Progressive Labor’s position on black nationalism, like its position on the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions, has not been consistent. For several years the PL line tended to vacillate, sometimes pompously presenting PL as the nationalist leadership of the black masses and sometimes condemning nationalist activities and demands as “bourgeois.”
However, several months ago, in a public self-criticism, PL reprimanded itself for earlier deviations. “We failed to understand that nationalism is reactionary, and that this is its main aspect,” states the January 1969 issue of PL (p. 17). While it would be fruitful to deal with some of the earlier positions, it is the current attitude of PL towards black nationalism which is of greatest concern to those in the revolutionary movement today.
The essence of PL’s current position is to deny the revolutionary nature of the Afro-American struggle for self-determination. While they do not deny in theory that Afro-Americans are exploited and oppressed as a distinct group, nor that they have a right to self-determination, PL states categorically that all nationalism is reactionary and that class demands are the “only real basis for the national form of struggle” (Challenge, March 1969).
PL’s position is not a new one. Essentially, it is the same as that held by the American socialist movement in the pre-World War I era. However, under the impetus of the Russian Revolution and the leadership of the newly formed Communist International, American revolutionaries rejected their former attitudes – similar to PL’s today – and came to understand that the nascent national consciousness of Afro-Americans could be a powerful force and ally in the destruction of American imperialism. The terms in which leaders of the International berated the American revolutionaries for their backwardness, chauvinism and capitulation to the prejudices of the more privileged white workers were extremely sharp. Slowly, the American communist movement assimilated the Leninist positions on oppressed nations and national minorities.
In reverting to the infantile errors of the American socialist movement PL simply reveals its total inability to comprehend that social phenomena usually have contradictory aspects, that they are rarely all “good” or all “bad” (to use the moralistic terms PL is so fond of), and that Marxists are concerned with the dynamics of struggles as they develop and attempt to analyze the relationships between them and the basic class conflicts of our epoch.
PL’s attempt to hide under the cloak of Leninism, to claim revolutionary backing for the categorical denunciation of all nationalism as serving the interests of the ruling class, is a grotesque fraud. One has only to read Lenin’s writings on nationalism and self-determination to see that he was clearly polemicizing against positions such as those held by PL.
The oppression of nations and national minorities is one of the cornerstones on which imperialism maintains itself. Thus the world capitalist system, which according to its own democratic rhetoric is supposed to open the way to national independence and freedom for all peoples, is precisely the system which today prevents the realization of those democratic aspirations. It is this fundamental contradiction which gives the nationalism of the oppressed its revolutionary implications.
The development of nationalist consciousness is often the very first step taken by the masses in a revolutionary direction.
While the nationalism of the oppressed constitutes a direct threat to world imperialism, it is only under the leadership of the revolutionary communists that these aspirations of the masses can be fully attained. As the examples of Cuba, China, North Vietnam prove, genuine economic independence from the world market, land reform, industrialization, nationalization of resources, education, adequate medical care and other basic reforms can only be achieved by abolishing private property in the means of production and establishing a planned economy.
Marxists have understood this for decades. The masses, however, are convinced by experiences gained through struggle, not by theoretical discussion. They have learned not to trust anyone and want to be shown who is on their side. They will not be won to communism by someone telling them their nationalist aspirations are reactionary. They will be won to communism only when it is proved to them that the revolutionary communists alone can guarantee their freedom from national oppression.
They know full well that their nationalist consciousness represents a sense of identity, self-confidence, pride, hatred of oppression – all the prerequisites of the will to struggle; that it represents a force which can mobilize the oppressed masses.
Within the United States, the contradiction between the needs of imperialism and the growing nationalist consciousness of 22 million Afro-Americans constitutes one of the most explosive, revolutionary elements in American society. This is all the more true because the Afro-American people are overwhelmingly working class in composition. They, along with the other oppressed minorities – Chicano, Puerto Rican, Indian, Asian-American, and others – constitute the most superexploited sector of the working class.
But, does their class identity constitute the only valid basis for struggle? Does class identity negate a common identity as an oppressed national minority, as PL claims?
To say yes is to deny that Afro-Americans have a common historical experience in the United States and suffer a common oppression, in addition to their class oppression, against which struggle is justified. To say yes is to deny the reality that the not insignificant number of non-working-class blacks are also racially oppressed and also capable of struggle. To say yes is to deny the right to self-determination, either out of fear that capitalism can satisfy the demands of black people for control over their lives or from fear that self-determination will not lead directly to socialism.
The support of revolutionary communists for the right of self-determination is unconditional. We do not withdraw our support from national liberation struggles simply because they do not succeed in abolishing capitalism. We call on the masses to continue the struggle, but we in no way withdraw or qualify our support for the struggle against imperialism. We do not predicate our support for self-determination on the condition that the masses choose socialism, or that they demand what we think is correct.
Progressive Labor’s refusal to give unconditional support to the right of self-determination for black America, their insistence that the only justifiable demands are class demands, their refusal to support demands arising from the common national oppression of Afro-Americans have led them to adopt some of the most utterly reactionary positions.
They have opposed the demands of black students and the black community for educational facilities under their own control. This, says PL, only fosters illusions that the ruling class will yield control over one of their institutions. But by the same token, it would be incorrect for workers, either black or white, to demand control over production lines because factories are also capitalist institutions, and such demands for control would only foster illusions.
PL opposes the demand for free university education for black students. They actually argue that such education “bourgeoisifies” them, helps them to escape the contradictions of class society! But it’s not so easy to convince black students they shouldn’t have a right to get an education when millions of white youth do. It’s not hard to comprehend why so many black students consider PL’s position racist.
PL argues that the only correct demands to raise on the campuses – in relation to the black struggle – are demands that build alliances between the black students and the black workers. But when it comes to the demands being raised by the black workers themselves, PL attacks them also for being oriented towards the black community, not exclusively the black workers.
It fits into a neat circle, where – all rhetoric aside – PL ends up supporting neither the black students nor the black workers.
For example, the May issue of Challenge carries an article attacking the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in Detroit for projecting a boycott of 1970 Chrysler products. “The boycott plan, ”says PL, ‥is a purely nationalist (bourgeois) approach, because the primary group to be organized is not the black workers, but the black community, and the black workers, and white, would be the first to suffer. . .This demonstrates how nationalism is divisive if the consciousness of black workers is not transformed into a working-class approach.” (p. 12)
In other words, any attempt to organize the black community itself as a force for struggle is anti-working-class. The next thing we know, it may even become “counterrevolutionary.”
Nothing could be farther from a Marxist approach to the black liberation struggle in the United States. Any issue that helps unify the Afro-American population in struggle, as an independent force conscious of its own power, effectiveness and will to fight, constitutes a blow against the capitalist rulers of this country. It is through such struggles that the black masses will come to understand that capitalism must be abolished if they are to be freed from the national oppression they suffer. And it is the black working class that will be in the very vanguard of this struggle against capitalism – both as black workers and as black men and women.
In the process, the white workers, and hopefully, perhaps even some PL members, will learn a great deal about revolutionary struggle in the United States.