Psychedelic Marxism: The Ecstatic States of the Body in the White Panther Party around 1970

Abstract

In the late 1960s, new styles of revolutionary politics of ecstasy emerged in the United States. They combined countercultural politics of transforming the subject via the experience of ecstatic states of the body with radical approaches to a fundamental reconfiguration of the societal order. A vital force in shaping such new styles of radical politics was the White Panther Party – an organization that was not only an influential actor in the countercultural and radical landscapes in the United States but also impacted European countercultures. The article examines how White Panthers merged politics of ecstasy with eclectically adapted bits and pieces of various communist ideas and ideologies and, thus, shaped a new style of radical politics that we might name psychedelic Marxism. Furthermore, it traces the changes in how the White Panther Party and its predecessors, the Detroit Artists Workshop and Trans-Love Energies, set states of ecstasy and societal change in relation to each other. Shedding light on White Panthers’ politics of ecstasy allows us to learn more about the ongoing reshaping of countercultural and radical politics during the late 1960s, but also about trajectories of communist ideas and ideologies that have not found much scholarly attention yet.

Disclosure Statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 John Sinclair, Guitar Army. Rock & Revolution with MC5 and the White Panther Party (Los Angeles: Process Media, 2007), 154.

2 Ibid., 156.

3 Ibid., 157.

4 Ibid., 158.

5 Ibid.

6 Historians and cultural studies scholars have already shed light on important aspects of the colorful and turbulent history of the White Panthers. For their conflicts with the police and the FBI see among others: Jeff A. Hale, “Wiretapping and National Security. Nixon, the Mitchell Doctrine, and the White Panthers” (PhD dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1995), 194, 270–76; Jeff A. Hale, “The White Panthers’ ‘Total Assault on Culture’,” in Imagine Nation. The American Counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s, edited by Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), 125; for the close entanglement of their striving for a cultural revolution with their striving for a political revolution see: Damon R. Bach, The American Counterculture. A History of Hippies and Cultural Dissidents (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020), 149; Mathew Bartkowiak, “Motor City Burning. Rock and Rebellion in the WPP and MC5,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 1, no. 2 (2007): 55–76; Patrick Burke, Tear down the Walls. White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 25–26; Hale, “White Panthers’,” 139–40, 151; for the way how race and gender influenced White Panthers’ world views and social practices see among others: Burke, Tear down the Walls; Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire. The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 207–36.

7 Bach, American Counterculture, 99. For the “New Left counterculture” see also: Doug Rossinow, “‘The Revolution Is about Our Lives.’ The New Left’s Counterculture,” in Imagine Nation, edited by Braunstein and Doyle, 99–124.

8 Angus Bancroft, Drugs, Intoxication and Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 67; Jonathan Herring, Ciaran Regan, Darin Weinberg, et al., “Starting the Conversation,” in Intoxication and Society. Problematic Pleasures of Drugs and Alcohol, edited by eid. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 11; Norman E. Zinberg, Drug, Set and Setting. The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

9 For reflections and thoughts about researching states of ecstasy, intoxication, and euphoria from a historiographical perspective see: Kristoff Kerl, Florian Schleking, “Rausch, Körper, Geschichte. Überlegungen und Perspektiven,” Body Politcs 6, no. 10 (2018): 13–60.

10 Anonymous, “Unsettled Accounts,” in Weatherman, edited by Harold Jacobs (Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1970), 464–6; John Marks, The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’. The CIA and Mind Control (London: Allen Lane, 1979).

11 David Farber, “The Intoxicated State/Illegal Nation. Drugs in the Sixties Counterculture,” in Imagine Nation, edited by Braunstein and Doyle, 21–22; Marks, Search, 119–20.

12 James Fadiman et al., “Psychedelic Research Revisited,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 35, no. 2 (2003), 111–25; Steven J. Novak, “LSD before Leary. Sidney Cohen’s Critique of 1950s Psychedelic Drug Research,” Isis 88, no. 1 (1997): 99.

