First Published: Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, Vol. II, No. 5, May 1959.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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When Marxist-Leninists say that the Negro question is an “Achilles heel” of American imperialism, the point is that it is not only a vulnerable point, but that it is an indispensable part of American imperialism, an inescapable contradiction! The oppression of the Negro people is an inherent and essential feature of the American “free enterprise” system. The nature of imperialism cannot encompass the necessary historic liberating ANSWER to the Negro QUESTION!
Yet the revisionists and concilliationists of the old Communist Party leadership now make strenuous effort to formalize their de facto abandonment of the revolutionary position on the Negro question, an effort organized around a “Draft Resolution on the Theoretical Aspects of Negro Question”. (Published as a Supplement to Party Affairs).
In his discussion of the Resolution. James S. Allen turns his introspective eye upon the source of past “errors”: “We were led to believe” (You see it was all in the mud!) “that . . . with respect to internal economic development, American capitalism had reached its apex and had fallen into a condition of permanent stagnation; had indeed entered upon a period of constant decline. It was not then anticipated (it was just a mental “blockage”–ed.) that there would be further industrial expansion which would lead monopoly capital to tap the labor supply of the Black Belt to a greater extent than during the first war (World War I)”. As a result, Allen goes on, “From a peasant people in the majority, the Negro has become predominantly a people of wage earners ... a basic change has taken place that requires a new look at our position (on the Negro question).” (Our emphasis, ed.).
According to this line of argument, American imperialism, by its normal “internal economic development” can shed this Achilles heel, the Negio question. When one stops to think on it, the possibilities opened up by this theory seem nothing less than overwhelming to the imagination!
The Achilles heel of working class struggle can also be saved from revolutionary rupture if only (as James Allen puts it) monopoly capital continues to “tap the labor supply of the Black Belt to a greater extent” than before. For, this would mean that U.S. imperialism was experiencing no cyclical crises or depression, and no general decline as a part of the capitalist world system of production.
Why stop there? The peasants of every colonial country in the world can look forward (according to the theory of the CPUSA) to their liberation from national oppression by being transformed into proletarians (like the sugar worker of Puerto Rico, the oil worker of Venezuela, and the tin miners of Bolivia, who have been enjoying such “national liberation” at the hands of American imperialism for half a century already!)
One thing is’ clear: In order to have belief in this theory of the Negro question as put forth by the CPUSA today, one must have a great faith in the future of American capitalism and must identify the interests of the Negro people with it. Those who see the Negro question in this light are basically bourgeois reformists. We say this is no more than plain Marxit-Leninist logic. We challenge the National Committee of the old Party to refute it.
Let us now turn to a second example of how the revisionist doctors probe their past “maladjustments”.
James E. Jackson, in presenting the main report in connection with the Resolution in the National Committee meeting “explained our errors” in part as follow:
“... we were logically led to focus (again, it’s all in the mind –ed.) upon the distinctive nation-like features and characteristics of the Negro people as the thing of almost exclusive importance (But) such nation-like attributes are not determinative for either the solution or representation of the Negro question in the United States.” (Our emphasis – ed.). (Special Supplement to Party Affairs on the Negro Question Resolution, p. 9).
What then is the explanation of Jim Crow discrimination and the oppression of the Negro in the U.S.? There are three general lines of explanation advanced by the bourgeoisie at various times and places:
First: Open racism. The “necessity” to maintain the natural position of superiority over the Negro race. Race antagonisms are eternal and independent of historic processes and social systems. Class differences have nothing to do with these race differences. Not even socialism could change this question. This is the Ku-Klux White Council line of the dominant circles, of monopoly capital (not just their Dixiecrat wing).
Second: The “pure and simple trade union” line. Negro workers, if they can get into the union, arc okay as workers. But Negroes of other classes are the same, as far as labor is concerned, as their class counterparts among the white race. This in one form or another is the slick cover-up of the Social Democrats for their denial of the legitimacy of the special demands and needs of Negro workers.
