First Published: Marxist-Leninist Vanguard, Vol. II, No. 6, June 1959.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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On May 10, the POC held an all day conference in New York on the Negro question. All areas of the New York POC were represented at this conference, and in addition, comrades from out of town and specially invited guests participated in the proceedings.
General Secretary of the POC Comrade Armando Roman delivered the main report and a political discussion followed. The report and the discussion were characterized by a deep and profound probing of the problems involved and further extended the line of the POC on the Negro question in the United States as a national question.
The report pointed out that part of the task of the POC in working out its own line and program must be to expose the class collaboration of the “Communist Party” as it is presently constituted and to trace it roots in the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the tanks of the working class. As Lenin long ago pointed out, revisionists never invent anything, but merely borrow from the arsenal of bourgeois ideology.
It is a characteristic position of those who take a social democratic position, or those who do not wish to attack the imperialism of their own nation, to ignore or distort the national question. This was true of the Second International, and Lenin and Stalin attacked the leaders of the Second International in their writings on the national question for their compromise with imperialism. It is true today of the leadership of the CPUSA.
It is the essence of the social democratic position on the national question to pretend that it does not exist, that workers of oppressed nations are subjected only to class exploitation, and not to see that they are not only subjected to class exploration, but that their class exploitation is qualitatively worse because of the national oppression directed against them. It was stated by a participant in the conference discussion that this reduction of national oppression to “simple” class-struggle is being done by the CPUSA leadership with both the Negro and Puerto Rican people. They will have something to say, although often only of a sob-sister nature, about the struggles of the Negro people, or of the condition of the Puerto Rican people here, but they have nothing to say about independence for Puerto Rico or the right of the Southern Negro people to self determination.
As a comrade from the Lower Harlem area of the New York POC pointed out, the revisionists now present us with the theory that the United States has been the product of an “amalgam of nationalities”. This is nothing but a new version of the bourgeois “melting pot” theory. It says nothing of the oppression of the Negro and Puerto Rican peoples because of the nature of imperialism. The POC, a Marxist-Leninist organization, will have nothing to do with such doctrines that mask the character of American imperialism.
By refusing to recognize the existence of oppressed nations and refusing to fight for their rights, the revisionists also refuse to recognize the existence and role of comprador classes, the allies of imperialism within the ranks of the oppressed peoples. In fact, not only do they refuse to recognize the existence and role of compradors, hut they follow the line of those very compradors, as more than one participant in the conference pointed out. As one comrade said, this is particularly true with regard to the Negro people in the United States. The CPUSA is much closer to the liberal bourgeoisie and the compradors among the Negro people than it is to the Negro masses.
Lenin pointed out as early as 1913 that the Negro question in the United States was a national question. The Communist Party of the United States did not however, develop its line on the Negro question as a national question until after the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928. Even then, theoretical clarity on the Negro question was achieved only after bitter struggle with the revisionists of that day. Since then, every revisionist crisis in the Communist Party has been accompanied by a sellout on the Negro question and the right of self determination. The present line of the so-called Communist Party on the Negro question was developed in the main by the renegades from Communism Gates and Wilkerson. Their position is now being continued with only a little polishing and considerable double talk designed to conceal its treacherous origin by the present party leadership.
Foster, Davis and Jackson now present this line, denying the Negro people the right to self determination just as do the highest circles of the American ruling class. These fine gentlemen, in the face of the continuing oppression of the Negro people, proclaim that the problems of the Negro people can be solved under capitalism with just a few reforms, and even hint strongly that it will be the further development of capitalism that will solve those problems.
The present Communist Party leadership proclaim that they recognize the Negro question as a national question but deny the existence of a Negro nation in the areas of Negro majority population. The main prop of this argument is that the Black Belt community is no longer “stable” because there is no much population movement from this area. Comrade Roman pointed out that the fact that Irish emigration for instance, over the past several generations totals more than the present population of Ireland, hut that no one can argue that this negates the existence of the Irish nation. It was further pointed out that two-thirds of the total Negro population of the United States still remains in the South, and that the migration from the rural areas of the Black Belt to Southern cities will soon result in Negro majority population in many of them.
Comrade Roman and others emphasized that we do not present the slogan of self determination as a blueprint for the creation of a separate Negro republic in the South. The right of self determination belongs to the Negro people for them to exercise ax they see fit whether it means separation or an autonomous status corresponding to that of nations in the Soviet Union and China or similar to the status of the French Canadians in Canada.
Self-determination in the South for the Negro people was presented as a revolutionary solution to the denial of the political rights of the Southern Negro people. Self determination, whatever the form it may take, will be a guarantee to the Negro people of their right to participate in democratic government.
A connection was made between the oppression of the Negro people in the South and the reflection and penetration of this oppression in the North. The oppression of the Negro people is [words missing in original – EROL} have us believe, the work of the Dixiecrats alone. The Dixiecrats are only the agents of Northern finance capital, who control them and all the agencies of the national government. Through this control they prevent the forces or government and law enforcement from halting the illegal terror launched against the Negro people North and South. Through their control of the agencies of public opinion they prevent a mass educational campaign against the poison of white chauvinism.
As more than one speaker pointed out, the existence of white chauvinism dictates an immediate political task to the American working class and particularly its vanguard forces – the eradication of this poison. For us in the POC, Negro-white unity is not just a slogan to be paraded. The line of this conference, which is the line of the POC, is that a fight must be waged particularly in the white working class communities to build mass support for the struggles of the Negro people.
A proper understanding of the national character of the Negro people and their right to self de termination will be a great aid to building Negro-white unity. As Lenin pointed out in Critical Notes On The National Question, recognizing the right of self determination of oppressed peoples and the end to their national oppression does not separate, but on the contrary, brings together the proletariats of oppressed and oppressor nations.
The POC program on the Negro question has already been outlined in its essentials in the VANGUARD and in our documents, but the conference on the Negro question extends and deepens this program and points the way to its concrete implementation. The discussion at the conference pointed out the necessity for emphasizing in all our work, such as our work on labor and housing, the special oppression to which the Negro people are subjected in all walks of life, and to conduct a relentless fight against this injustice wherever it is found.
The National Committee of the POC will use the conference report and discussion as a basis for further analysis of the Negro question and the further development of our program. On the recommendation of the conference, the National Committee has set up a special committee for the further study of the Negro question and particularly for the purpose of drafting a program of radical reform for the democratic-solution of the Negro problem in the United States. Particular attention in the program will be paid to the problem of the Negro nation in the South.
A resolution was passed at the conclusion of the conference that messages of protest be sent to Governor Coleman of Mississippi and Attorney General Rogers demanding that those responsible for the brutal murder of Mack Charles Parker be properly punished, and promising that so long as their present policy of inaction is followed that we will keep up a fight and protest in every working class community that we can reach.