Workers World, Vol. 1 No. 5
Dear Comrade:
I think that the Negro movement is on the verge of a tremendous leap forward. The reaction to the Tallahassee and Mississippi events appear to us all here to herald a new dawn, a new resurgence of the Negro people in America. But these same events have also raised the crucial questions of tactics and strategy in sharper form.
Rob Williams demonstrated this dramatically when he made his now famous statement about meeting “violence with violence.” Actually, Williams’ remark (as later clarified) was a splendid summary of the position we have been advocating both inside and outside the radical movement.
It is a living confirmation of the correctness of our position and a symptom of the mood that prevails throughout the most conscious layers of the Negro population. But it is also a challenge to the progressive whites, and to ourselves above all.
The movement cannot be successful, as you well know, unless it finds a staunch, reliable ally in the working class, or at least in some section of it. This is the problem of problems.
Twice before in American history, there have been great events which have propelled the Negro masses on to the historical arena, and showed the world how the masses can take their destiny into their own hands.
The first one was, of course, the period of Reconstruction, that mighty mass movement, the like of which has not yet been seen again in this country. That it foundered and collapsed was not only due to the treachery of the Northern bourgeoisie. That historical fact is only too well known to all who have studied Negro history from a class point of view.
But there was a far more important fact – for us Marxists especially. There was a near-Marxist party in existence at the time [Workingmen’s Party of the United States, later renamed the Social Labor Party]. It was founded in 1876 – just around the time the Reconstruction period had reached its high water mark. This party adhered to the tenets of the class struggle, was for the abolition of the capitalist system, and preached unity of the Negro and white workers.
Now we all know that its Marxism was of a platonic sort, and in retrospect, it is easy to see that its major deficiency was its lack of understanding of the Negro question. And of course this deficiency was rooted in the prevailing historical conditions.
But even so, it confronted a giant mass movement encompassing millions. Here were millions of people struggling with might and main for liberation, and susceptible to the most revolutionary solution for their problems. And here also was a party that stood for the abolition of capitalism, for the abolition of all slavery, both chattel and wage.
Why couldn’t this party, with all its defects, with all its shortcomings, with all its lack of comprehension of the exceptional significance of the Negro question for the Socialist struggle – why couldn’t it have stretched out a firm hand in an unbreakable alliance with these revolutionary masses against their common foe?
That this party did not do so, we all know now. And the reasons given above are generally accepted as valid by all who regard themselves as Marxists and Leninists.
But there is something that must be said that is not in the books; something that is usually glossed over, and not all fully appreciated. It is this:
The party feared political isolation from the bulk of the white masses. This fear of isolation constituted a fundamental, underlying consideration in its attitude to the Negroes, and constituted an unavoidable problem for the leadership. The problem was solved by ignoring it.
The reason why it is important for us to bring this up now is that this problem has never left the various working class parties that have existed in this country since. It is still with us.
Now, this fear of isolation from the more backward majority is not a psychological phenomenon by any means. It is deeply rooted in the material conditions of exploitation, and is reflected socially and politically in the widespread prevalence of white chauvinism which seeps down from the summits of the ruling class to all strata of capitalist society, and sticks like an incubus to the body of the labor movement.
We must review the period of Reconstruction, the period of the greatest upsurge of the Negro people, in the light of today’s problem. Here, we must review it from the viewpoint of the subjective factor of history; namely, the relation of the party to the mass movement. Viewed in that light – three quarters of a century later – a new lesson emerges.
It is this:
At a time of the greatest upsurge of the Negro masses, there existed in this country a socialist, near-Marxist party that was for the overthrow of the capitalist system and preached unity of the Negro and white workers, but completely overlooked the tidal wave of Negro rebellion.
This party was not a thoroughgoing, revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist party. Such could not exist at that time. But neither was it – and this is important – the naïve, simple-headed, sectarian little group of socialists that it is sometimes depicted, which could not at all grasp the character of the issues involved in the upsurge of the Negro masses.
And this party missed the great revolutionary opportunity during Reconstruction. This missing of a revolutionary situation decided the fate of the Negro people for decades to come. It meant the defeat of a revolution.
The defeat of a revolution, if it was a decisive defeat (and here it was), usually lasts for a long, long time to come. And partly as a result of that defeat, a new chain of historical circumstances takes shape and brings with it new problems.
Now, the defeat of the revolutionary movement of the Negro people during Reconstruction, and the dismantling of the petty-bourgeois revolutionary dictatorship that was set up by the Northern bourgeoisie over the Southern Bourbons, was an event very much akin to the modern defeats of the proletariat.
(I refer to the catastrophe suffered by the German proletariat at the hand of Hitler in 1933, and that of the Spanish proletariat by Franco in 1936, both of which were so brilliantly analyzed by Trotsky.)
But this defeat of the Negro people during Reconstruction had a more lasting effect than any other modern catastrophe of the oppressed.
It wasn’t until the very early twenties that a revival of the Negro liberations movement took form, captured the imagination of millions of Negroes, particularly the poorest and most downtrodden. This was the Garvey movement.
I needn’t tell you of the defects of the Garvey movement as a nationalist movement. That, every petty bourgeois radical will be able to tell you quickly enough.
