Black Liberation & Socialism

Black
Liberation
&Socialism
PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK

Malcolm X addressing Harlem rally March 23, 1963.
Black
Liberation
&Socialism -
Edited by'lbnyThomas
"The Combined Character of the Coming American Revolution,"
and "Leninism, Stalinism, and Black Nationalism" copyright
1970 by International Socialist Review, 14 Charles Lane, New
York, N.Y. 10014. "Pan-Africanism and Black Liberation
Today" copyright 1971 by International Socialist Review.
"Lenin!s Real Views on Nationalism" copyright 1972 by
'
International Socialist Review. "In Defense of Black National
ism," and "The Case for an Independent Black Political Party"
copyright 1971 by Pathfinder Press, Inc. "A Transitional
Program for Black Liberation" copyright 1972 by Pathfinder
Press, Inc. "Black Nationalism and Confused Marxists" copy
right 1972 by the Black &holar, P. 0. Box 908, Sausalito,
Ca. 94965. "How to Fight Racism" used by permission of the
Young Socialist, P. 0. Box 471, Cooper Station, New York,
N.Y. 10003. All other articles used by permission of The
Militant, 14 Charles Lane, New York, N.Y. 10014.
Copight 1974 by Pathfmder Press, Inc.

All Rights Reserved
First Edition, 197 4
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-75358

Manufactured in the United States of America
Pathfinder Press, Inc.

410 W est Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
CONTENTS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 6
INTRODUCTION
by Tony Thomas 7
I. BLACK LIBERATION AND THE COMING

AMERICAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
The Combined Character of the Coming American
Revolution
by Derrick Morrison 13
II. PROBLEMS OF STRATEGY

A Transitional Program for Black Liberation
with an introduction by Andrew Pulley 33
The Case for an Independent Black Political Party
with an introduction by Paul Boutelle 59
Malcolm X and the Struggle for Independent Black
Political Action
by Derrick Morrison 84
How to Fight Racism
by Andrew Pulley 92
Defending the African Revolution
ThThas 100
Why Women's Liberation Is Important to Black Women
by Maxine Williams 106
III. MARXISM AND BLACK NATIONALISM

Black Nationalism and Confused Marxists
by Tony Thomas 115
-In Defense of Black Nationalism
by Tony Thomas 124
Leninism, Stalinism, and Black. Nationalism
by Tony Thomas 157
Lenin's Real Views on Nationalism
by Tony Thomas 177
Pan-Africanism and Black Liberation Today
by Tony Thomas 198
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
PAUL BOUTELLE was active in the Freedom Now Party in

New York and in Malcolm X's Organization for Afro-American
Unity. In 1968 he was SWP candidate for U.S. vice-president.
DERRICK MORRISON is a Marxist journalist and the 1974

SWP candidate for governor of New York. As a staff writer
for The Militant he covered the Attica prison rebellion and the
Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.
ANDREW PULLEY gained national prominence as a leader of

GI's United Against the War at Fort Jackson, S.C. In 1972
he was the SWP candidate for U. S. vice-president. Presently he
is national chairman of the Young Socialist Alliance.
TONY THOMAS is a staff writer for The Militant and an

associate editor of the International Socialist Review. As a
journalist he covered the April 1970 rebellion in Trinidad and
the May 1972 strike wave in Quebec. He has traveled exten
sively throughout the U. S. and Europe lecturing on Black
liberation.
MAXINE WILLIAMS, 1974 SWP candidate for Congress in

Brooklyn, N.Y., is a contributor to feminist journals and to
the anthology Feminism and Socialism. She helped organize
the August 26, 1970, women's day demonstration in New York
City and was a founding member of the Women's National
Abortion Action Coalition.
6
INTRODUCTION
How can Afro-Americans win liberation? In recent years fol

lowing the explosion of Black consciousness and the struggles
that took place in the 1960s, this has become of crucial impor
tance to the political life of the Black community and the
country as a whole.
The articles collected in this book attempt to provide some
answers to this question. Two of the contributions, "The Case
for an Independent Black Political Party" and "A Transitional
Program for Black Liberation," are programmatic documents
adopted by the Socialist Workers Party in 1967 and 1969
respectively. The other contributions are articles by Afro
American leaders of the Socialist Workers Party who are activ
ists in different spheres of the struggle for Black liberation.
This book attempts to cover a great deal of ground, treating
questions of history, theory, and strategy. Part I, "Black Lib
eration and the Coming American Revolution," consists of a
single article by Derrick Morrison. This article, based on a
speech delivered in August 1970, places the struggle for Black
liberation in a historical context The coming American socialist
revolution, Morrison points out, will actually be the third
American revolution. The first revolution was the War of In
dependence against British crown rule ( 17.76-81), the second
the Civil War (1861-65). Both previous revolutions contributed
to the advancement of American society in general, but neither
completed the process of Black liberation. Blacks fought and
died in the first American revolution but the system of slavery
emerged intact The new constitution recognized a Black
person as three-flfths of a human being for the purposes of
congressional representation but slaves were denied their free
dom and all political rights.
The victory of Northern capitalism in the Civil War destroyed
the slave system but failed once again to bring about real
7
8 Black Liberation and Socialism
Black liberation. The landed estates remained intact, Black

slaves were transformed into destitute sharecroppers rather
than independent landholders.
The industrialization and economic expansion that followed
the Civil War did not bring about a solution to the problem
of Black liberation either. To this very day Blacks .are forced
into the lowest paying jobs (when they can get them), are de
prived of decent housing, education, and health care. "Capitalist
society in the United States," Morrison tells us, "[has) never
been able to digest Black people as citizens."
An understanding of the superexploited economic role that
has been forced on. Afro-Americans ever since they were first
brought to this continent is also the key to understanding
the real nature of racism. Racism began as the ideological
justification for the. enslavement of Black people.. The slave
system itself had an economic foundation- the necessity for
providing a cheap labor force for plantation .agriculture. But
the Southern planters were not about to justify kidnapping
Black people from the west coast of Africa, selling them like
cattle at the market, and forcing them to live and work under
inhuman conditions on the grounds that it was unjust but
profitable. Instead they propagated the myth that Blacks were
savages with no culture of their own who had been "civilized"
by being enslaved, or else they represented Blacks as simple
child-like creatures who wouldn't know how to fend for them
selves were it not for the tender concern of "Mr. Charlie."
With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Northern industrial
capital adapted the ideology of racism to uses of its own. For
one thing, this ideology provid a ready explanation of cap
italism's inability to "digest" Black people. It claimed that they
were "indigestible." They lived in slums and couldn't find decent
jobs because of their own innate inferiority and not because
of any fault of the system. This same explanation was employed
to cover the highly profitable use of Blacks as a reserve (and
highly underpaid) labor force. This was really nothing more
than an extension of the vicious argument put forward by the
slave holders- that Black people were not good enough to
be anything but slaves. But modern capitalism quickly found
a new use for racist ideology- it found it could use racism
to divide and conquer an emerging powerful opponent: the
American working class.
Although capitalism has managed to amass huge amounts
of wealth for a tiny handful of investors (2.4 percent of Amer-
Introduction 9
ican families own 65 percent of inve

. stment assets and 6. 7
percent possess 57 percent of total wealth in the U.S.) it has
not and cannot succeed in providing basic necessities for the
working people who produce the wealth. Jobs, housing, edu
cation, and now even food and fuel are scarce resources for
huge sections of the population. When necessities are scarce,
people will fight over them. Racism is used to convince white
working people that any advance in the standard of living
of Black people will be at the expense of their own marginal
standard of living. By setting white against Black in compe
tition for jobs, housing, education, etc., capitalism diverts
attention from its own inability to provide for the working
population despite this country's enormous resources and pro
ductive capabilities.
The contributors to this collection argue persuasively that
the fight against the special racist oppression of Black people
must be organized independently of the two capitalist parties
the Democrats and Republicans. The very social forces . t hat
benefit from Black oppression and have proven themselves
incapable of "integrating" Blacks into American society can
hardly be expected to bring about Black liberation.
Part II, "Problems of Strategy" in the Black liberation move
ment, takes up this thesis in the concrete, "The Case for an
Independent Black Political Party" exposes the role of the Dem
ocratic and Republican parties and points out the need for
an independent political base for the Black liberation struggle.
"A Transitional Program for Black Liberation" provides a
model program based on the needs of the Black community
and suggests concrete means of struggle for the Black liberation
movement. It takes into account the fact that Blacks have been
largely excluded from the benefits of the first two American
revolutions and that Black people's attempts to achieve the
fruits of those revolutions will form an integral part of the
struggle of all working people to wrest control over their lives
from the hands of the super rich and to reorder priorities
so that the resources of society can be.used to fulfill human
needs rather than the profit needs of a tiny minority.
This coincidence of interests between Blacks and other op
pressed nationalities on the one hand, and working people
in general on the other gives the coming third American rev
olution its special character. It will be a combined revolution,
combined in the sense that it will solve the problems created
by a capitalist social order that has long outlived its usefulness
along with the special problems of the oppressed nationalities

that were left unsolved by the two previous revolutions.
This coincidence of interests also places Blacks along with
other oppressed nationalities in the unique position of being
able to spearhead the development of this combined revolution.
On the political plane, for instance, the effect of Afro-Americans
breaking away from the Democratic Party would be to provide
an impetus for the labor movement to follow a similar course
of action. In addition the struggles of Black people for jobs,
housing, education, etc., can bring all working people into
motion around common needs and common goals. Such de
velopments do not cut across the Black liberation struggle
or "divide the working class" as various critics have claimed,
rather they create the conditions for cutting across the divide
and-conquer tactics used to keep all the oppressed in line.
The ramifications of combined revolution for the Black lib
eration struggle are two: first, that there can be no separate
Black revolution (or evolution) that will achieve Black libera
tion within the framework of capitalist society; second, because
the independent dynamic of Black liberation tends to carry
it beyond the limitations of capitalism, the Black liberation
struggle will play an important role in the socialist revolution.
Part Ill, "Marxism and Black Nationalism," is composed
of five articles of my own taking up the debate about the rele
vance and application of Marxism to the problems of Black
liberation. The articles take up a broad spectrum of arguments
ranging from those of critics like Harold Cruse who believe
that Black liberation can be achieved within the framework
of capitalism to certain Pan-Africanists who claim that Black
liberation in the United States has to wait for a successful
socialist revolution in Africa. I have also devoted considerable
space to clarifying Lenin's views on nationalism and differ
entiating between Lenin's real positions and the distortion of
them developed by the Stalinist bureaucracy after Lenin's death.
At first sight some of this debate may seem esoteric, but it is
of crucial importance. for establishing the theoretical grounds

for analyzing the position of the Afro-American nationality
in the U.S. and for proposing a concrete strategy that can
meet the needs of the Black liberation movement
As indicated in the introductory notes to each selection, all
of the material included here appeared first elsewhere. Some
of the authors have taken the opportunity to revise certain
sections of their articles or add new material. Other editorial
Introduction 11
changes have been minor. In our opinion all the material

presented here has stood the test of time even under the
rapidly changing conditions of the developing Black liberation
movement.
The material included here represents a particular point of
view- that of revolutionary socialism in the tradition of Marx,
Lenin, and Trotsky. It was not our purpose to argue both
or all sides of every question. The analysis in these articles
is not intended only for the written page, but as a guide for
action in the living struggle. Hopefully it can aid in the con
struction of a revolutionary leadership that can utilize the
tools of Marxism to provide a way forward for Black liberation
and other struggles against oppression and exploitation.
November 30, 1973 TONY THOMAS

I. BLACK LIBERATION AND THE COMING
AMERICAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
The Combined Character

of the Coming American Revolution
by Derrick Morrison
"The Combined Character of the Coming American Revolution,"

based on a speech delivered in August 1970 at a socialist
conference, was first published in the November 1970 issue of
the monthly International Socialist Review. The article outlines
the effec ts of two previous American revolutions (the War of
Independence and the Civil War) on Afro-Americans and sets
the historical context for the Black liberation struggle today.
It has been slightly revised for this collection.
Two events of supreme significance occurred in May 1954.

Even though they occurred 10,000 miles apart, they were very
much connected with one another. The two events represented
the surfacing of three-fourths of humanity, a surfacing from
the depths to which they had been relegated by European and
North American imperialism. The first event occurred on
May 7, 1954. On that day the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh,
better known as the Vietminh, defeated the French army at
Dien Bien Phu. The victory at Dien Bien Phu. represented the
first time an imperialist army was single-handedly defeated
by a colonized people. To be sure, there was the Korean War,
which lasted from 1950 to 1953. But the decisive factor in
Korea was the People's Republic of China. Had it not been
for the intervention of the Chinese workers' state, the forces
of imperialism, organized through the United Nations, would
have overrun all of Korea.
At the same time, the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu
registered the power of the national question on an interna
tional scale. The Vietnamese demonstrated, as had the Rus
sians, Chinese, and North Koreans, that the demand of op
pressed peoples for self-determination can only be fulfilled by
a socialist revolution and the construction of a workers' state.
The other event of importance in May 1954 took place ten
days after the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu. On May 17
the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that racial segre
gation in the public schools was illegal. This decision was
13
a complete reversal of a decision handed down by the Supreme

Court more than fifty years earlier. In 1896 the Supreme Court
had declared that racial segregation in the public schools was
lawful. At that time European and North American imperial
ism were in the process of subduing and subjugating the peoples
of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. And since imperialism
was militarily victorious everywhere, there was no respect,
not even a semblance of respect, for the rights of Black, Brown,
Red, or Yellow people.
This general attitude of disrespect, this general North Ameri
can and European assumption that Third World people are
not human beings but beasts of burden, plagued not only
Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but also the descendants
of Africans,. Asians, and Latin Americans here in the United
States. If the Black man and woman in Africa had no rights
that white people were bound to respect, then it was no dif
ferent with the Black man and woman in the United States.
So in 1896 the Supreme Court denied the right of Black people
to a decent education by allowing segregation in the public
schools. This decision was part of a systematic campaign to
reduce the Black man and woman to the position of
noncitizenship.
But the whole system of racial suppression and oppression,
better known as colonialism, began to crumble after a. series
of events in the twentieth century. The two world wars and the
Russian, Chinese, and Eastern European revolutions had a
crippling and damaging eff ect on the. imperialist system. As
the imperialist system declined, the fortunes of the colonized
began to rise. They began to take their destinies into their
own hands, challenging the right of imperialism to rule over
them. This uprising of the colonized forced the imperialists
to adopt new . tactics, to recognize the right of formal inde
pendence in order to stop the drive toward real independence.
The impact of these new tactics inside the United States led
to the removal of laws sanctioning the most overt forms of
racial segregation. The intent of the United States govern
ment was to give the impression of freedom to the Black man
and woman, but not the substance of freedom. And it is in
this light, i n the light of global public relations, that we can
understand why the Supreme Court reversed itself and came
out for an end to segregation in the public schools on
May 17, 1954.
Even though this decision was intended to give only the
Combined Character of the American Revolution 15
impression of equal rights for the Black man and woman,

Black people took it to mean that the government was finally
going to do something about their segregated condition. Black
people took it to mean that the government was finally going
to grant them some social, economic, and political mobility.
This was the state of mind that the Supreme Court decision
generated among Black people. This was the state of mind
which gave birth to the civil-rights movement.
The civil-rights movement, beginning with the Montgomery,
Alabama, bus boycott in 1955 and the sit-ins in 1960, was
the first stage in the natrb nal awakening of Afro-America after
the Second World War. It was the first thrust forward in what
has become known today as Afro-America's struggle for self
determination.
The civil-rights movement was unique in that it broke from
the NAACP strategy of total reliance upon the court system
to rectify the condition of the Black man and woman. Rather
than throw all of their apples into a court-litigation bag, the
new civil-rights organizations combined court fights with mass
actions in the streets.
This tendency toward mass action, toward the independent
mobilization of Black people in the streets, was the most im
portant aspect of the civil-rights movement. The movement
was not really about what is popularly termed "integration."
That is to say, Black people didn't mount these mass actions
in order to sit next to a white person in a restaurant, or to
sit on a white toilet stool, or to drink from a white drinking
fountain, or to live next to white people in a white neighbor
hood. Getting next to white folks was not the majOl' thrust
of the movement, even though many civil-rights spokesmen
may have interpreted the struggle in that way.
What the masses wanted was desegregation, not integration.
The masses wanted the right to sit anywhere in a restaurant
they chose. They wanted the right to go to any school, to sit
anywhere on the bus they chose. They wanted the right to
sit on any toilet stool or drink from any water fountain they
chose. And they wanted the right to live anywhere they chose.
This was the essence of the movement. Black people wanted
the same rights that are guaranteed to every citizen of this
nation-state. And they knew what these rights were since they
were very clearly codified in the Constitution and in the Bill
of Rights. These are the documents that the government claims.
as the basis for all its laws and regulations. All that Black
people were demanding was that these documents be .enforced

equally.
But the important thing was that the movement was. not just
putting forth demands apd then waiting for action upon them
by the political, economic, and social institutions of the bour
geoisie. What the acti yists in SCLC and SNCC did was to
combine this reliance upon bourgeois institutions with direct
'
action by the masses.
This independent mobilization of the Black masses, through
sit-ins, boycotts, and demonstrations, had a logic of its own,
a logic which was not comprehendtd by most of the partici
pants or their leaders. The effect of the mobilizations was to
give the Black masses a sense of organization and a glimpse
of their potential strength. Just the sight of several thousand
people .demonstrating in a small southern town began to break
down the isolation and atomization in the Black community.'
People who had been trying to solve social problems in an
individual way began to sense the power of the mass. Instead
of laying the blame for social pl'oblems upon themselves, or
their brother or their sister, they began to lay the blame where
it belongs- on the society itself. Black people everywhere, as
they saw their situation getting national and international at
tention, began to become cautiously optimistic. This optimism
was magnified even more as the overt forms of segregation
began to fall.
The mobilizations gave Black people a sense of confidence
and reliance upon themselves. Slowly but surely, illusions be
gan to crumble about the promises and civil-rights rhetoric
of the government and its politicians. The continued mobili
zations taught Black people that the government's practice
did not measure up to its righteous rhetoric.
While the FBI stood around "taking notes," white-racist vio
lence continued unabated.
As Black people saw through the superficial changes, they
saw that the lines of difference between the federal govern
ment and state governments became murky and blurred. As
the struggle deepened and spread northward, militants found
out that there was very little difference between a northern
Democrat and a southern Dixiecrat.
Thus the consciousness generated by these independent mobi
lizations over civil-rights issues began to affect the whole out
look of Black people toward society. For many Black people,
these mobilizations demonstrated that racial oppression is not
a question of morality, or brotherhood, 'or a question of good

men fighting evil men. These mobilizations demonstrated that
racial opp_ression is rooted in the very fabric of this society,
that it is institutionalized, systematized, and calculated into
the American way of life.
As a result of these independent mobilizations conducted
over civil rights, Black people began to move to a higher
level of independence in thought and in action . . This new level
of independence from white bourgeois institutions was reflected
in the acquisition- of nationalist, or Black, consciousness. From
the vantage point of Blatk consciousness, Black people began
to realize the need for independence in all areas of life from
this decadent white-capitalist society. This new nationalist con
sciousness grew as a result of two developments: the ghetto
rebellions and the transformation of the major civil-rights or
ganizations, such as SNCC and CORE, into nationalist organi
zations.
The combativity of the civil-rights movement had begun to
bring to the surface all of the resentments and grievances that
Black people had against capitalist society. As illusion after
illusion about liberals and liberalism was stripped from the
minds of the masses through struggle, Black people became
more assertive, more aggressive. When the last shred of faith
in gradualism was blown to the wind, all of the anger and
pent-up resentment burst through the surface with a volcanic
fury.
Nobody, with the exception of Malcolm X, expected and
predicted the ghetto explosions. Everything was peace and prog
ress until the Black uprisings in Watts, Newark, and Detroit.
Here is how Malcolm X predicted these explosions at a Mili
tant Labor Forum in January 1965:
But by the end of 1964, we had to agree that instead of

the Year of Promise, instead of those promises materializing,
they substituted devices te create the illusion of progress;
1964 was the Year of illusion and Delusion. We received
nothing but a promise. . . . In 1963, one of their devices
to let off the steam of frustration was the march on Wash
ington. They used that to make us think we were maki-ng
progress. Imagine, marching to Washington and getting
nothing for it whatsoever....
In 1963, it was the march on Washington. In 1964, what
was it? The civil-rights bill. They murdered a Negro in Geor-
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).]
The ghetto rebellions caught the civil-rights organizations

and leaders totally unaware. They did not understand the chain
reaction that they had set in motion. But as they began to see
that no perceptible change had occurred iii the lives of the
masses, the new stage of independence reached by the ghetto
rebellions became very attractive. SNCC and CORE made
the transition from civil-rights consciousness to nationalist
consciousness. This transition was expressed in the cry for
"Black Power." These two organizations not only made the
transition to nationalist consciousness but also became the
leaders and articulators of this nascent nationalist movement.
This independent mobilization of Black people around na
tionalist consciousness escalated with U.S. aggression against
Vietnam. The resistance of the Vietnamese to U.S. imperial
ism has played and will continue to play' a big role in the de
velopment of nationalist consciousness among Black people.
For thousands of Black Gls, Vietnam has transformed their
whole outlook toward this society.
As Black nationalism spreads and deepens its grip on the
psyches of Black people, the vanguard role of Black people
in changing this society becomes very clear. The best exam
ple is provided by the Black student movement. The students
are the most organized and politicized sector of the Black
community. The independent organization of Black college

and high school students has proceeded further than that of
any other sector of the Black community. By examining the
Black student movement, we can get an example in micro
cosm of the impact that the independent organization of the
entire Black community will have on the whole of capitalist
society.
On the campus, the struggle for Black studies or for the
Black university has radically transformed the relationship
of the entire student body to the university administration.
The struggle for the Black university prepared the ground and
set the precedent for the May 1970 upsurge over the antiwar
university.
The independent organization of Black . students not only
provided leadership for Black students but also le<;I masses o f.
white students into combat against university administrations.
Upheavals such as these. occurred at San Fral\ciSco State,.
the University of California at Berkeley, Brandeis, the. Uni
versity of Houston, the University of Washington in Seattle,
City College of New York and many more.
As a result of this independent organization of Black stu
dents, initial demands for merely establishing the right of
all-Black student organizations to exist grew into demands
that whole departments and schools be devoted to the study
of the Black man .and w.oman and that these departmen.ts
and schools be under the control of the Black student com
munity.
This is the logic and dynamic of nationalist consciousness
in the .campus setting.. The nationalist consciousness of' Black
students has also made them very much aware of the difference
in interests of the students and the authoritarian university
administration. That is to say, the independent organization
of Black students created not only an awarep.ess of themstilves
as Blacks but also an awareness of themselves as students.
The action of Black students brought many other students
to this same awareness. Their struggles educated many about
how the white capitalist class controls and uses the university
as just another cog in the imperialist machine.
This independent mobilization of Black students is only a
shadow of what the independent mobilization of the total Black
community would be like. If one can sense that, then one can
sense the power of a mass independent Black political party
basing itself on a set of transitional demands.
We now see independent organization spreading to various

sectors of the Black community. And as each sector achieves
some degree of independent organization, there follows a strug
gle around demands that are transitional in nature. But in
the course of each struggle, Blacks reflect an awareness of be
ing oppressed not only because they are Black but also be
cause they are welfare-mothers, or tenants, or women, or work
ers, or Gls.
In the army, for example, the independent organization of
Black Gls leads not only to struggle against white-racist op
pression but also to struggle against oppression as Gls. In
the case of Gls United at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Black
and Brown Gls got together first to fight racist persecution.
After this independent mobilization of their strength, they be
came the most militant fighters in the struggle against the
war and for GI rights. This is the logic and dynamic of the
struggle. The Black GI organization that recently came to
gether in Heidelberg, Germany, called the Unsatisfied Black
Soldiers, fights not only against racism and brutality but also
against bad conditions, and calls for the immediate withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Vietnam. As the independent ()rganiza
tion of Black GIs proceeds, it will provide leadership for both
white and Black Gls. Such organizations will make it harder
for white Gis to be both racist and antiwar.
Nationalist consciousness has begun to stimulate Black work
ers, both as Blacks and as workers. The plantation conditions
faced by Black workers at the point of production are no longer
being tolerated. Symptomatic of this situation is the fact that
in some cases Black auto and steel workers are resorting to
armed self-defense inside the factories. Just recently at a Chrys
ler auto plant in Detroit, a Black auto worker with two years'
seniority came to work and found that his job had been given
to a man with less seniority and less experience. When he
protested this slap at his dignity and worth as a human being,
he was suspended by his foreman. At being suspended by his
Black foreman, the worker experienced a virtual emotional
explosion. His job was his life. When he could get no relief
from his white union shop steward, the Black worker went
home, got his M-1 rifle, smuggled it into the plant and went
looking for his foreman. After the smoke cleared that day,
two plant foremen, orie Black and one white, and a white
skilled tradesman had been blown away. This example gives
only a glimpse of the pent-up anger and fury generated in
these modern-day plantations called automobile plants.

