From The Marxist Archives- Proletarian Road to Black Freedom

Workers Vanguard No. 1138	24 August 2018

TROTSKY

LENIN

Proletarian Road to Black Freedom

(Quote of the Week)

We reprint below an excerpt from a 1944 speech by Edgar Keemer who, as a member of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, wrote a regular column called “The Negro Struggle” in the Militant under the name Charles Jackson (see article on page 4). Addressing the fight against Jim Crow, Keemer emphasized that full equality for black people requires the overthrow of the capitalist order. Even with the end of formal Jim Crow segregation, what Keemer laid out then is still true today, as black oppression remains the bedrock of American capitalism.

Negroes are denied equality either through official government action or official government lack of action. The government is under control of the ruling class. That class is the capitalist class which comprises only a small minority of the population. These capitalists, through their government agencies and through their control of the means of information, indoctrinate the people with the lie that a man is inferior if the color of his skin is dark. They do this so that they can keep their economic slaves, the workers, white and black, split and fighting among themselves. Thereby they are able to spend their winters in Florida clipping stock coupons while the workers toil in the shops for a mere existence. These leeches suck the life blood of the American working class by setting up the Negro as a straw man and then shouting: “Don’t give a Black a break: give the Black the boot.” By this system of capitalism, race prejudice is made profitable.

Therefore we say that this system—capitalism—is the basic and fundamental enemy of the Negro people. Here is the spring from which flows the vile potion that cascades down to form the final stream of Negro inequality. We have found the source—let us mark it well. This is the reason why the fight against Jim Crow without a fight against capitalism, well intentioned though it may be, is an endless and fruitless fight. To establish Negro equality, we must abolish capitalism.

—“How to Win the Struggle for Negro Equality” (Militant, 25 November 1944)

A View From The Left-On Scotland and Self-Determination

Workers Vanguard No. 1138	24 August 2018

On Scotland and Self-Determination

(Letter)

25 May 2018

To Workers Vanguard:

Reading the ICL international conference document last summer, I initially drew the conclusion that as a general rule Leninists should not simply uphold the right of oppressed nations within multinational states to self-determination but affirmatively champion their national liberation. But then I considered the case of Scotland (and Wales—are there others?). The peoples in these countries are certainly oppressed within the United Kingdom. Yet despite having an active independence movement, Scotland is hardly mentioned in the conference document as published. In the 2014 referendum, the ICL, while supporting Scotland’s right to self-determination, did not advocate either a yes or no vote on the question of independence.

Assuming the party maintains this position, I would like to know on what grounds it does so in light of its new approach on the national question, and, more generally, when (barring cases of interpenetrated peoples or those where self-determination is legitimately subordinated to other questions) is it correct on true Leninist principles merely to defend an oppressed nation’s right to self-determination without calling for that right to be exercised by way of the formation of a separate national state. In particular, does the new methodology retain or abandon the principle adduced in the Workers Hammer article on the Scottish referendum that support for independence in a given instance should depend on “the depth of national antagonism” between workers of the nations in question? To back up its conclusion that national lines in Scotland are not hard enough at present to warrant advocating separation, the article cites opinion poll numbers, which strikes me as circular: is it only principled to call for a yes vote on an independence referendum when that side is bound to win? For that matter, hasn’t the independence movement in Quebec lost a couple of referendums over the years?

To be clear, I am not necessarily suggesting that the party revise its position on Scottish independence, but merely asking, for my benefit and that of other readers, whether and to what extent the arguments formerly advanced for it are still judged to hold.

Let me also request an article or series of articles on how the Marxist program on the national question developed historically to replace those by Comrade Seymour repudiated in the conference document.

Fraternally, Alan H.

WV replies:

Alan refers to the main document from the International Communist League’s Seventh International Conference, “The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra,” which details the fight in our party against a longstanding perversion of Leninism on the national question (see Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 65, Summer 2017). The document stressed that for the oppressed nations of Quebec, Catalonia and the Basque Country, which have waged bitter struggles, some going back centuries, against their forcible inclusion in multinational states (Canada, Spain and France), communists must fight for their independence as the only correct application of the right to national self-determination.

