2012 was the 101st year since the birth of the former National Chair of the
Communist Party, Henry Winston. The article below is taken from
Winston’s 1973 book, Strategy for a Black Agenda.
It is a critique of the strategy and tactics necessary to advance the
revolutionary process in the face of right-wing extremism and white
supremacy from the time of slavery to the upsurge of the 1960s and early
1970s.
Although the world has changed since the book was first
published, it continues to offer many lessons for fighting right-wing
extremism today and moving forward along the road to socialism.
Henry Winston, born in Mississippi, became active in the
unemployed struggles of the 1930s and soon became a leader in the Young
Communist League. He worked with William L Patterson and others to help
free the Scottsboro defendants, displaying extraordinary political and
organizational skills.
In the 1950s he served eight years in prison under the Smith Act,
during which time he lost his sight because of medical neglect. A
campaign to win his release was waged in the U.S. and abroad. Writer
Richard Wright headed a French/American committee to free him and his
sentence was finally commuted by President John F Kennedy.
On learning of Winston’s death in 1986, African National Congress
leader Alfred Nzo remarked, “We had come to regard Winston as one of
our own.”
Now, over a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation of
January 1863, racism and oppression are more than ever essential to the
ruling class, as U.S. state monopoly capitalism enters a new and more
acute phase of the crisis and decline of capitalism. U.S. imperialism,
facing a world in which the forces of socialism and class and national
liberation are on the ascendancy, and in which foreign imperialist
powers are challenging its domination, certainly can’t do today what the
slave power was unable to do over 100 years ago – solve its problems
through aggression and expansion.
The monopolists are equally unable to solve their problems at home,
where they are not only imposing a wage freeze, but are also attempting
to impose a far more repressive racist freeze on Black liberation
struggles than that of the McCarthy period.
By perpetuating and intensifying racism, monopoly aims to stop the
advance of the Black liberation movement, to destroy organized labor and
suppress every struggle of the oppressed and exploited.
Monopoly’s New Assault
Monopoly capital, within today’s context, aims to repeat the kind of
assault on the people’s rights that led to the betrayal of
Reconstruction. Reaction of that period, through racism and violence,
prepared the way for the Supreme Court to void the Civil Rights Act of
1875, whose passage had been won by the supporters of Reconstruction to
solidify the gains they had made. Reaction’s aim then was to push the
country into a long era of segregation and semislavery.
Today state monopoly capitalism seeks to wipe out every trace of the
struggles of the recent Civil Rights Decade. The increasing political
repression, the attempted frameup of Angela Davis and other political
prisoners, Nixon’s racist nominations to the Supreme Court, are all part
of monopoly’s attempt to obliterate every advance made through Black
and white struggle since Reconstruction was destroyed.
The betrayal of Reconstruction, it should be remembered, was the
signal for a three-sided attack against the masses. The Old Slave Codes
were replaced by the new Black Codes, and the former chattel slaves were
forced into semi-slavery, segregation and racist oppression. At the
same time, the escalation of the military plunder and massacre of the
Indians was entering a climactic stage. And simultaneously, the courts
that upheld the betrayal of Emancipation were declaring that workers,
Black and white, did not have the right to organize. In other words, the
courts had not only revived Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s pre-Civil
War doctrine that the Black man “had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect.” They had also extended this into another phase of
repression — that labor, whatever its color, had no rights that capital
was bound to respect.
In 1875, when the robber barons were joining with the former slave
owners to prepare for the 1877 betrayal of Reconstruction, Judge Holden
Owen, presiding over the trial of striking Pennsylvania miners,
declared: “Any agreement, combination or confederation to increase the
price of any vendible commodity, merchandise or anything else is a
conspiracy under the laws of the U.S.” Of course, this doctrine — like
Nixon’s wage-“price” freeze — was applied only to labor, never to the
capitalists’ profits.
Because of the perpetuation of racism and the resulting division
between the triply-oppressed Black workers and the exploited white
workers, it took more than 60 years of struggle against the bosses’
government-supported violence to win the right to organize. Today, the
rights of labor are once again under grave attack, and labor’s fate, as
in the past, is inseparably bound up with that of the Black liberation
movement.