Along with these isolated acts, there is also occurring the
growth of Black caucuses within the trade-union movement
In Detroit, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers con
tinues to operate a number of plant caucuses and, in some
cases, intervenes in local union elections with candidates of
its own.
The impact of nationalist consciousness on Black workers
and the unions has come through in recent strike struggles.
In the postal-workers' strike, the militancy and drive of the
strike was provided by the Black workers. And there is no
doubt that the militancy of the nationalist-minded Black work
ers pushed the white workers to new levels of enthusiasm about
the strike.
In another instance, a Teamsters local of United Parcel Ser
vice workers in New York went on strike beca\.!.Se Black work
ers were not allowed to wear the r, black, and green button
symbolizing the flag of Black liberation. Management had
allowed the workers to wear buttons symbolizing the American
flag. But as soon as Black workers, who constitute 35 per
cent of the union; started showing up for work with nation
alist buttons, management outlawed all buttons.
This denial of the right to wear the button of their choice
is what precipitated the strike. Curiously enough, the demand
of the Teamsters local was that the workers be allowed to
wear any button they chose. This strike-which was a political
strike, not an economic strike-even caused a one-day soli
darity strike by United Parcel Service workers in Secaucus,
New Jersey. And while these UPS workers in New York were
on strike, they weren't laying low. Several hundred demon
strated in front of city hall and in front of the courthouse
to protest imes levied on the union for the strike. In the dem
onstration, both the American flag and the Black liberation
flag were carried.
Here we see nationalist consciousness shaking up the unions,
making them instruments of struggle. These actions under
score Trotsky's statement that in the epoch of imperialism,
the national struggle becomes one of the most important forms
of the class struggle.
The import of this statement is strikingly confirmed by the
recent events in Jackson, Mississippi. This was the first strike
of municipal workers in the history of Jackson. This particular
local of the American Federation of State, County and Munic-
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
by the expansion of English capitalism. In fact, all of the

nations in the Western Hemisphere were produced by the his
torical unevenness between Europe and the Americas. Within
the nation-states carved out of the Americas, there was uneven
ness between the European settlers, the Native Americans, and
the African slaves. The product of this unevenness was the
superexploitation and oppression of the Native Americans and
the African slaves. .
That superexploitation and oppre.ssion of the African slaves
produced a nation within a nation. Within the United States,
the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which was completed for
white people, was never completed for Black people. Capitalist
society in the United States had never been able to digest Black
people as citizens.
The first phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution be
gan when the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776.
Although Blacks fought and died in the firstAmerican Revo
lution, they did not enjoy the fruits of victory. In the Consti
tution, a Black person was calculated to be three-fifths of a
human being. This was the basis of southern representation
in the Congress. Yet the Blacks were slaves and not citizens
Despite the fact that the slaves figured in on the congressional
representation, a slave could not cast three-fifths of a vote.
It was upon the backs of the slaves that the southern slave
holders consolidated their control of the nation.
The conflict between the need to expand bourgeois prop
erty relations and the plantation system. led to the second Amer
ican revolution in 1861, which ended with the destruction of
slavery. However, the former slaves- even though 200,000
fought in the Civil War and provided the margin of victory
for the North- did not get possession of the land. The cam
paign for "forty acres and a mule," which was an expression
of this urge for land, never got off the ground.
Because it was the Republican administration that signed
the Emancipation Proclamation, the newly freed slaves con
sidered this instrument of capitalist rule to be their party. This
was a natural reaction. However, the Blacks did not develop
any independent political organization when the Republicans
pulled back from the land question. If the Republicans had
broken up the landed estates and redistributed the land, this
would have caused not only a race revolution but a. class
revolution as well. Land could not have been given to the
Blacks without a similar distribution to the poor whites. And

the Republicans were not prepared to accept the consequences
of such a step. Therefore, since the relationship of forces was
not in their favor, the four-and-a-half million Blacks became
sharecroppers and landed serfs rather than landholders.
The opposite of this situation had occurred sixty years be
fore in Haiti, when a half-million former slaves, under the
leadership of the Black general Dessalines, declared their in
dependence from France. This declaration of Haitian inde
pendence on December 31, 1803, culminated fourteen years
of war and revolution. It was du.ring this fourteen-year period
that the Blacks were able to mold and build an army inde
pendent of the French under the dynamic leadership of Tous
saint L'Ouverture.
The four-year Civil War in the United States, h-oever, was
too short a period for a siinilar development in the South.
It was not long enough to allow the development of Black
guerrilla groups or a Biack army of emancipation in the South.
Had there been serious warfare between the slaveholders and
the poor whites during the Civil War, the North American
Blacks might have been able to seize the land and develop
a significant amount of independent organization. Such an
event would have changed the whole course. of North Amer
ican and world history. This more-than-partial completion
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in relation to Black
people would have weakened the whole schema of racial op
pression in this country. Blacks would have been a more in
tegral part of the United States. The class struggle would have
developed along much sharper and much clearer lines, which
would have slowed the growth of North American imperialism.
But this was not the case. The North American bourgeoisie
was too strong. Blacks were forced to depend upon the Re
publican Party. And when this instrument of the new industrial
elite had consolidated northern hegemony, Black people were
left in the lurch, left to fend for themselves against the southern
oligarchy. Thus Reconstruction was ended, and the task of
completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution in relation to
the Black man and woman carried over into the twentieth century.
Because the democratic revolution was left to the twentieth
century, to the epoch of imperialism- as the theory of perma
nent revolution tells us-it becomes a task that only the so
cialist revolution can complete. The noncompletion of democ
racy for the Black man and woman allows no other course.
Combin Character of the American Revolution 25
And because there is no other course, the struggle for self

determination is part and parcel of the struggle for socialist
revolution in the United States.
So we see that the unevenness bred by North American cap
italism, the unevenness between the descendants of Africa and
the descendants of Europe, will give the coming revolution a
combined character. This revolution will combine national
tasks with socialist tasks, and socialist tasks with national
tas,ks. Unlike some pseudo-Marxists and shallow-minded left
ists, we see no contradicti.on between Black nationalist con
sciousness and class consciousness. In fact, the deeper the pene
tration of nationalism into the consciousness of Black peo
ple, the better will be the development of the class struggle.
Because we stand upon the theory of permanent revolution,
and see this as the age of permanent revolution, we know
that bourgeois society can neither accommodate the national
question nor grant self-determination.
We therefore welcome and look forward to te independent
mobilization and orga.nization of Black people. The greater
the independent organization of Black people, tfie easier it will
be for Black people to acquire socialist consciousness.
Wasn't this the case in Cuba? Because the July 26 Move
ment, which was a nationalist movement, was organized totally
independent of U:S. imperialism, it was able to accept socialist
revolution as the only way to solve its national tasks. Even
though the July 26 Movement started out with a petty-bourgeois
and confused ideology, an ideology predicated on reforming
Cuban society, the independent organization of the movement
in the intransigent pursuit of its nationalist . goals was the de-

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
Maoist-Stalinist rap and pick-up-the-gun rhetoric was aimed

more at meeting the expectations of their ultraleft white sup
porters than the needs of the Black community for political
leadership.
The best example of independence so far remains Brother
Malcolm X. Malcolm was trying to build an independent or
ganization of, by, and for Black people. And in doing so,
Malcolm moved very much in the direction of a transitional
program for Black liberation. This is what Malcolm was trying
to codify in the "Statement of Basic Aims and Objectives of
the Organization of Afro-American Unity." I suggest the book
By Any Means Necessary for further reading on this subject.
What we advocate in terms of advancing the struggle for
self-determination is the independent organization of the op
pressed nation. From the vantage point of independent Black
organizations, Black people will be better able to judge who
is for them and who is against them. As Black people, through
struggle, gain an understanding that self-determination can
only be won through the construction of a workers' state, they
will come to join the ranks of the multinational revolutionary
socialist party.
The task of winning Black people to the revolutionary party
involves the decisive question of whether there will be a social
ist revolution in the United States. If we understand that the
nature of that revoluti
. on will be a combined one, involving
both the class and national questions, then it becomes impos
sible to conceive of any revolution in the United States without
a great deal of participation and leadership coming from Black
people and the other oppressed Third World national minorities.
We can state simply that either the coming socialist revolution
will be a combined one, or there won't be revolution at all.
To state it another way, revolution is not just an objective
event, but a subjective one as well. Part of making a revolu
tion is discovering objective historical laws, such as the fueory
-
of the permannt r ij Ji; whichti -j;;i"nt to
the revolution.
But unless those laws are given subjective expression in the
program of a vanguard party, the revolution remains on
paper.
A very good case in point is the first socialist revolution
in history, the Russian Revolution. This revolution had a
combined character because of the oppression of national mi
norities by the czarist state. Support for the right to self-deter
mination was rooted in the theory and practice of the Bolshevik
Party. This clearly distinguished them from the Mensheviks

and the Provisional Government between February and Oc
tober of 1917. And, more important, their position on the
ntional question enabled the Bolsheviks to triumph in the
civil war that took place after the revolution.
Just as revolutionary socialists comprehend that the dialec
tical unity between the national and class questions is a pre
condition for making revolution, so the North American capi
talist class understands the necessity of separating these two
questions if it is to continue to rule. The ruling class, the
reformists and the labor bureaucrats all try to separate and
compartmentalize racial oppression and class eX:ploitatlon. Their
contention is that the national question can be solved within
the confines of capitalist society. They hold the same view
of class conflict. In order to keep peo
. ple busy trying to find
solutions to class conflict and race conflict short of revolu
tion, the two questions must never be linked together. This
is what the AFSCME bureaucrat was opposed to. He was
unalterably opposed to any attempt by the Jackson workers
to use the union as a vehicle in the struggle against racial
oppression. The consequences would have been too explosive.
And the same goes for the ruling class, the class that is re
sponsible for the training of the labor bureaucrats. The ruling
class always maintains that there is some middle ground,
that there is room "to reason" on the national question.
But just how far they are willing to go to reason was il
lustrated in Detroit. Right after the uprising there in 1967,
the automobile bourgeoisie made all types of promises o f
change. T o bring about these changes, they created th e New
Detroit Committee. Among those on the New Detroit Com
mittee sat Henry Ford II and James Roche, the chairman of
General Motors. This. committee was supposed to rebuild the
burnt-out areas in Detroit Ford and Roche held out the prom
ise of jobs for the hard-core Black unemployed. The New
Detroit Committee brought together the bigwigs of business,
labor and the government to solve the problems of the Black
community. Detroit was in a good position to tackle these prob
lems because it is the center of the automobile industry.
But after three years- with the air cleared of the hot and
heavy rhetoric of the NDC- the problems remain the same.
The burnt-out areas are just empty lots. No new housing has
been constructed. The promise of jobs by the automobile in
dustry was just a cruel joke. You need ninety days of work
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
groups only aids the ruling class in smashing that potential

linkup with the masses. This "pick-up-the-gun" rhetoric provides
handles for the ruling class in attacking these groups.
As long as the masses of Black people see themselves as the
audience and the revolutionary nationalists as the actors and
actresses, there will be no linkup. Only through a united front
based on transitional demands does everybody come onto the
stage. And when everybody comes onto the stage, repression
and anything else can be defeated.
An example of this is the recent defense of militants in the
Republic of New Africa. These militants were charged with the
murder of a cop. The blowing away of this cop occurred in
a police attack on a convention of the Republic of New Africa
last year. Because of a united-front defense built by the League
of Revolutionary Black Workers, in combination with impres
sive legal tactics, all three defendants were acquitted. This
shows that with the activation of the Black community repres
sion can be rolled back and successful struggles mounted.
The theme running through all of the actions in the Black
community is the question of control. It is around this demand
for Black control that various sectors of the Black community
are organizing themselves independently of the white capitalist
power structure. And it is in the process of struggle that these
various sectors come to grips with and hammer out a set of
transitional demands.
The transitional program itself arises from and is based upon
struggle. The Black university concept came out of the struggle
for Black control of Black education; various demands are
arising from the struggle of Black caucuses in the trade-union
movement. But what is important is that, out of the struggle
for Black control of the. Black community, there will arise
popular organs of struggle through which the masses can
express themselves. And in the course of building tho
. se popular
organs around the different aspects of Black oppression, the
groundwork will be laid for the building of a Black political
party.
Now the struggle for Black control of the Black community
is in the process of being nationalized. That is to say, the
demand for Black control is applicable to wherever Black
people are at. What brings about this centralization of the
demand is the increasing urbanization of Black people
in the North, South, East, and West. This urban setting pro
vides the backdrop for the demand.
In the South, the struggle is becoming increasingly explosive

over the demand for Black control of Black education. What
is happening is that desegregation of schools is being used by
the white power structure to displace Black teachers and Black
administrators. Before desegregation, schools in the Black com
munity had teaching staffs and administrative staffs that were
all-Black in composition. And, of course, in the white commu
nity the schools had teaching staffs and administrative staffs
that were totally white. But because the power over this whole
school system rested in an all-white board of education, this
was segregation, not separation. The Blacks were powerless.
And because of this state of powerlessness, desegregation is now
wiping out jobs for Black teachers and administrators.
This is most clearly the case in North Carolina and Georgia.
In these two states, struggle has erupted over the racist appli
cation of the desegregation process. This struggle has not only
hit the racist hiring. procedures but also protested the blatantly
racist. abuse of Black students in predominantly white or newly
desegregated schools. In these desegregated schools, all types
of discriminations are dropped on Black students. They are
denied entrance into extracurricular activity, such as clubs
and sports. The teachers tolerate no questioning of the racist
subject matter that is fed in the classroom. This discrimination
collides very sharply with the nationalist consciousness of Black
students. Out of this collision comes struggle, as in North Caro
lina and Albany, Georgia, recently.
As this struggle for control is organized over the issue of
education, it will become the starting point for other struggles
around Black control. In West Point, Mississippi, through a
combination of uprisings and organization, Black residents
now control all of the economic activity in their community.
From this vantage point of economic control, the Blacks, who
make up 42 percent of West Point's population, are now seek
ing to take political control by electing a Black man to the office
of mayor. This candidate is a thirty-year-old former SNCC
worker who came to West Point in 1964.
The struggle for control is also broadening very rapidly

in the North and in the West Just recently, militant Puerto
Ricans occupied the administrative offices of Lincoln Hospital.
Lincoln Hospital is one of the butcher shops in a heavily
Puerto Rican community in the Bronx in New York City.
The militants were demanding that Puerto Rican patients be
treated as human beings and that the hospital deal with the
ills of the community, such as lead poisoning and drug ad

diction. This was followed by some Harlem militants seizing
part of Harlem Hospital, demanding that the hospital deal
with drug addiction.
At the last NAACP convention, that organization went on
record for mass demonstrations at construction sites in order
to get Black people hired into the building trades. The power
of such mobilizations was revealed last year in Pittsburgh
and Chicago.
The cutting edge of the struggle for Black control still re
mains in the schools. The continued breakdown and disin
tegration of the school system poses the question of Black
community control. Last spi:ing in New York City, the mere
attempt by Black parents to set up a grievance table in a
high school led to a struggle that lasted several months.
It is becoming all too clear to the Black community that
an end must come to white control of Black education. And
for this reason, the mass mobilizations over control of the
schools will continue. The power of such mobilizations in re
spect to the total mobilization of the community is made quite
clear by the Chicano struggle.
The victory of La Raza Unida Party in Crystal City, Texas,
grew out of a mobilization of the Chicano community over
Chicano control of the schools. It was through this mobili
zation over the schools that economic boycotts were conducted,
voter registration drives conducted, and the road paved to
enable the Chicano community to gain control of the board
of education in Crystal City. La Raza Unida Party i"s an
example of the logic of the struggle for self-determination.
The party arose out of popular organs of struggle built
in the struggle for community control. In Texas, the popular
youth organ that led the way in the formation of La Raza
Unida Party was MAYO, the Mexican American Youth Or
ganation. In Colorado, the popular organ of struggle around
which La Raza Unida Party was formed was the Crusade
for Justice.
MAYO and the Crusade for Justice are organizations of
mass action. The logic of their struggle for independence in
one sphere led to struggle for independence in all spheres.

And if a La Raza Unida Party is formed in California; it
is obvious that the organs of mass action will play a most
decisive role in its constitution. The example of La Raza Unida
demonstrates the best way to coordinate and unify the multi
farious struggle for self-determination.
To conclude, I want to quote from a statement Trotsky

made in 133 and to broaden that statement in the light of
recent events. Where Trotsky said "Negro," we can insert
"Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Black":
I believe that by the unheard-of political and theoretical

backwardness and the unheard-of economic advance the
awakening of the working class will proceed quite rapidly.
The old ideological covering will burst, all questions will
emerge at once, and since the country is so economically
mature the adaptation of the political and theoretical to
the economic level will be achieved very rapidly. It is then
possible that the [Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and Blacks]
will become the most advanced section. We have already
a similar example in Russia. The Russians were the Euro
pean [Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and Blacks1 It is very
possible that the [Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and Blacks1
also through the self-determination will proceed to the pro
letarian dictatorship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead
of the great bloc of white workers. They will then furnish
the vanguard. I am absolutely sure that they will in any
case fight better than the white workers. That, however,
can happen only provided the Communist party carries on
an uncompromising merciless struggle not against the sup
posed national prepossessions of the [Puerto Ricans,
Chicanos, and Blacks1 but against the colossal prejudices
of the white workers and gives it no concession whatever.
[Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination
(Pathfinder Press: New York, 1972), p. 18.1
II. PROBLEMS OF STRATEGY
A Transitional Program
for Black Liberation
"A Transitional Program for Black Liberation" first appeared

in the June 20, 1969, issue of the socialist newsweekly The
Militant. It was approved as a resolution at the Twenty-third
National Convention of the Socialist Workers Party in Septem
ber- of that year. The introduction by Andrew Pulley is taken
from the June 1972 pamphlet edition of the document, published
by Pathfinder Press. The text of the resolution has not been
revised, except for minor changes in capitalization and punctua
tion. The introduction has been !!lightly revil!ed for this collec
tion.
Introduction by Andrew Pulley
A Transitional Program for Black Liberation was adopted by

the Twenty-third National Convention of the Socialist Workers
Party in 1969. It outlines a revolutionary-socialist strategy for
Black liberation.
The last twenty years have seen a tremendous upheaval in
the lives of Black people. Massive demonstrations, sit-ins, and
boycotts have taken place- at first demanding civil rights and

desegregation, later focusing on Black control of the Black com
munity. Millions of Afro-Americans have been mobilized. The
ghetto rebellions of the 1960s shook almost every major city
and many minor ones. Thousands of young Blacks have
engaged in struggles on the campuses and in the high schools,
winning.important gains.
Nevertheless, the oppression of Afro-Americans deepens. The
racist war in Indochina continues to take Afro-American and
Asian lives. The wage freeze, mounting inflation and cutbacks
in social, health, and educational. services are further reducing
33
the living standards of Black people. Heroin addiction and

unemployment are spreading among Black youth on an
unprecedented scale. Faced with these conditions, Black people
are demanding control over the communities where they live
and the institutions that affect their lives.
Yet a mass movement has not yet been organized to win
these goals. Black liberation activists are facing many ques
tions as to how such a movement can be constructed.
A Transitional Programfor Black Liberation presents a strat
egy to answer these questions. This strategy centers on the rais
ing of demands that emphasize the need for Black control of the
Black community, and proposes building a mass Black political
party to fight for this goal. It combines a program of demands
for the day-to-day problems of the entire Black community,
as well as demands for the problems facing different sectors of
the community: workers, students, women, those on welfare
and those in prison.
Several new forces have entered the struggle for Afro-Amerif::an
liberation since A Transitional Program for Blqc Liberation
was written, nd several issues have gained added importance
since that time.
The eve
. pts at Attica, the . persecution of George Jackson,
Ruchell Magee and Angela Davis, and the prison revolts that
have taken place in every part of the U.S. have underlined
the importance of the demands of Black prisoners.
While their overall goals are the complete abolition of the
prisons and the conditions within the Black community that
have created the thousands of Afro-American prisoners, the
prison rebels have also raised demands for the immediate
improvement of lheir conditions. These -include: complete free
dom for cultural, political and religious organization and dis
cussion; an eight-hour day with full union wages and conditions
for all work done; adequate health and recreation facilities; the
right to receive any kind of political literature; the right to have
any visitor they please; the right to conjugal visits; the right to
correspond with whomever they ish with no censorship; an
end to all vindictive and discriminatory punishments within
the prisons; and punishment of guards for any cases .of
brutality.
Some Black women have also begun toraise their own specific
demands against the dual oppression they face- both as Blacks
and as women. Key demands raised by Black women include
equal pay for equal work; preferential hiring; repeal of anti-
. Transitional Program for Black Liberation 35
abortion laws and free abortion on demand; ending of forced

sterilization; free twenty-four-hour child-care centers; free birth
control information and devices; and full rights for participation
and leadership within the Black liberation movement itself.
Opposition to demands by Black feminists for abortion and
birth-control rights has been raised by those who claim that
the granting of these demands would lead to a "genocidal"
decrease in Black births, and that more Black children are
needed "for the revolution."
But it is the denial of abortion rights by the racist government
that leads to the "genocidal" murdering and maiming of thou
sands of Black women forced to seek unsafe abortions. It is
the denial of abortion, birth-control, and child-care rights that
prevents thousands of Black women from playing as full a s
possible a role i n the struggle for liberation.
. Black feminists are not attacking the right of Blacks to have

large families if they please-they are simply stating that
Black women, not the racist goverilment, should decide
when Black women will or will not have children. More
over, it is Black feminists, fighting for control over their
own lives, who have opposed the racist and sexist forced sterili
zation programs most strongly. It has been Black feminists who
have demanded that all abortion, child-c.are, and birth-control
facilities and programs in the Black community be placed under
Black control to prevent such outrages. These and other de
mands of Black feminists constitute an important addition to the
program of demands for Bl_ak libera!ion listed in
_ A Tra rts_i
tional Program for Black Liberation.
Another series of demands taken up by the Black struggle
in recent years includes the demands of Afro-American Gis.
Black Gls in Germany, Vietnam, the U.S., and other parts
of the world have protested the racist treatment they have
suffered in the armed services, and the imperialist and racist
military policies of the U. S. government. Two important de;
mands raised by Black Gls are already contained in A Transi
tional Program for Blo.ck Liberation: immediate U.S. with
drawal from Southeast Asia and an end to the draft. Others
include the demand for the right to organize political, cultural,
or religious groups without interference; punishment of white
Gis and officers guilty of racist practices and incidents; all
cases affecting Black Gis to be tried by their peers, other Black
Gis; equal rights to pay and promotion; and for a program
of job training and jobs at union wages for .all Black veterans.
_
The epidemic of heroin addiction has been an important

