MB Sundjata - Red Voice

The Last Shall Be First, Pt. III: Every Cook Is Still Governed (For CLR James)

"It's alluring to think of where [James's] theoretics might have gone had he owned the "anarchist" label, and began re-examining early writings on Black popular resistance in that light."

Anarchism

Self-Criticism: How I Became a BAR (Black Anarchic Radical)

We should never be afraid of self-criticism. Not only where we fall short in practice, but also, equally importantly, where our theory falls short of reality. To stick to wrong ideas in the face of a changing world is to betray dialectics itself.

Africa

Black Against Profit (Pt. 4): From Timbuktu to Babylon

With help from Wynter, Rodney, Gomez, Achebe, and Inikori, among others, the following essay will attempt to fill in some of the missing pages of primitive accumulation, concerning all that Africa lost in the vile traffic of our people across the Atlantic.

Africa

Black Against Profit, Pt. III: The African Mode of Production (for C.A. Diop)

"This article, which is dedicated to the Senegalese historian, scientist, and politician Cheikh Anta Diop, will discuss the historical falsification of Egypt by the imperialist world, and its consequences for the understanding of precolonial African society."

African Liberation

Black Against Profit, Pt. II of IV: Racism F's With You the Long Way

"The concept of racial capitalism offers both a material and an ontological explanation for the triumph of the profit motive over Black life."

Black liberation

Black Against Profit: A Primer on Capitalism and Racism (Pt. I of IV)

"The concept of racial capitalism...is important not only for understanding the foundations of colonialism and slavery, that hold up the edifice of modern capitalism, but also for uncovering the sources of Black revolt against that system."

Black liberation

Black Powder/Red Spark: Notes on Black Revolt

The ghettos of North America are strewn with Black gunpowder. All they need is a red spark.

History

The Last Shall Be First, Part Two: The Color Line of Labor

"...Du Bois was by the first imperialist war already thinking in terms that today would be called Third Worldist. He appears to hold that the fundamental contradiction, that conditions even class struggle, is the contradiction of oppressor and oppressed nations."

Third World

The Last Shall Be First, Part One: Third World Concept Revisited

"Defining Third Worldism can be difficult, for reasons that will...be made clear. But for Fanon..., there are at least three aspects of decolonization that confound European radicals. It is on their basis that we can start building toward a coherent Third World concept."

Feminism

Policing Black Feminism is Pig Work

"[The colonized struggle] with one another for failing to meet the standards of gender behavior imposed on us by colonial oppressors."

Criticism

Dragging White Leftists, Part Two: Fred Hampton Don’t Know You

"If white leftists wanna imitate Fred Hampton, then maybe they should try merging their organizations with the Black mobs in Chicago – but we’ll wait til the ice caps melt completely before that happens."

History

"Great Garvey's Ghost!": On the Grandeur and Weakness of Black Leadership

"As revolutionary nationalists in the 21st century, we need sympathetic accounts of Garvey and of Black leadership that don't descend into crass hagiography..."

Education

Dragging White Leftists: My Anti-Drug

"Today, if you are in good faith, you should do like Sartre did with Fanon and ask what, in spite of all, you can learn from our voices, now that we no longer address ourselves to you, but rather, to one another about you and beyond you."

Criticism

Bad Faith and Afropessimism: Notes Toward a Debate

"...the social world is not a product of natural laws, but is sustained by free human activity... voluntary human attitudes can make a difference in shaping the structures and outcomes of that world."