The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter by Cedric Johnson

Author:Cedric Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

3

Only a Class Politics Can Save

Us from Police Violence and

Fascism: Lessons from Rosa

Luxemburg and Cedric Johnson

Jay Arena

The winter 2019 edition of New Politics marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Social Democratic–led German government’s assassination of the towering Polish-born German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, along with her comrade Karl Liebknecht. An appropriate way to commemorate her life and work is the symposium in this issue dedicated to engaging the award-winning essay by political scientist Cedric Johnson “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now.” Johnson’s class dissection of a black version of ethnic politics, his emphasis on democratic organization and debate for social movement success, his views of the centrality of class struggle at the workplace and in the community, and of the need for unifying class demands all highlight central themes in Luxemburg’s work. Below I discuss how Johnson’s critique of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement elaborates on these Luxemburgist themes and provides a path to addressing not only police killings, but also the larger capitalist assault that drives them.

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