issue for Black activists in recent years. The cause of this
epidemic is the oppressive conditions in the Black community.
To change these conditions will require the allotment of massive
federal, state and city funds under the control of the Black
community.
Disclosures of police ties with organized crime in fostering
the heroin trade are an added reason why Afro-Americans
must replace the occupying army of corrupt cops with a self
defense force based on and directly controlled by the Black
community itself. That is the only way to root out organized
crime from the Black community. Black activists are also rais
ing the demand that penaltles levied against heroin addicts
who are really victims of this epidemic- should be abolished.
Instead of prison sentences, heroin addicts have the right to de
cent jobs, decent housing, and complete educational oppor
tunities as part of any serious rehabilitation program. There is
a desperate need for the appropriation of massive resources for
a Black-community-controlled program of research into the
problems of heroin addiction in the Black community and for
rehabilitation of the victims of this epidemic.
Another problem facing the Afro-American community is the
assault on living standards represented by Nixon's "New Eco
nomic Policy," which is nothing but heightened inflation, in
creased unemployment, and stepped-up attacks on the rights
of working people to higher wages and better working condi
tions. When combined with steady reductions in welfare and
social services, the impact of these antilabor measures becomes
that much more oppressive.
In its sections on "Domestic Polley" and "Black Workers,"
A Transitional Program for Black Liberation contains a num
ber of demands that are essential in fighting this assault on
living standards: shorten the workweek to spread the jobs, with
out cuttirig pay scales; open the books of all businesses operat
ing in the Black community; establish community price com
mittees to police the prices in the community; establish a guar
anteed annual wage for all; institute a thirty-hour workweek
with no reduction in pay; support Black workers' caucuses
fighting for these demands; and repeal all antilabor laws. In
addition, since the declaration of the "New Economic Policy"
on August 15, 1971, new demands have been raised. One
of the most important is the convening of a democratically
elected national congress of the entire labor movement to map
a united campaign of action against the freeze.
Transitional Program for Black Liberation 37
As the struggle for Afro-American liberation continues, the

demands listed in A Transitional Program for Black Liberation
will be expanded and modified. The mobilization of the Black
community in action against its capitalist oppressors provides
the key to the continued development of our struggle. For this
reason, the mass action strategy outlined in A Transitional
Program for Black Liberation is an indispensable tool for
Black activists.
A Transitional Program For Black Liberation
It is becoming more and more clear to increasing numbers

of Afro-Americans that nothing less than a revolution in this
country will bring about the liberation of Black people. As
a result, a great deal of discussion is going on over how to
make a revolution and how to relate present-day struggles
and demands to the goal of changing society as a whole.
In providing answers to these questions, the experiences of
the rest of the world revolutionary movement can be immensely
helpful. They teach that the most effective road to revolutionary
victory is through developing a rounded program of mass
struggle- and organizing a mass political party around mili
tant action on that program.
How can these lessons best be applied at the present stage
of the struggle for Black liberation in the United States? That
is the all-important question this document proposes to discuss
and answer.
What do the developments of the past fifteen years demon

strate? The struggle for Black liberation has taken giant steps
forward since the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott touched off
the contemporary phase of the movement. It has given Afro
Americans a heightened sense of dignity, worth, and destiny
as a people. It has made the claims of the Black masses into
a paramount and unpostponable issue in American life and
politics. It has acquainted the whole world with the intolerable
conditions of the more than 22 million Afro-Americans and
their determination to end the racist system and to win self
determination.
More recently, it has propelled Black nationalism from deeply
felt resentment against injustice and inequality into a powerful
and ascending force in the Afro-American communities.
In the conclusion to his biography of Sammy Younge, Jr.,
the first Black college student to die in the Black liberation
movement, SNCC leader James Forman summed up the situa
tion in the following terms: "The history of resistance to the
most unique colonization experience known to mankjnd shows
that the '60s must be recorded as an accelerating generation,

a. generation of Black people determined that they will survive,
a generation aware that resistance is the agenda for today
and that action by people is necessary to quicken the steps
of history."
Black Americans have participated in plenty of acti'Ons since
1955- and these struggles have been responsible for whatever
advances have been achieved. But it is painfully evident that
all the struggles over the past decade and a half have not
succeeded in improving the living and working conditions of
the masses of Black people or eliminating the worst abuses
inflicted daily upon them. Only a few favored individuals from
the Black upper crust have benefited fro
. m the tokenism through
which the white possessors of power and wealth have tried
to dampen or buy off the militancy of the masses.
A pile of economic statistics confirms what almost every

Afro-American knows from personal experience. Blacks are
subjected to many forms of discrimination, have much lower
incomes and fewer job opportunities, get lower wages, live in
rotten housing, have bigger rates of unemployment, and re
ceive inferior education. Just one figure from the bottom of

the heap shows what the score is . Forty percent of the na
tion's 9,500,000 citizens on welfare are Black. In some states
monthly welfare payments amount to as little as $40 for a
family of four. In New York City, 80 percent on welfare are
Blacks or Puerto Ricans.
Despite the heightened consciousness of the nature of this
oppression and the awareness of the failure of the policies
pursued in the past, no clear alternative conception has yet
emerged from the Black community on what has to be done
to bring better results. Although repeated uprisings in the Black
communities have indicated time and again the existence of
a deepgoing mass radicalization, little headway has been made
in organizing the ghetto masses into an effective force for strug
gle. Instead, the gunning down of Black leaders, the assassi
nation of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., the repres
sion of the Black Panther Party, and the lack of mass agencies
of struggle have bred a widespread feeling of frustration which
exists in the Black community on all levels.
The fraud of Black capitalism

Meanwhile the chief political representatives of American
capitalism are not silent or inactive. They have no intention
of removing the causes of discrimination, poverty, and misery.
These are built into their system of racist -oppression and
economic exploitation. They have shown by the use of police,

state, and federal troops over the recent years that they are
ready to resort to the most brutal and bloody repression to
put down Black protest. In order to maintain their rule they
strive to keep Blacks divided amongst themselves and separated
from potential allies among the whites. They expect to keep
Blacks in their place by alternating cheap concessions ("token
ism") with repressions.
The Kennedy and Johnson administrations banked on the
passage of a few civil-rights bills and a fake war-on-poverty
to calm and appease the growing militancy. These have not
worked. Now the more conservative Nixon administration
has announced the development of a "Black capitalism."
The essence of this program is that the principal lending
institutions, backed by government loan guarantees, are sup
posed to help set up and encourage different sorts of small
business enterprise by Black individuals or groups. Not much
has yet been done along this line. But th idea of creating
a puny Black capitalism alongside the gigantic edifice of white
capitalism and in competition with it is a pure fantasy and
a cruel hoax. While it may benefit a few Black businessmen,
it will fool very few Black people.
Today almost all Black businesses are tiny family operations,
catering to a ghetto clientele and providing a meager income
for their owners and a few jobs for others. About 25 percent
of Black firms are barber shops and beauty parlors. One out
of every forty Americans is a proprietor, while only one Black
-
in 1,000 is.
For show-window purposes, Nixon and his henchmen may
aid and establish a few more Black-operated enterprises
which will remain in debt to their financiers. But they will
not narrow the colossal discrepancy between white capitalist
ownership and the layer of Black proprietors. The predominant
trend of American economy is toward accelerated concentration
of business and industry in fewer and bigger monopolies.
This cuts down small white business as well as blocking the
growth of Black business. A sprinkling of new Black firms
cannot alter or reverse this process. They will remain petty
and shaky marginal enterprises while the major banks, in
dustries, insurance companies, chain stores and real estate
interests stay in white hands and keep on fleecing the Black
communities.
Nor do the corporations which control the job market have
any compelling reasons to better wages or working conditions
for their Black wage-slaves or eliminate the higher rate of

unemployment among Black workers and youth.
So long as the capitalist system prevails, Afro-Americans
have the right to demand equal, if not greater, access to capital
resources, credits and loans so they can go into business on
their own as well as into factories, offices and government
positions. Cooperatives may help some Black communities
to lessen the parasitic grip of the white bloodsuckers and
acquire a larger measure o f autonomy over minor aspects
of their economic life. But this is quite different from expecting
that the present owners and controllers of the United States
will satisfy the needs of the Black community orthat Black
capitalism will solve or even alleviate the most pressing prob
lems of Black people, such as housing, education, employment,
and poverty. A fundamental transformation of the whole eco
nomic, social, and political system is required for this.
The liberal approach

The liberal Black leaders, from Whitney Young and Roy
Wilkins to Ralph Abemathy and Bayard Rustin, advocate
extensive reforms for the benefit of Black people. The trouble
is that they expect to see these concessions come from Demo
cratic and Republican party politicians, the very agents of
the capitalist ruling class which has bred racism for centuries,
upholds it, and is its main beneficiary at home and abroad.
These gradualists and reformists keep their ideas and a
tlvities within the limits of the established order which they
are committed to serve. They resemble the house-slaves and
handkerchief-heads who came cap in hand begging "massa"
for favors.
The more astute white capitalist politicians and their Black
stooges are aware th'at any breakaway from the two-party
system to the left is a danger to them. That is why they back
the campaigns and build up the reputations of Black Demo
crats like Mayor Carl Stokes of Cleveland and Mayor Richard
Hatcher of Gary. Such Black men are nominated and put in
office, not to serve the welfare of the Black community, but
to head off the mounting demands for change, to co-opt and
corrupt Black nationalist sentiment if possible, and turn it
back into channels which are safe and secure for the white
supremacists.
The first major action of Mayor Stokes was to increase
payroll taxes to raise money so that more cops could be hired
to maintain control over the Black community. And Mayor
Hatcher admitted his administration has little control over

what happens to Black people in Gary. "There is much talk
about black control of the ghetto," he said. "What does it mean?
I am mayor of a city of roughly 90,000 black people-but
we do not control the possibilities of jobs for them, of money
for their schools, or state-funded social institutions. These things
are in the hands of U.S. Steel Corporation, the county depart
ment of welfare and the State of Indiana."
The positions of the revolutionary nationalists

To one degree or another almost every Afro-American shares
the sentiments if not the ideology of Black nationalism. The
spectrum of the Black nationalist movement comprises a wide
variety of political positions and trends, ranging from those
on the extreme right, who want to build Black business,
through the purely cultural nationalists, to the revolutionary
left wing.
Today hundreds of thousands of Black men and women
look forward to the Black revolution as the road to liberation.
In the vanguard are the rebellious Black youth in the ghettos,
the streets, and the campuses w,ho are absorbing ideas and
inspirations from the "Third World" revolutions, the teachings
of Malcolm X, and their own experiences in struggle. The
most advanced recognize that capitalism is the source and
support of racism and that it is necessary to abolish capitalism
in order to attack racism at its roots.
This rapidly growing revolutionary consciousness means
that increasing numbers of Black people, especially among
the youth, are ready to devote their lives to the building of
a revolutionary movement to win power for the masses and
overturn this system. They are now forced to grapple with
the extremely complex problem of how this can be done. With
out a correct and realistic perspective for carrying on the
liberation struggle, based on a clear understanding of the ob
jective conditions in the United States today, thousands of
excellent revolutionary cadres run the risk of disorientation
or wasting time and energy while trying to reach the goal
of emancipation.
Numerous revolutionaries see the necessity and desirability
of breaking away, once and for all, from both the Democratic
and Republican parties and forming an independent Black
party which will not only enter candidates in election cam
paigns but mobilize the Afro-American communities in actions
to attain community demands.
However, they do not yet see clearly how to link struggles

for the pressing immediate needs of the Black people with
the revolutionary goal of overturning the whole racist cap
italist system. In their search for an answer to this difficult
problem they swing from one extreme to the other without
finding a logical and practical connection between the two
ends. Thus
at one time they talk about armed struggle by
"
small, highly disciplined, and trained groups or militants as
the only really revolutionary method of action. When they
run up against the unrealism of guerrilla-type actions in the
United States, where the scale of revolutionary struggles de
mands huge and much more complex commitments of forces,
they fall back to spasmodic and uncoordinated activities as
sociated with the largely spontaneous struggles that flare up
in the community over issues that often do not appear to be
far-reaching. Many militants who have grasped the need to
overturn the system as a whole feel that in participating in
such battles they are merely marking time while they search
for the formula that will put a successful revolution on the
agenda in the United States.
In order to work out a strategy and tactics t,hat can
realistically hasten a revolutionary showdown, it is necessary
first of all to understand where the Black liberation stru.ggle
actually stands today. What stage is it in?,
In the country as a whole, a struggle for government power
by the working class is not an immediate perspective. This
obviously holds true for the white workers, who remain rela
tively quiescent politically and still tied in with the Democratic
Party machinery through the union bureaucracy.
Without the white workers, the movement for Black liberation

cannot realistically pose an immediate struggle for government
. power. It is true, of course, as the mass uprisings indicate,
that the Black masses are more ready to fight for their rights
against the authorities than any other sector of American so
ciety. But it requires the active backing and participation of
the majority of the population to achieve government power.
This stage has not yet been reached in the United States. More
over, the political understanding of the Black masses today
is far less advanced than their combative frame of mind.
Despite their bitterness, nine-tenths of the Black voters cast
a ballot for the Democratic candidate for pres'ident in 1968,
as they did in 1964.
The truth is that we stand in a preparatory period. Once
this is thoroughly understood, the problems begin to fall into

place.
The first big problem is how to break the hold of the white
supremacist capitalist politicians upon Afro-Americans. The
solution lies in promoting the formation of an independent
mass Black political party.
The second big problem is how to get Afro-Americans in
their majority to move faster and farther along the road to
revolution. The solution lies in formulating and fighting for
a program that can help transform the general discontent
and general militancy of the Black masses into an organized,
cohesive, consciously revolutionary force. By presenting and
fighting for such a program, a small vanguard can transform
itself into an influential power among the masses.
The next section of this document presents proposals along
this line, many of which have already been brought forward
by various elements in the movement.
SUGGESTED PROGRAM OF MASS STRUGGLE

The motivation for a program of revolutionary mass struggle
must be the self-determination of Afro-Americans. Like all op
pressed nationalitie Black people can achieve their freedom
only by taking their destiny in their own hands: "Who would
be free, themselves must strike the blow."
<_'-f-.
This means thp.t Black people must form and unify the1r own

organizations of struggle, take control of the Black communi

ties and all the institutions within them, and conduct a con
sistent fight to overcome every form of economic, political, and
cultural servitude and inequality generated and enforced by
the decadent, racist capitalist society.
A. Black control of the Black community

It is a basic democratic principle that a people should have
the right to decide its own affairs. Therefore the central demand
of the liberation forces is for Black control of the Black com
munity. This is an indispensable step towards freeing the Black
masses from domination by the white racists who benefit from
their exploitation.
The demand for Black control of the Black community has
a number of attributes which give it an extremely powerful
potential for mobilizing the masses in a revolutionary direction.
The demand for Black control has been raised spontaneously
in thousands or struggles across the country. It is obviously
a demand which speaks directly to the needs and present under-
standing of Black people. At the same time, Black control of

the Black community is a democratic demand. It is based on
something which even the ruling class says it believes in-the
right of people to have democratic control over their own lives
and communities. Thus the resistance the power structure puts
up against this struggle will help to expose the hypocrisy of
the ruling class on one of the central issues which it uses to
brainwash and enslave the masses-its proclaimed adherence
to democracy.
At the same time, the struggle for Black control is profoundly
revolutionary, because it poses the question of who will have
decision-making power over Black people: themselves or the
capitalist rulers. The realization of this aim can build Black
fortresses which will be centers of Black counterpower to the
white power structures in

the principal cities of the United
States.
As they develop within the Black communities, struggles tar
geted to win control over specific institutions and agencies can
pave the way and prepare increasing numbers of people for
the all-inclusive goal of total control of their community. These
partial struggles, carried out around issues such as Black
control of the schools, can. be extremely important because
through them encouraging victories can be won. These vic
tories, even if limited to specific areas, can help to raise the
confidence of the community in its own power and lay the
basis for broader future struggles.
The following demands can help promote this process:
1. Replace police occupation of the Black community with a
community-controlled police force drawn from residents of the
community.
2. Black control of all government funds allocated to the
Black community and control over all plans for renovating
and constructing housing and other communal facilities and
improvements.
3. Community control over all institutions in the Black com
munity, such as hospitals, welfare centers, libraries, etc.
4. Establish community councils to make policy decisions
and administer the affairs of the Black community. These
councils should be composed of representatives elected by work
ers in various community institutions-factories, hospitals, edu
cational institutions-as well as delegates elected on a block
basis.
The local councils or boards of control should be joined
together on regional, state, and national levels, the aim being
to create a National Council of Black Communities. This should

be composed of elected, not appointed, delegates representing
the local constituencies.
Such a National Council could work out common policies
and speak with one voice on all matters affecting the commu
nities as a whole and their relations with all other forces and
agencies. It would . thus exercise far more authority than any
single community could. To prevent the National Council from
bureaucratic usurpation of power, elections should be held
regularly and delegates should be subject to recall at any time
so that they remain under the control of the local committees
they represent.
B. Formation of a Black political party

The indispensable instrument foi: organizing and .carrying
on effective struggle for such demands, achieving complete
control over the Black community, and moving forward to
Black liberation, is an independent Black political party. Its
program would be designed to use the immense wealth created
by working people, Black and white, not for imperialist war
and the enrichment of a few but for the needs of the majority.
The main purpose of a Black party is to lead Afro-Ameri
cans in political and mass action. But its progressive propo
sals would attract support from other sections of the popula
tion which suffer from the evils of capitalist rule.
A Black party would expose and challenge the do-nothing
policies of the Democrats and Republicans and present an al
ternative to them not only by participating in elections but by
organizing effective community actions. It would take the ini
tiative in promoting the self-mobilization of the Black people
and forming alliances with students, poor white people, workers
and all other forces interested in radical change. It could play
a vanguard role in bringing revolutionary ideas to all sections
of the country.
C. Key planks in a party program
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-
ties, nurseries, libraries, and housing. Give Black workers

priority on all jobs connected with the construction program.
3. A $3 an hour minimum wage with guaranteed protection
of this minimum against increases in the cost of living.
4. Put an immediate end to hunger and malnutrition through
a guaranteed annual income which can assure ev-eryone, in
cluding the old, sick, and disabled, adequateliving standards.
5. Abolish all taxes on incomes of $7,500 and under. Abol
ish all sales taxes which discriminate against the poor.
6. Make free quality medical care available to all citizens.
Expropriate the drug monopolies and medicine profiteers. Un
dertake a large-scale program to train Black people as doctors
and nurses.
7. Organize self-defense units to protect the Black community
and 'its organizations. Oppose gun laws which leave Black
people defenseless and unarmed while white cops and racists
assault members ofthe Black community.
8. Investigate the financial records of all landlords and-busi
nesses operating in the Black community and tax their super
profits to help finance improvement projects for the community._
9. Extend credits to Black cooperatives and small businesses.
10. Enforce and tighten all existing housing codes. No tenant
to pay rent exceeding ten percent of his total income.
11. Expropriate any firin which discriminates against Black
people.
12. Elect price committees to inspect and police prices in _the
neighborhoods.
13. Review the cases of and release all Black prisoners be
cause they have not received fair trials. All Black people to
.be tried by a jury of their peers as guaranteed by the Con-

stitution, that is, by other Black people.
Military and Foreign Policy

1. End the draft. Exempt Black youth from military service.
2. Bring the Gls home from Vietnam immediately. The Black
man's struggle is here at home.
3. Take a referendum on the attitude of the Black commu
nity toward the Vietnam war and all foreign wars.
4. Support the constitutional right of Gis to speak out against
the war and discrimination in the armed forces. An immediate
end to all discrimination in the armed forces.
5. Self-determination for the Vietnamese and all Third World
peoples. Solidarity with the liberation struggles ofan oppressed
nationalities.
6. End government assistance to all oppressive regimes from
South Africa to South Vietnam. Dismantle all foreign military

bases.
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:
The educational system

1. Election of community-control boards to supervise schools
in the Black community.
2. The establishment of an educational system and curriculum
which meets the needs of Black children, prepares them for
future economic security, gives them a knowledge of themselves
and an understanding of the true history and culture of Black
people.
3. Parent involvement in every phase of school life.
4. Institute a crash program to train Black administrators
and teachers. Preferential hiring of Black teachers and ad-.
ministrators.
5. Community groups should be entitled to use school facili
ties to promote activities of benefit to the community and the
Black liberation struggle.
6. Offer a full program of adult education.
7. Dismiss all school officials who victimize or insult students
on racial grounds.
8. Introduce special tutoring programs for all students who

have fallen behind in their studies.
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
American history and literature truthfully and throw light on

the real nature of capitalist racism.
7. Upgraded job training programs. Adequate preparation
for all students desiring to attend college.
8. A guaranteed job for all high school graduates.
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.
The Black Workers

Because of the role they play in production, Black workers
are potentially the most powerful sector of the Black commu
nity in the struggle f.or liberation. As the victims of inequality
in the economy, Black workers have already begun to or
ganize separately on the job to advance their interests and
protect their rights.
The unity of Black and white workers is indispensable to
combat and overthrow capitalism. But where white workers
are privileged anq Black workers are penalized, Black unity
in action must precede and prepare the ground for Black-white
unity on a broad scale. Black caucuses in the unions can fight
.against discrimination in hiring, firing, and upgrading and for
equality of. treatment in the unions themselves, as DRUM and
other Black caucuses in Detroit and elsewhere are undertaking
to do. Where they are part of organized labor, they should
strive to democratize the unions, regenerate their progressivism,

and eliminate white job-trust conceptions and practices.
These aims can be furthered through the following demands:
I. Rank and file democratic control of the unions. Elimina
tion of all racist practices in the labor movement.
2. Preferential hiring and advancement of Black workers
and free access to apprentice training programs, the skilled
trades and higher-paying supervisory posts.
3. For an escalator clause in all union contracts to assure
automatic wage adjustments to keep up w-ith the rising costs
of living.
4. For a thirty-hour week with no reduction in pay.
5. For speedier grievance procedures. No restrictions on the
right to strike.
6. Equal rights and treatment for all Black union members.
7. Complete independence of the unions from government
intederence. Repeal of all antilabor laws.
8. Workers control of industry through factory committees
elected by the workers on the job.
Most of the proposals listed above have been brought forward
at one time or another in the course of the Black liberation
struggle over the past years; others are taken from the ex
periences of the masses elsewhere in fighting against capitalist
domination. A program of this sort cannot be fully finalized
or frozen. It has to remain flexible and open-ended with plenty
of room for additions and improvements as the struggle de
velops and new problems come to the fore.
The whole point of the program is to provide a guide for
the organization and action of the Afro-American masses which
can lead toward the goal of Black liberation with the maximum
of gains en route.
The Black liberation movement is bound to 'play a vanguard
role in the coming American socialist revolution both by its
example of comba.tivity against theracist power structure and
by the stimulus its struggles will give to actions of other sec
tors thrown into opposition to the ruling capitalist class.
The strategy of the Black liberation movement hinges on
the achievement of two tasks. One is the unification and mo
bilization of the Black masses for revolutionary action. The
other is the weakening of the enemy forces.
Since Afro-Americans constitute a minority of the population
in the United States, it will be necessary to fmd ways and
means to take advantage of potential social divisions among
the whites and thereby reduce the original unfavorable odds.
This can be done by drawing on part of the poor and work

ing-class whites, as well as sympathetic students and intellec
tuals, into an alliance of action while some other sections of
the white population are neutralized. Those parts of the pro
gram suggested above which not only correspond to the needs
of the Blacks but will likewise benefit prospective political allies
among the white majority can serve to further these long-range
aims of a realistic revolutionary strategy.
Revolutio.nary strategy and tactics

How does the program outlined above fit into the strategy
and tactics of a socialist revolution in the United States?
At first sight most of the points appear limited in nature.
Many of them concern rights and liberties guaranteed to every
citizen by the Constitution. Or they propose broadening these
rights, as, for example, establishing the right of Black con
trol of the Black community. They can be defined as "demo
cratic demands."
Other points concern guaranteeing jobs, hourly wages, annual
income, a thirty-hour week, social benefits such as adequate
medical care. Others involve independent political action, the
defense of the Black community, organization of Black. power.
For reasons which will be explained below, these can be de
fined as "transitional demands."
Taken point by point, the program can seem modest, per
haps even feasible under capitalism if one were to take at
face value the propaganda about capitalism standing for de
mocracy, a good living, and a free world.
Particularly to be noted about the demands is that they have
either already appeared in the Black communities, ln some
instances with quite broad backing, or they are easily under
stood and apprechl'ted by wide groups and, with correct leader
ship, could serve as rallying slogans for very massive strug
gles. This is a first prerequisite for any program for revo
lutionary struggle. That is, above all, the program must be
based on the objective needs of Black people.

