on the first floor of a small white house near the sea, looking across the Bay of Algiers. It has a floating population of Panthers, and of friends and revolutionaries, white and black. It is spare, functional, and feels, in some indefinable way, American. All his books and records have been confiscated by the State Department, and he has a great hunger for new books and above all music.
In Algeria, he is in touch with representatives of freedom ments from Africa and all over the world, who gather there under the friendly eye of that curiously mixed regime. Meanwhile, in America, the Panthers continue to be assassinated or imprisoned, and continue to move further to the left, to outgrow the.old black chauvinism. It was in the light of these developments-of internationalism and growing socialist consciousness-that interviewed Cleaver. He refuses to be interviewed by CBS. NBC any large organisation. His wife and child are in Denmark, and he is trying to finish a book while they are away. He knows and likes the Black Dwarf, and he was friendly and quietly-spoken throughout you have aligned or made some form of the interview, in which he reveals himself as a man of increasing and his party as undergoing ideological developments which are of major importance. JM February, 1970.
—We really don't want to interview you as a personality,-but just to set the scene, how would you describe your present from the working class, but we have to situation?
People when they start talking about my present situation, they start with the word 'exile, you know. I don't like to use that. term myself because it is static. We are in the process of establishing here information centre: to deal with the struggle on an international level, make contacts, find out who our allies are, locate sources of mutual support. It's a way of carrying on the struggle, of continuing to work. I never would have left the United States if the decision hadn't been made for me. We were not prepared to deal with an insecure underground thing at that time. So while we're working on that, this is a way of biding time until we can return —You are in Algeria. Did you choose Algeria?
No, I didn't really choose Algeria. After I left the United States, the place that I chose turned out to be almost diametrically opposed to what I thought I was choosing, and I found out it was impossible for me to do what I had to do there. To really explain how I got here and why, I'm not prepared to do at this time. But I could say I didn't discover Algeria to be what it is, and the opportunities that it offers, until after I got here. I didn't really come here by choice; there were very few avenues left open and it just happened that it was fortunate it turnca our tais way -Wnal are the charges against you in America?
There are about six counts of assault with intent to kill a police officer. I have a charge of violation of parole; a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for these other charges. -What about the confiscation of your books and your possessions, was that on a different charge?
No, it was based on a decision by the State Department. They declared me to be Cuban National and they have a law there Eldridge Cleaver lives in a few rooms called, "Trading with the Enemy Act"—a measure specifically enacted against Cuba to confiscate the property of Cubans who were loyal to Fidel Castro's Government. All they have to do is to designate you as a Cuban National and this entitles them to confiscate all your property in the US, plus they can prosecute anyone who does anything for you,-if someone sends some money, say like the royalties from my book, they construe that as Trade with the Enemy.
-What would you say the Black Panther Party's main successes were, so far? I think that the main success and the most important success has been in heightening the political consciousness of a lot of people. Once think the Government could ever really change their minds back to where they were before. Also dispelling the alienation that existed between Black Revolutionaries and White Revolutionaries of the United States. At the time that the party was started, there was like a big gulf that was sort of a heritage of the work of SNCC and Black Power and Stokely Carmichael.
—So in a way, you have created an aware ness of the situation, a political consciousness among American Black People and coalition with the Peace and Freedom Movement and other white movements. But so far as I can see, you haven't issued any call to the American Working Class as such. What is your opinion of the political role of the American Working class?
