Huey P. Newton’s Intercommunalism: An Unacknowledged Theory of Empire

Abstract

Huey P. Newton remains one the left’s intellectual enigmas. Although lauded for being the leader of the Black Panther Party, Newton is relatively unacknowledged as an intellectual. This article challenges the neglect of Newton’s thought by shedding light on his theory of empire, and the present-day value of returning to his thought. The article centres on how Newton’s critique of what he called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’ prefigures many of the elements found in the work of Hardt and Negri on empire. This comparison will be used to show how Newton not only foresaw elements of the rise of contemporary neoliberal globalization, but also offered an idea of political solidarity and revolutionary politics for such a context. The article concludes by highlighting how Newton’s ideas about the need for a war of position based on ‘survival pending revolution’ presents a more theoretically and empirically salient conceptualization of resistance than his successors.

Resisting racial militarism: War, policing and the Black Panther Party

“…In this new environment, decolonization no longer made sense; the countries that had gained formal independence from their European overlords remained subject to US-backed capitalist control. As John Narayan (2017Narayan ( , 2019 argues, this account portends contemporary debates about the politics of neoliberal globalization. It also has significant implications for how we think about both militarism and international solidarity.…”

Policing the (migrant) crisis: Stuart Hall and the defence of whiteness

“…The attempt to recreate the racial contract between capital and white labour has thus predominantly relied on a psychological rather than economic concessions, as John Narayan (2017Narayan ( , 2019 has argued incisively: that is, the new wages of whiteness are cultural and ideological, rather than material. Right-wing nationalist parties do not aim to resupply the wages of whiteness through redistributive policies or by breaking away from the logic of neoliberal globalization.…”

Huey Newton’s Lessons for the Academic Left

“…7 While Newton's central theoretical concept has recently begun to attract the attention of sympathetic scholars (e.g. Narayan, 2019), a critical assessment of it obviously lies outside the purview of this article; as does a response to the numerous critiques of the BPP's lapses in translating intercommunal theory into organizational practice made not only by scholars both hostile (Pearson, 1996) and sympathetic (Henderson, 1997), but by some rank and file Panthers, as well (Shakur, 1987). It is worth emphasizing, however, that, despite Newton's own confidence in his hypothesis and bold predictions regarding the future its embrace might produce, he also intentionally and explicitly 'left [his own political] program open-ended so that it could develop and people could identify with it', as evinced by the fact that he began with very local, piecemeal, seemingly reformist actions that could only be sustained and directed through community involvement, thereby allowing the people in distinct communities to challenge, alter, or clarify his theses in an ongoing way (Newton and Morrison, 2009: 47).…”