The Pitfalls of Liberalism - Kwame Ture, 1969 - Lemmy.World
Whenever one writes about a problem in the United States, especially concerning
the racial atmosphere, the problem written about is usually black people, that
they are either extremist, irresponsible, or ideologically naive. What we want
to do here is to talk about white society, and the liberal segment of white
society, because we want to prove the pitfalls of liberalism, that is, the
pitfalls of liberals in their political thinking. Whenever articles are written,
whenever political speeches are given, or whenever analyses are made about a
situation, it is assumed that certain people of one group, either the left or
the right, the rich or the poor, the whites or the blacks, are causing
polarization. The fact is that conditions cause polarization, and that certain
people can act as catalysts to speed up the polarization; for example, Rap Brown
or Huey Newton can be a catalyst for speeding up the polarization of blacks
against whites in the United States, but the conditions are already there. [1]
[2] George Wallace can speed up the polarization of whites against blacks in
America, but again, the conditions are already there. [3] Many people want to
know why, out of the entire white segment of society, we want to criticize the
liberals. We have to criticize them because they represent the liaison between
both groups, between the oppressed and the oppressor. The liberal tries to
become an arbitrator, but he is incapable of solving the problems. He promises
the oppressor that he can keep the oppressed under control; that he will stop
them from becoming illegal (in this case illegal means violent). At the same
time, he promises the oppressed that he will be able to alleviate their
suffering — in due time. Historically, of course, we know this is impossible,
and our era will not escape history. The most perturbing question for the
liberal is the question of violence. The liberal’s initial reaction to violence
is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic, that
violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything. The Europeans
took America through violence and through violence they established the most
powerful country in the world. Through violence they maintain the most powerful
country in the world. It is absolutely absurd for one to say that violence never
accomplishes anything. Today power is defined by the amount of violence one can
bring against one’s enemy — that is how you decide how powerful a country is;
power is defined not by the number of people living in a country, it is not
based on the amount of resources to be found in that country, it is not based
upon the good will of the leaders or the majority of that people. When one talks
about a powerful country, one is talking precisely about the amount of violence
that that country can heap upon its enemy. We must be clear in our minds about
that. Russia is a powerful country, not because there are so many millions of
Russians but because Russia has great atomic strength, great atomic power, which
of course is violence. America can unleash an infinite amount of violence, and
that is the only way one considers America powerful. No one considers Vietnam
powerful, because Vietnam cannot unleash the same amount of violence. Yet if one
wanted to define power as the ability to do, it seems to me that Vietnam is much
more powerful than the United States. But because we have been conditioned by
Western thoughts today to equate power with violence, we tend to do that at all
times, except when the oppressed begin to equate power with violence — then it
becomes an “incorrect” equation. Most societies in the West are not opposed to
violence. The oppressor is only opposed to violence when the oppressed talks
about using violence against the oppressor. Then the question of violence is
raised as the incorrect means to attain one’s ends. Witness, for example, that
Britain, France, and the United States have time and time again armed black
people to fight their enemies for them. France armed Senegalese in World War II,
Britain of course armed Africa and the West Indies, and the United States always
armed the Africans living in the United States. But that is only to fight
against their enemy, and the question of violence is never raised. The only time
the United States or England or France will become concerned about the question
of violence is when the people whom they armed to kill their enemies will pick
up those arms against them. For another example, practically every country in
the West today is giving guns either to Nigeria or to Biafra. They do not mind
giving those guns to those people as long as they use them to kill each other,
but they will never give them guns to kill another white man or to fight another
white country. The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using
violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions
about violence. I want to state emphatically here that violence in any society
is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is
just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence. It is not a
question of whether it is right to kill or it is wrong to kill; killing goes on.
Let me give an example: if I were in Vietnam, if I killed thirty yellow people
who were pointed out to me by white Americans as my enemy, I would be given a
medal. I would become a hero. I would have killed America’s enemy — but
America’s enemy is not my enemy. If I were to kill thirty white policemen in
Washington, D.C., who have been brutalizing my people and who are my enemy, I
would get the electric chair. It is simply a question of who has the power to
legalize violence. In Vietnam our violence is legalized by white America. In
Washington, D.C., my violence is not legalized, because Africans living in
Washington, D.C., do not have the power to legalize their violence. I used that
example only to point out that the oppressor never really puts an ethical or
moral judgment on violence, except when the oppressed picks up guns against the
oppressor. For the oppressor, violence is simply the expedient thing to do. Is
it not violent for a child to go to bed hungry in the richest country in the
world? I think that is violent. But that type of violence is so
institutionalized that it becomes a part of our way of life. Not only do we
accept poverty, we even find it normal. And that again is because the oppressor
makes his violence a part of the functioning society. But the violence of the
oppressed becomes disruptive. It is disruptive to the ruling circles of a given
society. And because it is disruptive it is therefore very easy to recognize,
and therefore it becomes the target of all those who in fact do not want to
change the society. What we want to do for our people, the oppressed, is to
begin to legitimatize violence in their minds. So that for us violence against
the oppressor will be expedient. This is very important, because we have all
been brainwashed into accepting questions of moral judgment when violence is
used against the oppressor. If I kill in Vietnam I am allowed to go free; it has
been legalized for me. It has not been legitimatized in my mind. I must
legitimatize it in my own mind, and even though it is legal I may never
legitimatize it in my own mind. There are a lot of people who come back from
Vietnam, who have killed where killing was legalized, but who still have
psychological problems over the fact that they have killed. We must understand,
however, that to legitimatize killing in one’s mind does not make it legal. For
example, I have completely legitimatized in my mind the killing of white
policemen who terrorize black communities. However, if I get caught killing a
white policeman, I have to go to jail, because I do not as yet have the power to
legalize that type of killing. The oppressed must begin to legitimatize that
