Liberation
&Socialism
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 6
INTRODUCTION
by Tony Thomas 7
6
INTRODUCTION
7
8 Black Liberation and Socialism
13
14 Black Liberation and Socialism
gia and did nothing about it; murdered two whites and a
Negro in Mississippi and did nothing about it. So that the
civil-rights bill has produced nothing where we're concerned.
It was only a valve, a vent, that was designed to enable
us to let off our frustrations. But the bill itself was not de
signed to solve our problems.
Since we see what they did in 1963, and we saw what they
did in 1964, what will they do now, in 1965? If the march
on Washington was supposed to lessen the explosion, and the
civil-rights bill was designed to lessen the explosion- That's
all it was designed to do; it wasn't designed to solve the
problems; it was designed to lessen the explosion. Every
one in his right mind knows there should have been an ex
plosion. You can't have all those ingredients, those explosive
ingredients that exist in Harlem and elsewhere where our
people suffer, and not have an explosion. So these are de
vices to lessen the danger of the explosion, but not designed
to remove the material that's going to explode. [Malcolm X
Speaks (Merit Publishers: New York), pp. 158-59).]
ipal Employees was all Black. The white workers didn't feel
the need of a union since they were given wages much higher
than those of the Black workers. One day all of the Black
workers went on strike, demanding union recognition, a wage
increase, an antidiscrimination clause, grievance procedures,
a health plan, and other benefits. Here Blacks combined na
tionalist demands with class demands. In fact, the nationalist
demands were class demands, and the class demands were
nationalist demands.
By striking, the workers had hoped to gain national atten
tion and support for their cause. Instead they were treach
ously sold out by the national leadership Qf AFSCME whose
field representa.tive told them to go back to work. Because
the workers were combining nationalist demands with the de
mand for union recognition, the field representative said that
this wasn't a strike. And with this denial of national support,
the strike was effectively broken.
Thus the strike showed just how far these liberal union bu
reaucrats will go. It also illustrated that the national question
will play a most important role in the regeneration of the
unions into organs of struggle.
These examples of struggle by Black workers illustrate the
dual or combined character of the struggle for Black libera
tion. In combination with the struggle for self-determination,
the working-class character of the Black community will make
the national question a most explosive force on the political
scene in the United States. In Jle United States the national
question revolves around a proletarian mass, unlike Eastern
Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America where the national
question revolves around a peasant mass.
There is another difference between the national question
here and elsewhere. Unlike the nations of Eastern Europe
and Asia, the Black nation was forged in the heat of North
American capitalist expansion. The slaves came from many
different African ethnic groups, each with its own heritage,
tradition and language. But the process of enslavement de
stroyed these ethnic groups and welded the African slaves
into one people with a common heritage of white-racist ex
ploitation and oppression.
In Latin America, we could even say that it was Spanish
and Portuguese colonization that produced many of the nation
states. The United States itself is a nation that was produced
Combined Character of the American Revolution 23
cisive factor.
Today in the Middle East, the power of the Palestinian com
mando movement flows from the fact that it is organized in
dependent of imperialism and the Arab states.
So, as with the Cubans and the Palestinians, the power of
Black people will flow from the depth of independent organi
zation. The. primary reason that SNCC collapsed was its ae
pendence upon white liberals for organizational and financial
resources. The weakness of the Black Panther Party can be
attributed to its organizational and financial dependence upon
white petty-bourgeois radicals of the Peace and Freedom and
Yippie variety. The Panthers fell into a fatal trap. They found
it was easier to appeal to the sympathies of white liberals and
radicals than to organize the Black community. Their heavy
26 Black Liberation and Socialism
to get into the union. The brothers who were hired were then
fired on the eighty-ninth day. And then thousands of brothers
who had made it were laid off early this year because of the
recession that hit the industry.
Thus, despite the absorption of many Black workers by the
automobile industry, Blacks still occupy the bulk of the reserve
army of labor. The reserve army of labor is the last hired
and the first fired. These workers are the last ones in on an
economic upswing, but the first ones out in the beginning of
an economic slump.
The example of Detroit only highlights the fact that the U.S.
ruling class is in permanent crisis over the national question.
And because of this permanent crisis, there will be permanent
struggle.
In this permanent crisis, the bourgeoisie will make use of
its apparatus of deception and its apparatus of repression.
The apparatus of deception tells people that the vast riches and
wealth of North America can be theirs if only they work hard
and get the right breaks. The existence of such riches and
wealth eggs the struggle -on. People continue to try to shape
the reality of their existence to the illusions about how to achieve
the good things in life. This contradiction- trying to make
what the Man says real- acts as a generator of struggle
amongst the masses of Black people.
The fact that motion is breaking out among other sectors
of the society-women, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Native Ameri
cans and Asian-Americans- will deepen and extend the strug
gle for Black -self-determination. And what must be added to
this is the fact that struggle and motion continue all over the
world- in Vietnam, Ireland, Africa and Latin America. All
these factors mean that there will be no letup in the struggle
for Black self-determination. Contrary to what the ultralefts
believe, doom, disaster, repression and fascism do not loom
around the corner. The ruling class's apparatus of deception
bas yet to be exhausted.
This is not to say that the bourgeoisie will not resort to
repression. The countless police murders of Black militants'
are testimony to this fact But in this period, the bourgeoisie
uses its repression to divide the militants from the masses. The
ruling class wants to isolate, contain, and snuff out the lives
of those revolutionary militants who have the potential of
leading masses of people in struggle. It is this potential linkup
that they dread. But use of ultraleft rhetoric by militant Black
Combined Character of the American Revolution 29
A Transitional Program
for Black Liberation
33
34 Black Liberation and Socialism
Domestic Policy
1. It is the duty of society to provide well-paid jobs for all.
A shorter workweek with no loss in pay to spread the available
work. Unemployment insurance at full wages for everyone
eighteen or over whether or not they have held jobs before.
