Context

What happens in the world today and how people process it are different things.  Soberly, Black folk must adjust what they think is happening to them with what is actually happening in the world.  

In less than five (5) years since the recession of 2001, over 3,249,000 Black workers have been forced out of the job market by plant closings, downsizing, government program cuts and closed hospitals, schools, and public works programs.  Nearly 1/3 or 31% of Black man who need jobs do not have jobs; and Black women who are barely 8 percent of the labor force are 23% of the workers who lost jobs over the past five years.  No job, no food, clothing, housing, education, transportation, health care---no livelihood.  No livelihood, no family.  Over 7 out of 10 Black families are today headed by women, and most of the children in those families live in poverty. 

The majority of Blacks are facing unemployment, poor housing, foreclosures, evictions, car repossessions, disease and poverty. Black adults have a mortality rate of 42-45 percent higher than whites. Black men live approximately eight years less than white female population, and have higher death rates for all leading causes of death. Among Black women between 25 and 34, AIDS is by far the leading cause of death. In Washington DC alone, nearly 1 in 7 Black men are infected with the HIV disease that causes AIDS; over 25% of them knew they had the virus and still had unprotected sex with others who did not know they had it.  Of all the AIDS cases among children/youth 70% of them are African American.   Infant mortality among Black babies is higher than some third world countries, and Black teens have a 60% unemployment rate which will only get worst as the economy worsens.  The leading cause of death among Black youth is homicide.  Over 60% of Black children do not have health care, and in over 70% of African American adults there is no health care or the care that they have is inadequate.

Poor health is directly related to poor diets, poor exercise, poor living conditions, and inheritance.  All of these factors are exacerbated by poverty and racial discrimination.  The Black work force is increasingly made up of part-time, contract, part-year, temporary, contingency, and low-wage workers with limited or no benefits, as well as unemployed, disabled and retired workers whose rights to employment-based health care have been taken. Over the years, those with well-paying jobs had the best health care employer-based benefits, the elderly and disabled had Medicare, the poor were given Medicaid, others got charity care at public hospitals, and some of us received no care at all. That day is over: Black and white are being stripped of benefits such as health care and pensions and wages are being slashed and cut.  Black unskilled workers have been made expendable as the white capitalist pursue maximum profits any place in the cheap labor world that they can get them.

While white unemployment moved slowly from 5.6 percent in October 2007 to 5.8 percent in January 2008, Black unemployment, already in three times that of whites, leaped from 21.3 percent to 25.1% percent in the same months. The median net worth of black households was 1/15th of that of white households in late 2007. 

Since March 2007 to January 2008, nearly 1.9 million workers have lost their job and 41% of them are Black workers even though Blacks make up only 13% of the population.   During the months of September, October, and November over 397,000 Black people lost their jobs in a flood of pink slips and wreck lives, families and relationships.  Who can hold a family together without money to feed, clothe, and shelter children?  These families are in crisis.  Most of them had at least 2 to 3 children, thus affecting nearly 2,000,000 lives.  Over half of the foreclosures and evictions in most major cities are Black.  Over 2/3 of the car repossessions are Black in the top 10 major cities that Blacks live in.

Black people generally are facing a depression and do not know it because the general mass media is describing what is happening to the white economy, not specifically the Black aspect of that economy.

Today, international capitalist production has developed rapidly, globally dominated by European and Asian computer automated machine production regions and the multinational corporations that operate globally within them.  Look at Ford, GM, Chrysler, federal government, State governments, hospitals, schools, etc.  Cut backs are everywhere, and Blacks are at the core of the layoffs, especially since the ending of affirmative action.  Capitalist production has begun the absolute elimination of workers out of all agricultural, manufacturing, mining, construction, and service spheres of production. Generally, when a capitalist economy emerges from a crisis and production begins to work under normal economic conditions, factories automate production, streamline management, and thus hire fewer people than before the recession.  Fully robotized factories are more productive than manned ones, especially when robots become more and more advanced.

The process of robotization of capitalist production becomes stronger each year, increasing productivity, reducing costs, speeding up production, reducing human error, and increasing volume and quality of production in every single field where the technology has been implemented.   When able to sell these products, capitalist are able to increase profits, which is the main reason for the implementation of the new technology.

