Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

The New Voice

Defeat the “National Question” Line in the U.S. and Unite to Fight Racism


V. The Material Basis of the “National Question”

The material basis of racism is the difference in wages which employers maintain between black and white employees, discrimination in hiring and layoffs, and the many other differences in income, housing, education and other aspects of life between black and white. Upon this material basis, the employer seeks to divide black and white workers, to lead the white worker to the false belief that he or she enjoys privileges from racism, and to divert the anger of the black worker away from the employer and onto the white worker. By splitting workers along lines of color, the employer sabotages their struggle for better wages and working conditions. And since the employer never gives anything not won by struggle, disunited workers are all driven to worse conditions than if united, though worse to a different degree among black than among white.

Liberal racists and nationalists do not accept the class analysis of racism. Therefore, it is necessary for those who claim to be Marxist-Leninists to propose another material basis for the attitudes of “white chauvinism,” as they term racist attitudes. The analysis we are examining runs along the line that the black people are a nation, and that their struggle is that of an oppressed nation, while white workers are part of an oppressing white nation.

In short, to uphold their line, these liberal racists and nationalists must prove that it has a material basis in a black nation. This is why they–or those of them who try to be scientific– engage in such detailed research about an alleged black nation.

The characteristics of a nation to which our interest is thus led were given by Joseph Stalin in his essay, “Marxism and the National Question” (1913):

A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture. (SSW, Cardinal, p. 53.)

Furthermore,

It is therefore clear that there is in fact no single distinguishing characteristic of a nation. There is only a sum total of characteristics, of which, when nations are compared, one characteristic (national character), or another (language), or a third (territory, economic conditions), stands out in sharper relief. A nation constitutes the combination of all these characteristics taken together. (p. 55.)

This is the commonly accepted analysis of the necessary characteristics of a nation among all scientific students of the problem and has never needed to be modified.

It is also clear that the black people must constitute a nation today, if we are to explain white chauvinism today as springing from a material basis in an oppressed black nation. The national question with regard to a certain people can change with time. It can change although the economic system remains capitalist.

In this regard, the charge of “American exceptionalism” is sometimes laid against those who deny that the black people in the United States are a nation. Those who use the term in this way either are not thinking or do not realize that the national question can change under capitalism. For the term “American exceptionalism” refers to someone like Jay Lovestone who holds that the capitalist economy of the United States is exempt from the general laws of capitalism, such as that crises are inevitable, irreconcilable class conflict exists, etc. But no Marxist holds that as soon as a national question arises in some capitalist country, it can never dissolve until capitalism is overthrown. While we know much about a country as soon as we know that it is capitalist, we do not know whether or not it has national questions among its people. That requires more investigation, to which we now turn.

In order to demonstrate that the black people in the United States do not constitute a nation, we shall concentrate primarily on two of the characteristics mentioned by Stalin–community of territory and community of economic life.

Have the black people a community of territory, their national territory? The usual candidate proposed for this territory is the Black Belt. “Black Belt” refers not to the skin color of the inhabitants, but to ”the rich and fertile black soil that stretches 1,600 miles long and 300 miles deep” in an arc through the South, between the coastal strip and the mountain backbone of that region of the country. (Negro National Colonial Question, p. 46.) This is a compact, continuous community of territory.

But is it the national territory of the black people? No, it is not. To determine where the black people in the South might find their national territory, let us look at “all districts of the South where the majority of the settled population consists of Negroes.” This definition of candidate territory for the black nation is taken from the 1930 resolution of the Communist International on the Negro question in the United States (section 6b). Obviously, the territory of a black nation should be territory whose population is more black than white–that is, over 50%.

