Feb 15, 2026

A Revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualism Critique of Colin Jenkin's Black Panther Party “Blueprint” Frame

An addendum to "An Ideal Blueprint: The Original Black Panther Party Model and Why It Should be Duplicated" by Colin Jenkins (2014), posted by Films For Action

By United Panther Party – U.S. / facebook.com

A Revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualism Critique of Colin Jenkin's Black Panther Party “Blueprint” Frame

Photo Credit: Black Panther Party Newspaper, Chicago History Museum, STM-037873701, Chicago Sun-Times

First, what this post gets right

This write-up does a few things that deserve real respect. It treats the Black Panther Party as more than a historical aesthetic, and it names the BPP as a living study in theory plus praxis instead of a nostalgia object. It also centers the Panthers’ Survival Programs as politically meaningful infrastructure, not charity, and it correctly argues that meeting material needs can be a direct route into political education and collective power. That orientation aligns with an Intercommunal Mutualist baseline: if people can’t breathe, eat, heal, or sleep safely, they’re being structurally blocked from sustained organizing. The post also makes an important move when it rejects “middle class erosion” narratives and emphasizes the multi generational poor, the imprisoned, and those pushed into the informal economy, which is closer to the Panthers’ insistence that the most dispossessed are not disposable.

So the post’s core instinct is solid: it wants organizers to learn from an organization that actually built capacity, defended communities, and developed a political line that could educate and mobilize.

Where Intercommunal Mutualism starts to diverge

From a Revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualism perspective, the biggest limitation is that the post frames the struggle primarily as a domestic class war inside the United States, with “internationalism” added as solidarity and geopolitical awareness.

Intercommunal Mutualism pushes a sharper thesis: the primary structure isn’t just national class rule, it’s Empire as a global system that manages labor, surplus labor, extraction, and containment across borders. That difference matters because it changes what counts as strategy.

When you describe the enemy mainly as “corporations and corrupted politicians,” you risk drifting into a reform shaped diagnosis that treats the state as a captured tool rather than a core instrument of imperial order. Intercommunal Mutualism does not treat the state as neutral infrastructure that needs better hands. It treats the state as one of Empire’s central technologies of control, along with finance, policing, prisons, and increasingly digital systems. The post gestures at militarism and police terror, but it still talks like the terrain is largely “America’s internal class conflict” rather than an imperial system that operates through global logistics, sanctions, proxy wars, surveillance, and border containment.

In other words, it is strong on critique, but it is still a little too nation bound in its strategic imagination.

Internationalism is not Intercommunalism

The post praises the BPP’s “international working class unity,” Algeria, Vietnam era solidarity, and anti colonial struggle. All of that is real and important. But Intercommunal Mutualism would press this further: internationalism often assumes nations as stable containers cooperating across borders, while intercommunalism treats communities, diasporas, and oppressed peoples as the central political units struggling across and against imperial structures.

That isn’t a semantic difference. It shapes praxis. Intercommunal Mutualism asks: what does it mean to build power when Empire has integrated supply chains, finance, media, surveillance, and border regimes into one adaptive machine? In that context, “international solidarity” is not enough. You need intercommunal infrastructure that can federate, share resources, replicate capabilities, withstand repression, and survive node failure. The post calls the BPP a “blueprint,” but it doesn’t name the core requirement for today: networked, redundant, resilient systems that can function under pressure, including digital pressure.

The “blueprint” language risks turning the BPP into a template instead of a method

Intercommunal Mutualism treats revolutionary history as a set of methods and contradictions, not a packaged formula. The post tries to create a “winning formula,” but formulas can become shortcuts that skip the hardest part: building living relationships, governance, accountability, and logistical capacity.

A Panther lesson that matters today is not simply “do breakfast programs plus Marxism plus discipline.” The deeper lesson is that survival programs were a political technology for building legitimacy, participation, and community trust while developing cadres and expanding capacity. Intercommunal Mutualism would say: keep the method, but don’t freeze the form. Today’s “breakfast program” might be mutual aid clinics, emergency response training, eviction defense, community safety teams, digital privacy education, open source comms, childcare co ops, and localized food sovereignty. Same logic, different conditions.

A key omission: the shift from nation state framing toward Empire

This is where the post misses a major development in Dr. Huey P. Newton’s later analysis. Revolutionary Intercommunalism moves away from thinking liberation is primarily winning inside a nation state framework. It argues that technology, capital, and military reach have reshaped sovereignty itself, and that oppressed communities are increasingly managed as internal colonies and external dependencies within one imperial system. Intercommunal Mutualism, as praxis, builds from that.

