The Unity Of Theory And Practice
In 1969, Fred Hampton – chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party – said: “we saying that theory’s cool, but theory with no practice ain’t shit.” He elaborated this statement in another speech that he gave in the same year: “I don’t care how much theory you got, if it don’t have any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right? Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. That’s what we’ve got to be able to do.”
Hampton’s words continue to be relevant. In the current conjuncture, Western Leftists – with a few principled exceptions – have been denigrating and viciously condemning concrete mass struggles and socialistic experiments in the Global South from a perspective of self-congratulatory moral purism.