In the tradition: Amiri Baraka, black liberation, and avant-garde praxis in the U.S

   BARAKA: ... to me the most important
   thing is reaching the working people
   the best way you can--which is
   propaganda distributed in factories.
   But revolutionary [avant-garde] culture
   has to play a role in that.

   INTERVIEWER: Is there a temptation
   to a certain kind of condescension,
   when you have identified a group that
   you are writing for, which prevents
   you from having the kind of sophistication
   your art formerly had?

   BARAKA: No, I don't think so.
   Actually I need to develop a different
   kind of sophistication.... I think plays
   should be direct, poetry should be
   direct, what you say should be direct
   and not obscure. But I think the sophistication
   in trying to link up what is
   direct with what is advanced actually
   requires another kind of skill, which I
   still have to develop. Because I believe
   that even the most simple statement
   should contain the most advanced
   understanding, and the most advanced
   understanding should contain the simplest
   kind of statement. That you have
   to raise a dialectical relationship
   between making things popular and
   raising people's standards. You don't
   make things popular just because you
   want them to be simple, but because
   you want people to understand them.
   But when people understand things,
   then they demand more. And so I
   think the question is, how do you combine
   the advanced with the popular?
   ("The Theatre" 141-42)

In acknowledging his own shortcomings, Baraka clearly acknowledges the difficulty of achieving this "sophistication." He understands that the relationship between avant-garde and popular audience is not stable or easy to negotiate. But he is committed to the process of experimentation and synthesis that will strengthen that relationship. In this concern he is resonant with Brecht:

   For a vanguard can lead the way along
   a retreat or into an abyss. It can march
   so far ahead that the main army cannot
   follow it, because it is lost from sight
   and so on.... If it splits off from the
   main body, we can determine why and
   by what means it can reunite with it.
   (72)

The comparison with Brecht suggests the second crucial question: Who is the main army? As is evident from any survey of his political prose, Baraka does not see himself addressing an army constituted by an undifferentiated assortment of people, as the word popular might suggest. Baraka's self-identification as a Third World Marxist indicates a specific position within the Left that is informed by an internationalist theory of capitalism. Rather than arriving at the simple conclusion that "class" is now more important than "race," Baraka understands contemporary capitalism to have moved into the stage of imperialism.