On the map on page 34 are shown all the counties of the South where black people constitute 50% or more of the population. Several facts are notable:

(1) These counties do not coincide with the Black Belt. While they are generally, although not universally, within this belt, they make up only a portion of the entire Black Belt.
(2) These counties are not a community of territory. On the contrary, they are widely scattered, disconnected fragments.
(3) These counties are not where the black people of the U.S. are concentrated. The black population in them a-mounted at the time of the 1970 Census, the source of our data, to 1,088,453. This is 4.8% of the black population of the United States. Less than one black person in twenty lives in these counties! This is less than 9.2% of the black population in the South alone. Not one black person in ten in the South lives here.
(4) Even in these counties, over 40% of the population is white. In other words, it is impossible, even ruling out most counties, to find a substantial area in which black people are the overwhelming proportion of the population.
(5) This candidate territory for the black nation has been shrinking rapidly. If we rely on the statistics in Red Papers V for 1900 and 1950, then we find that the counties of the South in which the population is 50% or more black have shrunk rapidly in number and populations:

Year….Counties…………Number blacks

1900…. 286……………….4 million
1950…..158…………….... 2 million
1970…. 105…………….... 1 million

Due to the dispersion of black people throughout the United States, these counties have declined in number. Furthermore, their black population took 50 years from 1900 to 1950 to drop by half, but then only another twenty years, from 1950 to 1970, were required for the black population to drop by half again. Since a nation must exist today for the argument of the liberal racists and nationalists, it is important in light of such rapid change to use current figures. Figures even from the 1960 Census are inadequate and out dated.[1]

In short, the notion that there is a community of territory upon which a “black nation” lives does not correspond to the facts. And the material basis of a nation must be a matter of fact.

Where are the black people in the United States? They are widely scattered. There are 500,000 in Los Angeles and 660,000 in Detroit. There are 380,000 in Manhattan (primarily Harlem), but 1,668,000 in all five boroughs of New York City. In fact, the cities in which more than half a million black people reside are the following:

Chicago……………………………………….1,103,000
Detroit………………………………………… 660,000
Los Angeles………………………………….... 504,000
New York City…………………………….... 1,668,000
(Manhattan………………………………….....380,000)
Philadelphia…………………………………...654,000
Washington, D.C…………………………........538,000
Total……………………………………........5,127,000
or 22.7% of all black people in the United States. (Source: Statistical Abstract, 1972, pp. 21ff., taken from 1970 Census.)

But it must not be concluded that black people are solely urban people. Over 18%, or more than one in six, live in rural areas. Within the metropolitan areas, most live in central cities, but over 21% do not. (Statistical Abstract, p. 16, and 1970 Census) (U.S. Summary General Social and Economic Characteristics, table 142)

In short, the black people are dispersed throughout the United States; at the same time, they are at the heart of the population (e.g., in the central cities). This distribution is the very opposite of a separate national community of territory.

Since to be a nation a people must possess all the national characteristics listed by Stalin, the lack of this aspect alone, community of territory, proves that the black people in the United States do not constitute a nation.

However, to contrast the nationalist analysis with the class analysis, which is the heart of Marxism, let us also consider whether the black people possess a community of economic life. This should confirm the accuracy of the class analysis of racism and underline the erroneous and anti-Marxist nature of the pro-nationalist analysis.

Frequently the candidate for the economy of the black nation is taken to be an agricultural economy. Because much Marxist discussion of the national question has revolved around the peasant question (although the peasant question does not exhaust the national question), nationalists seeking to dress their outlook in Marxist clothing sometimes attempt to portray the black national economy as one anchored in agriculture.

Of all black families (5,272,000), only 141,000 or slightly over 2.5% are farm families. (Statistical Abstract, p. 41.) Let us look at the sum of black people engaged in farm occupations (farmer, farm manager, farm laborer or foreman). These persons number less than 200,000 and constitute less than 3% of all black persons whose occupations were reported. Not one black person in 33 is engaged in agriculture. (U.S. Census, General Summary, table 81.) Even within the South, such persons represent less than 5.5% of the black population. (Table 133.) Neither in the South nor the U.S. as a whole are the black people engaged in agriculture. The notion that black people are based nationally in an agricultural economy is therefore patently untrue.