2. Transfer the funds from the war budget to launch a multi
billion-dollar crash program of public works to build schools,
hospitals, better public transport, parks and recreation facill-
Transitional Program for Black Liberation 47
Black Education
The Black community should have control of its entire educa
tional system from the nursery school through college. This
can be accomplished in the following ways:
High schools
1. Establish student policy-making boards to run student
activities in the high schools, handle disciplinary problems,
and participate in the general supervision of the schools.
2. Hold regular full assemblies to discuss school problems
and ascertain the will of the students.
3. Maintain the rights of all students and teachers. These
should include: freedom of expression, freedom to organize,
to pass out literature, freedom from censorship of school news
papers, freedom of assembly, and the right to invite any outside
speakers regardless of their political views.
4. An end to disciplinary expulsions.
5. An end to the tracking system- special tutoring for all
students who fall behind.
6. A rounded Black studies program which will teach Afro
Transitional Program for Black Liberation 49
A Black university
The Black community should have universities which are
related to the needs of Black people, to their struggle against
oppression, and to their development as a nationality. Third
World university students and faculty should be able to shape
their own educational destiny and provide training in all the
skills and professions required by the Black community. The
following demands to accomplish these ends have already
been raised in the campus struggles:
1. Autonomous Black studies and Third World studies de
partments, adequately financed and with complete control of
curriculum, facilities and policies in the hands of Third World
students and faculty.
2. Representatives of Third World groups on all policy-mak
ing bodies.
3. Availability of university facilities for use by the commu
nity and their expansion in the Black .community.
4. Free university education for all Third World students
who desire it, with full expenses paid by the government and
scholarships available to all who need them.
5. Guaranteed jobs for all graduates.
gimes, and endless wars, each more horrifying than the last.
A number of countries have already torn loose and set out
on the road to building socialism, whatever the difficulties,
hardships, and setbacks caused in the final analysis by the
poverty-stricken level at which they had to begin and the ef
forts of the capitalist powers to injure and destroy them. The
relationship of forces between capitalism and socialism on
a world scale has changed to such a degree in the past fifty
years since the flrst successful socialist revolution in Russia
that even the United States is, at bottom, on the defensive.
That is the basic reality despite the decades of prosperity
arising out of the victory in World War II and the prepara
tions for World War III, and despite the colossal military
force at the command of the American capitalist rulers.
What is to. be observed all over the world is that maBB strug
gles of any considerable scope now tend to collide with the
capitalist system and, with proper leadership, have the po
tential to break through the barriers of capitalism and cross
over into struggles for socialism.
This tendency is so strong, so deeply imbedded, that exam
ples can be cited throughout the Third World where a strug
gle for such democratic demands as national independence and
a thoroughgoing agrarian reform has moved in the direction
of a struggle for socialism. In Cuba, Vietnam, and China
these struggles have culminated in actual revolutionary over
turns of the capitalist system.
While the tendency for big mass struggles to move toward
socialism is especially striking in the Third World, it is also
operative- with certain modifications- in the industrially ad
vanced capitalist countries. Under the impulse of serious prob
lems affecting their lives in general and standard of living,
maBBes of working people can become engaged in struggles
of a militant nature, the logic of which is to disregard the
limitations of capitalism and to seek solutions that can ac
tually be worked out only if socialism is instituted.
This gives these struggles a "transitional" nature. Beginning
with a limited challenge to the rule of capitalism, they move
logically toward the creation of a new revolutionary power
in opposition to the capitalist government.
The key demands being raised in the Black liberation strug
gle today, such as Black control of the Black community,
jobs for all, and self-determination of Third World peoples
have this quality of being transitional in nature. They are
rooted in the needs and present understanding of the Black
Transitional Program for Black Liberation 53
59
60 Black Liberation and Socialism
for politics, is the phony, status quo politics of the racists and
shysters, the horse trading and hypocrisy of the Democrats
and Republicans in which a few get rich at the expense of
the many.
But there can be another type of politics. When Black people
get together and fight for control of the schools in their com
munity, that is political action. When Black people come out
into the streets, pushed beyond endurance by racist cops,
gouging merchants and landlords, and all the other miseries of
ghetto life, that too is a kind of politics.
The trouble with these attempts to change the policies that
affect ghetto life is that they are limited, sporadic, unorganized,
semiconscious, and unsustained. If such mass actions and
direct struggles were combined with a consistently organized
struggle to gain political power, if they were initiated and led
by a political party that rightly claimed to speak and act for
the struggling masses, this would be much more than a vote
catching device or an electoral doublecross.
Electoral activity need not be the opposite of revolutionary
struggle; it has been and can be an essential spur to it. It can
be a valuable part of the arsenal of struggle techniques in a
war where every means necessary must be employed.
History has known political parties that combined running
candidates for office with mass struggles under their leader
ship to abolish oppressive social systems. Lenin's Bolsheviks
are the best-known example.
A political party b.ased on the ghetto could carry out many
worthwhile activities in addition to running for or holding
political offices. It could conduct education about Black history
and revolutionary struggles elsewhere; take measures to form
cooperatives and credit systems to ease the economic squeeze;
defend Black victims of government persecution; initiate literacy
campaigns among adults; organize Afro-American cultural af
fairs and community recreation. Its contests for or control of
legitimate authority would give it much more leverage in fights
against landlords, brutal cops, and job discrimination. It could
organize neighborhood patrols against crime and rackets and
demand an end to the alien and repressive police powers of
racist rulers. It could provide a broad framework for unifying
various Black groups in common struggle.