Bu t how does such a program tie in with the struggle to
overturn capitalism and build a socialist society in America?
To understand this, it is necessary to bring in some gen
eral considerations. On . a world scale, capitalism as an in
ternationally integrated system for the production and distri

bution of basic necessities is in its death agony. It offers
little to most of humanity but grinding poverty, hopeless in
security, declining opportunities, increasingly repressive re-
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
community, yet they have a revolutionary logic because the

capitalist system does not have the capacity to meet them.
A new, more rational, more productive system is required.
On the ideological level such transitional demands constitute
a means of bringing the level of understanding of the broad
masses under capitalism to the higher level required to under
stand consciously the need for socialism. The present-day strug
gles around these demands for changes in the system can lea
to and become part of the overall struggle for power. The
mobilization of the masses thus takes place as a process, with
each struggle awakening, educating, inspiring, and organiz
ing new layers toward revolutionary consciousness and ac
tion.
Several examples will suffice to show this logical develop
ment:
Unemployment is a familiar enough phenomenon in the
Black communities. It is easy for a Black youth, for instance,
to understand why he should have a guaranteed job oppor
tunity. When great numbers of youths face the same situation,
a point can be reached where they can engage "":ith some mili
tancy in common action in support of jobs for all.
The problem is obviously no longer an individual problem,
as the capitalists seek to picture It and to maintain it. Its true
nature has come to the surface. It is a problem involving
society as a whole, demanding an overall solution.
Where are the jobs to be found? One possibility is to take
allthe current jobs and reduce the hours on each job suf
ficiently to make room for everyone seeking employment.
To maintain living standards, however, current yearly in
comes must be guaranteed despite the reduced work week.
What power can enforce such a solution?
Quite clearly, only the government can do this. Since the

present government will resist this collective way of solving
the problem, the question arises as to who it really represents,
and why it should not be removed to make way for a govern
ment that will guarantee jobs for all.
More questions arise. The solution demands economic plan
ning on a national scale and the placing of human needs
above profit-making. Consideration of the socialist alternative
to capitalism has thus been placed on the agenda.
Thus the demand for jobs can under certain circumstances
have very far-reaching consequences.
The actions spearheaded by Black students on campuses
across the country give another indication of the potential

role of struggles around transitional demands. The demand
for increased or open enrollment of Third World students has
already been shown to have far-reaching implications. Signifi
cant gains towards increasing Black enrollment can and have
been made within the present educational structure, but the
struggle for open enrollment- that is, for college education
for all who want it-will not be so easy for the system to
fulfill.
Certain key questions are immediately raised by this de
mand: Where are the resources for such a vast expansion
of educational facilities to come from? How will adequate jobs
be found for all the students upon graduation?
If persist. ently pursued, struggles around this demand call
into question the capitalist economic structure itself. Because
of its built-in need for large pools of low-paid, unskilled labor,
capitalism is not constructed to absorb the costs and conse
quences of higher education for the most exp!.oited sector of
the working force.
From the standpoint of moving the revolution forward, strug
gles such as those that have been taking place on the cam
puses-whether they end in victories or not-can inspire and
lead to demands with more far-reaching implications than
was apparent in the original issues. The Black community
as a whole has supported and received inspiration from the
example set by the Black students in struggles for self-deter
mination.
The fight for autonomous Black studies departments, for
example, has helped pave the way for struggle for control
of other institutions in the Black community. If there can be
Black control of Black studies departments in the universities,
why not Black control of the public schools, Black control
of the police and Black control of the community?
The impact which these Black student struggles have already
had can be seen in the fact that they have succeeded in bringing
about unprecedented unity in action between Blacks and other
national minorities including Chicanos, Oriental-Americans,
Puerto Ricans, and Indians. They have likewise attracted sup
port from many radical white students and even, in one small
but ignificant instance, from a progressively-led union local
of oil workers in the Bay Area.
The movement of Black and Third World students is a clear
example of how a struggle in a limited arena under present
conditions can help to expose the system and lead to bigger

and broader efforts. Struggle is the school of the masses and
the means for clarifying their consciousness of what has to
be done. All the demands that bring them into action for their
own aims are worth raising, fighting for, and incorporating
into an overall revolutionary strategy and program.
The strategy of advancing the Black liberation struggle
through the development of transitional demands is funda
mentally different from both the reformist and ultraleftist con
cepts of what to do.
The reformists view capitalism as so powerfuland entrenched
that it cannot be overturned, at least for a long time to come.
From this pessimistic outlook, they conclude that the best that
can be accomplished is to improve the lot of the poverty-stricken
masses a little, either by persuading or pressuring the rulers.
The ultralefts see capitalism as completely finished, not only
as to perspectives but in capacity to survive. They see it as
standing by inertia, requiring only a slight push to make it
collapse. They dream of bringing this about by galvanizing
the masses through clever or extremely revolutionary propa-
ganda-which often times turns out to be mere rhetoric-or
by a small heroic group undertaking a spectacular action
which, by setting an example, will prove contagious, setting
the masses in motion in some kind of spontaneous way.
Against both the reformists and ultralefts, revolutionary Marx
ists view capitalism as having entered the epoch of its death
agony, yet as still retaining considerable capacity to defer the
final showdown through violent means, through a few con
cessions in some instances, through keeping the masses from
gaining an understanding of politics, and through blocking
the organization of a revolutionary party deeply rooted among
the masses and endowed with a competent leadership.
As against both the reformists and ultralefts, the revolution
ary Marxists seek to take advantage of the basic weakness in
the position of the ruling class. This lies in the deep-going
tendency of all serious social struggles in this epoch to involve
government power and to raise the question of who should
exercise this power, no matter how limited these struggles may
be, or may appear to be, at the beginning.

The revolutionary Marxists propose a strategy based on
this fact. The succession of transitional demands suggested
above corresponds to the course of struggle repeatedly ob
served in the world today. To pose these demands in their
logical succession, to try to organize battles along this line,

helps to develop an understanding of the main existing ten
dency in the class struggle, thereby advancing the political
understanding of the masses and hastening the stage when
a final showdown with the racist capitalist system becomes
a realistic possibility.
The goal of liberation: capitalism or socialism?

The program of a movement or a party is a means to an
end- and for a revolutionary movement that end means the
replacement .of the prevailing system of racist oppression by
a free and equal society. What kind of socioeconomic organi
zation can enable the Black liberation movement to achieve
self-determination and a better life for all Afro-Americans?
Black nationalists have very varying attitudes on this cru
cial question. On the right are some who believe in building
up Black capitalism. To the left are those revolutionaries who
have come to understand that only a socialist society can
solve the fundamental problems of the Black masses. Many
nationalists are disinclined to take any definite position on
this matter. We will settle that when we come to it, they say.
However, this is not the sort of issue that a movement seriously
committed to the abolishment of racist oppression can evade
or leave indefinitely hanging in midair.
A realistic decision on what kind of economy can succeed
the present system of exploitation in the United States can
not be made in an arbitrary manner. The possibilities have
been restricted by great historical factors which have been
at work over a long stretch of time. Foremost among these
factors is the level of economic development which determines
the character and the goals of the contending forces.
This point can be made clearer by comparing the situation
which confronted the movement for Black emancipation in
the mid-nineteenth century with that of today. At that time
the main immediate oppressors of the Black people were the
Southern slaveholders, while the Afro-Americans in bondage
were mostly cultivators of the soil. The objectives of that revo
lution were to destroy chattel slavery and to provide the freed
men with the economic, social, and political means for their
liberation and advancement.
What happened, as everyone knows, was that the slave power
was smashed during the Civil War and Reconstruction and the
slaves given their formal freedom. But since the Northern
Transitional Program. for Black Liberation 57
capitalist conquerors denied them the promised "forty acres and

a mule" and other prerequisites for their economic independence
and the exercise of political power, the Blacks could be thrust
back into a new state of servitude from which they suffer to
the present day.
Today, the main oppressor of the Afro-American is the capital
ist class. The vast majority of Black people no longer live
on plantations in the rural South or work in the fields. They
are packed into city slums where they make their living
if they are not thrown on welfare- by working in capitalist
enterprises. They are surrounded on all sides by the capital
ist owners who fleece them as employers, loansharks, bankers,
landlords, and merchants.
In order to win liberation, the revolutionary movement must
overthrow these exploiters whose system breeds and sustains
racism and oppression. Because Afro-Americans are both an
oppressed nationality and the most heavily exploited segment
of the American working class, the Black libereon movement
has a twofold character. It is at one and the same time a na
tionalist movement for self-determination and a proletarian
struggle against the capitalist possessors of wealth and power.
Afro-Americans have been the principal victims of the profit
system at all stages of its development in North America over
the past four hundred years. They were enslaved and shipped
across the Atlantic to raise staple crops to enrich the planters.
They are still laboring for the profits of others today, although
in the cities rather than the countryside and for capitalists
rather than slaveholders.
The hour has struck when an end must be put to all forms
of exploitation and servitude. Full and definitive liberation
cannot be achieved except through abolishing the private own
ership of the means of production by the corporations and
banks.
This measure is mandatory whether Afro-Americans decide
to exercise their right of self-determination through the creatiop
of a separate Black nation or within the context of the crea
tion of a single socialist republic along with insurgent white
workers and other anticapitalist forces.
The transitional program of a genuinely revolutionary move
ment must have a clear and conscious goal which guides all
its activities and lights the way for its followers. It must be
designed to satisfy the needs of the working masses and place
them in control of their own affairs. While promoting a transi-
tion from national oppression to self-determination, it will of

necessity advance the transition from capitalism to socialism.
Through this second emancipation Black America will not
only have effected its own liberation, but promoted the libera
tion of all oppressed

peoples from racism, capitalism, and
imperialism.
The Case for an Independent
Black Political Party
"The Case for an Independent Black Political Party" is a resolu

tion passed by the TWenty-second National Convention of the
Socialist Workers Party in October 1967. It was first published
in the January-February 1968 issue of the International Social
ist Review. The introduction by Paul Boutelle was written in
July 1971 for the second edition of the document, published
as a pamphlet by Pathfinder Press. The text has not been
revised except for minor changes in capitalization and punctua
tion. The introduction has been slightly modified to take into
account developments that occurred since it was first published.
Introduction by Paul Boutelle
The Case for an Independent. Black Political Party, a reso

lution passed by a national convention of the SocialisfWork
ers Party in 1967, has not lost its significance. It raises one
of the key questions facing Black people today: the necessity,
problems, and possibilities of building a mass, independent
Black political party in this country.
Since this was written, few Black political organizations have
come into existence with the perspective of mobilizing Black
people over issues such as jobs, housing, education, and the
war in Southeast Asia. N mass Black political organization
has come into being with an adequate understanding of the
nature of the Democratic and Republican parties and with a
perspective on how to deal with them. Thus, the strategy pro
jected in this pamphlet still retains its relevance. This strategy
is a realistic alternative to the strategy of both the Black Pan
ther Party and the Black Democrats.
The most widely known Black political organization, tlie
Black Panther Party, originated in 1966 in opposition to police
brutality in the Black community. At its inception, the Black
Panther Party began to develop an understanding of the need
for organized mass action against the day-to-day problems
that Black people confront in their communities as reflected
in its ten-point program for community control.
But through their fixation on the gun, the Panthers sub
stituted armed self-defense by a small vanguard for the or-
59
ganization and mobilization of the community. The Panthers

did not understand that the white capitalist class wields the
carrot as well as the stick, and retreated from the task of
putting together a strategy of mass action to achieve Black
control of the Black community. The Panther Party proved
incapable of mounting united-front efforts to defend the Black
community against the police.
In the electoral arena, the Panthers moved away from in
dependent Black political action and mlseducated their sup
porters by running candidates in the reformist Peace and Free
dom Party in 1968. As the course of events demonstrated,
the Peace and Freedom Party represented no real break from
capitalist politics but the first step on the road back to the
Democratic Party. In 1970 and 1972 the Panthers openly
supported Black Democrats like California Congressman Ron
Dellums, and in 1973 completely dropped the pretense of in
dependent politics when Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown aban
doned their independent campaign in the middle of the non
partisan Oakland municipal elections and announced that they
were running as "registered Democrats."
The Panther Party also passed up opportunities to parti
cipate in and give effective leadership to the Black student
revolt of 1968-69. In the longest student strike in history, in
itiated and led by Black students at San Francisco State Col
lege in November 1968, the Panther Party did not play a
significant role, notwithstanding the fact that this struggle was
occurring right in its own backyard-the Bay Area, where
Panther influence was strongest.
The ultraleft rhetoric employed by the Panthers did not cor
respond to the actual strength or influence of their organiza
tion. The white capitalist class seized upon this contradiction
and used it to break the back of the party.
On top of this bombastic rhetoric the Panthers launched
utopian "serve the people" programs to provide free breakfast,
free health care, and free clothing to the Black community.
These programs which were able to aid only a handful of
people, were counterposed to the task of building indepen
dent mass organizations struggling in the Black community.
Today, after finding out that the Black community is not
ready for armed struggle or urban guerrilla warfare, the Pan
ther Party has split apart.
The past few years have also seen the proliferation of a few
token Black Democratic mayors and other elected officials.
Case for a Black Political Party 61
Stokes, Hatcher, Conyers, Bond, and formations such a s th e

Congressional Black Caucus have one key purpose: t o prop
up the illusions and faith of Black people in the Democratic
Party.
Here is how the New York Times of June 9, 197 1, reported
the remarks of Georgia State Democratic representative Julian
Bond on the idea of a Black party: " It wouldn't really have
much substance. Fifteen per cent of the people don't have much
power. But in a concerted effort with others, they could make
a big difference."
Thus Bond scoffs at and belittles the potential power of an
independently organized Black community. He cannot see be
yond what exists.
Bond's negative remarks on the concept of an independent
Black party are indicative of a growing consciousness in sup
port of the idea. A few years ago no Black politician would
have thought it necessary to even attack the idea. Today,
the Black reformists deny the necessity for it, as they haggle
over how to influence the Democratic Party, the party of our
white capitalist oppressors. Their denials reflect the fact of
growing sentiment for independent Black political action.
This growing mass consciousness was also reflected at the
September 1970 Congress of African People. The 3,000 to 4,000
Black people assembled there went on record in favor of an
independent Black party.
However, Imamu Amiri Baraka (formerly known as Le Roi
Jones), one of the chief organizers of the Congress, is admit
tedly working in the New Jersey Democratic Party. And the
Philadelphia branch of the CAP worked to organize a Black
political convention in support of a Black Democratic aspirant
for mayor.
At the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana,
in March 1972, attended by over 8,000 delegates and observers,
sentiment for an independent Black political party ran high.
But Black Democrats and other reformists tied in with the
Democratic Party, including Baraka, quashed all discussion
of an independent party on the floor of the convention.
These retrograde actions show that breaking the Democratic
stranglehold on the Black community will not be easy. But it
must be done.
The example for Black people is now being set by the coun
try's second-largest oppressed nationality: the Chicanos (Mexi
can-Americans). Chicanos have mobilized broad support for
the migrant farm workers through boycott campaigns. Many

thousands of high school and college students have fought
against racist school administrations, mobilizing broad com
munity support behind them. Chicano moratoriums against the
war in Southeast Asia have mobilized tens of thousands of La
Raza to demand an immediate end to the war and to "Bring
Our Carnales [Brothers] Home Now!" These forms of inde
pendent political action have shown many Chicanos that the
Democratic and Republican parties have not represented and
will not represent the aspirations of La Raza. They have shown
that Chicanos need their own independent political party.
La Raza Unida parties have been formed in Texas, Colo
rado, and California. In Crystal City, Texas, through the
organization and mobilization of the Chicano community, La
Raza Unida Party took control of the board of education and
the city council. The city, which has 10,000 inhabitants, is
85 percent Chicano. In Colorado and Northern California,
where Chicanos constitute a much smaller percentage of the
population, La Raza Unida Party campaigns were used to
organize and raise the political consciousness of Chicanos
throughout the state.
La Raza Unida Party bases itself on mass actions in the
streets, as well as at the ballot box. It is only in its initial
stages and has already scored successes. It is an example
for Black militants to ponder.
The optimism expressed in this pamphlet regarding the
Lowndes County Freedom Party has not been borne out. The
LCFP was isolated through the demise of SNCC (which helped
organize the party back in 1965) and it failed to put to gether
a national political perspective. The LCFP leadership was ab
sorbed by the National Democratic Party of Alabama, which
is simply a faction of the State Democratic Party of Alabama.
. Case for a Black Political Party 63
The Case for an Independent Black Political Party
The most dynamic demand among Afro-Americans today is

for Black power. Although they are the biggest minority in
this country, numbering 22 millioh people or over 1 1 per cent
of the population, making up about 20 per cent of the work
force, and due to become the majority in ten of the larger
Nor thern cities by the 1970s, Black Americans have been per
mitted little power of any kind, economic, social, cultural, or
political. The denial of real or proportional political represen
tation to such a key sector is one of the most glaring injustices
of this capitalist society.
How has the racist ruling class managed to keep Black
people in such a politically powerless state? How can this con
dition be overcome? This is one of the most pressing problems
facing Black Americans-and their future depends upon finding
the correct solution to it.
To the extent that Black people have participated in politics
to date, it has been almost entirely through the two big capital
ist parties, the Democrats and Republicans, that is, within terms
laid down by the representatives of their oppressors and ex
ploiters. The main reason for the meager results achieved after
thirteen years of struggle since the 1954 Supreme Court deci
sion has been their dependence upon the two capitalist parties
which have conceded little but a series of phony "civil rights"
bills.
The lack of any substantial gains through this avenue under
scores the need for organizing and exercising genuinely indepen
dent Black political power. Here are some of the reasons why
this kind of political action can bring considerable benefits to
the Black masses, give maximum leverage to their united power,
and prepare them for the taske of revolutionizing this oppressive
racist capitalist society.
Why an independent Black party is needed

The Black people's lack of political power is so serious be
cause politics is the key to breaking out of the vicious circle
of social, economic, and cultural deprivation and discrimina
tion imposed on them by this system. It is not something far
away from their everyday lives or divorced from their basic
needs. Political power means the capacity to assert the needs

and aspirations of a group and to see that they are fuliilled.
Full political power mens that a group runs its own affairs
and determines its own destiny. Even the possession of some
measure of political power means that the group has a voice
in deciding the terms of its existence.
In the United States today Black people are effectively ex
cluded from all the crucial decisions affecting their fate. The
policies that determine how they will live are made by others
and imposed upon them. Every aspect of Afro-American life
is governed by the decisions of the Democratic and Republican
agents of the capitalist rulers of this country. Their actions (or
inactions) perpetuate inequality, poverty, degradation, police
brutality, insecurity, unemployment, low-paying jobs, bad
srhools, inadequate housing and medical facilities, a shorter

life-span and all the other evils suffered by Black Americans.
These intolerable conditions cannot be fundamentally changed
except through a massive, united, all-out fight that hits the big
business rulers at the center of their grip. This is their control
of legal authority and state power. But in order to carry out
an effective fight for Black political power, Afro-Americans must
have their own organization under their own control.
The masters of this country understand the need for political
action that benefits them and for political organizations that
serve them. That is why they have political parties-not just
one, but two-which they control and through which they exer
cise a political monopoly.
Of course, it is not only through such parties that they main
tain their rule. They have the ownership of industry, the power
of money and credit, control of the mass media and schools,
and ultimately the police and armed forces. But their power
does not come out of the barrel of the gun alone. If they re
lied solely on naked force, the resources of their rulership
would soon be exhausted by an incessant battle between the
oppressors and the oppressed. Like other master classes
throughout history, our own rulers practice deception to make
their power and misrule seem legitimate and induce the subju
gated and exploited classes to accept it without resistance.
The two-party shell game, and especially the portrayal of

the Democratic Party as a party of the people, is an important
part of this deception. While the role of this party in upholding
and enforcing racism is clear in the South, it wears the mask
of liberalism in the North. But in practice it is no less racist
than the Republican Party there. Under duress it throws Black

people a few concessions, a few posts, a few tokens to placate
them though it has no intention of ending racism. The two
party setup fosters the illusion that Black people will get free
dom through gradual reform of capitalism and its institutions.
The history of the past hundred years testifies that this is a
lie. Black people will never be liberated by supporting political
parties that are controlled by their oppressors and that are
so constructed and operated that they will always be controlled
by their oppressors.
Big Business and the racist system it preserves for its own
profit cannot be challenged for control of legitimate authority
so long as voters are restricted to choosing between the can
didates and programs of the two parties under their thumb.
Hcwever, the tradition of electoral democracy which the rich
manip1Uate for their own ends is potentially a gun which can
be loaded ag ainst them. It claims to permit people the right
to. establish their own political parties which can take over
and run local. state, or national government Thus a Black
party indepeadent of. capitalist control could take advantage
of this right to gain control of some areas of government
If the capitalists tried to prevent this, that would expose the
faree .of. their electoral democracy and create conditions where
the masses could legitimately fight "by any means necessary"
for freedom against the tyranny of the very rich white minor
ity-a far smaller minority than the millions of Black people.
H it is to move ahead, the Black liberation movement must
be able to counter the enormous facilities for political decep
tion used by its enemy. The 1964 campaign provided con
vincing evidence of the hold the treacherous tw<rparty system
has over Black voters. No group in the country supported
the presidential ticket of the Democratic Party in greater pr<r
portion than the Black voters (almost 95 per cent). What did
they get in return? A civil rights law in 1965 that is largely
unenforced, a civil rights bill in 1966 that was filibustered
to death, a penny-ante "war on poverty" that leaves 90 per
cent of the Black people as poor as they ever were, housing
and schooling that are more segregated than they were in
1964.
The ouster of Adam Clayton Powell from his congressional
seat is one more proof of the tricksterism of the Democratic
Party. Many Black people looked upon Powell as a represen
tative spokesman who had acquired a position of considerable
influence on the summits of power in Washington. But he was

only a lieutenant, a tool of the Democratic machine which
neither he nor his Black supporters controlled in any respect
So the real powers could easily get rid of him once they felt
he no longer served a useful purpose.
The same is true about the others who work in the two cap
italist parties and occupy decorative posts in them or at their
mercy. While they get personal advantages and honors from
these positions, that does not change the conditions of the
Black masses. How much good does the appointment of a
Black Supreme Court Justice do if the entire local, state, and
federal legal system is stacked against justice for the Afro
American?
The real face, and not the hypocritical mask, of the Dem
ocratic Party can be seen in its "white backlash" aspect which
has come more into the open since 1964. Ex-governor Wallace
of Alabama is preparing a nationwide bid for the presidency
while still a ranking Democrat. And Johnson's vice president,
Hubert Humphrey, publicly embraces the notorious Georgia
racist, D emocratic Governor Lester Maddox.
The notion that the Democratic Party (or its Republican
duplicate) can be reformed from a party of racism into a
party of liberation is wishful thinking to the point of fantasy.
As Malcolm X said, a chicken is not constructed to produce
a duck egg; similarly, a capitalist party is not constructed
to produce freedom for Afro-Americans. The Democratic Party
is capable of giving concessions, especially to certain middle
class elements whom the capitalists expect to use to contain
and police the Black masses. But it is incapable of promoting
and making the profound economic and political changes
needed to solve the problems of millions of oppressed. Black
people who think they are going to "take over" part of the
Democratic organization and "use" it in the interests of the
Black masses are fooling themselves or the masses; they them
selves are the ones who get taken over and used.
Equally futile is the concept of a "third force" advanced by
some Black power advocates and by Adam Clayton Powell.
According to this proposal, Black Democrats, Black Repub
licans, and Black independents should get together politically,
bargain as a united bloc with the two capitalist parties, and
deliver or withhold the votes they influence depending on which
one offered the best bargain. Although this is called "indepen
dent political action," it is nothing of the kind. It is a spurious
substitute because it would leave Black voters dependent on

the promises of two racist parties, rather than of one.
At most, it could bring a few more concessions rather than
any fundamental changes. And it cannot even bring many
concessions because it overlooks the fact that the two capitalist
parties are controlled by the same forces, to whom it does
not much matter whether Black people vote Democratic or
Republican. Just so long as that is their only choice, just so
long as there is no alternative to the two parties they control,
the ruling powers have the Black voters at their mercy.
The only way that Black people can get out of the Dem
ocratic fire without falling into the Republican frying pan is
to establish their own party. They must do this because neither
major party is free of capitalist control. In most large industrial
countries there are labor and other noncapitalist parties based
on the working people and their organizations. H such a party
existed here, Black people might find a real alternative in join
ing and supporting it
But organized labor in the United States missed its chances
in the 1930s and again in the late 1940s to cut loose from
the Democratic Party and create its own party with the per
spective of taking political power away from the capitalists
and establishing a government of the workers and their allies.
Just as Uncle Toms have failed to lead Black people onto an
independent road, so too at critical junctures in the past, union
bureaucrats have prevented the American workers from forming
their own party. An independent mass party of the workers
will eventually be formed here as elsewhere. But it will not
arise until the workers become radicalized and able to defl!-at
and replace their present capitalist-minded misleaders.
Black people cannot wait until that happens-they need po
litical weapons now. Whatever allies they may get in the future,
they have no alternative now but to build a political party of
their own.
Some ultralefts who are deeply disillusioned with the two
major parties (or even certain radical parties) reject all po
litical action as useless or diversionary. They mistakenly iden
tify politics with narrow electoral activity or vote-catching.
They fail to understand what politics really is or can be and
what a powerful impetus an independent Black party could
give to the revolutionary movement.
There are different, and even opposite, kinds of politics.
What Americans see all around them, and what usually passes
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
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.
The nature of an independent Black party