You see our Party is drawn largely from the lumpen proletariat. We are members of the working class-many of our members are make a distinction between the employed and the unemployed. here are large numbers of unemployed people in the United States. In the first place the American people are very corrupt, very deeply imbued with the whole greedy dog eat dog philosophy of individualism, and they don't give a damn about other people or each other, and as long as the Government is able to provide enough jobs, as long as they're able-to prop up the economy by manufacturing war materials, as long as they're able to it is chase to these people, it is almost impossible to do anything with them. understand the theoretical analysis that makes the working class key •to tne revolutionary process, but we also recognise the realities of that situation,the important thing now is to organise those who are objectively organisable and after that we can begin to crack that hard ace. Right now I feel, and it is the feeling of the party, that we must make an approach to the working class as a category, but we feel that they're not about ready to come in -So that when you speak of "domestic imperialism" and "The Black Colony" and "liberating the colony", are you talking outside the Marxist framework of class I think it's strictly compatible with the Marxist analysis except that we are in a situation where we have to apply these universal principles to our specific situation in a way that has never been done before. To just take the dry marxist analysis as it exists, is not functional for us. This has been the diabolical failure of the American Communist Party. They refuse to deal with the reality of the situation,-they just talk about the working class, and black people are members of the working class, and that's it. They don't confront the ethnic problem that exists. In the United States, the class struggle is hidden by the ethnic struggle, and the way that the people are manipulated by the Government, by the ruling class, makes the ethnic struggle primary. They keep the ethnical contradictions very sharp by manipulating racism and the whole history of racism, which is why the struggle of black people in the United States has come to be looked upon as a race struggle as opposed to a class struggle. We understand that the class struggle is the key, but you cannot neglect the ethnic factor, if you do, you meet with disaster.
On a question of timing, would you say that liberating the colony had to come before the revolution in America?
No we think that they must be done at the same time. The key dynamic that gave rise to the developing Movement among whites in the United States was started off as a support operation against the war in Vietnam and support for black people struggling for their rights. If the struggle for black people didn't exist, the present antiwar movement wouldn't be there. The two things are inter-related and they must go on at the same time; there's no question about that. I mean you cannot call a moratorium on one and say well let's deal with the other one first. We say that they must bot] work together, must have machinery to deal with both of them at the same time. -The demands of the Panther Party are not particularly Socialist. In some ways they seem to accept the pattern of Society and demand more justice with that pattern. rather than overthrowing it. Is this so? We often are confronted with this question,-many times as a criticism, —but you must understand the situation that exIsts inside the United States and the people who drew up the programme. They understood the society from a Marxist point of view. The programme, if you notice, is drawn up on an either/or principle, it says either you will do this, or we will do this, and behind that is the understanding tha it's impossible for the Government to de liver those demands. But in terms of relating to the people, the demands are very term The New World Liberation Front clear and they're very just and they speak always go beyond the ten points. They are a working device that we can use to approach the people, and it's proving very effective, in spite of the criticisms that a lot of intellectuals make of it.
—I notice that in one of the latest issues of the Black Panther paper, you did a breakdown of a strike in General Electric which gave a very good analysis of how the power structure worked in a specific case.
This is because there have been some successes in approaching the working class, over the last couple of years,—we have got some party members and some allies who are members of the labour unions and who devote all their time to trying to relate to workers. We have a wide readership among the working class, and by running these analysis we can help them make someideological inroad. You can say definitely that this process will continue.
-How American would you say you are? I will say as American as apple know. Its very dear an a pat am ou American. It's become even more clear to me since leaving the United States, so I make no bones about it. I'm not ashamed of it, I don't feel there's anything to be gained by going through any fancy verbal changes about that. We talk about the third world and we have third world origins but we are members of the first world, which is the Capitalist world.
-When you talk about a united front against fascism you have identified America as a Fascist country, how do you think it compares with Nazi Germany?
I think that in terms of the effects it's having on the world, it's far worse than Nazi Germany. Many people have come to identify fascism only when they see swastikas, you know, or something related to Mussolini. We think that the form of oppression and the totality oppression that is involved in the United States is enough, along with the economics that are involved, to identify America as fascism. Through SOLIC very devious mechanisms, of holding companies and interlocking directorates and so forth, the economy is centralised in the hands of very few people and very few corporations at the top. It has an apparent facade of competition and free enterprise, but it's not free enterprise, it hasn't been for quite a while; if it ever was. It's definitely a highly centralised mechanism that only gives the appearance of being decentralised. —According to some Black Panther statements, America needs now North American Liberation Front. Traditionally liberation fronts fight protracted wars: What would you say was your strategy for carrying out the war?