Dimensions of the Crisis
The crisis of poverty and unemployment Black Americans now face is,
save for the almost total genocidal elimination of American Indians,
without precedent for any segment of this country’s population.
“The unemployment rate among Black workers in the ghetto now exceeds
the general rate of unemployment of the entire nation during the
depression of the 1930’s,” reported Herbert Hill, NAACP Labor Secretary,
at the organization’s 1971 National Convention.
“The rate of unemployment of Black workers in 25 major centers of
urban non-white population concentration is now between 25 per cent and
40 per cent,” stated Hill, “and the unemployment rate for Black youth
will be in excess of 50 per cent by the middle of this summer. In 1933,
the national unemployment rate was 24.9 per cent, the highest officially
recorded unemployment in the history of the United States.” Hill also
pointed out that tens of thousands of Black workers are classified as
employed but never have an income that could lift them above the poverty
level.
Yet, stark as this statistical report is, it cannot possibly convey
the disaster of racism, poverty and oppression affecting every aspect of
the lives of Black Americans today. The end of the decade of civil
rights struggles left the Black masses with a feeling of vast
frustration; not only had their condition failed to improve, it had
worsened.
This frustration was simultaneously experienced by many militant
young fighters, Black and white, whose despair turned to disillusion
with the preceding years of struggle. They were unable to differentiate
the gains of the Civil Rights Decade – in terms of unity, militant mass
action and consciousness – from the deepening crisis. They did not
realize that under capitalism the most important fruit of struggle is
the people’s advance in unity and consciousness. In their frustration,
they attacked the Civil Rights struggle itself, instead of seeing that
it had created a bridge to the period ahead.
Two-Sided Pressure on King
Thus, even before the hunger and frustration of Black masses led to
the spontaneous outbursts in Watts, Detroit and Newark, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. encountered attacks not only from reaction but from
segments of militant youth under the influence of sectarianism and
pseudo-revolutionism.
While the open attacks from the latter were a relatively new
development, King had long experienced pressure from the establishment
liberals, the NAACP, the Urban League and others to limit mass struggle
and to rely on the courts and “friends” within the two major parties. In
this period as the war in Vietnam continued and domestic conditions
worsened — this pressure from the Right increased, and was particularly
aimed at preventing King from linking the Black liberation movement with
the anti-war struggle.
At the same time, the frustrations of radical youth were intensified
by the escalation of the Vietnam war in 1965 — immediately after the new
Civil Rights Act was passed. Many Black and white radicals, including
Carmichael, Cleaver, Newton, Forman and Hayden, began to step up their
attacks on the Civil Rights struggle.
They placed themselves in
opposition to King, who was determined not to abandon, but to
strengthen, the forces of the Civil Rights Decade, to deepen and broaden
them into a realignment that could carry the struggle against poverty
and racist oppression to a new level.
If King was not without error in coping with pressure from the Right,
and later with that of the pseudo-radicals, his overall record was one
of firm adherence to militant non-violent mass struggle. The maturing of
his leadership, his recognition of the decisive role of the working
class, his evolvement toward an anti-imperialist position, all of his
steady and remarkable growth reflected his rejection of both the
opportunist pressures to limit mass struggle and the super-revolutionary
pressures to substitute the rhetoric of violence for the power of mass
struggle.
King has been dead more than five years, but the attacks on his
strategy and objectives continue from the Right and the pseudo-left. In
fact, while Nixon is bent on destroying the advances of the Civil Rights
Decade, it is ironic that the new “revolutionists” are so certain there
is nothing worth saving from it! But Nixon recognizes — and fears —
what the super-militants refuse to see — the Civil Rights Decade created
the pre-conditions for the much higher level of struggle needed in the
period ahead.
Pressing for a New Beginning
When King was assassinated in the spring of 1968, he was leading the
strike of the predominantly Black sanitation workers of Memphis. His
commitment to this courageous working-class struggle was a vibrant
indication that, in pressing for a new beginning in the strategy against
racist oppression, poverty and war, he had come to a full realization
of the meaning of his first major struggle, the Montgomery, Alabama bus
boycott. This landmark battle was sparked by Mrs. Rosa Lee Parks, a
Black working-class woman, and carried on with courage and tenacity by,
primarily, Black working class men and women. In the course of a decade
of leadership of the liberation struggle, King came to understand that
it was workers, more than any other stratum, who possess these
qualities.
