“Education consists not only in the sum of what a [person] knows or the skill with which they can put this to [their] own advantage… [People’s] education must also be measured in terms of the soundness of their judgments of people and things and in [their] power to understand and appreciate the needs of [their] fellow [person], and to be of service to them.”

Kwame Nkrumah – Consciencism

THE PARAMOUNT NECESSITY FOR IDEOLOGICAL TRAINING AND MASS REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE

“Without revolutionary consciousness there is no Revolution! All those who have had to conduct revolution have been able to verify this. But where does this revolutionary consciousness come from, since it is certain that it is not basic datum; nor does it come into being and develop spontaneously? History teaches that it is created and developed through ideological education and revolutionary practice.

“We can equally affirm that without ideological training and without revolutionary action, there can be no revolutionary consciousness….. 3 “Revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary action or mere Revolution engender and qualify one another forming a dynamic and tense whole with risks of rupture; which when it takes place, becomes fatal to the one and the other.

“History is full of cases where revolutionary action taking the lead on progress in the development of revolutionary consciousness, and thus breaking away from its nourishing source, that is the support and adhesion of the masses, runs into an adventure; accumulates failures and ultimately leads to a result contrary to the one anticipated, the recession on all fronts of the forces of progress, the questioning of all that had already been achieved, the rejection to a remote and uncertain future of every possibility of resuming the struggle.

“On the other hand, there are lots of cases where efforts have been vainly deployed to create and develop certain revolutionary consciousness in view of an action to be undertaken once all the conditions of success have been met. And in each case, all attempts to have a theory of action assimilated outside the field of action itself, be it a humble action because it is the only one possible in the conditions of the movement; have never been carried beyond the halls or clubs of discussion to change any situation whatsoever. On the contrary, they have always been lost in contemplation, in expectation of already missed opportunities, before degenerating definitely into an inactive residuum. “But the case is quite different when ideological training completes, highlights and founds revolutionary action in the process of execution so as to make their objectives understood, and thereby, have the necessary efforts and sacrifices consented.

“No worthwhile revolutionary Party can be mistaken on this today. This effort in training is a permanent problem and the attention which is accorded to it, according to the exigencies; characterize every phase of the Revolution and its leaders.

“The first exigency of the Revolution, the sum total of all other exigencies, is that of new [people] who have freed themselves from the servitudes of love for wealth, men and women who have opted for the general interest, for the People, for a genuine humanism.

“Ideological training, revolutionary ideology is the modern weapon used by the oppressed Peoples to overcome their insufficiencies, to meet the challenge of the powers of exploitation. Revolutionary ideology is the infallible arm that reveals and develops the People’s genius. All revolutionary parties agree on this.

“The work of ideological training in view of the emancipation of a whole People in conditions such as ours is of necessity a long term enterprise. The path to be followed is full of ambushes, the least of which is not the apparent slowness of the results that will crown their efforts.

“It is necessary at the onset to get secured against the risks of discouragement, by acquiring a sufficient amount of patience and perseverance, by taking account of the fact that the results of such an enterprise can only be appreciated on a long term basis, through all the qualitative changes which appear in the behavior of individuals and peoples facing their problems. In these conditions, it is certain that the expected results will only come when 4 the action, which engenders them, continues and this is the second condition of success continuity.

“It is vain and even dangerous indeed to start a work of education and stop it soon afterwards. Besides the fact that no result will be obtained, no worthwhile lesson will be drawn from it, the future is likely to be compromised by the doubt that will get hold of the militants as regards the determination and the competence of the leaders to keep to their promise and to carry on an action that was freely undertaken and presented in the beginning as absolutely indispensable.

