Markin comment:
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Ten: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Ghost Dance-Late 1969
Damn I missed Angelica, road-worthy, road-easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us a ride Angelica as I traveled down that Interstate 80 exit out onto the great prairie Mid-American hitchhike road after we parted at the Omaha bus station, she heading home East and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. And every ride after than, every miserable truck stopped or sedan ride, it didn’t matter, made me utter that same oath.
Here I am though well clear of that prairie fire dream now in sweet desert night Arizona not far from some old Native American dwellings that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath. Sitting by this night camp fire casting its weird ghost night like shadows just makes it worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies”, Jack and Mattie, playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone. Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Angelica and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here from that star-crossed Neola night. Jesus, and only a few hundred miles from the ocean that I can almost smell. That only makes the Angelica hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the ocean and I was to be her Neptune on this voyage west. Well let me get to it.
After a series of rides, and a short but scary two day delay by a serious snow squall hurricane-wind tumult just before the Rocky Mountain foothill leading into Denver I got there in good order. If I didn’t tell you before I was to hook up with now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, there for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. If you don’t remember Jack and Mattie, they are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a car this year in the early spring. We had some adventures going south that I will tell you about another time before I left them off in Washington, D.C. to head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver where they expected to stay for a while. My last contact from them had them still there but some when I arrived at the communal home where they were staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could and had left a Phoenix address for me to meet them at. I stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up and then headed out myself on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix to connect with them. At so here we are making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.
Early today we had been over to Red Rock for an Intertribal celebration and the sounds, the sights, the spirit are still in our heads. So right now in this dark, darker than I ever saw in the East even though it is star-filled, in this spitting flamed campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Angelica I an embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s pennywhistle I hear, and hear plainly the muted war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warrior to avenge their not so ancient loses.
And after more pipe-fillings that sound gets louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy that off the campfire reflected canyon walls I see the vague outlines of old Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television Indian warriors get up and start, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya,…..until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we are ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices. But just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame goes out, the shadow ghost dance warriors are gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance. We, after regaining some strength, all decide that we had better push on, push on hard to the ocean. These ancient desert nights will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
***When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “Street Corner Serenade”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film (From American Bandstand) of The Classics performing the old time classic ( I think originally from The Mills Brothers) , Till Then.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll, Era: Street Corner Serenade, Time-Life Music, 1992
Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. And within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, not close, and that they got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standard’s, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.
What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or any such. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Sure, some kids, some kids like my home boy elementary school boyhood friend Billie, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billie though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.
The cover art on this compilation shows a group of young black kids, black guys, who look like they are doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that makes sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art also shows, and shows vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe viz-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).
Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billie included, christ maybe Billie most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Ya, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the elementary school on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and start up a few tunes. Billie, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.) Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs in this doo-wop compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs here: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll, Era: Street Corner Serenade, Time-Life Music, 1992
Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. And within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, not close, and that they got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standard’s, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.
What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or any such. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Sure, some kids, some kids like my home boy elementary school boyhood friend Billie, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billie though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.
The cover art on this compilation shows a group of young black kids, black guys, who look like they are doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that makes sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art also shows, and shows vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe viz-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).
Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billie included, christ maybe Billie most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Ya, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the elementary school on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and start up a few tunes. Billie, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.) Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs in this doo-wop compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs here: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets.
*On The 8th Anniversary of The Iraq War (Really 20th) A March 19th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
Click on the headline to link to the Stop These Wars Website.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
From The Women's Rights War-Zone- The Boston Walk For Choice- February 26, 2011
Click on the headline to link the Walk For Choice website for information about women's rights and for a description of the February 26, 2011 Walk for Choice in the Boston Commons held just after the rally in solidarity with the Wisconsin public workers unions.
Markin comment:
Sometimes in politics, at least on the subject of political slogans, there are no-brainers. Today was one such day. Wisconsin, Women's Right, Same Struggle, Same Fight!
Markin comment:
Sometimes in politics, at least on the subject of political slogans, there are no-brainers. Today was one such day. Wisconsin, Women's Right, Same Struggle, Same Fight!
Poet's Corner- A Poem To While The Class Stuggle By- Claude Mckay's "If We Must Die"
Markin comment:
Sometimes a poem (or a song, play, or picture, but usually a poem) says more in a few lines than all the "high" communist propaganda we throw out about the stakes for our side in the class struggle. Claude McKay's If We Must Die is one of them.
If We Must Die by Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Sometimes a poem (or a song, play, or picture, but usually a poem) says more in a few lines than all the "high" communist propaganda we throw out about the stakes for our side in the class struggle. Claude McKay's If We Must Die is one of them.
If We Must Die by Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Claude McKay, Radical Poet
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Claude McKay
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future- From The Pages Of "Young Spartacus"-"Capitalism Has Nothing to Offer Youth"
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Markin comment on this article:
Lately. particularly in regard to social struggles in Europe and the Middle East (and a little in America as well), I have been seeing a lot of talk about youth, undifferentiated youth, as something of a vanguard in today's struggles. I will let a quote from the speaker in this article put things in their proper perspective. And the current front-line class war events by the public workers unions in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) only confirm this notion.
"Hand in hand with this understanding comes the realization that if students want to put an end to capitalism, they cannot do it alone. They must be allied with the working class, because only the working class has the power to shut down production and bring the whole capitalist system to a grinding halt. Right now, the students at the RÃo Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico are on strike against a tuition hike. The students are maintaining their strike in spite of violent repression from the cops and private security guards. The student action is courageous; however, the success of the student strike will hinge on whether or not it is joined by the workers. It was only through the united action of the students and workers that the campus strike last spring was victorious."
********
Workers Vanguard No. 974
18 February 2011
Capitalism Has Nothing to Offer Youth
SYC Speech at New York Holiday Appeal
(Young Spartacus pages)
On January 21, the Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, held its 25th annual Holiday Appeal benefit for class-war prisoners in New York City. A Spartacus Youth Club member gave the following speech, which has been slightly edited for publication.
It is important for revolutionary youth to take up the cause of the class-war prisoners because, as the old Industrial Workers of the World saying goes, “They are in there for us and we are out here for them.” Even if we do not share the same politics, we stand on the same side of the class line. If the working class is to move forward, it is essential that we defend our class brothers and sisters.
Around the world, the capitalists’ attempts to make the working class pay for the bosses’ recession have come down on youth especially hard. In the U.S., 43.8 percent of black teens are now unemployed as well as 23.5 percent of white teens.
Puerto Rico are raising tuition rates as part of broader “austerity measures,” i.e., attacks on the working class as a whole.
The capitalist class continues to uphold the bourgeois family, meaning one man on one woman for life. Maintaining this family structure requires the brutal repression of women and youth, as we saw in the case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who jumped off the nearby George Washington Bridge rather than face the torment of being a young gay man in America. Just weeks later, two young men in the Bronx were savagely beaten because they were suspected of being a couple.
Add to this the racist war on drugs, which continues to target black and minority youth. According to the New York Times one out of every nine black men between 20 and 34 is currently behind bars or on parole. The majority of these cases involve “drug-related offenses.”
Perhaps nothing explodes the “end of racism” myth more graphically than the fact that the police continue to gun down black and Latino youth no less under Obama than under any other administration. Witness Angel Alvarez and Luis Soto, who were shot down by the cops just blocks away from here. It is clear that capitalism has nothing to offer youth today. It is a brutal, exploitative and decaying system that must be completely uprooted and overthrown.
If we are to succeed, the youth must learn that the struggle to put an end to racism, sexism, starvation, exploitation, imperialist war, rampant disease and mass imprisonment is a class struggle. It is the struggle of the workers, who seek better wages, benefits, equality, etc., against the capitalists, who seek to squeeze every last ounce of profit out of the skins of the workers.
Hand in hand with this understanding comes the realization that if students want to put an end to capitalism, they cannot do it alone. They must be allied with the working class, because only the working class has the power to shut down production and bring the whole capitalist system to a grinding halt. Right now, the students at the RÃo Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico are on strike against a tuition hike. The students are maintaining their strike in spite of violent repression from the cops and private security guards. The student action is courageous; however, the success of the student strike will hinge on whether or not it is joined by the workers. It was only through the united action of the students and workers that the campus strike last spring was victorious.
These struggles are not new by any means! And just as capitalist repression has a long and bloody history, the working-class struggle to abolish oppression has a long and powerful history as well! The high point of this was the Russian Revolution, when the working class, under the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, actually ripped state power out of the hands of the capitalists and established the first workers state in the history of the world.
It is important for revolutionary youth to remember that we are not alone! We are not the first people who have felt this way! Others started this fight long before we were born, and it is up to us to continue it in the future and bring the class struggle to its victorious conclusion.
It is also essential that the youth internalize the lessons that previous generations have learned in the class struggle. Central to these lessons is that the capitalists’ courts are never neutral. They are the exclusive instrument of the capitalist state, whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the workers. From this understanding springs the slogan: There is no justice in the capitalist courts! If you are looking for proof of this slogan, look no further than the cases of the class-war prisoners. These courageous men and women are living the reality of this slogan every day.
Our class understanding of the state and its courts sets us apart from the rest of the left. A good example of this was seen last semester at CCNY, the college just across the street. The International Socialist Organization, or ISO, held a video showing of a new documentary about death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The ISO is in a campaign to pressure Obama to start a civil rights investigation into Mumia’s case. The Spartacus Youth Club was able to intervene at this event and point out, among other things, that Obama is the class enemy! He is the top cop of the capitalist state, whose job it is to maintain the racist capitalist system, which means getting rid of people who are perceived as threats to the capitalist order, like Mumia. When I asked the ISOers why they thought that Obama, who is explicitly pro-death penalty, would lift a finger to free Mumia, the ISO had no response.
Reformists like the ISO see the injustices against Mumia and the other class-war prisoners as an embarrassment to the capitalist state. They seek to build illusions in the capitalist courts and attempt to appeal to the capitalist rulers’ imaginary sense of justice. We know that the capitalists want anything but justice for the working class. While we support the pursuit of all legal means to free Mumia and all the class-war prisoners, we understand that ultimately it is only the working class who has the power to free them from the capitalists’ death grip.
Our class perspective also informs our position on military recruiters on campus. We have always opposed the recruiters because we understand the U.S. Army to be the tool of imperialist domination. This is why we protested their presence last semester at CCNY, and our relatively small team of demonstrators found considerable support among the other students. Liberals, however, have in recent years based their opposition to recruiters on the fact that the U.S. military discriminated against homosexuals, not because it is a tool for mass murder and imperialist plunder. These same liberals will find themselves ideologically disarmed this next semester, as the U.S. military is now an “equal opportunity employer.” While we always opposed “don’t ask, don’t tell” as part of our defense of basic democratic rights for homosexuals, it was never the basis of our unconditional opposition to the imperialist military.
As Marxists we understand that social struggle is inevitable. Witness the widespread outrage in Tunisia, or in Europe at the recent round of “austerity measures.” In London, students took to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest the tripling of their tuition. At the same time as the British ruling class is engaged in the largest attacks on the working class in years, Prince William and Kate Middleton are enjoying a rather different type of engagement, busy with the preparations of their outlandish royal wedding. Camilla and Prince Charles drove into one of these student demonstrations. When the students found out who was in the car, they surrounded the vehicle shouting, “Off with their heads!”
Class struggle is inevitable. What is not inevitable is who will win. For the working class to seize power from the hands of its oppressors and hold on to it requires the leadership of a Leninist vanguard party. As an older comrade said to me, “Marxism does not hover above the earth as a separate entity in space. Marxism exists only in human beings.”
And that is why, if you feel the way we do, if you understand that capitalism needs to be overthrown, if you want to fight for the emancipation of these prisoners and the emancipation of all of humanity, then join us in the struggle to overthrow this racist, sexist, bloody, oppressive capitalist system once and for all! Free the class-war prisoners! No illusions in the capitalist courts! Onward to a socialist future!
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Markin comment on this article:
Lately. particularly in regard to social struggles in Europe and the Middle East (and a little in America as well), I have been seeing a lot of talk about youth, undifferentiated youth, as something of a vanguard in today's struggles. I will let a quote from the speaker in this article put things in their proper perspective. And the current front-line class war events by the public workers unions in Wisconsin (and elsewhere) only confirm this notion.
"Hand in hand with this understanding comes the realization that if students want to put an end to capitalism, they cannot do it alone. They must be allied with the working class, because only the working class has the power to shut down production and bring the whole capitalist system to a grinding halt. Right now, the students at the RÃo Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico are on strike against a tuition hike. The students are maintaining their strike in spite of violent repression from the cops and private security guards. The student action is courageous; however, the success of the student strike will hinge on whether or not it is joined by the workers. It was only through the united action of the students and workers that the campus strike last spring was victorious."
