| PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness ISSN: 1543-0855 Issue 5 (2007)  |
George Jackson completed Blood in My Eye—an extremely important piece of Black prison writing, of revolutionary theory, and of theory’s practical application—hardly a week before he was assassinated by guards at San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971. The book, “written literally in bedlam” on a plastic typewriter (Jackson xviii), spoke directly to the struggles being waged in the international context of the early 70’s, especially those in Amerika. And the gravity of Jackson’s words has not expired with time. The message has lived on and greets us today as the latest forms of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism—or what Jackson a theorized as Fascism—have expanded and become entrenched. We need these words, perhaps now more than ever.
In what follows, I will dig into a number of different topics that loom large in Blood in My Eye. I will try to critically flesh out some of the ideas and begin to bring them to bear on the situation we—people struggling for justice—face today. Because of the incredible depth and complexity that Jackson opens up for us, this project must be understood as a beginning, a work-in-progress, always in motion. Hopefully, this is a project that many of us are (or will be) undertaking because of the way it speaks to and potentially influences the struggles we are (or should be) engaged in today.
Racism and the Failure of the Vanguard
One theme that recurs throughout Blood in My Eye is a critique of what George Jackson calls the “old vanguard.” Largely in reference to the emergence of “international fascism,” Jackson draws attention to the failure of the vanguard to seize the opportunity for successful revolution that presented itself during the Great Depression of the late 1920’s. He castigates them for allowing capitalism to “regroup” and solidify itself in Italy and Germany, but most especially in the United States. Seeming to argue that their actions went beyond failure, he denounces this “vanguard” for betraying the international socialist movement by supporting a nationalist war and accepting compromise and reform.He writes, “The old vanguard parties copped out and supported a nation-state ruling-class war which wasted the blood and energy of their proletariats” (172). They “supported strikes that asked only for reformist measures,” and “excused themselves by claiming that they were ‘exploiting the inherent contradictions of monopoly capital’” (170). They “made gross strategic and tactical errors” as “compromises were made in the thirties, the forties, the fifties” (120).
While Jackson is writing as an African revolutionary; and while he is definitely writing with a look forward to the fight that will be “spearheaded by the blacks of the lower class and their vanguard party, the Black Panther Party” (174), his work is also directed toward the creation of a “united front.” The critique of the “old vanguard,” especially within the U.S., must be understood (perhaps fundamentally) as a critique of a white working-class vanguard. It is in this context that his discussion of racism may be most relevant.
Jackson views “contradictions” of class and race as closely related. He argues that racism, or more specifically, white racism, “is a matter of ingrained traditional attitudes conditioned through institutions” (111). In the U.S. it has served as “a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness evinced by a people made fearful and insecure by a way of life they never understood and resented from the day of their birth” (172). White racism has functioned “in the past to render the progressive movement almost totally impotent” (111).
While Jackson’s formulation of the functioning of white racism at the “psycho-social” level, as well as his delineation of three categories of white racists—the overt racist, the “self-interdicting” racist, and the unconscious racist (111), that is—deserves closer study, a closer study than I have engaged in here, it must be understood in the context of the project which he has undertaken. As mentioned above, Blood In My Eye is in large part a call for a united front. I do not argue that, in this sense, we should view his treatment of racism as compromised (Jackson certainly wouldn’t have intended that), but it should be understood as a platform for a “search” for the “reconcilable” (105). As such, perhaps we can agree that a more thorough examination of white racism and its role in radical organizing is called for if our aim is to move against the system in which “Black, brown and white are all victims together” (113).
David Gilbert’s piece titled, “Looking at the White Working Class Historically” might serve as a useful beginning to such a project. There he argues that the white left’s position has by far been one of opportunism that entails “an unwillingness to recognize the leading role within the U.S. of national liberation struggles, a failure to make the fight against white supremacy a conscious and prime element of all organizing and … a general lack of revolutionary combatitiveness against the imperial state.” Looking critically at the white left’s “best moments,” he points out that they have often “fallen into an elitist or perhaps defeatist view that dismisses the possibility of organizing” significant numbers of working class whites” (1).1
So, if the vanguard has failed us where do we turn now? Today, with fascism solidly established, what must be done? Jackson’s answer, as discussed above, is first: “There will be a fight.” The fight will involve a united front (assuming that the white left can confront its racism) spearheaded by a Black vanguard (174). It will involve “real union activity” that will cut the ties that bind the working class to its state-led labor elites. It will involve “reawakening” the people’s revolutionary consciousness (175). And it is along these lines that we proceed. . . .
