The Political Report to the Seventh Congress of the African People's Socialist Party

272 Pages·2017·2.35 MB·English

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

By Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the APSP

© 2018 African People’s Socialist Party

PDF Release, July 6, 2018
Table of Contents
I. The Vanguard, The Advanced Detachment ........................................ 3
II. Our Party Solved the Problems of the Revolution ............................. 22
III. How the Party Survived the Counterinsurgency ............................... 39
IV. The Deepening Crisis of Imperialism: The Tipping Point of the Uneasy
Equilibrium ................................................................................ 66
V. African Socialist Internationalist Dual Power versus New Afrikan
Opportunism .............................................................................. 86
VI. The Regional Strategy: Putting Dual Power into Practice ................. 118
VII. The State of the Party, Part 1 ..................................................... 138
VIII. The State of the Party, Part 2 ..................................................... 169
IX. The Theory of African Internationalism ......................................... 191
X. The Question of the Nation ......................................................... 232
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I. The Vanguard, The Advanced
Detachment
Uhuru! Comrades, delegates, observers and supporters of the Seventh
Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party!
During the five years since our Sixth Congress there have been many
changes in the world and within our Party. All of them have served to reinforce
the significance of the African People’s Socialist Party which for more than 45
years has provided leadership for the African nation and the oppressed and
exploited workers of the world.
Comrades! This Seventh Party Congress constitutes a firm salute to the
indefatigable work of the African People’s Socialist Party to forward the struggle
for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the leadership
of the African working class.
The continued, unrelenting dedication of our Party to complete the Black
Revolution of the Sixties is alive in the theme of this Congress: “The African
People’s Socialist Party, Vanguard! Advanced Detachment of the African
Revolution.”
Although our assertion that we are the Vanguard and Advanced Detachment
sets us apart from other organizations, it is not something said in contention with
others. This is a declaration to you, the members of our Party, calling on you to
recognize the magnitude of your Party membership and the role you have
volunteered to carry out in the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa
and African people worldwide.
An example of an advanced detachment is a unit or group of soldiers that
goes out first to lead and pave the way for the army in battle.
For our Party the Advanced Detachment or Vanguard means that we have
freely and enthusiastically stepped forward to lead the struggle for the total
liberation and unification of Africa and our entire dispersed African nation
wherever we are located.
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Unlike any other African organization on the planet, our Party is very serious
about seizing African state power on our African continent. Our goal is to wrest
back our land, our stolen resources and the value of our stolen labor, under the
leadership of the African working class in a liberated, socialist Africa.
We understand that no oppressed people has ever become free without the
intervention of an organization of trained, disciplined cadres who are committed
to winning liberation by overcoming every obstacle, including our own limitations.
We are a Party of professional revolutionaries. Our members have a variety of
occupations. We are school teachers, barbers, construction workers, taxi drivers
and the like. We are also students, prisoners, office workers and welders. We are
cooks and even lawyers. But whatever our occupation, our profession is
revolution.
We are not dilettantes, simply committed to faddish political work in our spare
time. In fact our profession as revolutionaries guarantees that there is no time
when we are not advancing the struggle for the liberation of our people. This is
what it means to be the Vanguard, the Advanced Detachment.
The African People’s Socialist Party was created to complete the Revolution
that had been crushed by a vicious U.S.-led counterinsurgency that defeated the
Black Revolution of the Sixties as it expressed itself globally.
There was no other organization in the African world that both survived the
counterinsurgency and took up the task to go beyond survival and mere adaption
to our inherited conditions of defeat. Our Party was bent on advancing the
Revolution, the struggle for the total liberation and unification of Africa and the
forcibly dispersed African nation everywhere.
We have done much advanced work to resolve the many theoretical issues
that otherwise would have been left unresolved by the ruthless colonial-capitalist
defeat of our Movement just as the most important questions were surfacing in
our struggle.
We are practical revolutionaries. We are not an organization of consumers
and dispensers of information. We have chosen to lead in every way. We have
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chosen to be the Advanced Detachment of the African working class. We have
chosen to be the Vanguard.
Our Party understands that in order to change the world, to end our
oppression we must have the organizational vehicle to do so and willing and
trained cadres to carry out the task. This is why we are able to say African
People’s Socialist Party and Vanguard in the same breath.
The African People’s Socialist Party is boldly declaring our intent to forge the
revolutionary process to defeat imperialism. We are not just talking; we are
preparing to govern. We know parasitic capitalism was created and is maintained
through its cruel, rapacious attachment to Our Africa and our people. Our
intention is to overturn it and replace it through a worldwide socialist revolution
based in the forcibly dispersed international African nation wherever we are
located.
The success of our Party is the critical factor in the liberation and unification
of Africa and the entire suffering African nation. It is not a little thing. It is for this
reason we were able to report to our Party’s Plenary in February 2012 that
building the Party is not only a crucial task of the African People’s Socialist Party
and our members, “it is also the fundamental task of the African Revolution at
this critical juncture.”
The African People’s Socialist Party: the revolutionary
vehicle
Years ago, in 1986, we summed up the qualities of our Party that makes it
necessary to characterize the African People’s Socialist Party as the Vanguard in
the pamphlet, “Build and Consolidate the African People’s Socialist Party.”1
We paraphrased a statement by former Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton
when he was a revolutionary during the Black Revolution of the Sixties, which
stated, “The party must be the ox upon whose back the masses ride.”

