“The Shadow of the Plantation” - Eugene Puryear on The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader

Mar 27, 2024

Eugene Puryear discusses The Black Belt Thesis and its origins, articulations, and implications in the US communist movement. They explore the intersection of slavery, capitalism, and Black liberation, highlighting the necessity of addressing national oppression and white supremacy for true class unity. The conversation delves into the challenges and impacts of the communist movement in America, emphasizing the importance of self-determination for Black people and unity in the Black Belt region. They also discuss critiques and connections in Black liberation movements, analyzing historical figures and the roots of fascism within capitalist modernity.

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Introduction

00:00 • 4min

Exploring the Black Belt Thesis and Revolutionary Strategy

03:47 • 16min

The Intersection of Slavery, Capitalism, and Black Liberation

19:59 • 10min

Challenges and Impacts of Communist Movement in America

29:47 • 20min

Critiques and Connections in Black Liberation Movements

49:55 • 20min

Unpacking the Black Belt Thesis and Land Ownership

01:10:03 • 17min

Final Expressions of Gratitude and Farewells

01:26:46 • 5min

In this conversation we welcome Eugene Puryear back to the podcast to talk about the recently published book The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader which was compiled by The Black Belt Thesis Study Group and features a foreword by Eugene Puryear.

The reader itself was published by 1804 Books, and they have published a lot of really good stuff recently that I just want to take a moment to shout-out. They recently along with the Palestinian Youth Movement translated and published The Trinity of Fundamentals which hopefully we will be hosting a conversation on at some point soon. They also recently published a translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine and of course the collection of Hugo Chavez’s speeches that we discussed with Manolo de los Santos last year and much more. So I just say that to say if you go pick this book up from them, that there is a bunch of really good stuff you can grab while you’re there.

Eugene Puryear is a journalist, activist, politician, and host on Breakthrough News. He is a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.

In this discussion we ask Eugene to contextualize the origins of the Black Belt thesis, to discuss some of the articulations and development of the thesis as undertaken by Comintern and the CPUSA. We discuss some of the organizing implications of it, its role in the development of the US communist movement particularly with regards to Black people, and the challenging of the problem of white racism as it exists within the history of the US left and white workers as well. Also Eugene discusses the centrality of national oppression within the political economy of US capitalism.

Along the way we talk about some of the contributions from figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Harry Haywood, Louis Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones and others.

A couple of other things I want to highlight is that we have been hosting a lot of conversations over on our YouTube page recently the majority of which we have not released as audio episodes. We will link that in the show notes, but also you can just find it by searching Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube.

And as always the best way to support our work is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube

Tip of the Spear Reading Group (for patrons)

Credits:

This episode is co-hosted by Joshua Briond and Jared Ware. It is co-produced by Aidan Elias and Jared Ware. Our guest for this episode is Eugene Puryear. Our music is from Televangel.