• 1. Millions of workers, black and white, are being made unemployed each year without any hope of finding jobs to secure the average standard of living. Unemployment leads to evictions, foreclosures, homelessness, hunger, and broken families.
• 2. At the same time, the quantity, quality, volume, mass of produced commodities for mass consumption increases into the millions of units due to the high productivity of computer automated robotized factories. This is at the heart of the present economic crisis in the United States and the world. This undermine the domestic market:
• 3. People with a smaller salary, lost jobs, cut health care, and reduced benefits cannot afford to buy houses, boats, gold, trucks, cars and other expensive items;
• 4. They stop traveling and dining out.
• 5. In the long run all these industries will suffer severely from reduced salaries of working people.
• 6. By allowing capitalists to reduce their expenses by laying off workers, slashing payrolls, cutting their employees' salaries, the state creates a temporary advantage for domestic businesses with out-of-date technology to compete on the world market with businesses using higher technology, robotized and automated factories.
• 7. But this also leads to technical stagnation of domestic capital.
• 8. It also ends up with a high prevalence of low paid jobs such as security guard, cooks, waiters, fast food, delivery, clean-up, etc.
• 9. This will ultimately reduce the government budget and as a result all social programs for which progressive people have fought will be in jeopardy. In time they will be cut: workfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, job training, wic all will be cut. .
• 10. To increase the budget the government will be forced to increase taxes on working people and this action will decrease the solvency of the market, which affects, eventually, the whole domestic economy.

Today, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Citicorp, Microsoft, Apple, etc. produce goods for mass consumption on an increasing scale and at the same time eliminate the consumer market as they lay off millions of workers.  For this reason the companies can't realize their profits, stocks fall, cash reserves collapse, spending is cut, advertising is cut, workers are laid off, mergers and take-overs intensify, companies go bankrupt, loans go defaulted, the general economy enters into recession then into depression. They move over seas to find the cheapest labor, but this only intensifies their problem.

The result: an economic crisis that cannot be solved with old economic policy, the essence of which is to stimulate the private sector by reducing taxes on capital, by reducing the interest on money borrowed from the Federal Reserve, in short, by creating favorable economic conditions for capital to function. This economic policy will fail again, because the main reason for the crisis is absence of a solvent market in the face of high unemployment, consisting of workers who never will be engaged in production, and never will restore the market for goods of mass consumption.

The old means of treating an economic crisis by stimulation of business with low cost loans, which in turn enhances market solvency by attracting more and more unemployed people into production, will no longer put workers back to work because robots will forever eliminate workers from production.  The capitalist will take the loan, invest abroad in cheap labor, then use the profits to build robotisized computer automated machine production plants domestically. 

The existence of the global market only postpones the economic crisis in a given country, because capital increases export of its goods abroad for realization of profits when the solvency of the domestic market diminishes. This process will proceed until the robotization of production in underdeveloped countries reaches the same level as it has in developed capitalist countries. International competition will force them sooner or later to implement robotization. When the cheapest labor no longer can compete with unmanned factories producing the same product, underdeveloped countries will be compelled to implement robotized production, and they will feel the same consequences that developed countries experience. Under these conditions the global market will exhaust itself as the valve that eliminated economic pressure on the domestic market.  Then the economic crisis moves from social decomposition and destruction to political crisis. In concrete terms, this point will be reached when the American economic system is no longer able to come out of the crisis situation.

What Must Be Done

Under these conditions it is most likely that the patience of working people left without work (Black and white) will be exhausted and they will begin to fight openly for jobs and fair distribution of wealth.  In history the vast majority of whites (across class lines) have turned in a reactionary way against the Blacks in every area when their economic conditions deteriorate.  For five solid centuries, white workers and their white ruling classes forged a racial alliance across class lines.  They always robbed and pillaged people of color, fought wars of conquest and imperialism then participated in a parasitic system which always standardized the redistribution of the loot in their relative benefit.    In the second half of the 20th century, European nations expediently had to dismantle their segregated systems, or face the possibility of losing them completely, as oppressed nonwhites rose up simultaneously.  This type of desegregation was occurring all over the world in this period.  Wherever the lowest rung of manual labor was necessarily being integrated into the bottom sector of mechanized production, this type of desegregation within white capitalist nations was occurring.  Wherever, direct colonization was giving way to neo-colonization, a similar form of labor graduation was taking place.  Expediently, exploitation of nonwhite subject peoples was being modernized around the world from the early 1940's to the early 1980's.  White populations still controlled and determined the social expression of the process.  But they were forced to make concessions which were just about to materialize.  Now, in 2008+, their economies are collapsing and the nazi/fascist/genocide is forming.  The nazi ultra white nationalist hate organizations intend extermination of any nonwhite populations that are increasing obsolete to capitalist production.

