The Political Report to the Seventh Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party By Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the APSP © 2018 African People’s Socialist Party PDF Release, July 6, 2018 Table of Contents I. The Vanguard, The Advanced Detachment ........................................ 3 II. Our Party Solved the Problems of the Revolution ............................. 22 III. How the Party Survived the Counterinsurgency ............................... 39 IV. The Deepening Crisis of Imperialism: The Tipping Point of the Uneasy Equilibrium ................................................................................ 66 V. African Socialist Internationalist Dual Power versus New Afrikan Opportunism .............................................................................. 86 VI. The Regional Strategy: Putting Dual Power into Practice ................. 118 VII. The State of the Party, Part 1 ..................................................... 138 VIII. The State of the Party, Part 2 ..................................................... 169 IX. The Theory of African Internationalism ......................................... 191 X. The Question of the Nation ......................................................... 232 2 I. The Vanguard, The Advanced Detachment Uhuru! Comrades, delegates, observers and supporters of the Seventh Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party! During the five years since our Sixth Congress there have been many changes in the world and within our Party. All of them have served to reinforce the significance of the African People’s Socialist Party which for more than 45 years has provided leadership for the African nation and the oppressed and exploited workers of the world. Comrades! This Seventh Party Congress constitutes a firm salute to the indefatigable work of the African People’s Socialist Party to forward the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the leadership of the African working class. The continued, unrelenting dedication of our Party to complete the Black Revolution of the Sixties is alive in the theme of this Congress: “The African People’s Socialist Party, Vanguard! Advanced Detachment of the African Revolution.” Although our assertion that we are the Vanguard and Advanced Detachment sets us apart from other organizations, it is not something said in contention with others. This is a declaration to you, the members of our Party, calling on you to recognize the magnitude of your Party membership and the role you have volunteered to carry out in the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide. An example of an advanced detachment is a unit or group of soldiers that goes out first to lead and pave the way for the army in battle. For our Party the Advanced Detachment or Vanguard means that we have freely and enthusiastically stepped forward to lead the struggle for the total liberation and unification of Africa and our entire dispersed African nation wherever we are located. 3 Unlike any other African organization on the planet, our Party is very serious about seizing African state power on our African continent. Our goal is to wrest back our land, our stolen resources and the value of our stolen labor, under the leadership of the African working class in a liberated, socialist Africa. We understand that no oppressed people has ever become free without the intervention of an organization of trained, disciplined cadres who are committed to winning liberation by overcoming every obstacle, including our own limitations. We are a Party of professional revolutionaries. Our members have a variety of occupations. We are school teachers, barbers, construction workers, taxi drivers and the like. We are also students, prisoners, office workers and welders. We are cooks and even lawyers. But whatever our occupation, our profession is revolution. We are not dilettantes, simply committed to faddish political work in our spare time. In fact our profession as revolutionaries guarantees that there is no time when we are not advancing the struggle for the liberation of our people. This is what it means to be the Vanguard, the Advanced Detachment. The African People’s Socialist Party was created to complete the Revolution that had been crushed by a vicious U.S.-led counterinsurgency that defeated the Black Revolution of the Sixties as it expressed itself globally. There was no other organization in the African world that both survived the counterinsurgency and took up the task to go beyond survival and mere adaption to our inherited conditions of defeat. Our Party was bent on advancing the Revolution, the struggle for the total liberation and unification of Africa and the forcibly dispersed African nation everywhere. We have done much advanced work to resolve the many theoretical issues that otherwise would have been left unresolved by the ruthless colonial-capitalist defeat of our Movement just as the most important questions were surfacing in our struggle. We are practical revolutionaries. We are not an organization of consumers and dispensers of information. We have chosen to lead in every way. We have 4 chosen to be the Advanced Detachment of the African working class. We have chosen to be the Vanguard. Our Party understands that in order to change the world, to end our oppression we must have the organizational vehicle to do so and willing and trained cadres to carry out the task. This is why we are able to say African People’s Socialist Party and Vanguard in the same breath. The African People’s Socialist Party is boldly declaring our intent to forge the revolutionary process to defeat imperialism. We are not just talking; we are preparing to govern. We know parasitic capitalism was created and is maintained through its cruel, rapacious attachment to Our Africa and our people. Our intention is to overturn it and replace it through a worldwide socialist revolution based in the forcibly dispersed international African nation wherever we are located. The success of our Party is the critical factor in the liberation and unification of Africa and the entire suffering African nation. It is not a little thing. It is for this reason we were able to report to our Party’s Plenary in February 2012 that building the Party is not only a crucial task of the African People’s Socialist Party and our members, “it is also the fundamental task of the African Revolution at this critical juncture.” The African People’s Socialist Party: the revolutionary vehicle Years ago, in 1986, we summed up the qualities of our Party that makes it necessary to characterize the African People’s Socialist Party as the Vanguard in the pamphlet, “Build and Consolidate the African People’s Socialist Party.”1 We paraphrased a statement by former Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton when he was a revolutionary during the Black Revolution of the Sixties, which stated, “The party must be the ox upon whose back the masses ride.” 1 Yeshitela, Omali. “Build and Consolidate the African People’s Socialist Party,” Marcus Garvey Club, 1986. 2 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Selected Works, p. 46, International Publishers, 1986. 3 Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 467, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1961. 5 We pointed out that two 19th century European revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authored a similar statement: The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.2 We noted that it was left to V.I. Lenin, the 20th century Russian revolutionary, however, to successfully build and lead the revolutionary organization spoken of by Marx, Engels and later Newton. We quoted Lenin as saying, “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia,”3 and explained that Lenin set upon the task to build the revolutionary organization that indeed overturned Russia and became the prototype for revolutionary organizations of the oppressed and exploited peoples throughout the world. Such a party is the Vanguard, the Advanced Detachment of the working class. It is a party of communists, a party of a new type. Such a party is the African People’s Socialist Party. Our task then as now is to unite our people under the leadership of the black working class in the struggle for political independence, African liberation and socialism. This Political Report must win the unity of our Party members and the participants in our Seventh Congress to the recognition of the gravity of your role as cadres, the Advanced Detachment of the African Revolution. This Political Report will demonstrate the material basis, to be found in the history and accomplishments of the Party and our understanding of the acute crisis of the 2 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Selected Works, p. 46, International Publishers, 1986. 3 Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 467, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1961. 6 parasitic capitalist system, for having the confidence and courage to take up your proper role as leaders of the African Revolution. Our Political Report to the 2017 Party Plenary was titled “Putting Revolution Back on the Agenda!” In this report we began to show how the Party is the Advanced Detachment. First of all, the imperialist crisis, the uneasy equilibrium with which we have been contending, is manifesting itself with ever- greater clarity in the political arena, especially as seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and election. Secondly, the neocolonial African assimilationist tendency of our community, while opposed to the election of Trump, is making every effort to support the colonial-capitalist system. The assimilationists are doing everything possible to keep Africans loyal to the system and the electoral process—primarily to the ruling Democratic party from whence flows their economic security, semblance of power and influence.