Alan asks whether this methodology requires correcting the line the Spartacist League/Britain took in the 2014 referendum in Scotland, in which our comrades supported the Scottish people’s right to decide for or against independence but did not advocate one way or the other. That position is consistent with Leninist principles and does not contradict the ICL’s recent conference decision. The right to self-determination—i.e., to political secession—also implies that a nation may choose not to separate. As for opinion polls, they can be an indication, though sometimes distorted, of national sentiment, but they are far from the only criterion for Marxists.

The key differences between Scotland and Quebec (as well as Catalonia and the Basque Country) are rooted in their respective historical development. Quebec was conquered militarily and occupied by Britain following the defeat of the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and further subjugated with the suppression of the 1837-38 Patriote Rebellion. The modern Canadian state is founded upon Anglo-chauvinist oppression of the francophone people and retention of the historically Catholic Québécois nation within its borders. Quebec’s resistance to forcible assimilation has centrally been expressed through defense of the French language (see “Raising the Banner of Leninism,” page 3).

In contrast to the conquest of Quebec—not to mention Ireland—Scotland was co-opted as a junior partner in the British Empire. The 1707 Treaty of Union laid the basis for a two-way deal that was further sealed by the crushing of the 1745 Highland rebellion of the Jacobites, who were backed by the Catholic monarchy in France. In exchange for loyalty to maintaining a Protestant monarchy in Britain, Scottish merchants and aristocrats became partners in the Empire’s accumulation of vast wealth through slavery and brutal exploitation of the colonial masses. Scottish regiments became an essential part of the Empire’s military, serving in the bloody defeat of the French in Quebec and helping enforce colonial rule over India and elsewhere.

Crucially, Scotland (as well as Wales) shares a common language with England, and there are no decisive religious differences dividing the nations. Nonetheless, the Scots were and continue to be oppressed as a nation and retain a strong sense of separate national identity. For example, while the Scots have been known for their high levels of literacy which stem from the 16th-century Reformation, they have long been denigrated as uncouth and incapable of speaking “proper” English. Among the targets of such chauvinism was David Hume, pre-eminent philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, who wrote: “Some hate me because I am not a Tory, some because I am not a Whig, some because I am not a Christian, and all because I am a Scotsman.”

Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin summed up the Marxist program on the national question as: “Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations” (“The Right of Nations to Self-Determination” [1914]). To apply this program in the concrete, each case of national oppression must be examined in its particulars and in historical context. In this regard, the depth of antagonism between the working classes of the oppressor and oppressed nations is important. There are precious few examples of common class struggle across the national divide between the working classes of English Canada and Quebec. But the history of the British working class is very different.

Scottish workers, unlike their lords and masters, did not profit from the Empire and from early on were pitched in battle against the British ruling class, Scottish as well as English, forming bonds of solidarity with workers throughout Britain. From the militant strikes that took place in the aftermath of both World War I and the Russian October Revolution to the miners strike of 1984-85, a great many of Britain’s major class battles have been waged together by Scottish, Welsh and English workers, mainly as members of the same trade unions. Scottish and Welsh workers have often played a vanguard role in these struggles. This was in spite of the betrayals by trade-union bureaucrats and Labour Party leaders who, like Jeremy Corbyn today, were loyal to the reactionary United Kingdom and refused to uphold the right of Scotland to self-determination.

The first half of the 1970s saw tumultuous strikes throughout Britain, including by miners, that brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath. Against this backdrop, the SL/B’s 1978 founding document stated: “We are for the right of self-determination, but call on the Scottish people to exercise that right by choosing to stay in the same state as the other peoples of Britain” (Spartacist Britain No. 1, April 1978). On the other side of the coin, in the context of mass demonstrations against NATO cruise missiles in Britain in the early ’80s, the SL/B evocatively called for a “Scottish workers republic as part of the USSR,” demarcating ourselves from the anti-Soviet, pro-Labour, Unionist politics of the reformists.