We must stress again the importance of current statistics , for the number of black persons in agriculture has been declining rapidly. As recently as 1960, there were three times more black persons engaged in farm occupations than in 1970, despite the smaller total black population then. (Table 81.)

What is a separate economy, a distinct community of economic life? The essence of Marxist economic analysis is the analysis of the relations of production. To find an economy of a black nation, we must find a separate productive system. Do the black people possess such an economy in the United States? The answer is, obviously not. The black people are, first of all, overwhelmingly workers (wage and salary earners)–over 96% of them. (Census, table 133.) And they are workers in a single United States economy.

They work for the same employers, the same capitalist class, as do white workers in the United States. And it is impossible to identify a separate output produced by black workers. Instead, black people are dispersed throughout the U.S. economy. One could certainly not, for example, classify the 21% of the black labor force that is employed by the federal, state and local governments as part of a black economy. And while dispersed throughout the economy, black people are also, with a portion of the white workers, at the heart of the economy. Their 25-35% representation in blue-collar work and in basic industries is well known. The situation is thus the same as with the question of territory; the distribution is the very opposite of a national community of economic life.

Reference is sometimes made to the black consumer market as evidence of a separate economy. The very use of such a criterion betrays the non-Marxist approach of the analyst, for economic life is defined by relations of production, not channels of distribution and consumption. Consumption is governed by production. In particular, black people in the United States buy goods produced by the same producers, the same corporations, as do people in general in the U.S. And black people buy pretty much the same goods as do white workers, although the quantities are not the same, due to income differences. The same automobiles, the same breakfast cereals, the same shoes are purchased by black people (in general) and white workers. Only the very rich enjoy consumption goods markedly different from both black people and white workers. Indeed, it is a lament among black cultural nationalists that it is impossible for very long to promote a style of consumption among black people that is not soon diffused throughout wide strata of the (predominantly white) population of the country. But aside from the merger of culture, it is clear on the economic point that the claim to a separate black community of economic life completely denies the facts of the matter.

In some channels of distribution, in finance and in some service industries, there are some black merchants, bankers, professionals and small businessmen. Their activities consist of distributing goods manufactured by black and white workers in corporate manufacturing, gathering savings from black people into “black banks” at the mercy of the large banks of finance capital, and operating in a fringe area of services largely of a personal nature (barbers, morticians, clergy, etc.). This does not constitute a black economy. These persons neither employ many black people nor do they market a large percentage of the goods sold to black people. Much as they may wish, this black bourgeoisie is so small and so weak economically that they have not even begun to create a black national question in the United States.

To sum up, there is no black nation in the United States. At least two of the necessary characteristics, community of territory and of economic life, are absent. The nationalists and liberal racists have no material basis for their alleged explanation of the oppression of black people. This oppression can only be explained by the differences capitalist employers maintain between the conditions of black and white workers. The capitalists have seized on one or another historical and accidental factor (such as skin color), basing their tactics upon such factors. But the essence of their tactic is to maintain these material differences and, on this material base, racist ideologies. For they profit greatly thereby–not only in the lower wages paid black workers, but in the generally lower wages which all workers suffer when disunited in their struggle against capital. Here is the full magnitude of the root of the oppression of black people–not in the byways of tortured, incorrect, and sometimes deceptive notions of a black nation.

Having reviewed the facts of the case with regard to territory and economy, let us now briefly take up a few of the arguments sometimes used to try to make these facts weigh upward into the clouds instead of down to earth.

Sometimes persons who quota statistics, which compare quantities, follow the disappointing results (from the pro-nationalist point of view) with denials of the importance of figures. Thus, we are told, “The size of the peasantry is not the primary factor. As long as a peasantry exists, a nation will remain anchored to a given territory.” (Negro National Colonial Question, p. 59. ) In other words, one person in 33, not the other 32, defines a nation. However, these persons then admit that what exists is not a real anchor of a nation but a fantasy in their own mind. They say, “...the Negro national colonial question can only be solved by a return of the land to the people who have toiled over it for centuries.” (P. 60.) Since the people are not on the land, the land can only be returned to the people if the people are returned to the land. That is, 32 out of 33 black people, scattered across the United States in nonagricultural occupations, must uproot themselves and resettle as farmers. The people must make the fantasy come true.