It will take more than spontaneous eruptions to win Black
liberation; it will require an organized, sustained, long-term
fight If a Black party starts organizing and using its leverage
Case for a Black Political Party 69
effectively, the masses will learn from it, follow it, develop their
consciousness in and through it Such a party can become
the best means for breaking out of the trap of capitalist misery
and harnessing the enormous revolutionary potential of the
ghetto masses.
been tried. The same Black people who came out into the
streets and tore up districts in Newark, Detroit, and elsewhere
have still not broken with the Democratic Party, the party of
the white supremacists, xploiters, and warmakersl
A year after the big uprising in Cleveland, and only a few
months after Newark and Detroit, almost 95 percent of Clev
land's registered Afro-Americans turned out to nominate and
elect the Black man Stokes as mayor on the Democratic ticket
In some ghetto districts Stokes received every Black vote. In
the same way a Black mayor was elected in the steel center
of Gary, Indiana.
Some will say that these developments only go to show how
backward Black people are. What's actually bad is not their
use of electoral action to get rid of hated city officials but
the fact that this weapon was used along the old lines and
is still wielded by the same old hands. The Black voters in
Cleveland, Gary, and other places will now have to go through
more experiences of disillusionment with their Black Democratic
mayors. Black militants can hasten this process only by show
ing an alternative acceptable to the masses at their present level
of consciousness- and nothing will meet this need better today
than adv.ocacy of a political party controlled by the masses
and not their oppressors.
The ultraleft opponents of political action, or abstainers from
it, are mistaken in four respects: 1. They hastily and uncrittcally
transfer tactics and techniques which proved applicable at the
advanced stage of the Chinese, Cuban, and Vietnam revolutions
to the far different, more complex, and less matured conditions
in the United States. 2. They onsidedly believe that electoral
action is incompatible with any form of direct action whereas
the two can be combined or alternated to the advantage of both.
3. They proceed on the assumption that electoral action has
been bypassed or outmoded when it is only entering a new
phase. 4. Finally, in their exclusive preoccupation with armed
struggle and associated forms of direct action, however legiti
mate these may be, they fail to come to grips with the most
pressing problem of the present hour. That is the barely begun
task of unifying into a cohesive force and educating the mil
lions of ghetto dwellers who must shoulder the colossal as
signment of overturning white supremacy and radically trans
forming capitalist America. This prolonged and difficult job
cannot be impatiently waved aside or skipped over by those
who aspire to lead the Black revolution.
72 Black Liberation and Socialism
educators, writers, and all the rest did not come around rather
quickly in substantial numbers, they became discouraged and
gave up.
In the state of Michigan, the Freedom Now Party did enlist
a few hundred activists and manage to get on the ballot and
run an election campaign in 1964. But there too the leader
ship attempted to rush through or skip over inescapable stages.
Instead of concentrating at the start on clarifying the nature
and problems of a new party for themselves and their followers
and instead of developing a realistic long-range as well as an
immediate objective, they pinned all their hopes on securing
a big vote and possibly electing a few candidates. They counted
on so impressive a showing on the first try that it would bring
large numbers into the party right away.
Most of the Michigan leaders became discouraged when the
party received only five thousand votes. Instead of regarding
this support for a new, untried, unpopularized, largely un
explained movement as the beginning basis for sustained edu
catiom and organization, they saw the low vote as evidence
of total failure.
If in place of exorbitant expectations, they had been guided
by a more realistic approach, the party might have survived,
grown and spread to other places. The quick collapse of the
Freedom Now Party did not prove that the Black masses
would not support and join an independent party. It only
showed that they won't go for it in a rush and all together
at the first call. They will have to be convinced and won over,
not by a one-shot crack at the ballot box, but by persevering
education and organization.
The main point to be learned from the Freedom Now Party
experience is that the founders of a new party will first have
to organize themselves properly before they will be able to
organize large numbers successfully.
Like the Freedom Now Party, the Lowndes County Freedom
Party clearly opposes both the Democra_tic and Republican
parties and seeks to create an alternative to them. But it is
being built on a more realistic basis. It was not proclaimed
as a full-fledged political party as soon as the idea struck a
few pioneers. Instead, it was discussed at great length by its
founders, soberly, in detail, and with careful attention to local
needs, possibilities, and peculiarities. This preliminary stage
of discussion, when the movement was known as the Lowndes
County Freedom Organization, unified and educated the found-
80 Black Liberation and Socialism
ers and gave them a perspective, trusted leaders, and the ele
ments of an agreed-upon structure for going forward to the
launching of the Freedom Party itself.
Some members and sympathizers of the Lowndes County
Freedom Party expected it to win the very first election it con
tested in November 1966 because Black people are a majority
in the county. They underestimated the intimidation and pres
sure applied by the Democrats and the difficulties of conducting
an election campaign for the first time. The new Freedom
Party did not win; its highest vote was 42 percent. But its
leaders and most of its members were not crushed by the out
come. Armed with a long-range outlook, they took the result
in their stride and have set about to do better on the next
try.
Thanks to its farsighted and careful planning, the Lowndes
County Freedom Party has a well-defined organizational struc
ture which facilitates active participation by its members and
democratic decision making. Its candidates and leaders are
expected to respect these decisions. Through constant educa
tion and propaganda it has sought to unify the Black com
munity and has displayed considerable skill and flexibility
in bringing along most sections of the Black community without
sacrificing any of its basic principles or purposes.
While bidding for power and office through the ballot, it
functions the year around to improve the living conditions
of the Black population through such projects as building a
library, providing milk for children, etc. It has taken measures
to ensure the self-defense of its supporters against racist terror
attacks. It tries to be.tter the conditions of the Black people
in all respects.
