who were interested in the nexus between revolutionary socialism and black nationalism. As historian and Revolutionary Action Movement leader

e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g Muhammad Ahmad recalls, “Discussion sessions were held at the Boggs home which provided young Black radicals with insight on concepts, goals, strategy and tactics of socialism and revolution.”5 These younger activists included the future core of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers: John Watson, Luke Tripp, John Williams, General Baker, and others. đđđđđđđđđđThe texts included in Racism and the Class

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST Struggle continue and update the fundamental self-determination and the global reach of Pan- arguments of Boggs’s landmark 1963 pamphlet, Africanism, James was not simply willing to The American Revolution: Pages from a Black uphold the black liberation movement as the Worker’s Notebook.6 Boggs’s first book, The central front of struggle.9 Nor did he think the American Revolution, established him as a revolutionary process necessarily implied the leading intellectual force on the US left, a creation of vanguard organizations to develop position that would only solidify over the coming instances of proletarian self-activity, as the years. But the text was both the cause and 02/09 Boggses would soon insist – for James, this was outcome of an acrimonious split within the an indefensible retreat from his conception of Correspondence Publishing Committee, the socialism as being expressed in bursts of Detroit-based political organization to which spontaneous proletarian organization.10 He also both James and belonged adamantly opposed the Boggses increasingly throughout the 1950s (a continuation under a tendentious attacks against Marxism as a different name of their activity as the Trotskyist relevant revolutionary theory over the course of splinter collective the Johnson-Forest Tendency), the 1960s.11 A passage from the penultimate along with several close comrades, including the chapter of The American Revolution neatly famed Trinidadian Marxist theorist C. L. R. James encapsulates the points James found most and the radical labor historian Martin objectionable: Glaberman. The reasons for this split can help lead us into the discussion of Boggs’s distinct American Marxists have tended to fall into definition of Black Power. the trap of thinking of the Negroes as đđđđđđđđđđThe American Revolution was guided by an Negroes, i.e. in race terms, when in fact the effective methodological principle: theoretical Negroes have been and are today the most analysis would be prompted primarily by oppressed and submerged sections of the conjunctural developments in social conflict. workers, on whom has fallen most sharply Two historical threads guided the text’s the burden of unemployment due to argument. First, that automation and automation. The Negroes have more technological breakthroughs in US industry had economic grievances than any other created the conditions for a post-scarcity section of American society. But in a society; a sufficient amount of socially necessary country with the material abundance of the goods and services could be produced and United States, economic grievances alone distributed to all members of the population. could not impart to their struggles all their Recalling earlier arguments made by C. L. R. revolutionary impact. The strength of the James and Grace Lee Boggs in The Invading Negro cause and its power to shake up the Socialist Society (cowritten with Raya social structure of the nation come from Dunayeskaya) and Facing Reality (cowritten with the fact that in the Negro struggle all the ), Boggs forecast that the questions of human rights and human seeds of a “classless” and “workless” society relationships are posed. At the same time were already present, wherein the masses could the American Negroes are most conscious “walk out on the streets and get their milk and of, and best able to time their actions in honey.”7 However – and this is the second thread relation to, the crises and weaknesses of – the same trends towards automation and American capitalism, both at home and cybernetic command had deleterious effects on abroad.12 the industrial labor force, union power, and shop- floor organization. Old forms of labor were Despite the controversy, Boggs’s methodological becoming outmoded and generated an ever impulse in these pages is striking: the existence, increasing surplus population of the constitution, and trajectory of the industrial “permanently unemployed,” the “underclass,” or proletariat could not be taken for granted. the “outsiders,” predominantly concentrated in Effective strategies for power had to be urban black communities – a trend grounded in actual motions and political demonstrated by Detroit employment statistics developments. For Boggs, the bus boycotts, sit- tracking the period from 1940–1970.8 e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g ins, armed self-defense groups (led by Robert đđđđđđđđđđBoggs recalibrated his strategic outlook Williams), the explosive ghetto rebellions in accordingly: African-Americans were now Watts and Harlem (and later Detroit and Newark), positioned as “the chief social force for the revolt and the rapid growth of mass black nationalist against American capitalism.” One crux of the organizations, especially the Nation of Islam (in split between C. L. R. James and the Boggses particular the political ideas of Malcolm X), came precisely on this point: despite the demonstrated the momentum, scope, and former’s consistent appreciation of the validity “striking force” of autonomous black and strength of African-American movements for movements. Like the wildcat strikes of the