********
Workers Vanguard No. 974
18 February 2011
Capitalism Has Nothing to Offer Youth
SYC Speech at New York Holiday Appeal
(Young Spartacus pages)
On January 21, the Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, held its 25th annual Holiday Appeal benefit for class-war prisoners in New York City. A Spartacus Youth Club member gave the following speech, which has been slightly edited for publication.
It is important for revolutionary youth to take up the cause of the class-war prisoners because, as the old Industrial Workers of the World saying goes, “They are in there for us and we are out here for them.” Even if we do not share the same politics, we stand on the same side of the class line. If the working class is to move forward, it is essential that we defend our class brothers and sisters.
Around the world, the capitalists’ attempts to make the working class pay for the bosses’ recession have come down on youth especially hard. In the U.S., 43.8 percent of black teens are now unemployed as well as 23.5 percent of white teens.
Puerto Rico are raising tuition rates as part of broader “austerity measures,” i.e., attacks on the working class as a whole.
The capitalist class continues to uphold the bourgeois family, meaning one man on one woman for life. Maintaining this family structure requires the brutal repression of women and youth, as we saw in the case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who jumped off the nearby George Washington Bridge rather than face the torment of being a young gay man in America. Just weeks later, two young men in the Bronx were savagely beaten because they were suspected of being a couple.
Add to this the racist war on drugs, which continues to target black and minority youth. According to the New York Times one out of every nine black men between 20 and 34 is currently behind bars or on parole. The majority of these cases involve “drug-related offenses.”
Perhaps nothing explodes the “end of racism” myth more graphically than the fact that the police continue to gun down black and Latino youth no less under Obama than under any other administration. Witness Angel Alvarez and Luis Soto, who were shot down by the cops just blocks away from here. It is clear that capitalism has nothing to offer youth today. It is a brutal, exploitative and decaying system that must be completely uprooted and overthrown.
If we are to succeed, the youth must learn that the struggle to put an end to racism, sexism, starvation, exploitation, imperialist war, rampant disease and mass imprisonment is a class struggle. It is the struggle of the workers, who seek better wages, benefits, equality, etc., against the capitalists, who seek to squeeze every last ounce of profit out of the skins of the workers.
Hand in hand with this understanding comes the realization that if students want to put an end to capitalism, they cannot do it alone. They must be allied with the working class, because only the working class has the power to shut down production and bring the whole capitalist system to a grinding halt. Right now, the students at the RÃo Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico are on strike against a tuition hike. The students are maintaining their strike in spite of violent repression from the cops and private security guards. The student action is courageous; however, the success of the student strike will hinge on whether or not it is joined by the workers. It was only through the united action of the students and workers that the campus strike last spring was victorious.
These struggles are not new by any means! And just as capitalist repression has a long and bloody history, the working-class struggle to abolish oppression has a long and powerful history as well! The high point of this was the Russian Revolution, when the working class, under the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, actually ripped state power out of the hands of the capitalists and established the first workers state in the history of the world.
It is important for revolutionary youth to remember that we are not alone! We are not the first people who have felt this way! Others started this fight long before we were born, and it is up to us to continue it in the future and bring the class struggle to its victorious conclusion.
It is also essential that the youth internalize the lessons that previous generations have learned in the class struggle. Central to these lessons is that the capitalists’ courts are never neutral. They are the exclusive instrument of the capitalist state, whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the workers. From this understanding springs the slogan: There is no justice in the capitalist courts! If you are looking for proof of this slogan, look no further than the cases of the class-war prisoners. These courageous men and women are living the reality of this slogan every day.
Our class understanding of the state and its courts sets us apart from the rest of the left. A good example of this was seen last semester at CCNY, the college just across the street. The International Socialist Organization, or ISO, held a video showing of a new documentary about death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The ISO is in a campaign to pressure Obama to start a civil rights investigation into Mumia’s case. The Spartacus Youth Club was able to intervene at this event and point out, among other things, that Obama is the class enemy! He is the top cop of the capitalist state, whose job it is to maintain the racist capitalist system, which means getting rid of people who are perceived as threats to the capitalist order, like Mumia. When I asked the ISOers why they thought that Obama, who is explicitly pro-death penalty, would lift a finger to free Mumia, the ISO had no response.
Reformists like the ISO see the injustices against Mumia and the other class-war prisoners as an embarrassment to the capitalist state. They seek to build illusions in the capitalist courts and attempt to appeal to the capitalist rulers’ imaginary sense of justice. We know that the capitalists want anything but justice for the working class. While we support the pursuit of all legal means to free Mumia and all the class-war prisoners, we understand that ultimately it is only the working class who has the power to free them from the capitalists’ death grip.
Our class perspective also informs our position on military recruiters on campus. We have always opposed the recruiters because we understand the U.S. Army to be the tool of imperialist domination. This is why we protested their presence last semester at CCNY, and our relatively small team of demonstrators found considerable support among the other students. Liberals, however, have in recent years based their opposition to recruiters on the fact that the U.S. military discriminated against homosexuals, not because it is a tool for mass murder and imperialist plunder. These same liberals will find themselves ideologically disarmed this next semester, as the U.S. military is now an “equal opportunity employer.” While we always opposed “don’t ask, don’t tell” as part of our defense of basic democratic rights for homosexuals, it was never the basis of our unconditional opposition to the imperialist military.
As Marxists we understand that social struggle is inevitable. Witness the widespread outrage in Tunisia, or in Europe at the recent round of “austerity measures.” In London, students took to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest the tripling of their tuition. At the same time as the British ruling class is engaged in the largest attacks on the working class in years, Prince William and Kate Middleton are enjoying a rather different type of engagement, busy with the preparations of their outlandish royal wedding. Camilla and Prince Charles drove into one of these student demonstrations. When the students found out who was in the car, they surrounded the vehicle shouting, “Off with their heads!”
Class struggle is inevitable. What is not inevitable is who will win. For the working class to seize power from the hands of its oppressors and hold on to it requires the leadership of a Leninist vanguard party. As an older comrade said to me, “Marxism does not hover above the earth as a separate entity in space. Marxism exists only in human beings.”
And that is why, if you feel the way we do, if you understand that capitalism needs to be overthrown, if you want to fight for the emancipation of these prisoners and the emancipation of all of humanity, then join us in the struggle to overthrow this racist, sexist, bloody, oppressive capitalist system once and for all! Free the class-war prisoners! No illusions in the capitalist courts! Onward to a socialist future!
From The UJP Website- Wisconsin Public Workers Unions Solidarity Rally- Saturday February 26, 2011 At The Massachusetts State House
Click on the headline to link to an entry from the UJP Website- Wisconsin Public Workers Unions Solidarity Rally- Saturday February 26, 2011 At The Massachusetts State House
Markin comment:
As reposted below the question of a one day general strike in defense of the Wisconsin public workers unions is posed as the order of the day.
***
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Class Lines Are Drawn- Solidarity With The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- The Question Of A One Day General Strike Is Posed.
Markin comment:
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
Markin comment:
As reposted below the question of a one day general strike in defense of the Wisconsin public workers unions is posed as the order of the day.
***
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Class Lines Are Drawn- Solidarity With The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- The Question Of A One Day General Strike Is Posed.
Markin comment:
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
Stop Union Busting in Wisconsin... and at WGBH (Boston)-Support The AEEF Brothers And Sisters!
Markin comment:
The next time the endless 24/7/365 public television (or radio, for that matter) membership money hustles come on just remember this little reminder from the guys and gals who brought you the entertainment stuff. Hell, sent back your membership card and go to real public radio and television stations. What few there are now.
*****
Stop Union Busting in Wisconsin... and at WGBH (Boston)
Wisconsin is not the only place where an employer is using the need to balance their budget as an excuse to bust a union. Right here at Boston's own WGBH, management is insisting on the right to subcontract any and all union work in order to lower its costs.
For almost 40 years, our union, AEEF-CWA Local 1300, has proudly worked with WGBH management to create some of the best television, radio, and web content available as well as offering top notch access services for the hearing and vision-impaired—and we have done so in a manner that has provided the wages, benefits, and workplace rights capable of supporting our members, their families, and the communities where they live. This time, management has brought to the bargaining table a complete rewrite of our contract, demanding that workers give up basic union rights and renegotiate the whole document. When our contract expired, they took the nuclear option to not extend the contract and discontinued collecting our dues. The current offer from management would render our union virtually irrelevant in the workplace and possibly non-existent by giving management the unilateral ability to:
• Subcontract any and all work
• Assign managers to perform union work
• Use unpaid volunteers to do union work
• Terminate your favorite on-air hosts without cause or due process
• Prohibit most forms of collective action during the term of the contract
For more information, please "friend" us on Facebook and visit our web site: www.AEEF.org
The next time the endless 24/7/365 public television (or radio, for that matter) membership money hustles come on just remember this little reminder from the guys and gals who brought you the entertainment stuff. Hell, sent back your membership card and go to real public radio and television stations. What few there are now.
*****
Stop Union Busting in Wisconsin... and at WGBH (Boston)
Wisconsin is not the only place where an employer is using the need to balance their budget as an excuse to bust a union. Right here at Boston's own WGBH, management is insisting on the right to subcontract any and all union work in order to lower its costs.
For almost 40 years, our union, AEEF-CWA Local 1300, has proudly worked with WGBH management to create some of the best television, radio, and web content available as well as offering top notch access services for the hearing and vision-impaired—and we have done so in a manner that has provided the wages, benefits, and workplace rights capable of supporting our members, their families, and the communities where they live. This time, management has brought to the bargaining table a complete rewrite of our contract, demanding that workers give up basic union rights and renegotiate the whole document. When our contract expired, they took the nuclear option to not extend the contract and discontinued collecting our dues. The current offer from management would render our union virtually irrelevant in the workplace and possibly non-existent by giving management the unilateral ability to:
• Subcontract any and all work
• Assign managers to perform union work
• Use unpaid volunteers to do union work
• Terminate your favorite on-air hosts without cause or due process
• Prohibit most forms of collective action during the term of the contract
For more information, please "friend" us on Facebook and visit our web site: www.AEEF.org
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Class Lines Are Drawn- Solidarity With The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- The Question Of A One Day General Strike Is Posed.
Markin comment:
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
Hands Off The Girls Scouts!- In Georgia- And Everywhere
Click on the headline to link to an MSNBC-AP story about the plight of some Georgia Girls Scouts at the hands of local law enforcement.
Markin comment:
Sure, I know we still have at least the remnants of a bourgeois democracy that allows us, within shifting limits, to pursue our leftist political agenda. But on some days, and today is one of them, I am not as sure as the linked story to this entry describes in detail. It seems down in Georgia, old redneck Confederate state Georgia, that we will probably be hearing more about as we head closer to the observances of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War ( I will just say one thing about that here for now, William Tecumseh Sherman, and that name should put paid to that) some rogue cop decided to take a serious stand against rampant shopping mall crime and corral a bunch of Girl Scouts who were selling their cookies (yes, it is that time of years) at that site. Without a permit. All hell broke loose, or would have if cooler (and more public relations-conscious) heads had not prevailed. Now we leftist know, or should know, that our politics, especially our street politics are bound to bring us in confrontation with the police, the prime defenders of the bourgeois capitalist state. That comes with the territory. But Girl Scouts, under any probable scenario short one of the darling holding a gun to your face in order to get you to buy their damn cookies. Come on.
But see it never comes to that. Believe me it never comes to that last scenario. I, unlike that lightly-brained (and clueless) Georgia cop, figured out long along that in dealing with the Girl Scouts when they get into high selling mode come late winter the best course is surrender. And cut your losses. See, for the past several years I have bought my Girl Scout cookies exclusively from a family of sisters down the street as they, in turn, came of Girl Scout age. It’s automatic, as each winsome smiled girl comes knocking at the door and says (no sales pitch necessary) what kind and how many do I want. And I just hem and haw, and say oh I don’t know, peanut butter and mint. That, my friends is the secret. Order two boxes and be done with. No scowls about the cheap guy who only buys one crummy box to piece them off. Now, I am a respected repeat customer, and get an extra winsome smile and a thanks at the end of the transaction. And here is the beautiful part now when I am accosted by some other cookie sellers all I have to do is say that girl's family name and they back right off. Nice, right?