13 Bach, American Counterculture, xv.

14 Bach, American Counterculture, xx.

15 On the politicization of (rock) music in the Sixties counterculture see among others: Burke, Tear down the Walls; Michael J. Kramer, The Republic of Rock. Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

16 Bach, American Counterculture, 51, 56.

17 Brett Callwood, MC5. Sonically Speaking. A Tale of Revolution and Rock ‘n’ Roll (Church Stretton: Independent Music Press, 2007), 31; David A. Carson, Grit Noise and Revolution. The Birth of Detroit Rock ‘n’ Roll (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 108–9; Hale, Wiretapping, 192–93; Hale, “White Panthers’,” 127–29.

18 John Sinclair, “Report on DOWNBEAT Festival,” in The Protest Papers. Excerpts from Manifestoes, Programs, Articles, Assessments Related to Protest Movements of the 1960s, edited by Betty Chmaj (Detroit: Artists Workshop Press, 1966), 33, John and Leni Sinclair Papers (JLSP), box 10, folder 24, Bentley Historical Library (BHL), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 For the ‘psychedelic revolution’ in the United States see among others: Bach, American Counterculture, 50–60; Robert C. Cottrell, Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll. The Rise of America’s 1960s Counterculture (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Gerard J. DeGroot, The Sixties Unplugged. A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 208–215; Farber, “Intoxicated State”; Robert Feustel, Grenzgänge. Kulturen des Rauschs seit der Renaissance (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2013); Jakob Tanner, “Amerikanische Drogen – Europäische Halluzinationen,” in Attraktion und Abwehr. Die Amerikanisierung der Alltagskultur in Europa, edited by Angelika Linke and Jakob Tanner (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2006), 267–88.

22 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 126.

23 Letter from Tom Fiofori to John Sinclair, November 28, 1965, JLSP, box 1, folder 31, BHL.

24 Farber, “Intoxicated State”, 30–31.

25 Hale, “White Panthers‘,” 129–30.

26 Letter from Rainer Blome to Leni Sinclair, March 17, 1966, JLSP, box 1, folder 43, BHL. For the importance of sentiments of alienation in the context of the US-counterculture see among others: Bach, American Counterculture, 29-36; Rossinow, “The Revolution,” 110.

27 Bartkowiak, “Motor City Burning,” 63; Hale, Wiretapping, 195–96. For the expansion of the counterculture in the time period from 1965–7 and the use of drugs such as LSD see among others: Bach, American Counterculture, chapter 2.

28 Carson, Grit Noise, 110–12.

29 Bach, American Counterculture, 99–100; David Farber, Farber, Chicago ’68 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 3.

30 Carson, Grit Noise, 113; Hale, Wiretapping, 198.

31 Anonymous, “Trans-Love Energies,” Warren-Forest Sun, [?], no 1; Hale, Wiretapping, 197–98.

32 Anonymous, “R & R Crusader,” Warren-Forest Sun [?], no. 3; anonymous, “David Crosby,” Warren-Forest Sun, April 19, 1968.

33 Anonymous, “Smoke-In,” Warren-Forest Sun [?], no. 1; anonymous, “Smoke-In Detroit,” Warren-Forest Sun [?], no. 2; Bach, American Counterculture, 122–23.

34 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 134–35, 140.

35 Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool. Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Capitalism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 112–14, 135, 178.

36 Anonymous, “The Sun Rises & Shines,” Warren-Forest Sun, March 1, 1968, no. 5.

37 Pun, “Dope,” Warren-Forest Sun, March 1, 1968, no. 5.

38 Mathew J. Bartkowiak, The MC5 and Social Change. A Study in Rock and Revolution (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2009), 122. For a closer look on the history of the MC5 and the Detroit rock scene: Bartkowiak, MC5; Callwood, MC5; Carson, Grit Noise.

39 Carson, Grit Noise, 114, 124; Hale, “White Panthers’,” 132–33.

40 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 132–33, 138.

41 Dave Marsh, “MC5 Back on Shakin‘Street,” Creem, October 1971, retrieved on May 24, 2020, from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/mc5-back-on-shakin-street.