National lines hardened under the Thatcher government in the 1980s, particularly following the defeat of the miners strike. On top of the destruction of manufacturing, which had devastating consequences in Scotland, the Thatcher government imposed a hated poll tax first on the Scots, considered a “lesser people” by English chauvinists. Westminster’s contempt gave new life to Scottish nationalism, which had been marginal during the heyday of the Empire. Above all, the Labour Party’s adoption of Thatcherite policies, especially under Tony Blair, drove many Scottish workers into the arms of the nationalists. In 2014, Tory prime minister David Cameron agreed to an independence referendum, arrogantly assuming an overwhelming vote for the Union. The unexpectedly close result (55 percent against and 45 percent for independence, with 85 percent of the electorate voting) was a slap in the face to Westminster. We recognize that the Scots may well opt for separation in the future, in which case we would support that outcome.

The struggle for national liberation can be expressed in anything from fighting for language rights to popular insurrections. The fact that the Spanish government tried to brutally crush the most recent Catalan referendum last October and behead the nationalist movement is just the latest confirmation that independence is the only way for Catalonia to be liberated from Castilian oppression. As the situation with Scotland continues to play out, we will maintain our defense of its right to determine its own course as part of our struggle against the oppressive United Kingdom and for a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles.

With regard to further readings, we recommend that our readers begin by studying Lenin’s writings on the national question, as our party did in hammering out the programmatic substance of the international conference document.

A View From The Left-As Democrats Push “Russiagate” Hysteria Facebook Censorship and Surveillance

Workers Vanguard No. 1138	24 August 2018

As Democrats Push “Russiagate” Hysteria

Facebook Censorship and Surveillance

AUGUST 21—After it was revealed that Facebook handed over the private information of some 87 million users without their consent to the political data firm Cambridge Analytica, CEO Mark Zuckerberg came before Congress in April to assure lawmakers, especially Democrats, that his company would self-regulate against “fake news” and “bad actors.” Coming amid the Democratic-fueled hysteria against “Russian meddling” in the 2016 elections, Zuckerberg’s message to politicians was clear: we will carry out surveillance and censorship for you. And Facebook is doing it.

In late July, with the midterm elections approaching, Facebook deleted the event page for the “No Unite The Right 2” protest in Washington, D.C., which was called in response to fascist rallies over the August 11-12 weekend. Over 3,000 users who indicated interest in the anti-fascist event received notices claiming that it was created by “fake accounts.” But the event was real, and the page Facebook deleted was one of the main announcements for it. The shutdown of the anti-fascist event page, which had been used by activists including Black Lives Matter, was the centerpiece of Facebook’s announcement trumpeting its closure of 32 pages and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” The implication was that they were of Russian origin, although not even Facebook can define what “inauthentic” exactly means. The content shared by the users was generally left-liberal, with pages like “Black Elevation,” “Aztlan Warriors” and “Resisters.” As we go to press, Facebook announced it had taken down another 652 “fake accounts,” linking them to a purported new “political influence campaign” with ties to Russia and Iran.

Facebook shut down the initial 32 pages in collaboration with the Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRL), which ominously depicted them as “designed to catalyze the most incendiary impulses of political sentiment.” DFRL is an arm of the Atlantic Council, which Facebook teamed up with in order to “prevent our service from being abused during elections” and to monitor “misinformation and foreign interference.” A pro-U.S. think tank with ties to NATO, the Atlantic Council includes certified war criminals like Henry Kissinger and former CIA chief Michael Hayden on its board of directors.

Meanwhile, Facebook has knowingly hosted the “inauthentic” accounts set up by police departments around the country to spy on activists. It came out this month that the Memphis Police Department had set up a fake profile for at least two years to track and entrap black organizations and activists. A 2013 study indicated that more than half of the police departments polled admitted to using such phony profiles (the figure is likely much higher).

After Facebook removed the pages in July, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, encouraged further censorship in the name of fighting “foreign bad actors” who are “dividing us along political and ideological lines, to the detriment of our cherished democratic system.” This is part of the endless effort to paint working people and minorities who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 as dupes of Russian bots working for Trump’s victory. In fact, it was one of the jewels of America’s “cherished democratic system,” the Electoral College, that denied Clinton her crown despite her winning the popular vote.

The “Russiagate” hysteria, including the investigation into Trump’s “collusion” with Russian president Vladimir Putin, is a lot of smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that the U.S. capitalist system is based on the brutal exploitation of the working class and racist oppression and violence. The notion that working people who can barely make ends meet are angry at the Washington establishment because of some fake social media accounts is both absurd and obscene. Likewise, in a country built on the backs of black slaves, and where the majority of black people remain subjugated at the bottom of society, it doesn’t take “foreign bad actors” for black people to know that they’re in the gun sights of the killer cops.

