 CAPITALIST LEADERSHIP
At approximately 4:00 a.m. December 4, 1969, over
100 police surrounded the home of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. Both were
murdered by the police. What was significant for this police murder was
the presence of John Mitchell, the Attorney General of the United States.
The highest legal official in the United States,
charged with enforcing the rule of law in this country participated in
a police murder to ensure its efficiency, not to uphold the rule of law.
These two young black men were murdered because they were intelligent,
effective organizers for working class unity. They could not be bought
off or corrupted, or so the ruling class collectively believed.
One of the talents which seem to have bothered
the Bureau [Federal Bureau of Investigation] most about Hampton was his
undeniable effectiveness as an organizer and ghetto diplomat. By December,
1968, O’Neal was reporting (accurately) that the Chairman [Fred
Hampton] was on the verge of negotiating a merger between the still-small
BBP and a sprawling South Side street gang, several thousand members strong,
known as the Blackstone Rangers (at that time in the process of changing
its title to the “Black P. Stone Nation”). As it was obvious
that Hampton’s agenda was to bring about the politicization of the
Rangers, their constructive engagement in community work and a corresponding
sudden, massive surge in the Panther’s local political clout—indeed,
the merger would have served to double the Party’s national membership—a
major COINTELPRO was quickly implemented to head things off. (“Agents
of Repression” by Ward Churchill and Jim VanderWall p.65)
This paper is entitled “Capitalist Leadership”.
In other words, we must examine the process whereby leadership is created,
supported, or destroyed. As a culture, we create the leadership that has
the power to determine the direction of our society. Importantly, Fred
Hampton was organizing across cultural barriers bringing together workers
of Latino, White, and Black backgrounds. He was murdered.
By the time of his murder by the highest law enforcement
agency of the United States, other progressive leadership had already
been assassinated: John F. Kennedy; Martin Luther King; Malcolm X; and
Bobby Kennedy.
This history has basically been erased from the
working class movement. But it does show the kinds of methods used by
the most repressive wing of the ruling class in making sure that leadership
is identified and either marginalized or destroyed.
The history of assignation and police murder that
occurred during the 1960’s has never entered the collective consciousness
of the working class. Obviously, we know in general of the killings, although
few are aware of Fred Hampton’s and Mark Clark’s murders.
But the links to present day leadership are never examined or even acknowledged.
Even the concept that this leadership was destroyed for a reason is not
a part of collective consciousness of the working class.
As I have explained many times, it is when there
are splits in the ruling class that progressives can organize to broaden
demands of the working class. In the 1960’s, there was a clear and
definable spilt of the ruling class: on the one side, we had Republicans
taking the confederate flag to their breast and adopting the brutal tactics
of hate and murder.
On the other side, the liberal wing of the Democratic
party supporting a measured control of the civil rights movement and the
anti-war movement but generally opposed to outright murder. This wing
of the ruling class tried to marginalize working class leadership by making
its demands unnecessary. Fred Hampton did not allow for marginalization.
The strength of Fred Hampton described in the Churchill
and VanderWall book as follows:
Fred Hampton, as Noam Chomsky has observed, was
“one of the most promising leaders of the Black Panther Party.”
He’d come to the BPP’s embryonic Chicago chapter—founded
by SNCC organizer Bob Brown in lat 1967—from suburban Maywood, where
he’d been a high school leader and NAACP activist, at the beginning
of 1968. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI
fostered “SNCC/Panther split” (see Chapter 2), Hampton assumed
the Illinois state BPP Deputy Chairmanship, a matter which automatically
rendered him a national BPP Deputy Chairman. As the Panther leadership
across the country began to be decimated by the impact of COINTELPRO,
Hampton’s prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly
and dramatically. (p. 65)
There had been a systematic program to eliminate
the leadership of the Black Panther Party and for that matter any Black
leadership that was neither corrupt nor vulnerable to purchase. It is
the viciousness of the elimination of this leadership that is particularly
important. On that fateful day of December 4, 1969, the following happened:
Two shots were then heard, both of which were fired
pointblank into Hampton’s head as he lay prone, followed by Carmody’s
voice stating, “He’s good and dead now.” The chairman’s
body was then dragged by the wrist from the bed to the bedroom doorway,
and left lying in a spreading pool of blood. At that point, the raiders
“mopped up,” with Gorman directing fire from his submachine
gun at the remaining Panthers, again, who were attempting to cover themselves
in the apartment’s bedroom. Doc Satchell was hit four times in this
barrage, and Blair Anderson twice. Seventeen-year-old Verlina Brewer was
also hit twice. The victims were then beaten and dragged bodily to the
street, where they were arrested on charges of attempting to murder the
raiders and aggravated assault. (Churchill & VanderWall, p.73)
The combined effect of murder and marginalization
created the situation we have today. On the one hand, the working class
faced the brutal repression by forces within the Republican party. On
the other side, the message was clear: too much militancy would not be
considered or tolerated.
Having proven that honest leaders could be decimated
whenever necessary, it became much easier to marginalize anyone who stepped
out of line. Marginalization meant that leaders who spoke against capitalist
interests were not to be followed. Otherwise, they would be eliminated
viciously or their careers destroyed.