But what is missed in the analysis of the Garvey movement, what is glossed over, and deliberately falsified, is that it had a tremendous revolutionary potential for the entire working class in America. It represented the movement of millions of precisely the most oppressed, most poverty-stricken, and the most disinherited of the capitalist system, and let it be remembered, the most proletarian sections of the Negro people.
Its program was altogether false; it was shot through and through with the most naïve illusions; its leaders were in essence bourgeois nationalist. We all know this. But all this was of secondary historical significance – given a revolutionary party that accurately understood the social nature and direction of the movement. But there was no such party in America.
Let’s never forget that this movement really got going, roughly speaking, only after the Russian Revolution and through its impetus.
The Communist movement at that time was not only too young, but woefully incompetent to take the revolutionary movement of the Negro people and direct it into a proletarian class channel.
As a result, the movement suffered the historical fate of all movements like it. And the tempestuous nationalist ferment which it engendered (Trotsky, as you know, called this the “yeast” of the socialist revolution), disintegrated and vanished into thin air.
But some of our petty-bourgeois radicals, historians, etc. would have us believe that it was only the program of the Garvey movement that was responsible for this, or the nature of the personality that was leading it.
Actually, it was the failure of the revolutionary party of the workers to fully comprehend the social character of this movement, and its colossal importance for the socialist revolution.
Both the Reconstruction period and the Garvey period ended in frustration. (The period of the ‘30s and the rise of the CIO, I purposely omit at this time.)
But now dawns a new epoch for the Negro people. Shall there be a repetition of the old pattern? That is the real issue.
At first glance the pattern seems to have actually deepened. The new upsurge of the Negro masses coincides with the continuing stagnation of the official labor movement, and with the virtual demoralization and disintegration of the older radical groupings. But what seems to be a deepening is in reality a preparation for breaking the pattern.
Here is why:
The mass movement of rebellion, only simmering in the North, but on the verge of boiling over in the South, holds great revolutionary potentiality for the party of the proletariat – for the party that is willing at all costs to identify itself completely and wholly without reservations and without limitations, and is not in fear of isolation, precisely because it has confidence in the future.
The bankruptcy of the old parties and the crusted conservatism of the official labor leaders does not reflect the feelings of the toiling white masses one hundredth as much as the “leaders” imagine. We understand the white workers very well, including their prejudices. But we also understand their revolutionary potential, and we are not going to adapt ourselves to their prejudices. In this way, we will gain their following and their full confidence at a later date.
Here it is not only a question of program; it is a question of will and determination. For he who wills the objective, must will the means thereto!!!!
The will to struggle requires of course methods of struggle. But the choice of methods is itself a sign of how strong the will is.
Practically all the bourgeois liberal friends of the Negroes – that is, after Williams’ statement mind you, not before – now say that the Negroes have a right to self-defense. We congratulate them on this wonderful discovery!
But of all the groups who now pay lip service to the right of Negroes to self-defense, not one single solitary one has come out for the SYSTEMATIC ORGANIZATION of DEFENSE GUARDS ON A MASS SCALE. Not one of them has raised this as a slogan. Not one of them pushed it to the fore as the urgent task of the whole labor movement. Not one of them called for white workers to help this self-defense!
The question of Defense Guards, of arming the people, is the most critical of all the questions. This is not a matter of exposing individuals to legal or illegal attacks. On the contrary, it is a matter of mass self-preservation by mass action. Whoever evades this issue is not serious about the liberation of the Negro people from capitalist enslavement. He who does not will the means thereto, cannot will the objective.
And here is an international phenomenon observed in all revolutions of the oppressed peoples.
The movement gets the sympathy and the support of the mass of the petty-bourgeois radicals and socialists only after the oppressed peoples themselves have first shed their own blood, and that by the thousands. It is only then that these allies awaken, begin to stir, become sympathetic, become humanitarian and are ready to sacrifice.
Would anyone have had any sympathy for the people of the tiny island of Cyprus had they not for almost five years carried on what appeared to be an impossible, utterly hopeless struggle, against overwhelming odds? Would the people of Nyasaland be heard of in the imperialist press at all?
American radicals in particular are ready to applaud struggles abroad, especially if they are victorious ones! It is right here at home, in America – which Trotsky called the “foundry where the fate of mankind will be forged” – that the most decisive class battles will take place.
The movement of the Negro people is an indispensable condition for this. And woe to us and to the destiny of the American labor movement if we fail to understand it.
No matter how backward the workers, Negro or white, may appear to be; no matter how saturated they may be with bourgeois propaganda, they are never as backward as the petty bourgeoisie.
The white workers of the North are not free of prejudices, as the Negro masses well understand. But even the most ignorant and “backward” of them shall be stirred to action in defense of equality. We cannot predict at what exact point this unity will be forged. But it will be forged.
Ten years ago we said that the center of revolutionary gravity was moving East when it had engulfed a quarter of the human race in China. We said it was moving still further “East” when the Arabian revolution began to show signs of sparking the entire African continent. But the East is finally reaching the West, and igniting the long dormant flames of America’s hinterland. In these flames Reconstruction will be reborn. Socialism will triumph.
Therein lies the historical justification for our orientation and for our world historical perspective.
With supreme confidence,
Sam Marcy
Last updated: 11 May 2026