King recognized that since these special qualities of workers had
brought about the historic turning point in Montgomery, leading to the
nationwide involvement of many other sections of the population,
including Black and white youth in the struggle for equal rights, the
new stage — the struggle for jobs, for an end to poverty, racism and war
— demanded a new strategy based on the working class, Black and white.
Although King’s views were not identical with the Marxist conception
of the role of the working class — which sees this class not only as the
main social force but as the leader in the anti-monopoly struggle — he
had come steadily closer to this outlook.
Moreover, it is especially
meaningful that King moved in this direction at the time when Marcuse
and others, with the assistance of the mass media, were making their
greatest headway in promoting the idea among radical youth that the
Marxist concept of the working class was outdated.
Democracy, Liberation and Socialism
Another ironic contradiction in the role of many of the new radicals
emerged at the end of the Civil Rights Decade: As they lost sight of the
historic significance of that period, and more and more heaped abuse on
it and its preeminent leader, they became the inadvertent helpmates of
the ruling class, whose conscious aim it was and is to distort the
meaning of that period to the masses.
It should not be forgotten that for many long decades the ruling
class hid the true history of Reconstruction from the people of this
country. Now, at a time when the Black liberation movement has forced at
least the beginnings of attention to the Reconstruction era, it would
indeed be strange if the rhetoric of the pseudo-revolutionaries helped
the monopolists conceal the true meaning, the heroism and achievements
of the Civil Rights Decade. This must not be allowed to happen.
It is important to understand the meaning of this period, and the
vital leadership role in it of Martin Luther King, who came to an
awareness of the revolutionary relationship between the fight for
rights, for security, for peace and the liberation struggle. Despite
their “revolutionary” rhetoric, this is something the pseudo-radicals
have failed to comprehend. In rejecting this central meaning of the
civil rights struggle, these radicals caricatured the Marxist principles
they so often proclaimed.
As Lenin persistently emphasized, the fight for democracy is at the
heart of the class struggle. He continually warned against the ideas of
those who ignored the connection between the struggle for democracy,
national liberation and socialism. In “A Caricature of Marxism,” he
wrote:
All democracy consists in the proclamation and realization
of rights which under capitalism are realizable only to a very small
degree and only relatively. But without the proclamation of these
rights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately, without
training the masses in the spirit of this struggle, socialism is impossible. (Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 74.)
Lenin also emphasized that Marxists must:
. . . know that democracy does not abolish class oppression. It only
makes the class struggle more direct, wider, more open and pronounced,
and that is what we need. . . . The more democratic the system of
government, the clearer will the workers see that the root evil is
capitalism, not lack of rights. (Ibid., p. 73.)
Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass
Martin Luther King’s sectarian opponents proclaimed their Marxism,
but their policies and practice were contrary to its principles. On the
other hand, King’s philosophy was that of moral suasion, but in practice
he came to rely more and more on the liberating force of mass struggle
as the foundation for Black freedom and social advance for all the
oppressed and exploited.
Though not a Marxist, King was steadily moving toward a strategy that
tended to coincide with the Marxist-Leninist concept of an
anti-monopoly policy, one involving the Black and white sectors of the
working class, the Black liberation movement, the Puerto Rican and
Chicano masses, and all others opposed to war and poverty. This strategy
continues in today’s terms – when the working-class is the leading
force – the strategy developed by Frederick Douglass during the
Abolitionist period, when he struggled to form a broad coalition of
Abolitionists and other strata to break the slave owners’ control of
Congress and the Federal Government.
Just as it is impossible to understand the Civil Rights Decade
without understanding the role of Martin Luther King, it is impossible
to grasp the meaning of the antislavery struggle without understanding
the role of Frederick Douglass, the great genius and architect of the
anti-slavery strategy.
Like King, Douglass matured in struggle against sectarian, separatist
and accommodationist tendencies within the movement of his time. As one
example, his writings show that throughout the crucial decade of the
1850s, he resisted the separatist alternative of emigrationism which
would have weakened the anti-slavery front. Douglass saw that
emigrationism, a forerunner of Pan Africanism, objectively meant
accommodation to the slave power.