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST 03/09

Grace Lee Boggs (left) and James Boggs (right) in an undated photograph.đ

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST 1930s, they indicated a new phase in the cycle of factory, and found a class figure which no longer struggle, with updated programmatic objectives held the ability to sell its labor power for a wage. and tactics which would target the fundamental đđđđđđđđđđAt a very basic level, Boggs was trying to antagonisms of US society and spearhead a answer the question: “What has happened within collective project of emancipation. the working class since Marx?” The proletariat, đđđđđđđđđđBoggs’s approach not only elaborates in Boggs’s view, could no longer be grasped as a important features of the trajectory of black “homogeneous segregated bloc.” Capitalist radicalism; it also revisits the distinct Marxist 04/09 development in the US had engendered “changes problematic of workers’ inquiry uncovered by his in the nature of work, the social composition of comrades in the Johnson-Forest Tendency and various strata of the population, the classes Correspondence. In several texts – including The within it, and the culture of the population.”18 American Worker, cowritten by Grace Lee Boggs The subaltern stratum of the outsiders – a under a pseudonym – and the pages of their product of a renewed capitalist class offensive newspaper, also titled Correspondence, the and racialized strategies of social control in the group investigated the conditions of proletarian US – possessed a class position that life in the US based on the concrete experience transcended the limits of bourgeois political and first-person narratives of workers.13 From reform and posed an antagonistic challenge to these accounts, one could chart changes in the the wage-labor system. More to the point, the process of production, the autonomous needs of outsiders could potentially combine different sectors of the working class, and, most heterogeneous forces of social protest into a importantly, nascent forms of rank-and-file universal movement. resistance. The goal of documenting these đđđđđđđđđđBoggs indicated this potential by scattered experiences and elements of channeling currents of revolutionary nationalism. discontent was political: to establish He specifically situated the black underclass as connections between workers in their various an internal colony: “they have grown up like a locations, so that they might realize their shared colonial people who no longer feel any allegiance interests and act collectively against the to the old imperial power and are each day alienating forces of capitalist production. This searching for new means to overthrow it.”19 The historically reflexive attempt to link theory and political sensibility of this move was important, practice would have a wide resonance, with because it extended lines of analysis, some theoretical adjustments, in the projects of communication, and solidarity to the the collective in France international level. The qualifier “black” had an and the workerist and autonomist traditions in eminently political and generic connotation: Italy.14 included in the perspective of Black Power were đđđđđđđđđđIn a sense, The American Revolution also the “people of color who are engaged in advances a class-composition analysis of the revolutionary struggle in the United States and relationship between economic conditions and all over the world.”20 political subjects: the technological đđđđđđđđđđWith these provocations, Boggs altered how breakthroughs, so exalted by Big Three auto one maps the territory of revolutionary struggle executives, recast not only the labor process in the American context. Paolo Carpignano, in an itself, but also the field of action in which article that appeared in the US autonomist workers could determinately respond to such a journal Zerowork, captures the thrust of Boggs’s restructuring plan.15 There is a compelling broadening of revolutionary agency to “actions overlap between Boggs and the workerists in and forces outside the work process,” towards their understanding of science and strategy: a connected spheres of social activity: consistent striving for historical adequacy over the dangers of anachronism, and an attention to black struggles demonstrated that the how workers could “bypass existing wageless were part of the working class. organizations and form new ones uncorrupted by They unveiled the factory-like organization past habits and customs.”16 Just as Romano of society where ghettos, unemployment Alquati, Raniero Panzieri, and Mario Tronti and poverty were not a byproduct of the meticulously studied the technical conditions on e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g system nor a transitory malfunction, but a the factory floor in Italy, and articulated necessary element in the social appropriate forms of struggle on that basis, so reproduction of capital … Most importantly, too did Boggs understand scientific analysis as they brought working class struggle to the the “systematic examination of the specific society at large, and at that level they conditions, contradictions, and antagonisms in forced its recomposition. By recomposition one’s own country and one’s own time.”17 One we do not mean only the extension and the major difference, of course, was that Boggs had massification of the struggle but primarily already moved past a stringent focus on the the homogenization of its subjective

