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Title: Review: Bad
Author: Anarchist Communist Federation
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: book review, Organise!
Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513040147/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue41/bad_james_carr.html
Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 41: Special Issue on Race — Winter 1995/1996.

Anarchist Communist Federation

Review: Bad

This is not a book for the weak stomached, being the story of one Black

man’s struggle against his, and others, brutalization at the hands of

the state and, in particular, the U.S. prison system. It pulls no

punches and makes no excuses, Carr was not an archetypical ‘political’

prisoner and people looking for a black and white tale of Good Vs. Evil

will find parts of this book somewhat...unsettling.

The important thing about this book, however, is Carr’s evolution,

accelerated by his reading of Korsch, Lukacs and the Situationists, from

someone with a criminal mentality to someone with a revolutionary

mentality. This revolutionary perspective isn’t outlined until the

Conclusion of the book but is all the more powerful and inspiring for

it.

Upon finally getting out of prison Carr, who had been a central figure

in George Jackson’s famous ‘Wolf Pack’, joined the Black Panther Party,

working as personal bodyguard to the Supreme Commander Huey P.Newton.

Carr rapidly concluded that the armed reformism of the (by 1970)

seriously Stalinized Panthers could only lead to defeat and his

criticism of the militaristic politics then dominant is spot on. Carr’s

break with ‘leftist’ politics was cut short by his murder in 1972,

shortly after finishing this book. The motive behind his assassination

has never been definitively ascertained. A COINTELPRO (F.B.I.) hit? A

product of the fratricidal conflicts within the Black liberation

movement?

With interesting and highly informative Introduction, Afterword and,

particularly, New Afterword (with really useful footnotes!) this updated

reprint is gripping, depressing and inspirational in turn. Definitely

worth a read.