It remains to be seen whether it will continue to grow and
become so deep-rooted that it cannot be disoriented or de
stroyed. In any event, it sets an example and provides a model
for other Black communities, North and South. If an inde
pendent Black political movement can survive and grow under
such difficult and isolated circumstances, how much easier
could this job be done in a Harlem or a Watts!
by Derrick Morrison
84
Malcolm X and Black Political Action 85
ther ten-point. program and the call for Black studies and the
Black university in the programs of the Black student organi
zations.
However, the Panther Party and Black student movement
were never able to work out a successful revolutionary-na
tionalist strategy because they were not able to rid themselves
of the virus of ultraleftism. The Panthers put a disproportionate
emphasis on the gun, and their rhetorical promises went well
beyond their political and organizational capacities. The Pan
thers saw the ghetto rebellions not as the first outbursts of
nationalist consciousness, conditioned by the lack of an or
ganized leadership, but as the final phase of the struggle to
overturn capitalism in the United States. Rather than fashion
a revolutionary strategy suited to the reality of African-Amer
icans in the United States, the Panthers romanticized and me
chanically tried to apply models of revolutionary struggle
taken from Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, and Bolivia. Because their
romantic notions of armed struggle were at odds with reality,
they became isolated and divorced from the masses.
The ultraleft politics of the Panthers burned out and dis
oriented a whole layer of revolutionary-nationalist youth. And
when the Panthers began to understand that the politics of
"offing the pig" and "revolutionary suicide" would not work,
they retreated into reformism. This is reflected in their current
emphasis on establishing community social-work programs
and in their support to Black Democrats.
Since the Black Panther Party was the most influential in
dependent Black political organization in the eyes of campus
activists, its decline had grave consequences for the Black stu
dent movement. Black student militants retreated from the strug
gle for Black studies and the Black university. They became
disillusioned with the whole idea of revolution and equated
any notion of revolutionary struggle with ultraleftism or ad
venturism. Many were bought off with scholarships or jobs
in various government-financed projects in the Black com
munity.
The decline of the Black Panther Party and the Black student
movement signalled a heyday for reformist illusions of all
stripes. One of the wings of reformism is represented by those
nationalists who have adopted a reformist perspective. Another
wing is represented by the traditional Black reformists who
are now trying to give the appearance of being in step with
88 Black Liberation and Socialism
The people who are going to build a Black party are not
the Whitney Youngs or Vernon Jordans (the present executive
director of the Urban League); they are the masses of Black
workers, students, G Is, prisoners, and women.
Malcolm X and Black Political Action 89
Malcolm was for unity in action with the civil rights leaders
and organizations, but he didn't try to twist and turn the OAA U
so that it might embrace Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young
and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. H he had, the OAA U
would have amounted to little more than just another civil
rights organization, surely not a fighting nationalist organiza
tion. To hold together a political bloc with the traditional
reformists would mean, in effect, pushing aside the task of
building a Black political party in order to carry out opera
tions in the Democratic Party. This is just what has happened
to the Congress of African People.
An eastern regional meeting of CAP in Newark in September
197 1 sent out a call for a nationwide nationalist convention
in March 1972 to build an independent Black political party.
But as it turned out, the CAP leadership never had any real
intention of holding such a convention. They used it instead
to prod the Black Democrats into calling a national political
convention to be held in Gary, Indiana, this ::arch. Imamu
is now saying that the formation of a national Black political
caucus operating in the two capitalist parties will serve to sow
the seeds for the eventual formation of an independent Black
political vehicle.
This is totally absurd. The Democratic Party is not going
to serve as an organizing vehicle for a Black political party.
The road is filled with the bones and skeletons of previous
radical and progressive movements that tried to route them
selves through the Democratic Party. The same fate awaits
the Congress of African People if it continues along this path.
H there is one thing to remember about Malcolm, it is that he
had no soft spot in his heart for the Democratic and Republican
parties. He persistently castigated these parties of capitalist
rule despite widespread illusions about their nature.
During Malcolm's day the slogan raised by the liberals and
reformists was not "Evict Nixon." It was "Defeat Goldwater
at all costs." And defeating Goldwater meant that you had to
support Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964. Malcolm called the
two-party system a giant con game, a game in which either
way you move, you lose.
The truth of that analogy hasn't diminished a bit. The Black
Democrats, however, have not called for a halt to the game.
Instead they are saying the Black people should learn how to
play the game, that Black people should try to get in on this
con game.
Since the formation of the Congressional Black Caucus in
90 Black Liberation and Socialism
by Andrew Pulley
92
How to Fight Racism 93
it's those lazy Blacks!" It is things like this that cause and pro
mote racism.
Nixon, like other racists, is haranguing us about "law and
order, " and calling for the reinstitution of capital punishment.
What is the meaning of all this talk about "law and order?"
Look at the situation in New York. There is an election going
on and all the capitalist candidates, including the liberals, are
saying that the chief problem is crime. Is crime really the
main question confronting New York and other cities? I think
not.
When people live in rundown tenements, can't find jobs, and
send their children to terrible schools, then they are forced to
turn to alcoholism, or drugs, or some other kind of escape.
Nixon disagrees with this. When he announced his support
for the reinstitution of the death penalty, and stiffening penal
ties for the drug addicts and pushers, he pointed out his dis
agreements with what he called the "wishy-washy liberals" and
the "do-gooders" who said that crime and drugs are the fault
of society. He said the criminal is responsible and should be
punished accordingly.
Of course when Nixon talks about criminals he's not talking
about himself, a mass murderer responsible for the killing and
maiming of millions in Indochina. He's not talking about high
government bureaucrats, who are in cahoots with the big dope
pushers in Saigon. Nor is he talking about Watergate- where,
you know, it's obvious that Nixon himself is the criminal.
