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

Cadre development and leadership is key

More than anything we must give the greatest significance possible to the task of development of Party cadres. By this we do not mean simply filling the ranks of the Party with new forces or having sterile political education classes that will simply allow them to memorize text that can be regurgitated on command. We mean that members of our Party must be prepared to lead.

In practical terms this certainly means that they should be able to lead the particular areas of work for which they may be responsible. Their leaders must give them complete understanding of this work. But they must also be able to lead the masses in general — in their communities and on the campuses, in prisons and at their work places. They must be won to a love for the Revolution and an undying love for the Party that is the instrument through which the Revolution will be pursued and won.

This deep and profound respect and love for the Party is an absolute necessity for our cadres in this period. The Party cadres must be capable of recognizing the programs, commitments, strategy and struggles of the Party as their own. They must see the contradictions as well as victories of the Party as their own.

This means that subjectivism and opportunism, tendencies that place the interests of individuals at the forefront, have no place in Party cadres. The same is true of adventurism and other forms of individualism that substitute personal significance over the significance of the Party and our collective mission.

Individuals displaying subjective tendencies may be able to work in mass organizations under the leadership of the Party, and may be even in the ranks of the Party itself, but they cannot be considered cadres, regardless of the shortage of forces we may be contending with at any given time.

No matter how great or genuine the problems or significance of individuals, they cannot be allowed to undermine the responsibility to place the interests of the Revolution and the Party first, above all else. This means that within the Party all our members must aspire to becoming cadres.

Cadres must be taught to understand that the Party is everything, without which our people will be left with another 500 years of misery, should we survive the desperate aggressions of this imperialism in crisis at all. If there is to be independence, unification and socialism in our lifetime it will be because our Party, deeply united in our mission, is successful. This cannot happen with an organization of whining self-serving, individualistic members incapable of seeing beyond their own real or perceived pain or genius.

Our cadres recognize the value of democratic centralism as the main organizational principle of the Party. They recognize why this is so and how this reflects the fact that we are an organization of unity of will and action, something that is absolutely necessary for making the revolution that will end the misery of our people.

Our cadres understand that to come into the ranks of our glorious Party is to submit to its will, to make the will of our Party our own will as opposed to the tendency of attempting to make our own will the will of the Party, as has been occasionally demonstrated by some Party members, past and present.

Cadres must be schooled in the history of our Party that fought decades of struggles and held true to revolutionary principles while others all around us abandoned the field of battle in the face of our imperialist enemy. They must not only know the history in terms of dates and places of struggles, but cadres must also be made familiar with the tactics and strategies employed by the Party during various periods and in different struggles. This will arm them with a bank of experience that they can call on when faced with similar circumstances.

Our cadres must also know the history of our Party as it is represented by the exemplary stances of various comrades who have undergone sacrifices including alienation from friends and family as well as jailings, beatings, bombings and other attempts on their lives. The history should include the examples of those comrades who have traveled throughout the U.S. and the world to organize the African resistance under the most difficult circumstances. It must be a history that helps to steel cadres for the hardships and victories to come.

Our cadres must be taught African Internationalism. They must study the critical theoretical documents of our Party, especially those developed to explain the world as we were involved in struggle to change it.

This would obviously include texts such as the Constitution of the African People’s Socialist Party and Political Reports to the First, Second, Third, Fourth and this Congress.

We must also study “The Dialectics of Black Revolution” and “Political and Economic Critique of Imperialism and Imperialist Opportunism.” The reports to InPDUM conventions as well as the Main ASI documents must also be studied.

Obviously these are not the only materials that should be used for study. Others include works on political economy and dialectical and historical materialism.

They also include materials that teach cadres how to be in an organization of this type, based on principles of revolutionary discipline. However, we must remember that the best school for the development of cadres is actual, practical struggle. Otherwise we create forces that are incapable of utilizing anything that they learn. We continue to be guided by the understanding that practice is primary and that it provides the only meaningful test of theory.

Our leaders must organize their work to accommodate the struggle for the development of our cadres. Every leading committee and department must play its role. Indeed, I am calling on all our Local and Regional Party leaders to present plans of action for the development of cadres in their areas of responsibility. This is also necessary for our mass organizations, for InPDUM and AAPDEP as well.

Obviously the primary organization for carrying out the task of cadre development at this time is Agitprop. This is something that Agitprop is working on now, but it must be taken on with demonstrably greater urgency. I believe that recent developments in Agitprop give it the ability to quickly devise a Plan of Action for cadre development and I am requiring this to happen expeditiously.

Also, the important role of the Party organizations themselves in this issue of cadre development must not be overlooked. For it is in the Party organizations that we have the greatest opportunity to combine theory and practice.

The Party is organized into committees that give it a division of labor that provides ability for greater efficiency. But this is only if the various committees and departments assume full responsibility for their areas of work. The structural division of labor allows the Party to predict the success of the whole Party by the role of its component leading parts. Hence, if plans are made for the Party and one or more components of the Party, its division of labor, does not enthusiastically and successfully carry out its responsibility the entire plan can be undermined.

Now more than ever the Party must have leaders who are farsighted problem solvers. It should not be necessary to spell out every possible eventuality for leaders of specific areas of the Party structure. They should be the experts in these areas and know them better than anyone. They should be anticipating problems and planning for successes even when no one else in the Party is concentrating on their area of work.

If we move correctly in this period, if we do our work to build cadres and organize the Party rank and file, putting The Burning Spear in the hands of the masses, it will help to recruit new members into our ranks to assist with the tasks with which many of our committees are faced.

However, we cannot continue to use the excuse of too few forces in our leading committees. This is simply one of the tasks that has to be solved by the leaders who head up the committees. Otherwise we will always be explaining away our failures because of not having the people to do the work, when in reality the absence of these forces should be informing us of another critical aspect of the work that has to be taken on.

This paper has explained some of the requirements of cadre development. However, I want to add to the context of this discussion by reminding us that our cadres are the primary force through which we seek to capture and exercise power. They are the forces through which we intend to organize the revolutionary national democratic government and to lead and contend for power on every front.

Our cadres will be the foundation of all our mass work, especially in InPDUM but also AAPDEP and the mass organizations that have not yet been built through which the leadership of the Party will be expressed. Our cadres must be capable of finding the line of march and when necessary, to create organization that will increase the influence of the Party beyond our ranks.

Agitprop must contribute to a thirst for knowledge among our ranks. It must help us to create our own working class intellectuals. It must reestablish a culture of constant political study. Agitprop must also equip Party cadres with the political education and technical skills to make them capable and valuable, not only to our general Party work, but also to the masses we want to organize or who may already be in organization.

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