Supposed electoral meddling by Russia should not matter one bit to the U.S. working class. Deceit, manipulation and hypocrisy are used by the capitalist rulers—represented by both Democrats and Republicans—to maintain their system of wage slavery, black oppression and global imperialist domination. As for “influencing” elections, the U.S. imperialists are unrivaled in such “regime change,” like bloody coups and invasions. As part of opposing its own exploiters, the working class must stand against U.S. imperialist sanctions against Russia.

Behind the lurid tales of a Kremlin puppet in the White House lies a real threat. The Democrats are seizing on legitimate revulsion toward Trump to promote the murderous FBI and CIA as defenders of “democracy” and to push for increased government surveillance and censorship. Earlier this month, many liberals cheered when Facebook, YouTube (owned by Google) and Apple podcasts, among others, banned Alex Jones’s loony far-right, conspiracy-peddling Infowars. These tech conglomerates, which are virtual monopolies, have ordained themselves arbiters of what is sacred or profane for American eyes and ears.

The growing trend to censor media content, including against reactionaries like Jones, is ominous and will always redound against leftists, minorities and any perceived opponent of the U.S. rulers. Facebook, in collaboration with the Israeli government, has just this year shut down at least 500 accounts of Palestinian journalists and publications, including the Safa Palestinian Press Agency, grotesquely equating advocacy of Palestinian rights with anti-Jewish “hate speech.” Meanwhile, Zuckerberg treats accounts denying the Nazi Holocaust as merely “things that different people get wrong.”

Leftists who post material that the Facebook czar disagrees with may find themselves part of a scene from Kafka’s Trial. One article on the International Socialist Organization’s Socialist Worker website (7 August) by Dana Cloud, a professor at Syracuse University, described what happened when she tried to run a Facebook ad for an anti-I.C.E. protest. Initially denied because her account was not “authorized for ads with political content,” she was then required to hand over all her personal information to Facebook, which all but assures that it will be handed over to the government. When she put a Socialist Worker post on her page, she was warned that it might be “divisive” and sponsored by a foreign power. Although Socialist Worker—socialist in name only—criticizes some aspects of censorship, it had given credence to the “genuine concerns raised by the issue of Twitter bots and fake accounts” (12 October 2017), adding its own fuel to the fire.

Democracy under capitalism is a fig leaf for the class dictatorship of the capitalists. “Equality before the law” serves as a cloak for the class division of society, where, as Anatole France quipped, the rich and poor are forbidden alike from sleeping under a bridge or stealing a loaf of bread. To promote their interests, the rulers rely on their kept media, from print and television news to the likes of Facebook. Following the overthrow of bourgeois rule by the working class in the 1917 October Revolution, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained the policy of the newly founded workers state toward the press:

“For the bourgeoisie, freedom of the press meant freedom for the rich to publish and for the capitalists to control the newspapers, a practice which in all countries, including even the freest, produced a corrupt press.

“For the workers’ and peasants’ government, freedom of the press means liberation of the press from capitalist oppression, and public ownership of paper mills and printing presses.”

— “Draft Resolution on Freedom of the Press,” 4 November 1917

Above all, the bourgeoisie has the armed force of the capitalist state—its cops, prisons and military—to enforce its rule. The precondition for a genuinely free society, including the eradication of exploitation, racial oppression and imperialist war, is the expropriation of the means of production from the wealthy few capitalists through working-class revolution.

A View From The Left-One Year After Charlottesville Only Labor/Black Power Can Stop the Fascists Break with the Democrats! For a Workers Party!

Workers Vanguard No. 1138	24 August 2018

One Year After Charlottesville

Only Labor/Black Power Can Stop the Fascists

Break with the Democrats! For a Workers Party!

On August 12, a score of fascists rallied just outside the White House to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their murderous rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia. Outnumbered by more than 2,000 anti-fascist protesters, these race-terrorists, guarded by an army of police, carried out their rally for “white civil rights”—code for deadly violence against black people, immigrants, Jews, leftists and the integrated union movement. In Charlottesville, where one year ago hundreds of armed fascists waving swastikas and Confederate flags stormed the streets and killed protester Heather Heyer, a state of emergency was declared. Although there was no organized fascist presence, police in riot gear flooded the streets to impede marching by anti-racist activists. Students at the University of Virginia nailed the collusion between the cops and their fascist auxiliaries with a banner reading: “Last Year They Came with Torches, This Year They Come with Badges.”