And, as early as 1848, Douglass began to oppose the sectarianism of
William Lloyd Garrison and other anti-slavery forces who were against
both electoral action and any coalition with those whose objectives
stopped short of abolition.
In this connection, Douglass himself had at first feared that the
Free Soil movement, which opposed the extension of slavery but did not
demand its abolition, might divert from the anti-slavery struggle.
However, he came to under stand the objective role of this movement
within the anti slavery strategy and called upon the Abolitionists to
support it:
We may stand off … and in this way play into the hands of our enemies
. . . [or] remain silent and speechless, and let things take their
course. . . . In neither of these ways can we go. (The North Star, August 18, 1848.)
While calling for a common front of the Abolitionists with the Free
Soilers and others opposed to the extension of slavery, Douglass at the
same time relentlessly advanced the Abolitionists’ independent goal of
an end to slavery. He wrote:
Free Soilism is lame, halt and blind, while it battles against the
spread of slavery, and admits its right to exist anywhere. If it has the
right to exist it has the right to grow and spread . . . The only way
to put an end to the aggressions of slavery is to put an end to slavery
itself. (Frederick Douglass’ Paper, August 24, 1855.)
Douglass never relaxed in his drive for the development of the
strategy which eventually led to a political realignment, one from which
the Republican Party headed by Lincoln emerged to challenge the two
major parties of the period. At the time this realignment was in the
process of formation, he wrote:
We rejoice in this demonstration . . . to bury party affinities and
predilections, and also the political leaders who have hitherto
controlled them; to unite in one grand phalanx and go forth, and whip
the enemy. (Ibid., July 27, 1855.)
Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx
In 1846, two years before writing the
Communist Manifesto,
the young Karl Marx had already revealed his deep understanding of the
struggle against slavery in the U.S. His thinking closely paralleled the
direction Frederick Douglass was taking, and this remarkable
parallelism in the liberation strategy of these two giants of world
history continued throughout every phase of the anti-slavery struggle.
Marx, too, saw the Free Soil movement as an objective force against
slavery, and opposed the sectarianism of those who resisted coalition
with it. At the same time, he warned against the utopian views of some
of the Free Soilers. For example, writing of Herman Kriege, editor of
the
Volkstribun in New York, Marx said:
. . . he continues to chant his paean: And so the old dreams of the
Europeans would at last come true. A place would be prepared for them on
this side of the ocean which they would only have to take and to
fructify with the labour of their hands, so as to be able proudly to
declare to all the tyrants of the world, “this is my cabin, which you
have not built; this is my hearth whose glow fills your hearts with
envy.”
He might have added, This is my dunghill, which I, my wife, my
children, my manservant, and my cattle have produced. And who are the
Europeans whose “dreams” would thus come true? Not the communist
workers, but bankrupt shopkeepers and handicraftsmen, or ruined cottars,
who yearn for the good for tune of once again becoming petty bourgeois
and peasants in America. And what is the “dream” that is to be
fulfilled by means of these 1,400,000 acres? No other than that all men
be converted into private owners, a dream which is unrealizable and as
communistic as the dream to convert all men into emperors, kings and
popes. (Quoted in: Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 327.)
Thus Marx’s aim, like Douglass’, was to develop a strategy that would
bring together a coalition to stop the spread of slavery as the
precondition for its abolition.
At the same time, Marx s polemic against Kriege
has profound significance to the struggle against white chauvinism: it
demonstrated his irreconcilable opposition to every form of
accommodation to the influence of racism. Marx was battling against
the seepage of racist poison into the Abolitionist movement, in this
case in the form of the illusion that Western land could be won for the
white masses — while the Indians were driven off this same land and the
Blacks remained enslaved.
While the Free Soil movement aimed at keeping the Western land from
the slave power, Marx saw that it could not halt the eventual takeover
of this land and economy by the rising capitalist class. He attacked the
petty-bourgeois illusions of the Free Soilers because they carried the
seed of the racist division which would weaken the strategy for the most
democratic outcome in the struggle against the slave power. And any
weakening of this strategy would jeopardize the fight for Black
liberation, further the plunder and genocide of the Indians, and
profoundly disfigure the struggle for unity of the Black and white
working class, whose mission it would be to lead in the battle for the
abolition of wage slavery after the abolition of chattel slavery
Racist “Disfigurement” of Class Struggle
In addition, Marx saw that the greater the democratic gains of the
masses, the less would the future struggles of labor with a black skin
and labor with a white skin be distorted by the divisive ideology of
racism. And later, applying Marxism to the imperialist stage of
capitalism, Lenin placed the struggle for democracy, in the way Marx
viewed it, at the center of the struggle for the socialist revolution.