This whole transaction thing has got me to thinking though about what this primitive capitalist accumulation cookie-selling thing means in the big picture. Sure it is meant to get some funds for some worthy endeavor to keep these kids off the streets. And learning the rudiments of capitalist business procedure are an undeniable part but let me get a little dreamy here. Under our future socialist society where we collectively allocate plenty of resources for kids’ stuff, educational or adventurous, there will be no need for such quaint practices as winsome, smiling young girls stiff-arming people to buy some cheap jack cookies. Well, maybe, some future Young Pioneers will want to do so as a game to see how kids had to hustle for dough in ancient times. Sure, that might be fun. But until that day- Hands Off The Girl Scouts!
Markin comment:
Sure, I know we still have at least the remnants of a bourgeois democracy that allows us, within shifting limits, to pursue our leftist political agenda. But on some days, and today is one of them, I am not as sure as the linked story to this entry describes in detail. It seems down in Georgia, old redneck Confederate state Georgia, that we will probably be hearing more about as we head closer to the observances of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War ( I will just say one thing about that here for now, William Tecumseh Sherman, and that name should put paid to that) some rogue cop decided to take a serious stand against rampant shopping mall crime and corral a bunch of Girl Scouts who were selling their cookies (yes, it is that time of years) at that site. Without a permit. All hell broke loose, or would have if cooler (and more public relations-conscious) heads had not prevailed. Now we leftist know, or should know, that our politics, especially our street politics are bound to bring us in confrontation with the police, the prime defenders of the bourgeois capitalist state. That comes with the territory. But Girl Scouts, under any probable scenario short one of the darling holding a gun to your face in order to get you to buy their damn cookies. Come on.
But see it never comes to that. Believe me it never comes to that last scenario. I, unlike that lightly-brained (and clueless) Georgia cop, figured out long along that in dealing with the Girl Scouts when they get into high selling mode come late winter the best course is surrender. And cut your losses. See, for the past several years I have bought my Girl Scout cookies exclusively from a family of sisters down the street as they, in turn, came of Girl Scout age. It’s automatic, as each winsome smiled girl comes knocking at the door and says (no sales pitch necessary) what kind and how many do I want. And I just hem and haw, and say oh I don’t know, peanut butter and mint. That, my friends is the secret. Order two boxes and be done with. No scowls about the cheap guy who only buys one crummy box to piece them off. Now, I am a respected repeat customer, and get an extra winsome smile and a thanks at the end of the transaction. And here is the beautiful part now when I am accosted by some other cookie sellers all I have to do is say that girl's family name and they back right off. Nice, right?
This whole transaction thing has got me to thinking though about what this primitive capitalist accumulation cookie-selling thing means in the big picture. Sure it is meant to get some funds for some worthy endeavor to keep these kids off the streets. And learning the rudiments of capitalist business procedure are an undeniable part but let me get a little dreamy here. Under our future socialist society where we collectively allocate plenty of resources for kids’ stuff, educational or adventurous, there will be no need for such quaint practices as winsome, smiling young girls stiff-arming people to buy some cheap jack cookies. Well, maybe, some future Young Pioneers will want to do so as a game to see how kids had to hustle for dough in ancient times. Sure, that might be fun. But until that day- Hands Off The Girl Scouts!
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Cyril Briggs, Communist Writer
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Cyril Briggs.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
From The SteveLendamanBlog- Hidden Provisions in Wisconsin Bill
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Hidden Provisions in Wisconsin Bill - by Stephen Lendman
On February 25, AP said the Wisconsin Assembly, after days of debate, passed Walker's contentious bill, but the standoff is far from over. Senate Democrats remain absent in Illinois, vowing to resist ending collective bargaining rights for public workers. So far, Walker won't compromise, so resolution is on hold.
Much more, however, is at issue. On February 24, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman headlined, "Shock Doctrine, USA," saying:
"What's happening in Wisconsin is....a power grab - an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy." It involves much more than union busting, bad as that is.
Hidden in the bill's 144 pages are "extraordinary things," including a provision letting Walker appoint a health czar to make draconian healthcare cuts to Wisconsin's poor and low-income households unilaterally.
Another one states:
"16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss.196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49(3)(b)."
Call it the Koch brothers provision, multi-billionaire owners of Koch Industries, an industrial giant heavily invested in energy and power-related enterprises. According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Koch Industries PAC contributed $43,000 to Walker's gubernatorial campaign, second only to the $43,125 given by state housing and realtor groups.
Moreover, the Koch PAC helped Walker and other Republicans by contributing $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), that, in turn, spent $65,000 to support Walker and $3.4 million on television attack ads and mailings against his opponent, Milwaukee Democrat Mayor Tom Barrett. It made the difference between victory and defeat. Republican out-spent Democrats, sweeping many of their candidates to victory last November.
Significance of the Contentious Provision
Wisconsin owns dozens of small power plants, mostly for government facilities and University of Wisconsin's infrastructure. The bill lets Walker privatize them under no-bid contracts, claiming it serves the public interest.
Opinions differ on the provision's significance. The Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association's David Hoopman sees no private enterprise bonanza. Executive director Charles Higley of the Citizen's Utility Board agrees, saying many state-owned plants are old, cold-fired, and heading toward failing to comply with environmental requirements. Others have already done so.
The Customers First! Coalition, however, wrote Walker, seeking "a more thorough evaluation of the value of the state's power assets and a comparison of whether state or private ownership is in the best interest of the taxpayer" as well as more time for debate.
Whoever's right, letting the governor use no-bid contracts to sell state assets raises serious red flag issues. If the above provision wasn't important, why was it included, and what does Koch expect for contributing, for sure, much more than it gave! Krugman puts it this way:
"Union-busting and privatization remain GOP priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle (them) through in the name of balanced budgets," other reasons, or none at all, aiming straight at the heart of democratic freedoms, affecting everyone directly or indirectly.
Koch Pretender Entraps Walker
For 20 minutes, blogger Ian Murphy fooled him, recording his provocative comments so we know. They included possible bogus felony charges against absent Democrat senators, as well as consideration given to "planting some troublemakers" among protesters to blame them.
He also praised one of Ronald Reagan's "most defining moments....when he fired the air traffic controllers." Moreover, he told his cabinet that today's confrontation is "our time to change the course of history," implying, of course, his intent to crush unionism in Wisconsin, stripping public workers of all rights, including decent pay and benefits, as well the right to bargain collectively for for better ones.
He also threatened to fire 12,000 state workers without passage of his overhaul bill, saying:
"I'd do almost anything to avoid laying people off. We need to avoid those layoffs for the good of those workers," but he'll do it anyway to show toughness to impress top Republican leaders and funders like the Koch brothers.
In so doing, he's at odds with 200 state mayors, school board presidents, and other officials, opposing eliminating collective bargaining rights. Walker, however, is hardline against any changes to his bill. His comment about Reagan is telling, wanting, in fact, to harm workers the way he did to all organized labor nationally.
When he took office, union membership was around 24%. When he left, it was 16.8%, two-thirds of its former self and headed lower. The latest January 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics, in fact, shows 11.9% of workers organized nationally, only 6.9% of private sector ones, heading for oblivion if what's going on isn't halted.
This is organized labor's last stand. Wisconsin is ground zero. As it goes, so goes America, so it's crucially important to resist, stay resolute, stand fast, and refuse to surrender rights too important to lose. It's their call and our obligation to support them.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:48 AM
Hidden Provisions in Wisconsin Bill - by Stephen Lendman
On February 25, AP said the Wisconsin Assembly, after days of debate, passed Walker's contentious bill, but the standoff is far from over. Senate Democrats remain absent in Illinois, vowing to resist ending collective bargaining rights for public workers. So far, Walker won't compromise, so resolution is on hold.
Much more, however, is at issue. On February 24, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman headlined, "Shock Doctrine, USA," saying:
"What's happening in Wisconsin is....a power grab - an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy." It involves much more than union busting, bad as that is.
Hidden in the bill's 144 pages are "extraordinary things," including a provision letting Walker appoint a health czar to make draconian healthcare cuts to Wisconsin's poor and low-income households unilaterally.
Another one states:
"16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss.196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49(3)(b)."
Call it the Koch brothers provision, multi-billionaire owners of Koch Industries, an industrial giant heavily invested in energy and power-related enterprises. According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Koch Industries PAC contributed $43,000 to Walker's gubernatorial campaign, second only to the $43,125 given by state housing and realtor groups.
Moreover, the Koch PAC helped Walker and other Republicans by contributing $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), that, in turn, spent $65,000 to support Walker and $3.4 million on television attack ads and mailings against his opponent, Milwaukee Democrat Mayor Tom Barrett. It made the difference between victory and defeat. Republican out-spent Democrats, sweeping many of their candidates to victory last November.
Significance of the Contentious Provision
Wisconsin owns dozens of small power plants, mostly for government facilities and University of Wisconsin's infrastructure. The bill lets Walker privatize them under no-bid contracts, claiming it serves the public interest.
Opinions differ on the provision's significance. The Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association's David Hoopman sees no private enterprise bonanza. Executive director Charles Higley of the Citizen's Utility Board agrees, saying many state-owned plants are old, cold-fired, and heading toward failing to comply with environmental requirements. Others have already done so.
The Customers First! Coalition, however, wrote Walker, seeking "a more thorough evaluation of the value of the state's power assets and a comparison of whether state or private ownership is in the best interest of the taxpayer" as well as more time for debate.
Whoever's right, letting the governor use no-bid contracts to sell state assets raises serious red flag issues. If the above provision wasn't important, why was it included, and what does Koch expect for contributing, for sure, much more than it gave! Krugman puts it this way:
"Union-busting and privatization remain GOP priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle (them) through in the name of balanced budgets," other reasons, or none at all, aiming straight at the heart of democratic freedoms, affecting everyone directly or indirectly.
Koch Pretender Entraps Walker
For 20 minutes, blogger Ian Murphy fooled him, recording his provocative comments so we know. They included possible bogus felony charges against absent Democrat senators, as well as consideration given to "planting some troublemakers" among protesters to blame them.
He also praised one of Ronald Reagan's "most defining moments....when he fired the air traffic controllers." Moreover, he told his cabinet that today's confrontation is "our time to change the course of history," implying, of course, his intent to crush unionism in Wisconsin, stripping public workers of all rights, including decent pay and benefits, as well the right to bargain collectively for for better ones.
He also threatened to fire 12,000 state workers without passage of his overhaul bill, saying:
"I'd do almost anything to avoid laying people off. We need to avoid those layoffs for the good of those workers," but he'll do it anyway to show toughness to impress top Republican leaders and funders like the Koch brothers.
In so doing, he's at odds with 200 state mayors, school board presidents, and other officials, opposing eliminating collective bargaining rights. Walker, however, is hardline against any changes to his bill. His comment about Reagan is telling, wanting, in fact, to harm workers the way he did to all organized labor nationally.
When he took office, union membership was around 24%. When he left, it was 16.8%, two-thirds of its former self and headed lower. The latest January 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics, in fact, shows 11.9% of workers organized nationally, only 6.9% of private sector ones, heading for oblivion if what's going on isn't halted.
This is organized labor's last stand. Wisconsin is ground zero. As it goes, so goes America, so it's crucially important to resist, stay resolute, stand fast, and refuse to surrender rights too important to lose. It's their call and our obligation to support them.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:48 AM
The Latest From The Wisconsin War Zone- All Out In Solidarity-
Click on the headline to link to an article about the labor struggle in Wisconsin (and soon to be elsewhere).
Markin comment:
No question that a one day general strike is posed in defense of the Wisconsin public workers unions. Which side are you on?
Markin comment:
No question that a one day general strike is posed in defense of the Wisconsin public workers unions. Which side are you on?
Friday, February 25, 2011
From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)-Revolutionary Integration:Program for Black Liberation-The Work Of Richard Fraser-Resolution on the Negro Struggle(1957)
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement than in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
The black question as it is called in the Marxist movement, the question of class and race intertwined in the class struggle in America, is central to the strategy for revolutionary. Period. The struggle to find a way to the black masses through the black workers, who have historically been among the most militant sections of the working class, has been long, hard, vexing, and in certain periods fruitless (due to apathy or the predominance of various black nationalist or liberal assimilationist ideolgies. Fraser's work was invaluable as a first step toward sorting things out. Forward!
********
25 May 1957
Resolution on the Negro Struggle
Written: 1957
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From SWP Discussion Bulletin Vol. 18, No. 11 (September 1957). Fraser’s document, dated 25 May 1957, was submitted for discussion at the SWP’s 17th National Convention. It was counterposed to “The Class Struggle Road to Negro Equality,” sponsored by the SWP Political Committee and largely written by George Breitman.
I. The Permanent Revolution in America
The objective conditions have matured for the eruption of the class struggle in the South. The task of this struggle will be to overthrow the fascist-like yoke of white supremacy.