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST contents. In this sense these struggles begin to understand through a process of connected welfare, reappropriation, and escalating struggle.24 armed struggle with the factory. To use traditional terms, they united the factory While this understanding of party organization and the community.21 could certainly seem to tip over into the traps of rigid hierarchy and sectarianism, Boggs does The terrain of social reproduction to which stress the interaction between this vanguard

Carpignano refers – the “socially necessary 05/09 party and the masses as a relationship of activities” of community organization, social and testing, metamorphosis, and transformation. As public services, education, transportation, public Bill V. Mullen notes in his Afro-Orientalism, the health, and other areas – became the central Boggses’ “dialectical humanism” implied the point of focus for the Boggses’ vision of Black creation of new ideologies; vanguard Power. Through struggles over this institutional organizations, through the circulation of infrastructure, Northern ghettos could become international revolutionary experiences and the red bases of black self-management; concrete mobilizing force of social struggle, would trigger demands could be articulated into a more continuous learning processes wherein the coherent program to confront urban power transmission and intensification of knowledge structures. The founding statement of the could take place. Their humanist leanings would Organization for Black Power, included in the later spiral off into a politics of personal Boggses’ seminal 1965 essay “The City is the development in works like Revolution and Black Man’s Land,” reflects this emphasis on Evolution in the Twentieth Century, with the forming a coordinated system of parallel construction of a “new concept of human institutions: “The city is the base which we must identity” taking center stage.25 But in the final organize as the factories were organized in the pages of Racism and the Class Struggle, James 1930s. We must struggle to control and govern Boggs draws a tight correlation between political the cities, as workers struggled to control and practice and the masses’ capacity to think and govern the factories of the 1930s.”22 act: đđđđđđđđđđThis conception of urban grassroots insurgency was a prescient anticipation of the The people who are striving for power must arenas in which the meaning and import of calls themselves be transformed into new for Black Power would be fought out: welfare people in the course of the struggle. Their boards, newly founded War on Poverty programs, will to struggle, their vision of what they are and neighborhood housing coalitions.23 Crucially, struggling for, their social consciousness these campaigns for community control would and responsibility, and their capacity to need political leadership to combine them in an govern must all be systematically expansive dynamic of struggle – through which increased. The struggle must therefore be “mass consciousness of grievances” could an escalating one, focused on problems the translate into a “reorganization of society.” people can learn from. It cannot be hit-and- đđđđđđđđđđThe Boggses would embrace the vanguard miss or in reaction to what the enemy does; party as the organizational vehicle for this but must be based on a strategy which has passage; and indeed, this aspect of their work no been mapped out in advance and which doubt appears unsatisfactory today. They would permits the organization to take advantage outline the form and tasks of this party in of the enemy’s predictable actions or numerous texts, including the final essay of mistakes. Indispensable to victory is the Racism and the Class Struggle, “Putting Politics strategic employment of time as a in Command,” and the pamphlets The Awesome dimension of struggle within which Responsibilities of Revolutionary Leadership and contradictions are deepened, conflicts Manifesto for a Revolutionary Party. On one level, escalate, and there is an accelerated it is a quite orthodox conception of the vanguard: growth of the revolutionary social forces, a body of committed militants with a clear sense not only in numbers and understanding but of strategy and tactics, who can in organization and sense of community.26 e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g adapt themselves to the painstaking and Boggs advanced strong criticisms of other often unglamorous tasks of building cadre political trends in the Black Power movement, who are dedicated to working in the which we find in the essay republished in this community, carrying out and developing issue when he draws lines of demarcation programs of struggle and projecting between “realists” and “romanticists.” He political solutions and perspectives of expressed fierce opposition to cultural power to which the masses may not nationalist sentiments, and argued for the value immediately subscribe but which they can and collective power of multiracial