type of violence in the minds of our people, even though it is illegal at this
time, and we have to keep striving every chance we get to attain that end. Now,
I think the biggest problem with the white liberal in America, and perhaps the
liberal around the world, is that his primary task is to stop confrontation,
stop conflicts, not to redress grievances, but to stop confrontation. And this
is very clear, it must become very, very clear in all our minds. Because once we
see what the primary task of the liberal is, then we can see the necessity of
not wasting time with him. His primary role is to stop confrontation. Because
the liberal assumes a priori that a confrontation is not going to solve the
problem. This, of course, is an incorrect assumption. We know that. We need not
waste time showing that this assumption of the liberals is clearly ridiculous. I
think that history has shown that confrontation in many cases has resolved quite
a number of problems — look at the Russian revolution, the Cuban revolution, the
Chinese revolution. In many cases, stopping confrontation really means
prolonging suffering. The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation
that he usually finds himself defending and calling for law and order, the law
and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth functioning
of the society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position
where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than with
the oppressed. The reason the liberal seeks to stop confrontation — and this is
the second pitfall of liberalism — is that his role, regardless of what he says,
is really to maintain the status quo, rather than to change it. He enjoys
economic stability from the status quo and if he fights for change he is risking
his economic stability. What the liberal is really saying is that he hopes to
bring about justice and economic stability for everyone through reform, that
somehow the society will be able to keep expanding without redistributing the
wealth. This leads to the third pitfall of the liberal. The liberal is afraid to
alienate anyone, and therefore he is incapable of presenting any clear
alternative. Look at the past presidential campaign in the United States between
Nixon, Wallace, and Humphrey. Nixon and Humphrey, because they try to consider
themselves some sort of liberals, did not offer any alternatives. But Wallace
did, he offered clear alternatives. Because Wallace was not afraid to alienate,
he was not afraid to point out who had caused errors in the past, and who should
be punished. The liberals are afraid to alienate anyone in society. They paint
such a rosy picture of society and they tell us that while things have been bad
in the past, somehow they can become good in the future without restructuring
society at all. What the liberal really wants is to bring about change which
will not in any way endanger his position. The liberal says, “It is a fact that
you are poor, and it is a fact that some people are rich; but we can make you
rich without affecting those people who are rich.” I do not know how poor people
are going to get economic security without affecting the rich in a given
country, unless one is going to exploit other peoples. I think that if we
followed the logic of the liberal to its conclusion we would find that all we
can get from it is that in order for a society to become equitable we must begin
to exploit other peoples. Fourth, I do not think that liberals understand the
difference between influence and power, and the liberals get confused seeking
influence rather than power. The conservatives on the right wing, or the
fascists, understand power, though, and they move to consolidate power while the
liberal pushes for influence. Let us examine the period before civil rights
legislation in the United States. There was a coalition of the labor movement,
the student movement, and the church for the passage of certain civil rights
legislation; while these groups formed a broad liberal coalition, and while they
were able to exert their influence to get certain legislation passed, they did
not have the power to implement the legislation once it became law. After they
got certain legislation passed they had to ask the people whom they were
fighting to implement the very things that they had not wanted to implement in
the past. The liberal fights for influence to bring about change, not for the
power to implement the change. If one really wants to change a society, one does
not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring
about. If the liberals are serious they must fight for power and not for
influence. These pitfalls are present in his politics because the liberal is
part of the oppressor. He enjoys the status quo; while he himself may not be
actively oppressing other people, he enjoys the fruits of that oppression. And
he rhetorically tries to claim that he is disgusted with the system as it is.
While the liberal is part of the oppressor, he is the most powerless segment
within that group. Therefore when he seeks to talk about change, he always
confronts the oppressed rather than the oppressor. He does not seek to influence
the oppressor, he seeks to influence the oppressed. He says to the oppressed,
time and time again, “You don’t need guns, you are moving too fast, you are too
radical, you are too extreme.” He never says to the oppressor, “You are too
extreme in your treatment of the oppressed,” because he is powerless among the
oppressors, even if he is part of that group; but he has influence, or, at
least, he is more powerful than the oppressed, and he enjoys this power by
always cautioning, condemning, or certainly trying to direct and lead the
movements of the oppressed. To keep the oppressed from discovering his pitfalls
the liberal talks about humanism. He talks about individual freedom, about
individual relationships. One cannot talk about human idealism in a society that
is run by fascists. If one wants a society that is in fact humanistic, one has
to ensure that the political entity, the political state, is one that will allow
humanism. And so if one really wants a state where human idealism is a reality,
one has to be able to control the political state. What the liberal has to do is
to fight for power, to go for the political state and then, once the liberal has
done this, he will be able to ensure the type of human idealism in the society
that he always talks about. Because of the above reasons, because the liberal is
incapable of bringing about the human idealism which he preaches, what usually
happens is that the oppressed whom he has been talking to finally becomes
totally disgusted with the liberal and begins to think that the liberal has been
sent to the oppressed to misdirect their struggle, to keep them confused so that
the oppressor can continue to rule them. So whether the liberal likes it or not,
he finds himself being lumped, by the oppressed, with the oppressor — of course
he is part of that group. The final confrontation, when it does come about, will
of course include the liberal on the side of the oppressor. Therefore if the
oppressed really wants a revolutionary change, he has no choice but to rid
himself of those liberals in his rank. [1] Rap Brown was fifth chairman of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. He was known for the
phrase “violence is as American as cherry pie.” [2] Huey Newton was a co-founder
of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist
political party that started in Oakland, California. [3] George Wallace served
as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms, he opposed desegregation and
supported Jim Crow policies. He was known for the phrase “segregation now,
segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
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