Since the destruction of popular government in the South at the close of the Reconstruction, the Southern Bourbon oligarchy, in close alliance with the whole American capitalist class, adapted the social relations of chattel slavery to the requirements of property relations and capitalist production.
The capitalists and planters achieved this Jim Crow system by a method which has been copied by all the imperialist ruling classes of the world. They broke up the working masses into hostile racial groups by the use of organized murder and terrorism against the Negroes and all who would stand side by side with them. They degraded labor through the enforced peonage of the Negroes. They created a white middle class which derived special privileges from the degradation of labor in general and the Negro in particular. They eliminated popular government and substituted the rule of a small minority of the privileged, the rich, the powerful: the white supremacists.
By creating a living hell for the Negro people, the ruling classes were thus able to achieve a super-exploitation of all Southern labor, bringing in profits which could be compared with those from colonial exploitation.
Thus, a whole social system became organized around the degradation of the Negro—a system which became an integrated and indispensable part of the economic, social and political structure of American capitalism.
The emancipation of the Negro people through social, political and economic equality is the fundamental condition for this liberation of all the oppressed in the South. This requires the destruction of the whole Southern system. Short of this there can be little change and few democratic rights for anyone.
However, the permanent revolution in America reveals itself in the following manner: the Southern system represents massive survivals of chattel slavery. These survivals take the form of great social problems unsolved by the Civil War and Reconstruction: an antiquated system of land tenure, the absence of democratic rights, segregation and racial discrimination. The solution of these questions was the responsibility of the capitalist class when it took the national power from the slaveowners in 1860. But they proved incapable of this. So these survivals of an antique system of exploitation have become integrated into the capitalist structure and form a component part thereof.
Capitalism could not solve these problems during its youth and virility, even under conditions of waging a bitter war against the slave power. Now, when amidst the decay and death agony of capitalism, these problems have become integrated into its very structure, the capitalist class will positively not prove able to solve them. This circumstance leads to the inescapable conclusion that although the tasks of the liberation of the South are of an elementary democratic nature, they have no solution within the framework of American capitalism: they become a part of the socialist struggle of the proletariat to overthrow the whole capitalist system of production.
The second manifestation of the permanent revolution lies in the question of leadership of the Negro struggle. The goal of the Negro struggle has been determined historically: the elimination of racial discrimination lies through the struggle for economic, political and social equality. The axis of this struggle is the fight against segregation. At the present time the leadership of this struggle is in the hands of the middle class. This Negro middle class suffers social, economic and political discrimination because of skin color. It is a far more terrible discrimination than is the usual lot of privileged layers of an oppressed group. This circumstance has produced a great galaxy of Negro scholars who have brilliantly analyzed and plumbed the depths and sources of racial oppression.
But, at the same time, the position of the middle class as a whole derives from and feeds upon segregation, the axis of the social force which oppresses them as Negroes.
This conflict between their racial and class interests causes the middle class leadership to act in a hesitant and treacherous manner. They will prove totally incapable of giving adequate leadership to the movement as it develops on to higher planes of struggle.
But the Negro workers have no such conflict of interest. They receive no such economic privileges from segregation. On the contrary they are super-exploited at the point of production and in all economic spheres. Discrimination against them as Negroes is intimately connected with their exploitation as workers. Finding themselves below the standard of living of even the white workers, they must of necessity open up a struggle for racial equality as the key to raising their standard of living as workers.
So as it falls to the American working class as a whole to solve the basic contradictions of American society, so does it fall upon the shoulders of the Negro proletariat to take the lead in the struggle for equality.
II. The Significance of Montgomery
The successful struggle of the Negroes of Montgomery shows a changed relationship of forces in the South. This is the first successful sustained mass struggle of the Negroes of the South in nearly seventy years. It demonstrates the decay and disintegration of the power of white supremacy and reveals that the situation is ripening for the liberation of the people of the South from the Jim Crow system.
The changed conditions have been brought about by the industrialization of the South and the deepening of the penetration of monopoly capitalism into all spheres of life. The salient features of this change have been: (1) The urbanization of the Negro population which now finds its center of gravity shifted from the dispersed rural areas into powerful mass forces in the cities. (2) The undermining of the mass base of the Southern system through the partial destruction of the white middle class and the proletarianization of large contingents of this former mass petty bourgeoisie.
This changed relationship of forces results in the inability of the white ruling classes to crush at will the aroused and organized Negro masses. The magnitude of the Negro struggle, reaching national and even international proportions, has rendered the U.S. government helpless to intervene decisively in behalf of the white supremacists.
These objective conditions have been ripening for decades and provide the groundwork for the outbreak of the Montgomery masses. The immediate factor preparing the masses for the actual struggle was the [Emmett] Till case and its aftermath, which demonstrated to the Negroes that the Federal Government would do nothing against the Jim Crow system, that any feeling that the Negroes had an ally in the national capital was an illusion, and that if anything was to be done they would have to do it themselves.
The struggle is now beginning to unfold. As it develops, all the resources of the American capitalist class will be aligned against it: all the forces of reaction, all agencies of government, the army, the avenues of information and the schools, churches and courts. Yet, the victory of the masses will be assured under two conditions:
1. That the struggle of the Southern workers, led by the Negroes, will rekindle the fires of the class struggle throughout the country and bring into play the great powers of the American proletariat in solidarity with them.
2. That the Southern masses will produce a revolutionary socialist leadership fully conscious of its aims, the road of struggle, the magnitude of the task.
The Montgomery boycotters forecast the unfolding movement which will take the lead in the emancipation of the Southern masses.
We support the courageous internationalism of their sympathy for and self-identification with the struggles of the dark-skinned colonial masses. This kinship arises from the common bond forged by years of common struggle against white supremacy. It is our elementary duty, however, to warn the Negro people away from Gandhi’s program of “passive resistance” as a means of their liberation.
This program, fostered by the Indian bourgeoisie, paralyzed the action of the masses of people, kept the Indian capitalists at the head of the movement for Indian independence and made it possible for the native bourgeoisie to reap all the rewards of the struggle against imperialism at the expense of the masses.
In the United States this program has been super-imposed upon the struggle in Montgomery by its petty bourgeois leadership. By thus identifying a dynamic struggle with “resistance in the spirit of love and non-violence” they blunt the consciousness of the masses who require a program which corresponds with the reality of their militant actions.
We hail the emergence of the proletarian militants in the Montgomery struggle. They are the coming leaders of the struggle of all the Southern masses. It is they who have nothing to lose and the world to gain. Their class position gives them courage and insight, for it is they who have the fundamental stake in the struggle against the Jim Crow system.
We salute the women of the South both black and white for their heroic role in the struggle.
The unbounded revolutionary energy of the triply oppressed Negro women is making itself manifest in the initiative and leadership which they have given to the movement in its initial stages.
The decay of the Southern system which foretells its doom is expressed by the defection of the white women away from the forces of white supremacy and by their organized appearance in greater and greater numbers in joint struggle with the Negroes. This is the proof that they recognize that they, too, are the victims of the system of white supremacy. They understand that the so-called “chivalry” of Southern tradition degrades them: that the pedestal of “sacred” white womanhood is in reality a prison for chattels which denies independence, the rights of citizens and the status of human beings.
They are aware that the myth of “sacred” (i.e., segregated) white womanhood is one of the focal points of the ideology of white supremacy and ties the struggle for the emancipation of women directly to that of the Negroes.
Other large sections of the white population hide their disgust with the Southern system in fear of reprisal. We recommend the example of the women and urge them to give organized support to their courageous struggle.
III. The Labor Movement
The existence of the Southern social system is a constant mortal threat to the entire labor movement in the U.S. Every factor of political and economic life shows that the extension of unionism into the open-shop South is a life and death question.
But unions cannot exist on any mass scale in the total absence of elementary democratic rights. On the other hand labor unions will grow hand in hand with the successes of the Civil Rights movement. Consequently the labor movement must dedicate itself to the destruction of white supremacy as the only way to assure the extension of unionism into the South.
We call upon the officials of the AFL-CIO to begin the campaign to organize the South with a repudiation of their political alliance with the liberal Democrats who are the protectors and defenders of the Southern Bourbons. We call upon them to take the next step in the Southern drive: to declare for the formation of a political party of labor which would become the political and organizational center of the struggle against Jim Crow.
IV. The Advanced Position of the Negro Movement
The struggle for racial equality is an integral part of the struggle of the American working class for socialism. The connection between these two goals is so fundamental that one cannot be envisaged without the other.
This connection has been implicit from the very beginning of the anti-slavery struggle and found clearest expression in Karl Marx’s dictum to white American workers: “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” The consistent logic which led many abolitionist leaders such as Douglass and Phillips to embrace socialist principles confirmed this connection.
The power of the ruling class and the pernicious influence of the Southern system has kept the American working class divided along color lines for long periods of time. However, the past twenty years have demonstrated again in life the identity of interest which had been implicit all along.
The close connection between the Negro struggle for equality and the labor struggle became one of the paramount features of the great struggles of the 1930’s. One of the greatest achievements of unionism during this stormy upsurge was the successful conclusion of the long struggle to build the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This achievement was capped by the emergence of the CIO which represented the first mass joining of the two movements in modern times.
Together during the 30’s the two movements made giant strides. But with the preparation for World War II they diverged: the CIO under the pressure of a newly created bureaucracy capitulated to the bosses and the government and it wasn’t long before the Communist Party did likewise. Together they sacrificed the interests of the working class to the needs of the U.S. imperialist war machine. But the Negro movement, under the stimulus of workers arising from great depths of super-exploitation, refused to be taken in or intimidated by the patriotic hysteria.
Ever since the beginning of 1941 the unions have taken one backward step after another and the bosses have followed through with body blows. Although the labor movement was able to mobilize briefly in 1946 for a successful defense when mortally threatened, it soon gave in again and as a result has endured a never ending string of humiliating repressive measures inflicted on them by the government and the employers.
But all through this period and even at the height of the worst wave of reaction which has been unleashed against the American workers in many decades—the Negro movement has registered steady advances. The source of this difference in achievement lies in the divergent lines of development which were laid out in 1941 when the Negroes were organizing for a March on Washington in defiance of the needs of the government for domestic tranquility at the very time that the labor bureaucracy was giving no-strike pledges to this same government. The Negroes were able to withstand the patriotic pressure upon them and to see through the lies of American imperialism because of their advanced consciousness derived from super-exploitation and discrimination.
Upon this background the Montgomery uprising propels the Negro movement into a greatly advanced position which, coinciding with the ebb tide of the labor movement, approaches isolation.
And this poses a dual danger: First, that this great movement may remain isolated and be crushed for lack of needed support from the labor movement. Second, that such a defeat inflicted upon this dynamic sector of the working class would set back the development of the labor movement.
It is the duty of all socialists to spare no energy in rallying the working class and the labor movement to the aid of the Negroes struggling in the South and to connect and integrate the struggles.
But the decisive force in determining the future course of events, and relations of the Southern fighters with the labor movement in the North and West, is the Negro movement itself. In this vital movement just unfolding there is great attractive power: in the relations between the Negro movement and the labor movement the Negroes hold the initiative. But only a proletarian leadership of the Negro movement will be able to utilize properly this strategic advantage and to draw the labor movement into support and intervention. Such a leadership will grasp the political significance of the situation.
Above all, the Negro movement must beware of the “isolationist” feeling that if the labor movement doesn’t seem to move, and if, as a consequence, the working class as a whole appears unmoved by and unconcerned with the heroic struggle in the South, then the Negro movement can turn its back and go its way alone. Such a course would be disastrous, would end in the crushing defeat of the Negroes and retard the whole labor struggle.
Such proposals arise from an underestimation of the task ahead and from the dangerous illusion that racial equality can be achieved without the overthrow and complete destruction of the Southern social system. In this struggle, the Negroes will be the initiators, because of their super-exploitation and advanced consciousness. But the fight can be won only by the united struggle of all toilers.
V. What Political Road?
The advanced consciousness of the Negro movement expresses itself politically. First, by their refusal to be taken in by patriotic war propaganda. Second, by their willingness to launch broad struggles in spite of the reaction. This political understanding also encompasses the knowledge that the problem of civil rights is neither a moral question, one of law, or of the “hearts and minds of men,” but that it is a political question which must be fought by means of political party.
The Negroes are also quite aware that the Democratic and Republican parties are their enemies, and that serious advancement of the struggle for equality is impossible through these channels.
But the Negroes are the captives of the labor bureaucracy: the alliance between labor and the Negro people finds its degenerate expression in the captivity of the Negro middle class leaders in the Democratic Party. We have every sympathy with the Negroes in this political bondage and with the dramatic move of Roy Wilkins, shortly followed by Representative [Adam Clayton] Powell, to the Republican Party, as signifying a protest against the hypocrisy of the liberals and the labor leaders rather than support to the Republican bankers.