Racism, on the other hand, results in what Marx many times described as
the “disfigurement” of the class struggle — diverting it away from the
class enemy into division and fragmentation of the exploited and
oppressed.
That is why Lenin tirelessly emphasized that the struggle for
democracy is indivisibly bound up with the struggle against racism, and
class and national oppression. Lenin saw this struggle as the key to
advancing the unity of the workers of the oppressor nation with the
workers and the people of any oppressed nation or nationality.
In an article that appeared in the
New York Daily Tribune in
1861, Marx forewarned that the United States would continue to suffer
from racist disfigurement if the abolition of slavery was in any way
compromised:
The progressive abuse of the Union by the slave power, working
through its alliance with the Northern Democratic Party is, so to say,
the general formula of United States history since the beginning of this
century. The successive compromise measures mark the successive degrees
of encroachment by which the Union became more and more transformed
into the slave of the slaveowner. (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, International Publishers, New York, 1971, p.6.)
The confirmation of Marx’s analysis can be found in the “successive
compromises” which led to the betrayal of Reconstruction and, finally,
the transformation of the Union into the slave of state monopoly
capitalism.
The history of this country has been warped and distorted, first by
slavery, then the survivals of slavery and the ceaseless propagation of
racist ideology. And from this history it can be clearly seen that the
class interests of white workers, as in the struggle against the
super-monopolies today, can only be advanced in unity with Black workers
and as an integral part of the fight to end the oppression of Black
people.
In writing of Marx’ simultaneous support of the land reform movement
and opposition to those who saw that movement as a means of realizing
their petty-bourgeois dreams instead of a way to struggle against class
and racist oppression and exploitation, Lenin said:
While mercilessly ridiculing the absurd ideological trappings of the
movement, Marx strives in a sober, materialist manner to determine its
real historical content, the consequences that must inevitably flow from
it because of objective conditions, regard less of the will and the
consciousness, the dreams and theories, of the various individuals.
Marx, therefore, does not condemn, but fully approves communist support
of the movement. (Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 328.)
At the same time, Marx saw that even an uncompromising struggle
against all vestiges of slavery, against the plunder and murder of the
Indians, and to gain land for Black and white toilers, could not change
the nature of commodity production which would inevitably lead to the
take-over of the land and the economy by the rising capitalist class.
Lenin wrote:
With remarkable penetration, Marx, who was then only the future
economist, points to the role of exchange and commodity production. The
peasants, he says, will exchange the produce of the land, if not the
land itself, and that says everything! The question is dealt with in a
way that is largely applicable to the Russian peasant movement and its
petty-bourgeois ideologists. . . . Marx, however, does not simply
repudiate this petty-bourgeois movement, he does not dogmatically ignore
it, he does not fear to soil his hands by contact with the movement of
the revolutionary petty-bourgeois democrats – a fear that is
characteristic of many of the doctrinaires. (Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 327, 328.)
Douglass and Black Power
While Douglass was the champion of Black and white unity within the
Abolitionist movement, as well as the architect of the strategy to bring
about a national political realignment, he also advocated the
self-organization of Black people.
By 1849, Douglass was already calling for such a group, to be named
the National League of Colored People. He had even suggested a
constitution for it, with a preamble that stated:
. . . we have long deplored the distracted and divided state of the
oppressed, and the manifold evils resulting there from, and desiring as
we do to see an union formed which shall enable us better to grapple
with the various systems of injustice and wrong by which we are
environed, and to regain our plundered rights, we do solemnly agree to
unite in accordance with the following. (The North Star, August 10, 1849.)
Douglass was certain that in their struggle for liberation, and as
part of the struggles of all oppressed and exploited, Black people would
achieve self-union. “We shall never despair of our people, and union
will yet be affected — our ranks cannot always be divided,” he wrote in
The North Star (November 19, 1849).
