Title: Blood in My Eye
Author: George L. Jackson
Year of Publication: 1990 [1972]
Thesis:
Argues that crime and prisons developed from the economic and social order to protect the "privileges of a privileged few." His book is an attempt to raise prisoners' and others' consciousness that prison is the injustice and specifically for the purpose of creating a people's army. He cites the prison movement as a place where people from disparate backgrounds have coalesced in the struggle and therefore should be used as a model for the struggle.
Time:
Geography:
Organization: Letters
Amerikan Justice
- Describes prison conditions in his 11th year
- Mostly Black and poor folks in jail
- Strong Marxist influence (capitalism, lumpenproletariat as references)
Toward the United Front
- System kept in place by institutionalized racism and the prison system (7-8)
- Crime as "an assault upon the privilege of the privileged few" (9)
- Prisoners described as a class (9)
- Capitalism must be destroyed; violence can be limited by having more participants in the struggle, but he sees the conflict as inevitable (10)
- Prison movement best example of coalition building (12)
- Racism the most pernicious force in the left from aligning (12)
- No such thing as "Black racism" (12)
- The system must be crushed since it continues to replicate more racists (12)
- ALL people as victims of the system
After the Revolution has Failed
- Time to recognize that labor has failed in its efforts
- U.S. as a fascist state that continually pacifies the bottom layres through "reform," which is just enough to keep people from rebelling (16)
- Describes how the most downtrodden were first to be pacified (16)
- Points out the tension, especially on the issue of the scale of violence in the revolution among revolutionaries
- The vanguard revolutionaries can't win alone; yet, they can't wait for consensus
Fascism
- Reads Angela Davis's work on fascism
- See abundance of quotes below from this chapter
Classes at War: Mobilization and Contramobilization
- Intellectuals who supported fascism in Italy did so out of concern that system was breaking down entirely (if I'm understanding him correctly) (40)
- 3 phases of fascism:
-> "out of power" (appears revolutionary)
-> "in power but not secure" (period of repression)
-> "in power and securely so" (some dissent possible) (40)
- This seems to come out of his analysis of Italy under Mussolini (& Perón in Argentina, & Brazil)
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Keywords:
contra-positive mobilization (pacification/diffusion of working parties & also intent to mitigate the revolutionary vanguard's influence on working-class folk)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"I simply have never managed to develop a technique against nine armed men who are fascinated with damaging my private parts!!
But, I’m still learning!" - Comes straight from the white male projection of insecurities over white women & the propaganda sold on Black rapists of white women
On the attempt free George J. by his brother, Jonathan.
"Proof of the role of law within the totalitarian authoritarian relationship was also built into the action. In a fit of reckless, mindless gunfire, one hundred automated goons shot through the bodies of a judge, district attorney, and three female noncombatants to reestablish control over all activity. To prevent certain actions, no cost in blood is too high."
On Total Revolution:
"Total revolution must be aimed at the purposeful and. absolute destruction of the state and all. present institutions, the destruction carried out by the so- called psychopath, the outsider, whose only remedy is de struction of the system. This organized massive violence directed at the source of thought control is the only realistic therapy."
On rejection of hierarchy:
"Throughout the centralizing authoritarian process of Ameri- kan history, the ruling classes have found it necessary to discourage and punish any genuine opposition to hierarchy. But there have always been individuals and groups who rejected the ideal of two unequal societies, existing one on top of the other."
Prison as a manifestation of unequal distribution of wealth
"Prisons were not institutionalized on such a massive scale by the people. Most people realize that crime is simply the result of a grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of the present state of property relations. There are no wealthy men on death row, and so few in the general prison population that we can discount them altogether. Imprisonments an aspect jjfclass struggle from the outset. It is the creation of a closed society which at tempts to isolate those individuals who disregard the structures of a hypocritical establishment as well as those who attempt to challenge it on a mass basis."