The Newark, Detroit, and other uprisings that rocked the
country during the summer of 1967 have raised some basic
questions in the minds of many militants. They ask: "Hasn't
the Black liberation movement already gone beyond the stage
of electoral politics? Isn't it too late to be talking about as
sembling the forces to build a party, about independent cam
paigns, candidates, and programs? Aren't we close to the final
showdown with the white capitalist power structure? Hasn't
the time of the bullet superseded the casting of the ballot? Isn't
resort to armed struggle in the form of guerrilla warfare the
only effective mode of action on the agenda? Don't we need
an army, or at least dedicated bands of guerrilla f.ghters,
rather than a political party?"
Such questions are not out of place; they have been impera
tively posed by the fierce conflicts which have occurred in
many cities and will flare up again. They have to be squarely
faced and answered by all those concerned with the progress
and prospects of the liberation struggle. Here is our view.
The explosions of 1967 testify to the revolutionary temper
and potential of the Black freedom struggle and mark its high
est point They demonstrate that the Afro-American minority
is destined to play a vanguard role in the social changes
leading up to the American revolution. Although the uprisings
ran out of steam in a few days or were put down with heavy
casualties and suffering, they are an inspiration to all genuine
revolutionists, Black or white.
With few exceptions the inhabitants of the ghetto did not feel
that they met with defeat On the contrary, their self-confidence
and combativeness have been enhanced. By shattering the image
of their alleged docility, they taught an important lesson to the
ruling class. They also dealt a stiff blow to the myth that mass
action by workers is no longer effective in modern, sophisticated,
urbanized America. Finally they showed that the demand for
Black control of the Black community is not a fringe notion
in the ghettos but expresses the will of its residents.
While these determined demonstrations go far to refute the
concept that the ghetto is "powerless," it would be unwise to

overlook or keep quiet about the shortcomings of these historic
actions. The uprisings were spontaneous- nobody planned
or instigated them, despite the lies of the witch-hunters who
are looking for scapegoats and excuses for devising new re
pressive measures. They were uncontrolled eruptions against
unbearable conditions.
Although in size and scope they were the most impressive
upheavals the United States has ever seen, they did not go be
yond the stage of protest. After they had subsided, the rela
tion of forces had changed but the lives of the ghetto dwellers
were not any better. For example, the social and economic
conditions in Watts remain essentially the 11ame two years
after the explosion there. The Black freedom fighters still face
the task of organizing the forces required to abolish the root
causes of their degradation.
Malcolm X stated that the revolutionary movement must
resolve to achieve "freedom by any means necessary." The
specific question at hand now is: What means are now neces
sary to best advance the struggle at this point? That is, what
tactics are in order under the given conditions?
Some advanced elements in the Black communities insist
that only armed struggle is warranted and anyone who ad
vises different tactics is cowardly or worse. They believe that
any sort of political organization and action is incompatible
with direct action. Their militancy is undeniable. But small
bands of men, however courageous and self-sacrificing, can
not serve as a substitute for the organized urban masses.
The main task at the present rudimentary stage of the strug
gle for power is not to hurl unorganized, unprepared masses
against the most highly organized, centralized, and formidable
power in the entire world, and even less to pit small
and scattered groups of armed men against it. The basic prob
lem is how most effectively to organize and educate these
masses and equip them with the proper understanding, leader
ship, program and perspectives.
The time for armed struggle does not come merely because
a few daring rebels are ready for it, talk about it, or want
it. It ripens as the culmination of a prolonged process of mass
mobilization after other available methods of action have been
tried and found wanting.
So far as the Black masses are concerned, the stage of elec
toral activity has not been exhausted; in fact, it has hardly
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.
That first requires the organization of these masses into

a formidable and independent political force. Blowing up the
Democratic Party would be an explosion of greater magnitude
and consequences than tearing down a hundred stores. Smash
ing the two-party system-which the strategically situated Black
minority can accomplish-would do a thousand times more
damage to the structure of American capitalism than burn
ing down a whole city. These political objectives can be
achieved with a powerful and well-organized independent Black
party.
What makes an independent Black political party possible
What makes it both possible and urgent for Black people
to build an independent party, which the ruling class does not
want, is the system of racial segregation which the ruling class
created and intends to maintain.
Segregation and urbanization have brought the Black people
together physically, especially in the politically decisive big
cities where in many cases they will soon be a majority of the
,
inhabitants. Segregation and discrimination are also bring
ing the Black masses together psychologically. It is now neces
sary to unite them politically on local, state, and national levels.
The rulers of this country do not care to have Black people
think of themselves as a distinctive group-with group con
sciousness, group interests, and group objectives. They go

to considerable trouble to persuade Blacks to accept the same
myths about "individual progress" that they have used to brain
wash white Americans. But in pursuing their own ends the
dominant powers create the very thing they don't want. They
not only force Black people to live together; they also make
them feel, think, and react together and in similar ways to
their oppression. The ghetto whose original function was to
facilitate economic exploitation and to split the working class
now plays an additional role unwelcome to the powers that
be. It can serve as a base and force to unite Black people
politically.
If the capitalist class had abolished racism, an independent
Black party would not have been possible. If the labor move
ment had broken with capitalist politics and launched a revo
lutionary struggle along socialist lines that included the
abolition of racism as one of its key demands, an independent
Black party would not have been likely. Such a party is now
possible and likely because capitalist development has created
the objective preconditions for it and closed off other avenues
for effective political struggle, and because other anticapitalist

forces, at least for the time being, have not opened up alter
native roads for political opposition.
A base for an independent Black party already exists and
only awaits serious efforts to organize it. In mid-1966, ac
cording to a national poll made in Newsweek, 7 percent of
the Black people said they were in favor of operating as a
"separate force" in politics, rather than through the Democrats
or Republicans. That survey was made prior. to the ouster of
Adam Clayton Powell from Congress, which added greatly
to resentment against the two major parties and disillusion
ment in working through them.
To be sure, 7 percent is a small minority of the Black popu
lation. But it is not an insignificant minority when an inde
pendent party has not yet been started or widely discussed,
when it is only an idea, and before it has had any oppor
tunity to show it can be established, work, and produce favor
able results. No political party starts with a majority of the
people it hopes to enlist. The majority has to be won over,
through struggle and education, by the more far-seeing mi
nority that creates the party. Seven percent of the Black popu
lation amounts to a million or so adults and young people in
their late teens. This is surely enough to launch a new party
and sustain it long enough to carry out the tasks of educating,
mobilizing, and winning the adherence of a majority of Afro
Americans.
An independent Black party can unite the Afro-American
masses of this country, North and South, urban and rural.
It can draw into activity millions who have felt that politics
is futile and it can raise the political understanding of Black
people as a whole. It can take over the political life of the
Black community. In fact, this is the only way the slogan and
concept of Black power can be politically realized.
In all areas where Black people are a majority, it can run

and elect to office representatives who will not have obligations
and allegiances to the capitalist parties and who will be re
sponsible to the Black community. A well-organized continuing
Black party, democratically controlled by its ranks, can control
its own candidates in office more strictly and thoroughly than
any committee that is set up for a single election campaign
can do.
A strong Black party will not only isolate and destroy the
Democratic and Republican party machinery in the ghetto,
doing away with two-timing political Uncle Toms, but will

bring about a vast increase in Black representation at all
levels of government. Instead of five or six members of Con
gress who are tied to. the capitalist parties and subject to their
pressures, there could be fifty or sixty who owed their elec
tion and allegiance to an independent Black party. Instead
of a relatively few state legislators and municipal councilmen,
there could be a large bloc of hundreds and thousands of
Black men and women elected to office as genuine represen
tatives and spokesmen for their people. They could take over
the operation of big cities in the North as well as sinall coun
ties in the South. For the first time Black Americans would
have a political voice that really spoke for them, a political
weight that could not be ignored or swept aside, a political
power that could make itself felt, both for defensive and of
fensive purposes.
Representatives of the Black people will be able to govern
in areas where they are a majority. In other areas, includ
ing Congress, they will be able to fight and or negotiate more
effectively than in the past. Both in situations that call for
political combat and situations that call for political nego
tiating, the representatives of an independent Black party would
compel respect from both their foes and their friends and would
extract far more concessions than Negro Democrats and Republi
cans ever have done up to now because they would be bar
gaining from a position of strength.
If an independent Black party accomplished only these things,
its organization would be justified. But by its mere existence
it will accomplish other things as well. The massive withdrawal
of Black voters from the Democratic Party-not to the Re
publicans, not into electoral abstention, but into a powerful
party of their own-would shake the political structure of
this country from top to bottom.
This comes from one of the basic facts of American life today.
The Black man can't stand up erect, can't even exercise his
democratic rights (that's what independent political organiza
tion would signify), without repercussions spreading through
out the United States. White men, rich or poor, upper or middle
or lower class, would have to move over or stand up too or
alter their stance in some other ways. When large numbers
of Black people act on their own, a lot of other people, like
it or not, will have to act and react too. When Black people
will move on their own account in the political field, others
will also find themselves moving politically, or being moved.

The Democratic Party is usually predominant not because
it is controlled by the capitalists (this fact is kept hidden or
denied as much as possible). Its strength comes from the sup
port received from a combination of sizeable noncapitalist
forces-the unions, segments of the middle class, the unem
ployed, the pensioners and retirees, along with the great ma
jority of Black people. The defection of the Black voters will
create an imTflediate crisis for this Democratic coalition. With
out the Black vote, the Democrats will be unable to carry the
big cities and thereby have great difficulties in winning na
tional elections and control of the White House or Congress.
Since the Democratic coalition is bound together not by any
principles or identity of interests, but by the belief that it can
win national and lesser elections, its growing incapacity to
do so will undermine the coalition's reasons for existence and
in the end break it up.
Inside the unions those elements that are discontented with
the pro-Democratic policy of the bureaucracy (and they are
more numerous than is now apparent) will be strengthened and
find it easier to win support for a struggle to establish an in
dependent labor party. Old alignments will disintegrate and
new ones will be formed. An independent party will be the best
means for Black people to protect and promote their welfare.
It will also be the best way for them to forge new alliances
with other noncapitalist forces in the conditions that will ensue
after the two-party system crumbles.
Back in Reconstruction days after the Civil War, political
action by Black freedmen in the South improved educational
facilities, equalized taxes, cut down illiteracy, abolished im
prisonment for debt, and instituted many other reforms in
city, county, and state governments. Picture what unified politi
cal action by millions of Afro-Americans could accomplish
today!
The nature of an independent Black party

The character of an independent Black party will, of course,
be determined by its founders and members in accord with
the needs and possibilities as they will see them at the time
the party is organized. Without being able at this time to an
swer such questions concretely, it is nevertheless possible on
the basis of past experience to discern certain problems that
the builders of an independent Black party will have to be
concerned about both in the preparatory and initial phases

of its organization.
How radical will such a party be? In terms of the political
spectrum in the United States, a political party created to the
leftof the Democratic Party and in opposition to it will in

escapably be labeled radical. How radical it will actually be,
and what kind of radicalism it will actually express, will de
pend on the composition and outlook of the leaders and forces
who launch the party and their evolution as they operate in
the political arena. If, to them, independence of the capitalist
parties means independence from capitalist politics, then it will
surely be a radical party. The chances of this are strong be
cause Black militants and revolutionaries will probably be the
chief advocates and founders of an independent party. But in
the final analysis the degree of its radicalism will depend on
the relationship of forces inside the groups that form and com
pose the new party.
Will it be a purely electoral party, or a party seeking to
intervene and involve the masses in every area of struggle
economic and social as well as political-that affects the in
terests of Black people? Will it seek to only elect candidates
to office or will it also seek to mobilize and educate the masses
by participating in and leading rent strikes, boycotts, demon
strations for jobs and control of decent schools, against police
brutality and military interventions against colonial freedom
fighters like the war in Vietnam? It is hard to see how an
independent Black party could become a mass force without
following the practice of total involvement
Will it be an all- Black party (like the Freedom Now Party
of 1963-4) or a party controlled and led by Blacks (like the
Lowndes County Freedom Party)? This is a question of tactical
expediency, not of principle. Both approaches have advantages
and drawbacks which will have to be carefully weighed.
The founders of the Freedom Now Party believed that an
all-Black organization would be more attractive to the Black
masses. Some of them still thought this was the best approach
after the Freedom Now Party collapsed, while others felt it
had been a mistake, not because of what white people thought
about it but because they concluded it had been a deterrent
to the recruitment of Black supporters.
The founders of the Lowndes County Freedom Party in
Alabama, on the other hand, left membership open to anyone
who accepted its program and worked loyally for it. Despite
this, control and leadership of the party remain with Black
people. The feeling among young militants in the North today

is decidedly in favor of all-Black organizations and they are
likely to demand an all-Black party when one is formed.
Just as it is difficult to envisage an independent Black party
confining itself exclusively to electoral activity, so it is difficult
to imagine that its program would be restricted to so-called
"racial" issues alone. Of course an independent Black party
will proceed from the needs of the Black community but this
very concern will inevitably lead it to consider positions and
take actions on the most viial and urgent national and in
ternational issues.
When it opposes the drafting of Black youth to kill colored
people in Vietnam, it will be impelled to take a position for
or against the war itself; its representatives in Congress will
have to vote for or against military appropriations. When it
demands jobs for Blacks, it will have to take a stand on the
fight for a shorter work week, a minimum wage, adequate
compensation for all the unemployed. When it demands funds
to replace the slums with decent housing for Black people,
it will have to take a position on the national budget and
how it is divided. When it demands the right to control the
schools in the Black community, it will also have to take a
position on the source of taxes and the way they are allocated.
Inevitably too, at some point, an independent Black party
will have to decide whether decent conditions of life, equality,
and freedom for the Black people are really attainable under
capitalism or whether a basically different, nonexploitative
system is necessary-and whether a change of such magni
tude can be effected through reform or requires revolutionary
mass struggle. This will squarely pose the issue of capitalism
versus socialism to the leaders, m embers and supporters of
a party of Black emancipation.
In the early stages many important and fundamental ques
tions of program and perspective will very likely be left un
touched, or even misjudged, as tends to happen at the beginning
of every new party. These will have to be thought through
and fought out in the course of the party's developme!lt as
it grapples with the problems involved in creating a better
life for all Afro-Americans.
Two pioneer experiences and their lessons

The two most significant recent experiments in independent
Black political organization have been the defunct Freedom
Now Party and the apparently thriving Lowndes County Free-
dom Party of Alabama. What lessons do they teach?

Some opponents of independent Black political action or
downhearted former supporters of it contend that the attempt
to build the Freedom Now Party turned out to be such a sad
failure that all future efforts along that line are bound to be.
unsuccessful. From this negative judgment they conclude that
the only realistic course now is to try and take over the Dem
ocratic Party in the ghetto and use it for the Black commu
nity's purposes. They disregard the fact that this policy has
been tried much longer and has given far poorer results.
Others propose some version of a "third force" that will be
a pressure group but not a political party. Still others look
for a third party like the Wallace Progressive Party of 1948
or talk about a "peace party" ticket.
In dismissing any future forms of independent Black pol
itics, they forget that all new and enduring political forma
tions in American history or elsewhere have had short-lived
predecessors. The Republican Party, launched in 1854, was
preceded by the Liberty and Free Soil parties of the 1840s.
John Brown's band failed to overturn the slave power or
abolish chattel slavery- but it prepared the way for the Civil
War that did. Jet travel is common today. Yet the first attempts
to build airplanes either crashed or never got off the ground.
The truth is that the project of an independent Black party
did not get a fair and full trial from the founders of the Free
dom Now Party and any subsequent attempt will have to
understand the mistakes that were made to avoid repeating
them.
The organization of the Freedom Now Party was not under
taken in a sufficiently serious, systematic, and sustained way.
A new mass party cannot simply be proclaimed; it has to be
created by passing through a series of stages. The skeleton
and backbone of the coming party has to be constituted through
an initial stage of education and propaganda devoted to de
veloping and clarifying its basic ideas, testing out its program,
and training its cadres. Only when this indispensable prelim
inary groundwork is completed can the founding forces reach
out and win over large numbers.
The national founders of the Freedom Now Party mixed
up these two main stages and tried to do everything all at
once. They thought it possible to leap over the tough prelim
inary chores of gathering, consolidating, and educating the
initial core. Then when the required organizers, administrators,
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-
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!
The problem of allies and alliances

It is the very nature and logic of political struggle. to seek
allies. Even majorities seek and make alliances. The question
is not whether an independent Black party would seek alliances
but what kind and with whom.
The necessity of alliances is not altered by the fact that Afro

Americans are part of a nonwhite majority in the world and
even less by the existence of differences with prospective allies.
Alliances are made specifically with forces and movements
with whom an organization is not in essential or complete
agreement. If there was complete agreement between the two,
unity rather than alliance would be on the agenda. Practical
agreements are made with forces which disagree on some or
many matters. Alliances are concluded on actions and aims
on which there is a coincidence of interests, even if only for a
temporary period, while "agreeing to disagree" on other things.
This right to disagree on some points while working together

on others is crucial. Without this right there is not an alliance
of equals but a dependent relationship of a subordinate to a
superior power. The existence of an independent Black party
would safeguard Afro-Americans against the wrong kinds of
alliance. They would not be forced into unfavorable or unequal
tieups because an independent organization always has the
option of getting up and walking out. It is not necessary to
agree to any move, tactic, or strategy which will injure your
cause so long as you are independent and able to withdraw
and act on your own.
At this juncture the major alliances possible for an indepen
dent Black party would be international. The American ruling
class that oppresses and exploits Black people at home has
a large and growing list of enemies abroad. It is feasible and
imperative for Afro-Americans to forge ties with the victims of
U.S. imperialism who are still in shackles, with those who
have broken them, and with those who are in the process of
breaking them. Malcolm X was stressing and striving to effect
such alliances at the time of his assassination because he knew
what healthy effects they could have on the progress of the
liberation struggle within the United States. Stokely Carmichael's
speech at the OLAS Conference in Havana and other Third
World capitals demonstrates that such alliances are in the mak
ing.
Once an independent Black party has the power and acquires
the skill to seek and make alliances on its own terms, then it
will also be possible to create useful alliances with domestic
forces. Among these will be the rebel youth, especially among
the students; the antiwar movement; the Spanish-speaking peo
ple (Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans); the American
Indians whose plight has been neglected by almost all the

forces in the country; poor white workers; and radical op
ponents of both capitalism and the trade union bureaucracies.
While none of these elements may approach the problems in
exactly the way Black militants do, those who are enemies of
the enemies of Black people at home can become partners on
certain issues and for certain stretches of the road, whatever
their staying power in the long run.
Cooperation with allies is part and parcel of the strategy
of splitting white America and driving wedges into its con
stituent elements with conflicting interests so that some whites
will fight others to the benefit of the Black people. An inde
pendent Black party would best enable Afro-Americans to em
ploy this tactic without surrendering their own interests, unity,
autonomy, or freedom of action. Successful maneuvering along
these lines would set an example for other potential anticapital
ist forces by encouraging them to break with capitalist politics
and showing them what independent political action can
achieve.
Why the SWP supports independent Black political action

The Socialist Workers Party believes that only a revolution
taking economic and political power away from the capitalist
exploiters and abolishing the system of production for profit
can cleanse this country of racism and enable Americans to
live in harmony, prosperity, and equality with one another
and with the rest of the world.
The Socialist Workers Party opposes the capitalist system
and its political agents who run the Democratic and Republican
Parties. It exposes all attempts to hoodwink and lure the work
ing people, Black or white, into supporting the candidates of
these basically white supremacist and antilabor parties on such
pretexts as "it's the man, and not the party, that counts. " The
S,1cialist Workers Party does not endorse "people's fronts,"
"antimonopoly coalitions," "lesser evil" choices, "third forces, "
so-called "peace candidates" or any other formations which
have not clearly and cleanly cut their ties with the capitalist
parties and asserted their independ ence of capitalist politics.
On the other hand, the Socialist Workers Party will support
and d efend those political forces and movements which repre
sent a genuine breakaway from capitalist politics, whether or.
not they are socialist-minded or oriented. Thus it advocates
the creation of an independent labor party by trade unions
and would back such a progressive step, whatever criticisms

it might have of a labor party's program and leadership.
Similarly, . the Socialist Workers Party favors the formation
of an independent party uniting Afro-Americans in political
struggle for their just rights and freedom. It believes that Black
people have the democratic right to decide their own destiny
and that, without such a political instrument, they cannot ef
fectively advance their immediate well-being or attain their
ultimate goals. That is why the Socialist Workers Party sup
ported the Freedom Now Party and supports the Lowndes
County Freedom Party.
There is no contradiction between adhering to the ideas of
revolutionary socialism and championing an all-Black party.
To be sure, the one is consciously opposed to the capitalist
order whereas the other may be only partially and potentially
directed against its domination. But both will stand arrayed
against a common enemy in the capitalist ruling class and
should travel along the same road toward the same destina
tion.
Because Black people are the most exploited, oppressed, and
aroused part of the population, it is reasonable to expect that
they will become the first mass force to cut loose from the
Democratic Party coalition and blaze a trail for others to follow.
If they should establish an influential party of their own which
carries through the fight against oppression and exploitation
to the end, Black Americans can be the vanguard of radical
change in this country and play a decisive role in revolution
izing its political life.
Malcolm X and the Struggle for
Independent Black Political Action
by Derrick Morrison
The following article is based on a speech delivered at Malcolm