42 Tom Hibbert, “MC5. Kicking out the Jams with the Motor City Rebels,” The History of Rock, retrieved on May 24, 2020, from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/mc5-kicking-out-the-jamswith-the-motor-city-rebels.

43 Ed Ochs, “Motor City 5. A Non-Stop, Driving Unit,” Billboard, January 11, 1969 JLSP, box 10, folder 26, BHL.

44 Bartkowiak, MC5, 122-24; Hale, Wiretapping, 242.

45 John Sinclair, “The MC5. How the Jams were Kicked Out!,” ZigZag, July 1977, retrieved on May 24, 2020, from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-mc5-how-the-jams-were-kicked-out.

46 Anonymous, Programme for ‘An Evening Recital of New Music‘as Performed by Detroit’s own MC5, JLSP, box 10, folder 24, BHL.

47 Marsh, “MC5”.

48 Anonymous, “Kick out the Jams, Motherfucker!,” Liberation News Service, June 21, 1968; Sinclair, Guitar Army, 58–63.

49 Anonymous, “Kick out the Jams,” 5–6.

50 Anonymous, Programme for ‘An Evening Recital of New Music‘.

51 For a detailed examination of the Festival of Life see among others: Farber, Chicago ’68.

52 Bach, American Counterculture, 142–151; Cottrell, Sex, 229–31.

53 Anonymous, “Flash. MC5 Set to Kick Off Yippie Festival Chicago Sunday August 25. Will Share Bill with Country Joe & The Fish. Rock and Roll Forever,” Warren-Forest Sun, August 7, 1968.

54 Bach, American Counterculture, 146-47; Burke, Tear down the Walls, 19-21. For tensions and conflicts between Diggers and Yippies see among others: Michael William Doyle, “Staging the Revolution. Guerilla Theater as a Countercultural Practice, 1965-68,” in Imagine Nation, edited by Braunstein and Doyle, 86–91.

55 Westland White Panther Tribe, Eye of Ra, JLSP, box 17, folder 26, BHL.

56 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 142.

57 Bach, American Counterculture, 144; Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005), 102.

58 Sinclair, Guitar Army, 85.

59 Bach, American Counterculture, 148–49.

60 John Sinclair, “On Youth Culture. Proposal to the Central Committee,” 21, JLSP, box 17, folder 19, BHL.

61 Anonymous, “White Panthers Name Central Committee,” Ann Arbor Sun, December 5, 1968; Burke, Tear Down the Walls, 30–33.

62 Sinclair, Guitar Army, 90–91.

63 Carson, Grit Noise, 178, 183; Hale, “White Panthers’,” 143.

64 Sinclair, Guitar Army, 85.

65 Letter from Michael Kucera to the White Panther Party, March 9, 1969, JLSP, box 10, folder 21, BHL.

66 GC., “The MC5 kick out the Jams!,” Oz, February 1969.

67 Anonymous, “Raus mit den Frustrationen. MC5,“Sounds, March 1969; anonymous, “MC5. Bestialischer Aufschrei,” Agit 883, October 9, 1969.

68 Isabel Richter, “Psychonauts and Seekers. West German Entanglements in the Spiritual Turn of the Global 1960s and 1970s”, Contemporary European History (2022), 9, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777322000121.

69 Bach, American Counterculture, 200; Detlef Siegfried, Time Is on My Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2017), 626.

70 Ken Dabish, “Woodstock Nation at Work,” Goose Lake Sun [?], [?], 3, JLSP, box 17, folder 12, BHL.

71 Sinclair, Guitar Army, 39–40.

72 Burke, Tear Down, 121–22; Sinclair, “On Youth Culture.”

73 John Sinclair, Marijuana Revolution, 1971, 20, Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library (LSDL), Houghton Library (HL), Harvard University.

74 George Metefsky, “Right On, Culture Freeks!,” Kudzu, October 10, 1969; White Panther Party Ann Arbor, “Flyer with the 10-Point-Program and a statement by Pun Plamondon,” July 4, 1969, JLSP, box 17, folder 17, BHL.