It's not the real criminals that Nixon is talking about. He is
talking about the victims of his criminality. He's trying to make
the real victims look like the criminals.
If Black people and others who are oppressed and downtrod
den are not the victims of this system of private profits and
racism, then how can Nixon explain the fact that we're always
the last hired and the first fired? And that those of us who are
hired have the lowest p:tying jobs? How can Nixon and other
racists explain the fact that Black unemployment is twice that
of whites? How do you explain the fact that in many cities
an average of $1000 per pupil is spent on education in the
white communities, and only $500 per pupil in the Black com
munities? If this racist society doesn't cause this poverty, and
therefqre cause the revolt against it, then how can Nixon ex
plain the poverty of Blacks? Could it be that we have a pover
ty gene?
And here you have an example of how racism is perpetuated.
94 Black Liberation and Socialism
by Tony Thomas
1 00
Defend ing t he African Revolut ion 101
Mozambique.
One of the biggest operations in Portuguese Mrica is that
of Gulf Oil in Cabinda province in Angola. In 1969, according
(o Africa Today, Gulf had invested $130 million in Angola,
and planned to invest $76 million more in its oil fields there.
Like most of the U.S. firms in Portuguese Africa, Gulf pays
substantial subsidies and "taxes" (including 50 percent of all
profits) to the Portuguese colonialists.
Publicizing these facts lays the basis for building a mass
movement that can expose and oppose U.S. involvement in
Africa. This movement could unite around the demands:
Independence for Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, and
Guinea- Bissau;
End white-settler rule in Zimbabwe and South Mrica;
Defending the African Revolution 10 5
by Maxine Williams
1 06
Women's Liberation and Black Women 107
they were barred from many of the crafts they had been
trained in under slavery. The labor market for Black women
also proved to be a disaster. Black women entered the needle
trades in New York in the 1900s as a cheap source of labor
for the employers; and in Chicago in 1917, Black women,
who were willing to work for lower wages, were used to break
a strike.
There was great distrust between Black and white workers,
and in some cities, white workers refused to work beside Black
women and walked off their jobs.
The Black woman has never held high status in this so
ciety. Under slavery she was mated like cattle and used as
a mere breeding instrument. Today, the majority of Black
women are still confined to the most menial and lowest-paid
occupations- domestic and laundry workers, file clerks, coun
ter workers and other service occupations. These jobs in most
cases are not yet unionized.
Today at least 20 percent of Black women are employed
as private household workers, and their median income
is $ 1,200. These women have the double exploitation of first
doing drudgery in someone else's home and then having to
take care of their own households as well. Some are forced
to leave their own children without adequate supervision in
order to earn money by taking care of someone else's children.
Sixty-one percent of Black married women were in the la
bor force in 1966. Almost one-fourth of Black families are
headed by females, double the percentage for whites.
own bodies. And this means that we must also speak out
against forced sterilization and against compelling welfare
mothers to accept contraceptive methods against their will.
There is now a women's liberation movement growing in
the United States. By and large, Black women have not
played a prominent role in this movement. This is due to
the fact that many Black women have not yet developed a
feminist consciousness. Black women see their problem main
ly as one of racial oppression.
The middle-class mentality of some white women in the
movement has also helped to make the issue of women's lib
eration seem to be irrelevant to Black women's needs. For
instance, at the November 1969 Congress to Unite Women
in New York, some of the participants did not want to take
a stand against the school tracking system, that is, the sys
tem school authorities use to channel students into certain
types of occupations on the basis of their so-called intelligence.
These women feared that "good" students thrown in with "bad"
ones would cause the "brilliant" students to leave school, thus
lowering the standards. One white woman had the gall to
mention to me that she felt women living in Scarsdale were
more oppressed than Third World women trapped in the ghet
to. There was also little attempt to deal with the problems
of poor women, for example, the fact that women in Scars
dale exploit Black women as domestics.
The movement must take a clearer stand against the hor
rendous conditions in which poor women are forced to work.
Some women in the movement are in favor of eliminating the
state protective laws for women, that is, the laws which regu
late women's working conditions. But poor women who are
forced to work in sweatshops, factories and laundries need
those laws on the books. Not only must the state protective
laws for women remain on the books, but we must see that
they are enforced and made even stronger. I do not mean that
those laws which are so "protective" that women are protected
right out of a job should be kept. But any laws that better
the working conditions for women should be strengthened,
and extended to men!
Women in the women's liberation movement assert that they
are tired of being slaves to their husbands, confined to the
household performing menial tasks. While the Black woman
can sympathize with this view, she does not feel that break
ing her ass every day from nine to five is any form of lib
eration.
Women's Liberation and Black Women 113
her oppression, she will move to form alliances with all revo
lutionary forces available and settle for nothing less than
complete destruction of this racist, capitalist, male-dominated
system.
IlL MARXISM AND BLACK NATIONALISM
Black Nationalism
and Confused Marxists
by Tony Thomas
For many years, a debate has raged within the Black libera
tion struggle, and among those who call themselves Marxists,
as to what is the relationship between Marxism and Black
nationalism. Traditionally, reformist pseudo-Marxist organiza
tions like the U. S. Communist Party have taken the position
that Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism are "divisive," "bour
geois," and generally reactionary. Some Black liberatlonists
have falsely judged these attitudes as "Marxism" and have
gone on to brand Marxism irrelevant or dangerous to the
struggle for Black liberation.
As proof of the revolutionary thrust of Afro-American na
tionalism, Malcolm X's concept that Black liberation and so
cialism are directly linked as are racism and capitalism has
become widely popular in recent years. Many Black nationalists
and Pan-Africanists have developed pro-Marxist views out of
their experiences in the struggle.