It is clear that Douglass was the original advocate of “Black power”
and that his concept had nothing in common with the disruptive
sloganizing of Stokely Carmichael. Douglass rejected all tendencies that
viewed Black power in a separatist way. “It is evident,” wrote
Douglass, “that white and black must fall or flourish together.” (
The North Star, November 16, 1849.)
Douglass not only opposed separatist concepts of Black power, he also
polemicized against those who feared that the press would falsely
portray Black self-union as anti-white. This group included a prominent
Black friend who wrote to
The North Star, saying, “I believe
that the motto, ‘Union of the oppressed for the sake of freedom,’ will
be interpreted by the pro-slavery press, to mean an union of the black
against the white.” Douglass, continuing in his insistence that there
was no contradiction between the self-union of the oppressed Blacks and
unity with white opponents of the slave owners, responded by stating
that “it seems worse than timidity for us to hesitate to adopt measures
for our improvement and elevation, from fear of misinterpretation.” For
Douglass, self-union of the oppressed Black people — as the starting
point of Black power — was fully consistent with unity with white
Abolitionists and coalition with other white strata in order to advance
liberation. He saw that Abolition could not be achieved if Blacks
pursued a separatist policy.
Douglass saw that all struggle, including that for self
organization, was a process. It would be self-defeating, he realized,
for Black people to reject the strategy of coalition until some vague
future date when they had achieved complete internal organization.
Douglass did not waver in his conviction despite bitter attacks by
Garrison and other sectarians in the Abolitionist movement who opposed a
coalition strategy against the slave power. The passive acceptance of
their views, he was convinced, would lead to the perpetuation of slavery
for an indeterminate length of time.
Douglass also realized that refusal to enter into coalition with
forces that did not, at that stage of the struggle, accept the goal of
abolition would contradict and undermine an anti-slavery strategy. Had
Douglass advocated the anti coalition concept of Black power advanced
today by Carmichael, Forman, Boggs and others, the coalition of forces
that led to the defeat of the slave power would not have been achieved.
In today’s struggle against the genocidal economic and social
aggressions of state monopoly capitalism, those socalled radicals
advocate the type of “Black power” strategy that Douglass so
relentlessly opposed — a separatist concept that would dissipate instead
of strengthen Black power, and would result in the perpetuation of
unequal power of the oppressed and exploited in the battle against the
racist ruling class.
According to Stokely Carmichael, “The major mistake made by the
exponents of the coalition theory is that they advocate alliances with
groups which have never had as their central goal the necessity for the
total revamping of society. At bottom, these groups accept the American
system and want only – if at all – to make peripheral, marginal reforms
in it. Such reforms are inadequate to rid society of racism.” (Stokely
Carmichael and Charles Hamilton,
Black Power, the Politics of Liberation in America, Random House, New York, 1967, pp. 60-61.)
Carmichael is vague about what he means by the “total revamping of
society.” The only way that can be accomplished is by establishing
socialism, which he opposes. Carmichael also states that “reforms are
inadequate to rid society of racism.” Of course this is true, since only
the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism can
totally abolish racism. The majority of Black as well as white masses,
however, are not ready to wait for socialism as the solution to their
exploitation and oppression today. They continue to search for answers
to the problems imposed by their common exploiter and oppressor, state
monopoly capitalism.
Despite this fact, Carmichael calls upon Black people to reject the
struggle for reforms in favor of the “total revamping” of society. In
the same breath, he advocates interracial disunity pending the
achievement of complete Black selfunity.
But this self-unity will come about only as a part of the
revolutionary process in which the struggle for the racial and class
unity of the oppressed and exploited is an aim and result of every
battle against the racist oppressor. Those who do not understand the
role of coalition in the people’s fight to improve their condition fail
to see the relationship between reforms and revolution.
Long ago, Douglass answered those who persist in the illusion that
the destiny of oppressed Black people is separate and unrelated to the
destiny of exploited whites. “We deem it a settled point,” wrote
Douglass, that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with the white
people of this country . . . and the question ought to be . . . what
principle should dictate policy . . .” (
The North Star, November 16, 1849.)