On Revolution:
"Each of us should understand that revolution is aggressive. The manipulators of the system cannot or will not meet our legitimate demands. Eventually this will move us all into a violent encounter with the system. These are the terminal years of capitalism, and as we move into more and more basic challenges to its rule, history clearly forewarns us that when the prestige of power fails a violent episode precedes its transformation." (9-10)
On not needing to have all the same ideological persuasion/methods (very cool)
"In order to create a united left, whose aim is the defense of political prisoners and prisoners in general, we must renounce the idea that all participants must be of one mind, and should work at the problem from a single party line or with a single party line or with a single method." (10)
On racism's destruction of the political left
"Racism is a matter of ingrained traditional attitudes conditioned through institutions. For some, it is as natural a reflex as breathing. The psycho-social effects of segregated environments compounded by bitter class repression have served in the past to render the progressive movement almost totally impotent." (11)
On the the idea that reform can work with the same leadership:
"The question I’ve asked myself over the years runs this way: Who has done most of the dying? Most of the work? Most of the time in prison (on Max Row)? Who is the hindmost in every aspect of social, political and economic life? Who has the least short-term interest—or no interest at all—in the survival of the present state? In this condition, how could we believe in the possibility of a new generation of enlightened fascists who would dismantle the basis of their hierarchy?" (page # forthcoming)
"My opinion is that we are at the historical climax (the flash point) of the totalitarian period."
This is is beautiful:
"It is not defeatist to acknowledge that we have lost a battle. How else can we “regroup” and even think of carrying on the fight. At the center of revolution is realism. To call one or two or a dozen setbacks defeat is to overlook the ebbing and flowing process of revolution, coining closer to our calculations and then receding, but never standing still. If a thing isn’t building, it must be decaying. As one force emerges, the opposite force must yield; as one advances, the other must retreat. There is a very significant difference between retreat and defeat.”
"In my analysis, I'm simply taking into account the fact that the forces of reaction and counterrevolution were al lowed to localize themselves and radiate their energy here in the U.S. The process has created the economic, political and cultural vortex of capitalism’s last re-form. My views corre spond with those of all the Third World revolutionaries. And nate in the seizure of state power. Our real purpose is to redeem not merely ourselves but the whole nation and the whole community of nations from colonial-community economic repression." - By now I think I'm seeing that the counterrevolution/hegemonic powers are quite entrenched. Even revolutions that we can point to seem reformist.
On the historical necessity of armed struggle:
"Our insistence on military action, defensive and retalia tory, has nothing to do with romanticism or precipitous idealistic fervor. We want to be effective. We want to live. Our history teaches us that the successful liberation struggles require an armed people, a whole people, actively participat ing in the struggle for their liberty!"
On the need to understand fascism's cover of democracy:
"One has to understand that the fascist arrangement tolerates the existence of no valid revolutionary activity. It has programmed into its very nature a massive, complex and automatic defense mechanism for all our old methods for raising the consciousness of a potentially revolutionary class of people. The essence of a U.S.A, totalitarian socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass par ticipatory society. We must rip away its mask. Then the debate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle based on the development of an armed revolutionary culture that will triumph."
On fascism and its need for expansion:
"Expansion, then, which often led unavoidably to war, was the traditional recourse in the solving of problems created by a vacuous, uncontrollable system, which never considered any changes in its arrange ment, its essential dynamics, until it came under a very real, directly threatening challenge from below to its very existence."
The failure of the vanguard makes room for fascists to assume power:
"The point here is that fascism emerged out of weakness in the preexisting economic arrangement and in the old left. And the weakness must be assigned to the vanguard party, not the people. The People’s Party failed to direct the masses properly with positive suppression of their class enemies and their goons. Mussolini was able to proclaim that fascism held the only solution to the people’s problem—by default."
On who participates in fascism:
"The shock troops of fascism on the mass political level are drawn from members of the lower-middle class who feel the upward thrust of the lower classes more acutely. These classes feel that any dislocation of the present economy resulting from the upward thrust of the masses would affect their status first."
Notes:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jackson-george-1941-1971/
p.16 - notes that compromises were made in the interest of reform; however, I would add that the compromises were to continue reinforcing racial caste by the principal negotiators.