But this situation dictates bolder action by the Negro leaders: the isolation of the Negro movement demands that it give full scope to its advanced position to raise the workers in the labor movement toward it: we call upon the Negro leaders to reject the degenerate alliance with the labor fakers in the party of the Bourbons as well as the ineffectual bolts to the Republican Party. We urge them to join with the Socialist Workers Party in the demand upon the labor unions that they form a party of the working class.
We call upon them to emulate the qualities of leadership of a Frederick Douglass, who was not afraid to break even with William Lloyd Garrison and to split the abolitionist society when an opportunity appeared to prepare the way for the coming political party of emancipation.
VI. The Communist Party
The Communist Party, at one time the most successful of the socialist organizations in attracting Negro militants, has by now dissipated its influence in the Negro community and lost the large majority of its once powerful Negro cadre. This cadre was won by the prestige which the Russian Revolution commanded among peoples who seriously wanted a social change, and by years of devoted work by the rank and file of the party.
The basic reason for the present isolation of the Communist Party in the Negro community lies in the following political circumstance: the leaders of the CP have never hesitated to sacrifice the interests of the Negro people to the interests of maintaining alliances with privileged sections of the white population who might temporarily be of use in furthering the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
This was most horribly demonstrated during World War II when the CP openly denounced struggles of the Negro people as being disruptive of the “war effort” of American imperialism which was in alliance with the Soviet government. Betrayals of a like nature have followed the various twists and turns of policy until the Negro militants have become completely disaffected.
A second cause for the dissipation of the influence of the CP has been the persistence with which it clung to the erroneous idea that the Negroes constitute a nation and that their consequent political development would lead them to assert the right to nationhood and national self-determination. The authors of this doctrine envisaged that their theoretical contribution was, therefore, to prepare the ground for this inevitable separation.
This whole line of thought is in diametric opposition to the real nature of the Negro struggle and its historical tradition. It is segregation by skin color which is the traditional and present enemy of the Negroes, not national oppression.
The movement of the Negro people is the oldest social movement in existence in the United States. It is over 300 years old, and since 1818, the beginning of the struggle against the American Colonization Society, this movement has had a virtually uninterrupted existence and one fundamental direction: integration. Ever since then, the fundamental course of the Negro struggle has been to reject the demand of the ruling class that they become a separate subordinate nation, through segregation, and to demand the full rights of American citizenship and nationality. It will take a social catastrophe, more devastating than any yet visited upon the Negro people, to change the fundamental course of their struggle.
The Negroes considered that it was impudent, stupid and against their interests for the Stalinists arbitrarily to brush aside this great tradition of struggle and say to them in effect: “You’ll take self-determination and like it. When you develop out of your great political backwardness, the CP will be vindicated.” The Negroes replied that they already had segregation which was their worst enemy, and that the plans for a segregated socialism didn’t appeal to them. In spite of this almost universal reaction in the Negro community, the Stalinists blindly hung on to this theory.
Another consequence of this theory was that it created an almost gravitational attraction between the CP and sections of the Negro middle class. This was the only social group in the Negro community in which there seemed to be any expression of nationalism. This nationalism took the form of a willingness to accept segregation, the economic foundation of the Negro middle class and to confine the struggle to gaining improvements for its position within the framework of segregation.
Even during the “left” periods, this alliance between the CP leaders and the Negro middle classes resulted in the frustration of efforts of the rank and file communists, both white and black, to undertake serious struggle.
The present policy of “peaceful co-existence” is similar to the World War II jingoism in its betrayal of the Negro struggle. We call the attention of the Communist Party to the following actions and policies of the past year which tend to place the whole radical movement in bad repute in the Negro community:
1. Support of the “Louisville Plan.” This reactionary scheme to compromise the demand of the Negroes for immediate desegregation of the public schools, through “voluntary segregation,” was blatantly supported by spokesmen for the Communist Party. (See front page illustrated story People’s World, Sept. 21, 1956.)
2. Support of the Louisiana right to work law. This amended version of the original law was condemned by the National Agricultural Union and other spokesmen for Negro workers in Louisiana as a measure which gave to the largely white skilled workers certain immunities from the law at the expense of the Negroes and other agricultural, lumber, processing, etc. workers. The leaders of the CP committed the party to its support as an example of a “peoples’ anti-monopoly coalition” and even placed this support in its Draft Program. (See Draft Resolution for 16th National Convention of CP presented by NC, page 32, 1956.)
3. Support of the liberal betrayal of the civil rights struggle at the 84th Congress. This betrayal, now exposed by Rep. Powell and many others, consisted of devices whereby the liberal Democrats could guarantee the Bourbons that nothing would come of the Civil Rights legislation, but that the liberals should be permitted to appear as partisans of the legislation. In order to do this, however, they needed a smokescreen. The Daily Worker and the People’s World provided this admirably for them, and every time the liberals betrayed by giving in to the Bourbons, the CP leaders provided the smokescreen by endless fulminations against Eisenhower or the “Dixiecrats.”
4. Support of the “moderate” wing of White Supremacy. The so-called moderate wing of the Southern white supremacists, represented by such figures as Lyndon Johnson, is also part of the projected “anti-monopoly coalition.” (See Political Affairs, June 1956.) But this group is just as completely anti-Negro and anti-union as the rest of the Southern Bourbon politicians.
The support of these reactionary policies by the leaders of the CP disqualifies them completely from speaking with any authority on the civil rights struggle. We call upon them to repudiate these policies and join with us in a united front of action in defense of civil rights and the Negro struggle around the following propositions:
1. That we jointly memorialize Congress to refuse to seat the Southern Bourbon politicians, and continue to so refuse until it has been demonstrated that their elections are not carried out in violation of the civil rights of the people of the South.
2. That we demand of the president of the U.S. a second Emancipation Proclamation, proclaiming the workers of the South free from the white supremacist rulers and proclaiming an immediate and unconditional end to all segregation, discrimination, terrorism, etc.
3. For joint action in all local struggles against discrimination.
4. For a joint program for all socialists in the trade union movement on the civil rights question:
a. Demand of the international unions that they conduct a campaign in their Southern locals to bring them into conformity and support of the Negro struggle.
b. For the elimination of all Jim Crow locals and other discriminatory practices.
c. Against the extension of wage differentials and the privileges of skilled workers bought at the expense of the unskilled.
d. For a campaign to solve the discrimination inherent in the fact that Negroes are the last hired, first fired. This discrimination is perpetuated and frozen in most prevailing seniority systems. Seniority lists can be revised to advance the seniority of that number of Negroes required to maintain an equitable proportion of Negro workers in a plant at any given time, as is the policy of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
e. For all-out aid to the Southern struggles and to demand that the labor movement intervene directly, linking the problem of the organization of the South to the struggle against white supremacy.
5. To prepare for the overthrow of the Southern system by a continued democratic discussion of all issues at stake in the socialist movement with the object of creating a new revolutionary socialist party which is the only assurance of victory.
VII. Negroes and the SWP
The Negro people have long been preparing for the opportunity to open up the final struggle against white supremacy. Their preparations have been, in the South, painstaking and systematic. As their opportunity comes closer in time and more tangible in form, they must review their preparations and consider what element is lacking or in insufficient quantity or inadequate quality.
They must consider that they are a vital part of a great world revolutionary process which has as its goal the reorganization of the whole globe along lines of complete equality for all, through socialism.
They must recognize the crisis of this world revolutionary movement: that while the masses of the world have demonstrated their willingness to struggle for this aim, the leadership has not responded in kind, and therefore the movement fails to fulfill its historical goals. This has resulted in the historical crisis of leadership which is the basic problem of our epoch.
The critical point of all preparation for struggle in this era is the creation of adequate leadership. The struggles of all peoples and all classes require the organization of leadership into a political party. This is the means by which leadership can be tried and tested and is the means for unifying program with practice, leadership with ranks—and keeping them all in proper balance.
We call upon all socialist-minded Negroes to take advantage of the ideological ferment in the general socialist movement around the question of the regroupment of socialist forces. This discussion holds forth the possibility of clearing the political atmosphere and creating the foundation for a more powerful socialist party through the regroupment of the revolutionary currents.
We call upon them to participate in the discussions which are taking place. They will bring to these discussions the militance, realism and character of the Negro struggle and at the same time broaden their own understanding of it through a heightened consciousness of socialist ideology.
The Negro militants have the following ultimate responsibility in this situation: to determine the program which corresponds to the objective needs of the whole struggle and to make it theirs.
We call upon the militant Negro workers to join the Socialist Workers Party, the party of the American revolution. We stand before them as the party of the proletariat, of the poor and oppressed. We stand upon no economic, political or social privilege, but consider that the oppressed of the world must act together to gain peace, prosperity, security, equality; with abundance for all but special privilege for none. This is the only way to save the world from the catastrophes unleashed by decaying capitalism.
The SWP stands before the Negro people as the only party in the U.S. which has never under any circumstances forsaken or subordinated the needs of the Negro struggle in the interests of alliance with privileged groups or enemy classes.
We call upon the Negro intellectuals to cast their lot with the proletariat. This is the class which will lead the Negro struggle to victory. But this means, first of all, to adhere to the program of revolutionary socialism—which is the only road of the victorious proletarian struggle.
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June 1957
Summary Remarks on Negro Discussion
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Written: 1957
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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From SWP Discussion Bulletin Vol. 18, No. 14 (October 1957). Dick Fraser debated George Breitman at the SWP’s 17th National Convention, held 7-9 June 1957. The Convention adopted the Breitman resolution with 54 delegate and 33 consultative votes in favor, although a number of delegates recorded objections to its support for “self-determination” and for the slogan “Federal Troops to the South.” Five delegate and five consultative votes were cast for the Fraser resolution.
A study of the first discussions of the Negro question in the American political movement reveals that the question which was originally quite simple has become extremely complicated. The Negro struggle for equality was an obvious type of movement, as viewed by the IWW, a matter of equality for all workers. They would not tolerate any ideas of segregation. They would go into the deep South and hold integrated meetings there. It was simple, but incomplete. It required Marxism to clarify the question.
Of recent years, since the introduction of the nationalist conception of the Negro question by the Stalinists, the problem has revolved around the question of what is the nature of the Negro question. Dan [Roberts] says it is a national question and it isn’t a national question. So, if it isn’t a national question, what is it? It is a racial question. It is a question of racial discrimination. This is a unique category of special oppression which is different from national oppression.
Religious oppression, which Dan relates it to, is closely associated with national oppression. It is oppression of a part of the culture of a people; but that is not what the Negro question is like. The Negro question is only like itself. That is, it is a unique phenomenon arising fundamentally in the United States, and emanating from there in various forms throughout the world.
Color discrimination is a unique problem and requires an analysis of its own. Upon close examination the first thing which you find in the Negro question is its diametric opposites to the national question. Not in the whole history of the national struggle of Europe or Asia, did you ever see a national minority or a nation, whose fundamental struggle was the right to assimilate into the dominant culture. You never saw it. It is the diametric opposite of all the national struggles.
The national struggle is characterized by the desire for self-segregation, the desire to withstand the pressure of the dominant nations to force them to assimilate, give up their economy, give up their language, their culture and their religion. All of the militant tendencies of the nationalist movement stress the requirements of the nation to organize itself and to segregate itself from the nation that oppresses it. The conservative, conciliatory elements are on the side of assimilation and integration. That is absolutely characteristic of the national struggle. That is one of the fundamental characteristics with which Marxists were historically confronted.
This was the problem in dispute between Lenin and Luxemburg, and Lenin and everybody else who dealt with this problem of nationalism. It is the precise opposite of the Negro struggle. From the very beginning of the modern Negro struggle 150 years ago, all tendencies of a militant, revolutionary, progressive nature in this struggle have tended to find as the axis of their struggle a resistance against racial separation because this is the weapon of racial oppression.
Comrade Dan, you say that you want to leave the door open for self-determination at some future time. Will you not permit the Negroes a self-determination now based upon 150 years of struggle? Everything points to this fact. They do not want to be designated a nation. Why do you demand to place this designation upon their struggle? It is not a national struggle. It is a struggle against racial discrimination. That’s from whence it derives its independent and dual character, i.e., its independence from and identity with the class struggle.
It is the feature of the permanent revolution in American life. What is involved is the vestigial remains of color slavery, an antique social system unsolved by the capitalist revolution in the Civil War and Reconstruction. These vestiges, the social relations of chattel slavery, color segregation, color discrimination, white supremacy adapted to and integrated into the whole economic, political and social life of capitalism, become one of the important driving forces of the movement for socialism because capitalism can no longer even be considered as a possible ally of the Negro people in the solution of this question. The capitalist class has decided this long ago. They integrated their system with the Jim Crow system, it is one and the same thing now.