You see, usually people speak about liberation fronts when they're dealing with a Colonialist regime. In the US the primary struggle is a revolutionary struggle, but at the same time we have to deal with specific conditions of oppression of black people Black people were taken to the United States as part of the process of the expansion of European politics into the rest of the world, in order to colonise the rest of the world. So many forms of oppression that were developed in that process were developed and inflicted upon black people inside the United States. Not all. We don't have the classical form of colony, but many of the forms are there We have to appry une analysi Imperialism and Colonialism where th black community is controlled from the white community. But the large thing is that it has to be a revolution that will be won through a process of war. We don't think we re going to be able to vote the capitalist economy out of existence. think we're going to be able to vote the ruling class out of existence. We think that people are going to have to organise and take up arms and fight a war to overthrow the system. We talk about the North American Liberation Front, 1 prefer the continued overleaf.
—What books would say had influenced Woman has suffered extremely, all the way member of the party. She walked out and The Black Dwarf. March 7 1970 Page 6 What is happening now is that small groups of people are arming themselves and they're beginning to carry out activities against the system. I think that that process will increase and out of it, just as in other countries, a people's army will develop. This is what we constantly try to bring about. In terms of time, who can say how long it will take? I know that I can't. These things have way of exploding and processes that we think will take ten years telescope into two weeks: so there's a way of speeding up time through action. —Do you see it in relation to the economic processes?
Yes, if the economy, because of the international situation, experiences sharp reakdowns wnere more ane more bees xperience dissatisfaction in their daily life of course this will open up some very have to understand this, that the people who are active in the United States right now are not people who are ground down in poverty, because people in the United States are suffering a different form of oppression, even black people. There is a type of spiritual suffering that is so extreme that people are just as miserable as though they were starving. There is another form of misery. Hunger is not the only form you see and American people are miserable; many of them don't know it, but those who are aware and who know it and who understand the source of it, they have a hatred so deep for that system that they can do nothing but destroy it, because they see that their lives are rotten and the quality of their lives is worthless and that the only way that they can do anything meaningful is to move to destroy the monstrous system that exists there. It's kind of fashionable to talk about a Student Movement in the United States, people talk about this, but it's grown beyond just being a student movement to being a generation of people who are aware of the predicament that the world is in and who understand this predicament and who have enough quality about • themselves to want to do something about it: and this is a necessity. -In the light of this struggle, it seems that the Black Panthers have a tendency to adventurism in actually laying themselves open to being put in prison and being driven out of the country.
Yes. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. We talk a lot about this, we know this. People used to say that we were provoking the power structure into coming down prematurely when people weren't prepared, but it became very clear to us that it's always time to move if you're willing to face the consequences. Simply because we complained about the consequences doesn't mean that we were not aware that they were going to be brought about, you see what I mean. I remember when we went to the Legislature with those guns, the Communist party and the Socialist Workers party, all of these super revolutionary phrase-mongers-that's all 1 can call them-they were more angry at us than the pigs were you know, because they said this WaS provocative But there's a need for Black people particularly to have something of a kami-kaze consciousness. You recall, the first phrase in The Catechism of a Revolutionist by Bakunin, says that a Revolutionary is a doomed man, so all these people who are concerned about survival and who want to carry out a revolution without suffering any consequences, I think that they don't really want to carry out a revolution. We have to be prepared to take risks, to suffer, in order to bring about the results. So while we have suffered greatly, and while we don't like the suffering we've had to do, we don't regret doing what we've done because it was necessary. We were confronting LOTS situation: we had to choose between doing nothing taking action that would probably get us killed or put in prison. We prefer to just close our eyes and move against the enemy and then try to pick up the chips rather than sit around like these armchair philosophers do, and analyse the situation. For instance people in the United States talked about police brutality for about 50 years. The NAAPC started in about 1911. It started off as a protest organisation. They started off talking about Police brutality and they filed about a million petitions trying to put an end to police brutality. Everybody talked about that. But it wasn't until the Black Panther nartv pot out into the streets with guns and loss and at great suffering that we have texts-Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao etc.?
climate and an awareness, where the pigs are uptight. All the talking in the world literature. Myself, in prison i had a lot of didn't do anything about it, it took the type of action that we took, which they cal adventurist, and which we accept. So I really think that we must become even more consciously Kami-Kaze. I like that word because that's just what the situation calls for.