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST organizations.27 But he also had provided sharp approach.33 But later on, John Watson, one of the rebukes of, for instance, the Black Panther Party, more publicly visible LRBW members, would a group that shared Boggs’s class analysis and stress that the organizational structure of the understanding of political power. Although Boggs League was intended to support rank-and-file was appreciative of the historical importance of workers’ struggles “in different industries and the Panthers in demonstrating the “tremendous different plants,” through an insurgent system of potential among black street youth … to communication and united action with the overthrow racism and capitalism,” the Boggses 06/09 ultimate aim of developing a “national general charged the Panthers with a too-direct strike.”34 In any event, the LRBW’s combination importation of Maoist concepts and ideology of immediate demands and long-term strategy “without distinguishing what is appropriate to was in line with Boggs’s own prescriptions, and China … and what is appropriate to the United even sought to bridge the gap between the States.” Moreover, Boggs argued that the Ten- factory as a primary site of struggle and battles Point Program and survival programs, while over the social wage and community defense. articulating the correct issues, did not translate đđđđđđđđđđOf course, the Boggses’ conception of a into a clear long-term strategy, and that the revolutionary vanguard yielded its own problems. Panthers’ rapid national growth into a “small The enduring outcomes of the Black Power mass party” resulted in a situation where the movement seem to be the demobilization of organization found itself “being led by those who once-powerful grassroots insurgencies coupled should be following.”28 Recent scholarship on the with the rise of “black officialdom” and the Panthers would certainly temper and nuance realignment of ruling-class strategy to absorb these claims made by Boggs. For Joshua Bloom popular movements. In Adolph Reed’s words, and Waldo E. Martin, Huey Newton’s early “the imperatives of managing racial writings outlined a vanguard party in the US that subordination” won out among mainstream would articulate the political and military force African-American politicians; as more electoral of the “riotous energy of the ghetto,” but “with routes to political participation opened for the practical capacity to build political power communities of color, lines of communication and gain leverage to redress the wrongs against with radical activists and organizing groups fell black people and meet their needs.”29 And for through or were actively cut.35 historian Donna Murch, the Panthers’ survival đđđđđđđđđđThe driving forces of capitalist development programs were essentially alternative have shifted since the 1960s, after the crisis of institutions for political education, centered on Fordism; many of the effects of automation and an organizing practice of grassroots socialism.30 technological unemployment that Boggs foresaw đđđđđđđđđđBoggs held a positive view of another major in The American Revolution are now our reality Black Power group, one to which he had direct (sharp rises in precarious and informal ties: the League of Revolutionary Black Workers employment, the production and racialization of (LRBW), an umbrella organization formed in 1969 “wageless life”).36 As a consequence, new forms to solidify the mushrooming wave of and articulations of racial oppression need to be Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) at taken into account. The uneven, differential automobile plants across the Detroit region.31 In impact of social processes like mass an essay written while a series of wildcat strikes incarceration and police violence is a clear effect and walkouts rippled through the Dodge and of devastating mechanisms of economic Chrysler plants, Boggs hailed the League’s ability exploitation and control (infrastructural and to organize black autoworkers outside of social service transfers, debtors’ prisons), traditional institutional structures, especially the fortifying the determinations of race and class United Auto Workers union. As he writes, “the struggle in our current conjuncture.37 With the demands and the expectations of these young emergence of new sets of demands for black black workers far exceed the wildest dreams of self-determination (the program of the the labor movement and of earlier generations of Movement for Black Lives38) in tune with workers even in their militant days.”32 Boggs’s resurgent networks of grassroots activism text was written in the early stages of the LRBW’s (coalitions between Black Lives Matter chapters formation, and thus it appears to temper the e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g and Fight for $15 campaigns), James Boggs’s group’s explicit revolutionary strategy and shop- analysis of Black Power as both a scientific floor initiatives by emphasizing demands to hire concept rooted in the history of the US social “a black plant doctor, fifty black foremen, even a formation and a political condensate with black chairman of the Board of Directors.” The concrete strategic implications might yield new first leaflets put out by the Dodge Revolutionary insights and clarity for the present. Union Movement, the most active RUM, did call đđđđđđđđđđ× for the direct representation of black workers in the factory and the union: a clear “reformist”