75 Anonymous, “Suggested Reading List from the White Panther Party,” Ann Arbor Sun, [?], no. 1.

76 Anonymous, “White Panther Tribes,” JLSP, box 17, folder 29, BHL; Hale, “White Panthers’,” 147; Hale, Wiretapping, 180.

77 Genie Plamondon, “Public Statements to White Panthers,” JLSP, box 17, folder 25, BHL.

78 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 147. For the extensive correspondences see, for instance, the boxes two, three, four and five in the John and Leni Sinclair Papers based at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

79 Carson, Grit Noise, 208-9.

80 Jackson Chapter, “Jackson,” Sun/Dance, October 1970; Illinois Chapter, “A White Panther Media Guide,” JLSP, box 17, folder 18, BHL; John Sinclair, “Sinclair … from Prison,” JLSP, box 17, folder 33, BHL; Letter from John Sinclair to Bill Goodson, September 7, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 13, BHL; Sly/WPP Tulsa, “Weekly Report,” JLSP, box 17, folder 14, BHL.

81 Anonymous, “Minutes from Central Committee Meeting, July 18, 1970,” JLSP, box 17, folder 15, BHL; Hale, Wiretapping, 343–44; Plamondon, “Public Statements to White Panthers”.

82 Sinclair, “On Youth Culture.”

83 Letter from John Sinclair to Leni Sinclair, September 1, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 13, BHL.

84 Letter from Bill Knight to Leni Sinclair, JLSP, box 1, folder 9, BHL; Letter from Bruce Strubing to the WPP, JLSP, box 1, folder 11, BHL.

85 Hale, “White Panthers’,” 147–48.

86 Letter from John Sinclair to Leni Sinclair, September 1, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 13, BHL.

87 Leni Sinclair, “Minutes from the CC Meeting, August 1, 1970,” JLSP, box 17, folder 15, BHL.

88 Pun Plamondon, “Statement by the Minister of Defense and Political Prisoner, Pun Plamondon, to the People in the Youth Colony (Woodstock Nation),” Sun/Dance, October 1970.

89 Ministry of Information, Berkeley Branch/White Panther Party, “And the beat goes on…,” Berkeley Tribe August 7, 1970.

90 Letter from John Sinclair to Leni Sinclair, August 4, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 8, BHL.

91 Anonymous, “Rules of the Black Panther Party,” White Trash, no. 2, [?], Underground and Alternative Press collection, card 111, University of Brighton; anonymous, “[Extract from an interview with Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary conducted by Michael Zwerin],” Bitman, no. 4 (1971); Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home. The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 47.

92 Anonymous, “CC Meeting, September 6, 1972,” JLSP, box 18, folder 8, BHL; anonymous, “CC Meeting, September 30, 1972,” JLSP, box 18, folder 8, BHL.

93 Sinclair, “On Youth Culture.”

94 George Metefsky, “Right on, Culture Freeks,” Kudzu, October 29, 1969.

95 Sinclair, Marijuana Revolution, 2–5.

96 Anonymous, “Dope-O-Scope,” Ann Arbor Sun, July 1970; anonymous, [no title], Ann Arbor Sun, July 1970, 4; Ministry of Information, WPP, “Junk Sucks Life,” Sun/Dance, July 1, 1970.

97 Ministry of Information, WPP, “Junk Sucks Life,”; Michael Tabor, “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide,” LSDL, HL.

98 Metefsky, “Right on,”; Sinclair, Marijuana Revolution, 7.

99 Sinclair, Marijuana Revolution, 8–9.

100 Ibid., 5.

101 Ibid., 6.

102 Sinclair, Guitar Army, S. 101.

103 Philip Deloria, “Counterculture Indians and the New Age,” in Imagine Nation, edited by Braunstein and Doyle, 166.

Historians have already examined the ambivalent and problematic ways the overwhelmingly white counterculturalists related to non-white minorities within the United States and non-white cultures beyond the national borders. On the one hand, counterculturalists were strongly opposed to racism and supported the struggles of African Americans and Native Americans against racist discrimination. On the other hand, in their opposition to so-called white America and “the American death culture” they often fetishized African Americans, Native Americans, North Vietnamese or Indians. They made use of these fetishized images, ripe with racial stereotypes and exoticism, to construct their own rebellious, sometimes hyper-masculine subjectivities, to underline their opposition to the straight society and its foreign policy, and to claim the status of a suppressed and colonized social group (Bach, American Counterculture, 110–16; Burke, Tear down the Walls, 14-16; Deloria, “Counterculture Indians,” 164–66).

