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JACKSON
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Blood in
Blood in
My Eye
George L. Jackson

Random House
New York
Copyright © 1972 by Stronghold Consolidated Productions, Inc.
Preface Copyright © 1972 by Gregory Armstroi
All rights reserved under Inverational American
Copyright Conventions. Publishedin <'Unsited Sta
Random House, In, New York, and Saou in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Tor
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jackson, George, 1941-1971.
Blood in my eye.
1. _Black power-—U. S, 2. Revolutions—U. S
x Pius U.S. 4, U. S.—Social conditions—
1. Title
Eres. 615.328 1972 322.42 79-37423,
0-394-4791

copyrighted material:
thdrawal” and
ward A United Fron,” both by George L. Jackson; “Statement by Huey P. New
ob
Newton.

© 1971 by Black Scholar.

Revolution” by John Gerassi, from The Coming of the New International: A

Revolutionary Anthology, edited by John Gerassi. Copyright © 1971 by John
Gerassi.
Manufactured in the United States of America by Haddon Craftsmen,
Scranton, Pa.
Designed by James McGuire
98765432
First Edition
 To the black Communist youth—

To their fathers—

We will now criticize the unjust with the weapon

My dear only surviving son,
I went to Mount Vernon August 7th, 1971, to visit the grave site
of my heart your keepers murdered in cold disregard for life.

for a headstone—and two extra sites—blood in my eyel!!

 Preface

" his introduction to George Jackson’s Soledad Brother

wrote, “Nothing has been willed, written
a for the sake of a book...ot is both a weapon or
liberation and a poemof love.” This book, too, is a weapon,
but one entirely willed and ‘purposeful. tt was completed

August 21, 1971. It was sent out of the Adjustment Center

ith fic i i i icati almost as if the
author knew that he would never li
in print. ibing i George said,
“T’m not a writer, but all of it’s me, the way I want it, the
PREFACE

way I see it.” ” What he saw and what he wanted, the central
passionof his life, , the revolutionary war of the
people against thet oppressors
op s, a war which grew out of
“perfect love and perfect hate.

“T’ve been in rebellion all my life,” he wrote in on

his letters. For a young black growing up in the ghetto, ine

law came at fourteen when he was arrested in

Chisago for stealing a purse. From then on, his life was a
constant succession of arrests, juvenile homes, paroles and

Fe
s
more arrests. At age eighteen he was convicted of stealing
$70.00 fr ion. His lawyer
ould make a deal with the D.A. if George confessed to
second degree robbery. He told George it was

expense of a trial, and they will give you county time.”

Instead he was given an indeterminate sentence—one year to
life.

The first time I was put in prison, it was just like dying.
Just to exist at all calls for some very heavy psychic
adjustment. Being captured was the first of my fears. It
may have been an acquired Characteristic built up over
centuries of black bondage.*

The turning point in his life came when

* Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson.

 PREFACE

I met Marx, Tenin, Frosky, Engels, and Mao and

they redeemedme. For the firs!st four years, I ‘studied

We attempted to transform the black

criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mental-
ity.*
He alone in his discovery. At the same time,
otherx prsoners were just beginning to discover Marx, Fanon
10, who vided them
th with a new way of regarding
themectve and ‘heir gl tanda: moral
judgment. “T have been in rebellion all my life. I just didn’t
know it.” The social insights of Man
jarx and others made it
possible for them

erhood.
In prison, commitment to revolution has a special

ary the prison authorities means an almost permanent

ceva of Paroles tN ne from’ the other Prisoners, sitar
im security v the

food. It brings dow: entire punitive cand repres-

sive force of a completely retains syste
ide prison George practiced a very special kind of

* Ibid.
PREFACE

devotion and love. When convicts talk about him, they often
se the term “for real.” Many inmates “murder mouth” and
sell wolf tickets”; they do a lot of heavy talking, but w!
it comes down to the point of action, they disappear. George,
however, was as good as his word. Whenever he made a
statement of some kind, it would be followed by action. If
ictim of i insi ison, there was

sid
Most of his “offenses” inside prison—the reasons why

solitary confinement, including the infamous strip cells*

Sol le dad’s “o” wing, tthe tereasons why he was never paroleed
inmates.
ticularly dangerous to the© Prison authorities was this enor-
mous talent as an organi

t to be together. We have got to be in a

me of those whites are willing to work with us against

*A 6 by 8 cell with no protection from wet weather, deprived of all

‘on the cold canvas floor.

 PREFACE

the pigs. All they got to do is stop talking honky. When

the races start fighting, all you have is one maniacgroup
against another. That’s just what thepi

th: _ ;
y 8
tionary groups is one of the major themes of this book.

Try to remember how you felt at the most alr

deepest dej

to the ball, ee wee hours a

ked down” inside his cell, George devoted himself

to sud. “His painfully seid scholersi in the fiel ds of.

professors. But Sometimes, for days on end, reality itself

would vanish from his

I would be sitting in a special locked isolation cell,

sometimes
i e lock welded shut, and there
would be no one to talk ost thes sound of screaming
voices. And because there is tact,
depend on books. No contact with people. Special lock
welded on Nobody around. I’m strictly by
myself. The only friend I had was : ook. Sometimes I’d
find myselfe talking out | to or. I’d sort of
wake myself up and I'd hear myself talking to this other

*Unpublished interview.
Unpublished interview.

xiii
PREFACE,

person. T guess it was like some kind of wish fulfillment.

When asleep at night, I still find myself talking to
those guys.

Typing laboriously on a plastic typewriter, George pub-

lutionary pottes from a Marxian pointof view.

le paid a heavy price for his activities. When the Prison
couldn’t break him through solitarycconfinement, they
i illed b:

wi
some good.” Once he remarked that there had been twenty

cell he was always ready to parry an attack.

But nothing could mitigate the pain of confine-

ment.
And the years stretched out and a whole decade
passed.
n the context of his life what happened next had

January 13, 0, a new exercise yard was

in tl axi security wing of Soledad
rison. Eight whites and seven blac! kin-

broke out between the whites and the blacks. Without

any warning, a tower guard who had a reputation as a

*Unpublished interview.
 PREFACE.

crack shot began to fire. He fired four times and three

black inmates were ki killed. O: ite prisoner was
wounded in t in by a shot that ricocheted.
survivors claim that one of the wou me
bled to deathon the concrete floor. Three days later the
nterey County Grand Jury found that the killings
were justifiable homicide. Less than hal: hour after
nounced on the prison radio, a white
guard, (not the guard who had fired the ts) was
found beaten to death. All the convicts in wi in,
we n. On
February 28, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and
George Jackson were formally charged with the mur-
r,
ie prison authorities accused George because, in
theie wor
rae “he was the onl who could have done
it.” With their total power overthe inmate population
er
hi
kind of testimony they needed when the trial came.

George’s parents came to visit him they used

in Tr

Ge
the murder of the guard on the 16th of Janu-
PREFACE

ary, Jonathan began to get his first taste of Amerikan jus-

tice.
Jonathan himself wrote:
People have said that I am obsessed with my brother’s
case, and the movement in general. A person that was
close to me once said that my life was too wrappeduw
in my brother’s case, and that I wasn’t cheerful sroh
for her. It’s true I don’t laugh very much ai
ave but one question to ask all you people andy renee
atjnink like you, what would you do if it was your

On August 7, 1971, Jonathan Jackson entered a court-

room in San Rafael, California, and attempted tofree three
black convicts, one of whom on trial for assaulting a
ard. med the convictsaiand t ook five hostages, in-
cluding the aassistant dst attorney and the jude, nm
dressed in his robes. He dieda few minutes later
of bullets inside a vented ¥van that was being used fort the -
getaway.
“We're taking over,” he said. At seventeen, Jonathan
had steady come
0 to the conclusion that the only way he

experience of life in Amerika had convinced him that the

ly way s
“You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries.”

a criminal, because he no longer recognized the legitimacy

of white law.
 PREFACE,

When his sister heard the news of his death, she cried
out, “But he was only a boy.” Her mother corrected h

n
&
. Jonath:
He was going to live like a m:
After his death, George wrote
w in a letter:

Thaven’t shed one tear, I’m too proud for! that, a beaut
ful, Deautifal man-child with a sub-machine gun
knew how to be with people. I loved Tonatha, but he
death ony sharpens my fighting spi
id just to nave own thal he was flesh of
my tah tlood ofmy blo

ws conference three days after, he said, “I loved

that wr tT was the first to stand him up in | his crib. Not a
crib,re
I wanted to teach him how to fly. I'll think of him now as
I think of Che Guevara.”
George Jackson’s last book, Blood in My Eye, speaks

and his brother, Jonathan, but the living dead in all of the
jails and
nd ghetfos s of this country. It speaks with the voices
of the who have already given themselves up for dead
and who | have nothing left to give—except a death for the
people.
It is very much a book by a man who considered himself
doomed. In his last letters, aeoree wrote
Ww about the judicial
process as “the endgame.” He had foreseen and foretold his
assassination at San Ouentin a thousand times (“‘ten yeat

xvii
PREFACE,

of blocking knife thrusts and the pick handles of sadistic

pigs’).
The fact that the author of this book lived with his death
for so many years gives his book a kind of special impor-
tance. But it would be a mistake to consider it simply as the
work of an individual—George always refused to consider
himself an individual. Untold thousands both inside and

‘is book was written Herally |in bedlam, with the au-
thor Tovkea |in solitary for a minimum of twenty-three and
a half h a day, in the midst. of raucous screaming that
never stopped—the s a prisoners being beaten, the
screams of men retreating from intolerable pain into mad-
ness.
a book about taking the revolution that George
worked and died for inside prison out into society at large.
His message to his revolutionary orothers is crystal-clear.
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of
our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that
thai t generations

in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for
the .
George Jackson was shot and killed inside San Quentin

xviii
 PREFACE

on August 21, 1971. The convicts who were with him inside

ficial
sacre.* This would only have been in keeping with the char-
acter of his entire life.

gory Armstrong
~Outaber 15, 1971

shortly after the author’s death.

 Blood in
My Eye

st accept the eventuality of bringing the

228

nees; accept the

| closing off of critical
ar

house-to-| Hose arches ‘ked in, the

;ommonness of dea’
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

March 28, 1971

Letter to a Comrade*

My ister i f your i d the political

| h words and your
messages, I sense that we are still together. We’ve gone
thrown approximately the same changes since they sepa-
rated us—the confused flight to national _fevolutionary
iafrica, through the riot “stage of re BI

&
Amerika. We have finally arrived at scientific coolutionsry
as hopii

med bor
morgue. But I was almost certain that wouldn’t be y
destination, brother.
Though I no longer adhere to all of Nechayev’ 's revolu-
(too cold,
chology; revolution should be love-inspired), his first line
contains the incontrovertible, truth, the black revolutionary
is twice doomed.
A times I wonder about the present state of revolution-

*A prison comrade of the author's who must remain anonymous.

Fa
Nechayev, an early Russian nihilist. His catechism can be found in
Zerat The Story of Terrorism, by Robert Payne.
GEORGE JACKSON

ary black consciousness. It’s really annoying to hear blacks

eer fo
vince Thee are the really dangerous People. When we
‘owner’
to fig ht. Theey willuse the tactic ‘ ane left- wing causes” to
protect their bosses’ “white right-
You mustst teach ‘that socialism: ornmanalst is as old

East Afri s dtod

sion in the original East African tongues). The only inde-
pendent African societies today are socialistic. Those which
allowed capitalism to remain are stillneo-colonies. Any
black who would oe fend an African aay dictarorship is
uch a fas as Hoover. Are
people are living ‘under these socalled rcv vi
cultures? The Congo and the entire West Coast ica
i i sana
nated by Westernized black right-wing puppets. I'm
thly si h i (young ones too).
They'll be your main source of opposition in communizing
*Fictional hero of the Langston Hughes stories.—Ed.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

the black colonies here. The “good white people” who own
things will always givethem a few inches in their paper
other media. That w fascism works, influencing the
asses and institutionsbrows elites.
talked to several black ‘lawyers when I got. this last case
of but they
abandoned me the moment I attacked Anglo-Saxon law,
capitalism and the Blues, and then went on ognize
Black ers, Kwame mah, Sékou Touré, Nyerere
nd Odinga, instead of Kenyatta, Lumumba ins' of that
ju ao
Fre etown. That will be your main source of opposit tion—the

subtleties; some are simply confused in an honest way.

Some of t! the arguments they | Pose will center around the

n’t be socialism, communism, or capitalism.” Often

they'll leave out the denunciation of capitalism altogether.
You must explain the economic motive of human social
. y hich
ocieties can e i production
of their needs: "the various * types of totalitarian methods

and the czar method. Fala is people’s gov-

ernment, an le’s government and economics is social-
ism, Slalectial and materialist. How cee can societies be
governed? There must be hierarchies or the elimination of
hierarchies. Then show that the greatest contributions to
GEORGE JACKSON

cealitarianism came from Africa, the greatest and the first

rade, you will encounter the faint-hearted

and ile sical types like Ali/Clay, entertainer and tool of th
capitalist cliques. Their line is: ““Ain’t nobody but black folks
die i lution.” Thi letel
looks the fact that we always have done most of the ying,

USS. foreign wars. The point is now to construct a situation

where someone else will join in the dying. If it fails and we
have to do most of the dying anyway, we’re certainly no
worse off than before.
We find ourselves today forced into a reexamination of
the whole nature of black revolutionary consciousness and
its relative standing within | a class society steeped in a form

est variation in skin ton

The great majority ‘or blacks reject racism. They hav.
never found it expedient, wise or hoonoralable to take on the

stress that for blacks a concern for the * “survival” of the race
is not, patently not, definable as r:
explanation for social shenomenon, past, present
or future, must present valid arguments and proof. As we
travel back into history, honest descriptions and definitions
will inevitably overlap. They will differ depending on their

as little subjective intcrpretanon as possible from today

world. The present, due to its staebering complexities, is
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

predic-
tions about the future with action
So all my comments must ‘be considered the merest

must consider; a other comments in this area. They merit

atention only in that as s s I mi ake tem it| won’t be
onset befor eI go® about ‘roving
slave, the social vhenomenen "at engages my
whole consciousness
« is, of course, revolution
me slave—and revolution.
orn to a premature death, a menial, subsistence-wage
workes odd-job man, the cleaner, the caught, the man under
hate! es, without bail—thal t'ssme, the ee victim. Any-

e tomor:
tion yesterday can kill me today with complete immunity.

leath. In every sense of the term, in every sense that’s real,

I'm a slave to, and of, propert:

Revolution within a modern industrial capitalist society

an only mean the overthrow of all existing property rela-
tions and the dest: all institutions that directlyo1
indirectly support existing woperty relation
ions. At must in-

endorse the present state of property relations or who stand

GEORGE JACKSON

to gain from it. Anything less than this is reform.

Government and the infrastructure of the enemy capi-

lem: property relations. Otherwise there is no revolution.

Reshuffle the governmental Personnel and forms, without t

you have Produced he another reform stage in the id

to alter
ances, to remedy the critical det of an sdvanced indus-
trial state orderedo1 ntiquat greed-confused
motives, rests with control over traduction et distribution
f wealth. If the 1 percent who presently control the wealth
of the society maintain their control - ‘ter any reordering of
the state, the changes cannot be s: ‘0 be revolutionary.

The Prerequisite for a successful popular revolution is

junk ma

e pop i
all classes into one, that is, destroy the class state!*

n Gerassi, The Coming of the New International (New York:

World Publatine 1970),p.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

Revolutionary change means the seizure of all that is

held by the | percent, and the transference of these holdings
into the hands of the remaining 99 percent. If the 1 percent
are simply displaced by anotother 1 Percent, revolutionary
the fact
of the modern corporate anita state can only mean the

ics and cultur

the mechanics of distribution must be reversed. we prob-
hose of the
entire 99 percent who are being manipulated, can never be

‘e the personal property of an extraneous minority moti-

vated solely by the need for its own survival. And that ex-
traneous minority will never consider the proper solutions.

Fourth Reich—a Lieutenant Governor of California orating

public on poverty: “One-third of the Population will al
ill-clothed, and ill-fex
lems are really conditions that we cannot change or ao not
want to incur the disadvantagesof anging.”” His e-
thie statement was a calculated vnerstateren t.
ie slave, revolution is i tive, a love-
inspire It’s aggressive. It isn’t
weool or cautious. It’s bold, audacious, violent, an expres:
ion
eho raising a fundamental contradiction. If revolution,
and especially revolution in Amerika, is anything less than
GEORGE JACKSON

an effective defense/attack weapon and a charger for the

le to mount now, it is meaningless to the great majority
nce on the

intended are under attack now. If the proponents of revolu-

into the practical, if they continue to debate just how to call

i i the
revolutionary ideal will be the loser—it will be rejected.
cipal reservoir of revolutionary potential in
Amerika les 1in wait inside the Black Colony. Ht ts oneer
sl nu-
merical strength.
lence of the Productive system, and the fact ori itspresen

base of the whole class structure into the forefront of any

black. Closeto 40 pe cent of all industrial support

roles aare filled by blacks. Blacks are still doing the work of

are all that have been alte:

The Black Colony can rand will influence the fate of

ary rage actually could carry at least the opening stages of

oe , 4 _ =
counting some of
racism. However, if we are ever going to be “successful in

10
 BLOOD IN MY FYE

tying black energy and rage to the international socialist

revolution, we must understand that racial complexities do
exist.
When the Minister of Defense and Servant of the Peo-
ple’
and the liberal-left revisionists for their failure to devise a
policy

‘ollective ideal
other

by a particularly vicious and immediately threatening ra-

cism.
My brother Jonathan, a communist revolutionary to the
core, writing me in June of 1969, theorized as follows

We are quite obviously faced wit!* an 0 organize

some small defenses to the more flagrant et abuses of the
this in a military sense. The period
Zgz
B

of disorganinized nctivity, of riots andral, and purely

to happen. While we await the° precicise moment when all

*Huey P. Newton
GEORGE JACKSON

of capitalism’s victims will indignantly rise to destroy

the system, we are being devoured i in family lots at the
is thi

r begun

Both Huey and Jonathan are understandably calling for

racial genocide. Jonathan is calling from his grave, adding

another voice to the many thunderous graveyard affirma-
tions which, for us blacks, speeds the revolution to its ulti-
mate issue.
In order to develop revolutionary consciousness, we

the highest point by stimuli from the vanguard elements. We

recognize and apprecialate the decades of hard, , sometimes
the olde
socialist partis. Perhaps we wouldn’ 't exist at all were it not
for their effort:
armony wit! te
impetus and greater intellectual and physical energy if the
forces of reaction are not to win another extended reprieve.
A joint effort will make the task of overwhelming our com-

12
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

mon enemy all the simpler. But if our present differences

the
rect way, then we will be forced to take the foundation of
correct ideals and theory into our own hands and build a

circumstances surrounding our lives. In his Guerrilla War-

fare Lenin wrote: “ “New forms of struggle, unknown to the
8

forms oftstrveele that we are now unable to foresee.”

er words, the old guard must not fail to under-
stand "hat circumstances change in time and space, that
here can be nothing
othin; dogmatic about revolutionary theory.
It is to be born out of each popular struggle. Each popular
1 histori i new ideas.
In the words of John Gerassi: “Building from one to the
other, eventually the revolutionary cadre would become
equipped with a theory rooted in experience, broadened by
fistoriea! knowledge, tested by combat, and fortified by re-

ter ten or fifteen generations of laboring or

ona subsist:
ence level
8 P fail t
ishi
warfare: We simply
We question a strategy har seems to have stopped short

*V. I. Lenin, Guerrilla Warfare.

$Gerassi, op. cit, p. 42.
GEORGE JACKSON

of providing a tactic for growth and for survival. Terror

tactics like lynching will never be allowed to work on us. If
terror is going to be the choice of weapons, there must be
Pp
plex be conscious of th:
The sujuperstructure any edifice that iisasS extensive and

sive ayer for ane for possible improvement of metho .

e foundation of our strategy. We have stud-
ied Man nd ‘tenn for ad ti i
modern industrial state. We’ ani:
trained our bodies for the ordeal of
vat anguard elements understand the simple importance of

tion with the core issues on a broad basis precede hard

to revolutionary
acceptance of the fact that there is no alternative, or that the
alternative is less inviting th i
Oo

chieve our ends? And how will we know when this ili is

it isn’t the fault oft the people it’ 's the fault of the vanguard
party. The people will never come to us and say, “Let’s
fight.” There have never eeren any spontaneous revolutions.
They were all staged, |manufactured, by people who went to
the head of the s and directed them.
The Hiberalist ‘‘lopan “You can’t get ahead of the peo-
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

me is meaningle ss. From what other Position can one

e rear? Rearguard leadership?! A typical Yankee
innovation. I think most of these inesponsble excuse-slo-

colonial wars of liberation, the vanguard elements did get

ahead of the People anand pull. There is no other way in
forward mass mor

A vanguard which fears that consciousness will outstrip

spontaneity, which fears to put forth a bold “plan” {hat t
would co iti those

with rearguard
not ymplying that
tha ine vanguard party act out the
ir

who control no more wealth than some clothes, perhaps a

worthless automobile, and a roof of sorts over their heads,

*V.I. Lenin, Selected Works.