This strategy, launched by the ruling class in
early 1970’s and implemented primarily by the Republican Party worked.
Leadership from that point on was allowed as long as it was either corrupt
or timid. Kwame Kilpatrick now creates a media circus not because he is
creating a powerful working class movement but because he is corrupt.
Barak Obabma, by contrast, does create a movement but only if he is not
too militant. So long as he does not support redistribution of wealth
or support a class analysis he can raise $100,000,000.00 ($100 Million)
in a very short period of time.
By contrast, even someone as innocuous as John
Edwards is immediately marginalized as having a bad haircut or serving
on some hedge fund and he cannot raise money. In this country, the candidate
with the most money wins 95% of the time. John McCain became the candidate
of exclusion. In other words, all other candidates failed and he was left.
Initially he did not raise money. Now he is raising millions. He was the
best of the Republicans among a group of very bad candidates. He was the
best of the worst. As soon as he was chosen, he had plenty of money.
Our populace is taught not to analyze positions
but to analyze individual candidates. In other words, we look at what
we think the candidate is. However, no one “knows” the candidate.
Ninety-nine percent of the people have never met with the candidate. They
are told what the candidate is by the corporate media. The question is
why would the working class buy into such a ridiculous proposition? There
are multiple reasons both general and particular. As a culture, we are
all about individualism even though as an ideology it has been a total
failure.
More importantly, by indoctrinating our voting
populace to vote for the individual not the party, the corporate media
finds it easier to get workers to vote against their economic self interest.
The working class is not given the choice of candidates
militantly fighting for the interest of the working class. The corporate
media, instead, trains the voting population to look at individual candidates
divorced from program and separated from a movement for fundamental change.
Because of individualism, workers are taught to believe an individual
leader can be assessed on character, not program. More importantly, by
indoctrinating our voting populace to vote for the individual, not the
party, the corporate media finds it easier to get workers to vote against
their economic self interest.
As voters, we are not given programmatic choices.
Nevertheless, we can formulate a strategy of struggle. Clearly workers
must vote for the Democratic party and reject the vicious backwardness
of the Republican party.
That is why the question today is not whether to
vote for Obama or Clinton but for any Democrat who is nominated. When
you get the Republican party you get individuals who are either corrupt
or incompetent. When you get the Republican party you get not only George
Bush but also Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Abramhoff,
Trent Lott, Jessie Helms, Strom Thurmond, Ken Lay, Howard Scaiff, Sam
Alito, Clarence Thomas, John Engler, Paul Weyrich.
In addition, you get Halliburton, Enron, Bear-Stearns,
torture, concentration of wealth, war, recession and depression. The voter
gets privatization of social security, privatization of water, high gas
prices, high energy prices, tax gifts to the rich, and finally the complete
arrogance of power.
The fact is that if John McCain is elected president,
we will have a depression. People are suffering so badly today that they
believe that we are already in a depression so it can’t get worse.
However, the fact is that it can get worse, much worse. The fact also
is that the Republican party intends to make it worse. John McCain has
already stated that he will expand the war. He intends to set up a separate
international agency that can go to war anywhere in the world. Those wars
are designed for one purpose: to protect the wealth and power of that
wing of the ruling class represented by John McCain, George Bush, Dick
Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. We can see how this is going to work with
the recent bailout of Bear-Stearns. While thousands upon thousands of
homeowners and workers are suffering mightily because of the disaster
of sub prime lending, $400 Billion is being used to protect the financial
interest of that wing of the ruling class represented by the Republican
party.
“The rescue of Bear Sterns, in particular,
was a paradigm-changing event.
Traditional, deposit-taking banks have been regulated
since the 1930s, because the experience of the Great Depression showed
how bank failures can threaten the whole economy. Supposedly, however,
“non-depository” institutions like Bear didn’t have
to be regulated, because “market discipline” would ensure
that they were run responsibly.
When push came to shove, however, the Federal Reserve
didn’t dare let market discipline run its course. Instead, it rushed
to Bear’s rescue. Risking billions of taxpayer dollars, because
it feared that the collapse of a major financial institution would endanger
the financial system as a whole.” (“The Dilbert Strategy”
by Paul Krugman, NYT, 3/31/08, p. A 23)
Over the last year Krugman has always been correct
to the development of this economic disaster.
McCain has already said he will do nothing to help
the individuals who suffered the mortgage crisis. His entire direction
will be to support the financial industry, not the people who are suffering.
It is therefore necessary for us to oppose that section of the ruling
class represented by John McCain and the Republican party. We oppose that
section of the ruling class not only because they support torture, not
only because they believe in the concentration of wealth and the protection
of the wealthy, not only because their programs have been proven to be
a total failure over the last 28 years, but also because we need relief
from the disaster that they represent. We must have some opportunity to
organize. We must show that we are willing to fight such things as torture
and concentration of wealth so that we can then provide leadership for
alternative programs including the redistribution of wealth, universal
healthcare, and an end to these endless wars.
Yours in Struggle,
-
Ronald D. Glotta
220 Bagley, Suite 808
Detroit, Michigan 48226
(313) 963-1320
(313) 963-1325 fax
rglotta@glottaassociates.com
www.glottaassociates.com
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