Fueled by Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant “Make America Great Again” crusade, fascist terror has been on the rise. And the cops, the day-to-day enforcers of capitalist “law and order,” protect the fascist killers. On August 18, the cops accompanied more than 100 fascists marching with guns through downtown Seattle. Two weeks prior, on August 4 in Portland, more than 400 fascists organized by Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys rallied while cops attacked counterprotesters with tear gas and flash grenades. One protester suffered a traumatic brain injury from a grenade that pierced his helmet and penetrated his skull. In Berkeley, a number of those protesting an August 5 “alt-right” rally were arrested and “doxxed” by police who posted their names and mug shots on Twitter. Doxxing leftist and anti-fascist protesters has become routine police procedure, an ominous set-up for lethal violence. We demand: Drop all charges against all anti-fascist protesters!

The fascists are paramilitary gangs whose purpose is the destruction of the workers movement and carrying out racial and ethnic genocide. Feeding off economic misery and fomenting murderous chauvinism, the fascists recruit mainly from sections of the enraged petty bourgeoisie and unemployed. With class and social struggle at a historic low, the American rulers currently have no need to unleash their fascist thugs against the organized workers movement. But they keep these shock troops in reserve for times of social crisis, when the normal mechanism of state repression under bourgeois democracy is not enough to restrain the workers’ organizations, black people and the oppressed, and to preserve capitalist rule.

The race-terrorists must be crushed in the egg, before they grow into a mass force. The power to do that lies with the working class: integrated trade unions marching at the head of all of the intended victims of the fascists and sweeping these scum off the streets. As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 October Revolution, wrote in the Transitional Program (1938): “The struggle against fascism does not start in the liberal editorial office but in the factory—and ends in the street.”

No one should be lulled by the small number of fascists that showed up in Washington, D.C. They got away with their rally, and this will encourage them to commit more acts of racist violence. The counterprotests led by groups like the International Socialist Organization, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America and the ANSWER coalition, associated with the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL), did not aim to stop the fascists but to channel outrage into impotent “hate not welcome” and “protest against racism” gatherings.

Their strategy to “unite against hate” pushes the deadly illusion that fascism is merely a question of racist ideas. Fascism is not about “hate” or right-wing ideology, but lethal violence, which in this country is directed particularly against black people. The fascists hope to reverse the outcome of the Civil War that smashed black chattel slavery. In D.C., one fascist, after thanking the police for VIP escort service in and out of Washington, called on Trump, the “great white hope,” to address “the interracial rape by black men of 40,000 white women every year.” Defense of “white womanhood” has long been the battle cry for KKK lynch-mob terror.

The liberal politics of the D.C. protests against the fascists were captured in the numerous signs such as, “Bigotry Has No Place in Our Democracy.” Such pleas fit neatly into the Democratic Party’s portrayal of the bigoted Trump administration as some “un-American” aberration. Far from it. This country was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and built on the backs of black slaves. Racial oppression is at the core of the American capitalist order, whether administered by Republicans or Democrats.

For its part, the bourgeois media gave loads of airtime to the fascist filth around the time of the rally. The liberals at National Public Radio provided a platform for Jason Kessler, the organizer of this year’s “Unite The Right 2” protest as well as last year’s Charlottesville horror, in the name of presenting his views. Fascist “views” are expressed through lynch ropes, bullets and gas chambers. Militants who buy the liberals’ “free speech” argument must be warned, as our forebears in the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party stressed in Socialist Appeal (3 March 1939): “The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis’ ‘democratic rights’…will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.”

The mostly black Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689, which operates D.C.’s transit system, had the power to stop the fascists from even getting to their rally site. After transit management made plans to provide special train service for the fascists, Local 689 president Jackie Jeter blew the whistle, declaring that the union will “draw the line at giving special accommodation to hate groups and hate speech.” But these were empty words.