GEORGE JACKSON

least Contente ed.

e task of a revolutionary is toto make revolution.”
fact
snake" and the meaning comes through a little better for
us.
The fascists have deliberately manufactured a false
sense of security by various stratagems. They will never per-
mit conditions to go of their control as lo:one 2as “bread
and circuses” appease. owe clearly cannot dodgeour respon-
sibilities by giving credence to slogans built sround «“condi.
tions.

uncharacteristic fit of total madness. Shouldwe wait for

in the 1930s also. The government’s bread lines were backed

that decade, but the “conditions weren’t right.” The

guard elements betrayed people of this nation and the
world as a result of their rire to seize the time. The

alist expansion, this time carried out by the greatest

imperialist of all time—t the Yankee brigand. There ¥woul
ituation’
of like situations) if we had taken ourselves \oriewety then,
when all conditions were favorable. It was a slightly below-

16
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

conscious desire to avoid doing the us. further violence, and

in particu-
lar, that robbed us of our chance to win on that occasion
when, ironiically, @ win would have cost ” little. There
n’t then even the illusion of well-bei
a veport written by Comrade Tonathan Jackson in
November of 1969 just before Fred Hampto n’s aland Mar!

Avenue Panther headquarters in Los Angeles,* he says,

It’s come down on us hard now. There are twenty ie

ent breeds of pigs patrolling every street in the colon:
her ‘e. I mean every section of the city that can be said
be predominately Black is saturated with the estab-
lhe 's demented gunslingers, of every sort. They’re
all nervous an ingerous as king cobras. Spies, double
agents, entrapment, a war of electronics, house: 101
st hes, doors being kicked in. I fe on
these issues. just not going S
fighting them by myself. If they kick down the door of
a house I’ve stopped at tl they'll fall in dea e mm
Browning weighs something like 2 pounds. I’m not car-

"Two Black Panther Party leaders killed during a raid by the Chicago
poli i A
Clark concluded that the purposeof the police raid was to “search and
destroy.” It also concluded that viampton had been deliberately killed by
shots fired at close range while he was totally unconscious. The shoot-out
headquarter even
throwing the police's own tear-gas canisters back at them. ae
GEORGE JACKSON

rying this extra weight around my belt for nothing. It

s a 13-round clip, I keep one in the barrel, 14 shots.
Save me a cell on murderer's row there, I could have 14
murder charees any day now.
Try to get the Piet ‘ure—down every through street
they cruisejust a moments apart at most. Some-

use said flamethrower, give him also two comrades in

arms, one equippedwith an M60 machine gun, the
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

other an anti-tank rocket launcher. Pigs are punks. Give

cc

\ess—shor they’re too visible.

etimes what can we do against “ a hes» pigs.”oT
state it simply—we put them to death. 'y look at mi
as if to say, ““You’re nuts, man.” W! y
explanation their eyes go blank, or they are distracted
Ny SK e blocks down the et. y’re not
hearing then. So what’s happening? The things I say (for
us, smile) seem too fantastic for the even listen. Yet
"t seet stic for them to go against the
LA wi snubbed-nosed revolver. There’
it
the day of the real dragon is coming. Long live 2 the
guerrilla!!

Jonathan was sixteen years old then a re had just that

year bbeen allowed to drive a car. He liked to drive, an
Gui

that even vanguard violence was organized violence He re-

time for ,
and ite
he acting to begin.”
er of his reports after the Chicago murders of
Hamp tor an Clark and t e-hour shoot at Black Pan-
ther headquarters in
i Los ‘anaes he writes:

The fact of Amerikan terror, slave existence in general,

seems to have almost destroyed the nervous system of

19
GEORGE JACKSON

the Black man here. They are frightened, and feel they
al a eing so. Those that ws ed, those
that escaped, those that refused to ‘be inumideeed, dis-
mayed, prudent to the point of ‘dice, have either

down pretty cold. One eatinneeds to be stan bp,

mor-piercing, ammo-equipped M60 port in the front

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

cab pointing in rahe direction that the truck is moving

id reet—i re

y
ne armor-pleroing bullet may render sev-
eral of the unrighteous dead.
And comrade, the pigs are so proud of their new
little *copters—they’re suckers—it’s almost comical to
hear them boast and watch them look to the sky
i e pig who will get up in one of

&g
®

k .
Militarily it would have Sononetrated tto i pigs that

21
GEORGE JACKSON

the Panther Party is not out there on the limb alone, and

nan
Long live the Panther! Power to the People Who Don’t
Fear Freedom

Jonathan was sixteen years old then,I re

Consciousness is the opposite onder, or me
ness, bl lanl romoting consciousness invol en-
eral dissemination of, the concept that each tn us is pairt of,

hat th i vertigo,
degenerative disease. Connections, connections, cause and
effect, the connec-
tion with the past, continuity, flow, movement, the aware-
ness that nothing, nothing remains the same for long. And

don ’t read and act out its imperatives. Not on its own will
it die, but ratheirather because the forces of reaction have created
iml lances that will kill it: “The seeds of itso1 n destruc-
str
” Our destruction too—in the epoch of the Bomb, the
nerve gases, the massive precipitation of industrial wastes.
Consciousness is knowledge, recognition, foresight;
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

‘common experience and perception: sensibility, alertness,

mindfulness. It stirs the senses, the blood; it exposes and
suggests; it will objectify, enrage, direct. There are no posi-
tive formulas for aa thing so complex. We have guidelines
we are
done with our books, they must be put aside; and the searc!
for method will depend on | Observations correct analyses,
creativity and seizing the
Sometime after the neuen 4, 1969, shoot-out around
the Panther Party Los Angeles headquarters, Jonathan com-
mented on the “connections,” the aftermath:

lave you grasped the significance of the backlash? It

has stung the fascist. The people are in foment, all of
them, of all persuasion. They don’t dig midnight or
rai a c
ardly pigs perchedwy n thei ‘ir roofs, the same gases
manufactured for use azainst the Vie amese > Libera tors
wil ‘0

WI mail
that the whiteman will protect it with his all, that the
white man is a killer, a reflex killer t hat all we can ever
hope for is a reforming or expanding of the system to

23
GEORGE JACKSON

‘lude the few of us who can make ourselves accept ‘a

bs “§t’s too big for us,” “you can’t fight city hall,” “i
n’t happen in Amerikkka,” and all of that shit, vise

* ou check—all of the objective conditions are

esent here |in the Black Colony for revolution, the
mean, “want” and “want to” (the real
g.
zy

o
<

®
a

feeling, not the various pretenses). East Los Angeles

hasn’t changed a bit since you were out. Watts is still a
depressed area. 'y of the west-side districts are start-
ing to resemble the older black dist riers The f
e yment is still the sa 40 percent
of the nation’s work for 1 pereent of the ‘returns, and
us

those who thought the bear their rightful ruler see him
differently when he foams at the mouth, and bites at his

I think you were on the right track with the idea

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

concerning repression. It is, it has to be, a part of the

revolutionary process, a necessary stage in the develop-
it of revolutionary consciousness. The situation be-
ine as it was and is, the Black erience is "

existence under capitalism, the nature of it, and how

foul a piece of the pie would be even if we could have
One fundamental problem remains: the survival of
the vanguard political party and I mean in good form.
We must think to the righteous fielding of a clandestine
army!!
Jon

Lenin, Guevara and Fanon, all in

i their Particular fash-
all other
forme of redress must be exhausted, clearly exhausted. Elec-

confi-

aspect of public life must be shaken to the core. Years and

years ago it may
a people’s ticket of solid worker and revolutionary creden-
tials and arm it with an ideal platform—only to be defeated

25
GEORGE JACKSON

a mud-slinging opportunist-warlord, demonstrably in-

ferior, scum-swilling pig. Then pass out | a pamphlet to ex-
or speak
it in Pershing Square—or, years ago, in the Campus Hall.
Today it is not a tactic—it’s counterrevolution. After forty
years it’s pretty clear that it will not suffice. Years ago,
“working with” and attempting to “influence union leader-
ship may h

away the strike. Union hall speeches and pamphlet passing

are playing at revolu
It isn’t revolutionary or materialist to disconnect things.

izing activity, to build

1 is ideali than
materialist. The effect has been reformism rather than revo-
lution. When any election is held it will fortify rather than
destroy the srediility of the power brokers. When we partic-
'pat
ate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we're lending

or control over
me the electoral process in the hands of the

to seem ‘isolated unimportant, even extraneous. If these tac-

tics still give the appearance of revolution to some after

vanguard.
When people begin to express their isgust at the dema-
ies, they
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

will discover in real action a new form of political activity

whichin no way resembles the old:
These politics are the politics of Keaders and organizers
living inside history who take the lead with their brains

ie bottor
wn mass atl i Hine innthe valewes, endlessly

In the vena retreat to avoid full commitment, to write

di fe f revolution. i deb:
“Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
GEORGE JACKSON

among us that has degenerated into atl opr quoting

mutually exclusive or contradictory groups. The overall!

effect is to reduce u! t
Where more than one individual iis involved in any life
situation, the fact of subjectivism will always make differ
ences based on opinion and interpretation “a prol blem
xchanges, i he initiation

ing
will get
wt done. All opinions are not of equal value, and there
is such a thing as * counterproduetive revisionism.
ipidity t unknown to our long-range political
policy makers, "Participation in electoral politics organized

particularly participation that tends to authenticate this

rocess—i si te of revolution. It’s a tactic for th
ula Fightsts With history as a guide we could never make
‘h mental errors.
ie hist tory of the U.S.—the blood-soaked, urine-
steeped essence of its bei nes the wreckage and demise of its
juman character undertl a two-hundred-year-
old headlong flight with Iecdlece Tightened animals at the

appeal on a strictly ideological level. George Wallace or

Adolf Hitler fea = e better at the polls of an honest
election than Huey Newton and Tom Hayden. But again,
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

pression is indeed a part of revolution, a natural as-

pect of antithesis, the al -to-be-expected defense-attack
re ie caguercd toothless tiger. Al arguments
against this fundamental are false and lab to th
point of being fut a re og ha power be seriously
challenged with
tycoon, the Fu hrer alow us to seize his privilege withou it
esistance?
all jime with sleight of hand alone? Incredible! The fascists
understand the value of mass ps!sychology, are familiar witith
its use,
control. they are not aware of our existence and our
general strategy regardin, g the reaching
of people.
The whole situation can be reduced to a minority ruling
clique engaging the people’s vanguard elements for control
of th e masses. The ruling clique approaches its task with a
at to think” Program; the vanguard elements have the
mach more difficult job of promoting “how to think.”
0 tactic can be ignored or discounted in
i sucha battle.
Power If
‘he threat is a small one, the fascist tactic is to laugh it off,
ignore it, isolate it with its defense mechanism—media. The
greater the threat the greater the corresponding Violence
from power.
The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad
enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough

members of the society as possible. By compromising and

playing at class war, we lose. If some effective means of

29
GEORGE JACKSON

the vanguard elements only, when the ideal situation is for

Nothing can bend
ano-knock
invasion, carele: i i
, anger others. Common sense alone tells me whom the
people will turn their anger against. Perhaps for a short time
they will bee angry'y at us, but since ‘the pig is aa pigs i it won't

Revolution builds in stages; it isn’t cool or romantic; it’s

dad init . . th .
el of vi and our
forces learning how to counter this repression and again
pulling ourselves above their level of violence. That process

is suppressed. The power of the people lies in its greater

Potential violence. And this power of the people—t their’
re a

when i

‘he foco theory grew

gr out of the Cuban Revolution and refers to the
“more or less slow building up through guerrilla warfare of a mobile

future socialist state.” (Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution? Armed

Struggle and Folileal Strugle in Latin America (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1967),p. 24.]

30
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

thus “exposing | itself to the vastly superior fire power of the

corporate st:

ere is no doubt that Fidel’s foco was the motor to the

revolution in Cuba. But nor cai re be any doubt that
Fidel’s organizational made sure that co,
remained in the cet of the much bigger revolutionary
vement, which it controlled or guided for its military
and political advantage. The foco may well e
actic to mount the motor, but it Is a long Period of
preparation, intensive rganizationa al work to set up an
efficient, reliable ery which will not onlyly gener-
ate the atmosphere oe ‘armed struggle by focos but will
, icati .
P aganda itional
communist parties of the rid claim that they are
doing just that—and have been, mostly peacefully, for
forty years. That i hat Bejar had in mind wh
he said there have been “real stages T
ground life.” Bejar, and New Left revolutionaries all
over the world, know very well that a revolutionary life
style is a warrior’s life style. By stage: es
of combat, a at is precisely the way in which revolu-
tionaries can be honed into the kind of organization
capable of leading a people’s war.*
We are at an impasse now, because the next level of

without calling down on the nation a corresponding and

“sGerassi, op. cit, p. 69.

GEORGE JACKSON

who dread this next level of commitment. They don’t under-

S. r yo
‘When revolution fails . . . it’s the fault of the vanguard

Some of the fear is an honest fear that revolution will

be repressed entirely. These thinkers have historical refer-
ences that roll them back to Europe to the time of Hitler’
Germany and Italy in the twenties and thirties. But I say that
can never happen here. That was too long ago, too far away,

niggers on their hands. None of that ever had to happen, for

the same reason that we don’t have to allow it to happen. All
reactionary movements depend principalally on a handful of
i Meals sometimes one individual
ere are many tthousands of ways to correct individu-
als. the best way is to send one armed expert. I don’ ean
to outshout him with logic, I mean correct him. Slay ‘him,
assassinate him with thuggee, by silenced Pistol shotgun,
undred yard:
ion, trangulation crucifix-
ion, burning with amethrower dispatch by bomb. Auto
accidents happen all day. People drown, get poleaxed,
breathe noxious gases, get stabbed, get poisoned with ba
water, rats Panes germicides, hemloc!ee arsenic, strychnine,
L.S.D. 25 concentrate, cyanide, hydrocyanic acid, vitriol. A
snake could bite him, nicotine oil is deadly, an overdose of

32
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

dope; there’s deadly nightshade, belladonna, datura, wolfs-

bane, foxglove, aeonite, romaine, Potulism,
b and the death of
a thousand cuts. But se Won
We're going to aw ve to fight to win.
othe logic of procras-
tination has been destroyed. A peop! e:
pressed that they can’t strike back in some w: 'e will
purge the poltroons and fight. Or just igno
The reality of power’s automatic defense. safes makes
it possible for us to measure our own effectiveness. Their

peopl y in the fight.

be truly repressed. There is quite simply non 0 way fors an estab-

sive enemy. Especially in an urban voit “The votes

logic,
be defeate
I n the opening stages of such a conflict, before a unified

inevitability of wan Defore we are able militarily to organize

e violent st depend limited, selective vio-
lence ted to an exact ‘political purpose. In the vary service
of the people there must be totally committed, professional

its quality. I am one of the:

I’m the under hatches, the desperate one. We will make
the revolution. Nothing can st
y the specter of repression—we’re already repressed. The
g

Black Legion* and their terror leaves us cold, unafraid. We

33
GEORGE JACKSON

will meet it with a counter-terror. We'll never, never allow

ourselves to be immobilized by a tactic that actually works
better for us. The lynch-murder of a friend—it makes
angry, not afraid 1
forefather. trembled when his brother was lynched, but my
molation means war to the death, war to the
utmost, war to the knife!!
Violence is not supposed to work inin Amerika. For no
one, that is, i i
ha yet to be Proved to my satisfaction stsince I know that a
hi
and dismembers men everywhere else in the world. Why not
le i
int
in Vietnam. Why won't it kill a pig in the place where pigs

nter-terrorism is a facet of urban people’s guerrilla

warfare. It's our logical response to the repressive measures

the rebellion. Our military cadre involved in this activity has

the tactical advantage over the© establishment’ 's terrorists

of aa political front we must remain separate from it. The

ranks of these early soldiers must be absolutely impervious

In

“An armed anti-labor terrorist group active in the thirties, reputedly

financed by sections of the automotive industry.—Ed.

34
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

that

As a leading Pragmatst Lenin believed that the only

way a revolution could come about in Europe in his time
was by the creation of a revolutionary organization.
‘hat organization ad to be tight, well
ws trained, loyalto
its central committee, dedicated— al w, not only
for ideological reasons (hen purges and sectarian
splits were to be encou raged during its formative years)
also for security.*

And Lenin states that

e more we confine the membership of such an organi-

ople who are professionally en in

difficult it will be to unearth the organization.”

One of Jonathan’s reports contains the following:

it almost impossible to trust comrades, not aft iter

tt of this. Theyy say Gloves Da vis—a black pig—killed
he was asleep. I certainly don’t
n
appearing before govern mmit testifying
for the state. They were infiltrators to bé with.
The house-niggers wh in to the high sheriff as soon
as someone whispered revolt. I think I hate them

*Gerassi, op. cit.

tV.L Lenin, Selored Works.
GEORGE JACKSON

worse than I hate the sheriff, or the “owner.”

I’m just a young slave (you say) trying to under-
stand and cope with my environment. I know personali-
ties have ce in revolution bi timeI thi
of Davi: s B. le, Karenga* andthe rest of the:
murderous turncoat idiots, my tri; finger fairly it-
ches! Non- “persons like Karenga, LeRoi Jones and the

they are doin ‘e cannot excuse them ith the

ease that we can se the average brother who has had
opportunity or inclination to search. The mantle of

rise of the moder

displaced the plantation, Could it have escaped their

*Ron Karenga, head of a black nationalist organization known as

US—Ed.

36
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

notice that all the African states that really Nberated

themselves booted out the foreign businessmen and
now socialist states?
No, I think the strongest suggestion is that ney are
working for the government, the new house-niggers.
And what better way is there for them to sell tems
to us than to scream Black, Black, Black, Black .
To lboya, whose whole service for th the wi sto
redirect the revolutionary rage of the coreinto a thing
more compatible with the interests on Western Busi-
nessmen. They are spies—death to spies.
don’t think it is a personality clash at all for us
to teach these black pigs that we will not be altered from
our co at the reward for counterrevolution is
di in’t continue to expect or wish for loyalty
tot le—we'll have to demand it. And that’s both
fror idly fat t-mout! hs who come to us in theiri
disguise, “ cultural natal,” and from the class de-
fe ctors who is in ur sle ep.
rll make an sn example orGloves Davis even if I have
to hobo to Chicago. They'll find him strung-upt
street ight by his heels with our sign burned in ‘tis
forel Mt
t be devised to guard ourselves against

id fi
do the choosing. 2. Once we choose someoneto do the
people’s military work they should be ieolated. and

37
GEORGE JACKSON

tested thoroughly, and their background checked.

There are patterns to people’s lives, especially Blacks,
that if studied one can easily spot pig tendencies and
i of

deals in credit. it deal e learned through the

various credit check institutions these days. We’ll be
using one eir own inst for t veal pur-

i b ped into a e- ritten

stuff to help reestablish for ourselves the patterns of this
soldier's ba now, full cor gen-

only thinking in terms of a small, highly

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

trained, super-secret, counter-Kluxist vanguard group.

However, dealing with people you’ve known over the
years and have seen tested in fire already is best, like me,
you and your comrades, and mine. The Blacks who
joined the armed expeditionary forces just for profit (the
cats who steal them blind and hustle the other suckers).
They are starting to stir, to become aware also.
is Vietnam adventure on thepi ofthe fascist
f
e

¢ hav no
lion groups and no problems: Ssvedd The physical condi.

39
GEORGE JACKSON

tions are right for the start of a protracted war. We hav.

yet to hit on the tactic for control of attitudes, howeverT;
of

he
ma ‘wagons, "that we're willing tto ake it to the grave-

“s show of organizational skill and vali anti-estab-

lishmentism will a/ways bring on violence fromthe fas:
cist. The people know this, so they must ni know that
i ou

Engels. From Fanon it’s “The time for talking has

ended, the time for acting has begun.”—Long live the
guerrilla.
Jon

The counter-terrorist, faceless, nameless specialist in all

wift, surprising, explosi

matrix. In some cases of assassination, it may be wise to

the political content.

40
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

These workers, Properly distributed and going about

their ta:
ze

son with the political front, will shake the fascists to their
very foundations. Their limited, highly selective violence is
the absolute minimum for enforcing the demands of the
le.
People who will throw down ‘their Buns and submit to our

established power and history they know that 0}one> armed

man can control a thou:
People’s War is not site 0 r proper. It is not possible
to limit the scope and range of violence to what the enemy
will bear without reacting. Any ideal, any activity that may
i i i i People’
War is improvisation and more improvisation. It is organiz-

against whatever forces restrict their passage to power. I

repeat: realistic, day-to-day ne ds should be the basis of

the world, the universe, 1 that it will st

stagnate anddie for no man’s orivilege
necept revolution, we must accept all that it im-
plies repression, counterterrorism, days filled with work,
nervous strain, prison, funeral
Our priresent problem as soldiers iis to Protect our politi-

that | the people, as a political result, will make upon power.