Consequently, the Negro struggle for equality, in its independence, arises out of racial oppression, attacking a Southern social system which is the result of these vestiges incorporated in the capitalist system. This struggle begins on the plane of elementary consciousness. Equality is an elementary democratic demand which has no solution under capitalism and therefore becomes, because of its nature, a transition to the struggle for socialism.
Comrade Dot accuses me of accusing the P.C. of being pro-Stalinist and pro-reformist.
(Note by Kirk: The following interchange was not picked up in the transcription. I have reconstructed it as it occurred according to my memory:
Interruption from the Presiding Committee: That what you said yesterday?
Kirk: That’s not what I said.
Presiding Committee: Then you implied it.
Kirk: I implied nothing of the kind.
Presiding Committee: Let’s have plain speaking here.
Kirk: I say that your program is an adaptation to reformism.)
That means that you do not differentiate yourselves from the reformists in the Southern movement. The critical problem of the moment, the crisis of leadership in the Negro movement, revolves around the question of reformism or revolution, and the resolution does not differentiate between these two tendencies. If it did we would have a different situation today in the convention. I would not have written another resolution.
The resolution does not differentiate. It supports the basic line of the religious pacifist leadership of the Negro movement in the South.
Comrade Breitman and the resolution say that the Southern Leaders Conference is the differentiation, that this is the differential force in the Negro movement; and that’s not true. The S.L.C. is just another wing of the petty-bourgeois leadership. This is not the decisive differentiation. The differentiation will come as a result of our being able to inject the revolutionary proletarian program into that struggle. And the struggle will not have its over-all religious character then, as the workers take the power in the Negro movement.
Comrade Jones says we are not, never have, and never will be separatists. We had a resolution in 1939 which Comrade Breitman said was the guiding line of the party for 10 years, which is essentially a nationalist document on the Negro question. It is entitled “Self-Determination and the American Negroes.” And it is organized around the concept of self-determination. That was the program adopted by the 1939 convention. “It is not improbable, therefore, that the bulk of the Negroes have absorbed their lesson far more profoundly than is superficially apparent and that on their first political awakening to the necessity of revolutionary activity, the first political awakening, they may demand the right of self-determination, that is, the formation of the Negro state in the South.”
The 1939 Resolution analyzes the Garvey movement as representing the desire for a Negro state, and speaks about the opponents of the Negro state as follows: “The opposition to a Negro state comes mainly from the articulate and vocal but small and weak class of the Negro intellectuals concerned with little else besides the gaining of a place for themselves in American capitalist society, fanatically blind to its rapid decline.” This is the characterization in the resolution of the theoreticians of assimilationism who have been now vindicated by the whole course of the Negro struggle. That is a wrong formulation and it has not been vindicated by the course of events, but nevertheless this is an important part of our history and it is wrong to say that it never existed.
Now, Comrade George Lavan accuses me of twisting words when I say the resolution designates the Negroes as a national minority. That’s what it says and Comrade Dan agreed that it did; he said, what are you going to call it if you don’t?
Comrade George says that there is no such movement as I described as quoted in the Militant as a movement of Southern women. There’s no movement, there’s no struggle. There is! The item in the Militant is only one aspect of it, only one facet. There is a movement which has been in continuous existence since 1930, in overt struggle against the system of segregation.
A very exceptional book on the movement in the South, Lillian Smith’s The Killers of the Dream, describes this organization and what role it plays there. She speaks about the Southern women and what their stake in this struggle is. She describes them as follows: “Culturally stunted by a region that still pays nice rewards to simple mindedness in females they had no defenses against blandishment. The gullied land of the South, washed out and eroded, matched the washed-out women of the rural South whose bodies were often used as ruthlessly as the land; who worked as hard as animals; who were segregated in church, sitting in separate pews from the men; who were not thought fit to be citizens and vote until three decades ago and who, in some states in the South, cannot own property except in their husband’s name. Who even now cannot officiate as ministers in most of the churches though they are the breath of life of the church.”
These women, she says, decided to make a war upon their oppression. These “lady insurrectionists,” she calls them,
“these ladies went forth to commit treason against Southern tradition. It was a purely subversive affair but as decorously conducted as an afternoon walk taken by the students of a female institute. It started stealthily in my mother’s day. Shyly these first women sneaked down from their chilly places, did their sabotage and sneaked back up, wrapping innocence around them like a lace shawl.
“They set secret time bombs and went back to their needle work, serenely awaiting the blast. Their time bombs consisted of a secret under-ground propaganda movement which was developed from mothers to daughters and through the years spreading out to encompass vast sections of the white female population. And so degraded was the position of women in Southern society that white men of the South could not conceive of their women having ideas and had no inkling of the insurrection until it happened.
“The lady insurrectionists gathered together one day in one of our Southern cities. They primly called themselves church women but churches were forgotten by everybody when they spoke their revolutionary words. They said calmly that they were not afraid of being raped and as for their sacredness, they could take care of it for themselves. They did not need chivalry or a lynching to protect them, they did not want it. Not only that—they continued that they would personally do everything in their power to keep any Negro from being lynched and furthermore, they squeaked bravely, they had plenty of power and this was the foundation of the Association of Southern Women Against Lynching in 1930.”
It began a struggle against segregation, as the fundamental hereditary enemy. They claimed that the Lord’s Supper was a holy sacrament which Christians cannot take without sacrilege unless they also break bread with fellow-men of color. They systematically set out to break down one of the most important conventions of segregation and engaged in inter-racial feeding.
This organization has been in continuous existence since that time, has been active and has now become a tremendous factor developing support of the movement against segregation.
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement than in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
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Markin comment on this article:
The black question as it is called in the Marxist movement, the question of class and race intertwined in the class struggle in America, is central to the strategy for revolutionary. Period. The struggle to find a way to the black masses through the black workers, who have historically been among the most militant sections of the working class, has been long, hard, vexing, and in certain periods fruitless (due to apathy or the predominance of various black nationalist or liberal assimilationist ideolgies. Fraser's work was invaluable as a first step toward sorting things out. Forward!
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25 May 1957
Resolution on the Negro Struggle
Written: 1957
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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From SWP Discussion Bulletin Vol. 18, No. 11 (September 1957). Fraser’s document, dated 25 May 1957, was submitted for discussion at the SWP’s 17th National Convention. It was counterposed to “The Class Struggle Road to Negro Equality,” sponsored by the SWP Political Committee and largely written by George Breitman.
I. The Permanent Revolution in America
The objective conditions have matured for the eruption of the class struggle in the South. The task of this struggle will be to overthrow the fascist-like yoke of white supremacy.
Since the destruction of popular government in the South at the close of the Reconstruction, the Southern Bourbon oligarchy, in close alliance with the whole American capitalist class, adapted the social relations of chattel slavery to the requirements of property relations and capitalist production.
The capitalists and planters achieved this Jim Crow system by a method which has been copied by all the imperialist ruling classes of the world. They broke up the working masses into hostile racial groups by the use of organized murder and terrorism against the Negroes and all who would stand side by side with them. They degraded labor through the enforced peonage of the Negroes. They created a white middle class which derived special privileges from the degradation of labor in general and the Negro in particular. They eliminated popular government and substituted the rule of a small minority of the privileged, the rich, the powerful: the white supremacists.
By creating a living hell for the Negro people, the ruling classes were thus able to achieve a super-exploitation of all Southern labor, bringing in profits which could be compared with those from colonial exploitation.
Thus, a whole social system became organized around the degradation of the Negro—a system which became an integrated and indispensable part of the economic, social and political structure of American capitalism.
The emancipation of the Negro people through social, political and economic equality is the fundamental condition for this liberation of all the oppressed in the South. This requires the destruction of the whole Southern system. Short of this there can be little change and few democratic rights for anyone.
However, the permanent revolution in America reveals itself in the following manner: the Southern system represents massive survivals of chattel slavery. These survivals take the form of great social problems unsolved by the Civil War and Reconstruction: an antiquated system of land tenure, the absence of democratic rights, segregation and racial discrimination. The solution of these questions was the responsibility of the capitalist class when it took the national power from the slaveowners in 1860. But they proved incapable of this. So these survivals of an antique system of exploitation have become integrated into the capitalist structure and form a component part thereof.
Capitalism could not solve these problems during its youth and virility, even under conditions of waging a bitter war against the slave power. Now, when amidst the decay and death agony of capitalism, these problems have become integrated into its very structure, the capitalist class will positively not prove able to solve them. This circumstance leads to the inescapable conclusion that although the tasks of the liberation of the South are of an elementary democratic nature, they have no solution within the framework of American capitalism: they become a part of the socialist struggle of the proletariat to overthrow the whole capitalist system of production.
The second manifestation of the permanent revolution lies in the question of leadership of the Negro struggle. The goal of the Negro struggle has been determined historically: the elimination of racial discrimination lies through the struggle for economic, political and social equality. The axis of this struggle is the fight against segregation. At the present time the leadership of this struggle is in the hands of the middle class. This Negro middle class suffers social, economic and political discrimination because of skin color. It is a far more terrible discrimination than is the usual lot of privileged layers of an oppressed group. This circumstance has produced a great galaxy of Negro scholars who have brilliantly analyzed and plumbed the depths and sources of racial oppression.
But, at the same time, the position of the middle class as a whole derives from and feeds upon segregation, the axis of the social force which oppresses them as Negroes.
This conflict between their racial and class interests causes the middle class leadership to act in a hesitant and treacherous manner. They will prove totally incapable of giving adequate leadership to the movement as it develops on to higher planes of struggle.
But the Negro workers have no such conflict of interest. They receive no such economic privileges from segregation. On the contrary they are super-exploited at the point of production and in all economic spheres. Discrimination against them as Negroes is intimately connected with their exploitation as workers. Finding themselves below the standard of living of even the white workers, they must of necessity open up a struggle for racial equality as the key to raising their standard of living as workers.
So as it falls to the American working class as a whole to solve the basic contradictions of American society, so does it fall upon the shoulders of the Negro proletariat to take the lead in the struggle for equality.
II. The Significance of Montgomery
The successful struggle of the Negroes of Montgomery shows a changed relationship of forces in the South. This is the first successful sustained mass struggle of the Negroes of the South in nearly seventy years. It demonstrates the decay and disintegration of the power of white supremacy and reveals that the situation is ripening for the liberation of the people of the South from the Jim Crow system.
The changed conditions have been brought about by the industrialization of the South and the deepening of the penetration of monopoly capitalism into all spheres of life. The salient features of this change have been: (1) The urbanization of the Negro population which now finds its center of gravity shifted from the dispersed rural areas into powerful mass forces in the cities. (2) The undermining of the mass base of the Southern system through the partial destruction of the white middle class and the proletarianization of large contingents of this former mass petty bourgeoisie.
This changed relationship of forces results in the inability of the white ruling classes to crush at will the aroused and organized Negro masses. The magnitude of the Negro struggle, reaching national and even international proportions, has rendered the U.S. government helpless to intervene decisively in behalf of the white supremacists.
These objective conditions have been ripening for decades and provide the groundwork for the outbreak of the Montgomery masses. The immediate factor preparing the masses for the actual struggle was the [Emmett] Till case and its aftermath, which demonstrated to the Negroes that the Federal Government would do nothing against the Jim Crow system, that any feeling that the Negroes had an ally in the national capital was an illusion, and that if anything was to be done they would have to do it themselves.
The struggle is now beginning to unfold. As it develops, all the resources of the American capitalist class will be aligned against it: all the forces of reaction, all agencies of government, the army, the avenues of information and the schools, churches and courts. Yet, the victory of the masses will be assured under two conditions:
1. That the struggle of the Southern workers, led by the Negroes, will rekindle the fires of the class struggle throughout the country and bring into play the great powers of the American proletariat in solidarity with them.
2. That the Southern masses will produce a revolutionary socialist leadership fully conscious of its aims, the road of struggle, the magnitude of the task.
The Montgomery boycotters forecast the unfolding movement which will take the lead in the emancipation of the Southern masses.
We support the courageous internationalism of their sympathy for and self-identification with the struggles of the dark-skinned colonial masses. This kinship arises from the common bond forged by years of common struggle against white supremacy. It is our elementary duty, however, to warn the Negro people away from Gandhi’s program of “passive resistance” as a means of their liberation.
This program, fostered by the Indian bourgeoisie, paralyzed the action of the masses of people, kept the Indian capitalists at the head of the movement for Indian independence and made it possible for the native bourgeoisie to reap all the rewards of the struggle against imperialism at the expense of the masses.