Because the post doesn’t foreground this shift, it risks teaching readers that the Panthers’ relevance is mainly about “class war in America,” when part of the Panthers’ deepest relevance is how they anticipated an era where borders increasingly function to contain and manage labor, surplus labor, and displacement. That is not a minor detail. It is the difference between organizing to “fix America” and organizing to out build Empire.

Vanguard language and militarized aesthetics need a harder boundary

The post repeats claims about Maoism, vanguard roles, Foco theory (popularized by Che Guevara), and intimidation as necessary counter force. Intercommunal Mutualism will not dismiss disciplined self defense. Community defense is real. But this post blurs lines that must be clarified if you’re serious about people’s safety and long term legitimacy.

Two problems show up here:

1. Vanguardism can slide into substitutionism, where a cadre acts “for” the people rather than building structures where the people govern. Intercommunal Mutualism insists on mass line accountability and horizontal legitimacy. Cadre development should deepen collective capacity, not concentrate command.

2. Emphasizing “intimidation” as a political necessity risks feeding performative militarism, which is easy to provoke, easy to isolate, and historically one of the routes the state uses to justify repression. The Panthers understood self defense, but they also understood the difference between defense that protects the people and posturing that exposes the people. Intercommunal Mutualism would insist that any defense formation must be rooted in community consent, strict rules of engagement, legal and medical readiness, and political discipline, not romance.

“Intersectionality” is treated as a feature instead of an ongoing governance problem

The post names sexism, celebrates women Panthers, and calls the Party “proto intersectional.” That’s not wrong, but it is incomplete in a way that matters now. Intercommunal Mutualism would frame gender, patriarchy, and internal harm not as side contradictions that eventually get addressed, but as core tests of whether a movement can remain liberatory under stress.

It’s not enough to say the Party evolved. The question is: what structures prevented harm, what accountability existed, and how did internal contradictions shape external vulnerability?

Intercommunal Mutualism’s praxis requires intersectional mutualism as a checks and balance against internal hierarchy, charismatic abuse, and informal patriarchy. Without that, “discipline” can become discipline for the bottom and freedom for the top.

Discipline is good, but the post under explains democratic accountability

The post praises military-like discipline and structured chapters, and that can be valid. But Intercommunal Mutualism asks: discipline to what, and accountable to whom?

Discipline without participatory governance can become compliance culture. Discipline without transparent conflict processes can turn into internal repression. Discipline without care becomes burnout and collapse. A revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualist critique would demand clearer emphasis on:

-community governance over programs
-rotation of roles and anti gatekeeping
-clear decision pathways that don’t rely on charisma
-political education that produces independent thinkers, not repeaters
-security culture that doesn’t become paranoia or exclusion

The post gestures toward “horizontal leadership,” but it doesn’t give readers a real framework for preventing hierarchy from reappearing.

The post is light on today’s decisive terrain: digital imperialism and logistical power

The analysis is mostly pre platform era in its assumptions. Intercommunal Mutualism takes seriously that Empire now governs through:

-platform control and algorithmic visibility
-data extraction and surveillance
-digital financial chokepoints
-communications disruption
-logistics and supply chain dependencies

A “BPP blueprint” for 2026 that does not include autonomous communications, digital security, data minimization, decentralized tech ecosystems, and redundancy planning is incomplete. Empire’s repression does not only show up as police raids. It also shows up as deplatforming, doxxing, payment processor bans, surveillance fusion, and disruption by information warfare.

If the post wants to update the Panthers, it must update the terrain.

What a Revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualist rewrite would emphasize

To frame this piece inside Intercommunal Mutualism, the strongest improvements would be to:

-Replace “domestic class war” framing with Empire framing, where the state is not merely corrupted but structurally imperial.

-Treat “internationalism” as an entry point, then move to intercommunal federation as the goal: networks of autonomous nodes that share resources and maintain continuity under repression.

-Keep Survival Programs, but define them explicitly as dual power infrastructure, not only service plus education.
Clarify self defense as community defense under mass accountability, not intimidation aesthetics.

-Treat intersectionality as governance and accountability architecture, not a moral badge.

-Add the missing layer: decolonized technology and anti digital imperialism as core commitments, not optional modern updates.

-Replace “blueprint” language with “method under changing conditions,” to prevent the post from encouraging copy and paste organizing.

This Films For Action post is a strong popular education piece for people who are newly looking for grounded revolutionary examples. Its biggest value is that it points readers toward organized praxis rather than online ideology. But from a Revolutionary Intercommunal Mutualism perspective, it stays too close to a traditional left frame where the struggle is mainly national class conflict supplemented by international solidarity. Intercommunal Mutualism pushes the analysis into Empire, intercommunal federation, and resilient infrastructure built to survive repression across physical and digital terrains.

ALL Power to The People. #PantherUp

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