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST Patrick King is a graduate student in the History of đđđđđđ1 movements and racial initiatives Consciousness Department at UC Santa Cruz and a For a recent study and within unions, and he spoke intellectual history of Boggs’s eloquently about his member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint extraordinary life and his experiences. Although Marty and Magazine. personal and political others in the group also worked relationship with Grace Lee in factories, Boggs was the only Boggs, see Stephen M. Ward, In one who seemed to be the kind Love and Struggle: The of militant who spoke and acted Revolutionary Lives of James and in terms that had immediate Grace Lee Boggs (Chapel Hill: application. When he spoke University of North Carolina about workers, he described the

07/09 Press, 2016). kind of people we all knew rather than the idealizations projected đđđđđđ2 by other radical groups and even James Boggs, “Black Power: A other members of his own circle. Scientific Concept Whose Time Boggs was especially intriguing Has Come,” in Racism and the when he enumerated the Class Struggle: Further Pages shortcomings of the class and from a Black Worker’s Notebook its internal problems, (New York: Monthly Review emphasizing underdevelopment Press, 1970), 51–62. among Black as well as white workers. Later, of course, he and đđđđđđ3 his wife would develop these This historical perspective of ideas more fully in a number of Black Power necessitated a writings.” Dan Georgakas, study of working-class “Young Detroit Radicals, formation and capital 1955–1965,” Urgent Tasks 12 accumulation in the US, in (Summer 1981) particular the constitution of http://www.sojournertruth.ne internal divisions within the t/detroitradicals.html. working class along racial lines through the legacy of slavery – a đđđđđđ6 perspective which was to also be James Boggs, The American advanced by the theorists of Revolution: Pages from a Negro “white-skin privilege.” See Noel Worker’s Notebook (New York: Ignatin (Ignatiev) and Theodore Monthly Review Press, 1963). W. Allen’s 1967 pamphlet The The text was originally released White Blindspot (published in as a double issue of Monthly 1969 by SDS’s Radical Education Review in the summer of 1963, Project), available online at and was published as a separate http://www.sds-1960s.org/Whi pamphlet later that year. The teBlindspot.pdf. Another essay complete text of The American in Racism and the Class Revolution has been collected Struggle, “Uprooting Racism and along with many of Boggs’s other Racists” (146–60), discusses important writings in Pages from debates tracing “the parallel a Black Radical’s Notebook: A between the rise of capitalism James Boggs Reader, ed. and the rise of racism”: “The Stephen M. Ward (Detroit: historical fact is that without Wayne State University Press, African slavery the class 2011). struggle between capitalists and workers could not even have đđđđđđ7 been joined in the first place. For Boggs, The American Revolution, the capitalist, it served the 53. functions of primitive accumulation. That is, It đđđđđđ8 provided both the initial capital See Thomas Sugrue, The Origins and the labor force freed from of the Urban Crisis: Race and the means of production which Inequality in Postwar Detroit is a prerequisite for the process (Princeton: Princeton University of capitalist accumulation inside Press, 1996), 275. Sugrue also the factory.” traces the effects of automation on employment in the auto đđđđđđ4 industry over the course of the Not to mention their involvement 1950s and ‘60s (130–35). in the formation of the Freedom Now Party in Detroit in 1964, and đđđđđđ9 their role in organizing the 1963 For a comprehensive account of Northern Negro Grass Roots the divergence between Boggs Leadership Conference in the and James on the question of same city, where Malcolm X gave Black Power, see Stephen M. his famous “Message to the Ward, “An Ending and a Grassroots” speech. Beginning: James Boggs, C.L.R. James, and the American đđđđđđ5 Revolution,” Souls: A Critical See A. Muhammad Ahmad, “The Journal of Black Politics, Culture, League of Revolutionary Black and Society, vol. 13, no. 3: Workers: A Historical Study” 279–302. For James’s definitive