Some of these brothers and sisters supposedly coming from
"Marxist-Leninist" and "class" positions have now denounced
Black nationalism, employing many of the terms used by
reformist antinationalists such as the Progressive Labor Party
and the Communist Party.
In the October 1971 Black Scholar, Eldridge Cleaver de
scribed how this process took place in the Black Panther Party:
"Those who were revolutionary black nationalists went through
many changes and one very important thing which many of
115
116 Black Liberation and Socialism
by Tony Thomas
124
In Defense of Black Nationalism 125
that whites are furnished by this system with power and privi
leges that Blacks do not have. In jobs, in the police force,
in education, in the capitalist parties, and in the labor bureau
cracies, whites use their power to maintain their privileges
and to keep Black people oppressed.
Black nationalists and revolutionary socialists do not only
fight against racist ideology; they also support the struggle
of Black people to control their own affairs. Winning white
support to this perspective is one of the most important ways
to fight both racist ideas and racist oppression.
And most whites-even those with the worst racist preju
dices- will recognize the right of Blacks to self-determination
when they learn in the course of their own struggles that, de
spite differences (separate organizations, etc.), they and the
oppressed nationalities have a common enemy: the capitalist
class. They will come to realize that in order to defeat this
enemy a united struggle will be necessary.
Monteiro's argument that nationalism retards the struggle
against racism is a cover for his real reason for opposing
Black nationalism: its threat to the reformist CP and YWLL
program for the Black liberation movement. Their reformist
line is exposed in their evaluation of the relationship of the
Black struggle to the Democratic Party. While opposing as
classless, divisive, and reactionary the idea of an independent
Black political party, the CP and YWLL advise Afro-Amer
icans to support Blacks and other "progressives" in the oarty
of the capitalist class-the Democratic Party. They argue that
an effective fight against racism can be waged by electing
more Black Democrats. But this strategy is not effective at
all.
The Democratic Party, il ke the Republican Party, is a polit
ical instrument of the racist white ruling class.
The Democrats are running more Black candidates today
because of increased pressure from the Black community. They
are trying to fool Blacks into thinking that the Democratic
Party and the system of racist American imperiaUsm offer a
solution to the problems of Afro-Americans. But our experience
with the Democratic Party shows that just the opposite is the
case. We will never win our liberation by relying on this cap
italist party.
Democratic Party politicians, including the CP's favorite,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, put thousands of Asians in concentra
tion camps in the 1940s. It was a Democratic president who
In Defense of Black Nationalism 127
in its demands and slogans. The YSA and SWP have con
tinually fought for that perspective.
The antiwar movement attempts to unite the broadest possible
coalition for mass action against the war in Indochina, and
it has dealt heavy blows to the government's .ability to continue
the war. Victories against the government's racist war policies
are victories against racism in this country. And they help
build the Black liberation struggle.
"It was precisely those forces in the front line of the struggle
against racism that were subject to the brutal attacks of the
Trotskyites" (Political Affairs, July 1971, p. 49).
These statements amount to nothing more than typical CP
and YWLL slander against political opponents. With such
slander, Monteiro attempts to hide the real position of the
SWP and the YSA and to hide the real political differences
between King and Malcolm over perspectives on the civil rights
movement.
Rather than opposing the civil rights movement and sitting
on the sidelines, as Monteiro charges, Malcolm X felt it neces
sary for himself and his supporters to participate in that move
ment even though he disagreed with the purely integrationist
perspective of many of its leaders. In fact the need for Black
nationalists to participate in these struggles was one of the rea
sons for his split from the Nation of Islam in 1964.
Although Malcolm rejected integration into white capitalist
America as an ultimate goal, a goal King and many other
In Defense of Black Nationalism 139
The YSA and SWP believe that the struggle for democratic
demands, such as self-determination, cannot be fully vic
torious without a socialist revolution. A strategy for winning
Black liberation must necessarily be oriented to building a
mass movement independent of, and directed against, the
capitalist oppressors- as well as the capitalists' political de
fenders, of both the liberal and reactionary varieties.
The CP and YWLL see things differently. They think tha.
major and enduring gains can be won by Black people without
struggling against the capitalist system- even through sup
porting the liberal wing of the capitalis ruling class.
They think the reformist demands put forward by Bllick
Democrats and white liberals such as Ronald Dellums and
In Defense of Black Nationalism 145
perialism to the last drop of blood, so that they gain the right,
wherever and how they please, to separate a piece of land for
themselves" (p. 13).
Trotsky's position was an application of Marxist-Leninist
theory to the specific conditions of oppression that Black people
live under in the United States. As Lenin pointed out, such
social questions are never abstract Our starting point for
dealing with them must be the concrete material conditions
Afro-Americans have faced. These conditions over the last
four hundreq years of Afro-American history have led to the
development of a distinct Afro-American people.
U.S. capitalism and imperialist exploitation of Africans who
cam.e from different backgrounds, different cultural and histori
cal levels, from different tribes and nationalities, from different
parts of Africa, speaking different languages, led to the creation
of a new Afro-American nationality possessing a common
language, a common cultural tradition, and a common his
torical experience.
Our common oppression, based solely on African origin,
developed into a common consciousness and identity among
Africans in this country, a consciousness that has led to the
development of Black nationalism and the struggle for Afro
American liberation.
Just as one cannot deny the objective historical oppression
we have faced, one cannot deny the importance of Black con
sciousness itself-as Monteiro attempts to do-in measuring
the national identity of Black people. While people from Euro
pean nationalities were assimilated into the cultural, economic,
and political life of white America, Blacks were consciously ex
cluded. The oppression of Blacks-first as chattel slaves and
later as the most oppressed section of wage slaves- has played
a special role in the founding and development of U. S. capital
ism.