Frederick Douglass and Paul Robeson
In our time, the towering figure of Paul Robeson has personified the
link between two significant periods – from the betrayal of
Reconstruction to the era of Black liberation begun with Martin Luther
King and the Civil Rights Decade.
Frederick Douglass had himself been a slave and Robeson is the son of
a slave. Like Douglass in his time, Robeson has devoted his life to the
cause of Black liberation. And, like Douglass, he recognizes that Black
liberation cannot be achieved via a separatist path, but through Black
power in alliance with the oppressed and exploited of all colors.
Robeson has always seen Black independence and Black white alliance as
related, indispensable components of the liberation struggle.
The principles that should dictate policy,” Robeson has declared, are
the following: “Dedication to the Negro people’s welfare is one side of
the coin; the other side is in dependence. Effective Negro leadership
must rely upon and be responsive to no other control than the will of
the people. We have allies – important allies – among our white fellow
citizens, and we must seek to draw them close to us and to gain many
more. But the Negro people’s movement must be led by Negroes, not only
in terms of title and Position but in reality.” (Paul Robeson,
Here I Stand, Othello Associates, New York, 1958, p. 111.)
Robeson struggled for self-union of his people at home, and for
solidarity with the oppressed and their allies at home and abroad.
Whereas Douglass travelled widely in Europe to win support for the
anti-slavery cause, Robeson travelled even more extensively, rallying
support for Black liberation and championing liberation from imperialism
everywhere.
That Robeson’s travels were more extensive than Douglass’ was of
course made possible by the October Revolution, which replaced the czar
and serfdom with socialism, opening the way for the end of racism and
oppression in a major part of the globe, and becoming the most decisive
support for the oppressed and exploited throughout the world.
Wherever he went, Robeson earned the hatred of the U.S. imperialists —
and never more than in Paris in 1949, when he declared: “It is
unthinkable that American Negroes could go to war on behalf of those who
have oppressed them for generations against the Soviet Union which in
one generation has raised our people to full human dignity.”
When Robeson asserted that Black men would never fight against the
country of socialism — the Soviet Union, the chief supporter and
champion of liberation from imperialism, oppression and racism — he was
expressing what is at the heart of today’s Black resistance to fighting a
war to oppress others.
For a Strategic Breakthrough
In Douglass’ time, the strategy to break the slave power’s control of
Congress and the Federal Government was the precondition for the
abolition of slavery. Today, the precondition for opening the path to
the abolition of wage slavery and racist oppression through socialism is
the strategy to defeat the threat of fascism and to break the
monopolists’ domination of Congress and the Federal Government.
“Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie
and the growth of fascism [in its] preparatory stages,” stated Georgi
Dimitrov, “
is not in a position to prevent the growth of fascism, but on the contrary, facilitates that victory.” (
United Front Against Fascism, New Century Publishers, New York, 1950, p. 9.)
The anti-coalition views of Carmichael, Forman, Boggs and others are
nothing less than opposition to a united front against the “reactionary
measures” with which monopoly prepares for its imposition of fascism.
However, regardless of the disruptive nature of the views of such
Black radicals, it must be recognized that the main obstacle to Black
and white unity against the common enemy is the influence of racism on
white workers. And it is the primary responsibility of white
revolutionaries to lead the fight against racist ideology and to
mobilize white workers in the struggle against racism and in support of
Black liberation as indispensable to the advance of their class
interests.
The aim of monopoly is to force a reversal of every aspect of
bourgeois democracy, limited as it is, in order to open the way for
fascism. The aim of the anti-monopoly program, as advocated by the
Communist Party, is to bring about a
strategic breakthrough to a
deeper and wider degree of democracy, one that would powerfully
accelerate the revolutionary process, opening the way to Black
liberation and socialism.
Once this anti-monopoly strategy succeeds in breaking the control of
state monopoly capital over Congress and the government, the forces
exist, internally and internationally — in contrast to the anti-slavery
period — that can prevent the betrayal of the struggle. There is such a
perspective, and this is so, first of all, because the forces of class
and national liberation, headed by the Soviet Union and the other
socialist countries, have changed the world balance of power.
PHOTO: Henry Winston, 1972. Daily Worker/People’s World collection at Tamiment Library.