e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g http://www.historyisaweapon. statement on the independent com/defcon1/rbwstudy.html. validity of black struggles for See also Dan Georgakas’s civil rights in the US, see C. L. R. eloquent recollection of Boggs James, “The Revolutionary and his influence: “The person Answer to the Negro Problem in who made the strongest the United States,” C.L.R. James immediate impression on us, on the “Negro Question,” ed. particularly among the Blacks Scott McLemee (Jackson: who would become the nucleus University of Mississippi Press, of the League of Revolutionary 1996) 138–47 Black Workers, was James https://www.marxists.org/arc Boggs. He had been through hive/james-clr/works/1948/re numerous rank-and-file volutionary-answer.htm.

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST Italy, organized by Roberto Man’s Land,” 46. University Press, 1977). On its đđđđđđ10 Giammanco, which coincided decline, see Ernie Allen, “Dying James and Grace Lee Boggs, with a wave of campus đđđđđđ23 from the Inside: The Decline of “CLR James: A Critical occupations in the cities of The literature on the Black the League of Revolutionary Reminiscence,” Urgent Tasks 12 Milan, Turin, and Trento. He and Power movement has exploded Black Workers,” in They Should (Summer 1981). Grace Lee Boggs provided in recent years. For an overview Have Served That Cup of Coffee: reports and analyses of the of the movement at the local Seven Radicals Remember the đđđđđđ11 Black Power movement and the level, see Rhonda Williams, ’60s (Cambridge, MA: South End James famously suggested that Detroit political scene, and this Concrete Demands: The Search Press, 1999), 71–109. For a James and Grace Lee Boggs visit made a lasting impression For Black Power in the 20th strong recent account, see needed to take “education on Italian activists. See Nicola Century (New York: Routledge, Elizabeth Kai Hinton, “The Black classes in Marxism” if they Pizzolato, Challenging Global 08/09 2015). For an enduring Bolsheviks: Detroit believed Marx had not grasped Capitalism: Labor Migration, examination of the stakes of Revolutionary Union Movements the link between automation and Radical Struggle, and Urban campaigns for community and Shop-Floor Organizing,” in unemployment in capitalist Change in Detroit and Turin control and empowerment, and The New Black History: development, one of the central (London: Palgrave Macmillan, the problems with confronting Revisiting the Second arguments of chapters 15 and 25 2013); Steve Wright, Storming entrenched municipal regimes Reconstruction, eds. Manning in volume 1 of Capital. See Heaven: Class Composition and and social welfare programs, see Marable and Elizabeth Kai Nicola Pizzolato, “The Struggle in Italian Autonomist Robert O. Self, American Hinton (New York: Palgrave Revolutionary Task of Self- Marxism (London: Pluto Press, Babylon: Race and the Struggle Macmillan, 2011), 211–28. Activity: A Note on Grace Lee 2002), 85, 132–33; Michael for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, Boggs,” Viewpoint Magazine, Staudenmaier, Truth and NJ: Princeton University Press, đđđđđđ32 January 4, 2016 Revolution: A History of the 2002), 215–55. James Boggs, “The Future https://viewpointmag.com/201 Sojourner Truth Organization, Belongs to the Dispossessed,” in 6/01/04/the-revolutionary-ta 1969–1986 (Oakland: AK Press, đđđđđđ24 Racism and the Class Struggle, sk-of-self-activity-a-note-o n- 2012), 44–45, 279–80. Nicola James Boggs, “The American 99. In addition to being a mentor grace-lee-boggs/. Pizzolato, “Transnational Revolution: Putting Politics in of sorts to the future core Radicals: Labour Dissent and Command,” in Racism and the leadership of the League, Boggs đđđđđđ12 Political Activism in Detroit and Class Struggle, 187. was a regular contributor to Boggs, The American Revolution, Turin (1950–1970),” International Inner City Voice, a newspaper 85. Review of Social History 56 đđđđđđ25 that catalogued RUM activities (2011): 1–30; Sergio Bologna, Bill Mullen, Afro-Orientalism and other community struggles đđđđđđ13 “Class Composition and Struggle (Minneapolis: University of in Detroit, and which functioned Paul Romano (Phil Singer) and in Italian Autonomist Marxism: A Minnesota Press, 2003). as a central coordinating