<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail-author gmail-clearfix"><div class="gmail-author-container">
<div class="gmail-author gmail-clearfix">
<div class="gmail-author-container">
<div class="gmail-authored-date">
<span>
<font size="4"><b><a id="gmail-label" href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-lorenzo-komboa-ervins-anarchism-and-black-revolution" rel="bookmark"><span>Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”</span></a></b></font><br></span></div><div class="gmail-authored-date"><br><span>
</span></div><div class="gmail-authored-date"><span><a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor">Roberto Sirvent,</a></span>13 Oct 2021
</div>
<div class="gmail-translated-by">
</div>
</div>
</div><div class="gmail-translated-by">
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-share-icons">
<a class="gmail-facebook gmail-fbc-has-badge gmail-fbc-UID_1 fbc-has-badge fbc-UID_1" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-lorenzo-komboa-ervins-anarchism-and-black-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
</a><a class="gmail-twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=BAR Book Forum: Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”&url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-lorenzo-komboa-ervins-anarchism-and-black-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a class="gmail-mail" href="mailto:?subject=BAR Book Forum: Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”&body=NewsClick - http://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-lorenzo-komboa-ervins-anarchism-and-black-revolution">
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-field-cover-image gmail-field--type-image gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2021-10/Lorenzo%20Kom%E2%80%99boa%20Ervin%201.jpg" title="BAR Book Forum: Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”" class="gmail-colorbox gmail-cboxElement"><img src="https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2021-10/Lorenzo%20Kom%E2%80%99boa%20Ervin%201.jpg" alt="BAR Book Forum: Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”" class="gmail-img-responsive" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="452" height="339">
</a>
</div>
<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-field-image-caption gmail-field--type-string gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item">BAR Book Forum: Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s “Anarchism and the Black Revolution”</div>
<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-body gmail-field--type-text-with-summary gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><p>In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Kom%27boa_Ervin" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a><strong>. </strong>Ervin
is an American writer, activist and black anarchist. He is a former
member of SNCC, the Black Panther Party and Concerned Citizens for
Justice. His book is <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345802/anarchism-and-the-black-revolution/" class="gmail-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><em>Anarchism and the Black Revolution: The Definitive Edition</em><span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a><em>. </em></p>
<p><strong>Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin:</strong> My name is Lorenzo Ervin, and
I am a native of Chattanooga, Tenn. I came up during the 1950’s and
1960’s, during the fight against racial segregation in the South. I
became an activist in my early years for civil rights and Black power.</p>
<p>I have been an Anarchist for over fifty years, primarily placing
emphasis on class struggle, anti-racism, radical political education,
and community organizing among peoples of color. Anarchism generally is a
radical political, social and activist ideology for non-statist methods
of social change. Rather than placing its primacy on the control of
society to leaders, authoritarian political parties, or coercive methods
of struggle, Anarchism is socialism from below, without the necessity
of state apparatus. It is a broad based theory, and I have never claimed
to capture all of its essential history, ideologies, or political
formations. My approach is based on Libertarian Socialism, which has
been in contention as a non-statist form of socialism since the First
International Workingmen's Association in the 1860’s.</p>
<p>Not familiar to many academics or Left activists, Libertarian
Socialism is not totally based on Anarchist theory alone, there were
historically unorthodox libertarian Marxist tendencies as well. This is
an anti-authoritsrian, anti-state, and ideological form which is in
opposition to electoral reformism, wage slavery in the workplace; and in
favor of worker control of the economy, with overall decentralized
control of society. It is the most radical wing of Anarchism, based on
the grassroots.</p>
<p>I wrote Anarchism and the Black Revolution in 1979, while I was a
political prisoner at the infamous United States Penitentiary in Marion,
Illinois. I was fighting for my life and for my sanity inside a
solitary confinement unit which used forced druggings, beatings by
guards, and psychic torture to “break men’s minds.” But I superseded the
physical circumstances I found myself in, to break new ground
ideologically.</p>
<p>I had been in prison for ten years and was already an Anarchist,
totally opposed to the state and capitalism. I had long since come to
the conclusion that it was the state itself that was the greatest
purveyor of violence. It was certainly the racist authority responsible
for the oppression of Black people, not just individual whites, nor
prejudiced features of a white society. The white government did the
bidding of a capitalist state and hierarchy, and it was clear that we
would never be free under this system, despite winning various reforms
from the Civil Rights period.</p>
<p>So, I began to write about a new theory of Anarchism and the Black
Revolution of the 1960’s, which had been unfurling in that period and
challenging all of racist America with a new world. That period also
produced the Attica Rebellion, primarily led by Black prisoners, which
radicalized myself and prisoners all over the country, as well as
millions who saw it play out on television, and began to understand for
the first time the depth of racism and repression in this country’s
prisons. A new movement came into existence almost overnight. It became a
prison abolitionist campaign, which opposed prison as an institution,
and understood it as a crime against humanity itself, and the very
extension of slavery. It fought for the human rights of prisoners, even
though it understood prisons themselves had to be dismantled and
defunded.</p>
<p>So beginning in 1969, when I was locked up, I was an Anarchist, but I
wrote the book, however, to give oppressed Black and colonized peoples a
voice that did not exist in the contemporary Anarchist literature, or
in the movement itself. The book was the door to introduce new ideas,
tactics, and motivations. It was the first step towards Black Anarchism
as an autonomous full-fledged theory and movement.</p>
<p><strong>What do you hope activists and community organizers will take away from reading your book?</strong><strong> </strong></p>
<p>The book has gone through three other printings and is scheduled for a
new edition in October 2021. The first edition dealt with a defense of
Anarchism from the state, Marxist-Leninist political rivals, and from
certain Anarchists themselves, who wanted to raise an idealist,
middle-class, white cultist and lifestylist movement. I put forth
Anarchist socialism, Black liberation, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism
in opposition.</p>
<p>By the second and third editions, the book had changed from an
anarcho-socialist economic argument to the ideals laying the foundation
of Black Anarchism,which is just really beginning to become popular
today as a cultural and political force. I began building on the ideals
of Black Autonomy, (Black liberation and Anarchism). In 1994, I worked
with some Black college students and community activists to create the
first Black Anarchist group, Black Autonomy Collective in Atlanta,
Georgia. At one point, it had chapters in ten cities and three other
countries. Without the efforts of myself with the book, and others in
the Black Autonomy movement to popularize Black Anarchism, it may not
have appeared. I say that not as self-gratulation, but as a fact.