The soldier is the counter-terrorist, the bodyguard, the first
of a military vanguard. The distance between him and the
GEORGE JACKSON

strongest cof our kind: calm, sure, self- possessed, completely

familiar

and snap shot. Terrible Jonathans teethed on the eel on :

viel tool, hardened against the coi of the
uncivilized jungles of the planet—Chicago, St Louis, woos
ngeles, San Francisco—tested in a dozen fires. “Tall, slim
t the new nigger, with a gun and the eyes of the
hunter, the hunter of men.
These comrades must make the first contribution. They
We gather i
Their

of death by. We should bessad

ad only that it’s taken us so many
generations to produc:
Building consciousness and revolutionary culture

the need
for clothing and housing, joblessness. It involves provoking
pression—feeding on it. The factof political and political

of passion against the oppressors must be understood as

rebellion. Even funerals can be used as an issue, since there
will be so many of them. Improvising on reality is the key

the consciousness of the people. It will give us our tactics.

42
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

In the Black Colony and other depressed areas of the

mobilizing
and altering the attitudes of the People toward their class
enemies. However,
be said to be “making it,” affecting attitudes toward a revolu-

1, of course, call for the destruction of their comfort, the

of a “condition” where they will Pe either
neutral or complementary to the revolutionary effort
Ps t
destructive effect it can have; an increasingly pervasive un-
dergi round Press with new emphasis ona “mass sstyle”; the

vating of it; both under the direction of an ultra-aggressive

political party—these three, with no element i ing, con-

ill b o revolution.
ary culture, no forward movement, with these three ele-
ments working with the harmonyof a healthy organism
To sum up, the existence of a valitcal vanguard pre-
cedes the existence of any of the oth er elements of a truly

the overthrow of established power), it will be attacked by

the built-in automatic survival instincts of the established
power compl i i
pow
interforce to neutralize the violence of established
power,antithesis dies. We are not contending with fools who

43
GEORGE JACKSON

will allow us to simply walk in and organize people to war

against them. All serious chang will be met with Panic
and repression. That is axi ust not allow our-
selves to be hunted, imprisoned and rand ‘ed. We will never
yield to terror tactics. We will organize a violence of our
own, hidd. ive. W ht fi iti
eakness, but there are tactical devices that if employed
without restraint will afford us a very real advantage.
The fascist: uard wit
can control a thousand men, ut I know that this guard
cannot watch all one thousand at once. While his attention
T free-
dom closing on his blind side, my knife will claim his life.

an thrust in the opening phases of revolutionary culture.

to understand and relate to the necessity of violence in any

plan to overthrow anything—“overthrow” means violence.
In our case it means putting to death. This is the last time
Til
I repeat this for those of us who forone dread or another
too receptive: fighting originates from a well-
developed kick in the
e proketariat—the working class—is still the | most

society. However, the notion that they alone can or must

carry the revolution is too ridiculous and simplistic for any
serious consideration at all. The industrial working force
te modern industrial state may be 1 in carrying
eir
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

as automation, military-corporate elitism, (the connection

through marria; Be of government, militsitary and corporate
hea
heal strike), government-contvolled unions, right-to-work
laws, etc. The argument that centers on the ideal that all

can support a violent thrust verges on the abs

nearly six and a half million of th 't fine
are working be convinced that foreign
wars and arm: S are more desirable than
u yme
their exploitation and they must be moved to act in their
behal If. Those who feel that they are doing well, and those

of “surplus value.”
Waiaiting pave for the final verdict of history is
is not

he exi d an
h 5 d animali f the ruling-cl igs. It doesn’t
take into account the fact that they kno’
They | now how to hold on to their privilege, ould they

*Surplus labor in Marxian economics is the number of hours a worker

can work in excess of what is required to provide him with minimum
sustenance. The product of surplus labor is known as surplus value. It is
worker.—Ed.
GEORGE JACKSON

already in existence. There are more secret police in this

untry than in all others combined—so many that they
constitute a whole new class that has attached itself to the
pow mplex. Repression is here. It’s time to movewith
determination After ‘ictory, no il escape our
justi ith now historically classic line “Well, we didn’t
know.” s
Repression is here , and ’t reach the next
level ofnf revolutionary consciousness and activity until we

that we are here and resistance is pos:

From a letter mailed by Tonsthar ‘Shortly before his
death:

Why do we go for this old shit, most of the fascist

functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a
knife between Max Rafferty’s ribs. The ‘A news and Du

Hi ypes who sneak around in armored

cars and jets are just as reachable. Anyone who will
come out of his b shelter can be had. Imagine what
ixon’s a d car wor look like if I stepped out of
coat—a ball of fire. Hell will be their re-

But the guerrilla needs our help. When Jonathan steps

i i: i-Ni there should be

for him. And there should be a political infrastructure, a

cadre, not far away to explain his actions, and glean from

46
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

them the greatest possible overall political effect.

Prestige stands between the masses and a revolt against
y. Th

ality
viri Organize violence, but the Indo-Chinese have proved
ot too formidable.
eur ent task is to illustrate thispoint forcefully | to
the people The fascist industrial state
ous, mechanized violence, but this systematic i dvewrally
olding action is helpless before the fluid, mobile,
selimpelled attrition of people’s urban guerrilla va fare.

police complex with some of these military objectives in

mind:

eaken the local guards or the security system of

the itaorship, given the fact that we are attacking and
the “gorillas” defending, whichmeans catching the gov-
ernment in fensive position with its troops immobil-
ized in de tire complex of national
intenan ith its ever-present fears of an attack on

qu
ing separately, to disperse the government forces in
GEORGE JACKSON

their pursuit of a thoroughly fragmented organization

instead of offering the dictatorship the opportunity to
concentrate its forces of repression on the destruction of
one tightly organized system operating throughout the
country;
—to give proof of its combativeness, decision, firmness,
determination, and persistence in the attack on the mili-
tary dictatorship in order to permit all malcontents to
our example an urban guerrilla tac-
tics whil overnm with all its problems,
incapable of halting guerrilla operations in the city, will
lose time and suffer endless attrition and will finally be
forced to pul back its repressive troops in order t
int guar¢ the banks, industries, armories, mili-
tary ks, prisons, public offices, ra ind _televi-
sion stations, North American firms, g: ‘age tanks,
il refineries; ships, airplanes, ports, residences of out-
tanding m of the regi s ministers ant
generals, police stations, and official organizations,

—to increase urban guerrilla disturbances gradually in

an endless ascendancy of unforé actions such that
the government troops cannot Teave e the urban areas to
pursue the guerrillas in the interior without running the
tisk of abandoning the cities and permitting rebellion to
increase on the coast as well as in the interior of the
country;
—to° oblige the army and the police, with the command-
d their assistants, to change the relative comforts
and ‘ranguillity of their barracks and their usual rest for
a state of alarm and growing tension in the expectation
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

of attack or in search for tracks that vanish without a

trace;
—to avoid open battle and decisive combat with the
g ent, limiting the struggle to brief and rapid

and supportin, on:struction of the revolutionary

army for oat liberation.

Prestige is an n abstract, an intangible. It has no material

bas}
the senses. One can’t touch it or taste it, see it or smell it, it
can’t be heard. So how does it exist?
#? Subiectively, in the
mind’s eye, after the fact of sor ected circumstances
thatmay also have been subject
We're looking for connections;
ve the materialist approach
is to examine things in their total sequence, see them

images, but to take in the state of being in proce:

maturity, tine qhings in motion, processed into other
things in e’re constantly laboring to determine
hat which reece

ments.

(*)Gerassi, op. cit., p. 71.

GEORGE JACKSON

The prestige of power as the Subjective effect of a past

eed or reputation, real or fancied,t has a very definite
ite process. The prestige of the cna class inside the U.
eached its maturity with the close ofthe 1860-64 civil war.
Since that time there have been no serious threats to their
; their excesses have taken on a certain legitimacy;
thro
roug!
veh long usage.
Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people
attack a thing they consider with awe, with a sense of its
legitimacy?
in the process of things, the prestige of power emerges
8 P
its underlying basis—violence. Having proved and estab-
lished itself, it drifts, secure from any serious challenge. Its

are othe ignored away, laughed away, or in the cases that

m som ething dangerous, slapped away. To the
he
masters of ital, the most dreadful omen of all is revolu-
tionary scientific socialism. The digger evokes fear
sponse. Prestige wanes if t! t atta n its power base
ind it wai ming. Prestige dies when it cannot prevent further
attacks upon
All Pntellectual arguments against the necessity of
counter-violence, even in the opening stages ora we )ple’s
War against aan industrial establishment sucha:
the U. false. We can stop the debate; prestige must
be destro:
the omnipotent administrator’ actually under physical at-
tack. They must be assured that the heavens will not hurl

50
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

lightning bolts at the peonies heads for challenging the

rights of property. Then, ough international
capitalism
has shot its vant ‘pelts, iti is not roy harmless. Tf the threat
T

tige, we must anticipate reaction, accept repression’s terror,

and meet it with a counter-terror of our own. The gravedig-
ger needs a bodyguard to protect him at this work, else the
grave may be his own.
The debate between the vanguard elements should end.
The argument that the prestige of power will let itself to be
educated away is too idiotic to be allowed to stand. Waiting
for power all
concerned. Blacks and other Third World peoples have the

and we can now allsee that the modern industrial state,

motivated by the interests of exclusive groups of capitalist

massive waste of resources and destruction of all that

. t is
question of the necessity of violence, but how to organize it
to fit our jue situation, to tie it with flawless exactitude
to our voliticl activity, and to organize it immediate!

Comrade George: I read recently from a textbook edited

by my favorite writer W. Pomeroy* that a city street

*W.J. Forest Pomeroy, author of Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism.

51
GEORGE JACKSON

could actually be considered as a defile. A convoy of any

kind trapped in a defile on the countryside is easy prey
for the forces positioned above and about it.
—Jonathan

It is absolutely certain that svery fascist military thinker

and ofa |in the world has devoted time and study to the
works the great guerrilla tacticians, Mao, Ho,
°g

Guevara, Pomeroy, Fanon and Nkrumah. The fundamental

of People’s War are no specret It would seem that Giap’s
People’s Army. P eople’s Waror Guevara’s Guerrila Warfare
the other necorke on poor people’s war, once pub:

ata least asitle—that iis, until one e has studied inn depth and
understoo
Advanced scientific eens strategy, worked out over
the first three-quai f this century, is not, contrary to
popular image, merely a ° hiteand. run haphazard affair. an,
Pp
of its poverty and daring, it is scientific. The man who la-
bored over its construction had as éa task the forging of an
instrument which

tized thought. It is a perfect tool, perfect No establishment

countervail it. The best example of this new
fighting style—the “ban guervila is the spectacular suc-
cess of the Tupamaros, the military arm of Uruguay’s Na-
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

tional Liberation Movement. Brilliantly organized, they

have carried out well-planned operations, su‘

burning down plants (General Motors) without har

ing a single worker, robbing impregnable fortresses
(such as the Casino of Punta del Este), kidnapping hated
officials, ambassadors, and bankers, seizingwhole towns
long enough to explain their purpose and revolutionary

police military outposts to capture arms and ammuni-

tion.*

Gerassi outlines their fighting strategy as follows:

The obj jective is manifold: (1) to threaten the Estab!

the fact that for a long time urban groups will operate

*Gerassi, op. cit, p. 72

GEORGE JACKSON

independently ne each other keeps sweeping arrests of

urban guerrillas m to a minimt em (4)to demoralize
the rank and fle:an even the officers of the repressive
forces, as they see themselves constantly but unexpect-
edly under attack |(it is said that to kill policemen indis-
criminately is to forget the working-class background of
the cop on the beat; this is as absurd as trying to save
the ordinary soldiers whom the Vietnamese must kill to
survive); (5) to panic local capitalist tot © withdraw their
funds from specific areas, thus hurt the local war-
lords and politicians who profit from these investments;
(6) to frighten away foreign investors, which will affect

to constantly extend its interv ention, which will tax its

esources, hence discontent at home, and spread its im-
perialistic arms, rendering it more wulnerable abroad.*

is Point, I must make clear that I am certainly not

ita

Amerikan government; when se the initials U.S.A. in

h b: i i d that I could quite
Africa (U.S.A.!)
The government of the U.S.A. and all that iti stands for,

point, and the the means to this end; the

problem is to “enclop veceptance
4 of their use.
The first struggle is one waged within our own minds.

* Ibid, p. 69.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

ist in all haste transcend the intellectual inhibi ions

that nreclude support of at least the minimum level of vi
lence that must develop concomitantly with each ple
thrust; our attitudes must change before we can n expect ad
esponse from the people, worker:
pol erariat, We must accept | the eventuality ‘ot bringingrite

of “he city with barbed wire, armored pig carriers criss-

ig of nt to thei

#
3€

go
8

2
33

cient movement, Tale walls, “hidden sub- basements, tunnels

value of infiltration—it works better for us than it does for

© opposisition. We simply stop allowing 0ourselves to be
secret police
aren’t really too secret at all. Right now we can go number-
ing, naming, compili ing information on 1 them all—they’re too
visible tobe
g to? In

In vonsiering all ofthe establishment’s protec aeen-

cies, even those that are quasi-secret, none can
selves. Any sctablishonent institution or reanization that

55
GEORGE JACKSON

cnioys, Dresses that exists openly aboveground, is by thi

defini at least vulnerable to a deter vrined
attack. “Whenwn purpose of your military tactics is to build
and guard some object or point of supposed advantage, the

guard himself a standing target. The fortress and all its re-
sources, mechanized and human, for all its imposing
strength, cannot exist for long under persistent attack de-
prived of the opportunity to replenish, repair, renew itself. If
the© oppo sing rallitary forces that have Jaid the siege are
s, number! 11 t
ml lions ‘het exist all about the establishment, when the
establishment’s military forces sally forth from their belea-
guered fortress to do battle, what must be the result? They

them to know us, thus making new enemies. They will re-

and projects that are welded to the people, thus restricting

thetic to them. They will make themselves targets for our

hidden machine gun, sniper’s rifle, silenced pistol, mortar,
anti-tank rocket , flamethrower.
Our nter-terrorism will
i bring on a stage-two fascist
repressio1 a There is no que: in our minds—blacks, men
inder hatches—abs the 1nature of te mung class; the
exceedingly violent olsposition of the U.S.A. ruling class is
well documented with just a glance into our lives and the
order ore our deaths,S. The point is to reveal this “senseless
violence” to the entire revolutionary class or classes.

56
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

Counter-t terrorism isis a mij hy tool, and the only one at

our disposal in the opening stages of People’s War.
cases in other revolutionary societies the level of violence
alone was sufficient to win all he der mands 0of the© peo ple.
However,
of the complexities of the U.S.A. class structure and its
stockpile of potential further violence (many of the small
jemands of a sizable portion of the population are slowly

people). A new pig-oriented class has been created at the

bottom of our society from which the ruling class will be
always able to draw some support. Consequently our task

stage of anger guerrilla unit operatior

percent of the U.S.A. poyoputation live in cities
and towns, and although some of the principles of classic

orderly flow of intercity and interstate commerce, most of

. wo .
th
development of People’ 's War. Whereas the classic types of
the Third World movements generally relied upon the stran-

the colonies can be said to be situated within the city, the

process or tactics will be unique.
Though the basic strategy is the same, urban guerrilla

of guerrilla against the god state. There are similarities be-

57
GEORGE JACKSON

Uruguayan people, and perhaps we can draw from their

experience. But to be realisti isparity in si
lation, the relative strength of the enemy state institutions

Uruguay is a colony of Anglo-Amerika; defeat of the

Jati Id i defeat of ion of

¢ Amerikan imperial sinfretrasture The comparison be-
tween ourselves and theA’\gerian Hberation experience is
almost untenable, though t may be some small tactical
lessons to be gleaned from this urban effort It must be kept
in mind that the Principal battles that led to the people’s
victory were fought the countryside between massive
French mechanized divisi da classical guerrilla army
of the people. The battle for Algiers was only aided by the
forces within. The people’s fifth column within the city of
Algiers was not a Model of perfection simply because the
principal effort

ary forces for control of the countryside. At issue there in

Iperi h thi 1

some iron ore. fc ourse,

located in the countryside and had to be protected by the

The war for control of the U.S.A. is unique in that its

acing our primary forces
 BLOOD IN MY FYE.

in the valleys and defiles of its city streets. U.S.A.

colonial master, the center ‘of the imperial process ‘where ih

ucts to be recirculated back into the exterior and interior

colonies.
n a comparison of the classical forms of wars of libera-
tion fought in the outlying colonies and the one we must
yet formulate, a vital question is immediately brought t
our atten! : Does it work in sucha totally different set-
ting?
A theoretical examination indicates that ittoes. In fact,
urban. people's guerrilla warfare may pro
ore effective tool than the classical type. The same sadvar
tages are present
imply because the fight iis taking place within the cities, the
nerve centers of
nemy culture, the established government, exists

order 1 he vai
ous levels and elements of the society. “Law and Order” is
their objective. Ours is “Perfect Disorder.” Our aim is to stop
the life cycle of the enemy culture and replace it with our
o

perfect disorder within the cycle of the enemy culture’s life

process and leaving a power vacuum to be filled by o
building evolutionary € ulture.
n the fight takes place within the cities, the disorder
GEORGE JACKSON

on the consciousness of the bulk of the population and will

the utmost.
If the life of the manufacturing city is to be stopped, it

will destroy some aspect of that factory-city and underci

It will not help the fascist cause very much at all when the
armored personnel carrier or jeep patrol equipped with 30-
caliber
at the elusive guerrilla who has taken refuge among them.
The people just will not understand.
The cities of fascist U.S.A.—built straight up and with
y
gangways connecting roofs, manholes, storm drains, con-

tively as any forest. There is the added advantage that just

ir game, as is th se when an establishment army unit

rots a wathering, no
n matter how innocent, in an area where

does not mean that hard work needn’t be done toward the

60
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

ort. It simply ‘hat fail

gain “full support” for violent confrontation doesn’t pre-

made guerrilla warfare in its classical style an invincible

developed areas, they will be even more successful in built-up

urban Amerikan conditi
The facts that make iit impossible for the eae
ar vercome the attacking guerrilla army—i
the availability of the knowledge contained in thew master-
orks on guerrilla strategy—become clear when we realize

tactics applicable to his Particular mniltary problems “area

oduct of his imagination alone,” a constant i
prevising Also working against the ‘tetablishment's general
is its mentality. ” vinces elves or
have been convinced by their experience at war with other

wins war. In other words, they feel that winning wars

pends mainly on gadgets and they presume that they can

place. They’re locked in on a fixed set of systematized ideas

that conflict completely with the realities of People’s War.

ingenuity. that ‘has gone into the development of the blitz-

krieg has been wasted. A $100, oon ta ‘an be destroyed
with two dollars’ worth of materi: nn ‘ useless against
the rifleman, and i it also can be eed with one well-
GEORGE JACKSON

by mortar from miles away. Then, too, the pilot, years in the
making, can be killed with a knife. The ’copter as a fighting
machine is the most stupid of all ie costly Badgers: it can
be heard from miles away; it ci a ten-cent
bullet can render it useless. All of ‘hee aa vetions require
iq
the other commodities stops. Fighting really depends upon
the people and small easily machined portableweapons.
other factor that works to the advantage of the guer-
villa army is time. The establishment forces cannot survive
Pro fa Il, the

ther
stages of life, while our new revolutionary culture iis Suiding
—musical chairs where cach go-round excludes some ele-
ment of their control facto
The objective, I repeat, ofthe destruction ofa city-based
perfect disor to disruptall of their i
that allow them to produce vd distribute goods, and this
in be done from within the pr ‘ocess muclich more easily
i Really,
lished government ever overcoming a determined internal
smerny
heir very nature, the “holder” or “owner” and his
guard. are exposed and vulnerable. A compari: twee
their mode of existence and that of the people’s vanguard
elements employing all the subtle scientific principles of ur-
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

power lies.
Top-heavy establishment organizations that exist
ore arere always a reflection of the men who staff them. Of

f 8
their wrong—the local and federal pig establishments. The
complexities of the class structure have shifted somewhat

in
is structure which feels that all of its demands on life c:
et by the existing order. In fact, the working class 7
Use 1971 ¢ wn be realistically divided into two mutually
exclusive and conflicting sections, one right-oriented and
conservative, the other left to neutral. One explanation for

class consciousness. In effect, it can be said that this right-

oriented sector of the working class is a new class, a new pig
class. In their ranks we find a factory or construction worker,
the ubiquitous civil service employee, the retired military
n, the who sells used autos or insurance, the
stork clerk or ongshoreman about to. be r eplac ed by a ma-

only have pig tendencies and can still be redeemed. Outright

pigs must be either neutralized or destroyed (killed). From
the new pigclass (a section of the working class whose
GEORGE JACKSON

P
masters), the government draws its greatest support. The
forces of counterrevolution make theremselves felt on
¢ the

the loosely defined petit: bourgecis level and “oper

complex inverted stataton of revolutionary potential

the history of thhe US. and its immigrants, the emphasis

by the ruling class, and the apparent (not real) stabilizing of

imperialist expansion, all can be carefully treated to ex-

plain the present ©confusion and contradictions in the class
struggle—but of this I 1 10 Comi rade New
who has handled it oe so far. This is a comme! what t

The top-heavy bureaucratic agencies that exist with

quasi-social sanction—and in particular the ones that are
given over to the maintenance of iaw and order—draw their
inci he pig cl. d 1

vistic “one na petethat is completely dependent upon regimen

th func!
Tintt of mh the opposition is wupid. How ever, let me
ae athis sarement ith the observation that they make
it they lack in brai sheer brutality. As a
ae of their ginal drawback “atupidiy), they have ex-

64
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

bly to a technology based on massive and equally faulty

them ever

or to change themselves in response to any change inn ow

attack. The very nature of their apparatus, its sappeeed Tegal
ity and its size, tends to weaken it. Their growing demand

F oeretic cannot overcome the fact that men,

sseialy of the pig class, are cyclic. They think, function
and livei n oyolen 7Thi is is more to their detriment t thi
Their science of control turns upon them to wveaken. and

dinate aany
ny activity without the strictest regimentation, with-
out a massive meet ting place to familiarize themselves with
‘ocedures, without badgesor uniforms to iigentfy each
other, without systematiaed Patterns of thought and beha’
Simple pig types
canrv only learn to function by rote and in cycles. Procedure
must t be drilled into them and only seldom reever changed.
function the
same » way, time after time, once he has learned the function;
it is not so easy to vary, especially when there are erent
numbers of the same types of individuals involved.

or think for himself just one eight-hour shift? Chaos. If it

65
GEORGE JACKSON

weren’t for th i ine, when the

out of the | street by the ctzeny when his bullets ran out

Cyclic men equipped with only a few learned responses

can be watched, clocked, photographed and anticipated.

on the proper action, we will find that our enemies are vul-
nerable.
the soldiers of the people, the guerrillas, though
they ako must operate with the tightest structure and i
with their are not
a factor in their oJ
The subtleties and fundamentals of urban guerrilla war-
fare can be broken down to their simplest terms this wa)

Mobility

Only the light, portable, easily machined or easily stolen

tances. On rare occasions, he may hire or commandeer a

piece of heavy equipment for an isolated or special purpose

this form of combat). The bomb in all its various forms,

glor, morta
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

rock fl
weneed Nice the flamethrower, the poison dart, poiso:
bullet, the crossbow, the knife, the fist—all form the guerrilla
nal. Provision must be made
to move men and equip-

the cities. That means making use of the new four-wheel

drive civilian-type jeeps, station wag motorcycles.
The bicycle will regain popularity. Heavy vehicles the jeeps,
trucks, vans s (all ordinary-looking family or r commercial-

be either rented or commandeered. All dwellings should be

rented and expendable. They should re equi ped so that
leave Nn exits

tacker and destroy evidence. Food and clothing should be

purposely siete Clothing must always be available for dis-
gui h part of the guerrilla’s function is to hijack
P commondect food in nonperishable form from the

y
in backyards and vacant lots. He should also learn to want
less.