tool. Ria Stone (Grace Lee Boggs), The Review of Steve Wright’s For a detailed account of the American Worker (New York, Storming Heaven,” trans. đđđđđđ26 importance of Inner City Voice as 1947) Arianna Bove, Strategies: Boggs, “The American the “focus of a permanent https://libcom.org/history/a Journal of Theory, Culture & Revolution: Putting Politics in organization … a bridge between merican-worker-paul-romano-r Politics, vol. 16, no. 2 (2003). Command,” 183. the peaks of activity,” see John ia-stone. Other pertinent texts John Watson of the League of Watson’s 1968 interview with include Charles Denby (Si Revolutionary Black Workers đđđđđđ27 Radical America, “Black Editor,” Owens), Indignant Heart: A Black would also travel to Italy in 1968, See the still-relevant line in “The recently republished by Workers’ Journal (Detroit: Wayne to speak at a conference on anti- City is the Black Man’s Land”: Viewpoint Magazine State University Press, 1978); imperialism. “Because Afro-Americans were https://viewpointmag.com/201 Marie Brant (Selma James) and the first people in this country to 5/01/13/black-editor-an-inte Ellen Santori (Filomena đđđđđđ17 pose the perspective of rview-1968/. D’Addario), A Woman’s Place For representative texts: Roman revolutionary power to destroy (Detroit: Facing Reality, 1970), Alquati, “Organic Composition of racism, I have been using the đđđđđđ33 later republished in a famous Capital and Labor-Power at word ‘black’ as a political Georgakas and Survin, Detroit: I pamphlet alongside an essay by Olivetti” (1961), trans. Steve designation … It should not be Do Mind Dying, 36. The authors’ Mariarosa Dalla Costa, The Wright, Viewpoint Magazine 3 taken to mean the domination of description of the RUM strategic Power of Women and the (2013) Afro-Americans or the exclusion approach is worth examining: Subversion of the Community https://viewpointmag.com/201 of other people of color from “More like the IWW of an earlier (London: Falling Wall Press, 3/09/27/organic-composition- black revolutionary generation of radicals than like a 1972). of-capital-and-labor-power-a t- organization” (50). For his trade union, DRUM had many olivetti-1961/; Raniero Panzieri, criticisms of cultural aspects of a popular đđđđđđ14 “Socialist Uses of Workers’ nationalism, see his essay revolutionary movement that For a thorough account of this Inquiry” (1965), trans. Arianna “Culture and Black Power,” in could go in many directions.” theoretical lineage, see Asad Bove, eipcp (2006) Racism and the Class Struggle, Haider and Salar Mohandesi, http://eipcp.net/transversal 63–69. đđđđđđ34 “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy,” /0406/panzieri/en; Mario Tronti, See “To the Point of Production: Viewpoint Magazine 3 (2013) “Lenin in England” (1964), in đđđđđđ28 An Interview with John Watson https://viewpointmag.com/201 Working Class Autonomy and the Boggs, “The American of the League of Revolutionary 3/09/27/workers-inquiry-a-ge Crisis: Italian Marxist Texts of the Revolution: Putting Politics in Black Workers,” reprinted in The nealogy/. Theory and Practice of a Class Command,” 182–85. Movement, 1969 Movement: 1964–79 (London: https://www.marxists.org/his đđđđđđ15 Red Notes, 1979) đđđđđđ29 tory/erol/1960-1970/watson.p For a careful presentation of the https://www.marxists.org/ref Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. df. For an excellent recent study concept of class composition, erence/subject/philosophy/wo Martin, Black Against Empire: of the League’s “radical see Salar Mohandesi, “Class rks/it/tronti.htm. The History and Politics of the imagination,” from their reading Consciousness or Class Black Panther Party (Berkeley: of social conditions in Detroit to Composition?” Science and đđđđđđ18 University of California Press, their robust legacy of cultural Society, vol. 77, no. 1 (January Boggs, The American Revolution, 2013), 69. production, see Jordan T. Camp, 2013): 72–97. 14–16. Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom đđđđđđ30 Struggles and the Rise of the đđđđđđ16 đđđđđđ19 Donna Murch, Living For the City: Neoliberal State (Berkeley: Boggs, The American Revolution, Ibid., 52. Migration, Education, and the University of California Press, 32. In some sense, the Rise of the Black Panther Party 2015), 43–67.