In the United States this program has been super-imposed upon the struggle in Montgomery by its petty bourgeois leadership. By thus identifying a dynamic struggle with “resistance in the spirit of love and non-violence” they blunt the consciousness of the masses who require a program which corresponds with the reality of their militant actions.
We hail the emergence of the proletarian militants in the Montgomery struggle. They are the coming leaders of the struggle of all the Southern masses. It is they who have nothing to lose and the world to gain. Their class position gives them courage and insight, for it is they who have the fundamental stake in the struggle against the Jim Crow system.
We salute the women of the South both black and white for their heroic role in the struggle.
The unbounded revolutionary energy of the triply oppressed Negro women is making itself manifest in the initiative and leadership which they have given to the movement in its initial stages.
The decay of the Southern system which foretells its doom is expressed by the defection of the white women away from the forces of white supremacy and by their organized appearance in greater and greater numbers in joint struggle with the Negroes. This is the proof that they recognize that they, too, are the victims of the system of white supremacy. They understand that the so-called “chivalry” of Southern tradition degrades them: that the pedestal of “sacred” white womanhood is in reality a prison for chattels which denies independence, the rights of citizens and the status of human beings.
They are aware that the myth of “sacred” (i.e., segregated) white womanhood is one of the focal points of the ideology of white supremacy and ties the struggle for the emancipation of women directly to that of the Negroes.
Other large sections of the white population hide their disgust with the Southern system in fear of reprisal. We recommend the example of the women and urge them to give organized support to their courageous struggle.
III. The Labor Movement
The existence of the Southern social system is a constant mortal threat to the entire labor movement in the U.S. Every factor of political and economic life shows that the extension of unionism into the open-shop South is a life and death question.
But unions cannot exist on any mass scale in the total absence of elementary democratic rights. On the other hand labor unions will grow hand in hand with the successes of the Civil Rights movement. Consequently the labor movement must dedicate itself to the destruction of white supremacy as the only way to assure the extension of unionism into the South.
We call upon the officials of the AFL-CIO to begin the campaign to organize the South with a repudiation of their political alliance with the liberal Democrats who are the protectors and defenders of the Southern Bourbons. We call upon them to take the next step in the Southern drive: to declare for the formation of a political party of labor which would become the political and organizational center of the struggle against Jim Crow.
IV. The Advanced Position of the Negro Movement
The struggle for racial equality is an integral part of the struggle of the American working class for socialism. The connection between these two goals is so fundamental that one cannot be envisaged without the other.
This connection has been implicit from the very beginning of the anti-slavery struggle and found clearest expression in Karl Marx’s dictum to white American workers: “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” The consistent logic which led many abolitionist leaders such as Douglass and Phillips to embrace socialist principles confirmed this connection.
The power of the ruling class and the pernicious influence of the Southern system has kept the American working class divided along color lines for long periods of time. However, the past twenty years have demonstrated again in life the identity of interest which had been implicit all along.
The close connection between the Negro struggle for equality and the labor struggle became one of the paramount features of the great struggles of the 1930’s. One of the greatest achievements of unionism during this stormy upsurge was the successful conclusion of the long struggle to build the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This achievement was capped by the emergence of the CIO which represented the first mass joining of the two movements in modern times.
Together during the 30’s the two movements made giant strides. But with the preparation for World War II they diverged: the CIO under the pressure of a newly created bureaucracy capitulated to the bosses and the government and it wasn’t long before the Communist Party did likewise. Together they sacrificed the interests of the working class to the needs of the U.S. imperialist war machine. But the Negro movement, under the stimulus of workers arising from great depths of super-exploitation, refused to be taken in or intimidated by the patriotic hysteria.
Ever since the beginning of 1941 the unions have taken one backward step after another and the bosses have followed through with body blows. Although the labor movement was able to mobilize briefly in 1946 for a successful defense when mortally threatened, it soon gave in again and as a result has endured a never ending string of humiliating repressive measures inflicted on them by the government and the employers.
But all through this period and even at the height of the worst wave of reaction which has been unleashed against the American workers in many decades—the Negro movement has registered steady advances. The source of this difference in achievement lies in the divergent lines of development which were laid out in 1941 when the Negroes were organizing for a March on Washington in defiance of the needs of the government for domestic tranquility at the very time that the labor bureaucracy was giving no-strike pledges to this same government. The Negroes were able to withstand the patriotic pressure upon them and to see through the lies of American imperialism because of their advanced consciousness derived from super-exploitation and discrimination.
Upon this background the Montgomery uprising propels the Negro movement into a greatly advanced position which, coinciding with the ebb tide of the labor movement, approaches isolation.
And this poses a dual danger: First, that this great movement may remain isolated and be crushed for lack of needed support from the labor movement. Second, that such a defeat inflicted upon this dynamic sector of the working class would set back the development of the labor movement.
It is the duty of all socialists to spare no energy in rallying the working class and the labor movement to the aid of the Negroes struggling in the South and to connect and integrate the struggles.
But the decisive force in determining the future course of events, and relations of the Southern fighters with the labor movement in the North and West, is the Negro movement itself. In this vital movement just unfolding there is great attractive power: in the relations between the Negro movement and the labor movement the Negroes hold the initiative. But only a proletarian leadership of the Negro movement will be able to utilize properly this strategic advantage and to draw the labor movement into support and intervention. Such a leadership will grasp the political significance of the situation.
Above all, the Negro movement must beware of the “isolationist” feeling that if the labor movement doesn’t seem to move, and if, as a consequence, the working class as a whole appears unmoved by and unconcerned with the heroic struggle in the South, then the Negro movement can turn its back and go its way alone. Such a course would be disastrous, would end in the crushing defeat of the Negroes and retard the whole labor struggle.
Such proposals arise from an underestimation of the task ahead and from the dangerous illusion that racial equality can be achieved without the overthrow and complete destruction of the Southern social system. In this struggle, the Negroes will be the initiators, because of their super-exploitation and advanced consciousness. But the fight can be won only by the united struggle of all toilers.
V. What Political Road?
The advanced consciousness of the Negro movement expresses itself politically. First, by their refusal to be taken in by patriotic war propaganda. Second, by their willingness to launch broad struggles in spite of the reaction. This political understanding also encompasses the knowledge that the problem of civil rights is neither a moral question, one of law, or of the “hearts and minds of men,” but that it is a political question which must be fought by means of political party.
The Negroes are also quite aware that the Democratic and Republican parties are their enemies, and that serious advancement of the struggle for equality is impossible through these channels.
But the Negroes are the captives of the labor bureaucracy: the alliance between labor and the Negro people finds its degenerate expression in the captivity of the Negro middle class leaders in the Democratic Party. We have every sympathy with the Negroes in this political bondage and with the dramatic move of Roy Wilkins, shortly followed by Representative [Adam Clayton] Powell, to the Republican Party, as signifying a protest against the hypocrisy of the liberals and the labor leaders rather than support to the Republican bankers.
But this situation dictates bolder action by the Negro leaders: the isolation of the Negro movement demands that it give full scope to its advanced position to raise the workers in the labor movement toward it: we call upon the Negro leaders to reject the degenerate alliance with the labor fakers in the party of the Bourbons as well as the ineffectual bolts to the Republican Party. We urge them to join with the Socialist Workers Party in the demand upon the labor unions that they form a party of the working class.
We call upon them to emulate the qualities of leadership of a Frederick Douglass, who was not afraid to break even with William Lloyd Garrison and to split the abolitionist society when an opportunity appeared to prepare the way for the coming political party of emancipation.
VI. The Communist Party
The Communist Party, at one time the most successful of the socialist organizations in attracting Negro militants, has by now dissipated its influence in the Negro community and lost the large majority of its once powerful Negro cadre. This cadre was won by the prestige which the Russian Revolution commanded among peoples who seriously wanted a social change, and by years of devoted work by the rank and file of the party.
The basic reason for the present isolation of the Communist Party in the Negro community lies in the following political circumstance: the leaders of the CP have never hesitated to sacrifice the interests of the Negro people to the interests of maintaining alliances with privileged sections of the white population who might temporarily be of use in furthering the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
This was most horribly demonstrated during World War II when the CP openly denounced struggles of the Negro people as being disruptive of the “war effort” of American imperialism which was in alliance with the Soviet government. Betrayals of a like nature have followed the various twists and turns of policy until the Negro militants have become completely disaffected.
A second cause for the dissipation of the influence of the CP has been the persistence with which it clung to the erroneous idea that the Negroes constitute a nation and that their consequent political development would lead them to assert the right to nationhood and national self-determination. The authors of this doctrine envisaged that their theoretical contribution was, therefore, to prepare the ground for this inevitable separation.
This whole line of thought is in diametric opposition to the real nature of the Negro struggle and its historical tradition. It is segregation by skin color which is the traditional and present enemy of the Negroes, not national oppression.
The movement of the Negro people is the oldest social movement in existence in the United States. It is over 300 years old, and since 1818, the beginning of the struggle against the American Colonization Society, this movement has had a virtually uninterrupted existence and one fundamental direction: integration. Ever since then, the fundamental course of the Negro struggle has been to reject the demand of the ruling class that they become a separate subordinate nation, through segregation, and to demand the full rights of American citizenship and nationality. It will take a social catastrophe, more devastating than any yet visited upon the Negro people, to change the fundamental course of their struggle.
The Negroes considered that it was impudent, stupid and against their interests for the Stalinists arbitrarily to brush aside this great tradition of struggle and say to them in effect: “You’ll take self-determination and like it. When you develop out of your great political backwardness, the CP will be vindicated.” The Negroes replied that they already had segregation which was their worst enemy, and that the plans for a segregated socialism didn’t appeal to them. In spite of this almost universal reaction in the Negro community, the Stalinists blindly hung on to this theory.
Another consequence of this theory was that it created an almost gravitational attraction between the CP and sections of the Negro middle class. This was the only social group in the Negro community in which there seemed to be any expression of nationalism. This nationalism took the form of a willingness to accept segregation, the economic foundation of the Negro middle class and to confine the struggle to gaining improvements for its position within the framework of segregation.
Even during the “left” periods, this alliance between the CP leaders and the Negro middle classes resulted in the frustration of efforts of the rank and file communists, both white and black, to undertake serious struggle.
The present policy of “peaceful co-existence” is similar to the World War II jingoism in its betrayal of the Negro struggle. We call the attention of the Communist Party to the following actions and policies of the past year which tend to place the whole radical movement in bad repute in the Negro community:
1. Support of the “Louisville Plan.” This reactionary scheme to compromise the demand of the Negroes for immediate desegregation of the public schools, through “voluntary segregation,” was blatantly supported by spokesmen for the Communist Party. (See front page illustrated story People’s World, Sept. 21, 1956.)
2. Support of the Louisiana right to work law. This amended version of the original law was condemned by the National Agricultural Union and other spokesmen for Negro workers in Louisiana as a measure which gave to the largely white skilled workers certain immunities from the law at the expense of the Negroes and other agricultural, lumber, processing, etc. workers. The leaders of the CP committed the party to its support as an example of a “peoples’ anti-monopoly coalition” and even placed this support in its Draft Program. (See Draft Resolution for 16th National Convention of CP presented by NC, page 32, 1956.)
3. Support of the liberal betrayal of the civil rights struggle at the 84th Congress. This betrayal, now exposed by Rep. Powell and many others, consisted of devices whereby the liberal Democrats could guarantee the Bourbons that nothing would come of the Civil Rights legislation, but that the liberals should be permitted to appear as partisans of the legislation. In order to do this, however, they needed a smokescreen. The Daily Worker and the People’s World provided this admirably for them, and every time the liberals betrayed by giving in to the Bourbons, the CP leaders provided the smokescreen by endless fulminations against Eisenhower or the “Dixiecrats.”
4. Support of the “moderate” wing of White Supremacy. The so-called moderate wing of the Southern white supremacists, represented by such figures as Lyndon Johnson, is also part of the projected “anti-monopoly coalition.” (See Political Affairs, June 1956.) But this group is just as completely anti-Negro and anti-union as the rest of the Southern Bourbon politicians.
The support of these reactionary policies by the leaders of the CP disqualifies them completely from speaking with any authority on the civil rights struggle. We call upon them to repudiate these policies and join with us in a united front of action in defense of civil rights and the Negro struggle around the following propositions:
1. That we jointly memorialize Congress to refuse to seat the Southern Bourbon politicians, and continue to so refuse until it has been demonstrated that their elections are not carried out in violation of the civil rights of the people of the South.