Infiltration

Right no be pl
olice and military and prison staffs. Our more gifted and
better-educated comrades could end up in the intelligence

67
GEORGE JACKSON

units of the army and police; our major source of weapons

should come from our men placed in the military under

est weakness; any establishment’s greatest weakness is the

need for ct th le. This lavs th
to infiltration. The guerrilla army that operates within the
y

tion.

The Ambush
The
The onlyonly fe f
the ambush, the surprise attack. There must never be an
front lines, or defending of territory. The only engagements
h ied let h ji
ning;aft
counterattacks, we e disengage and simply 80 home to await
ith hi
women, moving in convoys, on the toilet.

Camouflage

Nothing ever appears outwardly as it is. The armor (sheets

. we . b
a way as to make them appear normal when viewed from

68
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

without. The military safehouse—with tunnels leading in all

directions and ¢connecting with otheer r houses, a storm drain

encasements inside the house camouflaged with heavy cur-

tain i p
the insid lok lil house
along the block. We must dress and equip ourselves with
Pp
than private
private interest
poli ma pho:
man,ms Dries nun, National Guardsman. hi Principle vil
or turning the inno-
centste apainst them. The result—perfect disorder!

Autonomous Infrastructure

If it is our eventual goal to wear away the establishment's

ability to produce and distribute Boods, to feed it
ine,
we must, at the same time,

Both the military and the Political arms of the liberation

their vanguard

th e machine. Military supplies are stockpiled in advance

with food staples. Depression-days’ foraging and war-years’
liberation gardens must be reintroduced and refined. The

69
GEORGE JACKSON

military must depend on the people for food. It must also

prepare to feed the people from the enemy’s supplies.

en you have the very healthy, spontaneous mass loot

ing. Pert disorder! At some point in the develoopment oF
will have

with Che’s theory of molding the new society around the

stores, "hospitals, banks, buses, army. This dual power, this

building of pola infrastructure and the military is suc-
cinetly stated y the Minist
ister of Defense of the Black Pan-
ther Party, Huey

We recognized that in order to bring the people to the

level of consciousness where they would seize the time,
e

mia, and we know that 98 percent of the victims of

this disease are Black. To fail to combat this disease
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

is to submit to genocide; to battle it is survival.

these programs satisfy the deep needs of the
community but they are not solutions to our Proves.
That is why w call them survival programs,

high level, then the community will seize the time and
deliver themselves from the boot of their oppressors.*

following this strategy we at once “fill a very real

Poor white too), where the people are not peing fed, clothed,
ransportation
ries This will create the consciousness ta comes from
he introduction of people’s government. It will help the
ople to understand the force and energy \frevetution, “We
are organizing them around their needs.” We will not di

from which political vary. “All political Parties, as things

stand, will support the power complex. Any individual
elected will either a a supporter of the vetablished polities
juey P. Newton, Black Capitalism Re-Analyzed, p. C (supplement
tom) Thlele Ponther iuterourauitaat Neve Service, Saturday, June 5,
GEORGE JACKSON

—or an “individual.” What would help us, in fact, is to allow

many right-wing elements as possible to assume “politi-
cal” ie warnings that “our thrusts toward self-
determination will bring on fe ” are irresponsible—or
better, unrealistic. The fascists already have power. The
poin me W: ust be to expose them and
combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is
li hoosing wl wishes to die. Ider of

the hated ruling corporate class. It is to our benefit that this

Person be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning. We are not
8
or even eight out
of two hundred. This is a huge nation dominated by the most
reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of the
world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot

fort of the world. They have been hypnotized into believing

that criticism of the expansionist polices “4 imperialalism is
really isolationist or injurious to both thi S.A. and the
r]
We are faced with two choices: to continue as we have

cane,
will be able to turn on the old culture. Collectively we have

such choice. In a report from Jonathan Jackson in early

1970, he said,
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

We are not going to wait until the U.S.A. attacks the

people of the U.S.A. or Angola, Mozambique or any of
the other African nations in foment. We can’t wait. We
shouldn’t even allow this thing to happen in Indo-
‘hina, Bank of f Am America, Chase Manhattan, First Na-
tional City Bank of N. Y., Irving Trust Co., the Morgan
monopoly, acturers Hanover Trust, Continental
Ill. National Bank, First National Bank 0,
Banke , and a dozen lesser firms al have
great financial interests in the U.S. ow. In 1966 the
F investment in one small African nation was $66
million. It’s almost doubled since the: 168, 70 to
715% of oods from the U.S.A. entered the U.S.A
uty fre we'll be asked to fight the people of the
S.A. because they’re getting their people’s army to-
gether
her... jo—I’m not wait ir them to attack
a n
part of Africa or Asia, Tm
P m entering the war now—on
the side of the Vietnar

‘he Black Colony, U.S.A., has little choice. We must

enter the war on the side of the majority of the world’s
people, even if it means fighting the U.S.A. majority. We
fight to live. And we’re learning to fight; it'll bea war to the
Knife if necessary.
an’ rt wait until the «generation that thinks of blacks

etc., has been educated away. It may be the reverse “hat

happens; we niggers and gooks may be blown away first. Or
ifwe survive, what will we sa A desert?
GEORGE JACKSON

We'll mass what people we can; perhaps that won't be

the whole lower class. We’ll mass ourselves and any ally
and we'll
attempt to wage a war on property and property rights.
i i but, even then, ill di

ssary a iti
the majority of the world’s people in the reduction of this
whole country to a vast wasteland, and a gra’ near forttwo
hundred million of history’s most damnable fool
Peop!ple’ 's War, urban ‘isle each poe move to-

port a corresponding military move. This unity of politics

and war wil i i i

to exis
k Panther Party is the largest and most power-
mu | poli force existing outside establishment politics. It
is power oe the people. It is the people's'S natural
oie vanguard. Now let us assume the e: nce
small, tightly vat totally committed and separate mtn
vangvard puch as
a Jonathan Jackson attempted to
=

an was my brother and closest comrade. . knew

him. tea wasve real super-nigger. He worked at it, hard. He
took complete control of himself, he learned every weapon

the mortar. thirt:

with the simple stroke of an empty hand or foot. He was

74
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

and reaches down take up our weapon

see ve two perfectly harmonious fists: the left “front
ram” of the Black Panthers’ political thrust, and the left
“back ram” of the August 7th movement.
Let’s further assume that this nation is one hugeci
Johanne: burs,
This clarifies the understanding of urban People’s War, the
coni of “the true internationalism,” and tthe connections
incon processes and effects of a people at war under
e leadership of a vanguard which we a2 double-edged

'y due to

in. We can now deal with them as a single entity because

f the national character of the vanguard party and revolu-
tionary consciousness within the inner Black Colony. All
nglo-Western cities are generally the same when they are
ould be
talking about London, New York, Chicago, Petrie Los
ngeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Paris, Berlin or Rome in-
stead of Johannesburg.
Mao ietured the U.S.A. as the city of the world sur-
ir
board, I
wish to make further comments on the hypothetical super-

75
GEORGE JACKSON

technological city-state and its vulnerability.

Any ponest expert in the overall strategy and logistics
of classic We mechanized warfare—the war of the in-
Gustially-based, “established state—will
st admit that the scien-
tific guerrilla force must be outnumbered ten to one in
manpower by
all. The establishment army, the defenders of property, of the
industrial complex armed with the tools and weapons of

wo fighting styles. Recent reports (March of 1971) coming

the Indo-Chinese theater describe such debacles as
sehen rus A. 40-ton taianks racing in wild retreat before the
pervs. Puppet soldiers and U.S.A. mercenaries in thei

selves to the runners of rescue helicopters. Disaster for the

man with the most and best equipment is threatening and
imminent. Now is the time for us to fill the streets with our

povernment with every weapon at our disposal.

The effectiveness of rallies and mass
1 demonstrations has
Their

us the opportunity to effect intensive organization of the

Projects at
and Progr ms that will form the infrastructure of
our com: If the mass ale close, as they have in the
past, with a tow specches and a pamphlet, we can cxpect no
the people will
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

be Amerikans again (instead of people). But going among

the people’ ing with cli and
P 8 >

intensive organization and the sterile, stilted attempts to

build new unions (rank and file, etc.) or elect a socialist
legislature.
However, as we start the projects that will eventually

flict with the ruling clique, my own personal observatitions

leadme to the independent conclusion that the political
vanguard and ¢even its early project a to be defended

culture's military, its secret police and vigilante “death

squads.
‘med struggle is at the very heart of revolution. If the
problems of the People cannot be redressed because the

lies and individuals it means we are going to have to seize

his pro,
ot war, some ® form of armed struggle. If history is our guide,
it clearly records that nothing of any great value has ever
changed hands without a struggle or at least a show of, or
threat of, violence. Men simply don’t surrender what they
think of as their privilege me property except by force.
History itself isis economically motivated class struggle.
simply no way to compare this society or its
GEORGE JACKSON

hile: Allende is not seizing property; his government is

“buying property.” Until the Chilean ruling capitalist class
is suppressed, the Chil ion i i

forget the eco-

birth to countless “socialistic” hermaphrodites, always to the

so many contradictions that most have given up all hopeof

ee the modern industrial state or even understand-
it. England before the Tories or between the Tories is
“liberal vocialist " Military dictatorships, clearly total-
itarian, are ruled by cttanes traveling under the designation
“revoluoom council,”
No it hasss any substance if it conflicts with the
In our
th
obituary section. Blacks who seriously advocate revolution
are killed
the graveyard or the prison camp. It’s a national cultural
tradition. Since these are the facts, it follows that

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use

Le >

© acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like

v
3

slaves. We cannot forget, unless we ie bourgeoi

ifists or opportunists, that we are living in a “ass
society, that there is no way out of this society, and there
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

can be none, except by means of the class struggle. In

every class soriety, whether it is based on slavery, serf-
dom, or as at present, on wage labour, the oppressing
class is armed.*

The vanguard cannot stay alive long enough to effec!

broad consciousness unless it ossesses the latent threat ‘ot
force. They’re going to claim thatour clothing projects, the
people’s bazaars, the people’s stores and decentralized cot-
tage industries are fronts for stolen property. The establish-
ment will claim that the vanguard party is feeding an
clothing people with
w goods stolen from the old enemy cul-
‘e. They'll claim that we’re buying it from the city-state’
ham
impen who steal cverything they can Sell, or that t we're
ippi urse, i
an attack upon our ri projects our infrastructure. The
ified by th a dozen diff
urselves ‘on! r
homes. They will attack us—behind the fire ordinance, the
sanitation department, the anonymous tp. e establish-
nd all of us who
il, for
resisting arrest, attempting murder and receiving stolen
property, etc. It’s as predictable as nightfall.
I'm convinced that any serious organizing of people
st carry
tionary violence. Without it, the establishment forces will

*V.I. Lenin, Selected Works.

GEORGE JACKSON

his project before the people can feel its benefits. Self-
determination requires a small, hidden, highly trained
army equipped with the very best and most destructive of
mina ‘weapons, and
a a bodyguard of counter-terrorists.
anguard party distinguishes itself in the service of
people and superimposes itself over the ol ture
throws hout the city-state. Tactics designed to further the
development of revolut
lutionary consciousness must be based
n the prevailing state of class and race antagonisms
created out of the new relation:ship, We can be certain that
h 1 fa clandesti it] ist by then.

trated by blacks and other revolutionary people. Infiltration

Infiltrating the

ize the ruling class’s attempt to isolate the black vanguard

commune from the larger
lar body of the class structure. All
cons to jsoare the vanguard community must be resisted.
¢ Black Colony must actively invite other revolutionary
pte to vllow their example. We must give refuge tot the

How ‘annot
delay our own preparations toward a united black revolu-
tionary culture. No one will undertake to aid uss unless they

ly the rol al
leading role in the liberation of the whole city-state. To
‘ . ibility for
our own liberation is suici patient
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

for another one hundred to one hundred and fifty years!

e’ll get stuck with long theoretical explanations on con.
sciousness or objective conditior it’sclear that con-
sciousness will not grow unless hee is someone among us
willing to feed it.
Consciousness grows in spirals. Growth implies feeding
and being fed. We feed consciousness by feeding eople,
addressing ourselves to their needs, the and social
needs, working, organizing toward a ‘united national, left.

lefen
ence infrastructure, then they are ready to be brought into
“open” conflict with the ruling class and its supporters. This
conflict must extend to every level of capitalist production
i f out er will grow, a:
a result of this mass contact with the ruling forces. There i is

fully move against their “less enemy. However, there seems

to be some questionas to how seriously we should take
ourselves and our worlce oroorganizing.
en we meet resistance, shouldwe acquiesce, with-
draw, wait it out or intensify? Should we meet violent reac-
tion with a more determined violence? The type that put
ciety fanks to flight in Laos? In other words, if the fascists
don’t like what we’re doing and attack us through a lyncl
mob (ihe police forces and judicial branch of their govern-
ment), should we relent? Or should we accept their violent

81
GEORGE JACKSON

against it?
Every step, every stage toward aunified black commune

form of violence. It is clear that if we don’t learn to overcome

all resistan i Di
ing i i i monstrat-
Ives that “we can,”
di
under 'y step of f the way.

. We'll take our >

collectivize them, defend them, invite other revolutionary
P tod
soy the fascists’ pseudo-mass-~ -culture fom witl hin
he people move into more s ant areas s of anti-

tact with the defenders of the present state of property

rights in general. Then we will discover that their ower and

their T po-
tential for violence. The size and complexity ofaa thing are
not an index of its strength. This struck me forcefully orone

and spotted a photograph of a huge self-propelled 155-mm

i its si i i A man on
foot,
had destroyed it.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

The larger and more complex the city-state, the more it

is dependent upon all related parts. The cannon was hit at
movi
stroyed and the death machine fell of its ownin weight. How

or power, without water,

er transport communications, sewage
*” None of these can be protected; their sheer
alot kes it impossible. How can the establishment
protect anelectrical supply line and the thousands of tr:
formers, etc? Effective positioning of the guards is militarily
impossible. A man every twenty-five feet up and down t!

class that paid for the protection), since a break at any one
point renders powerless huge sectionsof the area served. The
cost of supporting the guards would bankrupt any nation.
8 P
by point. I think this is the essence of the poor man’s war,

worker bees.
The only valid form of union activity is seizure of union
leadership by any means necessary. We must call strikes to
enforce our demands on capital. To enforce the strike we

. - ge slavery. T y first impulse i

eat! With right-wing union leadership gone and the black
wore revolutionized through his contact with the black
mune, even the fascists who exist without any sense of
GEORGE JACKSON

community or ibly b
or at least rendered neutral. Either way, they won't be able
to real strikes with the power lines dow:
ower of our volltary strategy isting beside our
polite! infrastructure depends on constant attack, attack,
attack. Improvisation, aggression. An attack on y.

&
feed
‘odu poi ril yst
As I stated, the Western matory experts admit that the
mechanized establishment guard must outnumber the at-
tacking worker by ten to one. Whee they cannot afford to
dmit is th i i i iority they can-
not win. They’re learning this in every theater of combat. In
a class war, the:ey coul Id never even raise a ten- to- one numeri-

erate elements of the lower class (created by a long history

y)
the advantage
is still ours. At ten to one, we still enjoy a strategic. military
uperiority if
it points vital to the order ond. continuity of.
thei lifessuppor system, all at the same time. The points to

able " ) Protect th

super- technolo city-state has grown so com-
plex that it is completely dependentne won its thousands of
related parts. It has grown so large that no force can be

rilla technique is to cripple. and nally stop the life-support

84
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

system of the enemy class or state. The advantage of the

the need for the establishment forces to spread themselves

rms ‘oducti
The mobile have, not,” the attacker, can concentrate his

In Mao’s Selected Works, Vol. II, he speaks of ingenuity and

a
mobility as necessary qualities of any guerrilla operat

The ancients said: “Ingenuity in varying tactics depends

on mother wit”; this “ingenuity,” which is what we
mean by flexibi ‘lity, iis the contribution of the intelligent
commander. Flexibi ne does mean recklessness;
‘klessness must jected. Filexy consists in the
me'S abil ity to take timely and ap-
t is of i

crush him so that the final Victory will beo

*Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works.

GEORGE JACKSON

" there are twenty points in the city-state to be pro-

t - . lear! kine f

tion. The ten points that remain andaare guarded by the ten
units of Protection must now meet the attacker on a one-
to-one basis. The term na aoe" explicitly means “first
strike,” ‘and tet wrike translates into “ “advantage. ” Total

selves for survival first—if we first construct the commune,

asense of community, a common interest of class. The objec-
tive conditions are present. To postpone our liberation with

weapon in the world for close-range urban fighting. They are

simple to make, maintain and use. Anyone can be effective
with the Scatter gun; one simply Points and squeezes the

your swing. Tanks are obsolete. They can be rendered harm-

less with a dollar’s worth of grenade, propelled from the
muzzle of the shotgun by a blank cartridge. Then, as a tank

gasoline bomb. Enough gasoline, soap shavings and potas-

sium chlorate could a ank over on its side, or thrown
from the windows of our ts the gasoline bomb could
incinerate the terse
We only be vepressed if we stop thinking and stop
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

fighting. Pee who refuse to stop fighting can never be

repress eitherwin or they die—whichis more at-
tractive than iosing and dying. The primacy of politics re-

no stretch of the imagination can we hope to overthrow so

determined an enemy without force.

We Will Win!

George
 The
Amerikan
Mind

Frankenstein 's need fi servant was an expression

of his BO, 50 rhe ated a aera } uely
creature, pathologically, strong and hu,
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

Dear Greg,*

The breakdown of establishment-conditioning usually

beneficial to them. They begin to refuse their share of the

spoils. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale left the campus to
le em
cratic Society gave birth to the Weatherman.
ie rise of socio- political institutions to their "present
form and complexityw: t the result of chan
poration, the vniversty, the unions, the mass oe dint
foundations, the associations, the courts, the prisons, te
arm: y (pol ice—national and snternational-uniformed and

ers of state centralism. An examination focused on the his-

sStates (a studydy i i i ink

tionssof these institutions. For my purpose, I would broadly

divide the major

and the other to discourage, curtail or completely deny cer-

tain other actions. The unintelligible vastness of these institu-

p 1 y smal of h h
of this can be demonstrated by documented evidence and

*A friend of the author.

