An Interview with John Watson

The following interview was originally conducted in September 1970 and published in November of that year in Quaderni Piacentini , a radical Italian periodical founded in 1961 by Piergiorgio Bellocchio and in print until 1984. In the same issue that featured this interview of John Watson there appeared an article by Eldridge Cleaver, a leading member of the Black Panthers, and a report on the Weather Underground, among other articles. While such features demonstrate the internationalism of the periodical's radical interests, they also demonstrate, in succinct fashion, the ideological diversity of Quaderni Piacentini 's pages. Following a short introduction, Watson discusses the Marxism-Leninism of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the difference between the revolutionary potential in the United States and that in Europe, the relationship between the struggle among black workers and white workers, and the various projects and struggles taken on by the League.