104 Burke, Tear down the Walls, 44.

105 Sinclair, Guitar Army, 24, 28.

106 Ibid., 33.

107 Deloria,”Counterculture Indians,” 164.

108 Michael Aldrich, “Psychedelic Genocide,” Sun/Dance, October 1970, 24; id., “Psychedelic Genocide,” International Times, 11.3.1971, 12–13.

109 Ibid., 24.

110 Ibid., 24, 31.

111 Ibid., 24.

112 Ibid., 37.

113 Deloria, “Counterculture Indians,” 166.

114 The term ‘Woodstock Nation’ became popularized by Abbie Hoffman’s book with the same title.

115 Kenneth L. Wright, “A Communal Living Arrangement. Exploratory Study of the Trans Love, White Panthers, Youth International Party Commune,” 12, JLSP, box 17, folder 17, BHL.

116 Ministry of Information, WPP, “Junk Sucks Life,” 16.

117 Letter from Leni Sinclair to John Sinclair, November 20, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 22, BHL.

For the figure of the dealer and the understanding of dealing substances such as cannabis and psychedelics as a service to the counterculture see among others: David Farber, “Building the counterculture, creating right livelihoods. The counterculture at work,” The Sixties. A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 6, no. 1 (2013): 8–11.

118 Sinclair, Marijuana Revolution, 20.

119 Ibid., 6–7.

120 Genie Plamondon, “Vietnamization,” Sun/Dance, July 1, 1970; Letter by Ministry of Communication to the Cadres of the WPP, June 1, 1970, JLSP, box 17, folder 27, BHL.

121 Letter from an anonymous person to John Sinclair, March 4, [?], JLSP, box 1, folder 10, BHL.

122 Anonymous, “Kickin’ out the Jams,” Sun/Dance, October 1970.

123 Ibid.

124 Hale, Wiretapping, 346–47.

125 Letter from Frank Bach to John Sinclair, November 17, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 21, BHL; letter from Pun Plamondon to Frank Bach, November 13, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 21, BHL.

126 Anonymous, “Introduction,” in Weatherman, edited by Jacobs, 376–77; anonymous, “Unsettled Accounts,” in Weatherman, edited by Jacobs, 465; Bernardine Dohrn, “Communique #1 from the Weather Underground,” in Weatherman, edited by Jacobs, 509–11; Barbara Hendrickson, “Weathermen,” The Great Speckled Bird, January 12, 1970; letter from John Sinclair to the WPP commune, December 23, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 27, BHL; Weather Underground Organization, “Self-Criticism by the WUO,” 3-4, Special Collections Research Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

127 Anonymous, “White Panther Trips,” The Berkeley Tribe, April 3, 1970.

128 Letter from John Sinclair to Leni Sinclair, December 23, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 27, BHL.

129 Letter from Lynn Schneider to John Sinclair, December 11, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 26, BHL; Saint Marks Gang, “On ‘Message to the People of Woodstock Nation’,” JLSP, box 17, folder 22, BHL.

130 Frank Bach, “Writing by Frank Bach,” November 18, 1970, JLSP, box 4, folder 21, BHL.

131 WPP Ann Arbor, “To All White Panther Party Chapters and Branches, April 12, 1971,” 3-4, JLSP, box 17, folder 24, BHL.

132 Ibid.

133 Anonymous, “What Really Happened to the ’74 California Marijuana Initiative?,” Touch. White Panther Intercommunal Service, no. 5, 1974.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the German Historical Institute London, the Houghton Library, Harvard University and the German Historical Institute Washington.