“This action must be carried on obstinately, without intermission, with, of course, the necessary adaptation of the methods to all the new data.”

excerpted from Ahmed Seku Ture’s “FORWARD”, in the STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF THE REVOLUTION

Ideologicaltrainingguidelines (1)

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this pdf is the ideological training guidelines for the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (my home organization).

interlude – discipline by dead prez

we need to be disciplined in our principles and our ideological stances. the racist white supremacist fascist that our killing us and actively organizing to kill even more of us more efficiently are disciplined and principled in their hatred for us and they’ve injected so much bullshit propaganda into our veins, sanitized history, and so many of us have been left in a state of confusion because they have deceived us into thinking we’re “americans” and “canadians” and “brits” and “australians” and all the other settler identities.

discipline makes things easier. organize your life. disciplines makes things easier. organize your life. uh oh uh oh it’s gonna be alright. uh oh uh oh it’s gonna be alright it’s gonna be fine. discipline. practice makes perfect. discipline. health is wealth. discipline. all things in moderation. discipline. plan your work. discipline. work your plan. discipline.

word 2 dead prez.

fortunately if we choose to we don’t have to go along with their sanitized version of history. the truth reveals itself time and time again and its madness that genocides must take place for people to become conscious of people’s conditions. we must do better. we cannot keep repeating the same mistakes, there is too much, too many peoples lives depending on it. we have resources to learn from we just have to get better at sharing them. everybody wants to be a gatekeeper and put everything behind a paywall. not on my watch! I made a drive link with probably over a 1000 different books varying from pan africanism, street medic info, herbal medicine, COINTELPRO files, autobiographies of revolutionaries, poetry and guerrilla tactics. click here to free your mind

interlude – psychology by dead prez

i understand for many people including myself it can be very daunting to try and approach reading especially things that are heavy non-fiction historical texts. everybody has different learning needs and accessibilities and that needs to be accodmated for. i personally know i learn better with visual and audio which i have included so much music and video references as a way to package the information i am trying to deliver to your senses.

we also learn better in conversation with each other. learning in isolation is not how it’s supposed to be. you can read a book a bunch of times by yourself and think you have it all figured out but as soon as you have a discussion with someone with a different perspective on the same book a whole new conversation is able to be had.

we need spaces where we are safe with one another to study, fast, train and fight word 2 black august

i am proposing to those reading if you and at least 2 other comrades were to start a work/study circle, which entails:

• the formation of a circle of people with the goal of increasing their education on the needs of the community they are in
• think about the problems you see in your community and find and study resources that relate to the situation (e.g. if you feel like there is a need for education and mobilization around fighting transphobia in your community (whatever your community looks like)
• picking a consistent meeting time either on a weekly, biweekly or monthly schedule where you study the texts that are related to the situation
• in coordination with your studies brainstorm ways that you what have learned can be applied in your community (e.g. starting self defense training sessions for trans comrades)

this is just an example of a way this can be applied.

some other topics of education to cover :

• African history
• Indigenous history
• anti-patriarchy
• restorative justice
• political prisoners and the prison industrial complex
• environmental justice
• intersectionality
• anti-Zionism
• Pan-Africanism
• imperialism
• colonialism
• white supremacy
• settler colonialism
• neo-colonialism
• scientific socialism
• gender binary
• gentrification
• food sovereignty
• history of women and trans folks in the revolution
• disability justice and ableismpractice what you preach. preach what you practice.

Explaining The Justifications Behind these Revolutionary Political Education Focuses: Why Anti-Capitalist and Pro-Socialist?

An anti-capitalist foundation for all revolutionary community defense work is essential. The introductory chapter(s) have already reaffirmed the terrorist history of how this country was built on the theft of Indigenous lands and the kidnapping of Africans to work for free as property for hundreds of years. The so-called industrial revolution, which fueled the development of the capitalist system, was financed by the chattel enslavement of the African masses. The tactics of colonialism and slavery were utilized to establish and institutionalize the systems of inequity and oppression that still operate on a dominant level today. Capitalism is the absolute reason that the masses of African people everywhere on earth today are exploited and oppressed. Consequently, there is no way that capitalism in any form, whether of the multi-national corporate variety, or even through the often re-cycled “Black capitalism” model, can ever be the solution to any of our problems.

Scientific socialism is the antithesis to capitalism. Whereas capitalism was created and is based on exploitation, scientific socialism is based on the collective ownership of the means of production by the masses of people. Scientific socialism provides the mechanisms where Africa’s mass mineral wealth can be properly evaluated, based not on the degree of profits those resources can provide the capitalists, but based solely on how we can plan to utilize those resources to wipe out poverty and suffering among the

African masses using collective organization to achieve those objectives.

– Ahjamu Umi

this whole substack post is basically a tool for political education and mobilization as well as for me to push pro Pan-Afrikan scientific socialist propaganda 🙂

interlude – the perfect storm by aja monet