African slaves arriving in the U.S. were completely stripped
of their culture and identity. African languages, African religious
and political systems, African family, clan, or tribal ties were
dangerous to the slaveholders and were suppressed.
Before the Civil War, not only slaves but"free" Afro-Americans
banded together in independent all-Black organizations. As a
symbol of pride, many of them used the term African to identi
fy themselves. The struggle to preserve Black culture, to throw
off racist oppression, has deepened our sense of Black identity
150 Black Liberation and Socialism
over the past four hundred years. And the remnants of African
history and culture symbolize the refusal of Afro-Americans to
submit to cultural genocide.
The Civil War freed the chattel slaves and began the process
of transforming them into the wage slaves of Northern and
Southern capitalists. During the Reconstruction period, Southern
Blacks were able to make maior gains toward attaining demo- .
cratic rights, and they held local positions ofpolitical, economic,
and intellectual power. However, as soon as the Northern capi
talists gained a firm control over Southern society, Afro-Ameri
cans were pushed back into a desperate position differing only
in form from their situation before the Civil War.
The alliance between Northern capitalists and Southern Blacks
was shattered as it became evident tha,t the capitalists were
unable and unwilling to grant the economic concessions neces
sary for "assimilation." It was more profitable for the U . S .
capitalists to turn Blacks into the most exploited sector of the
population.
The demise of the Reconstruction alliance corresponded to
the new needs of U . S . imperialism. And the industrialists, con
cerned with the growing Populist and labor movements, were
conscious of the advantages of turning Blacks into social
pariahs and dividing them from their potential allies.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the rollback of Re
construction, the rise of Jim Crow and other forms of segrega
tion in both the North and South, and new racist propaganda
against all nonwhites signified that, overall, the special oppres
sion of Afro-Americans had only intensified since the Civil
War.
The industrialization and urbanization of Afro-Americans in
the twentieth century has deepened our sense of "nationhood."
Instead of being dispe.rsed throughout the rural South, Blacks
are now concentrated in huge urban ghettos. The majority of
Afro-Americans today live in twelve major cities. More Afro
Americans born in Mississippi live in Chicago than in Mis
sissippi.
Within' the urban Black communities our people are even
more "homogenized" than in the rural South. The consciousness
of ourselves as an oppressed people intensified in the "integrated"
North where Afro-Americans began to see that all of U.S.
society-including the liberal North- is organized to perpetuate
the oppression of Black people.
Thus, Monteiro notwithstanding, the consciousness of Black
nationality has been a major objective factor in U . S . political
In Defense of Black Nationalism 151
157
158 Black Liberation and Socialism
and the call for extreme revolutionary agitation was made with
out any concern for the level of consciousness of the masses
and their readiness for the showdown.
The American CP's theory of the "Black Belt" was one aspect
of this international Stalinist policy, rather than a policy unique
to the history of American Communism, as Cruse depicts it.
In fact, according to Theodore Draper's American Communism
and Soviet Russia, the Black Belt strategy was originated by
Stalin himself and handed down by order from Moscow-with
little or no discussion on tlie part of the American Communists,
let alone the Black masses. (New York: Viking Press, 1960,
pp. 342-45.)
The essence of this theory was that since Blacks are a na
tional minority, and have the right to self-determination (recog
nition of Blacks' right of self-determination in itself repre
sented an advance over previous positions), the CP was now
obligated to demand and agitate for an independent Black
state in the South- the Black Belt. This policy was adopted
even though the masses of Blacks at that time were not de
manding a separate state. The Black struggle at tha't. time
was centered primarily around the demands for full social
and economic equality rather than separation. .
In reaction to this policy of the CP the American Marxists
sought Tr.otsky's advice on the national question. They were
confused about the question of separatism and, due to the
absence of an ongoing nationalist movement of any real sub
stance, they were inclined to discount the possibility of one
developing. It was in this context that Trotsky developed his
position on Black nationalism and self-determination.
In discussions during 1933 and 1939 (both of which are
available in Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self
Determination) Trotsky dealt with the conditions for the sup
port of the right to self-determination of Afro-Americans, with
its revolutionary character, and the conditions for the develop
ment of Black nationalism.
Trotsky thought that the only condition for support of self
determination was whether or not Black people demanded such
a solution. It was not up to the revolutionary party to raise
that demand; but only to support it once raised by Blacks:
The Negroes are not yet awakened and they are not- yet
united with the white workers. 99.9 percent of the American
workers are chauvinists, in relation to the Negroes they
are hangmen ... It is necessary to tea<:h the American
beasts. It is necessary to make them understand that the
American state is not their state and that they do not have
to be the guardians of this state. Those American workers
who say: "The Negroes should separate when they so de
sire and we will defend them against our American police"
-those are revolutionists, I have confidence in them. [Ibid.,
p. 17.)
what about his evaluation of the CP? We will find that here
too Cruse makes the basic mistake of equating Marxism with
the Stalinism of the American CP and on this false basis re
jects Marxism.
Cruse's complaints against the CP stem from his experience
with their policies during the Roosevelt era. He reports a se
ries of atrocities during the 1930s: the CP's vicious antina
tionalist positions, their manipulations of Black history, their
effect on Black intellectuals, their conduct during the Second
World War, how their policies were oriented toward the Black
middle class. But he is unable to explain these misdeeds.
By examining the record of Stalinism, especially a few of
the examples which Cruse himself gives, and contrasting it
with the positions of Marxism, we can uncover what is wrong
with the CP, and even find some value for revolutionary Black
nationalism in certain of Cruse's critiques.
In the mid-thirties (after Moscow abandoned the third period)
the American CP executed a turn in the direction of supporting
integration and opposing nationalism almost unconditionally.