Third: The “prejudice” argument: Prejudice (due either to “natural” causes or to a ’’luck of education”) causes oppression. This is the typical line of the middle class liberals. It sees the “ignorant” poor people, particularly white workers and farmers as the chief sources of the “discrimination” (which is as far as the oppression is recognized by the liberal). This line has the real relationship of oppression and prejudice reversed: Prejudice is not the primary cause of oppression, although of course it reinforces it. Rather, prejudice is the direct and indirect result of the oppression.
All of these arguments have two themes in common: 1) They all deny that “nationwide attributes are determinative for the representation of the Negro people.” 2) They all deny the desirability or feasibility of the white workers giving class support to the liberation struggles of the Negro people as a whole.
For these reasons, Marxist-Leninists in the United States, Negro and white, with the help of the international Communist movement, long ago rejected these theories as unscientific and anti-workingclass. They characterized the Negro question in the United States as that of an oppressed nation in the Black Belt and an oppressed national minority in the rest of the country-This oppression can be ended only by socialism, and therefore, the Negro peoples movement as a whole is a revolutionary ally of the proletariat in the struggle for Socialism.
It is not surprising that in rejecting the Marxist-Leninist position on the Negro question Jackson and the rest of the leadership of the old Party have turned back toward the arsenal of bourgeois “explanations” of the Negro question.
After having said that the “nation-like” features do not determine the character of the Negro question, Jackson says:
“The Negro people in the United States suffer a special form of national oppression. It is national in the sense that ail class strata are subject to a common yoke . . . They are racially identified and set apart by racist laws and customs, social existence and by actual ethnic identifications.” (ibid. p. 10).
Let’s see: All Negroes are oppressed. All Negroes belong to the Negro race. That much is clear. But why should people of the Negro race be oppressed? That is the Negro question of questions!
That is precisely the question that the Resolution seeks to evade with its characterization of the Negro people not as an oppressed nation and national minority, but as “... a racially distinctive people or nationality.” The Negro people are apt to be “racially distinctive” for some centuries as least.
The point is that the fighting determination of the Negro people in the United States to fall into step with the national liberation tide of the oppressed peoples of the world is not going to wait for centuries for justice and equal rights. The determination ranges them more and more consciously on the side of the forces of socialism, and the workingclass against the common imperialist exploiter and oppressor.
This is the basis, the only real basis, for railing the white worker to take up the challenge of the Wall Street-Dixiecrat plot against the civil rights and national liberation struggles of the Negro people: the basis of a common objective interest in an inescapable struggle for existence.
No Marxist-Leninist will make the mistake of considering that these ideological battles are matters of mere theoretical abstractions without “practical” significance. In future issues of the Vanguard we shall spell this out in relation to many aspects of the class struggle. We shall close this article by citing the tremendous practical significance of the theory of the Negro question.
Early this year the NAACP formerly and publicly indicted the U.S. labor movement for its failure to give more than mere lipservice to the struggle of the Negro people for civil rights. Shortly thereafter, the sad accuracy of this criticism was dramatized by the disgraceful open collaboration of a Textile Workers Union local in the firing of NAACP members in Virginia.
These developments emphasized the warning sounded in the November issue of Vanguard:
“The most outstanding aspect of the current crisis of American democracy is the deterioration of the Negro-Labor alliance, the failure of the trade union movement to take up the Wall Street Dixiecrat challenge to the struggle for Negro liberation.” Today we underscore that warning. Upon the swift correction of this critical failure of class responsibility depend such major tusks of the labor and democratic movement: 1) The organization of the South. 2) The smashing of the southern bulwark of imperialist reaction within the United States; 3) The victory of the six-hour day struggle; 4) Independent political action by labor, beyond the status of mere window-dressing for the Democratic Party.
On May Day, 1959, we rededicate ourselves to Negro-white workingclass solidarity, to the support of the national liberation struggle of the Negro people, and to the victory of Marxism-Leninism over revisionism on the Negro question, as on all others.
All the “amalgams” in the pharmacy of revisionism will not rid Wall Street of its Achilles heel. Upon that fact is hinged the historic revolutionary alliance of the workingclass and the Negro people.