Black people with integrity and intelligence must act now.  We have the professional and moral obligation to organize, and lead misery in order to right the past Great Wrong and the present slide to another even greater wrong---attempts at a nazi genocide.  We must not compromise, sell out on principle, or crawl around on our knees hoping for miracles that have never come even during the worst of 500 years of direct enslavement.  Our obligation is to carry out our life tasks scientifically in harmony with the laws of cultural, sex-gender, race and generational struggle and with awareness of the goals to which working class Black people aspire.  That is our obligation.  In so doing, we must live knowing our freedoms, lives, and hopes are collective and achievable.  What's the use of talking about individual glories?   We will either hang together/stick together or be hung together.

In sum, we must clean up on three fundamental levels: material, moral, and mental.  Then we must organize for immediate and long term solutions. 

MATERIAL FUNDAMENTALS

• 1. Pursue KMT cultural, educational, scientific and moral orthodoxy; everything has to be done by the book
• 2. Establish curricula and process of evaluation and training of prospective they undergo lengthy and extensive evaluation and training and perform many tasks which culminates in moral, mental, and martial perfection.
• 3. Be honest and direct on every levels of life.
• 4. Thoroughly study history for lessons.

What is needed for us?

• a. Nutritious Food, clothing, medicine, herbs, e
• b. New homes for the worker (stone, brick, cement, steel, wood, plastics)
• c. Paved streets
• d. Running water, fresh and clean
• e. Sewage system
• f. Fresh clean food, clothing, shelter and streets
• g. Universal scientific education, martial arts, moral/ethical system for all
• h. Single language, moral code, mental code, martial code
• i. Technological revolution, destruction of old; construction of new.
• j. Homeland, pan African internationalism, modernization
• k. Kmt renaissance