1 Yeshitela, Omali. “Build and Consolidate the African People’s Socialist Party,” Marcus Garvey Club, 1986.
2 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Selected Works, p. 46, International Publishers, 1986.
3 Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 467, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1961.
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We pointed out that two 19th century European revolutionaries, Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, authored a similar statement:
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically,
the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class
parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all
others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great
mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the
line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of
the proletarian movement.2
We noted that it was left to V.I. Lenin, the 20th century Russian revolutionary,
however, to successfully build and lead the revolutionary organization spoken of
by Marx, Engels and later Newton.
We quoted Lenin as saying, “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and
we will overturn Russia,”3 and explained that Lenin set upon the task to build the
revolutionary organization that indeed overturned Russia and became the
prototype for revolutionary organizations of the oppressed and exploited peoples
throughout the world.
Such a party is the Vanguard, the Advanced Detachment of the working class.
It is a party of communists, a party of a new type. Such a party is the African
People’s Socialist Party.
Our task then as now is to unite our people under the leadership of the black
working class in the struggle for political independence, African liberation and
socialism.
This Political Report must win the unity of our Party members and the
participants in our Seventh Congress to the recognition of the gravity of your role
as cadres, the Advanced Detachment of the African Revolution. This Political
Report will demonstrate the material basis, to be found in the history and
accomplishments of the Party and our understanding of the acute crisis of the

