Abstract

While abolition and revolution might appear complementary, it is not always easy to see how they can relate with each other as part of a coherent conception of emancipatory struggle, nor how such complementarity might inform political strategy. In response to this problem, the objective of this paper is to contribute to a critical reappraisal of the revolutionary heritage of abolitionist thought by drawing attention to what Joy James called ‘the revolutionary era’ of abolitionist politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s USA, focusing on the organisational politics of George Jackson who I consider to be one of the period’s most original thinkers. The claim I would like the reader to consider is that the type of vanguardism once presented by revolutionary abolitionists like George Jackson can help us to re-evaluate the political and ideological basis upon which a greater socialisation of struggles can be built today in view of the constitution of potential counter-hegemonic blocks capable of contesting the demands that capital makes on the planet and our lives. To put it in broader terms, the paper hopes to contribute to a widening of the conversation on how the question of abolition can help us rethink revolutionary politics in the twenty-first century.