approach? For example the F.L.N in there are the traditional Maoist Guerrilla tacticsWhen the party was first organised there Mao's works you know, even some Fabian was a big conflict over this. Many people wanted to start the party underground, immediate and beautiful prospects. But you Huey deals with this whole argument in an essay entitled The Correct Handling of a Revolution." In the situation that existed in the United States, it was necessary for the organisation to start above the ground, so that it could relate to the people and so the people could relate to it. We anticipated being driven underground, and this has happened to a great extent. Much of what is seen above ground we already consider understanding of it in terms of moving, it to be passé. We know that you cannot overthrow the Government through mass daily activity, there was no organisational demonstrations and pickets but we also structure that I could relate to. know that part of the correct revolutionary pproach is to utilise both the legal and the and the underground approach. Definitely we are going to have to resort to the tactics you reletrea to -I want to ask you about the Student Movement which you mentioned just now.
How would you place the strength of the it was a revolutionary vanguard, or a actonator, trouble..?
My whole opinion of student movements fluctuates as their actions fluctuate. but having had some very close associations with large numbers of students, I came to people who understand the problem, and who are committed to it. At the same time there are also a great number of people just going through a sort of initiation process and will afterwards rejoin the system.
group called the Weathermen!
know that the people who form the Weatherman faction of SDS are very good, selfless people, and I feel that they deserve have performed these functions well. Sc support. The action they took didn't seem there is a lot of suspicion and hostility annot still be supporte -Something about it didn't appeal to you, great need what was that?
I think a lot of it is naive you know, some situation. People have to learn to really of the things that they say like Fight the appreciate and dig a cat that functions in lon't serve the people you fight them, you done by so-called intellectuals know, They drifted off into very isolated and really insane ideological positions. But helpful in this regard, because you find that whole ideological thicket that exists in develop a correct approach to the situation and I think that everybody in the United States is kind of in that position. Some of have an appreciation for talent. We know the things that other people do is just as that we need it. disastrous for the movement as what the members of the working class. On the other perhaps the first time in the history of hand, I think it's not so dreadful to antagonise some members of the working class from a party when this has been named as ecause members of the working class are one of the crimes.
look upon them as being objects to be pampered—I think they have to be handled the black female in the United States is kind of roughly you and the Panthers particularly? Well to back to slavery, when the family structure been able to do something to create a The members of the party, those who started it, they read very widely in Socialist time to read all the books I could get m hands on, but the key book that really started the party was "The Wretched of the Earth" because it was after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale reac "The Wretched of the Earth" that something clicked inside their heads and —Do you foresee a stage where you'll need they put the party together. I was still a to adopt a more traditional liberation front prisoner at that time and we read "The Wretched of the Earth" in prison; but we Algiers used to strike and disappear, and read everything from The Manifesto, Das Capital, to scattered selections from Lenin that were available in Prison, some of socialist essays, things like that, reading these materials we were able to draw an black women. understanding of the Society of Capitalism and how it functions and the evils of it. "Yes, and you felt that quite a lot of it was very relevant to your situation?
Yes. When I first read Marx, I was about 18 years old, first time I ever went to prison, but it was in such a form, that it only offered, like an intellectual understanding of capitalism, I didn't have an was impossible for me to relate that to my -Have any other later 20th century Marxists, apart from Fanon meant anyllegal approach, both the above ground thing, like Marcuse, Gramsci? what abou Trotsky?
I think I have read more of Trotsky than I stand it much better now than they did. have of the others. Marcuse, I read some of when I was already, deeply involved in the Black Panther Party so we can't really say directly. because I went to the Campus in San Diego where he was an instructor and one of the students gave me a collection of his books actual student contribution, would you say there and he had a lot of support from the and I had to deal with him because he was Campus but I wasn't drawn to his work. I as they said in Paris, or just don't think about them unless someone asks me. selves Minister of Information, Minister of Culture, Prime Minister, and so?
