Huey Newton Speaks at Boston College, Presents Theory of 'Intercommunalism'

Huey P. Newton, Supreme Commander of the Black Panther Party, told an audience of about 1200 at Boston College's Roberts Arena last night that the Panthers "would like to disclaim internationalism and become intercommunalists."

Newton's speech-which was sponsored by the B. C. Left Collective-was originally scheduled to start at 7:30 p. m. last night, but was delayed until 10 p. m. because of tight security precautions by the meeting's organizers.

As the crowd jammed around the arena's doors, Panther security guards admitted people singly and frisked them for weapons.

New Departure

Last night's speech, in which Newton enunciated the theory of "intercommunalism," seemed to represent a new departure in Panther ideology, which Newton said had formerly been one of "revolutionary internationalism."

Newton said last night that "every nation of the world has been violated by the ruling circle of North America, and every nation has thus been transformed. They are no longer nations."

"The Marxist global non-state has been established, but it is reactionary," he said.

"Socialism in the United States will not exist. Socialism will not exist anywhere in the world, because for socialism to exist, a socialist state must exist, and since states do not exist, how can socialism exist?"

Newton said that "progressive areas such as the People's Republic of China, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the Provisional Revolutionary Government in the South" should not be called nations but "people's liberated territory."

One World

"The ruling circle have recognized that this is one world," he added. "They no longer acknowledge wars, they call them 'police actions.' They say we're having a civil disturbance because the people of Vietnam are rioting.

"The police are everywhere and they all wear the same uniforms, and all have the same job, which is to protect the interests of the ruling circle."

Newton said that the Panthers seek a world revolution which will establish a global group of interdependent socialist communities, or "intercommunalism within a cooperative framework." Under such a revolutionary system, he said, the people of the world would control "the technological machine which the imperialists have built."

'Lumpenproletariat'

The Panthers seek to organize the "unemployable" elements of society, or "lumpenproletariat," Newton said, because they form the only revolutionary class in technological society.

"As the ruling circle continue to build their technocracy, more and more of the proletariat will become unemployable, become lumpen, until they have become the popular class, the revolutionary class," he said.

Newton criticized "mechanical Marxists" who "would like to pretend that this is 1917."

"Marx was trying to warn Progressive Labor [Party] not to accept the past as the present or the future," he said.