MORAL FUNDAMENTALS

• 1. Study, master the fundamentals
• 2. Be clear on principles.
• 3. Set high standards
• 4. Know how to deal with people and in various situations
• 5. Be decent and honest
• 6. Develop and implement a necessary and firm moral basis.
• 7. Master in an organized manner the fundamentals.
• 8. Define the fundamentals of each situation
• 9. Draw lessons and parallels between the fundamentals to other things/efforts
• 10. Free up the mind, heart, and hands for other things
• 11. Think fluidly about other things, situations, etc.
• 12. Be consistent in discourse, not shifty.
• 13. Value people who have marched, lived, died, and fought
• 14. Value people, characteristics, and habits that value morality and intellect
• 15. Value the virtues associated with design and construction rather than repair
• 16. Engage in criticism and self-criticism
• 17. Live and think simply
• 18. Use few words; when speaking have meaning and substance.
• 19. Speak little and only on substantive issues
• 20. See truth and justice at all times.
• 21. Always leave places better than they were upon entrance
• 22. Clean up organizations and environments.
• 23. Establish strong relationships and support bases among the people
• 24. Work hard, work long, work smart, work honestly
• 25. Be demanding, precise, rigorous, remember Harriet Tubman when facing fear
• 26. No double standards
• 27. Take time with people to see how they really are, how they live, what has gone into producing them.
• 28. The fundamental questions of existence, of right and wrong, of morality and ethics, of flow and process must be worked out to build a society
• 29. Never organize a civilization around a questionable moral system or one that has not addressed the basis, the rules of interaction
• 30. Take charge of defining and fulfilling individual and race destiny, for the destiny of a race resides within its people; [nobody has the right to order and decide our direction; Defining one's destiny is the greatest achievement owed to the historical era that is now being consummated and knocking at its end
• 31. Work with purpose and passion; this purpose and passion is reflected in what one does and is.
• 32. Organize and participate in study groups
• 33. Get to know the people and the area in which to work
• 34. Identify and work with people who have the heart needed; those interested and qualified undergo training
• 35. Be fluid; live light; be able to move quickly
• 36. Possess the dignity to do anything morally sound to win and the audacity to do it
• 37. Go to where decisions are made and move into those places; go where your life's work can be done.
• 38. do not make excuses for your life; give your best with what you have
• 39. don't hate people; hate what they do, attack wrong at its heart
• 40. Once a person has gotten all that she/he can get from a situation, go to the next level
• 41. Engage in overwhelming deeds
• 42. Never accept defeat, even if you cannot win at that moment, make sure that others win in the future
• 43. Never debate in public; peace and friendship in public . Let people talk. Deeds are what matter most.
• 44. Be fearless, bold, honest, driven, determined.
• 45. At appropriate moment, withdraw to meditation and assume lower profile in preparation for what's to come next
• 46. Prepare for next actions while engaging in prior set of actions-apply principles of positive/negative to all that one does.
• 47. Extract lessons from life during each moment; always be thinking, learning, getting better
• 48. Transform theory to practice and devote life to fulfilling historical obligation
• 49. Assess trends and processes
• 50. Commit entire lives, entire lifetimes to winning; organize a winning civilization
• 51. Be audacious
• 52. Engage in thorough planning and preparation
• 53. Live in an honest, kind, and good mannered way
• 54. Undergo continuous criticism and self-criticism; root out revisionist thinking and living
• 55. Live according to established moral and scientific rules
• 56. Develop guiding principles only after tremendous thought, effort, careful study, and extraction of lessons occurs
• 57. Cultivate morally sound fighters among women, men, and children
• 58. Make the leap from rational knowledge to renaissance/renewal practice
• 59. Observe the ka of nature as a fundamental universal law in nature, society and thought
• 60. Transform theory to action; there comes a time when the moment of study gives rise to the time when arms of other sorts are picked up to round out our efforts, our existence, to fulfill what must be done.
• 61. Be good, decent, honest and hardworking. Live as pillars in respective communities.
• 62. Stand for principle, what is right.
• 63. Take seriously what must be done and move forward through quiet preparation work; this road is not haphazard, but deliberate, well planned and executed, heedless and just.
• 64. Know the moment in which person is born; understand conditions surrounding birth and growth of self; view self as a product of historical accident and inevitable social necessity.
• 65. Establish guiding thoughts, guiding beliefs, guiding principles; no leadership exists that is not sustained by guiding thought. Remember Asa Hilliard, Paul Robeson, Patrice Lumumba.
• 66. Inspire and motivate people to sacrifice everything to create a higher and new society toward which 21 billion years of matter in motion has inevitably and irresistible moving toward. Remember Kwame Nkrumah.
• 67. Place life's work into perspective; it is a matter of truth and time before we win Remember Harriet Tubman and Winnie Mandela.
• 68. Come and go like a spirit, quietly and without fanfare
• 69. Examine what people are going to do in various situations, given what produced them; examine what people do under pressure, etc.
• 70. Establish clear rules and guiding principles so that people know where they stand (internal and external)
• 71. Know own weaknesses; resolve them. Know ‘friends' from enemies
• 72. Establish moral foundations, with Kmt at the core; no religious mess, no cultural hybrids, no crawling around to the gods and saviors of the enslavers.
• 73. Turn the tide of history with sheer nerve and audacity; be bold; be relentless, tenacious, just.
• 74. Be and do the opposite of losing; do winning things; do what winners do
• 75. Do not give up fighting;
• 76. Study lessons from the past and adjust accordingly
• 77. Observe what people do and know their hearts
• 78. Need to be clear, direct, draw definitive lines and quickly assess and deal with people accordingly-purging
• 79. Give the very best in return for what you receive; humility, respect for what went into us.
• 80. Extract lessons from history, discard that which we cannot use
• 81. Be decisive and offer no apologies
• 82. Be honest and direct on every level.
• 83. Observe people's deeds-you will know them by their deeds.
• 84. Establish heartfelt purpose and identity
• 85. Never take payoffs from any side.
• 86. Clean up areas of work, be clean, live clean
• 87. Implement at home what will be done elsewhere in embryonic development, lay foundations, weed out problem areas (and purple)
• 88. Focus in on what is needed to move forward.
• 89. Be firm and consistent. Deal swiftly but accurately
• 90. Grow stronger and more clear as pressure intensifies.
• 91. Be extraordinarily disciplined regardless of location; turn disadvantage into advantage
• 92. Take charge of own life
• 93. Reveal weaknesses to strengthen people through sessions of criticism/self-criticism
• 94. Identify strengths of people and use as a basis to move a person from one place to another
• 95. Whatever principles guide the group, infuse them throughout the training and initiation process
• 96. Develop efforts, activities, and ceremonies to bolster sense of unity civic awareness and national pride.
• 97. Think clearly, clean up environment, clean up mind, assess the situation, calm self down to look at what must be done
• 98. Under pressure-get more focused, get more precise, get more clear. Do one thing right and then move on to the next.
• 99. Be exceptional in patience, willingness to self-sacrifice, and leadership