You see, we felt there was a very important understand that there was this generation of fact that had to be dealt with: the Government's tactic to always depoliticise all of the organisations of black people in the United States. We have very hot arguments about who are active in the movement who are it-people thought that it was too pretentious. But we chose the type of names that we did in order to emphasise the political content of our struggle. —You seem to approve in particular of a —What's your party's attitude to it Well you know I was over here when the Educated people have been a class in the activity of the Weathermen took place, I United States that have sold the black masses out, because they were specifically educated in order to perform certain very serious, and very dedicated and very functions for the slave master, and they o me to be so counter-productive that they among the black masses towards th educated people. But in the party there is a for constantly refresh the analysi Fuck the People, they that manner, and we've got over some of attack the slogan Serve the People-they these suspicions simply because we've got say, I don't know how to put it but you good benefits out of some of the work being We find that the pigs have been very I think that this is not fatal, that they will the people that they have been murdering not be lodged with that for ever; I think have the brains, like Malcolm X, even that what they are doing is exploring the Martin Luther King. Fred Hampton was a the very intelligent man. The disaster that has United States, they're trying to find the happened to certain brains of the party correct positions and they're trying to have made people understand that the pigs were doing this because they were trying to hurt us in turning out the lights. People -When you expelled one group of Weatherman did, although it might not Panthers one of the charges against them have the same violent form, antagonising was male Chauvinism. I think that this is politics that politicians have been expelled murdering off other people, so that I don't It is a very serious problem you know. The relationship between the black male and horrible. In the United States the Black and the family structure that exists now was created. During siaver-to talk about all these forms you have to always go back to slavery the woman was used as a breeder to produce more slaves and the man was used as a stud. All the delicate sentiments between a man and a woman were distorted, very fucked up, and this has continued and black women have been subjected to a double form of oppression, maybe even triple or quadruple. They have to deal with being oppressed as black people, they have to deal with being oppressed as females, then they have to deal with being oppressed as black females, then they have to deal vith being oppressed by black men wh themselves are oppressed. So it's very har for them to deal with, and black men have been very vicious and brutal in dealing with On the one hand the black woman was more secure under slavery than the black man. The white man in the United States understood that the most effective way of keeping the black man down was to destory all forms of security for him, so that the black woman has been in a more secure position than the black man. For example the black woman was able to kill the black man, and was assured that it would automatically be ruled as justifiable homicide so the black man resorted to a form o brute force on women to keep them in their place. The sisters in the Black Panther Party don't want to hear that shit, they're not going to have it, you see, but a lot o prothers don't understand that. They unde I'll tell you this, the first trial that we his materials but I read those at a time ever had in the Black Panther Party was specifically over this problem. A brother wanted to go to bed with a sister and she were a stimulus or influence didn't want to go to bed with him, so he hit her, he cursed her out, and he refused to leave her house, she reported this, and we had to have a meeting about it because at that time it hadn't come to our consciousness that there was such a problem. We had this meeting. Bobby Seale presided over the meeting and we had a discussion of the action of this brother. There were three sisters living in the house and they told about what he did and there was a vote as to whether or not we suspend the guy. kick him out of the party or kill him or whatever might be done as you know we had no code drawn up but these were the alternatives: expel him, suspend him or kill him, what else can you do to a guy? So after a full debate on this, it came to a vote and Bobby called for the vote, and the question came up could the sisters vote When the party first started there were no women in the party, it was all men, and it was only after Huey was arrested that began to come into the party Before that we had women who related to the Party, members and they would do little thing, mostly girlfriends of that were helpful to us, but at that time our whole activity was taken up with dealing th cops, and very little paper work w volved—it was mostly just Panthers ar guns. It was only after the operation expanded that women started coming into the party. So we had no forms, we didn't know how we would designate them. When we had meetings in the beginning, when the girlfriends of the cats would be there, it was understood that they weren't members of the party so when we voted they didn't vote. They didn't participate, because they veren't members of the party-Then thes ame sisters and more declared themselve to be Panthers, but we would still take votes on certain issues and just the brothers would vote. Then, when this particular trial came up, we started to vote in the same manner. But this was an issue that hotly concerned the sisters. The leader of the women at that time, was Sister Joanne. The vote was taken alright and Bobby told the sisters you can't vote, just like he always would. It was at that moment that we realised that we had another problem on our hands. We voted and the cat was exonerated an in-just decision was passed, the cats just related to supporting this other cat. Joanne jumped up, she was very angry and she just ranted down from the sisters point of view and she split and she said the sisters are subjected to the same objective oppression that the brothers are, and they work just as hard as the brothers do and if they can't vote they don't want to be a that's when it dawned on us that we had to
her back and we began to develop the allowed to discuss it. I've been in a Soviets have done by tearing down all started laying the foundations to get away from male chauvinism.