X memorial m eetings in Chicago and Detroit on February
18-19, 1972. It appeared in the March 17, 1972, issue of The
Militant. The speech outlines the pioneering role played by
Malcolm X in initiating the drive for independent Black political
action outside the two-party system and reviews attempts in
this direction that have taken place since Malcolm's death.
I think we all recognize that a mass Black political organiza

tion does not exist in the United States today. The Black liber
ation movement right now is in a stage of crisis. Activists have
been bought off, coopted, demoralized, jailed, or just plain
murdered by the repressive apparatus of the state. There is
great disorientation and confusion.
It is for these reason.s that a renewed study of Malcolm X
can help throw some light on what has to be done and how
to do it For this reason, I would like to discuss the meaning
of Malcolm's ideas, particularly in relation to hammering out
a strategy for building a mass independent Black political or
ganization.
During the earlier phase of the movement when the civil
rights struggle predominated, the Nation of Islam, more popu
larly known as the Black Muslims, was the largest nationalist
organization around. The Muslims criticized the civil rights
movement for its nonviolent and moralistic approach to the
problem. Although many of these criticisms were correct, the
Muslims advanced them more as an excuse for not joining with
civil rights organizations in action against specific problems.
This all-talk-but-no-action approach to the problems of Black
people was the major factor that finally led Malcolm and a
group of other Muslims to break with Muslim leader Elijah
Muhammad in March 1964.
He did so with the intention of building a movement based
on self-defense against racist violence and on the concepts of
all-Black organization and all-Black leadership of the struggle.
84
Malcolm X and Black Political Action 85
We have to understand that these concepts were abhorred

by the civil rights leadership. SNCC, C ORE, S CLC, NAACP,
and the Urban League were all based on cooperation with
white capitalist liberalism. They taught that self-defense was
suicide when Black people were only 20 million in a nation
of 180 million whites.
However, despite this ideological backwardness, the civil
rights organizations were engaged in direct mass action for
"Freedom Now." This direct action mobilized and galvanized
Black people. The masses achieved a certain amount of self
confidence and won some partial victories. This in turn led
to greater demands and sharper confrontations with the capi
talist government.
The effect of this activity was to propel the masses beyond
the ideological restraints of the civil rights movement. For as
the masses became aware that racism was not merely a prob
lem of morality but went much deeper, they took bolder action
and reached for bolder ideas. To build a leadership based on
these ideas and to lead these actions was the task that Mal
colm cut out for himself. Malcolm recognized that the struggle
would pass over from a predominantly civil rights stage to an
explicitly nationalist stage. He and others created the Organiza
tion of Afro-American Unity ( OAA U) in July 1964 to partici
pate in the civil rights struggle while at the same time prepar
ing for the consciously nationalist stage of the movement.
The platform of the OAA U was the precursor of the national
ist ideas that became popular one, two, three, and four years
after it was written. Black power, Black community control of
the schools, Black community control of its social, economic,
and political life, independent Black political action in the elec
toral arena, Black control of Black cultural life- all of these
ideas received expression in the OAA U program. Pan-African
ism, that is, identification with the African continent, also found
expression in the OAA U program. However, before the OAA U
could sink roots and develop a cadre and organizational ap
paratus, its life was cut short by the assassination of Malcolm
X on February 2 1, 1965.
The U. S. imperialists understood too well what Malcolm was
about. The imperialists were trying unsuccessfully to deal with
national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America,
and could ill afford the launching of a national liberation strug
gle among Black people here. Malcolm's assassination was a
staggering blow to the movement for Black liberation. This
loss figures significantly in the severe crisis of Black leadership

today. For example, the beheading of Malcolm's movement
meant there was no organized leadership that could give ex
pression and a program to the sentiments unleashed by the
ghetto upheavals.
The rebellions gave vent to the long-suppressed rage, anger,
and fury of Black people in the United States. The civil-rights
organizations could not relate programmatically to this senti
ment In fact, there was an inverse relationship between the
reformism of the civil-rights organizations on the one hand
and the spontaneity and uncoordinated nature of the rebellions
on the other. The political bankruptcy of these organizations
conditioned that spontaneity and lack of coordination.
Had Malcolm been able to build an effective leadership and
organization, it is likely that the nationalist awakening would
then have assumed more organized forms, forms that would
have held mass street actions for Black control of the Black
community. This would have hastened the process of building
a mass nationalist organization. Just a sketch of this variant
gives us a measure of the loss of Malcolm. When the masses
exploded in Watts, Cleveland, Detroit, and Newark, his name
was constantly upon their lips. But all that they could find of
him were his ideas printed in books and recorded on tapes and
records. There was no organized formation led by him under
whose banner the awakened masses could group.
As it turned out, the initiation of nationalist organization
had to take place under the direct impact and direct influence
of the ghetto rebellions. Malcolm's ideas were read, but piecing
together his strategy and organizing a leadership around it
proved much more difficult Malcolm's strategy as outlined
in the OAA U program and expressed in speeches during the
last year of his life was a revolutionary-nationalist one. The
organization arising out of the period of ghetto rebellions that
came closest to this strategy was the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party and the Black student organizations
formed at that time were the most radical expressions of Black
nationalism and represented the highest level of independent
Black political organization reached during the period of the
ghetto rebellions. They sought to work out a concrete program
of nationalist demands and attempted to move Black people
into struggle around them. These nationalist demands included
the call for Black control of the Black community in the Pan-
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
the nationalist sentiments of the Black community in order to

channel them more effectively into reformist, particularly Dem
ocratic Party, activity.
First, I want to deal with the Congress of African People
( CAP) as one expression of reformist nationalism. Then I
want to discuss the Congressional Black Caucus as an ex
ample of one of the reformist currents taking a nationalist
posture.
At its inception in Atlanta on the Labor Day weekend of
1970, the Congress of African People called for a World African
Party, an international Pan-African political party. It coupled
this idea, however, with an effort to achieve a political bloc
with the Black reformists. At the same time that Imamu Amiri
Baraka ( LeRoi Jones), a leader of the CAP, talked of building
a world African vehicle, he was embracing Whitney Young
of the Urban League. Young was, and the Urban League is,
the epitome of gradualism, tokenism, and unvarnished depen
dence on the funds and support of white qapitalist corpora
tions.
It is impossible for the Urban League to serve as a founda
tion for building a world African party. Yet Baraka thinks he
can overcome this contradiction with talk of "operational unity. "
There is nothing wrong with nationalists trying to achieve
unity in action with the traditional Black reformists. That is,
if nationalists mobilize the Black community against a specific
act of police brutality or on a concrete case of housing or job
discrimination, then all segments of the Black community should
be represented in this united effort, whether they are Democrats,
Republicans, Socialists, or a member of the Urban League or
the NAACP. If nationalists call a Black demonstl'ation in de
fense of Zimbabwe or the struggle in Namibia ( South-West
Africa), then the broadest possible Black coalition should be
assembled.
But it is one thing to bloc with the traditional reformists
in concrete actions and quite another to bloc with them in
supporting capitalist politics. A political party involves a
broader range of questions than just a specific action or dem
onstration. Its function is to strive for political power. A na
tionalist party can only be built in opposition to the Democrats
and Republicans and in opposition to white capitalist liberalism.
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 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
early 197 1, Black Democrats have been busily forming caucuses

on the statewide, regional, and local level. All of these caucuses
serve one purpose- to facilitate the functioning of the machinery
of oppression in the Black community. That is their purpose,
despite all claims and rhetoric to the contrary.
Given all that I have said about the traditional reformists
and the reformist nationalists, how will the Black liberation
movement get out of the rut it is in and move toward the
vision and strategy outlined by Malcolm?
This is not an easy question to answer. There will be all
types of twists and turns and successes and failures, before
the Black community is organized into a mass independent
political organization. But what we can say at this point is
that there will be another upsurge, there will be another re
surgence of mass struggle simply because the reformists do
not hold the solution to the problems of Black people.
When the masses saw that civil-rights reformism did not
end the oppression in the ghettos, a new upsurge occurred in
the form of uncoordinated and spontaneous eruptions. As the
illusions about the present crop of Black reformists and re
formist nationalists wear thin, the basis will be laid for another
renewal of tremendous mass activity.
This next upsurge will be conditioned by a number of factors,
not least among them the example of the independent antiwar
movement, the independent Chicano movement, and the in
dependent women's movement.
If we agree that Malcolm remains the example not yet equalled
by any nationalist current in his advocacy of independent
political action and organization, and that his ideas captured
the spirit and the rage of this new Black awakening that began
in the Watts explosion back in 1965, then we can say that
Malcolm had a heavy hand in helping to prepare the ground
for the rise of the antiwar, women's liberation, and Chicano
liberation movements.
The various independent movements fighting oppression and
working for social change are not somehow compartmentalized.
They interconnect and penetrate one another because all of
them face the might of a single capitalist class and its state.
But the growth of these independent movements will not be
the only factor conditioning a resurgence. Another factor that
must be taken into account is the existence of a revolutionary
socialist party.
This factor is of no small importance. In fact, since the de-
mands of none of these movements can be fully satisfied within

the framework of American capitalist society, the existence of
a mass revolutionary-socialist party whose perspective is thaf
of socialist revolution will be key to the growth and victory
of these independent movements.
The coming American revolution will be a combined one,
a revolution combining the demands of the workers for an
end to capitalist exploitation with the demands of the Blacks,
the Chicanos, and other oppressed nationalities for national
liberation.
We don't have a mass revolutionary-socialist party today,
but we do have an organization armed with that perspective.
And that is the Socialist Workers Party. The Socialist Workers
Party, along with the revolutionary-socialist youth group, the
Young Socialist Alliance, has been instrumental in building
the independent movements of today. The SWP and YSA have
played key roles in building the antiwar and women's libera
tion movements. And they have supported and helped build
the Chicano struggle for self-determination.
While Malcolm was alive, and since his assassination, the
SWP and YSA have been instrumental in getting his ideas to
the public. The SWP and YSA have been active in all phases
of the Black liberation struggle. Our militants engaged in Black
antiwar activity and in organizing Black women in the cam
paign for the repeal of abortion and contraception laws and
for an end to forced sterilization.
So along with the independent movements for social change,
the growth and strength of the SWP and YSA will be a factor
in shaping the course of the next Black upsurge. Moreover,
part of the leadership of the next upsurge of Black mass activ
ity will come from Black revolutionary socialists in the SWP
and YSA, and Black activists in the antiwar and women's
movement. This is important to grasp, because it gives us a
dynamic conception of that next leadership rather than a static
and stagnant one.
How to Fight Racism
by Andrew Pulley
"How to Fight Racism" is based on a speech given before stu

dent audiences in the spring of 1973. The article points out
that racism is built into Am erican capitalism so that Black
liberation can never be achieved by "working within the system."
First published in the June 1973 Young Socialist, additional
material has been added for this collection.
A serious problem is plaguing the U.S. today: racism.

What is racism? What causes it? And how can it be fought
and defeated?
One of the best places to start is with one of the number
one racists in this country today: Richard Nixon. Let's
look at some of the ideas that he has been putting forward.
He's very typical of your average racist He doesn't bluntly
say that Black people are dumb, inferior, and lazy. Instead
he makes racist insinuations and innuendos. He talks about
the need to return to the "hard-work ethic" and the so-called
"merit system. "
What does Nixon mean when he talks about the "hard-work
ethic?" He is saying that Black people's poverty is caused by
laziness. Can you imagine? This man says that we, Black peo
ple, are lazy. Why, the sweat and blood of Black slaves built
this country! And Black people today do the hardest work and
are paid the least.
These racist slanders of the "commander-in-chief"' have been
designed to arouse the racist sentiment of white people who are
infuriated at Nixon's attacks on their standard of living. He
says that high taxes and spiraling inflation are caused by gov
ernment spending on social programs, like OE O ( Office of
Economic Opportunity) and "antipoverty" programs, which
were supposed to aid Black and other oppressed minorities.
So, in essence, he's saying to whites, "It is not I nor my govern
ment that is responsible for lowering your standard of living,
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.
It's a very conscious and deliberate thing. It is perpetuated by

the rulers of this country in order to rationalize their exploita
tion of Blacks as a cheap source of labor, and to divide Black
working people from white. Racism means billions of dollars
in extra profit for the capitalists. It is perpetuated by them to
make it look like the problems faced by white workers- the
problems of the cities, the problems of inflation, etc. -are ac
tually caused by Blacks. And racism is perpetuated to prevent
white and Black workers from getting together to solve these
problems.
In every capitalist country there always exists a group of
people who constitute the floor. I mean those who are at the
rock-bottom of society. This is true in Europe, in the United
States, and in all capitalist countries. When prices begin soar
ing because of government deficit spending, which is mainly
war spending, and when the government begins attacking the
standard of living of the people by cutting back the already
meager social services, it's the Black and other oppressed
minorities who are hit the hardest. Because it's those of us who
are the most victimized by this private profit system and its
racism who are most in need of those services.
Nixon's attacks on social services include drastic cuts in feder
al aid to hospital reconstruction and child care. He terminated
the $1 billion program to hire the "hard-core" unemployed. The
Office of Economic Opportunity has been eliminated. There is
a freeze on nearly all federally funded housing programs like
"model cities" and "urban renewal. " These cutbacks are made
while funds for war, war-related projects, and the police are
increased.
Nixon's racist assault against Black people encourages po
lice in the cities to step up th eir brutal attacks. To enhance
the cops' ability to enforce the laws, Nixon authorized a 7.5
percent increase in funding to police agencies.
In Detroit seventeen Black youths have been murdered by a
police assassin squad called STRESS (Stop the Robberies En
joy Safe Streets). Similar units exist in other cities to supple
ment the brutality Blacks suffer at the hands of the regular
cops. The money to pay for these special units comes from the
fed eral government Nixon's racist attacks against Black peo
ple are designed to put us on the defensive. The government
is trying to whip up white prejudice against us. They blame
us for the problems they cause. They try to make us the scape
goats!
Black people are concentrated in America's central cities,

.which are in decay. 12.5 million Black people are city resi
dents. As more and more Blacks moved to the cities, more and
more whites migrated to the suburbs. Let's take the case of
New York City. Between 1960 and 1970, the Black and Puerto
Rican population increased by one million. During that same
period, New York's white population declined by one million.
This depicts the basic trend throughout the country. In many
cities Blacks are a very large minority or even the majority.
And the poverty stricken condition of Afro-Americans mani
fests itself in the decay of the cities. One of the most graphic
descriptions of the situation appeared in the New York Times
Magazine of July 25, 1971. The city concerned was Newark,
New Jersey.
"Newark is a study of the evils, tensions, and frustrations
that beset the central cities of America. It is a city of 375,000,
an estimated 61 per cent Negro, 11 per cent Puerto Rican.
It is a city with an overall unemployment rate of 14 per cent
(25-30 per cent among Black and Puerto Rican); around 25
per cent of those who are employed work part-time, and there
are virtually no summer jobs and few programs for the city's
80,000 school children, who now roam the streets.
"As a result, one of every three Newarkers is getting some
form of public assistance. There are, by conservative estimate,
20,000 drug addicts in the city, and only 7 per cent of them
are being treated.
"Newark has the highest crime rate of any city in the nation;
the highest percentage of substandard housing; the highest
rate of venereal disease, new tuberculosis cases and maternal
mortality, and it is second in infant mortality."
In New York City's South Bronx the conditions are worse.
The South Bronx has a 35 percent Black and 65 percent Puerto
Rican population. Forty percent of the residents live on welfare.
The official unemployment rate is 30 percent. 60,000 of 80,000
housing units are substandard, with 20 percent being without
water and 50 percent without heat. The South Bronx's mortal
ity rate is 28.3 for every 1000 births. (The infant mortality
rate for New York as a whole is 20.8.) The South Bronx
has 25 percent of New York's malnutrition cases. And 5 per
cent of the South Bronx population are heroin addicts, i.e.,
20,000 people.
Martin Tolchin of the New York Times commented: "Even
for a native New Yorker, the voyage across the Willis Avenue
Bridge is a journey to a foreign country where fear is the

overriding emotion in a landscape of despair."
No, this is no foreign country though it is certainly a land
of despair. This is part of America!
What's the answer to these conditions and Nixon's attacks?
Let's look at the Democrats. Do they have solutions? They
have run the Congress for more than twenty years. However,
more schools are segregated, more housing units are sub
standard, and the income gap between Blacks and whites is
wider today than it was twenty years ago. And they call this
progress.
What has been the record of recent Democratic administra
tions? What was Johnson's "war on poverty" ? Nixon is right
when he says that the "war on poverty" didn't solve any of
the basic problems. The antipoverty programs did do some
very good, very important things-like provide money for
childcare, for headstart programs, for school lunch programs,
etc.- but the money was grossly inadequate. It was only a
token. And, in most cases, the money did not even reach the
people who needed it most. In many cases, it went to poverty
program officials who received exorbitant salaries. And this
was used by buy off young militants, to keep them within the
system, by offering them jobs with the poverty programs.
The "war on poverty" was inadequate and so are all the
other so-called solutions offered by the Democrats and the
liberals. They have no basic solutions to poverty, unemploy
ment, inflation, bad schools, and urban decay. So, they kow
tow to Nixon. They whip up racism too; they howl for "law
and order. " Congress has voted all the money the presidents
have needed to carry out the slaughter in Vietnam. And more
money has been allocated this year for continued imperialist
aggression in Southeast Asia. Yet these fork-tongued liberals
pretend to be antiwar. Democrats in Congress pretend to want
to help Black people, but all they do is talk. They remind
me of chickens in a coop who cackle all the. time but never
really do anything.
What is the answer?
The only way to begin solving the problems of Black people
is through crash programs with federal funds to provide hous
ing, jobs, hospitals, better schools, etc. Where can we get the
money? One thing we can do is cease spending money on war
and police and rechannel these funds. Another is change the
tax structure. All corporations must be taxed; banks and the
rich should be taxed. At present the super rich are not taxed.
On the contrary, they're on tax welfare. This is more com

monly referred to as tax benefits. $19
This comes to nearly
$50,000 a year, and $11.5
billion a year for families making
billion goes to those families making $100,000 a year, ac
cording to computerized analyses of returns by two Brookings
Institute economists. Did you know that 276 individuals with
incomes in excess of $1 00,000 paid no 1 971 ? This is
taxes in
the ruling class. These are the real beneficiaries of racism, the
owners of the wealth we produce.
When you talk about solving the problems of Black people,
you must question the capitalist system, that is, whether pro
duction should be done on the basis of private profit. It is
not profitable to build schools for Black children that are
controlled by Black people. It is not profitable to build low
income housing. If it was, you can bet your bottom dollar
these things would get done! What is profitable is racial dis
crimination against Black people which nets billions in extra
profits.
To solve our problems, we can't look to those who defend
the c apitalist system, the profit system. We can't depend on
Republican and Democratic politicians. These politicians are
either rich themselves or are financed by the rich and the super
rich. Their interests are not our interests.
To solve our. problems Black people must organize, inde
pendent of the bankers and businessmen and their political
parties. The very fact that Black people as a group are singled
out for concentrated racist oppression makes it natural that
part of the solutiop. to our problems lies in organizing Black
people around our specific problems.
The whole history of Black people shows that it has only
been when we have taken action ourselves and not relied on
the Democratic and Republican politicians to solve things for
us that we have made gains.
The segregation laws in the South wel'e broken down and
voting rights were won when Black people went into the streets
and struggled in the civil rights movement. The poverty pro
grams and any other concessions we have won, however limited,
have come from Black community struggles and rebellions.
Black studies departments and increased enrollment of Black
students in universities have come from struggles led by Black
student organizations. Black caucuses have appeared in the
trade unions, and organizations of Black Gls, sailors, and
airmen have shaken up the armed forces.
Part of the rising Black consciousness has been the demand
that Afro-Americans gain control over their own communities.

This has been a natural reaction to the fact that all of the
major economic, political, cultural, and educational institutions
are used by the system to perpetuate racism. This type of
demand was expressed in struggles such as the anti-STRESS
campaign in Detroit, where Black people organized to kick
this racist elite police unit out of the Black community; and
in District 1 in New York, where Puerto Rican, Black, and
Chinese parents, students, and teachers are fighting to gain
control of the schools in their community.
This Black awareness, self-confidence, and self-organization
has been summed up in the term Malcolm X used- Black
nationalism. It means the consciousness that if Black people
are to win freedom, we must take our destiny into our own
hands. It points the way toward abolishing racism. We want
to take the power over our lives out of the hands of the cap
italists and their parties and supporters and place it in the
hands of Black people.
Because the problems we face are rooted in the profit system,
our attempts to deal with them must be organized around de
mands that cut into the power of the racist big-business interests.
This means fighting together as Black people for all the things
we need- not only control over the institutions within our
communities, like the schools, but also for such things as ade
quate funds for these schools. It also means building an alter
native to the Republican and Democratic parties. We need to
end the support of Black people to the Democratic Party and
create our own party, a Black party with the perspective of
carrying on day-to-day struggles against the oppression of
Black people in the schools, in the streets, in the factories as
well as in the elections.
In order to deal racism a final blow, we also need something
else: the strength of all oppressed people in this country- op
pressed nationalities such as Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and
Asians and the strength of all working people, Black and
white, who are oppressed and exploited as a class- to launch
a joint struggle against capitalism. We have to utilize all of
our forces if we are to defeat the common enemy.
Black consciousness and the growth of an independent Black
movement, rather than cutting across such united action, ac
tually strengthens it. Blacks breaking with reliance on the
capitalist system provide a positive example for other groups
to unite with us in the struggle. Many of the economic and
social problems we face such as unemployment, inflation, hous

ing, childcare, are not just problems faced by Black people
and other oppressed nationalities. Everyone who works for a
living has to face them. They are problems for the whole work
ing class. Can you imagine the power we could unleash by
mobilizing the working class- the people in trade unions, the
unorganized, and the unemployed- to fight for solutions to
these common problems?
The independent struggles of Black people can play an im
portant role in bringing this about Already, wherever attacks
have been made against all working people, Black people have
played a leading role in fighting back and forging the links
for united action between Blacks and white workers. For ex
ample, it happened in a struggle I was involved in with other
Gls at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The struggle of Gls
against the war began with the Black and Puerto Rican soldiers,
but then it spread to the whites too. We held meetings indoors
and outdoors as large as three hundred on that base, and at
those meetings, we expressed our opposition to the war and
to racial oppression.
Another example is the recent meat boycott. It showed that
it's not only students, not only Blacks and Chicanos who get
mad at this government This boycott involved millions of
white workers. It was 80 percent effective in New York City,
and 50 percent effective nationally. And this is a struggle that
will continue. Food is a basic question which affects every
one!
The capitalist system has proven its inability to solve the
fundamental problems of war, racism, pollution, inflation, sex
ism, and inequality facing us today. It is only through strug
gles like those I've outlined- struggles which will unite white
workers and oppressed minorities against this system- that
will ultimately lead to revolution and the overthrow of cap
italism. This is why we are building the Young Socialist Al
liance, a socialist youth movement in solidarity with the rev
olutionary party of the United States, the Socialist Workers
Party.
When the unity between white workers, Blacks, and other
oppressed nationalities is achieved, we'll have the forces essen
tial to triumph over capitalism, and in so doing, we'll strike
a mortal blow against racism.
Defending the African Revolution
by Tony Thomas
"Defending the African Revolution" is based on a speech de

livered at the Pan-African Conference and Third World Sym
posium at Brandeis University May 3-6, 1973. It was first
published in The Militant in its June 1, 1973, issue, which
appeared the week before the May 26 African Liberation Day
demonstrations. The article outlines the important role that
mass action organized by Afro-Americans can play in defend
ing the liberation movements in Africa and the West Indies.
In the past few years a new wave of interest in the African