Cruse would have us believe that this switch was the result
of an American peculiarity, or due to Jewish dominance of the
CP!
But this was the popular front strategy based on an attempt
by the Soviet_ bureaucracy and its agencies to build an al
liance with the Anglo-American capitalists against Hitler. Racist,
strike-breaking capitalist statesmen were supported in the hope
that they would align themselves with the needs of Stalinist
diplomacy. The perfidious Black Belt theory was abandoned
not because it was unpopular or unprincipled, but because it
interfered with the Stalinist goal of subordinating all domestic
struggles to the needs of the Democratic Party.
After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, when Roosevelt
and American imperialism became military allies of Moscow,
the Stalinists topk the most crudely superpatriotic and op
portunist position. In the labor movement they campaigned for
166 Black Liberation and Socialism
Cruse refuses to deal with the' real way that the Russian revo
lution was carried out. He should remember from his Com
munist Party days that the population of Russia in Lenin's
day was far less proletarian than that of the Black community
of today, or even the Black community at the time of Wash
ington and Du Bois. Cruse should try to figure out why Lenin,
the Marxist, successfully worked out the problem of a bour
geois-democratic revolution, while Black capitalism-which has,
after all, been the establishment-supported program for Black
economic development for the past one hundred years- has
failed so ignominiously.
170 Black Liberation and Socialism
177
178 Black Liberation and Socialism
thus the need for the national movement had been outmoded
within the lhited States; (2) Lenin saw all nationalist move
ments by oppressed people as being "bourgeois" and thus
opposed them; (3) Black, Brown, and Red nationalist demands
for revival of their cultures suppressed by the centuries of
oppression by U.S. capitalism, and the demand being raised
for community control are equivalent to the theory of cultural
national autonomy put forward by Otto Bauer, a reformist
leader of the Austrian Social Democratic Party during the
pre-World War I period.
These charges are often made by would-be Leninists. They
utilize the lack of exposure to Lenin's full works on the na
tional question among radicals in the U.S., and the fact that
Lenin's analysis of the question expanded and developed over
the years, to paint Lenin as an opponent of the national move
ments of the oppressed.
Faced with supposed Marxist-Leninists . claiming that
Leninism is completely opposed to revolutionary-nationalist
movements, mny Afro-Americans have concluded that
Leninism and Marxism are irrelevant to their truggle.
In actuality, a close examination of Lenin's position leads
to the conclusion that support to these nationalist movements
is fully consistent with Leninism. If in this examinatin I must
quote extensively .from LenlD's works, it is not from any
scholastic conception that all new questions can be answered
by the rote repetition of passages from the Marxist texts. But
Marxism is a serious and scientific body of ideas continually
tested against experience. Changes in its fundamental views
must be cogently argued on the basis of new evidence and not
smuggled in through a spurious orthodoxy that really amounts
to a falsification of the writ
i
ngs of the most prominent Marxist
leaders of the past
Lenin's name has been recently invoked by numerous tenden
cies in defense of views that he never held on questions that re
main of key importance today. It is only an elementary courtesy
to his(orical truth to reestablish in his own words his positions
so that those who wish to depart from them are forced to clearly
and openly say that this is what they are doing and explain
their reasons.
of these ruling nations are the. same as those of the prole
tariat .in England in the nineteenth centvry in relation to
Ireland [when Marx .and Engels advised .e English so
cialists to support Irish self-determination- T. T.]. [Lenin,
Collected Works (Mos< ow: Progress Publishers), Vol. 22,
pp. 150-1. .&nphasis added. All q1,1otations from Lenin
in this article are taken from the Collected Works, for which
only volume and page numbers will be cited.]
Rather than fearing the spread of the desire for such demo
cratic rights as self-determination, equality, or autonomy for
the masses of an oppressed people, Lenin felt such desires were
potentially revolutionary and should be encouraged by the
revolutionary-socialist party. "'nle Marxist solution to the prob
lem of democracy," he wrote in 1916, "is for the proletariat to
utilise all democratic institutions and aspirations in its class
struggle against the bourgeoisie in order .to. prepare for its
overthrow and assure its own victory" (Vol 23, p. 26, empha-
sis in original). .
Wohlforth and others who claim that the Leninist approach
to the national question denies support to the Black struggle
as a national struggle forget Lenin's own conclusions. Lenin
dealt with this specific point in his "Draft Theses on National
and Colonial Questions" prepared for and approved by the
Second .,Congress of the Communist International in June 1920.
(The following quote also provides a remarkably concise state
ment of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which Lenin
shared, and which was then the offiCial position of the Comin
tern, on the relationship between the struggle for socialism and
struggles for national independence that have not yet achieved
socialist leadership.) Lenin wrote:
60.]
Cultural autonomy
Another distortion of Lenhi is the attempt to counterpose
Lenin's opposition to cultural-nationaJ. autonomy as raised by
Otto Bauer, the Austrian centrist, to the SWP's support of Black
nationalist demands for Black control of the Black community.
Tim Wohlforth states in his pamphlet Black Nationalism and
Marxist Theory: "Lenin's position was one of complete oppos
ition to autonomy in 'cultural' matters, control of the schools,
etc., which he held meant support for the bourgeois aspiration&
of the oppressed nationalities and led to the divisions not unity
of the work ipg class" (p. 5).
This is a complete distortion of the dispute on cultural-national
autonomy. Here is how Trotsky described it:
.
.
.
198
Pan-Africanism and Black Liberation Today 199
This strategy implies actions not only when any part of Black
Africa has been attacked but in any intervention of U.S. im
perialism against the national liberation struggles of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America-interventions like the Vietnam war.
202 Black Liberation and Socialism