2 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Selected Works, p. 46, International Publishers, 1986.
3 Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 467, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1961.
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parasitic capitalist system, for having the confidence and courage to take up your
proper role as leaders of the African Revolution.
Our Political Report to the 2017 Party Plenary was titled “Putting Revolution
Back on the Agenda!” In this report we began to show how the Party is the
Advanced Detachment.
First of all, the imperialist crisis, the uneasy equilibrium with
which we have been contending, is manifesting itself with ever-
greater clarity in the political arena, especially as seen in the 2016
U.S. presidential campaign and election.
Secondly, the neocolonial African assimilationist tendency of
our community, while opposed to the election of Trump, is making
every effort to support the colonial-capitalist system. The
assimilationists are doing everything possible to keep Africans loyal
to the system and the electoral process—primarily to the ruling
Democratic party from whence flows their economic security,
semblance of power and influence.
The African People’s Socialist Party is the revolutionary vehicle
of the advanced detachment through which the conscious and
organized African working class continues to wage the struggle for
the socialist liberation and unification of our dispersed African
nation.
Instead of spontaneity, which allows the issue of the moment to
determine our trajectory, our work is based on a plan stemming
from a scientific theory. We continue to check up on our work, to
measure our successes and correct our errors, to make certain that
our practice reflects and validates our theory.
The Party Congress and our plenaries allow us to bring the
membership of the Party into this democratic process of charting
our course. They grant the Party leadership the authority to require
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centralized discipline from all our members and constituent
organizations...
The Sixth Party Congress participants adopted the Political
Report after serious discussions that began more than three
months prior to the convening of the Congress. The Political Report
was truly a document of our whole Party and the tasks, the five-
year plan laid out in the Political Report, constitutes the Party’s
direction that was voted for by the whole Party.
Our Plenary process is the method the Party has adopted to
continue summing up our work of making our plan reality and
guaranteeing that we do not veer off on some opportunistic gambit
based on the whims of any Party organization, committee, member
or leader.
The resolutions and mandates adopted at our congresses safeguard our Party
against spontaneity and opportunism, factors that distinguish our Party and
contribute to its continuity which is key to our strategic approach.
Our congresses and plenaries are critical because since the defeat of the
Black Revolution of the Sixties more than two generations ago, the African
People’s Socialist Party is the organization that assumed custody of the
revolutionary struggle of the African working class and peasantry, indeed of the
entire African nation.
We are the Party that constitutes a historical continuum from the previous era
of the Black Revolution of the Sixties to its incipient resurgence today.
Our mission has never been determined by the events of the moment. Events
come and go, elections are held, coups overturn governments, police violence
escalates from time to time, our struggle faces setbacks, but the social system
that has arisen from slavery and colonialism remains the same. This is the
essential ingredient that must inform our analysis during each period.
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Our congresses and plenaries contribute to our ability to hold the line to
protect, defend and solve the problems of the Revolution. This is what
revolutionaries do. This is what a revolutionary party does.
It is also true that the system of oppression under which the entire world and
we live and struggle, is a parasitic capitalist system that owes its existence to
and is nourished by slavery and colonialism. The legitimacy of any movement of
the oppressed must ultimately be judged by its opposition to slavery, colonialism
and the capitalist system birthed by slavery and colonialism.
Africans and the peoples of the world suffer from a dictatorship of a white
nationalist imperialist bourgeoisie currently headquartered in the U.S.
Our Party is the custodian of the African Revolution
While the selection of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African U.S.
president and the August 9, 2014 police murder of 18-year-old Mike Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri may have affected how we carried out our strategy and tactics,
the reality of the parasitic capitalist colonial domination of Africa and the world
remained the same. This reality shapes our worldview. It makes us African
Internationalists.
We addressed the critical role of our Party in the continuing process of solving
the problems of the Revolution in the Political Report to the 2016 Plenary:
Since our inception in 1972, our Party has functioned as the
primary custodian of the African Liberation struggle. We have
summed up all the lessons and contradictions of our revolutionary
Movement to reunite the African nation and liberate and unite
Africa and African people worldwide under the leadership of the
African working class.
The African Liberation Movement suffered major setbacks since
the defeat of the Black Revolution of the 1960s. Not only were
giants like Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana brutally murdered and overthrown by repulsive, shameless,
European-created neocolonial stooges, but our Movement was
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never able to resolve many of the key ideological and political
questions facing our people. This demoralized our people whose
dreams and aspirations were spoiled by the disillusionment that
followed our Movement’s defeat and demise.
Inside the U.S. it was left to our Party to sum up the
significance of the life and death of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin
Luther King and the destruction of the Black Panther Party along
with the accompanying assassinations and imprisonments.
It was the African People’s Socialist Party that forced the world
to recognize that the African Liberation Movement is one struggle
being waged across the globe on different fronts by a forcibly
dispersed African nation held in colonial slavery in Africa and
elsewhere over the last several hundred years.
It was our philosophy, African Internationalism, that brought
this understanding to the forefront. Without African
Internationalism it would be impossible to understand why
Africans, sometimes called by an assortment of different names,
suffer impoverishment, brutality and imposed ignorance all over
the world.
As we state in the Political Report to our Party’s 2010 Fifth Congress,
published as One People! One Party! One Destiny!:
Would capitalism and the resultant European wealth and African
impoverishment have occurred without the European attack on
Africa, its division, African slavery and dispersal, colonialism and
neocolonialism?
The answer is No! No! No! and a thousand times, No!4
In the Political Report to the Party’s 2016 Plenary we clarified:

4 Yeshitela, Omali. One People! One Party! One Destiny! The Political Report to the Fifth Congress of the
African People’s Socialist Party-USA, p. 42, Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, St. Petersburg, FL, 2010.
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