Political Report to the Fifth Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party

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Table of Contents

1. Imperialists cannot stem tide of national liberation
2. The Party is the anti-colonial force in this time
3. African People’s Socialist Party is heir to Marcus Garvey
4. Pan-Africanism was the petty bourgeoisie; Garvey led the African working class
5. African Internationalism advances Garvey Movement, defines imperialism in crisis
6. African Internationalism shows the way forward
7. African Internationalism led on the issue of reparations
8. African workers must lead the struggle against parasitic capitalism
9. ASI is the basis for a genuine Communist International
10. White nation-state built on pedestal of slavery, colonialism
11. White communists must be committed to overthrowing white power
12. The African Socialist International is growing in Africa
13. ASI resolution adopted at Party’s First Congress
14. InPDUM leads mass resistance
15. Revolutionary National Democratic Program: the political basis for black power
16. Black is Back Coalition helps to advance RNDP
17. African People’s Solidarity Committee another vehicle against U.S. imperialism
18. White people must side with African workers not parasitic capitalism
19. AAPDEP a tool against parasitic capitalist development
20. AISO wins students to African Revolution
21. African Redemption Church: the Party’s response to religious idealism
22. Influencing and organizing African labor
23. Party must address issue of African mass incarceration
24. Formalizing the leadership of African women
25. Solve the problem of recruitment
26. Accountability and democratic centralism
27. Party’s Department of Agit Prop has made great leaps
28. Cadre development and leadership is key
29. Office of Economic Development builds culture of self-reliance

Solve the problem of recruitment

The one area of Party work that has been characterized by great ineptitude is that of recruitment. We have always accepted the fact that by its definition as an organization of the advanced detachment of our class, the African People’s Socialist Party is not a mass organization. However this should not mean that we do not use all our means to build the numbers of our Party. The fact that we are a cadre-based organization should not be used as an excuse for failure to recruit the greatest possible number of quality members into our Party.

The current crisis of imperialism has resulted in ever growing numbers of Africans seeking membership in the Party and a relationship with the movement under our leadership. Others who would seek membership in the Party either do not know of our existence or they do not know they can join the Party. Both of these things are due to shortcomings that must be immediately rectified.

The fact is that we do not have a viable, dynamic recruitment strategy. While most of us are bemoaning a shortage of forces necessary to take on the work, we have not initiated a strategy to resolve this crisis through bringing more forces into the Party.

Instead, in most instances, we resort to overloading a handful of mostly veteran and other experienced forces, with more and more work that tends to limit their capacity to carry out the tasks to which they are assigned. This Congress must change this. We must make recruitment as important and organized a part of the work as any other responsibility.

One attempt to guarantee that recruitment remains a focus of the Party has been to place it on our Standard Party Agenda so that every meeting has to deal with the issue. We must keep recruitment as an agenda item for our regular meetings, but its placement must be changed to reflect the seriousness of the question. Currently recruitment is the last item of the agenda. This means that often, if meetings last too long, the question of recruitment is tabled, while at other times it is merely dutifully touched on without much forethought.

I suggest that the issue of recruitment be placed in a prominent place on our agenda, under the heading of “Most Important General Campaigns of the Party.” This means that every Party organization at every level is obligated to develop Plans of Action for recruiting into the Party and movement wherever they are located. The placement of recruitment on the agenda also demands a thorough discussion of the issue instead of the cursory attention it now receives.

Although we demand a scientific approach to every other question, we neglect to do so with recruitment. This is true despite the recurrent cry from too many of our leaders and committees of too few people to do the work. The crisis of too few people to accommodate the increasing level and complexity of our work is not something that receives proper attention by Party and movement leaders. This must change. It must change because it is necessary for our work and it must change because the crisis of imperialism expresses itself in part by the growing numbers of people, Africans and otherwise, who are approaching us with a desire to join our Party and/or movement.

Throughout the U.S. and much of the world, Africans are in a permanent state of resistance. This is especially true of young Africans, whose very posture is one of resistance. The rebellious way they wear their clothes, their perennial stance of defiance and uniform opposition to various forms and levels of bourgeois authority, especially in the school system — all of this represents raw, politically limited and sometimes blind resistance. Almost everything young Africans do reeks of resistance to colonial authority. It is the task of the Revolution, the Party, to tap into this resistance providing leadership that will transform this resistance into a meaningful and powerful weapon in our arsenal.

This means that we have to do the work critical to recruiting this component of the population into revolutionary political life. Of course, the timely production and distribution of The Burning Spear that carries within its pages work that reflects the reality and contradictions that confront young Africans, will help us to do this. Also, we have to develop a systemic method of utilizing other forms of communication and information dissemination that are popular with our increasingly technologically savvy young people. Our department of Agitation and Propaganda has begun this process, but it is something that must be taken on with enthusiasm and seriousness equal to the significance of the task.

Our objective is to recruit the best sons and daughters of Africa into our Party. We have to recruit all who have the ability to make a meaningful stand on the right side of history into our movement.

Our own presence in our Party and movement is testimony of our views on the Party and Uhuru Movement as the correct vehicle through which our freedom can be won. Why then, would we hesitate to win our friends and families into our Party and movement? Why don’t we recruit those comrades and brothers and sisters who also demonstrate good political sense — those with whom we work with on mass committees or various projects — into the Party and movement?

We are also confronted with what to do with the contacts we make that do result in interest in our Party or movement. Systems and processes have to be developed that will result in human follow-up with every contact and inquiry. This will not mean that they will all result in recruitment. Obviously many will not. The fact that we live in a technological world that permits much discussion and requires little or no action will mean that many of the contacts will be people who simply want to join another discussion group that will explain the world with no responsibility to change it.

Nevertheless, there will be some, perhaps many, who will be serious in their desire to join with our Party precisely because we represent the continuation of a historical revolutionary trajectory on a higher level that is demanded by these times. We must develop organizational processes that will open the doors to these comrades.

I am proposing that our amended Party Constitution include an office with the sole responsibility of overseeing recruitment in our Party and movement as its permanent responsibility. This office will develop Plans of Action for a recruitment strategy that is the responsibility of the whole Party; it will mean that measurable goals are always attached to the issue of recruitment, that recruitment is not just an organizational afterthought that we are concerned with only when faced with the need for another body to take on our growing tasks.

It is true that the people are the real makers of history. The people make history in general and the people must be given the opportunity to make history through our Party, the organizational tool that is the primary weapon for human progress. Throw open the doors and let the people in. This call to recruit must not be taken as a call to organizational opportunism, to choke the Party and our movement with undesirables in order to be able to count more people in our ranks.

It is a call for achieving greater responsibility in our Party and ranks to win to and permit participation in our Revolution by the masses of people who are growing ever more conscious of the need for revolutionary transformation, sometimes because of our work.

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