The Revolution Will Be Urbanized: George L. Jackson's Blood in My Eye

Abstract

Will it be? Blood in my Eye says so, loud and clear. For George Jackson, violence has hitherto been a consequence of the historical situation of the Blacks, and not a stage in the radical transformation of the state of affairs. On a theoretical level, this dialectic of violence is simply too hot to handle for dilettante radicals and coffee shop philosophers. To argue that the concept should pass from the category of effect into that of cause always sounds either quixotic, suicidal or adventurist to ears attuned to the bugle calls of courtroom battles. Its true that one can always out-law the Law and beat it at its own casuistic game; its true that prisoners fully cognizant of their constitutional rights and of procedural moves available to them can win significant legal fights they did and still do so. But while most of his fellow incarcerated comrades delved into law books, George Jackson studiously read radical writers, Marxist literature and handbooks on military strategy, he went through the whole gambit, the whole line. He knew from intimate experience that each time the (blunted) sword of reformism managed to behead the hydra of American fascism, the latter mockingly reared its head again. What he wanted was to severe the monsters head, pure and simple, and we only catch a glimpse, in these scattered notes, of how he envisioned to do this: an urban revolution in the United States, with Blacks at the forefront.