It's a very interesting problem. There were some brothers who used to brutalise their old ladies, you know, and my wife,she's a sort of firebrand when it comes to the women's liberation, got together with some of the other sisters, and they rented this big pad and they called it the Sisters" Pad, and they took some guns into the pad and they established certain rules like that no cat could come inside, but that proved non-functional so then no cat could go upstairs, they could just come into the front room. When sisters would have problems with the brothers, they didn't want to go home to Mother, they just wanted to go some place, they wanted to have structured so that these problems could be dealt with.
So I remember these two brothers both on the same night had a fight with their old ladies, and without our knowing what going on,-the sisters took refuge in this pad, and these guys went to the pad and were just going to force their way in, and one of them got shot. I went over to the pad the next day after I found out about this and my wife was there you know, and I said-what the hell's going on here, why did the cat get shot, so they explained to me that this was their pad and they were going to defend it and they were not going to have this type of thing going on, and l said well I'm coming into this pad, and they said-well no you're not, this is our pad, and you're not coming in unless we let you come in, and you got to respect that. The other sisters they just stepped back and they let Kathleen deal with it and she had a shot gun that I bought her and she threw down on me you know. It was a very important principle to them, but I was not really thinking about what was involved. I was going to force my way into the pad but when she threw the shotgun down on me and looked at her standing there trembling, I know that this principle was so important that she would have shot me had I just driven over that, I dug that, so l supported that here developed that pad there still very functional for sisters and they're able to get a lot across to the Brothers through using this pad. —Is there anything you can't tolerate in women's liberation?
I say this, that men have been so wrong for so long that I support women even when they're wrong. But sometimes my wife will tell me-we're talking about womens liberation and biologically you're incapable of relating to it. But I think I have something to do with it. It's just not women's problems, it's problems between men and women and think that we should be machinery to deal with it. That is when we situation where I've been put very uptight. I remember when the sisters wanted to use—and Kathleen was kind of pushing this journalists that was held there in September too you know,the same tactics against us as we were using against the pigs: if a brother brutalises a sister then we're going to go and get him and kill him, things like that. Well I know that brothers shouldn't brutalise the sisters, but I was in a situation where I didn't want to loose a good man, so that I thought another approach to that would be more desirable that just offing the cat, because it got to the point where some guys slapped their old lady and they want to kill him. Now this may be a very just position, I can't attack it because don't see why a guy should be allowed to slap his old lady even though I've done that before myself. But I make the plea to them, to be a little more considerate about what's going on. Those are the kind of things that put me off. But, in a way, I'm a traitor to East there's Japan and the southern half of my sex. I kind of support them.
you think the effects on the individual of racialism, Iperialism and class defend themselves, and in order exploitation all take place on the level?
In the first place we're talking about totality that can't really be separated, but in terms of pain, certain things are more easily ree died than other Like you can dead the basis of economic exploitation, some of those sufferings can be wiped out, but certain other forms of pain, like the suffering that people do for racism can warp you phsycologically so that maybe nothing can be done to alleviate that. But at the same time they're inseparable because the racism is just a tactic employed to bolster up the economic exploitation. It's like this, you could have a ball and chain around your ankle you know, but when you body to see where the physical damage is done it's not the big ball but the clasp around your anklw that will leave the mark on you and the big ball might be imperialism and all the economic exploitations and the clasp may be the racism you see, that's the thing that marks you-but its really the ball that's holding you down.
—Do you see the struggle continuing on the basis of the international socialist movecolour emancipation movement? I would just say that it may be a toss up. A very desparate situation exists international socialist movement. Onl Ene one hand we have the Soviet Union coming identified as the Revisionists, Renegrade clique, and on the other hand you have the dogmatists and as far as I'm concerned they end up being just as bad as each other. It seems that the Chinese have trected an ideological wall: they make it just as impossible to relate to them as the ideological principles. This came on to me while I was in Korea at the Conference of of last year. The whole source of the sroblem is the conflect that exists between the Soviet Union and China which is driving the Soviet Union more and more into a white racist positions, and there's a lot of xenophbia in the Chinese approach also. The only principled positions being advanced by a country that I was able to relate Was that being advanced by Comrade Kim Il Sung of North Korea. I found that the people who are not yet liberated are the ones, who chrish the true revolutionary principles of marxism, leninism and anti-imperialism.