Someone or some group has to pioneer a new movement for others to rally
around.</p>
<p>Why are these new Anarchist ideas needed in this period? For many
years state socialism has been in deep crisis. During its authoritarian
rule, it created many abuses, and crushed the rights and aspirations of
workers and the poor of its own countries. We need a new way to
understand the ecological, social and political crisis today. We need to
organize from below, to empower the lowest level of workers and
oppressed peoples, if socialism is to appear as a revolutionary force in
the USA, as well as in other countries.</p>
<p><strong>We know readers will learn a lot from your book, but what do you hope readers will <em>un-learn</em>? In other words, is there a particular ideology you’re hoping to dismantle?</strong></p>
<p>My book is an attack on doctrinaire ideology, racism, and capitalism
and the abuses of the nation state. It puts forth another view of
socialism, libertarian or self-governing socialism, to that of the
state. It puts forth a new approach of Black freedom. I want activists
and theorists of this period to go beyond orthodoxy, sectarianism,
shallow thinking, and conventional politics. We must think and rethink
our politics, and not continue to exist in the ditch of bourgeois
theory. All social change must not be based on idealism, careerism, or
political opportunism. Materialism alone should be rejected as the *only
motive force for social change.</p>
<p>It is important to create new movements and Left ideologies, living
alternatives to all forms of dogma and rigid orthodoxy.The concept that
an idea or theory is immutable and anchored in time forever is totally
ludicrous. Anti-revisionism may be good for religion, but not for
political activism. We need to be free to engage in praxis.</p>
<p>I am an Anarchist Communist/Black Autonomist, and have many
differences with European Anarchism (especially as it exists now), as
well as with old school Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, which raised the
primacy of the party, state and leadership cult, and engaged in many
bureaucratic errors. We can start to build a new society, even while
capitalism, the state, and official ideology still exist. Make no
mistake, capitalism and the nation-state must be dismantled, but we must
create forms of socialism and a mass revolutionary culture until then.</p>
<p><strong>Who are the intellectual heroes that inspire your work?</strong><strong> </strong></p>
<p>My ideological mentor was Martin Sostre, who in the 1960’s and 1970’s
was one of the best known political prisoners in the world. He was also
a Black Anarchist, and gave me many of my foundational concepts after I
met him in New York federal detention center upon my arrest in Germany,
and being returned to the USA for hijacking a plane to Cuba in 1969.
After years in prison on a racist frame-up, Sostre was given clemency by
the New York State governor in 1974. He believed that Anarchism is a
universal political theory, instead of a white cultural and political
tendency. I have let that central idea, and his ideals about libertarian
socialism guide me for decades.</p>
<p>Yet, I realize there is no ideology alone that will automatically
free people. It has to be based on the desire of the people themselves
for freedom, and their ability to carry out their will for revolutionary
social change.. In the early stages of any new movement or ideology,
it may seem to be purely speculation, but it is always based on the
balance of forces, the historical moment, and the crisis of the ruling
class, and the willingness of the masses of people to fight back and
win.</p>
<p><strong>In what way does your book help us imagine new worlds?</strong></p>
<p>There is now a deep planetary crisis (climate change); economic
crisis (collapse of capitalism); the death spiral of the nation-state;
and the rise of fascist barbarism. The nation-state cannot resolve these
problems, and state socialism is an utter failure. Yet, socialism and
communism have always been seen as the way forward as alternate
economies. I have generally supported these theories, but only in
relation to Anarchism as self-governing, anti-bureaucratic programs
leading to a future society. Such a society would be against capitalism,
dictatorship, war, racism, imperialism, police, and prisons. No
government, no dictatorship. A new society entirely.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><em>Roberto Sirvent is editor of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum.</em></strong></p>
</div></div>
</div>