GEORGE JACKSON

futabl di ii ‘ial, corporative,

hierarch:
rior conditioning,” of course! The “effects of ubiqui-
tous self- negation inbred since childhood,” of course, again!
inly m of capitalistm: .
ly * s.
‘estern eiviltzation is dying because it’s tied into an
economic system that t was decadent a hund Ired years ago.

minority class. The rise of the manufacturing class was not

pontaneous. It i

ble ability
bility. Rather it is proof of a destructive will to power at any
cost.
Frankenstein’s ‘need for a servant was an expression of
his dise:
demented, ugly creature. He censored the beast’s activity by

tall any growth of his mental faculties. A brain was grudg-

ne attached
a to the beast to Provide away
a for it to act. The
east workedand fought the of his creator. The
ast was content to watch the ¢creator flourish. He lived
through his creator. And when he finally saw himself as he
was, he went ma
The corporation, the foundation, the association, the
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

media, th i iti
primary schools are all designed to move people into very

di
slave state but the pre-ordering is done by the one-tenth of
one percent, the ruling cl: i i the cor-
Th

ately how the guiding instructions are held together by red

necessary. The corporation’s flea market and the mass media

are relatively new techniigus of control, as are the institu-
tonal foundations and most of the associatior
he foundations, whetherfa mily or corporate, are tax-
cxem financial mechanisms, ostensibly established for a
the fields
They subsidize scientific research, h igher r education, educa-
tional TV, etc. The Rockefellers alone control thirteen such
foundation:
of ninety to a hundred nations in the Third World countries
mainly—holdings variouslyestimated in value from ten to
fourteen billion dollars. Similar foundations are comolied
by the Fords, Kelloggs, and Carnegies, ete., ete. When

tations are threatened, the tax reupported” international po-

ar vated. fail:
cated upon.When necessary,
v the Marine Corps and infantry
intervene.

Comrade George
 Amerikan
Justice

For their freedom to prey on the world’s people .

hatever the cost in blood.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Dear Greg,

r for capitalism to continue to rule, any action

that theaters the right of a few individuals to own and
control Public Property must be prohibited and curtailed
whatever
repressive institutions has spent one and one-half ‘trillion

rily e;
ecuted in the streets) ignore the fact that thein bosses have
looted the world!!!
I refuse to make any argument with statistics compiled
by the institutions and associations that
I indict. Yet it is true
that even official figu rove the case against capitalism.
F ie A .

1969, 28 percent of these crimes occurring in the ghetto.

Since 1960, th d i: i

qi
ity.
This is my eleventh year of being shoveled into every
major
GEORGE JACKSON

the largest prison system in the world. What I have seeni

3 rs is the living situation. The experience is
¢
8
<
es ‘anger

my runes to the Poison. gas treatment, there 2are seventeen

ter” but is far more accurately known as the hole. The A./C.
is San Quentin’s triple maximum security, and all of these
cells are filled—eleven of them with black men—every one
of them without exception from the working class.
en arrested, interrogated or inv:vestigated more
times than I care to count. I’ve learned ten times more
n alabout

From the first moment I’m brought into this scenario, I

place between myself and my captors. Depending on the

situation, one learns 10to feign either indignation, surprise,
*The author was under indictment for two counts: firstdegree mur-
mu
4500

upon conviction.—Ed.

98
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

idiocy or fear. At times the peasant-philosopher face will

work. I don’t think I am an exception at all, as most blacks
learn by age fifteen how to handle the cretins who hire out
as guns for the privileged. There is only one type of inquisi-
tional situation that I Per sonal cannot control—the ses-
thos es, guile fails and

it least learn how to protect the grein area. I simply have

never managed to develop a technique against nine armed
who are fascinated with lamagging my private parts!
But, Pm still learning!
‘All blalack People, wherever they are, whatever their
crime:
rs because the system has dealt with them differently than
with whites. - Whitey gets the benefit of ev ery law, every
loophole, sth
white people: Blacks don t get the benefit of any such jury
trial by peers. Such a trialis almost a cinch to result in the
conviction oa blac! Kp.person, and it’s a conscious political
decision that blacks don’t have those benefits” (Howard
Moore Jr., more official “of” the court, but not “for” the
court—he’s in a position to know—he’s honest, black, and

tized society. The ultimate expression order:

it’s prison. There are hundreds upon hundreds. of prisons,

99
GEORGE JACKSON

order, no social peace Anglo-Saxon ourgeols law is tied

firmly into ecot s. One can even pick that out of those
Vital States ‘Bours law protects proper relations
The cultural
society that also tend to check acivity—Gndividuaism, ar-
he rush to
learn “how to” instead of “what is”)—are secondary Teally,
and intended for ild id i

an, my younger prother understovd this point

perfect the purport of the yn the Marin County
‘courthouse was more sinieant oy ‘or than its calculable
effects. I knew him w

action. He knew that as he proceeded in liberating there

amI the hoax.

the real Significance of the August 7th affair. To Jonathan,

ah sure was “audacity, audacity and mi
audacit' and practice, strategy and tactics w
based inn his mind on actual confrontation within “this” Par:
ticular
ity i operating
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

if, at the same time, the Black Panther political apparatus

a fit of reckless, mindless gunfire, one hundred automat sted

goons shot through the bodies of a judge, district attorney,

all activity. To prevent certain actions, no cost in blood is too

It would seem that so much free fire would be difficult

to explain, but it is not.
tected with this gunfire. Freedom must then be inert
a thousand separate ways, but it actually comes dow:
freedom for a few families and their friends_freedom to
prey upon the world.
Acceptanceof enslavement is deeply buried in the pa-
thogenic character types of capitalism. Itisa result of the

capitalist rule. Compulsive behavior and disordered obses-

sional longings are actually made synonymous with “charac-
ter” in our disordered Society. But | to emphasize these

spring is to© confuse effect with cause and further cloud the
point of attack. So far,
GEORGE JACKSON

that what is needed is total revolution, the armed struggle

between the have-nots with their vanguard and the haves

purposefulil ‘and absolute destruction of the state and all

present institutions, the destruction carriedout by the so.
called psychopath, the outsider, whose only remedy is de-
struction of the system. This organized massive violence

therapy
sis of the oppressed mentality and theps
thopathic personality that a ie from contact with he
Prevaricat ions of Ammeril
rikan ul must be carefully inte-

of effects tends to sii certainly promotes defeatism.

“Action makes the front.” One can quietly refuse to accept
the constrictions of bourgeois culture, can reject himself,

a form of individual revolt, but here again we find another

- A . . wa

e cannot escape—one simply cannot reject constrictions

without rejecting and putting to death the constrictor. An
armed attacker cannot be ignored. Gandhi and the gurus
were all abject t fools. I would certainly be te 4 if, when
critical flash points matured, I hadn’t backed my rejection
with blows. I would hate to have been a8 Vietnamese in My
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Lai without arms. I hate encounters like the one at my last

April 6, 1971,*
attacked 1 me had all the weapons. I would hate to run into

without being armed. My pledge is to arms, my enemies are

if that interest is only a wage. If revolution means civil war

—I acct ane the sooner begun the soon
don’t think the enemy can be vdemifed any more
carefully than this. Further identification must be made in
the process. I feel elated that my brother died with two guns
in hand. I’m going to miss him and all the others, though
r miss people in-
tensely. I shim intensely, but he and the others who

freedom.
I paraphrase Castro on trial after Moncada:
“T warn you, gentlemen, I have only begun!”
*On April 6, 1971, at a preliminary hearing of the Soledad Brothers
murder trial, a bailiff persisted in jabbing George Jackson in the
the bailiff “with a karate blow to the head.—Ed.
A
movement centering on political prisoners. How can this
ae 1 i fd

to isolate reactionary elements

nitary conduct implies a ” search” for those elem:
ments
h is for joint
action. It involves a eonnscious reaching for th e revelevvant, the
entente, » and especially, in our case, the reconcilable.

kan history, the ruling classes have found it necessary to

But there have always been individuals and groups who

105
GEORGE JACKSON

of the other.
The men who placed themselves above the rest of so-
ciety through guile, fortuitous outcome of circumstance and
sheer brutality have developed two principal institutions to
deal with any and all serious disobedience—the Pris and

Bories in the United States than in all other countries of the

‘orld combined. At all times there are two- thirds of a mil-
lion people or Hundreds are
destined to be legally executed, thousands more quasi-
legally Other thousands will never again have any freedom

tutions that combine to make up the order of things. One

third of a million people may not seem like a great number

However, compared with the one million who are responsi-

ble for all the affairs of men within the extended state, it
What I
area few of the subtle elements that I have observed to be

tarian) to
fe effectively reverse this legitimatized rip-ot
ons were not institutionalized on such a massive
scale by

and privilege, a reflection of the* Present state of property

rela tions. There are no wealthym so few
he general prison population that we "ie
altogether Imprisonment is an aspect ofclaxe siruaale from

106
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

the outset. Tt is the creation ofa closed Society which at-

tures ofa hypocritical establishment as well as those who

tory, the United States has used its prisons to suppress any
orsaanized efforts to challenge its regitimaey its at-
t eak early Worl Men

A
Ss

2
zz
zSeg.

33
S
2
z

33 °

°
a

85

must be taught to understand the true function of prisons.

types of offenders or victims? The people must learn that

when one “offends” the totalitarian state itis patently not an
i that
the privilege «of the Pres ed fe
thing be ore ral than the fansuage of
tay pli indict nts: e Peo) he State
Angel and reuchel Mane” or rhe eople
of th Bob bby S eale and Ericka Huggins.” What
rel Ci ‘the hierarchy, the ed minorit;
mi
cate the people i
nomic crimes. They must be made to realize that even crimes

that was decadent a hundred years ago. All crime can be

107
GEORGE JACKSON

P
In all cases, it is deter-
mined by the economic system, the method of economic
organization. “The Peo} ple of the State .. . vs. John Doe” is
It’s like statin:
“The People vs. . The People. ”’ Man against himself. ‘Offical

to suppress the forces of progres:

Prisoners must be reached and made to understand that

from within (while I’m here, my persuasion iis that the war
on no matter
dominated soil). The sheer numbers of the prisoner class and

revolutionary potential. Working alone and from within a

steel-enclosed society, there is very little that peoplelike

ary outside the walls. That is part of the task of the “Prison

The “Prison Movement,” the August 7th movement

and all

lutionary consciousness at every level of struggle. The goal

is i i bl
of fielding a people’s army.
of us should understand that revolution is aggres-
sive. The, manipulators of the system cannot or will not meet

with the system.

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

years of capitalism, and as we move into more and more

when the reste of power fails a violent “episode precedes

its transform:
We can at tempt to limit the scope and range of violence
in revolution by mobilizing as many Partisans as possibleat

ruling class has on this country, and its history of violence,

nothing could be more certain than civil disorders, perhaps
ven civil war. I don’ t dread either. There are no
ai good as-

nized in its destruction.

n Monopoly capital is the enemy. It
crushes whe life force all of the people. It must be com:
pletely destroyed, uickly as possible, utterly, totally,
ru thlessl, ‘os estrove
his as a common major goal, it would seem n that

oping common initiatives and methods consistent with the

egretfully,

across the ideological, racial and cultural barricades that

have blo cked the natural coalition of left-wing forces att all
times in
le for
gle. The issues involved and the dialectic which flows from
an understanding of the clear objective existence of overt
oppression could be the springboard for our entry into the
of * ii increasing W orld-wide socialist consciousness.
order to create a united left, whose aim is the defense

109
GEORGE JACKSON

of political prisoners and prisoners in general, we must re-

nouncece the idea that all participants must be of one mind,

with a single party line or with a single method. Ther reverse

Ea ch | partisan, outside the ‘vanguard elements, should work

at radicalizing in the area of their natural environment, the

ig the rallies and demonstrations. The vanguard element: ts,

mitment and providing concrete, clearly defined activity.

will contribute to the building of the commune, the infra-

structure, with pen and clipboard in
ir ‘ona ‘or those who
aren’t ready to take that step, a “packet” of pamphlets
should be provided
for their cdlucation,
All of this, of course, means that we are moving, and on
a mass level: Not all in our separate directions—but firmly
under the disciplined and principled leadership of the Van-

0 deal cectively ‘with the Amerikan ordeal. ane central

committee e people’s vanguard partymust make its
Presenece. r lt throughout the various levels of ‘the overall

wit fh the example of unity in the prison movement, we

can begin to break the old behavioral patterns that have

110
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

ascism, to triumph over the last several decades. We tap a

massive potential reservoir of partisans for cadre work. We

payeho-sesocial Uy products that economic man with his pri-

vate s mani red—Raci
Tvve Sa’
caved ths most otic barter tot our needs of unit
for last. Racism is a matter of ingrained tra
traditional autitudes
conditioned through institutions. For it is as natural

environments compounded by bitter class repression have

totally eer
em: + obstacle to a united left in this country is
whitera im There are three categoriesof white racists: ne
overt, self satis fied racist who doesn’t attempt to hid
antipathy; the self-interdicting racist who harbors and: nur-

racist, who has no awareness of his racist preconceptions.

I deny the existence of black racism outright, by fiat
deny it. Too much black blood has flowed | between the chasm
unfair to expect

is either a healthy defense reflex on the part of the sincere

black partisan who is attempting to deal with the realistic
problems of ssurvival and elevation, or the racism of the
organs.
lack partisans, we must recognize and allow for the

111
GEORGE JACKSON

existence of all three types of racists. We must understand

their i
must be crushed, for it continues to manufacture new and
deeper contradictions of both class and race. Once it is de-
stroyed,w abl le to address the Problems of racism

while we are in the process of destroying the system.

The self-interdicting racist, no matter what his acquired

it. Whether the basic character of a man can be changed

or
at alli is still a question. But . . . we have in bd immediacy

validity of materialist philosophy again, because we don’t

fave to guess, we have the meansof proof.
‘he need for unitariancdc goes much deeper than
the liberavon of Angela, Bobby, Frick Magee, Los Siete,
Tijerina, white draft-resisters, and now the indomitable and
faithful James Carr.* We have fundamental strategy to be

*Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, Ruchell Magee. Los

cisco of the charee of ling a police officer, and who continue to be

imprisoned for
el aty

the Soledad Brothers’ hearing on ‘Apa 6. He was arrested and now ffaces
the possibility of return to prison to complete his life sentence—1

112
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

proved—tested and proved. The activity surrounding

protection and liberation of people who fight for us is an
i he struggle. it is i if

lution under new progressive methods. There must be a

collective redirection of the old guard—the factory and
union agitator—wi ith the campus activist who can counter
the ill-effect "Off ‘ism at its training site, and with the
lu mpenproletriat intellectuals who possess revolutionary

people already living outside the system. They must work

Pistol Black, brown and white are all victims together rr. At

struggle, the permanent struggle after the revolution—the

one for new relationships between men.
 After the
Revolution
Has Failed

After the killing is done, the ruling class goes on about

usiness of making profits
On
Withdrawal

SYLLOGISM, 7. argument with two premises and a conc!

sion; a logical scheme of a formal argument consisting otaa
‘ajor and minor premise and a conclusion which must logi-
cally be true if the premises are tru:
—Merriam-Webster

After revolution has failed, all questions must center on how

that
the authoritarian reign of terror. At which level of social,
new attack?
rst, we, the black partisans and their vanguard party,
the old and new left alike, must concede that the worker’s
the

tions that support them. This must be conceded without

bitterness, name- falling: or the irintense rancor that is pres-
ently building. There havebi ‘0 depressions, two 5 preaat
a dozen serious recessions, aa dozen brush wars, crisis

117
GEORGE JACKSON

after economic crisis. The mass psycho-social national cohe-

threatening to fi
apart from its own concentric inner dynamics. But at each
revo-
Id left has
failed to understand the true nature of fas
never have a complete definition of fascism,

nance of the traditionalist, capitalist ruling class. But if one

enough for all to understand, that word would be “reform.”

“economic.” “Economic reform” comes very close to a

working defnition of fascist motive for
uch a definition may serve to ‘lavify things even
though it leaves a great deal unexplained. Each economic

Disguise
d devel f
the fascist state. The modern industrial fascist state has
found it essential to disguise the opulence of its ruling class

consumer I
of the “new state” to Participate in this flea market, the

wage laws that mask the true nature of modern fascism.

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

way for capital-

ism to protect and develop fascism!
After the German SS agents or Ttalian Black Shirts kick
in the doors and herd Jews and Communist partisans to
death camps, after Peg-Leg White’ 'S Black Legion terror and

the F.B.I., in other words, after the fascists have succeeded

is pose
is removed, the ruling class goes on about the business of
making Profits as usual. The Significance ofo the “new fascist
arrangement” lies in the fact it this business-as-usual is
accompanied by concessions to the degenerate segment of
the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone

ary segments of the lower classes.

Corporative ideals have reached their logical fonctusion
in the US. The new N corporate state has foug ght

important institution, formed its partnership with jabor

thro elit
tective agencies replete with spies, technical and animal, to

ruling class of this country in the long process of its trend

toward authoritarianism and its last and highest state, fas-

‘Probably the author is referring to the Guardians of Liberty, an

ti-Cath
civil servants in New York in 1911. Among its founders was Nelson A.
Miles, former chief of staff of the United States Army.
GEORGE JACKSON

carth yoday or in hist

With each advancement in the authoritarian process
and strengthening of the ruling class’s control over the sys-
tem, there was a corresponding weakening of the people’s
and workers’ movement.
And intellectuals still argue whether Amerika is a fas-
cist © untry. This concern is typical of the Amerikan left’s
ight ‘rom reality, from any truly extreme position. This iis

At this stage, hi
the existence of a fascist arrangement? Just consider the
awesome centralization of power, and the proven fact that

of a minute "Portion of the population.

Of course, the revolution has failed. Fascism has tempo-
rarily succeeded under the guise of reform. The only way we
can destroy it is to refuse to compromise with the enemy
state and its ruling class. Compromises were made in the
thirties, the forties, the fifties. The old vanguard parties made

the last revelation about oneself, not many members of the

old vanguard choose to risk their whole futures, their lives,
in order to al“ike T the conditions that Huey P. Newton de-
scribes as “destructive of life.”
formism was allowed. The more degenerate elements
of the working class were the first to succumb. The vanguard
parties supported the capitalistic war adventure in Worl
a

War II. Then they helped to promote the mass consumers’

120
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

market that followed the close of the war, the fee market
that mut ted the workers’ more genuine demands.
the
complexities | of a particularly refined fascist economic ar-
‘angeme! here the controling elites have co-opted large
portions os the lowly working c!
When we ask ourselves, Where will we attack the enemy
state? we are answered, At the productive point. The next

in a nation of short-sighted, contented, conservative work-

ers? Obviously, the fascist movement is counterrevolution at
its verys center. Fascist veformismn isi a calculated response to
the ssic, scientific-socialist_ approach
pro: to revolution
trouh positive mobilization of the working classes. From
its ince

ist ruling class would continue to° play its leading 19 A

ciet jot a mass
sts are per-
fectly suited to the development of the perfect totalitarian

of fascism involve the concept of “scientific capitalism,” or

“controlled capitalism,” ophisticated, totalitarian,
“earned” response to the challenge of egalitarian, scienti!
sociallism. fer iits successful establishment iin Spain, Portu-
So, ‘

consciousness.”
GEORGE JACKSON

We are faced with the task of raising a positive mobiliza-

i i i ‘gone
through” a contra-positive, authoritarian process.
The new faneuarard elements seem to agree that with-
drawal from my si nd its social, political aand
economic ie ishe fet step voward its destruction. The

consciousness will develop in the struggles of withdrawal.

However, after this point, arreement grows vague and is all
but ms in a sea ot contra n. The contention turns on
one whe scope and range of violence
wit! thin the revolutionary process.
After the lengthy and clearly unnecessary ideological

white or black worker, we are now faced with an equally

unnecessary ideological battle over which of the various
communal (revolutionary cultural) approaches has the
rong revolitionary validity.
lem is compounded by the almost apolitical
withdrawal or the growing Weatherman faction, and their

of sex, music and drugs. Their Nietzschean-Hegelian with-

five generations. In our equation, thi: b idered th

the realistic, cohesive synergism seems as yet impossibly

On the other side of the equation, we have Huey New-

ton’s concept of black communes set well within the huge

122
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

population centers of the enemy state. This concept accepts

any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the

party and joined with the world’s other revolutionary | soci-

eties. They are the obvious answer to all the theoretical and
n revolu-
tion—a revolution that will be carried out eee ncipaly by
blacks.
The question I’ve asked myself over the years runs this

si
all—in the survival of the present state? In this condition,
how could we believe iin the Possibility of a new generati ion

hierarchy?
Just how many Amerikans are willing to accept the
fatherland so that
the rest of the land and the world might survive in goo
health? How can the black industrial worker be induc oieto
carry out a valid worker’s revolutionary policy? What and
who will guide him? The commune. The central city-wide

rights? Carving out a commune in the central city will in-

volve claiming certain rights as our own—out front. Rights
that have not been respected to now. Property rights. It will

123
GEORGE JACKSON

ture, capable of filling the vacuum that has been left by the
. . . oe

this new social

comfort all the people on at least a subsistence level, and
force the “owners” of the enemy bourgeois culture either to
tie their
to leave the land, the tools and the market behind. If he ‘ail
not leave voluntarily, we will expel him—we will use
shotgun and the anti-tank rocket launcher!
Who wil build on an ideal that begins with force? The
vangu rd pi now nation-wide. But vanguard parties
not build revolutions alone. Nor can a vanguard party

tion
in of the people. Revolution is| siege ‘Ssagainst the law.
It’s prohibited. It willnot be wed. I that the
revolutionary isi a lawless man. the outlaw an the impen
make the revolution. The people, the workers, wil: adopt
it.i This must be the new order of things, after the fact of the
modern industrial fascist state.
in blacks, the authoritarian
traits are mainly the effects
of terrorism and lack of intelle cual stimulati
munal experience will redeem A sen, the black
worker is simply choosing the tes gerous andc
plicated strategy of survival. All ‘iasses and all people are
an
subject to the authoritarian syndrome. It is an atavistic
throwback to the herd instincts. But it requires only the
r trauma, th iologi i
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

tial pressures to bring forth a revolutionary consciousness.