Management did run a special train with a designated car to get the fascists and a gaggle of press from the Vienna station in suburban Virginia to D.C. And the union leadership did nothing to stop this. Two top union officials were present at the Vienna station when service was provided to the fascist killers, and one even boarded the train to “witness” the scene. After the rally, the fascists were transported back to safety the same way. Black workers operating those trains described feeling “crushed” and “devastated.” They were betrayed by their own union leaders.

Jeter has tried to cover up the union tops’ treachery by placing the blame on transit general manager Paul Wiedefeld, who had claimed that the plans had been scrapped. Wailing that he “lied,” she calls for his firing. Jeter said the union will “talk to politicians” and organize “as tax payers” so that this doesn’t happen again.

These labor bureaucrats have no intention or clue how to organize real union power! The ATU should have shut down the train, literally stopping the fascists and their police escorts in their tracks. Jeter, who heads the Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO, had the connections with other labor forces to back up such actions. Other integrated D.C.-area unions such as the Teamsters, Postal Workers and Laborers could have been mobilized to show up at Vienna station and make sure the train didn’t run. What could have been a much-needed victory for labor and minorities ended in a demoralizing defeat because of the labor tops’ reliance on the bosses’ word and the capitalist politicians’ good graces. This class-collaborationist program has disarmed the unions in the face of the bosses’ decades-long class war, which has led to the driving down of wages, benefits and working conditions.

The power that workers have to stop the fascists was shown in a small but real way in Washington, D.C., in November 1982, when the Spartacist League initiated a united-front labor/black mobilization against a planned KKK march called against immigrants. Some 250,000 leaflets proclaiming “STOP THE KKK! Be where the Klan says they’re going to start their march!” were distributed. The action was endorsed by over 70 union officials, exec boards and union locals around the country. Some 5,000 people, including many black D.C. residents whose families had firsthand experience with the terror of Southern nightriders, came out behind the power of the organized labor movement, stopped the Klan and took over the streets for a victory celebration.

At the recent D.C. counterprotest, one black demonstrator who bought a subscription to Workers Vanguard said with pride, “You know we stopped them in 1982.” There is a reason why the memory of this action resonates in the city to this day. Our purpose was not only to spike a dangerous fascist threat but to promote among labor and black militants an understanding of the social power of the working class and the need for a revolutionary workers party, one built in political opposition to both the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties.

The 1982 success required a constant political battle against Democrats like black D.C. mayor Marion Barry, whose cops did everything they could to try to intimidate the anti-Klan protesters. It also required combating the reformists of Workers World (from which the PSL later split), who tried but failed to sabotage the labor/black mobilization by organizing a diversionary rally well away from the Klan’s intended march route. Our mobilization showed in embryo how a workers party in this country could act as a tribune of the people and fight on behalf of all the oppressed, with labor at the head of minorities and the poor in struggle against the common capitalist enemy.

We noted last year in the lead-up to the fascist mobilization in Charlottesville:

“Today, the idea that organized labor would mobilize its power in its own interests, as well as in opposition to the fascists, might seem fantastical, particularly to youth who have seen little to no union struggle. Responsibility for this situation lies with the trade-union misleaders, who have shackled the social power of the working class to the interests of their capitalist exploiters, particularly through the Democratic Party.”

— “‘Alt-Right’ Fascists: Shock Troops for Racist Genocide,” WV No. 1115, 28 July 2017

Playing off Trump’s overt anti-immigrant bigotry and dog-whistle appeals to anti-black racism, Democratic Party liberals are dusting off their phony image as the friend of blacks, women and workers, the better to gain a majority in Congress and retake the White House. But make no mistake. The Democrats in office will offer workers and the oppressed continuing U.S. imperialist terror abroad and racist cop repression and attacks on working conditions here at home. This is exactly what happened under Obama, whose own attacks on working people, immigrants and the oppressed set the stage for the rise of Trump reaction.

A serious fight to put an end to fascism must be based on a revolutionary proletarian perspective to do away with the capitalist order that breeds the fascist scum. In this country, the fight for black liberation through socialist revolution is the key to winning liberation for all the exploited and oppressed. The Spartacist League/U.S. is dedicated to building a multiracial workers party to fight for a workers government, which will complete the unfinished tasks of the Civil War by ripping the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist exploiters and establishing a socialist egalitarian society.