2. That we demand of the president of the U.S. a second Emancipation Proclamation, proclaiming the workers of the South free from the white supremacist rulers and proclaiming an immediate and unconditional end to all segregation, discrimination, terrorism, etc.
3. For joint action in all local struggles against discrimination.
4. For a joint program for all socialists in the trade union movement on the civil rights question:
a. Demand of the international unions that they conduct a campaign in their Southern locals to bring them into conformity and support of the Negro struggle.
b. For the elimination of all Jim Crow locals and other discriminatory practices.
c. Against the extension of wage differentials and the privileges of skilled workers bought at the expense of the unskilled.
d. For a campaign to solve the discrimination inherent in the fact that Negroes are the last hired, first fired. This discrimination is perpetuated and frozen in most prevailing seniority systems. Seniority lists can be revised to advance the seniority of that number of Negroes required to maintain an equitable proportion of Negro workers in a plant at any given time, as is the policy of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
e. For all-out aid to the Southern struggles and to demand that the labor movement intervene directly, linking the problem of the organization of the South to the struggle against white supremacy.
5. To prepare for the overthrow of the Southern system by a continued democratic discussion of all issues at stake in the socialist movement with the object of creating a new revolutionary socialist party which is the only assurance of victory.
VII. Negroes and the SWP
The Negro people have long been preparing for the opportunity to open up the final struggle against white supremacy. Their preparations have been, in the South, painstaking and systematic. As their opportunity comes closer in time and more tangible in form, they must review their preparations and consider what element is lacking or in insufficient quantity or inadequate quality.
They must consider that they are a vital part of a great world revolutionary process which has as its goal the reorganization of the whole globe along lines of complete equality for all, through socialism.
They must recognize the crisis of this world revolutionary movement: that while the masses of the world have demonstrated their willingness to struggle for this aim, the leadership has not responded in kind, and therefore the movement fails to fulfill its historical goals. This has resulted in the historical crisis of leadership which is the basic problem of our epoch.
The critical point of all preparation for struggle in this era is the creation of adequate leadership. The struggles of all peoples and all classes require the organization of leadership into a political party. This is the means by which leadership can be tried and tested and is the means for unifying program with practice, leadership with ranks—and keeping them all in proper balance.
We call upon all socialist-minded Negroes to take advantage of the ideological ferment in the general socialist movement around the question of the regroupment of socialist forces. This discussion holds forth the possibility of clearing the political atmosphere and creating the foundation for a more powerful socialist party through the regroupment of the revolutionary currents.
We call upon them to participate in the discussions which are taking place. They will bring to these discussions the militance, realism and character of the Negro struggle and at the same time broaden their own understanding of it through a heightened consciousness of socialist ideology.
The Negro militants have the following ultimate responsibility in this situation: to determine the program which corresponds to the objective needs of the whole struggle and to make it theirs.
We call upon the militant Negro workers to join the Socialist Workers Party, the party of the American revolution. We stand before them as the party of the proletariat, of the poor and oppressed. We stand upon no economic, political or social privilege, but consider that the oppressed of the world must act together to gain peace, prosperity, security, equality; with abundance for all but special privilege for none. This is the only way to save the world from the catastrophes unleashed by decaying capitalism.
The SWP stands before the Negro people as the only party in the U.S. which has never under any circumstances forsaken or subordinated the needs of the Negro struggle in the interests of alliance with privileged groups or enemy classes.
We call upon the Negro intellectuals to cast their lot with the proletariat. This is the class which will lead the Negro struggle to victory. But this means, first of all, to adhere to the program of revolutionary socialism—which is the only road of the victorious proletarian struggle.
********
June 1957
Summary Remarks on Negro Discussion
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Written: 1957
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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From SWP Discussion Bulletin Vol. 18, No. 14 (October 1957). Dick Fraser debated George Breitman at the SWP’s 17th National Convention, held 7-9 June 1957. The Convention adopted the Breitman resolution with 54 delegate and 33 consultative votes in favor, although a number of delegates recorded objections to its support for “self-determination” and for the slogan “Federal Troops to the South.” Five delegate and five consultative votes were cast for the Fraser resolution.
A study of the first discussions of the Negro question in the American political movement reveals that the question which was originally quite simple has become extremely complicated. The Negro struggle for equality was an obvious type of movement, as viewed by the IWW, a matter of equality for all workers. They would not tolerate any ideas of segregation. They would go into the deep South and hold integrated meetings there. It was simple, but incomplete. It required Marxism to clarify the question.
Of recent years, since the introduction of the nationalist conception of the Negro question by the Stalinists, the problem has revolved around the question of what is the nature of the Negro question. Dan [Roberts] says it is a national question and it isn’t a national question. So, if it isn’t a national question, what is it? It is a racial question. It is a question of racial discrimination. This is a unique category of special oppression which is different from national oppression.
Religious oppression, which Dan relates it to, is closely associated with national oppression. It is oppression of a part of the culture of a people; but that is not what the Negro question is like. The Negro question is only like itself. That is, it is a unique phenomenon arising fundamentally in the United States, and emanating from there in various forms throughout the world.
Color discrimination is a unique problem and requires an analysis of its own. Upon close examination the first thing which you find in the Negro question is its diametric opposites to the national question. Not in the whole history of the national struggle of Europe or Asia, did you ever see a national minority or a nation, whose fundamental struggle was the right to assimilate into the dominant culture. You never saw it. It is the diametric opposite of all the national struggles.
The national struggle is characterized by the desire for self-segregation, the desire to withstand the pressure of the dominant nations to force them to assimilate, give up their economy, give up their language, their culture and their religion. All of the militant tendencies of the nationalist movement stress the requirements of the nation to organize itself and to segregate itself from the nation that oppresses it. The conservative, conciliatory elements are on the side of assimilation and integration. That is absolutely characteristic of the national struggle. That is one of the fundamental characteristics with which Marxists were historically confronted.
This was the problem in dispute between Lenin and Luxemburg, and Lenin and everybody else who dealt with this problem of nationalism. It is the precise opposite of the Negro struggle. From the very beginning of the modern Negro struggle 150 years ago, all tendencies of a militant, revolutionary, progressive nature in this struggle have tended to find as the axis of their struggle a resistance against racial separation because this is the weapon of racial oppression.
Comrade Dan, you say that you want to leave the door open for self-determination at some future time. Will you not permit the Negroes a self-determination now based upon 150 years of struggle? Everything points to this fact. They do not want to be designated a nation. Why do you demand to place this designation upon their struggle? It is not a national struggle. It is a struggle against racial discrimination. That’s from whence it derives its independent and dual character, i.e., its independence from and identity with the class struggle.
It is the feature of the permanent revolution in American life. What is involved is the vestigial remains of color slavery, an antique social system unsolved by the capitalist revolution in the Civil War and Reconstruction. These vestiges, the social relations of chattel slavery, color segregation, color discrimination, white supremacy adapted to and integrated into the whole economic, political and social life of capitalism, become one of the important driving forces of the movement for socialism because capitalism can no longer even be considered as a possible ally of the Negro people in the solution of this question. The capitalist class has decided this long ago. They integrated their system with the Jim Crow system, it is one and the same thing now.
Consequently, the Negro struggle for equality, in its independence, arises out of racial oppression, attacking a Southern social system which is the result of these vestiges incorporated in the capitalist system. This struggle begins on the plane of elementary consciousness. Equality is an elementary democratic demand which has no solution under capitalism and therefore becomes, because of its nature, a transition to the struggle for socialism.
Comrade Dot accuses me of accusing the P.C. of being pro-Stalinist and pro-reformist.
(Note by Kirk: The following interchange was not picked up in the transcription. I have reconstructed it as it occurred according to my memory:
Interruption from the Presiding Committee: That what you said yesterday?
Kirk: That’s not what I said.
Presiding Committee: Then you implied it.
Kirk: I implied nothing of the kind.
Presiding Committee: Let’s have plain speaking here.
Kirk: I say that your program is an adaptation to reformism.)
That means that you do not differentiate yourselves from the reformists in the Southern movement. The critical problem of the moment, the crisis of leadership in the Negro movement, revolves around the question of reformism or revolution, and the resolution does not differentiate between these two tendencies. If it did we would have a different situation today in the convention. I would not have written another resolution.
The resolution does not differentiate. It supports the basic line of the religious pacifist leadership of the Negro movement in the South.
Comrade Breitman and the resolution say that the Southern Leaders Conference is the differentiation, that this is the differential force in the Negro movement; and that’s not true. The S.L.C. is just another wing of the petty-bourgeois leadership. This is not the decisive differentiation. The differentiation will come as a result of our being able to inject the revolutionary proletarian program into that struggle. And the struggle will not have its over-all religious character then, as the workers take the power in the Negro movement.
Comrade Jones says we are not, never have, and never will be separatists. We had a resolution in 1939 which Comrade Breitman said was the guiding line of the party for 10 years, which is essentially a nationalist document on the Negro question. It is entitled “Self-Determination and the American Negroes.” And it is organized around the concept of self-determination. That was the program adopted by the 1939 convention. “It is not improbable, therefore, that the bulk of the Negroes have absorbed their lesson far more profoundly than is superficially apparent and that on their first political awakening to the necessity of revolutionary activity, the first political awakening, they may demand the right of self-determination, that is, the formation of the Negro state in the South.”
The 1939 Resolution analyzes the Garvey movement as representing the desire for a Negro state, and speaks about the opponents of the Negro state as follows: “The opposition to a Negro state comes mainly from the articulate and vocal but small and weak class of the Negro intellectuals concerned with little else besides the gaining of a place for themselves in American capitalist society, fanatically blind to its rapid decline.” This is the characterization in the resolution of the theoreticians of assimilationism who have been now vindicated by the whole course of the Negro struggle. That is a wrong formulation and it has not been vindicated by the course of events, but nevertheless this is an important part of our history and it is wrong to say that it never existed.
Now, Comrade George Lavan accuses me of twisting words when I say the resolution designates the Negroes as a national minority. That’s what it says and Comrade Dan agreed that it did; he said, what are you going to call it if you don’t?
Comrade George says that there is no such movement as I described as quoted in the Militant as a movement of Southern women. There’s no movement, there’s no struggle. There is! The item in the Militant is only one aspect of it, only one facet. There is a movement which has been in continuous existence since 1930, in overt struggle against the system of segregation.
A very exceptional book on the movement in the South, Lillian Smith’s The Killers of the Dream, describes this organization and what role it plays there. She speaks about the Southern women and what their stake in this struggle is. She describes them as follows: “Culturally stunted by a region that still pays nice rewards to simple mindedness in females they had no defenses against blandishment. The gullied land of the South, washed out and eroded, matched the washed-out women of the rural South whose bodies were often used as ruthlessly as the land; who worked as hard as animals; who were segregated in church, sitting in separate pews from the men; who were not thought fit to be citizens and vote until three decades ago and who, in some states in the South, cannot own property except in their husband’s name. Who even now cannot officiate as ministers in most of the churches though they are the breath of life of the church.”
These women, she says, decided to make a war upon their oppression. These “lady insurrectionists,” she calls them,
“these ladies went forth to commit treason against Southern tradition. It was a purely subversive affair but as decorously conducted as an afternoon walk taken by the students of a female institute. It started stealthily in my mother’s day. Shyly these first women sneaked down from their chilly places, did their sabotage and sneaked back up, wrapping innocence around them like a lace shawl.
“They set secret time bombs and went back to their needle work, serenely awaiting the blast. Their time bombs consisted of a secret under-ground propaganda movement which was developed from mothers to daughters and through the years spreading out to encompass vast sections of the white female population. And so degraded was the position of women in Southern society that white men of the South could not conceive of their women having ideas and had no inkling of the insurrection until it happened.
“The lady insurrectionists gathered together one day in one of our Southern cities. They primly called themselves church women but churches were forgotten by everybody when they spoke their revolutionary words. They said calmly that they were not afraid of being raped and as for their sacredness, they could take care of it for themselves. They did not need chivalry or a lynching to protect them, they did not want it. Not only that—they continued that they would personally do everything in their power to keep any Negro from being lynched and furthermore, they squeaked bravely, they had plenty of power and this was the foundation of the Association of Southern Women Against Lynching in 1930.”
It began a struggle against segregation, as the fundamental hereditary enemy. They claimed that the Lord’s Supper was a holy sacrament which Christians cannot take without sacrilege unless they also break bread with fellow-men of color. They systematically set out to break down one of the most important conventions of segregation and engaged in inter-racial feeding.
This organization has been in continuous existence since that time, has been active and has now become a tremendous factor developing support of the movement against segregation.
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-The Militants Of The African Blood Brotherhood (1920s)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the African Blood Brotherhood.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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