Racism enters, on the psycho-social level, in the form of
a morbid, traditional war of both blacks and revolutions. The

cies to mete out pain to blacks, throughout the history or

Amerika’s slave systems, all came into focus when blacl

to city to compete with whites in industrial sectors, and, in

general, engage in status competition. Resenti tment, fear,in-
ecurity,
modern r capiralist industrial society (the more complex the
products, the greater the division of labor; the higher the
ami, the individual
brick tends to feel) are multiplied by ten when racism, race
antagonism, is also a factor. There is certainly no lack of

magazines that carry the little cartoons, and omits or mis-

represents us to death?) has always served to distract and
defuse feelings of status deprivation suffered by the huge

sonality (conformity, but also a strange latent destructive-

ness),
for the psychopathic destructiveness evinced by a people

maker, to “hate freedom.

e revolutionary iss outlawed. The black revolutionary

125
GEORGE JACKSON

“is a doomed man.” All of the forces of counterrevolution

stack ‘Up over his head. He’ Ss standing in
j the tank-trap he has

feeling but himself. “From the beginning” of his revolution-

s.

z
2
S
3

&g

3
8
s

<5

3
<

Bio
ms have ha
to the death. The children’s breakfast programs haven't been
spared. The next round of commu

m with the fin ye

id a gun (an anti-personnel weapon). We cannot ave

tionary people if we are to move together to conclusive ac-

The war will be fought in the nerve centers of the nation,

the cities where Angela was finally capture red as she was at
ork for the revolution, where Huey was found hiding and
working by the government’s propaganda apparat
We cannot withdraw fro
rom the cities. In oder to com-

to withdraw. And under cover of the guns which force ttheir

withdrawal, we will build the new black comm A
BLADE IN THE THROAT OF FASCISM.
 Fascism

Its most advanced form is here in Amerika.

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Comrade John*

T’ve just finished rereading Aneel 's analysis of fascism

(she’s a brilliant, “big, iful revolutionary woman—
ain’t shel!). I’ve studied your eters on the subject carefully.
It could be productive for the three of us to Bet together at
d histori al
analysis. there is some difference of opinion and interpreta-
tion ofhi ‘y between us, but basically I think we are
brought together
three of us could not meet without probably causing
c 2 World
War
"Give her my deepest and warmest love and ask her to

on the subject ri conta return to myself and reexam-

t I will hi

P:
on to a greater effort.
he basis of Angela’s analysis is tied into several old left
my

nn fascism-corporativism did indeed emerge, develop and

consolidate itself into its most advanced form here in
Amerika.
some very severe setbacks. Unlike Angela, I do not believe
that this realization leads to a defeatest view of history. An
An

“John Thorne, the author's lawyer.

GEORGE JACKSON

success of future revolutionizing activity. To contend a

corporativism has emerged and advanced is not to saytl
it has triumphed. We are not defeated. Pure fascism, solu
totalitarianism, is not possible.
Hierarchy has had six thousand years of trial. It will

i poi whole philosophy on politi

and its extension, war. My opinion is that we are at the
historical climax (the flash point) of the totalitarian period.
Th lysis i A
done. Important as they aare, both Wilhelm Reich’s and
Franz Neumann’s works* on the subject are limited. Reich
tends to be veranalytical to» the pointof idealism. I don’t
think Neumann truly sensed the importance of the antiso-
ialist movement. Behemoth is too narrowly based on the
experiennce of German National Socialism. So there is so
much to be done on “he
he subieet and time is running out. If
Iam correct, we will soon be forced into the same fight that
he old left avoided.

6/20/
t is not defeatist to acknowledge that we have lost a
battle. How else can we “regroup” and even think of carrying
on the fight. At the center of revolution is realism. To call

Behemoth: The
The Mas:ss Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reicl
R
Structure and Practice of National Socialism, by Franz Neumann.

130
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

one or two or a dozen setbacks defeat is to overlook the

ebbing and flowing process of revolution, coming clos
our calculations i then receding, but never standing ‘il
Ifa
fa thing isn’t building, it must be decaying. As one force
h i Feld the
other must retreat. There is a very “ienifcant difference be-
tween retreat and defeat. I am not saying that our parents
were defeated when I contend “a fescist-corporativism
merged and advanced in the was
making its advance, it caused, by itits vey pate ann advanee
world-wide socialist consciousnes:
¢ n U.S. capital-

ers had already divided among themselves almost all the

important markets in the world. At the end of World War
II when the other the
U.S. became the most powerful and richest imperialist
power. Meanwhile, the world situation was no longer the
same: the balance of forces between imperialism and the

longer ruled over the world, nor did it play a decisive role
in the development of the world situation” (Vo Nguyen
Gia
In my analysis, I’m simply taking into account the fact
that the Torees of reaction and counterrevolution were al-

the U.S. The process has created the economic, political and
cultural vortex of capitalism's last re-form. My views corre-
Third ionaries. And
GEORGE JACKSON

if taken in the international sense, they are aggressive and

realistic.
The second notion that stands in the way of our under-
standing of fascist-corporativism is a semantic problem.
8

ne in at us, his barely functional plastic tape-recorder that

ost him a week’s labs or, and Poi int out that these are al

me bby js i mpl. i iti

affai
ground and no opposition political activity is allowed. But
examine that definition of totalitarianism, comrade. No
Cuba, North Korea or
North Vietnam. Such aa narrow detnton condemns the
espite the
Prewenee ¢ political parties, there is only one legal politics
the —the politics of corporativism. The hierarchy
comman ae all state power. There are thousands of ways,
however, to attack it and place that power in the hands of
the people.

6/20/71
All levels of struggle must be conceived as inclined
Planes leading inexorably | toa poinint t where armed conflict
will engulf two o1 ions of the people.
‘Armed struggle or oesanized violenee is the natural
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

to the point of impasse. This is not to say that war is for us

the only immediate recourse or the spontaneous result of a
T have alway:
tried to emphasize that through every stage of political

tary mobilization of the people’s forces. One is inextricably

opposition political activity, though there is some truth i

that position. My position is based on historical precedents
violence in an
Amerikan revolutio
ie present clas structure we ¢ represent | the _Broup

significance of which needs very little analysis hore though

But mainly
YY position is rooted in the long history of the Amerikan
business oligarchy’s penchant for violent repression of any
forces that have threatened its centralist movement, and in

Alt hough, as victims or one of history’s most brutal contra-

dictions, as the poo: of the poor, as blacks, it is quite
justifiable and completly possible for us to destroy this
with a Hy

is not our purpose. As revolutionaries, it is our objective to

i i h ill culmi-

133
GEORGE JACKSON

nate in the seizure of state power. Our real purpose is to

redeem not merely ourselves but the whole nation and the
hol ity of natios fi lonial i
nomic repression.
The . has established itself as the mortal enemy of
a
me

all people’ 's government, all scientific-socialist mobilization

activity on
oF earth. The history of this country in the last fifty
e, the very nature of all its fundamental 1 ele-
ments, and its economic, social
zation distinguish it as the prototype of the international
fasci ist sounterrevolution, The USS. is ‘the Korean prob!

8 o
3
the ola,
Mozambique, the Middle East. It’s the grease in the British
and Latin ik ii f
common people.

6/21
The nature of fascism, its characteristics and Properties
have been in dispute ever sin ce it was first iden’

d 1922. i i
written around the subject. There have been a hundred
warty! lines” on just exactly what foosiant is. But both Marx-
ists and non- Ma rxists agree on at least two of its general

nature. These two factors almost by themselves identity the

USS. as a fascist-corporative state.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

An exact definition of fascism concerns me becausei

will help us identify our enemy and isolate the targets of
revolution. Further, it should help us to understand the
ki t i i j

clear away some of the fog in our liberation efforts. This will
help us to broaden the effort. We will not succeed until we
fully accept the fact that the enemy is aware, determined,
iisguised, totalitaria i i
To fight effectively, we must be aware of the fact that the
nemy has consolidated ‘thro ugh reformist machination the
reatest community of self-interest that has ever existed.

y
whole p.
ing inthe mveste for their liberty!
inal definition of fascism is still open, simply be-
cause it isen a developing movement. We have already

of its process and its sequential relationships. You gain only

t.

io) trate
fascist manipulator or the researcher who is able to slash

Fascism was the product of class struggle. It is an obvious

i f capitalism, a higher form of the old struggl
GEORGE JACKSON

capitalism versus socialism. I think our failure to clearly

isolate and define it may have something to do with our
insistence ona full definition—in other words, looking for
exactly identical symptoms from nation to nati ion, . We hav

acter. In fact, it has followed international socialism all

around the glob
fascism is its international quality.

6/22/71
‘he trends toward monopoly capital began paetively
just after the close of the Civil War r in Amerika. Prior to its
emerge!
been the predominant Political force inside Amerikan so-
ciety
geois democracy faded in pro As monopoly capital
forced out the small dispersed Factory setup, the new cor-
Porativism assumed political supremacy. Moilonopoly capital

democracy. The forces of monopoly capital swept across the

Western world in the first half of this century. But they did
not exist alon «That opposite force was alse at work,i.
“neato socialism”—Lenin’s and Fanon’s—nation: val
of liberation guided not by the national ours but
by the ople, the ordinary workireine -class peopl
its core, fafascism is an e mic c rearrangement. It is
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

tion out of differing levels of traditionalist capitalism’s

dilapidation. The common feature of all instances oy fascism
is the oj Position of
o a weak socialist revolution. When the
fascist arrangement beginsto emerge in inde-
dent nation- retates, it does so by default! Tt is simply an
arrangement of an established capitalist economy, an at-
tempt to renew, perpetuate and legitimize that economy’ 's
0:
lutionary consciousness pushing from below. Paine must

development of capitalism in a state of crisis. It is the result

of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried—a
consciousness that was compromised. ““W) i

“ietis clear that class struggle isan

i ingredient of fascism.
the anti-
capitalist forces were weaker than the traditionalist forces.

develops! The ultimate aim of fascism is the complete de-

struction of all revolutionary consciousness.

Our Purpose here is to understand the essence oP this

living,
against it.
This observer i is convinced that fascism t not only exists
in the U.S.A
GEORGE JACKSON

phoenixlike,
logical arrangement
s to understand that the fascist arrangement tol-
erates the existence of no vvalid revolutionary activity. It has
programmed into its very nature a massive, complex and
automatic defense mmechanison for all our old methods “tor

of people. The essence of a U.S.A. totalitarian socio- poi

capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of S par-
ticipatory society. We must rip away its mask. ‘Then th
lebate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle

that will triumph.

lay 14, 1787, the Constitutional Convention with
George Washington presiding officer, the of fra
the new nation’s constitution proceeded ‘vith nity five her
sons and only two were not employers!!!
ere have been many booms and busts in thepe history
of capitalism in this nation and across the Western Hemi-

the stricken economy out of its stupor has always n to

expand. It was vretty clear from the outset tha the curls
alue factor eventually
when the existing implementation of the productive factors
makes it impossible for the larger factor of production (la-
bor) to buy back the aie of its labor.” This Teast to what
has been erroneously termed “overproduction.” It is, in fact,
ly P
to search out new markets and new sources of cheaper raw

138
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

materials to recharge the economy (the imperialist syn-

rom
are of interests develop, of course, between the
various Western nations and evi ventwally lead to competition
arkets. The result ways ing
international centralization of thes various apitalists? “lites,
world-wide cartels: International Telegraphic Unions (now
International Tele: mmunication: s Union), universal Postal
ion, t agricultural
Before World War I there werere forty-five or fifty such inter-

The international quality of capitalism is not happenstance.

-Leni
not
ot completely accept the dea that the old I tle bycom-

lated their local economies and made it possible to

t 5 promote
nationalism among the lower classes. War taken to the point
ce b, bh.
participant:
at all they were > good businessmen. Expansion, then, which

incontrollab!
system, which never considered any changes isin its arrange-
a very real,
directly thre: ing challenge from below to its very
exi e. Fascism in its early stages is a rearrangement of
capitalist implementation in response to a sharpeni
GEORGE JACKSON

threatening, but weaker egalitarian socialist consciousness.

In regi ional or national economic crisis the traditional

sive expansion on the international level. Traditional con-

trols short of expan: r haveve always existed in the

market and import licenses, and monopolies have always

used government to help direct investment.
Classes
at
War

Mobilization and Contramobilization

ate. We should now be able, after time has somewhat dulled

the traumatic exchanges of debate and struggle, to analyze
faecicns chieetivele i a onte ite mei vot
and its goals. ing its i ical i
suggesting that all of its advocates (of the especially early
Ps
situation withi i A
GEORGE JACKSON

As intelligentsia, keepers of th
d
thought, ‘they felt it was their secponiblie to attempt to
resolve a growing social m roblem. M y insistence upon the
nonimportance « of ideology indeed rests squarely upon this
point: that most of the Tasvist intellectuals were reacting to
thet uprootedness and social disintegration of the particular
moment, and with each change in the face of this state of
affairs they were in large part forced to repudiate most of
their former ideology. Weight is given tto this observation by
fascism includ:
sionists, anarcho-syndicalists, Nation, Heedlian ideals,
theoretical syndicalists, nationalists and, in the of the
Ss panish Falange, intellect ‘ual anarchists.
le theme of this early face of fascism was not
merely anti-communist but fundamental Ny a general indict-
le rf
sorbed some socialists. In 1914 the Fasci di Azione

ist patriots favoring Italian interventionin the war against

he Central Powers. Benito Mussolini, a leader of the ex-
treme yndicalist faction of the Socialist Party,su
them vehemently in his newspaper I/ Popolo d’Italia, end of.
course this resulted in his expulsion from the party. In
rch 1919, the deep disillusionment and unrest
caused by the “alin Participation in the war, Mussolini
fascio.
him did not do so out of a sense of the usual role of the
i i i i ducat t
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

society) in a time of extreme social disintegration and eco-

nomic crisis. Men like Benedetto Croce and Arturo Tos-
canini, and others like Giovanni Gentile and Gabrile

solini almost out of desperation at what they vi to Me a

destructive national breakdown. All four were elitist and
may have also felt that their status as intellectuals was also
threatened. Recall, bana Russian evolution had shocke “d the

gard of the Socialist Party for any art form or scientific

activity that did not serve the state, and its tendency to

top intellectuals.
¢ final reason why the importance of ideology in

one form. In fact, historically it has proved to have three

different faces. One “out of power” that tends almost | to be

“in power but not secure” —this is the sensational aspect

of fascism that we see on screen and read of in pulp novels,
when the ruling class, through its instrumental regime, is

ers’ movement. The third face of fascism exists when it is

“in power and securely so.”” During this phase some dissent
may even be allowed. In Italy, Trilussa the poet wrote and

i di h led liberal-
democratic states. In April 1925, three years after the fascist

143
GEORGE JACKSON

March on Rome, Benedetto Croce was able to publish a

clearly anti
a fascist manifesto.
hed product, the actual fascist arrangements is
‘he re}

Wells. This stem: an itable cn ict between the

theory of the
ethical state. The ideals of obedience na oe author-
ity and freedom, 0 mutu-
ally exclusive, that the ideology of fascism could never be
taken seriously.
we pseudo-intellectual origins of fascism can be
y back to ancient Greece. The Germ: ation
Sent apologist Alfred Baumler and | expressionist Gott-
riedB
intlecrals and Eastern Laneean fascists. The Western
iS, ver, favored the primitive, withdra
ideals of Nietzsche or a confused combination of Nietesche
and Hegel with a bit of Plato’s philosopher king added for
window dressing. Actually, there have been as many differ-

societies. Which brings us to the relevant point of inquiry.

never i i Its social ani

economic past must be investigated and clearly defined

It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that Ger-

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

many and Italy reached nation-state status. Their heavy in-

dustrial Sectors were rapidly expanding and coming into

family of the ruling classes at the point of their emergence

into Western bourgeois culture, the section controlling the
largest share of the the GNP in all cases finally succeeded i
in
gaining an even greatei old rt the direction of the
economy, with class interest generally wi a ‘0-
mise. The final result always involved a higher degree of
and control.
tive mobilization. It occurs when the capitalist industrial

acterized by the movement of masses from the traditional

of the cities. A policy was designed by this Capitalist class to

But
“the specter of communism” was “haunting Europe.” The

ence in ihe realm of politics. This we will term positive

mobili
Soaon three: sided political struggle opened the twentieth
century. Actually it was a two-sided struggle: the proletariat
agaiainst the ruling class. A multitude of conflicts existed
tradi-
tionalist sectors and the manufacturing class. Within these

The corporative ideal had its roots in this conflict. Elitist,

145
GEORGE JACKSON

conservative economists like Pareto theorized around such

concepts as “governing elites,” and “general equilibrium.”

f the working class. The system itself was ostensibly de-

signed to balance the interests of all economic classes and
b 1 How. nernn

the working class. In its Desinnings cspecially |in nae it was

too vague and difficult rol. Generalequilibriu
never Teached and clase. wee went on unabal ited. "Clas
ed the ol
states, torn from within “ in conflict with each other,
Tu! shed toward their own ruin.
here is another form of mass mobilization that has
strong socio-economic significance. It lies betweenn positive
and contra-positive mobilization. It involves the men who
were uprooted to serve in nation-state wars. Those who were

the cities after their releases farther Aislocating the economy

in favor of the moder traditional agricultural
sector was fo) reed tto vnechanise re) and pull mar-
ginal land out of production. In areas agriculture col-
lapsed attogetether. The result was * the need to import
foodstuffs and other agricultural products. This may or may
not have. damaged the overall economy, but in any case it

tor.
After World War I, international capitalism went
hi h ion ph h i le. At its base
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

ar
and Speculation: But the boom was brief. The great war had
taken the whole business of destruction of surplus to the
point ot diminishing returns, The years 1920 to 1925 were
Western world.
The few Years that followed—from 1925 t 929—business
“roared” back to recovery and expansion. Tndustiat manu-
lacing around the Western world and parts of the Third
id (Japan, Argentina, Brazil) increased by 25 percent.
The volume of lowever,
an increase in the arts of agricultural production, under the

ability of the great laboring masses to buy back what was

being produced, precipitated a sharpfall in the price struc-
ture of foo dstuffs iiin on: he worl Id’s largest agricultural
centers, the United States. It was underconsumption (not
overproduction),
1929. The whole Western world went into recession and deep
depression
qe countries were little affected by the general break-
dow ussia, which had taken itself off the wheel with a
ro socialist revolution, and Traly, which had estab-

her economy of from the other bourgeois states. Italy had

World War I dur
the 1920-25 economic crisis. That war had mobilized mile
lions of Ita
GEORGE JACKSON

adopt. The key element that made the economic policy of

fascist arrangements unique was the emphasis on
‘ough government intervention.” The opposite of Adam
Smith's “invisible hand” workingto coordinate economic
activity. The opposite of the French revolutionary battle cry
“laissez fifaire.”
Big business was in a crisis, of course, after the short
boom following World War I. The giant cartels and the

twenties and a of the thirties). This gave the movement its

seemingly middle- class anteced ents. Where large-scale
i I, its straining to
merge as the dominant force within the nomywas re-
sisted by the petit bourgeois, the landed lass and the

“stage one.” We hear its language sounding deceptively an-

ticapitalist: “parasitic capi italism,” “illegitimate capital, ”
“rapacious capital,” etc., etc. This was true ina with
early fascism, in Falangist ‘Spain and in G
Mussolini, who set up the first maces fascist regime,
tactics
and strategy of scientific socialism!! His departure from the

the working class of one or more nations was § manipulated

i i ions by the
ruling classes of the respective states.
His opposition to the Socialist Party and his participa-
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

1
In spite of the fact that the Socialists won 156 seats in the

1 1 Hitical 1 hol lar Party)

d

tion of Labor had grown from 300,000 members before

I to almost 2.5 million members in 1920, the
e

ofall the
manufacturing plants but, incredibly. returned them io the
private interests. Several accounts claim that the workers

steel . ? Obviously it was a problem of direction and

management in the vanguard party. There were strikes, slow-
downs, Tockouts and the kinds of disorders that precede

war and during the early depression on 1920-28 Italy could

have gone either socialistor fascist. ere partisans
enough i in both Parties to lsd the vprostel, disintegrating

of the | leadership, along with the question of who would be

willing to commit their whole fortunes and futures to the

Mussolini took his Black Shirt army and moved to the

149
GEORGE JACKSON

35 seat: out ofa Possible 535i in the parliamentary body.