Violence and Dialectical Materialism
“Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one”
— Marx, Capital
“Part of the myth that we must destroy is that “the people” reduced to a state of inexplicable misery still have a choice of action. Invariably their response will take some form of violence. I term this violence, individual or collective, not crime but antithesis”George Jackson is a self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fanonist.” This descriptor is useful when considering his conception of consciousness and violence. First, he asserts that violence is already widespread, already an inherent fact of life; in capitalism and especially for Black people in fascist Amerika, “violence is a forced issue” (126). He points to “the long history of the Amerikan business oligarchy’s penchant for violent repression of any forces that have threatened its centralist movement,” and “the very natural defense reflexes of any form of state power” (133). Here, we might see the influence of Marx who saw not only the history of the initial expropriation required for capitalist relations, “primitive” accumulation, “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire” (Marx 1967: 669), but also saw the day-to-day struggle over relative surplus value and socially necessary labor time as, inherently and necessarily, a violent one. The resistance to capitalism, of course, must also be understood as unavoidably violent (although Marx would predict that it would be less so).
— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye
It is to his “Fanonist” influences that we might look when considering the relationship between consciousness and violence. In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon writes, “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect” (94). In this sense violence is no longer just an inherent characteristic of a particular mode of production or a necessary ingredient in overthrowing it. Violence now figures as a question of consciousness, as a psychological element of revolt.
Jackson picks up this reformulation of violence, which now includes questions of revolutionary consciousness, and runs with it. He writes, “In blacks, the authoritarian traits are mainly the effects of terrorism and lack of intellectual stimulation.” “But it requires only the proper trauma, the proper eco-sociological set of circumstantial pressures to bring forth a revolutionary consciousness.” He says that “the communal experience will redeem them” (124). Carrying on from the conclusion of the previous section, we can now see that violent revolt plays a critical part in the development of revolutionary consciousness. Jonathan Jackson would add that the reaction to violent revolt is also crucial. He writes, “Repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on—their power to organize violence, our acquiescence” (23).
Considering Fanon, we might come back to the question of racism which we discussed earlier. If Fanon saw racism as a unifying force, bringing together rich and poor (white) Europeans, in the project of colonization, we can see a similar function of racism in Jackson’s fascist Amerika. Concerning the white working class, Jackson writes, “The huge mass of blue-collar workers seem to be working totally against themselves in their support of a system owned and controlled by a tiny minority.” These contradictory behaviors can be explained “by feelings of loyalty to race, by their identification with the white hierarchy and by their economic advantage over the oppressed races. They may be oppressed themselves, but in return they are allowed to oppress millions of others” (183).
This is a similar but slightly different perspective on racism than we dealt with earlier. Whereas Jackson began by pointing to the way racism played on psychological effects of capitalist modes of production and functioned to diffuse progressive movements, now we might see ways that racism materially benefited and benefits working class whites. Also, with this perspective we can view the relationship between race and class a bit differently. As we move out of the strictly economic sphere of processes of accumulation and class relations we encounter unavoidable considerations of race and racism. Fanon pushes aside the dialectical opposition of capital and labor to examine the “meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature”: native and settler (36). This relation is still highly economic in nature but unintelligible without an understanding of a racism that unites colonizing capitalists and the colonizing proletariat.
We began this section by hinting at another sense of violence which Jackson employs in his work: violence as antithesis. This, as I understand it, is a radical reworking of the traditional Marxist model for understanding the historical development of human society. In this model we have a thesis, which is a particular dominant idea of how the world should be organized, as in capitalism. The anti-thesis can be understood as an oppositional, contradictory idea, as in socialism. The synthesis is the product of the meeting and working out of these contradictory ideas which then comes to function as a new thesis, and so on..