encounter between Boggs and đđđđđđ20 e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g in Oakland, California (Chapel Italian workerism did take hold James Boggs and Grace Lee Hill: University of North Carolina đđđđđđ35 at the level of practice. As Boggs, “The City is the Black Press, 2010), 179. See Adolph Reed Jr., Stirrings in writers including Nicola Man’s Land,” in Racism and the the Jug: Black Politics in the Pizzolato, Steve Wright, and Class Struggle, 50. đđđđđđ31 Post-Segregation Era Michael Staudenmaier have The best history of the LRBW (Minneapolis: University of demonstrated, there was a đđđđđđ21 remains Dan Georgakas and Minnesota Press, 1999), 117–62. robust exchange and circulation Paolo Carpignano, “U.S. Class Martin Survin, Detroit: I Do Mind See also Cedric Johnson, of ideas, texts, and experiences Composition in the Sixties,” Dying (Cambridge, MA: South Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: of struggle between the radical Zerowork 1 (1976): 7–32. End Press, 1998 (1971)). See also Black Power and the Making of milieus of Detroit and Italy James A. Geschwender, Class, African American Politics during the 1960s. In 1968 Boggs đđđđđđ22 Race, and Worker Insurgency (Minneapolis: University of embarked on a lecture tour of Boggs, “The City is the Black (Cambridge: Cambridge Minnesota Press, 2007). The

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST experience of the Congress of African People, the Black Power group led by Amiri Baraka, in supporting the election of Kenneth Gibson as the first black mayor of Newark, New Jersey is an exemplary case of the dynamics at work in the ascendancy of the black political class and the abandonment of the radical perspective of Black

Power. See Komozi Woodard, 09/09 Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

đđđđđđ36 For a clear presentation of Boggs’s account of “postindustrial” society, see Cedric Johnson, “James Boggs, the ‘Outsiders,’ and the Challenge of Postindustrial Society,” Souls, vol. 13, no. 3 (2011): 303–26. On the historical and structural relationship of unemployment and wage labor, see Michael Denning, “Wageless Life,” New Left Review 66 (November–December 2010): 79–97.

đđđđđđ37 To start: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Donna Murch, “Paying for Punishment: The New Debtors’ Prison,” Boston Review, August 1, 2015 https://bostonreview.net/edi tors-picks-us/donna-murch-pa ying-punishment.

đđđđđđ38 See https://policy.m4bl.org/. e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 9 — b y 2 0 1 đ P t i c k K g I n t r o d u c i “ B l a k P w e : A S f C p W h s T m H ” b y J g

02.01.17 / 18:16:50 EST