revolution has spread across the Afro-American community.
The African Liberation Day demonstrations and rallies set
for May 26, 1 973, in over twenty cities are a focus of this
interest.
On one hand, this new interest was spurred by the post
World War II upsurge of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. Mass struggles for national independence swept
the African colonies. The goal of self-determination was
achieved only in a partial and distorted form. The imperialists
of Western Europe and the United States continue to dominate
both economically and politically-the nominally independent
African countries.
On the other hand, the o;igin of the new interest in the
African revolution has come out of the Black liberation struggle
in this country. Afro-Americans began to take pride in their
cultural and historic roots as a defense against the psycho
logical and cultural genocide the capitalist system has attempted
against our people.
The liberation struggles in Indochina helped to inter
nationalize the struggle in the eyes of the Black community.
We saw that the government we were fighting against at home
was playing a similar reactionary role around the world.
U.S. imperialism was taking our tax dollars and making
big cutbacks in the already meager social services in our
1 00
Defend ing t he African Revolut ion 101
communities in order to pay for the war against the Indo

chinese peoples. Blacks were sent to Vietnam to die. We began
to recognize that the U.S. government's role in this country
and its role abroad could not be separated.
So it is not surprising that part of the liberation struggle
of Afro-Americans, part of the response to the rise of national
liberation struggles in Africa, part of the recognition of the
international role of U.S. imperialism, part of the growing
recognition of the African roots of Black people would be a
desire to defend the African revolution and oppose U.S. com
plicity in the effort to stop that revolution.
The necessity of such actions can be made even more clear
by reviewing the role of U.S. imperialism in Africa. U.S. in
vestments in Africa have mushroomed since World War II
as the U.S. became the dominant imperialist power. Between
1937 and 1949, for instance, Tanzania's exports to the U.S.
increased by 850 percent, those of Zambia by 3,000 percent,
those of Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi by 1,500 percent, those
of Kenya and Uganda by 400 percent, those of Angola by
4,300 percent, and those of Mozambique by 1,300 percent.
And these figures have continued to climb since then as the
U.S. has displaced the European colonial powers in many
parts of Africa.
Washington plays a politically reactionary role in Africa
as it does elsewhere in the world, giving political assistance
and military and economic aid to every government in the
world that is threatened by revolutionary overturns. The U.S.
government -whether under Republican or Democratic ad
ministrations- has used its resources to help prop up regimes
like the Haile Selassie dictatorship in Ethiopia, which is now
engaged in a savagely repressive struggle against the Eritrean
liberation fighters as well as against its own people. It has also
given aid to the remaining colonial powers and white-settler
regimes: Spain, Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa.
The phenomena we call the African revolution- the desire
of the peoples of Africa to throw off foreign economic
domination whether it is expressed through colonialism or
neocolonialism; the struggle of Africans to modernize their
societies and solve pressing problems such as land reform and
literacy; the desire of African workers and peasants to throw
off their exploiters both African and imperialist; the struggle
of oppressed nationalities for national liberation within African
countries- all these struggles run directly or indirectly into
conflict with U.S. imperialism's political, military, and eco-
nomic role in Africa. We should have no doubt that when a

major struggle threatens to overturn one of the neocolonialist,
colonialist, or white-settler regimes in Africa, U.S. imperialism
will not hesitate to intervene directly if the Nixons, Kennedys,
Rockefellers, etc., think they can get away with it.
One very important factor limiting the ability of Nixon or
his successors to intervene in such a situation will be the extent
to which mass opposition in this country is mobilized. The
African liberation support movement is helping to lay the basis
for such opposition. This movement points out that the actions
of the U.S. government and the corporations that invest in
Africa are not in the interests of the masses of people in this
country, Afro-Americans in particular. While the government
gives hundreds of millions of dollars to Portugal in order for
it to wage wars in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique,
Nixon is cutting back on child care, welfare, old-age pensions,
and other social services. Nixon's economic policies mean our
wages are held down while prices and profits soar.
The government's aid to the Rhodesian and South African
regimes, which practice the most brutal forms of racist op
pression, must be related to the struggles in this country against
racism and segregation. In a country where there is so much
government hypocrisy concerning "freedom" and "democracy,"
we can turn the prodemocratic sentiments of the masses of peo
ple against the government by calling for solidarity with the
struggles of African people for democracy and independence.
In a country where many people are now struggling for
better working conditions, defense of unions against . the big
corporations and the government, we can expose how the gov
ernment and the big corporations are deeply involved in the
Portuguese colonies and South Africa, where it is illegal for
Africans to organize and defend their rights as workers. We
can show thaf'it is in the interests not only of Afro-Americans
but of the majority of people in this country to oppose the
U.S.'s reactionary role in Africa.
Currently the central focus of activity in defense of the African
revolution is centered on the U.S. role in southern Africa and
Guinea-Bissau. That is for good reason.
The African peoples of these countries are deprived of all
basic rights. In Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and
Namibia, Africans are demanding independence. In South
Africa and Rhodesia, they are demanding that Black Africans
be given full political and economic rights. The different
colonial and "apartheid" systems the white settlers and colo
nialists use to govern these areas are aimed at ensuring
Defend ing the African Revolution 103
extreme exploitation of African labor. Under these conditions,

focusing on the U.S. role in propping up these regimes can
have important consequences.
Under the colonialist heel African workers receive a pittance.
In Durban, South Africa, African workers average $30 per
month (white workers average $475). In Namibia- in 1966
before the South African regime stopped publishing statistics
Black workers were averaging between $5 and $ 15 per month.
And these figures are higher than those prevailing in the Por
tuguese colonies.
The peoples of these countries have resisted their oppression.
In Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, and
Angola armed struggle is being waged for independence. Mas
sive actions have periodically broken out against the South
African and Rhodesian settler regimes. Mass demonstrations
and boycotts shook South Africa in 1959 and 1960 against
the imposition of the pass laws, culminating in the Sharpeville
massacre. In 1972 thousands of Ovambo miners struck and
d emonstrated in Namibia. In February of this year ( 1973),
dockers and other Black and Asian workers in Durban and
in other South African cities launched a massive wave of illegal
strikes that the apartheid regime has been unable to crush.
And the sisters and brothers in South Africa are continuing
these actions to this day.
We have to show the masses of people in this country how
U.S. imperialism has given full support to the Portuguese
colonialists and white settler regimes in their efforts to crush
the liberation struggles. We have to show how Washington
has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the war
machine of the Portuguese government. We have to show how
this aid has been crucial to the ability of the Portuguese to
carry out their wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea
Bissau as well as to preserve their repressive internal regime
in Portugal itself.
Portuguese officers and soldiers have even received military

training in the U.S. at "Green Beret" facilities at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina. Military equipment given to Portugal as a
member of NA T O is being used in Angola, Mozambique, and
Guinea-Bissau. Defoliation chemicals and napalm developed
and produced by the U.S. for use in Indochina have been put
to similar use in these colonies. The U.S. military communi
cations base at Kagnew station in Ethiopia is being used to
spy on the anti-Portuguese freedom fighters.
U.S. support for South Africa and Portugal is linked to the
heavy U.S. investment in southern Mrica. It is also linked

to the fear that the germ of revolution will spread throughout
Africa. There are 292 U.S. corporate subsidiaries or affiliates
in the Republic of South Afr.ica- not including chiefly South
Mrican and foreign-owned firms with U.S. investment -ac
cording to the July 1972 Fortune. " Their direct investment,"
Fortune reported, "is close to $900 million, and their returns
on that investment have been romping home at something
like 10 percent a year, after taxes ($171-million)." Fortune
also reported a poll showing that three-quarters of U.S. and
Canadian businessmen involved in these firms openly support
the apartheid system of racial discrimination. This is only
natural as they share in the superprofits that result from the
extreme exploitation of Black South Mrican workers. Fortune's
poll lays to rest the myth that these firms are more liberal
than local firms and thus are capable of helping South Mrican
workers, as has been alleged by Roy Wilkins of the NAA CP
and other apologists for capitalism.
We have to expose the massive U.S. exploitation and invest
ment in Portuguese Africa. Three years ago in its July-August
1970 issue, Africa Today listed scores of American firms
involved in Angola and Mozambique. They include Allis
Chalmers, American Cyanamid, Caterpillar Tractors, Caltex
Oil, Chase Manhattan Bank, Firestone Rubber and Tires, Gen
eral Electric, Gulf Oil, Holiday Inns, Mobil Oil, IBM, National
Cash Register, Singer Sewing Machines, Standard Oil of
California, I T T, Tenneco Oil, Texaco Oil, and Union Carbide.
These are the cream of the U.S. financial crop benefiting from
the denial of self-determination to the peoples of Angola and

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
End all U.S. corporate trade, investment, and cooperation

with Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa;
End all U.S. government military and financial aid to Por
tugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa.
The most significant step in this direction has been the call
for the May 26, 1973, African Liberation Day activities by
the African Liberation Support Committees. These activities
should be continued after May 26 in a series of teach-ins, meet
ings, demonstrations, and other actions that can reach out
to Afro-Americans and other potential supporters of the African
liberation struggles.
Why Women's Liberation Is
Important to Black Women
by Maxine Williams
The following article, which first appeared in the July 30,

1970, issue of The_ Militant, is based on a talk given to a class
on women's liberation. It points up the importance for Black
women of the demands raised by the women's liberation move
ment and refutes the idea that a "matriarchal dominance" in
the Black community is responsible for the problems faced by
Black people as well as the idea that Black women's role in
the Black liberation movement should be confined to "support
ing their men" and producing "revolutionary" babies.
In the early part of the sixties, social scientists became more

and more interested in the family structure of Blacks. Un
employment and so-called crime among Blacks were increas
ing, and some of these "scientists" decided that the problems
of the Black community were caused by the family pattern
among Black people.
Since Blacks were deviating from the "norm" -more female
heads of households, higher unemployment, more school "drop
outs"- these pseudoscientists claimed that the way to solve
these problems was to build up a more stable Black family
in accord with the American patriarchal pattern.
In 1965, the U.S. government published a booklet entitled
The Negro Family- The Case for National Action. The au
thor ( U.S. Dept. of Labor) stated, "In essence, the Negro com
munity has been forced into a matriarchal structure which,
because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society,
seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole."
According to this theory, the institution of slavery led to a
breakdown in the Black family and the development of a so
called matriarchy, in which the Black woman was "dominant."
This "matriarchal" structure was held responsible, in turn, for
contributing to the "emasculation" of the Black man. In other
words, as these people would have it, the oppression of Black
people was partly caused by the victims of this oppression,
Black women!
1 06
Women's Liberation and Black Women 107
This myth of the Black matriarchy has had widespread in

fluence and is even widely believed in the Black community
today. It is something we have to fight against and expose.
To show just how wrong this theory is, let's look at the real
condition and history of the so-called dominant Black woman.
Under slavery, once arriving on American soil, the African
social order of Black people was broken down. Tribes were
S_!:!parated and shipped to different plantations. Slaves under
went a process of desocialization and had to adopt a new
culture and language.
Up until 1840, Black men greatly outnumbered Black wom
en. Sociologist E. F. Frazier indicates, in his book The Negro
Family in the U.S., that this probably led to "numerous cases
of sex relations between Negro slaves and indentured white
women." The "marriage" rate between Black men and white
women became so high that interracial "marriages" were banned.
Prior to this time, Black men were encouraged to "marry"
white women in order to enrich the slavemaster's plantation with
more human labor. The Black man in some instances was able
to select a mate of his choice. However, in contrast, the Black
woman had little choice in the selection of her mate. Living in
a patriarchal society, she became a mere breeding instrument
Just as Black men were chained and branded under slavery,
so were Black women. Lying nude on the slave ship, some
women gave birth to children in the scorching hot sun.
There were economic interests involved in the Black woman
-
having as many offspring as she could bear. After her child
was born, she was allowed to nurse and fondle the infant
only at the slavemaster's discretion. There are cases of Black
women who greatly resisted being separated from their chil
dren and having them placed on the auction block, even though
they were subject to flogging. And in some cases, the Black
woman took the lives of her own children rather than submit
them to the oppression of slavery.
There are those who say that because the Black woman
was in charge of caring for the slavemaster's children, she
became an important figure in the household. Nothing could
be further from the truth. The Black woman became the most
exploited "member" of the master's household. She scrubbed
the floors, washed dishes, cared for the children, and was often
subjected to the lustful advances of Miss Ann's husband. She
became an unpaid domestic. However, she worked outside
as well.
Still today many Black women continue to work in house

holds as underpaid domestics. And as W.E.B. Du Bois stated
in his essay The Servant in the House, " The personal degrada
tion of their work is so great that any white man of decency
would rather cut his daughter's throat than let her grow up to
such a destiny."
In this way arose the "mammy" image of Black women
an image so embedded in the system that its impact is still
felt today. Until recently, the mass media has aided in rein
forcing this image, portraying a Black woman as weighing
two hundred pounds, holding a child to her breast, and/ or
scrubbing floors with a rag around her head. For such a
one, who was constantly portrayed with her head to the floor
and her behind facing the ceiling, it is ludicrous to conceive
of any dominant role.
Contrary to popular opinion, all Black women do not willing
ly submit to the sexual advances of white men. Probably every
Black woman has been told the old myth that the only ones
who have had sexual freedom in this country are the white man
and the Black woman. But in many instances, even physical
force was used to compel Black women to submit. Frazier
gives a case in his book where a Black woman who refused
the sexual advances of a white man was subdued and held
.to the ground by Black men while the "master" stood there
whipping her.
In some instances, Black women stood in awe of the white
skin of their masters and felt that copulation with a white man
would enhance her slave status. There was also the possibility
that her mulatto offspring would achieve emancipation. Her
admiration of white skin was not very different from the slave
mentality of some Blacks which caused them to identify with
their masters.
In some cases, the Black woman who submitted herself
sexually played a vital role in saving the life of the Black
man. H she gave the master a "good Iovin'," she could some
times prevent her husband from being horsewhipped or
punished.
The myth that is being perpetuated in the Black community

states that somehow the Black woman has managed to escape
much of the oppression of slavery and that all avenues of
opportunity were opened to her. Well, this is highly interest
ing, since in 1 870 when the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed
citizens the right to vote, this right did not apply to the Black
woman.
During Reconstruction those Blacks who served as justices

of the peace and superintendents of education, and in mu
nicipal and state governments, were men. Although the Re
construction period was far from being an era of "Black rule, "
it is estimated that thousands of Black men used their votes
to help keep the Republicans in power. The Black women
remained on the outside.
To be sure, the Black man had a difficult time exercising
his right to vote. Mobs of whites waited for him at
the voting booth. Many were threatened with the loss of jobs
and subjected to the terror of Klan elements. The political
activity for the Black man was relatively ephemeral, but while
it lasted, many offices for the first time were occupied by them.
The loose ties established between Black men and women
during slavery were in many cases dissolved after emanci
pation. In order to test their freedom, some Black men who
remained with their wives began flogging them. Previously,
this was a practice reserved only for the white master.
In the late 1860s and early 1870s, female heads of house
holds began to crop up. Black men who held jobs as skilled
craftsmen, carpenters, etc., were being driven out of these
occupations. Since the Republicans no longer needed the Black
vote after 1876, the ''welfare" of Blacks was placed in Southern
hands. Black men found it very difficult to obtain jobs and,
in some instances, found employment only as strikebreakers.
Black men, who were made to feel "less of a man" in a racist
oppressive system, turned toward Black women and began
to blame them for the position they occupied.
The Black woman, in some cases left to herself with chil
dren to feed, also went looking for employment. Many went
to work in the white man's kitchen. Du Bois in the same essay
mentioned earlier, The Servant in the House, gives a vivid
portrayal of the exploitation of domestic workers. He speaks
of the personal degradation of their work, the fact that they
are still in some instances made to enter and exit by the side
door, that they are referred to by their first name, paid ex
tremely low wages and subjected to the sexual exploitation
of the "master."
All of this proves that because the Black woman worked,
it did not make her more "independent" than the white woman.
Rather she became more subject to the brutal exploitation
of capitalism- as Black, as worker, as woman.
I mentioned earlier that after emancipation, Black men had
a difficult time obtaining employment, that after emancipation
1 10 Black Liberation and Socialism
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.
Due to the shortage of Black men, most Black women are

forced to accept a relationship on male terms. In Black com
munities there sometimes exists a type of serial polygamy
a situation where many women share the same man, one at
a time.
As if the Black woman did not have enough to contend
with- being exploited economically as a worker, being used
as a source of cheap labor because she is a female, and being
treated even worse because she is Black- she also finds her
self fighting the beauty "standards" of a white Western society.
Years ago it was a common sight to see Black women
wearing blond wigs and rouge, the object being to get as
close to the white beauty standard as one possibly could. But,
in spite of the fact that bleaching creams and hair straighten
ers were used, the trick just didn't work. Her skin was still
Black instead of fair and her hair kinky instead of straight.
She was constantly being compared t o the white woman, and

she was the antithesis of what was considered beautiful. Usu
ally when she saw a Black man with a white woman, the
image she had of herself became even more painful.
But now "Black is beautiful," and the Black woman is play
ing a more pron:tinent role in the movement. But there is a
catch! She is still being told to step back and let the Black
man come forward and lead. It is ironic that at a time when
all talents and abilities should be utilized to aid in the strug
gle of national liberation, Stokely Carmichael comes along
and declares that the position of women in the movement
should be "prone."
And some years later, Eldridge Cleaver in referring to the
status of women said they had "pussy power." Since then, the
Black Panther Party has somewhat altered its view, saying
"women are our other half."
When writing their political statement, the Republic of New
Africa stated they wanted the right of all Black men to have
as many wives as they can afford. This was based on their
conception that this is the way things were in Africa. (In their
publication, The New Africa, written in December 1969, one
of the points in their Declaration of Independence seeks "to
assure equality of rights for the sexes." Whether this means
that the Black woman would be allowed to have as many
husbands as she can afford, I have no way of knowing.)
So today the Black woman still finds herself up the creek.
She feels that she must take the nod from "her man," because
if she "acts up," then she just might lose him to a white
woman. She must still subordinate herself, her own feelings
and desirs, especially when it comes to the right of having
control of her own body.
When the birth-control pill first came into use, it was ex
perimentally tested on Puerto Rican women. It is therefore
not surprising that Third World people look at this example
and declare that both birth control and abortion are forms
of genocide-devices to eliminate Third World people.
However, what is at issue is the right of women to control
their own bodies. Enforced motherhood is a form of male
supremacy; it is reactionary and brutal. During slavery, the
plantation masters forced motherhood on Black women in
order to enrich their plantations with more human labor.
It is women who must decide whether they wish to have
children or not. Women must have the right to control their
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.
She has always had to work. Before the Emancipation Proc

lamation, she worked in the fields of the plantation, as Mal
colm X put it, "from can't see in the morning until can't see
at night."
And what is liberation under this system? Never owning
what you produce, you are forced to become a mere com
modity on the labor market. Workers are never secure and
their length of employment is subject to the ups and downs in
the economy.
Women's liberation must relate to these problems. What is
hampering it now is not the fact that it is still composed of
mainly white, "middle-class" women. Rather it is the failure
to engage in enough of the type of actions that would draw
in and link up with the masses of women not yet in the move
ment, including working and Black women. Issues such as
day care, support for the striking telephone workers, sup
port for the laws which improve working conditions for women
and the campaign to free Joan Bird are steps in the right
direction. (Joan Bird is one of the New York Black Panther
members, who was unjustly held in jail for months awaiting
trial, because of the excessively high bond demanded by the
courts.)
I don't feel, however, that white women sitting around a
room, browbeating one another for their "racism," saying, "I'm
a racist, I'm a racist," as some women have done, is doing a
damn thing for the Black woman. What is needed is action.
Women's liberation must not isolate itself from the masses of
women or the Third World community. At the same time,
white women cannot speak for Black women. Black women
must speak for themselves.
This is why there was a need for a revolutionary Black
women's movement to speak to the oppression of Black women
as Blacks, as workers, as women.
We feel that Black women will have a difficult time relat
ing to the more bitter antimale sentiment in the women's lib
eration movement, fearing that it will be a device to keep
Black men and women fighting among themselves and di
verting their energies from the real enemy. Many Black women
realize it will take both men and women to wage an effective
struggle. However, this does not negate the necessity of wom
en building our own movement, because we must build our
struggle now and continue it after the revolution if we are
to achieve real emancipation.
When the Black woman begins to recognize the depth of
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
The following article first appeared in the September 1972

issue of the Black Scholar, a journal of Black studies and
research. It is an answer to Black "Marxist-Leninists" who
claim that Black nationalism is a diversionary force that leads
away from the socialist revolution and Black liberation.
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
them did, particularly those who went on to build the Black