Rather than view the dominant conflict driving change as that between the capitalist class and the working class—the traditional Marxist model focused on mode of production, rather exclusively—Jackson’s formulation pits the “oppressor” against the “oppressed.” In this model oppression operates from the position of thesis, the currently prevailing regime. Resistance operates from the position of antithesis, moving against, in opposition to oppression. The result, or synthesis, is increased oppression—perhaps more accurately termed repression—and “excesses.” As this situation now exists as the thesis, it is met with increased resistance in the form of increased violence. The process escalates either until oppression is defeated or the oppressed are destroyed. 2
An illustrative excerpt from the text reads:
[The system] also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression (Jackson 1972: 182).While similar formulations can be found throughout the book, there is never an explicit explanation of the development and reasoning of such a theory. An elucidation and examination of what work he is drawing on and how he is reworking it as he describes history as “clearly a long continuum of synthesizing elements” (182) is certainly important but will not be taken up in this essay.
George Jackson’s Understanding of Fascism
“Our purpose here is to understand the essence of this living, moving thing so that we will understand how to move against it”In order to understand George Jackson’s analysis of Fascism we must understand that it is, first and foremost, dialectical in nature. In a mode similar to Fanon’s—who we saw previously describe the colonial struggle as that between settler and native—Jackson, laboring to “examine things in their total sequence, see them in process” (49), views fascism as the result of the struggle between international capitalism and international socialism. He argues “that out of the economic crisis of the last great depression fascism-corporativism did indeed emerge, develop and consolidate itself into its most advanced form here in Amerika” (129). While it is in this study of fascism that we could, given more time, draw together the various considerations we’ve dealt thus far, for now we will only attempt to familiarize ourselves with the general points and arguments he develops.
— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye
We might begin by acknowledging that Jackson’s study of fascism engages, and rises out of, a much wider (Marxist and non-Marxist) discourse. It is clear that he critiques and sets out to redress “several old left notions” about fascism. First, he argues that analyzing the emergence and “consolidation” of fascism does not lead “to a defeatist view of history.” In fact, he says, it is necessary if we are to “regroup and even think of carrying on the fight” (129-130).
The second notion he critiques is the “old guard’s” definition of fascism “simply as an economic geo-political affair where only one political party is allowed to exist aboveground and no opposition political activity is allowed” (132). However, I am yet unclear as to whom he is engaging with. Wilhelm Reich and Franz Neumann are referred to explicitly—while “important,” the former tends to be “overanalytical to the point of idealism” and the latter is “too narrowly based” on Nazi Germany (130). But beyond that it isn’t clear to me whose ideas are being drawn on or critiqued and reshaped.
One way that we can come at the question of fascism is by differentiating between a number of different perspectives of Fascism. Jackson seems to do just this as he writes, “The importance or form of a particular political regime can never be understood simply as it stands alone. Its social and economic past must be investigated and clearly defined before the distinctive being of the political realm takes shape” (144). While each never gets explicitly isolated from the other it might be useful for us to identify some characteristics of each separately.
In regards to the economic dimensions of fascism, Jackson argues that the rebound from the Great Depression signaled the rise of fascist economy. In this argument the business cycle (or the accumulation cycle) and the trend toward monopoly capital (Jackson 1972: 136) take center stage in the historical development of capitalism: “The heart of the fascist economy is an attempt at control through centralization: monopoly capital control, price fixing, wage freezes, and carefully balanced foreign trade” (155).
The “political” dimensions of fascism seem to entail what Jackson terms “corporativism.” In one sense, this seems to refer to the marriage of state elites and industrial elites through the process mentioned previously: nation-state bureaucracies and international monetary institutions team up with industrial capitalists and (attempt to) take the steering wheel in the regulation of economic processes. However, it is important to remember that “the capitalist business cycle cannot be controlled. Inflationary spasmodic attacks, regional recession and depression pursue capitalism in all its forms like a nemesis, break its spirit, reduce its top heavy bureaucratic backbone to jelly” (Jackson 1972, 160).
