MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Organisations


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Black Hundreds

Monarchist gangs organised by the tsarist police to fight the revolutionary movement. They assassinated revolutionaries, assaulted progressive intellectuals, and organised pogroms against the Jews.

 

Black Panther Party

Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense". It was initiated to defend the minority community against police brutality through the training and arming of politically aware and morally sound militia.

This organization held to a unique mix of revolutionary ideas regarding race, class, and gender, and was in the forefront of the US revolutionary working class struggle. The group began where some of the ideas of Malcolm X left off, and as time progressed incorporated some Marxist and Maoist ideology. Near the end, the group became ultra-left, making little or no distinction between US "facism" and Nazism, some of which can be attributable to the extreme penetration of the party by the US secret police and thier agent provactuers.

The party was soon torn to pieces by the government. The party culture of strict secrecy was used to maximun leverage against members to sow seeds of distrust and suspicion. The Black Liberation Army formed as a faction of the party and lasted several years before dwindling into obscurity. Many members were held throughout their remaning lives as political prisoners of the US. Others went into local community activism, while a few went into the "Maoist Internationalist Movement".

Further Reading: Black Panther History Archive

 

Blanquists

The Blannquists were adherents of the trend in the socialist movement of France headed by Louis Auguste Blanqui. The Blanquists believed that small revolutionary groups could overthrow capitalist rule and bring about Socialism.