Workers World, Vol. 17, No. 22, May 30, 1975
NEW YORK, May 23 -- On May 17, the NAACP, in conjunction with other organizations, organized a huge rally in Boston to mark the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision which was supposed to ban segregation in the public schools. The rally was to protest the failure to implement the court's decision.
There has been a steady stream of reversals of this decision engendered by the high-pitched campaign against busing which has made Boston a symbol of racist hysteria. Indeed, the ruling class succeeded by the use of the anti-busing slogan to transform the school desegregation issue from a political question into a transportation problem.
There have been all too few significant rallies protesting racism arising from the busing issue. Even this rally probably would not have taken place had it not been for the initiative taken by Youth Against War Fascism along with other organizations in organizing the march of last December 14 which mobilized about 25,000 people, giving a tremendous impetus to the struggle and in some measure setting back the racist hysteria.
It might seem inconceivable that more than 70 years since Lenin first began his celebrated polemics against Rosa Luxemburg and others on the right of nations to self-determination and the struggle against chauvinism there would be Marxist-Leninist groupings in this country who, while sounding the tocsins for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and imperialism, find themselves on the same side objectively as the racists.
Yet a year ago, one of these groupings, the Revolutionary Union (RU), opened a violent tirade against busing in its paper Revolution with the utterly incredible and fantastic headline, "Smash Busing." Except for the verbiage contained in a long and confused article, it seemed a clarion call to line up with the racists.
This year, October League (OL), which shares the same general political line as RU (both are for Mao and also for Stalin), proclaimed the necessity for boycotting the NAACP rally. The basis for the boycott, they claim, is that the rally was organized by "assimilationist leadership." OL had previously attacked RU for its racist line and stood firm on the right of Black children to go to any schools that white children can.
This present position on the NAACP rally is, in reality, a capitulation to the same forces of reaction and racism which gripped RU and which earlier had also caught Progressive Labor, the Labor Committee, and several other groupings, all of whom are opposed to self-determination. OL's boycott of the NAACP rally shows that it is gravitating in the same direction, although from the opposite point of view.
Let us examine the issue of assimilation as expounded by Lenin.
It is the right of every oppressed people to demand and obtain self-determination, including the right of separation. Marxist-Leninists in the oppressing nation must firmly uphold this right, which includes the right of the oppressed nation to secede and set up a separate state.
But Marxist-Leninists must not advocate it or foist any kind of separatism upon an oppressed nation. It is up to the oppressed nation to decide its own destiny. The business of Marxist-Leninists, of Communists, is to firmly and resolutely prosecute the class war and fight for class solidarity between workers of the oppressing and oppressed nationalities.
From the point of view of the socialist future of humanity, the victory of socialism based on the solidarity of the working classes of the world will ultimately lead to an amalgamation of all the nations of the world. Unquestionably, it will also lead, on the basis of socialist solidarity and equality of all nations, to gradual assimilation of the nations of the world.
This concept, however, differs wholly from the concept of forced assimilation which is practiced by the oppressing imperialist nation against the oppressed. Their aim is to subjugate the oppressed, deprive them of their cultural heritage, reduce them to second-class citizenship or no citizenship at all, and foist upon them the language and the literature which is that of the oppressing ruling class.
Revolutionary Marxists and progressive people generally must fight against what amounts to cultural and national genocide. What has happened to the Native Americans of this country, the Chicano people, the Puerto Rican people, and the Black people is a clear-cut example of the damage U.S. imperialism has inflicted on the oppressed in the United States.
It is only in the last few years that some measure of alleviation has taken place in this area, so that Spanish-speaking people in New York City, for example, are given some opportunity to be taught in their own language -- something which is literally ABC in socialist countries like the USSR and China.
But while Revolutionary Marxists must stand firm against any repression in the direction of depriving oppressed peoples of their own culture and nationality, they must at the same time not oppose efforts by oppressed nationalities to demand rights which members of the oppressing nation have, even if this be regarded as assimilationist, as long as that is what they prefer, if that is a voluntary choice. This is part and parcel of the Marxist position on the right of a nation to determine its own destiny part of self-determination.
It is the oppressed people's right to choose, and it is the obligation of Marxists in the oppressing nation to vigorously support and relentlessly defend that right. A Native American, a Chicano, or a Puerto Rican must be afforded the same right to partake of all that exists in America, to the same degree as members of the oppressing nation. In other words, Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Native American people have the right to choose. And it is for the whites to support that right, not to foist the choice upon them.
The duty of revolutionary Marxists is to preach the class struggle, to fight the class war, and unite Black, white, Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Native American, in a unified multi-national party to fight the poisonous racism and overthrow the capitalist system of exploitation which breeds it.
Now coming back to the boycott of the rally. A Black organization, for instance the Black Muslims who have a separatist perspective and advocate a separate state, have a right if they prefer to exercise it to boycott the NAACP rally because they do not want to support any activities which might conceivably hinder their perspective.
We, of course, don't agree with their general ideology. We are Marxist-Leninists. But they have a right to preach and propound their doctrine. And we are duty bound to defend that right whenever the bourgeoisie, its politicians, and its lackeys attack them merely because they advocate a separate state. (The Black Muslims may today have somewhat modified their views but this is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.)
It is altogether different, however, with a predominantly white organization or a multi-national organization, which presumes to stand on the ground of Marxism. It is duty bound to accord the same right, and defend that right, to assimilationists as to separatists. To boycott one (in this case the NAACP rally) is to make a choice for separatism.
Now, OL had every right not to attend the rally for whatever reasons they may have had. But to boycott it because it was assimilationist in character does violence to the principle of self-determination and is objectively a surrender to racism.
It should be added that, like millions of Black people generally, many of the supporters and organizers of this rally are neither assimilationists nor separatists, but simply came there for the purpose of protesting the savage repression of the rights of Black people as evidenced by the monstrous segregationist decision of the Boston School Committee.
It is common for ultra-radical groupings to cover opportunism with left phrases and to attack such a rally for its reformist leadership, etc. No one, of course, could conceivably mistake Roy Wilkins or Tom Atkins for flaming revolutionaries. And anyone who expected anything along that line at the rally is simply not living in this world. But the rally, as a protest against the government's deliberate efforts to deprive Black children of the right to go to the same schools as white children, was progressive and should have been supported.
In that sense, support for the rally and its participants would seem elementary. It would by no means deprive any tendencies of the right to differentiate themselves politically from the reformist bourgeois propaganda that usually accompanies these rallies. Until the radical movement can organize a more progressive, more militant and anti-capitalist rally which can command thousands of Black and white workers, it will be only common sense to show a presence at them as well as genuine support, regardless of differences in political approach.
What OL did in this instance with its deliberate boycott was to arrogate to itself, a supposedly multi-national organization, the right to determine whether Black people should have an assimilationist or separatist perspective. It did this notwithstanding that all of Marxism and Leninism speaks volumes on maintaining strict neutrality on this issue until the oppressed nation itself makes a decision, while at the same time fighting for class solidarity and socialist revolution.
Naturally, Workers World, as a multi-national workers' party, supported the march. We not only made a significant presence, but were able to take advantage of the large number of people to disseminate our literature and viewpoint.
The Supreme Court decision of 1954 was not necessarily an assimilationist edict. It was a long, long overdue affirmation by the court of an elementary bourgeois democratic right. The struggle against segregated schools, no matter under what leadership, likewise is not necessarily assimilationist in character, any more than the struggle against "white only" signs in washrooms in factories where millions of American workers toil.
Last updated: 11 May 2026