Another sense of corporativism is its strategic incorporation and co-optation of potential challenge into the system through reform. Jackson writes, “Each economic reform that perpetuates ruling-class hegemony has to be disguised as a positive gain for the upthrusting masses” (118). Reform is carried out in the form of concessions “to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone between the ruling class and the still potentially revolutionary segments of the lower classes” (119). This sense of corporativism, or fascism, can bring us back to a discussion of racism which operates to unify capitalists and the white working class which they exploit. It can also bring us back to the failure of the old vanguard that allowed the formation of a fundamental ingredient to effective fascism: the partnership between capital and labor.
The “psycho-social” dimensions of fascism are, of course, tied closely to these considerations. Jackson identifies the presence of competitiveness, “a sense of insecurity and insignificance that is inculcated into the workers by conditions of life and work,” and that gives rise to “the resentment and the seedbed of fear” which is “patterned into every modern capitalist society,” and racism, “the morbid traditional fear of blacks, Indians, Mexicans” and the desire “to inflict pain on them when they began to compete in industrial sectors” (171). This racism and competitiveness are seen as necessary features for a fascist state.
Another key element of the “psycho-social” functions of fascism is the way that it plays on and encourages what he calls the “authoritarian syndrome.” While in blacks he sees this condition as relatively superficially engrained, for elements of the white working-class it seems deeply instilled. He describes it as a “loyalty syndrome” that “feeds on a small but still false sense of class consciousness and the need for a community.” He also describes it as a “morbid phenomenon that grows out of the psychopathology of mob behavior” (152). This functions to “degenerate and diffuse working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man’s herd instincts” and it is “at the center of totalitarian capitalism (fascism)” (152).
The connection to our earlier discussion of racism is obvious. The “authoritarian syndrome” can be seen as another perspective on the racism of working class whites. From here we might follow Jackson’s lead and ask, how do we raise a new revolutionary consciousness? Earlier we covered Jackson’s formulation for raising Black revolutionary consciousness. What are the possibilities for an anti-racist white working class consciousness, toward the desired united front? In what ways would the process be similar? In what ways would it differ?
We have only begun to understand the workings of fascism as Jackson formulated them. We can say, for example, that a close reading of his historical study of the rise of fascism in Europe and Amerika is fundamental to understanding the different “dimensions” which we have separated out for the sake of our analysis. We can also say that a study of fascism would be a useful platform on which to draw together questions of racism, violence, consciousness, and capitalism together. I am particularly interested in following the line of questioning set up at the end of the previous paragraph. How does the situation we face today relate to Jackson’s time and place? Where are the movements of fascism at today (because if Jackson’s fascism was developed then, it is certainly still strong)? And how do go about moving against it?
How do we raise revolutionary consciousness within a system “programmed against our old methods,” moreover? How do we raise consciousness in the white working class in order to begin to develop our United Front—against Fascism? How should our struggle to “combat racism while we are in the process of destroying the system” be organized and initiated?
With these sorts of questions as a guide, with the muscle of our brain and our arm, we “must prove our predictions about the future with action” (Jackson 1972, 7).
Works Cited
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1965.Gilbert, David. [1984]. “Looking at the White Working Class Historically.”
http://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/lwwch.html.
Jackson, George. [1972]. Blood in My Eye. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1990.
Sakai, J. Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. Morningstar Press, 1989. (Copies available from the Cooperative Distribution Service, Rm. 1409-93, 5 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60602.
Notes
1 Gilbert’s article seems valuable for the way it deals openly with racism in the white left and for its emphasis on the necessity of organizing large numbers of white people. However, I argue that we should be weary of his tendency to cling to the notion of a white working class proper, illustrated in his reading of J. Sakai’s Settlers.
2 This reading was developed from class discussion in ETS 352 with Professor Greg Thomas (Fall 2005, Syracuse University).
Citation Format:
Thor Ritz. “Studying Fascism, Violence and Failure: George L. Jackson’s Blood in My Eye,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 5, 2007.
Copyright © 2007 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
http://www.proudfleshjournal.com/issue5/ritz.html
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