Another attempt to deny the results of statistical inquiry is made in the following analogy. To deny the dispersion of the black people throughout the U.S. over the last 100 years, the Communist League writes,

More than five million Irish have immigrated to the U.S.N.A. [United States of North America] most of them coming during the period of the Potato Famine in Ireland. Just because only four million remain, does this spell the end of the Irish nation? Of course not! Only a fool would reason otherwise. (P. 44.)

Of course, there are more considerations: –the land of Ireland is inhabited almost entirely by Irish, whereas even in their majority counties, the black people constitute less than 60% of the population; –few argue that there is a direct national connection between the fate of the Irish today in the U.S. and the Irish in Ireland. Yet the pro-nationalists obviously wish to regard all blacks in the U.S. as affected by a single national question; –the ratio of black people within and outside the counties of over 50% black population is one to nineteen, which is not exactly comparable to a ratio of four to five.

The writers then go on to quote figures not about the majority black counties nor the Black Belt, but about the “entire South (that region south of the Mason-Dixon line)”. This is another tactic of confusion rampant in most discussions of the alleged black nation. Namely, this is the unsystematic and inadmissible shifting of ground throughout the discussion. There is an interplay, arranged for maximum convenience, between the Black Belt and the South, between Southern region and farming patterns, between the Black Belt and the “dependent” economic areas, between Southern blacks and “Negro national minority.”

The analysis of these people begins with a confusion between the Black Belt, an agricultural area defined by soil characteristics, and the black national territory, which we have seen can only refer to a few counties which do not cover the Black Belt at all. The Black Belt is then enlarged by reference to “the economically dependent” areas around it. Of course, no argument is given that the surrounding areas are dependent on the Black Belt; one could assert as much that the Black Belt is dependent on the surrounding industrial, shipping and other areas. Often in the elaboration of this trail of confusion, economic statistics about geographical areas are quoted as if they characterized an agricultural economy of black people–another falsehood, as we have seen. Finally, with no justification except the convenience of U.S. Census definitions of regions, “the South” is smuggled in and virtually equated to the black nation. Some people may feel that the step by step confusion of facts is very dialectical. But a fantasy constructed step by step is the same thing as a fantasy drawn in one grand sweep– it is still a fantasy, not a matter of fact.

Finally, the majority of black people in the U.S., who live outside the 105 counties of the black nation, are called “the Negro national minority” in the oppressor white nation. After speaking for hours about the one black in twenty who lives in the “black nation,” the existence of the other nineteen is acknowledged momentarily as the Negro national minority. Some things are said about them that are obviously wrong; others are true. These statements amount to a backhanded acknowledgment of the truth of the class analysis of racism: black workers are given worse jobs and lower pay as the employer attempts to increase his profits with divide-and-rule tactics. An imperfect statement of this fact is given: “In short, Negro national minority workers were pulled into industry to do the jobs no one else would do under the speed-up conditions and poor wages the capitalists were offering.” (Negro National Colonial Question, p. 92.) All that remains is to recognize that racism is a capitalist divide-and-rule tactic, with a material base and with systematic ideological support in the capitalist machinery of fraud. Racism cannot be explained as a byproduct of a nonexistent black nation.

These weak arguments comprise one way to distort the question of racism along nationalist and liberal racist lines. Almost because of their flimsy nature, such arguments can practically be excused and even laughed at, if the question were not such a serious one. What is worse than these crude statistical and logical contradictions, however, is the opposite attack on a Marxist class analysis–namely, the distortion of Marxism-Leninism to purvey the pro-nationalist line. In this category must be placed such notions as the “nation of a new type” (the Revolutionary Union), the “nation within a nation” (of the old Communist Party), and the oppressed “nationality” (October League).