king and the constitutional monarchy and form the first

political
evelopmment. “Eyes right”—he pumped tpallets into the old
left a1 w life into capitalism. The exist
solely Tor “the state (the Tuling class). ae was,the very
‘ond face’
of fascism, “the dark night” when it was still insecure.
i
But it went on 1 to dev velop a “closed economy” with
It pros
fill the economic vacuum with surplus capital and super-
nationalism.
“Believe, fight, obey.” State-protected industries,
mainly nitions and | shipbuilding. Italy
power facilities and oj ‘w marginal snricultral land
for its new slaves. New* adueattional facilities and new
“educators” out of 1,250 university Professors only twelve
ath of loyaltyto th
in 1931) were also part of the reforms. Taken all together the

150
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

reforms turned out to be extreme reaction. The government

of 1870 had seized the papal states. The regime brought back
the old religion. In 1929, in spite of the unrewarding experi-
ences of World War I, the regime was allowed to make war
again in Africa, in
j 1 Europe This marked the “third face” of
fascism—in power ands
The2 point here is that fascism emerged out of weakness

id th tk he vanguard party,
not the people. The People’s Party failed to direct the masses
properly wi an . . .

their go
on A .
the only solution to the people’s problem—by default. Fas-
cism, the strength-

the reality of class struggle by disguising itself as a new

‘olution to “national problems,” by deifying the interests of
the “whole state”—which turned out to be the interests only
of th
Fascism is always a response to a threat the establish-
ment. Any anti- establishment actions taken the strictly
political arm of a forming fascist srvangement are simply
attempts to centralize or upstage the capitalist industrial
sector—sither to establish it, as in Spain, or modernize it, as
in those cases where marginal productive interests are ab-
sored or destroyed by the arrangement. It is significant to
fe that no fascist regime “in power” has advocated thi
abolition of any form of private ownership. The fascist

151
GEORGE JACKSON

e and private ownership work hand in hand. No mod-

The shock troops of fascism on the 1mass political level

the upward thrust of the lower classes more acutely. These

ig
their status first. They are joined by that sector of the work-

alist ‘rappings and the loyalty syndrome that ees

hav ‘med the “authoritarian Personality ” One prim

w pig class, to ania and diffuse workings -class con-

sciousness with a psycho-social appeal to 's herd it
stincts. Development vind exploitation of the authoritarian

ogy of mob behav:

With each develolopment in the fascist arrangements tthe
marriage between the political elite and economic elite
becomes more apparent. The integration of the various sec-
tors of the total economic elite becomes more pronounced.
The Rumanian Iron Guar: d was no exception. It would have
y ‘owners’ and “financiers
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Red Army.
The generals and colonels of the various Latin Ameri-

of the traditionalist with the more modern sectors of the

lonial
the “ruling class” of such nations, or to consider them as part
of a populistic movement. in Rumania and Spain, state

people’s labor
exist of their own. Without the support of government, capi-
talism simply could not prevail. Peron was a fascist. The
peace he worked out between labor and “owner” was subtle

diffused the worker’s resentment of the nonworker and

7 . . os pee mn

head h

to settle for
p wi ital. Hi the fascist
e the U.S.A., th iginal st
ure of the society in which he hadto work his scientific
manipulation had only one available sector large enough

his movement—labor. Peron the fascist found his strongest

support in labor. He was finally deposed when he lost the
GEORGE JACKSON

y
and reactionary to the ultimate extreme of self-destruction.
Peron might have held on to his position had he chosen to

base y r-
ests—by nationalizing the¢ productive facilities and turning
them over to labor’s management. But fascists would rather
die or flee than support the total revolution. So they must be
n!
The very first step in establishing the “whole interest of
the state.” ‘the combine, the corporate state, is to dismantle
the working-class movement and replace it either with a
state controlled organ or no organization at all. The corpo-
Italy in 1 h
complete destruction of the proletarian movement. At the
same time t utom: jefense
against future labor activity. In disputes, labor was repre-
sented by men sworn either to the state or without the skill
and intelligence to effect labor’ s demands. The manufact ur-
In
Italy the fascist party cadre spread throughout the nation
organizin, Peo ple left aimless by the failure of the positive
mobilization of the socialist vanguard parties: people who
id ‘dropped out,
unemployed either by the war or the deflated economy. This
organizingg mustbe considered contra-positive mobilization
that its intent was to inflate the capitalist economy aand

the economy. With easy credit, inflationary financing, and

154
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Pp Proj
fascism in Italy, Germany and Japan succeeded in recon-

property relations. After the takeover, Italy recovered rap-

idly from essil i

$a

® Zz4
z5
s

8
B
3
°

3
3
a&
e
state of the economy. The untapped productive factors—
capital and labor—were grinding toa standstill. Cost of

ot immediately rise to the point of crisisi Giminishing re-

turns for capital, decrease in real wages of labor). Later in

ary budgeting showed damaging trends and setoff a chain

reaction in Germany that y have eventually led to its
wnfall. However, the heart t oe the fascist economy is an
P
control, pre fixing, wage freezes, and carefully balanced
foreign
The On t currency crisis stimulated by Italy’s inflation-
ary polities (initiated in ) resulted in the stabilizing of
thelira by deci 1927. ontrolled deflationary period
followed, effected ‘through ‘he paren systems which the

tected themselves from totally destructive competition by

i i i: refinement:
in its simple currency control methods were introduced. The
GEORGE JACKSON

effect on the expansion of heavy industry without also con-

a key factor in the arrangement. Again, the regime func-

tioned as a centralizing, mitigating influence. Real eS
began to fall and industrial production rose. Considered
i i Produ
cent by 1937 in Germany. The same 25 percent figure held
true for sepa in the middle and late thirties. From 15 per-
nt of GNP at the lowest point of the Great Depression in
iit tly, annual average investment in industry rose to
rr 20 percent in the years 1936-40. Because Italian fas-
pi
1 ki failed, th

juasi-government ownership. The “Industrial Recon-

yank.
owned or influenced large sectors - ‘the nation’s
dustry—a further “hint at an upward thrust of the middle
classes to fill in sections of the traditional ruling class de-
stroyed by the forces of the business cycle. In general, the
developments and experiments in controlled capitalism re-
sulted
ul in a concentration n of of economi
omic por wer in the large
monopolies. The crisis in German foreign exchange mur-

isappear because of low wa; ‘onsumption and

larg iincreases in the arts of apna Production. The
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

ests of the private elites generated new tensions. The break-

down of the big industrial Pattern into Sections, the
he regula
tion or
labor when it was short, and the control of labor organiza-
tions basically comprised the whole of the e new fascist “‘eco-
omic arrangement” which attempted to reduce the vast
t the h d
the have-nots.
The psycho-social dimensions of fascism become quite
complex, but they can be simplified by thinking of them as

the elites of the particular state with the regime acting as

arbitrator. The regime’s interests are subject to those of the
ruling class. Labor is a partner in this arrangement. At the
head ization i i there is an

quently tied also to the economic status quo.

The tra f this pseudo mass society are et
cheap, spectacular leisure sports; parades
parad: wher
hi
meet, shout each other do’lown and often trample each other
to de: ath on the way home; mass consumption of worthless

days ° glorify the idiots who died at war or other r days to

deify those who se them out to die. A mass society that is
act sl a mass jun,male.
gle.
e, fascism is capitalistic and capitalism is inter-
national. Beneath its nationalist ideological trappings fas-
cism is always ultimately an international moveme
GEORGE JACKSON

Many of the fascist regimes that failed or lacked thrust

—the Belgian Rexists, the Dutch N.S.B. (National Socialist
lovement)
ere all essentially too imi and inflexible. Even the
toalitarians must be supple and tesponsive if th ey al
as was tl razi
we
A. So one fascist regime falls to another more efficient
fascist regime.
Two factors must be seriously considered when analyz-
ing the two largest fascist states in Latin Amerika—Brazil
and Argentina. Their dependence on foreign trade and their
neo-~colonial status, which involves dependence on “ne the
inv ent.” When exports fall as they did dur the
d he thirti value of
must also fall 1
crease. The battle to balance payments begins, necessitating
massive oe tncet intervention which leads inexorably
a 4 5 . . .

Concern for balance of payments determines internal eco-

nomic motives.The deficit financing, th mpt to control
incomes (by rolling labor), pric axl government
stockpiling of. agricultural surpluses, positive direction of

economy’s elites can all be pointed to as evidence of an

attemptto employ the ccm controls that characterize
ist arran|
e first fascist vesimeie of ‘Brazil was headed by Vargas.
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

It lasted from 1930 to 1945

of the nation’s GNP prior to Vargas’ takeover andt
Depression. When international trade (especially in sail

ments with the so-called “closed economy. New internal

a ih
successful to an extent, was still basically imitative ana ‘did

accumulate ccapital
It is extrem
Oey important not to confuse the three faces
of. fascism ‘when studying Latin Amerika. The second Phase
(in pow
whole fase ist episode. Regime after regime has failed to in-
crease internal demand or unseat the roitionalist landed
elite in favoroF of the small industrial interests; thismean:

machine tools, for weapons to control the people’s move-

ent
flea markets. Consequently we see these areas as the most
glaring dich of socio-economic injustic e

ates from all over the Western world, literally within rifle
hot. live tk 1 rvice th ‘

A binati f
antly ravaged
by

aid of the United States, Gestapo “death squads,” and the

GEORGE JACKSON

now have certainly filled the streets and forests with blood
to lose sight of
Latin Amerika’ 's neo->-colonial status. A victory for the peo-

ters. The puppet regimes of these areas cannot move firmly

i hase th i two reasons.
The people are willing to use arms and are learning to use

not indigenous, they do not reflect the real interests of the

nations’ ate but rather the interests of the ruling elites of
the pare ‘ial nation, the U.S.A.
Gern ‘many rttempted to rearm, deflate its currency, and

of heavy industry. ItI finally fell of its own weight. The fascist
economic arrang ent failed under the pressure of war in
Germany, in Austria, it faile
first regimes in Brazil and Argentina. The principal failing
as very much the same that brought down laissez faire. The
capitalist “bine cycle cannot be controlled. Inflationary

capitalism in all its forms like a nemesis, break its spirit,

reduce it: eavy bureaucratic backbor n jelly. I -
tior to regeneration after xtended col-
lapse, ultimately leads to complex problems that seem to be
be latory control it by compressing
wi lw turns out to be politically unsound.
consciousness in Germany was better leveloped
than in any other the fas-

160
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

cist takeover, so consciousness “alone” is obviously not the

factor that determines whic! a disintegrating society
will develop—fascist or socialist, “The task of defusing the
people’s labor
special individual heavy industrial firms (Reichswerke-Her-
mann Goring-Krupp) an ie vital interests of the increas-
ingly important chemical ‘ducts ry (I. G. Farben, etc.), fell to
ront. atte
pease labor came in the form of slightly improved workin;
ror

10
&>

s
=
g
g 8
a

33
3

a3 a

&
3

2
8
_#

3
power of labor (due to the workers’ importance in the pro
duction of heavy armaments) was such that really effective
easures fot ing
tenure of the Third Reich. ge increases couldn’
avoided. Rigorous state sonels veplaceed mild repression
and propaganda only after the Sudenter nland affair of 1938
and the accentuateda: ents drive of 1939. Because
wages could not be ‘susnesefully held Yiown (the individual
firms were after profits, bear in mind; consequently they

ing labor market), measures were taken to limit the move-

ment of laborers from place to place, and the other factors
of production were openly channeled into the armament
se i i i All idealistic,
GEORGE JACKSON

psycho-social motives of the society and shook it apart.

The German economy wasas already i in ruins by the time

dustrial-mili d to live. must

forcibly balance trade in its favor to survive. No amount of

he li h ganized vio-
lence and armed struggle could have stopped them before
they lost their minds and destroyed so many lives. The coun-

direction of the people’s consciousness could have changed

the le course of h istory over the last fifty years. Once

tion) insinuates itself technologically with weapons and

controlof the means of the people’s subsistence, limiting
their vision to their own Personal short- term interests with

death onone _{howsand cuts” can then unseat the Fuehrer.

-d States was not existing in a vacuum wh

great depressions. My reading of history indicates th:

U.S. was in greater economic, social, and political crisis after
Western country
excepting possibly Germany. The same trends, the same ex-
periment:
forces for the direction of the nation’s economy. The extreme

162
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

economic crisis of the early thirties brought working-class

revolutionary consciousness to its very peak. All serious

dence in the workability of capitalism. This avalanche of

thinkers as well as the left—just as it did in Italy, Germany,

Rumania and the other fascist storm centers. But of course

re “New Deal,” much like those of Nazi, Fascist, and

langist Europe. No serious or honest student could miss
the likeness. F.D.R. was a fascist. His stated, documented

matic gestures. Joseph

render gi
Kennedy’s mind. He was official ambassador of the U.S. to
England.
There was positive mobilization of workers and the
lower class, and a highly developed class consciousness.

strikes, tnionizing, lockouts,

To break-ins, call-outs of the Na-
tional Guard.TI er Class was threatening to unite under

sin it. e was

terrorism from the right from groups such as Guardians of
the Republic, the Black Legion, Peg-leg White-type storm

of a contra-positive suppressive mobilization. Under the

i rT the ruling cla: ian th
GEORGE JACKSON

became all the more co-optive and dangerous. F.D.R.w

His role was to
h ic, political
and labor elites. Governing elites/corporative state/fascism

of cooperation; to put laissez faire to rest, and initiate the

A great many of the early trends of Amerikan history

prepared the way for the ultimate successof fascism in its
highest form. From the very beginning of Amerika’s exist-
ence as an independent nation-state there were localized la-
attempted to further

nation. It If of
nineteenth cet that labor took on a national character
and began to make its presence felt in the economic life of
the nation. cen then, it was resisted by the violence of
defi
h twisted,
struggles is substantiated by Amerikan labor history. The

in the 1790s on the East Coast in cities like New York,

higher wag working hours.

the
New York Typographical Union of 1794, Journeymen Cabi-
net and Chair Makers of 1796. The first wage strike was

164
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

y
1799
and was broken by right-wing terrorist activity.
ing to rest of laissez faire, the shackling of Adam
smiths invisible hand,” really began during the Civil War
in the U.S. The petit bourgeois dream of countless contend

blending of private and state interests—when long-range

one day—became a nightmare with the advent of the

Panofacturing process. At the opening of the Civil Wan the
U.S.was ranked fourth among tthe world’s industrial states
behing ‘ English empire, the German states and Fra
By 1870 the US. industrial manufacturing plant had dow.

trial work force to nearly double during this same period.

Improvements in the arts of agricultural Production drew
some workers from the countryside ands others west-
ard toward the closing frontier. The craftsman lost his
privileged economic Position with the appearance of newly
nted mi roduction machi -w machinery
and the factory setup, in genera made inaividust workers

of the profits. By the mid-1890s the U.S. was producing

one-third of the world’s manufactured goods, and was on its
way to becoming first among the world’ Ss. industrial states.
xpansionof U.S. industryout of the demands of
the Civil War involved a complex concentration of several

165
GEORGE JACKSON

ector of th i n; machine tool:

transport, and communications boom ned (the basis of the
industrial state and, of course, an industrial elite, when raw
materials—coal, iron and other ores—are not lac! cme) the
price or value of labor shrank; an “drive”
monopoly accumulation was firmly sstablished
is period of capital accumulation, iinvention
machinery, ‘its use in expanding factory setups, the sed
ul
n irec ertain Ss
sovernment contract were in part the begin of a ne}
chapter in the authoritarian process of Western history. In-

lized capitalism.
US.!
This is the logical place to question some of the old left’s
hintorical assumptions about the last hundred years of life.

ences between bourgeois democracy and monopoly capital

and their manifestations on the Amerikan scene. They
to feel that both can coexist in the same society. Actually one
the other.
tral ‘objective of corporative fascism. Prior to the Civil War
and the emergence of the trends toward monopoly capital,

and political rule. The economy was based upon the diverse

arrangement to reflect that fact.

166
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

ver, with the emergence and expansion of

monopely capital after the economic impetus of the Civil
War, bourgeois democracy naturally ‘began to fade. Bour-
geois democracy, imply
cannot exist after the emergence of monopoly capital.
lonopoly capital has its own political expression. It devel-
ops as bourgeois democratic political
rule declines.
e roots of corporativism-| fascism |were laid | with the
corpo-
rations and interlocking trusts. The owners of the largest

and Bovemment of the state. Monopoly capital is corpora-

tivism (fase
I don’t think k anything that ever happened in Italy,
ain, Germ any of the other capitalist states can
match the craig Process that the U.S. went through in
the last hu ered yeal ven the so-called public wi
. & T., Senta "Fe, the Pennsylvania
Electric, Western Union) are owned by financial institutions
hi a on | examination, always turn out to be controlled by a

ists of 1865—
e tr: ait itional Anglo-Saxon concept of law (founded
on the latent principle that the haves 1 must always | be pro-

teenth century.
GEORGE JACKSON

efeller petroleum combination from forming. It didn’t stop

Western Union from takingover the tel leeraph | industr;ry. It
didn’t stop Samuel Slater and the“ Boston Assi ” from
tying up all the New England textile interests. “The transcon-
tr
i i 19, 1969—Uni i

government and commercial cooperation. Corruption and

lawlessness were the basis of their commercial success, but
no one was charged or punished by law. Any individual, on
the other hand, who joined with someone else to effectai
increase in his wage was guilty oreconspiracy. That same law
Anglo- Sax
law ‘Supported F.B. Gowen of the Philadelphia and Reading

s, just as it supported the KKK in reconstructing

Sut tern U.S., King of the Baltimore and Ohio, Tom
of the Pennsylvania, William Vanderbilt of the New
York Central. Every time I hear the word “law” I visualize
ar-
ing sheets and caps that fit over their pointed heat ‘s see a
white oak and a barefooted black hanging,or snake eyes
peeping down the lenses of telescopic rifles, or conspiracy
trials.

1. Mankind is biologically sick.

2. Politics is the irrational expression of this sickness.

 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Whatever takes place in social life is actively or passively,

vol tari orii votunta ily, determined by the structure
of masses
4. This character structure is formed by socio-economic
processes and it anchors and perpetuates these Processes
thic character structure is, as it were, the
estan of the authoritarian process of history It is
he biophysical reprodua tion of mass suppr
The human structure is animated by ththe contradiction
between an intense longing for and fear of freedom
The fea dom of masses of people is expressed in
the wna rigidity of the organism and the inflexibil-
ityo
'y form of social leadership is merely the social ex-
~

pression of the one or the other side of this structure of

masses of people
—W. Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Revolutionary change always involves the complete altera-

tion of the structure of property relations and the institu-
tional substructures that port tl hem. It leads from
hierarchy to mass society.
The ruling class in the U.S. is composed of one mition
men and their ih Rocket fGen Vanderbilts,
gans, Mellon: Hunts and s, Fords ‘and ‘hei
minions and “sependents They use the "y Leaague universi-
their offspring

169
GEORGE JACKSON

and as training grounds for their corporate hirelings. They

F.B.1., private foundations and financial institutions. shen

control of all the media of educatition and communication

At the time when this ruling class was forming a hundred

years ago,
strikes that asked only for reformist measures, * although it
, even at that time, that reform w: it the solu-
tion and it quietly advocated the seizure of the materials of
production. The dichotomy between the longing for true

then. Early radicals excused themselves by claiming that

they were “exploiti ing the inherent contradictions of

dent. But capitalism reformed itself, apologized to no one,

present.
Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There have been
depressions and socio-economic political crises throughout
P) pper
| i i i i ii But the partie:
: ploit thei

revelaionay potential.
The latest round of capitalism reform, the latest redirec-
tion of its energy, was its highest and last form. The struggles
of the thirties, forties and fifties completed the totalitariani-

170
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

zation o!
social deception I
capitalism, monopoly capital, fascism, corporativism, or
hatever your vernacular, is a foform of “ “welfare- state-ism.”
Th pre
political takeover by ‘monopoly capital was actually an ad
i 1 1 old le!
promotes the lie that valid concessions
c have been made oy
the ruling class, as if deceptively better working conditions
and illusory wage increases were Marxism. A true Marxist

would be the final and highest stage ‘of social evelopment,

where the world and the state are one,where the material
and psychological needs of the masses have een met

Iting militar
I swear I'll stran;ngle the next idiot who repeats that line.
All the ingredients for a fascist state were already pres-
ent: racism, the morbid traditional fear of blacks, Indians,

to compete in industrial sectors. The resentment and ‘the

seedbed of fear is patterned into every modern capitalist
society. It grows out of a sense of insecurity and insignifi-
cance that is inculcated into the workers by the conditions
'y
At the same time, the ruling

classes. This programmed racism has always served to dis-

GEORGE JACKSON

higher level than those in a more debased condition (in the

1870s the strikes frequently ended in anti-Chinese or anti-
black lynchings). It conforms to dual requirements of the

pulsive sadism). Racism has served always in the U.S. as a

by a people made fearful and insecure by a way of life they

never understood and resented from the dayof their birth.
In the U.S., Wor rid War II was the principal cause of the

lutionary consciousness, which had been built up by the

crisis years of the thirties and all that went before them.
Lesser attempts at suppression had been made prior to the
war 5 A os
he economy had been closed, banks regulated,
ce Senin had been practiced on projects like TVA and
he arms race that eventually culminated in the fascist

economic ideal. Two conditions sony the the successful

establishment of fascism in this cour
c The old v anguard

prol letariats.
At the time, resistance to the war would have seemed like

USS. war effort, he was a fool. In any case, the old vanguards’

Ss.
With a little more patience and sacrifice, Stalin could
Atlantic. With al
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

of disintegration with the U.S. presence inin Europe, capital-

ism could be dea: ¢ today. inste ad, U.: S. iimperalism rose to
he war,
opened in Europe, Afri ond Asia with the flea market of
radios, TVs and vvelties here at its center. For the sake of

4 ‘ we
peop!
result of their defection simply solidified the totalitarian
the rul-
ing classes. Elections and political Parties have no signifi-

of the candidat

sors who backed Mussolini were all frightened. Those who

are aware and still do nothing constructive are among the
most Pathetic victims of the totalitarian process.
The necessary shock troops and tools for creating the
false contra-meni “psycho-social ‘asi of a fascist-type
pseudo-soc country prior to
and during tthe process of the ft takeover. Therews
little of this consciousness among the middle classes, so the
first terror came from the specially ‘umd and hired goons
of the Du Ponts and Rockefellers, the Black Legion, the
Guardians of the Republic, the FBI. They | destroyed the

ments of the working class as the only available mass. Class

this action by the

173
GEORGE JACKSON

movements.

ade possible by
tary complex. Ties were formed ee tween rulers and labor
leaders. nthe elites of the prolet: m-
prromised. A ruling class and its governing lites
| were cen-
A
YI
secure state. It has happened here. And the only recourse is
no genu-
inely free political opposition. They only allow meaningless
gatherings where theycan plant more spies than partici-
ants. They feel secure in their ability to mold the opinion
of a people interested onlyin wages. However, real revolu-
tionary activity will draw panic- stricken gunfire. Or heart

‘So what is to be done after a revolution has failed? After

based
on meaningless electoral politics, spectator sports, and a 3

negate itself with a corresponding rise in the cost of living.

contra-positive mobilization of the entire society? What can

ian process and cdcome out sek to the core!!!

