Direct Action, Deliberation, and Diffusion by Lesley J. Wood (review)

emphasizing anti-imperialist politics, nonblack liberation movements, and class struggle and positioning itself as the vanguard of the New Left. By linking the black struggle for liberation to the international liberation struggle, the Black Panther Party began to assert the commonality of liberation struggles in communities in the United States with those throughout Latin America and the Third World. It was through Marxist theory that the Panthers articulated a class politics that helped build alliances internationally in a global struggle against imperialism. However, as the authors clearly prove, the Panthers were not dogmatic Marxists and did not allow ideology to get in the way of alliance-building. Although their Marxism deepened over time, the Panthers remained committed to the idea of themselves as a revolutionary vanguard party representing the interests of the black community within a global struggle against imperialism. Hence, Bloom and Martin reveal the Black Panther Party as a unique American revolutionary organization. By positioning itself as a vanguard party, that is, the most politically advanced section of the proletariat, the Black Panthers accepted the revolutionary responsibility to move the American proletariat toward revolutionary politics and this involved alliances across racial lines and in solidarity with the international struggle for liberation. Bloom and Martin clearly show that as an African American political organization, the Black Panthers occupy an unparalleled location within African American sociopolitical thought but also within American radicalism.