Only the People Make Revolutions

Huey P. Newton has always been something of an intellectual enigma. Famous for co-founding the Black Panther Party in 1966 in Oakland, California, as a revolutionary leader he undertook armed resistance against the racist state. His role as a political theorist, however, remains underexplored. Today, revolutionary theories of the Black Power movement are being reappraised by a new generation of scholars. Here, John Narayan reclaims Newton’s place as one of the most neglected neo-Marxists of the twentieth century. By exploring Newton’s unpublished archives, Narayan shows how he linked the oppression of Black Americans with the logic and machinations of a newly formed, US-enforced, global capitalist empire, long before others did, providing powerful insights into the nature of anti-racism and anti-imperialism which resonate deeply in today’s age of capitalist crisis.