Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center

Racism in the Communist Movement


Resolutions on White Chauvinism in the OC


C. Resolution on Taking up the Struggle Against White Chauvinism

1. White comrades need to play the leading, primary role in the struggle against white chauvinism within the OC. This is for two reasons:
(a) When white comrades see the struggle against racism in their own self-interest and therefore seriously take it up and lead the struggle against it, this represents a real advance in the struggle against racism and in the party-building movement. Multinational unity is built as national minority comrades see white comrades taking up this struggle as their own, rather than just seeing it as the “problem of national minorities”.
(b) White comrades, when they face their own white chauvinism, are in the best position to expose it and win other white comrades to seeing white chauvinism in themselves.

2. Therefore, the conspiracy of white chauvinism within the OC needs to be broken down. This conspiracy has been serious and widespread since the OC’s inception. It is the liberalism of white comrades not struggling with racist errors of other white comrades based on the tacit agreement, “I won’t criticize your racism so you won’t criticize mine.” It’s an unprincipled, opportunistic peace with white chauvinism that serves to maintain the “solidarity of race”, i.e., white comrades not wanting to break the pact of bourgeois racial solidarity. Breaking down this conspiracy is key to moving the struggle against white chauvinism forward.

3. Throughout the history of the OC, right errors have been primary in taking up the struggle against white chauvinism. There has been a virtual liquidation of the struggle against racism in the OC. This underestimation of the grip of white chauvinism on white comrades is rooted in the bourgeois viewpoint of white chauvinism and the bourgeois method of empiricism. White comrades have seen white chauvinism as something outside them, only to be combatted in backward, racist white workers, and have seen “anti-racist practice” as the way to draw national minorities into the OC. Therefore, they have underestimated the impact of white chauvinism on not only their practice of drawing national minorities into the OC but also their practice of winning white workers to the struggle against racism.

4. Left errors have also been made recently by white comrades in carrying out the struggle against white chauvinism. They are rooted in the bourgeois viewpoint of white chauvinism and the bourgeois method of idealism, which looks at ideas separate from practice. They have taken the form of writing off comrades who are struggling but having real difficulty in looking at their white chauvinism, negating positive steps forward on the part of white comrades, using organizational means to resolve the struggle, etc. These, as do right errors, hold back the struggle against white chauvinism.

5. As with all right and left errors, unless we get at their ideological roots, in this case, white chauvinism, white comrades will go back and forth between making right and left errors in taking up the struggle against racism in the OC.

6. Defensiveness has been one of the most serious expressions of white chauvinism in taking up this struggle in he OC. It is white comrades’ white chauvinism and refusal to look at it and struggle against it that leads to using the following defenses:
a. Deflection is a defense whereby comrades claim it was anything and everything but white chauvinism that led them to make racist errors. Comrades create all sorts of excuses, lines, blame others to hold up the process, take the focus off of the struggle against their white chauvinism.
The most common form of deflection within the OC has been creating criticisms and lines that those leading the struggle have used “unprincipled methods”, been “left-sectarian” or bureaucratic centralist. Theoretical justifications have developed to avoid dealing with one’s white chauvinism, e.g., you need well-developed political line on racism and/or the national question before you can take up the struggle against white chauvinism.
b. Moralizing and breastbeating is whereby white comrades see themselves as horrible, bad people for their racist errors. They fail to be materialists and see the white chauvinism as bourgeois ideology with roots in capitalism. They get wrapped up in self-pity, demoralization, feeling like a victim. It is a defense because they are in essence pleading for liberalism.
c. Lying is an obvious way to get out of a criticism of white chauvinism. Sometimes it’s outright lies, often more subtle forms of lying, such as choosing not to remember, putting out half-truths, or not being honest by agreeing with a criticism when one doesn’t really agree.
d. Hiding out is the defense used any time a comrade is unwilling to say or do something for fear it will reveal their white chauvinism. There are many different ways to hide one’s white chauvinism.
e. Posturing is putting on a show of struggling with white chauvinism rather than seriously trying to move forward the struggle against white chauvinism in oneself and others. If comrades can put on a good enough act, they can defend their own white chauvinism from being struggled with. Posturing in the form of being “the great anti-racist fighter” usually leads to left errors, while posturing in the form of giving a self-criticism when it’s inappropriate for moving another comrade forward usually leads to right errors.
f. White flight is when comrades openly refuse to deal with criticisms of their white chauvinism. Comrades refuse to struggle, and often leave the OC, their local organization, etc.

7. All comrades using these defenses are saying it’s more important to hold onto their white chauvinism than have national minorities play a strong role in leading the party-building movement forward. They’re choosing to maintain the character and composition of the OC as it is; choosing to hold back the party-building movement, and choosing to give up Marxism-Leninism rather than struggle against white chauvinism. All defenses of white chauvinism must be sharply struggled against.