There will be a fight.The fight will take place in the
central cities. It will be \peashented by the blacks of the
lower class and their vanguard party, the Black Panther

174
 BLOOD IN MY EYE.

Party. Real uni ivity will

People at the top

is i him. il i
or join us in our fight to liberate him. We will work this
y g
central-city communes, which will revolutionize the all too
conservative black laborer. We will build these communes
againstall resistance, the pamphlet in one hand, the gun in
the other.
of terrorism and a lack of intellectual stimulation. They have
b hoosing the les d: d i f
existelence, survival. All classes, all people are subject to the
I
ess n
Wi their revolutionary «consciousness.

ovel
veal task is to Separale the people from the hated
state. They must be made ealize that the interests of the
State and the valiing class are one and the same. They must
be taught to realize that the present politcal regime exixists
iv
h
3

governing elites,including those of labor, that we mustai

our bolts. The average workingman will “imply withdraw or
watch with secret satisfaction or actively join in when we

terrorism for generations. It no longer affects us. It will

intensify. We must prepare a counter-terrorism. A man can

175
GEORGE JACKSON

x; 750 or more colleges offer policesscience courses; 247

onion colleges offer associate degrees in law enforce:
ment; 44 of aechelr ¢de;caress. The N: 1 rd ni
bers 35,00 Oe C.LA.D. (Co inteler Ineligence Anais
th th milit: lar
siened for the surveillance ovat citizens. The police state
isn’t coming—it’s here, glaring and threatening.
How do we raise a new » evolutionary consciousness
against a rogrammed again: I hods?
Revolution is against the law. It will not be allowed, not in
significant ‘hat makes the true revolutionary an out-
law, an the black revolutionary a “dosloome man.” As
packs, we must functionas the vanguard in any hostilities.
S new app:proach, unite and revolutionize the
black 1 ow!
with the incentive °© feht by allowing “them to create Pro-
grams that willmeet all of their social, political an
nomic needs. We mustsil the vacuums left by the established
der. We must Push | the settlers off our land when they
Pp ystem.
We must learn from the people, we must learn from the
workers, the discipfine they are so highly skilled in. In re-
turn, we mu: ach them the benefits of our revolutionary
ideals. We must move blacks to the forefront of a really

ly ion level, b
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

of property relations. We must promote and support en-

forced rent strikes. Merchants must come over to our side,
iati ir prope! tty for the commune.
We t build i a socio-political
infrastructure so that we can become an example for all
revolutionary
im has established tse in a most disguised and
eficie nt manner in this y. It feels so secure that t
leaders allow us
Ws the Tueury ‘attain protest. Take protest too
far, however, and they will show their other face. Doors will

shot will become the medium of exchan,

I am an extremist, a communist ‘not communistic, a
communist, 2 j
i i ie Black
Panther Party. I mt give them my all, every iy fi ighting
trick in the annals of war. Nothing will defeat our revenge
and not thing will coer our march to victory. We
to our
us. Freedom means warmth and rovection against harsh
exposure to the elements. It means ge. It
means truth, harmony, and the social relations that spring
from these. it’s
eded. It means employment that is wee tcl that coin-
cides with the individual necessities and feelings. We will
have this freedom even at the cost of total
 The
Oppressive
Contract
irst women and children in a ditch in Vietnam,
atimetl executions in the civic centers of every
look-alike county in this country
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

Dear John Gerassi:

As you know, I’m in a unique political position T have

a very nearly closed future, and since I hav alwi

practice against the innocents—wherever—

just about what I want (I’ve alw:ways done just about that),
without fear of
or woexposure ly be executed once.
No matter whi y will always oe in me away with
the fae er my eleven nears in
i n pris on and my supposed loss
f ith obi
free (the action on April 6). When I am denied or corrected
—I always understand—but rage on. All on the principle

tality must be taught by example to escape the myth, the

hoax that repression can work against the collective con-

be killed with violence. So—I’m duty bound to take the

occasion of yor
once termed “‘the sweet
r Il go straight back to our visit and the hour they al-

concerning “the outlaw” back to the cell with me, tooled

with it a bit, and clarified i in my o h

revolutionary must certainly reconcile himself with one day

becoming an outlaw.
GEORGE JACKSON

Then my thoughts turned to the oppressive contract in

general. It’s the nature of cancer to expand. You’ve seen a
great deal of it firsthand—U-S. expansionism since World
War IL ied it vicari t
conclusions: millions of outlaws in the Union of South
Africa, Jordan, Indochina and here. Summary executions
not of ito rmed soldiers but ordinary people. First women
d Vietnam.

the civic centers of every look-alike county in this country.

nd that’s the principal contradiction of monopoly

It also breeds contempt for the oppressed. accra of con-

tempt is its fundamental survival techniau ie. This leads to the
excesses and destroys any hope f peace cently being
haves
ie have-nots. Coexistence j is impossible, cont
omtemPt
*
gro’ th
destruction of ‘the oppressed or the termination1 of oppres-
sion.
History is clearly a long continuum of synthesizing ele-
ele
ments. The imbalances of the oppressive contract, ideals
entally
sive can only result in the dissolution of the agents of that
contradiction.
The corollary of the contract is quite simply malig-
earch
for a nondiseased mind throws one : hard against one of the
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

m
that is victimizing them, brainwashed by the National Ad-
vertising Council’s portrait of the silent vnajorty as well-o!

Iso t labor history.

But even the nationalistic conditioning received in massive

hi If. Even the workers’ ‘i

racism, e huge mass of blue-collar workers seem to be

working ‘oually against themselves iin their support of a sys-
Actually, their
contradictory behavior is explained by feelings of loyalty to
race, by their identification with the white hierarchy and by
thei economic advantage over the oppressed races. They

to oppress millions of others.

economic nature of racism is not simply ann aside.

exclude them forever. These features cannot be changed. It

t d
we dress with loud tastelessness (a thing they now also
about their own children), he forgets that he governs. He
thath
has abused his responsibility to use taxes paid by blacks to

183
GEORGE JACKSON

improve their living conditions, that he manufactured tthe

fous Pants and pointed shoes that destroy and defo:
are not cnoueh like him to suit his tastes, it’s
vecause he planned it that wi e never intended to
be i
eel emy
re. The only way the
exploiter can maintain his position is to create differences
and maintain deformities.
is the sense of the finality of their exclusion from solid
forces out

Prevalalence of anticommunal behav or | whi ich is a psy

8 fe y-
The diseased mind . . . it’s “lows ‘spreading througnent
d ism. Even the
mindless overman is dying from the almost total anemia.
Where is the Black Man? I see him inseparable from the
he now? How he ha s survivedat
all is almost beyond any rational explan
Early I understood the alternatives or the black situa-
tion: assimila
i beyond,
revolution. But John, I admit to some confusion over the

ind has vacillated between the historical references:

atvoan feudalism and African communalism—I know that

184
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

“primitive communism” in one of the glossaries of his

anti-'-people books). Dr. Du Bois dealt with it in The Philadel-

manner, y
i But.
that Europeans were not capable of communistic unitarian
behavior. I felt this, however, only briefly, since unitarian,
aft
t tali di in
some areas, after thousands of years of hierarchy. I’ve always

turn to the pre-slavery past of African feudalism can onl:

\eave
ve the "average black man more uncertain and insecure
thanever. It is difficult to understand why such negative,
academia and obscure exoticism exists when there are defi-

i nt and our future.

The commitment to total revolution must involve an
2

motives which perpetuate the oppressive contract. For the

bla ti ional ite si i
en people without a collective consciousness that tran-
scends natitional boundaries—freaks, Afro-Amei rare
Nesroes, even ‘Amerikiekane, oe the sense of a lar;
community than their own group—can have no effect on
histor. Ultimately they will simply be eliminated fromt
e. Without the collective sense of community,
¢ without its
GEORGE JACKSON

7*) and institutions (our survival projectst that will now

force
uring the nationalist period of the collective oppressed
tality promoted by the establishment, the movement is
frozen, static. This is the level of development favored by the
oppressor,
and respect for atees
a a nationalistic song or beat, the fervent
lief in a orga
thwarted Toning for real community. The establishment
does everything in
ir its power to ensure e that revolutionary

releases for desir th Id be if allowed

to Progress. At this stage in the development of monopoly
capitalism i i i
ary activity or calcification. Conservative society, black or
white, isis decaadent t society e to the absence of creativity

letter got right at the heart of that principle. The

whole ideal of cultural nationalism has been all but smoth-

*Three instances of armed black resistance: Lil’ Bobby Hutton was

ha id dem:
in when he sempre to escape.
The shoot-out on Centralis described in a previous note; the signifi-
cance of August 7th is described in the introduction —Bal
#The new programs of the Black Panther Party which include free
tin
tion schools and prison projects.—Ed

186
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

ed now. It was basically contrived out of the loss of com-

munity and the terms of the oppressive | contract—coercive

chy. But we must all realize that the oppressive contract

cannot be broken as long as at ort of hierarchy
exists to
perpetu‘uate the sensitized relationships of Amerikan tribal-
i lassi d raci ety i d i ible b
ugh in-
tercommunalism* will require that the social contract
¢ be

less biearhy is destroyed. Can we expect the hierarchy to

away with itself???
Then the real undertaking Present is the uncondi-
tional freeing of the people.W ge beyond ideological
debate before this immediate vee ‘The black man and the
Jack fem have mentally ordered things,
completely joined together in the act of liberation! I accept

hysteria at times. But I also realize ‘that it is the “role of the

living,” of all the innocent, to discover unitary practice and
inst the instituti 1 h
oppressed.
Those who have more regard for their own egos or

left gether in favor

of petty interests, are in direct opposition to our real inter-

*Huey Newton's concept of the revolutionary solidarity of all the op-

pressed peoples of the world.—Ed.
GEORGE JACKSON

ests. ad are attempting another form of escapism. They’re

fleeing the objective conditions of their real life and will
eventually reach the ultimate contradiction of facing their
father or brother, or old cl lassmate, comrade, or r wife, over
he barrel of Or they
land, | cast out by th € people, suspected by their crime part-

Hus y n reminds us, there is always a positive side to

cach negative. The confused resentment and rever: Ci
of e black Partisan will eventually lead toa new, more

there was no split in the party, only a defection. The party

« trategy
d ur total objective
situation. Recall we discussed Jonathan and guerrilla
strategy in the urban situation ati length over that piece of
paper with circles and lin and question marks.
I guess now that he is ‘deed, ond the wuilty are
ar safe from
the muscle of
his mi it is safe 1 f

movement. He felt as I did that the military and political

opening “stages should function separately from each otheer

for very obvious reasons. In undeveloped countries, the es-

*In pririson argot, a man’s most trusted companion.—Ed.

+The departu e from the Black Panther Party of Eldridge Cleaver
and some of his followers in Algeria and New York.—I

188
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

miles down a dirt road in the > Provincial capital. They're

owever, can mingle with the enemy and remain invisible

and invulnerable. In our present situation there iis no contra-
diction between the military thinking and action and the
primacy of politics. The situation allows for such activity as
the Aug ust 7th movement, because it can be accomplished

to move in and destroy the political apparatus—under the

ey convenient and much used Ai elo-Saxon ene
laws. The primacy of politics will continue
military reads, nicks up and works well within “herain
political matrix. So Tonat han’s raid on the laryal
judiciary that Friday was at once an expression ir his own
e
of
clandestinene army which saw the Black Panther Party as its

attemptto support some of the minimum demands of the

people without placing Huey Newton and David Hilliard in
jeopardy of loss of movement or death, i.e., persecution in
courts.
That this is our only recourse at the present level of
development is too obvious to even dwell on. It will not be
possible, however, in th uti Just

of the survival infrastructure will reveal the error of Clea-

ver’s analysis that no separ should exist even now be-
tween mziitary and litical cadre, between military and

189
GEORGE JACKSON

political action. You know I sent him a message suggesting

hat unitarian conduct depends ona a principled discipline

ism that sent him first against his Muslims (through the

the C.P. through his unreasoned attack on the magnificent

Angela Davis. Recently he has even attacked the dedicated,
overworked and brilliant Charles Garry.
pattern with the man. You recall the reach “be. inched
against Fidel and Cuba, and those accounts that seemed
disparaging of is hosts which howe reached the pig press
here from time to time.
ersonal message to him was mild, considering that

Pi
was far from exemplary and had that section of it signed by
Ulysses McDaniel and Clifford Jefferson, two of the oldest

one just given—that did not indicate that he had changed

much. I finally asked him simply to show proof now that he
as compulsive disrupter or agent provocateur. A very
mild request, I feel. He returned with a very scurrilous and
profane set of invectives—in short,aa piece of vendet ‘tta. Tell

P
discipline, tell him that the dragon is coming. . .

190
 BLOOD IN MY EYE

The substructured prison movements are gai

momentum. My trial is set for early August, 1971, a I
be hearings in between of course. If they are at all like the
last,
arts. I’m working hard to stay in form. I wasn’t at my best
ing.
Dll cl h 1 i
Attend—let me see your sue
comrade in arms—‘He who does not fear the
death or 1, 000 cuts will dare unseat he emperor.

George Jackson

“The hearing of April 6, 1971

 Afterword

Statement by Huey P. Newton, Servant of

the People, Black Panther cy at the
Revolutio mary a Memorial Servi for
George Jackso
Jackson. First, because many

tween Brother George Jackson and the Black Panther Party.

WhenI went to prison in 1967 I met George. Not physically,
but through his ideas, his thought id words. He was at Soledad
Prison at the time; I was at California Penal Colony. George was

193
AFTERWORD

a legendary figure throughout the prison system, where he spent

mo: t George through his spirit. Shortly after
Weavnivg out him qT pot word through the prison grapevine that

of general and field marshal. He was put in charge of the prison

recruiting, and was asked to go on with his life as a revolutionary
Pecaree that cannot be killed
Tsay that the lelegendary figure is also a hero. George Jackson

fer 1 that’ts, characteristic of any soldier for the people. He in-

spired prisoners, whom I later en reountered, to put his ideas into
practice and so his eine became a living thing. Today I saytlthat
irit
ideas live. And we will see that ‘hee ideas stay wtive, ane
Panthers’
bodies, who are our children. So it’s a true saying that ‘Core will
be revolution from one generation to the next. This was Geo

as they advance, generation upon generat ‘ion.

at kind of standard did George Jackson set? First, he was
a surone man, without fear, determined, full of love, strength, and

aNo matter . > gly

is is why
no Pain in giving up his life for the people's c:
state itself sets the stage for the kind of contradiction or
violence | that occurs in our world, particularly in the prisons. The
ing ci i i The stat
 AFTERWORD

has the audacity to say they have the right to kill. They say they

confine someone, subject to correction at a later date. Even if the

state does wrong it could give itself the semblance of legality by

e
should deliver a life to them without a struggle. is can
accept that. George Jackson had every right to do ‘rething

the People.
Even after his death, George Jackson is a legendary figure and
say that George Jackson killed five people, five oppressors, and
wounded three in the space of thirty seconds. You know, some-
times I like to overlook the fact that this would be physically
im possible. But after all George Jackson is my hero. And I w ald

that George Jackson had the strength because that would have
him superman. (Of course, my hero would have to be a

Pack fought for freedom.

orge’s last statement, the example of his conduct at San
cal prisoner
rs He left
a sanded for the liberation armies of the world. He showed u:
act. He demonstrated how the unjust would be criticized
AFTERWORD

by the weapon. And this will certainly be true, because the people
‘ll tak h : i

to our very knees, he might crush us to the ground, but it will be

i At some point hi
legs willget tired
and the people will tear his kneecaps
But first the state sets eee for Sach violence, you see. And
some people say that we rid of this kind of physical
am ‘We i

on down to his knees; he can’t go on). We will retaliate with

violence against his violence. It’s true that we’e'll be hurt t by his

on. We will tear his legs off, we'll tear his head off and we'll take

f freed
anyone who threatens the people and our children, We'll do it in
name of px
oon as it’
will no longer exist.
So we will be very practical. We won't make statements and
believe the things the Prison official: —their incredible stories
about one man killingfive people in ‘thity seconds.We will go on
and live very realistically. There will be pain and much sufering
growing. I see the example that George set living on. We know “hat
s y.
of death, the reactionary death and the revolutionary death. One
oe her is not. - aa
a Significant wa: hile the death:
of the ones that fell that day in San Quentin will be lighter than

196
 AFTERWORD

-ather.
in the hare because we're determined to change their minds.
We'll change their minds or else in the people’s name we'll have
to wipe them out thoroughly, wholly, abeolutely and completely.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
Blood in My Eye was completed only days be- What the critics said about Soledad Brother:
fore the author died from bullet wounds during his collection of letters reveals unmistakably, he
an alleged escape attempt from San Quentin exists, his angers pure and palpable, he is the prod-
Prison, California. Arrested at the age of uetof stem that seeks rather than
eighteen for allegedly taking part rehabilitate, and there will be thers like him
betore too long. Attention must be paid.”
—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,
The New York Times
tary confinement. This book testifies to how “Probably nothing so ar ss been published by
those years were spent, and why. aback Aroreareor anyting as clos othe bone
the raw stutt, ragged and bleed-
hiiten with the memory ot is stain brother, ing, oF proudly refusing to bleed ... (they) show us
nathan, constantly before him, itis an apoc: something of the process of becoming a man under
such circumstances, and of becoming black.’
—PeterS. Prescott,
Look Magazine
ary brothers is clear:
who could be saved, serane mor “These letters comprise a remarkable portrait of a
or lve poor butchered hal siva you remarkable man, self-made in hell. . . here is the
or geutnuinantyendiyou? (oven few remnant of an extraordinary generosity brutalized.
ion Pass on tho torch Join us, give up your life Here is what might have been.”
for the people. —Melvin Maddocks,
‘s expressed in the preface to this volume: Lite Magazine
“What he saw and what he wanted, the central, as impressive a book as The Autobiography of
Bassin of hia te, wan war; the revolutionary ‘Malcolm X and Sou! on Ice ... (Jackson) displays @
3f the people against their oppressors, style which from the beginning was muscular, elo-
grow out of parfoed lave and port quent, pocticaly defiant. ite soiely working
3h the California prison system tried to
before the world heard of him, George his pintand erush his Body. The reverse has hap,
pened. What was just another mindless pettyc
is now a super-motivated, super-articulate walking
bomb."
Maitland Zane
‘San Francisco Chronicle
2 of
tant documents since the first black was pushed
off the ship at Jamestown colony . . . In one of
to be pub- Back of fcket photograph by Carle Smith
lished, he summarizes 300 years of rage for un-
told millions of blacks, alive and dead ... this is ocket design by James MeGuie
the most important single volume from a black
since The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Blood Pubtcrsc Tie RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY
in My Eye takes up where Soledad Brother left (OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: the Unebrigod
off, and introduces the reader to the life force Vintage Book
that was George L. Jackson.