If you look at the history of Korea and its geographical situation, a lot can be understood. In the North there's the Soviet Union; in the West there's China; in the their country is occupied by the United States. They've been forced, in order to same articulate their own best interests, to develop an ideological defence against a aggression from any direction. They've suffered from aggression from the Russians, they've suffered aggression from the Chinese and definitely they are suffering now from aggression from the United States and they have suffered from the aggression of the Japanese. So while maintaining a consistent adherence to Marxist-Leninist principles they've also had to develop a very sharp critique against certain MarxistLeninists who've been fucking them over. This is really the position that all oppressed people are in. They have the consciousness haip opter o antry is stered bed use their country is still occupied and under a neo-colonial regime backed by United States imperialism. The Vietnamese, and many of the liberation movements in Africa, and in Latin America are unable to publicly articulate how they feel about the shit that's going on, because there would be disastrous consequences, people will cut off their guns if they told it like its is. In private conversations they would tell you the same thing that I'm telling you, but publicly it's too expensive for them to take that position. We're in a position where we're not receiving aid from anybody so that we can say these things. It was even true that there were many people in Korea who urged us to make very strong attacks upon the revisionists and also they wantit to come out and they expressed their position and their feelings the by the way they applauded.
-Did you find any danger of Kim Il Sung developing a personality cult?
No, a lot of people feel that there's a personality cult already. there. My own personal feeling is, that's the way that human society functions, I don't see santhing wrong with people relating to a charismatic leader that level, particularly, if he's a just man. I think it's The Black Dwarf March 7 1970 Page 7 very unfortunate if you relate to an unjust charismatic leader. When we first got there everytime we talked to anybody started off by saying Comrade Kim Il Sung. If we were talking about apples or if we were talking about teacups, anything, but once you begin to understand that this is a way maintaining their unity and that Comrade Kim Il Sung has founded his country and that he will not live for ever. I don't think that this is any different than what has happened in the history of all countries. There is the father of every country. —Did you find socialist democracy being carried out in North Korea?
We weren't able to observe deeply into whether or not everyone was satisfied that their will was being brought to bear in all decisions, we were not there that long. But it's a crisis situation that exists in Korea, and the people are mobilised on a level where they are prepared for a war at any moment. The United States has 60,000 troops in the South of Korea you know, and they have a puppet army there of, I think. 600,000 and they have just moved the wne e command of the Pacific military machine from Okinawa to South Korea, so the people there fell threatened and the threat is very real, so they're not playing any games about ensuring that everyone can raise a point of order on every question that comes up. There is one thing, that I think criticism of Socialism anywhere in the world has to be tempered with; the understanding that Socialism nowhere has really been given a chance; because of appropriations for defence capitalism and Imperialism that are really there and aggressive. You can't really talk about what would happen if these things weren't true, because it is true. —How much do you feel the movement can rely on the help of Communist Parties in America or Moscow or China or Cuba? We don't. Because we find that they are lagging behind our activities. We're inclined to have rather disastrous relations with the Communist Party in the United States.
The reason they have started relating to us is because the people were relating to us, and they were out of it. We consciously barred them from participating in certain of our activities and we even at one point barred them from passed out leaflets in the black community- -black communists and white communists. We had to come down on them very hard, we had to expose them in our newspaper, write articles attacking them and their activities before they started changing their behaviour. You see some cooperating between the CPA and the Black Panther Party now, but this is something that we've gained through some very bitter conflict. Myself I'm not inclined to be liberal with them or to even forgive and forfunctioning in a harmonious way on certaie though they problems. they have an ingrained ideological bias that keeps them lagging behind. As far as I'm concerned, the marxism that they use is not an indigenous marxism, it's something that is unrelated to the problems that exist in the United States. The Movement as a whole, is beginning to relate to Marxism-Leninism in the United