The Revolutionary Union, for example, is able to recognize many facts about the black people’s geographic dispersion and economic relationships. The R.U. might have recognized that the black people do not comprise a nation. But the R.U. rejects the class analysis of racism; it believes in the existence of white skin privilege. It was determined to hold on to nationalism and so it invented the term, nation of a new type. This is nothing but revisionism. It is the manufacture of nations without any regard for a material basis of a nation. First, the R.U. quotes Stalin to introduce the idea that national questions can change. This is true, of course. In particular, it can disappear, even under capitalism, for given peoples. For example, the German national question was solved in the 1860’s and 1870’s, under capitalism. But the R.U. talks of change only to deny change; it is determined that nationalism and liberal racism shall not disappear. “By ’nation of a new type’ we mean a nation under new conditions.” (Red Papers V, p. 31.)

The new conditions turn out to be conditions of non-nationhood. Thus, the black nation is a “proletarian nation, dispersed throughout the U.S...” (P. 33.) That is, it turns out that Stalin was wrong to require that a nation have a community of territory; exactly the opposite will do as well. What proves the existence of this nation? It is “the fact that the national consciousness of Black people ...is higher than it ever has been.” (P. 33.) That is, nationalist consciousness proves the existence of a nation in material fact. This is overt idealism–ideas create material things. Of course, the R.U. is deceiving itself. The anger of black workers at racist inequality is strong–and it is a growing class-consciousness, not nationalist consciousness.

Where does Stalin imply, for example, that nations can ever be divorced from a specific community of territory? Did he state that his five criteria, listed in 1913, were relative and might change under different conditions? In fact, did Marxists see any need to abandon those criteria of nations, including community of territory, when the focus of the national question shifted from European nationalities to colonies? Neither the R.U. nor anyone else can find affirmative answers or even mild encouragement for any of those positions in the writings of Lenin and Stalin. While both teachers made sure to point out that change in the form of national oppression might bring changes in the national question, they defined and designated nations for the entire historical epoch of capitalism. They further designated the right of self-determination as the only correct demand for all oppressed nations. Now the R.U. wants to be “historically concrete” and deny that nations are nations.

To recap: to talk about the national question, there must be a nation. There are definite material criteria for the existence of a nation. The black people in the U.S. are not a nation; they do not have at least two required characteristics –community of territory and community of economic life. But racism exists. Its material basis is the system of economic and social inequality imposed by the capitalist class. The capitalist class uses all available occasions to push racism; it bases racist fraud on the material differences between black and white workers which it works so hard to maintain. Liberal racism and nationalism are forms of racist ideology, based upon an implicit denial of the fact that all workers have a material interest in fighting racism.

Endnote

[1]These statistics are based on the definition of candidate territory used by the Communist International–districts where 50% or more of the settled population is black. Sometimes other definitions are proposed. Two of them are 1) counties in which a substantial minority–30% or more–of the population is black, or 2) the counties of the ”Black Belt.” But the dispersion of the black people is a fact, and this fact cannot be changed by any definitions. Let us examine briefly the picture given by these two definitions.

In 1970, the U.S. Census showed:

………………………………………...........…..Counties 30% black(a)………..“Black Belt” counties(b)

Number of black persons ………………………………4,883,786 …………………………4,302,914
Number of white persons…………………………….....7,110,967 …………………………..6,966,697
Giving a black percentage of .. ………………………… 41% …………………………....... 38%
These blacks represented as a percentage of all blacks
in the United States ……………………………...............22% ……………………………...19%
And as a percentage of blacks
in the South ………………………………………..……41%.................................................. 36%

(a) Omitting St. Luck County in southern Florida well outside any candidate territory.
(b) As listed in Allen, The Negro Question in the United States.

It is merely a matter of postponing the inevitable. The 30% counties are not the home of most black people, and they are headed along the same route as the 50% counties; it is the same picture, only lagging in historical time.