Panther Party, was to become ideological, adopting the Marxist
Leninist class analysis, which even negated our nationalism.
" ... We were getting further and further into ideology, deeper
and deeper into Marxism-Leninism, and the other aspects of
our African connectedness was defmitely downgraded, as part
of our struggle with the cultural nationalists" (p. 35, emphasis
added).
A recent spokesman for the former revolutionary-nationalist,
now antinationalist "Marxist-Leninists," is brother Earl Ofari.
In an article commenting on an interview with Kathleen Cleaver
-who herself criticizes "excesses" of nationalism in the New York
Panthers-Ofari states:
. . . The more advanced sections of the black movement

in America now argue that black nationalism, including
"revolutionary nationalism," is reactionary and does nothing
but retard the struggle.
Nationalism often leads to alliances with some of the most
backward elements in the black community. There can never
be a principled "all-class" unity with black millionaires,
politiCians, police officials, businessmen, professionals, etc.
on the part of true revolutionaries. : . .
I hope the Cleaver faction recognizes that black national

ism at this point, represents a retreat from revolutionary
principles.L
[ .A Free Press, October 30, 1971, p. 27.]
Ofari proposed "that new organizational forms must revolve

around the black working class," and also attempted to claim
that the uprisings in Detroit and Newark in 1967 "were working
class uprisings," as opposed to ,expressions of the nationalist
consciousness of our people.
Ofari is guilty of ignorance of the real Marxist position on
the nationalist movement of oppressed peoples. He formally
counterposes the struggle for national liberation of all Black
people to the struggle of Afro-American workers against class
exploitation. He also falsely identifies the politics of reformists
and sellouts in the Black nationalist movement with the essence
of Black nationalism.
Lenin is considered the chief Marxist authority on the question
of national liberation, due to his experiences in the Russian
revolution and the Communist International. In summary, his
position on the national liberation struggle-which can be
seen as the basics of Marxism on this question-can be stated
in these four main points.
Black Nationalism and Confused Marxists 117
1) Revolutionaries must give unconditional support to all

sections of the oppressed people in the struggle against their
oppressors, including the unconditional right of the oppressed
to self-determination.
2) The struggle for national liberation is a combination of
the class struggle for liberation of the mo$t oppressed sections
of the oppressed, and the overall struggle of oppressed people
as a whole for national liberation. The solution of all the
problems of oppressed nations cannot take place without de
stroying capitalism. This does not negate the importance of
nationalist demands that do not explicitly call for the downfall
of capitalism; rather it proves that by posing them in a revo
lutionary fashion, such nationalist demands can play a decisive
role in making a socialist revolution.
3) The national capitalist classes of oppressed nations are
incapable of bringing real national liberation due to their
neocolonial ties with world imperialism and their fear of the
power of the masses of workers and peasants who might
transform the struggle for national rights into a complete social
revolution. This is expressed by the national capitalists' attempts
to brake the struggle for national liberation and by their eco
nomic and political ties with world capitalism. Likewise, being
the most exploited, workers and Other oppressed classes of the
oppressed nations are the best fighters for nationalist demands.
4) Revolutionaries can and should support and participate
in nationalist movements of oppressed peoples that are not
based on the national-capitalist elements, utilizing them as
a key weapon in the fight for socialism.
This Leninist position on the national struggle has been
suppressed by the leadership of the Soviet Union and the Com
munist parties since the 1920s. On the one hand they have
susbstituted the two-stage theory of revolution, in which the
national liberation struggle and the struggle for socialism are
separated into different historical stages- and in theory and
practice the "backward" nations are told that they cannot directly
proceed to socialism. On the other hand they have developed
the idea that nationalist movements, like the Black nationlist
movement in the U. S., are completely reactionary.
Ofari's view flows from a misconception of Marxism, fostered
by these falsifications of Lenin's ideas on national liberation.
From a Leninist point of view as we have seen, support to
Black nationalism is a principled revolutionary position.
The subjugation of Afro-Americans in the U.S. has been
basic to the existence of capitalism here for four hundred years.
This is not only true in terms of the vast economic gains im-
perialism has gotten through the exploitation of our people,

but also due to political advantages gained for imperialism
by the permeation of the European-American masses withracist
ideology. If anything, the position of the Afro-American nation
in the U.S. is even more strategic today because we are con
centrated in the major industrial and urban centers on which
the entire economy rests and because our links with African
people and other oppressed peoples internationally are increas
ingly strong.
This oppression is more than simple exploitation of Black
workers "at the point of production." It covers every facet of
the lives of all African people in this country. Every institution
is used to maintain this oppression. All Black people are tar
gets of this oppression. The overall national oppression of
all our people and the class exploitation of Black workers
are indissolvably linked. A program for the liberation of Afro
Americans from one aspect of this oppression. must be .a pro
gram for the liberation from the other as well.
Black nationalism demands complete Afro-American control
over the economics, politics, culture, education, and every other
sphere of the life of Black people. It recognizes that we must
rely on our own power to gain this. In its revolutionary form,
as advocated by Malcolm X, it proposes a program for mass
action and mass organization to gain Black liberation.
Obviously, these goals cannot be achieved without a revolu
tion that could destroy capitalism. Obviously, these goals will
result in the death of U.S. imperialism. Obviously, Marxist
Leninists whose main aim is to destroy capitalism and im
perialism can only define a movement of oppressed people
for such goals as a revolutionary, not a reactionary, move
ment.
Ofari and other opponents of Black nationalism claim that
Black nationalism leads to "all-class .unity" and alliances with
Black reactionaries. Ofari counterposes to these "pitfalls" build
ing Black workers' organizations.
It is incorrect to counterpose Black workers' organizations
to Black nationalism. Nationalism can play a decisive role
in the organization and mobilization of Black workers.
Historically, Black urban workers have been the base for
Black nationalism. It is no coincidence that the rise of Garvey
ism coincided with the mass influx of Black people into industry
during and after World War I and that the UNIA's main base
in the U.S. was in the big cities, North and South. Malcolm's
main following was among Black workers.
Blcu:k Nationalism and Confused Marxists 119
Black workers, after all, do not face oppression simply as

workers, but as Blacks as well. Black workers face the same
racist conditions in housing, education, medical facilities, police
brutality, cultural genocide,. that all of us face. Even "at the
point of production," Black workers face national as well as
"class" oppression.
Indeed, exactly because of their class exploitation, Black
workers feel the effects of our national oppression much more
sharply than the "black millionaires, politicians, police officials,
businessmen, professionals," that Ofari fears.
As Lenin pointed out, the oppression of Black workers, the
overwhelming bulk of our people- is national and class op
pression combined. These are not two separate things added
together but a complete mixture of the two aspects of Black
oppression into one distinct entity.
The idea that struggling around nationalist demands prevents
the mobilization and organization of Black workers is wrong.
The main forces involved in the mass struggles of the Afro
American people have been made up of Black workers, em
ployed and unemployed and their children. The massive
uprisings that shook the Black communities in places like
Watts, Detroit, and Newark in the mid-1960s were not con
ceived of as special "Black workers" uprisings, but as part
of the overall revolt of Afro-Americans as a people. It is by
projecting an overall revolutionary-nationalist program that
Afro-American Marxist-Leninists can mobilize the masses of
Black workers as well as by "workers' organizing."
This is not to deny the importance of Black workers. Espe
cially with Nixon's "new economic policy," the struggle of Black
workers "at the point of production" plays an increasingly
crucial role in the liberation of our people. The appearance
of Black union caucuses and the development of other Black
workers' organizations such as the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers are results of the nationalist consciousness
sweeping the plants.
The power and extent of Blac workers' organizations can
be increased by their relating to a nationalist strategy for the
overall community. Forces from every sector of the Black
community can be utilized to support the Black workers' strug
gles, and likewise the power of Black workers at the point of
production can be utilized in every portion of the Black strug
gle.
In <;leveloping a strategy andprogram for Black liberation,
we must rect the economist view- which only looks to Black
workers' economic role as being important- for a political

view aiming at every single aspect of our oppression.
Ofari claims that Black nationalism is "all-class" unity and
claims that it will "lead to alliances with some of the most
backward elements of the black community." Ofari has no
understanding of the Marxist view of the capitalists of op
pressed nations, or for that matter, of the need to fight them,
as opposed to running away from them.
The fact that many who pose as nationalists advocate Black

capitalism and work in the Democratic Party does not prove
Black nationalism to be reactionary any more than the fact
that there are a number of Afro-American unionists who have
reconciled themselves with the racist class-collaborationist poli
cies of the top union bureaucrats proves that Black workers'
organizing is reactionary. Just as the policies of these bureau
crats are against the needs and interests of Black workers,
so these phony "porkchops" carry out strategies that are against
the grain of Black nationalism.
Operating in the Democratic Party, trying to build Black
capitalism under Nixon's aegis, being a poverty-program pimp,
hardly meets the defmition of consistent Black nationalism.
All these strategies of reliance and alliance with the institutions
that maintain the oppression of Black people can hardly be
called consistent Black nationalism.
To write off the Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist move
ments because such "porkchop" elements are in them, is to
bestow to the "porkchops" a monopoly of leadership of the
Black nationalist movement and the masses of Black workers,
students, women, and unemployed who support it. It is only
by waging "class struggle" within the Black nationalist move
ment, by projecting a consistent program for mass nationalist
action, by demanding that Black people build organizations
financed by Black people and organizations controlled by
Black people, which will fight for freedom for our people by
any means necessary, that Black Marxist-Leninists can win
the leadership of the masses of our community from the "pork
chops."
The most important organization within the Black liberation
struggle attempting to deal with the question of the relation
ship between Black nationalism and Marxism in recent years
has been the Black Panther Party. Unfortunately, as Cleaver
has pointed out, the Panthers failed to understand the consis
tency. of the two political strategies.
This idea that becoming Black Marxist-Leninists negates
Black nationalism encouraged the Panthers to retreat from

the Black-nationalist principles that they had been founded
on, and from the means that could have enabled them to mo
bilize and involve masses of B.lack people. Failure to under
stand the importance of Black nationalism was one of the
main reasons, in my opinion, for the demise and subsequent
splits in the Black Panther Party.
As has been pointed out by Robert Allen in his Black Awak
ening in Capitalist AmeriCa, the ten-point program that the Pan
thers originally adopted could have been the key to a massive
movement raising demands for Afro-American control over
the lives of our people. Instead the Panthers shunted these
demands to the background, with the exception of their police
"decentralization" program. (Even in this case, Bobby Seale,
chairman of the party, pointed out that it was "decentralization,
not Black community control," at the 1969 United Front
Against Fascism Conference in Oakland.)
The Panthers were afflicted with one of the maladies that
seem to strike many Black would-be "Marxist-Leninists"-using
pseudo-Marxist rhetoric to substitute for the development of
a real revolutionary program for our struggle. Incomprehen
sible rhetoric about "dialectics," "intercommunalism,""the popular
front," "Kim II Sung," etc., hindered their abilities to voice the
demands and concerns of the Black community. They forgot
that Marxism is based not on rhetoric, but on the conviction
that the everyday problems faced by the masses of people
can only be solved by socialist revolution, and that the duty
of Marxist-Leninists is to mobilize and organize the masses
in struggles around these questions. To do 'this you have to
be able to speak in terms the masses understand, and pose
serious solutions to the problems they face.
In attempts to fight "cultural" pseudonationalists like Ron
Karenga, many Panthers forsook any expression of Black
culture, beyond Emory Douglas's cartoons. In many areas
they opposed the Black student movement and the struggle
for. Black studies as cultural nationalism. They were forgetting
the important role in maintaining capitalism that the ideological
domination of the masses plays, especially how that is exer
cised through capitalist control of the culture.
The real meaning of Karengaism could have been clari
fied if he and others of his kind were identified not so much
as "cultural nationalists," but on a political basis. Then we
would have to call them polUical and economic collabora
tionists and "assimilationists" with the capitalist system and
political and economic institutions that are bent on throttling

real African and Afro-American culture.
What excited many brothers and sisters about the Black
Panther Party was their concept of a Black political party.
Malcolm had called for our people to break off from the Demo
crats and form our own nationalist political party. The Pan
thers, inspired by the Lownde!? County (Alabama) Freedom
Party, seemed at the beginning to have the potentiality for
leading the way to the all-Black mass political party many
nationalists had been calling for.
Instead, the Panthers backed away from this perspective.
In the fall of 1968, when the Panthers' popularity was at its
peak, the Panthers launched the national presidential campaign
of Eldridge Cleaver. This campaign could have been used
to call together nationalists and other forces in the Black lib
eration struggle that wanted to break our people away from
the Democratic Party and wage a political struggle for the
demands raised in the ten-point program. Such a campaign
could have had a decisive effect on the struggle. We can see
the vitality that has swept through the Chicano struggle due to
their formation of independent Raza Unida parties, and this
suggests what such a campaign could have done for our strug
gle.
Instead of running an independent nationalist campaign, tlie
BPP allied with the middle-class Peace and Freedom Party
that countered the "liberal" capitalist politics of the Demo
crats only with "radical" capitalist politics. If anything the
Panthers' association with the Peace and Freedom Party di
minished rather than increased their support within the Afro
American nationalist movement and in "the community." This
policy has further deteriorated with the Panthers' backhanded
support to Ron Dellums's congressional campaign in 1970,
and their more open support to the Berkeley and Oakland
"Coalitions" of Democratic Party liberals in the 1971 elections.
The Panthers' most serious error was their underestimation
of the importance of reaching and organizing the masses of
Black people. Rather than struggling for unity of the masses
of our people around a program for mass nationalist action,
it seems that they attempted to substitute themselves as an
armed vanguard for the power of the whole Black nation.
This view is still apparantly held by the section of the party
loyal to Cleaver, while Newton's faction has gone on a more
openly reformist course.
The view of terrorism and armed struggle as strategies rather

than tactics to be used at specific stages of the struggle to
organize and mobilize the mass of our people is completely
contrary to everything Marxism has to say on the subject
The brutal suppression of the Panthers has proven that no
matter how well-prepared your "technical equipment" is, the
most important question is your relations with the masses
of our people. For Marxists, the first rule of politics is: with
the masses we are everything, without them, nothing.
These errors isolated the Panthers from the masses of Black
people in the U.S. and from other sectors of the Black lib

eration movement. Black revolutionaries who want to follow
a course consistent with Marxism and Leninism must not re
peat these errors..
The main steps we can take toward building mass revo
lutionary-socialist consciousness among Black people must be
to apply the revolutionary-nationalist strategy developed by
Malcolm X. This strategy combines the class demands of Black
people fighting against capitals
i t exploitation with the national
ist demands of our people fighting for overall national lib-
eration. This strategy recognizes the primary task facing our
struggle is to break from any dependence or support to the
Democrats and to organize a mass Afro-Ame"rican political
party to direct our struggle on all fronts. Such a revolutionary
nationalist strategy will play a decisive role in developing
the type of Black liberation movement that can lead to the
destruction of U.S. imperialism.
In Defense of Black Nationalism
by Tony Thomas
"In Defense of Black Nationalism" first appeared as a series

of articles published in The Militant from April 23 to July 9,
1971. These articles were written as a refutation of the anti
nationalist views of the Communist Party and the Young Work
ers Liberation League. The article has been slightly revised
for this collection.
On April 19, 1971, Tony Monteiro, a leader of the Young

Workers Liberation League (YWLL) and the Communist Party
(CP) in New York, gave a talk entitled "Trotskyism: Racist
Voice in the Left." An edited version of his talk appears in the
July 1971 issue of Political Affairs. the monthly theoretical
journal of the Communist Party.
I will discuss the position taken by Monteiro in his talk, but
I should first point out that in labeling the Young Socialist
Alliance (YSA) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) "racist,"
Monteiro is using the timeworn device of slander to prevent
clarification of political differences and to block the possibility
of united action. His charge of racism is utterly false.
The real question, one on which there are real differences
between the YWLL and CP on one hand and the YSA and
SWP on the other, is how to fight racist oppression.
The major part of Monteiro's talk was an attack on the
YSA and SWP because of our support for Black nationalism.
In the printed version, he states that "... nationalism and
separatism within the movement are capitulations to racism."
He claims that Black nationalism retards the struggle against
racism because it does not focus on educating whites to rid
themselves of racist ideas.
The YSA and SWP believe that an educational struggle against
racist ideas is necessary. However, by itself this is not sufficient
for an effective struggle against racist oppression. It is through
the concrete struggle of Blacks for liberation that racist ideology
is most effectively fought and victories are won against racist
oppression.
124
In Defense of Black Nationalism 125
As revolutionary socialists, we in the YSA and SWP believe

that racist oppression of Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans,
Asians, and Native Americans as nationalities is rooted in the
political, economic, and social structure of U.S. capitalism.
The racist ideology flowing from concrete racist oppression
is one of the foundations of the capitalist social order. This is
why revolutionary socialists believe that the fight against racist
oppression is_ so important to the ongoing struggle against
capitali.sm and that the end of capitalism is necessary to deal
the final deathblow to racism.
In the past ten years, victories in the struggle against racism
include extended voting rights for Blacks in the South; growing
acceptance of Black history and culture, including Black studies
programs in schools _and colleges; and concessions in employ
ment and housing. But even in these areas much more remains
to be won.
Blacks, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asians, and Chi
canos are no longer willing to beg white liberals for a few
crumbs. We are no longer accepting the racist distortions of
our history and culture. We are no longer demanding integra
tion into imperialist America: we demand the right to control
our own communities and the right to separate from white
America if we choose to do so. -The result of Black nationalism
is the advance, not the obstruction, of the struggle against
racism.
Black nationalist students demanding open admissions a nd
Black studies have won significant concessions on campuses
around the country. The nationalist demand for community
control of schools won the support of millions in New York
City in 19.68. Mass mobilizations led by MPI (Movement for
Puerto Rican Independence), the largest Puerto Rican nationalist
movement, have forced the U. S. to stop drafting brothers in
Puerto Rico. Such victories against racism are the fruit of the
deepening political consciousness of the nationalist movement.
Monteiro claims that the YSA uses its support to Black na
tionalism to dodge the task of involving whites in the fight
against racism. Perhaps he believes whites will never support
Black nationalist demands for community control of the schools,
Black studies programs, preferential hiring of Blacks, and an
end to racial discrimination in the Army, and therefore believes
"unity" is a matter of adapting to the anti-Black-nationalist
sentiments held by many whites.
The strength of racism in this country flows from the fact
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
ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Democratic officials launched the Korean and Vietnam wars
against Asian people. It was in Democratic-controlled cities
that Bobby Hutton and Fred Hampton were murdered by
city cops, and Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were framed.
It was Black Democratic Mayor Carl Stokes who backed the
frame-up of Ahmed Evans in Cleveland. And it was Black
Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chiholm and Puerto
Rican Democrat Herman Badillo who convinced Black and
Puerto Rican prison rebels in New York in 1970 that Mayor
Lindsay's wardens wouldn't harm them if they surrendered;
the. prisoners followed this advice and were brutally beaten
by the guards.
The failure of the capitalist parties to nd racist oppression
is leading many Blacks to reject the Democratic Party. This
is why nationalist struggles, such as those for Black control
of Black education, are taking place independent of the Dem
ocrats and often against those very politicians.
For this reason, the CP, the YWLL, and other reformists
who want to sidle up to "progressive" capitalist politicians,
oppose Black nationalism. And it is for this reason that. rev
olutionary socialists see support for Black nation!llism and
opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties as central
components of the fight against racism.
Monteiro's attitude toward the antiwar movement is linked
with his attitude toward the Democratic Party. In his article,
he implies that the antiwar movement is racist and charges
the YSA and SWP with supporting a racist policy for the anti
war movement. Monteiro makes these slanderous charges be
cause the antiwar movement, like the nationalist movement,
is independent of the Democratic Party. The basic demand
of the antiwar movement- that the U.S. get out of Southeast
Asia now- is directed squarely .at the racist warmakers. Dem
ocratic Party politicians have no way to squirm around this
demand.
Contrary to what Monteiro says, the antiwar movement is
an ally of the Black liberation struggle. The facts are that the
antiwar movement has in its literature, meetings, demonstra
tions, and slogans exposed to millions of Americans th.e racist
character of the war and the draft. It has linked the racist
policies of the capitalist governm ent to the My Lai massacre,
the invasion of Laos, and the racist treatment of Black troops
in Vietnam. It has done this not only implicitly but explicitly
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.
Black workers and Black nationalism

Monteiro's inability to deal with Black nationalism is ap
parent when he discusses workers, both Black and white. His
rejection of Black nationalism leads to a policy of adaptation
to the racist attitudes of white workers. He denies the potential
of Black nationalism to radicalize masses of workers, and
presents the erroneous theory that there is a conflict between
the nationalism of the oppressed minorities and the class strug
gle of the workers.
Because of his position, he is unable to explain the growth
and power of nationalist sent m
i ent in the Black community.
In his talk, Monteiro implies that Black nationalism flows
from non-wotking-class elements in the Black community.
Claude Lightfoot, another CP spokesman, makes the claim
explicit in his book Ghetto Rebellion to Black Liberation
(International Publishers, 1968), where he states that Black
nationalism originates from "the unemployed and the under
employed, the youth and business. ... Their very existence
and life experiences mitigate against a working-class outlook.
This situation, therefore, is the main social base ... for Black
nationalism today" (p.45).
This notion that Black nationalist sentiments are rooted pri
marily in demoralized and declassed strata or middle-class
sectors of the Black community is totally false. Ninety-five
percent of the Black community consists of employed workers,
unemployed workers, and their families. The special exploitation
of Blacks under capitalism, that is, national oppression, sets
off Black workers as a superexploited section of the working
class.
The advantage to the capitalist ruling class of separating
one section of the working class from another by national
oppression is that it provides a cheap reserve labor force as
well as a way to divide and weaken the working class.
Far from being a middle-class ideology, nationalism has
In .Defense of Black Nationalism 129
grown and developed most strongly in the large urban con

centrations of Black workers. That was true in the nationalist
radicalization of the Black community after World War I,
in which Marcus Garvey played a prominent role, and it is
true also of the current, deeper upsurge. Then and now, na
tionalism has. foundits prime support among Black workers.
Is there a conflict between the deepening nationalist con
sciousness of Black workers and their class consciousness as
workers? Is nationalist consciousness an obstacle in the struggle
of Black workers against capitalism? Monteiro would have
us believe the answer to these questions is yes.
But class struggle against capitalism is not only the narrow
economic struggle of organized workers fighting for higher
wages, better working conditions, and so forth. It is both a
political and an economiC struggle, embracing many
organizations and movements. By struggling for control of
the institutions in our own communities, we are challenging the
right of the capitalist class to control our lives. Victories scored
by the Black movement are blows against capitalist rule and
aid the overall struggle against the capitalist class.
Nationalist consciousness, then, is the development of in
creased political consciousness by Black people and s in reality
a form of class consciousness.
At the present time, Black workers who have been part of
the mass upsurge of the Black community are the most class
conscious workers. In some places, they have organized Black
caucuses to fight for the particular demands of Black worl.ers,
including specifically political demands. An important example
is the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, a Black
nationalist workers' group in the Polaroid camera factories
in Massachusetts. Their movement has exposed the complicity
of the Polaroid company with South Africa's apartheid regime,
nationally and internationally. They have organized workers
against it.
Such struggles by Black workers help to increase the political
consciousness .of. the working class as .a whole, refuting- Mon
teiro's notion that nationalism retards class consciousness.
But Black workers are not fighting only for political de
mands; they are also taking the lead in struggling for union
recognition, higher wages, better working conditions, and so
forth. The 1969 hospital .workers' strike in Charleston, South
Carolina, and the sanitation workers' strikes in Memphis in
1968 and Jackson and Atlanta in 1970 were led by Black
workers. Their militancy and determination were to a large

extent the product of the struggles and growing nationalist
consciousness of the Black community. This was shown by
the fact that attempts were made in all of these strikes to mo
bilize support from the Black community.
This along with the raising of demands against racist
practices has brought these workers into conflict with union
bureaucrats who want to confine the struggle to "union" ques
tions. In Jackson, Mississippi, where sanitation workers went
on strike in the summer of 1970 demanding union recognition,
an antidiscrimination clause, and benefits that most white
workers already have,. the international office of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sent
Thomas Adams in to break-it up.
At one meeting, he stated: "Nobody in the labor movement
considers this a strike. You ain't got no strike. You just got
a bunch of people not going .to work. . . . You didn't get
together because of anything except your Blaclmess. You don't
understand unionism. If you want to have a civil rights move
ment, that's something else. But it's not unionism" (The Militant,
July 31, 1970).
The Jackson sanitation workers, by combining their own
special demands as Blacks with their demands as workers,
carried out a strike that was more than a pure and simple
union struggle. It was a social struggle as well. These workers
were several giant steps ahead of the class consciousness of
millions of workers who have been unionized for thirty years.
Yet another example of the impact of Black nationalism
on strike struggles is the 1970 postal workers' strike, whose
militancy was largely the result of the concentration of Black,
Puerto Rican, and Chicano workers in the Post Office.
The impact of Black workers leading militant strikes, forming
independent caucuses, raising political demands, can only be
to elevate the political level of other workers and strengthen
the overall struggle against capitalist domination.
The formation of an independent Black poHtical party would
be another way in which the Black community could positively
affect the thinking of other workers and help to raise the po
litical level of all forces fighting for social change. There has
already been discussion of this in the Black community, as
well as a few unsuccessful attempts at forming a Black party.
Such a party, based on the Black community and dedicated
to the liberation of Black people, would be a nationalist party.
But, because nearly all Blacks are workers, it would also be

a workers' prty. In addition to demands that relate to the
special oppression of Blacks, it would as a matter of course
raise demands that apply to them as workers.Further, it would
be an instrument of political struggle against the capitalist
parties.
It is ironic that the CP and the YWLL advocate Black sup
port of politicians in the capitalist Democratic Party and con
demn as classless an independent Black party composed of
Black workers fighting against capitalist oppression.
Monteiro is equally mistaken on the question of white
workers. By rejecting Black nationalism out of hand, he ends
by adapting to the backward sections of the white working
class, presenting a line that would retard their radicalization.
White workers and Black nationalism

In 1933 Leon Trotsky commented, ftToday, the white workers
in relation to the Negroes are the oppressors, scoundrels, who
persecute the black and the yellow, hold them in contempt
and lynh them ....
ft. . . 99.9 percent of the American workers are chauvinists;
in relation to the Negro they are hangmen, and they areso
also to the Chinese. It is necessary to teach the American
beasts. It is necessary to make them understand that the Amer
ican 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 desire and we
will defend them against our American police'- those are rev
olutionists; I have confidence in themft (Leon Trotsky on Black
Nationalism and Self-Determination [Pathfinder Press, 19721
pp. 14-17).
In his speech, Tony Monteiro said of this and similar state
ments by Trotsky and other supporters of Black nationalism:
ftThis approach is not only incorrect, it is dangerous. Its most
obvious conclusions would be that the unity of the working
class and proletarian internationalism would mean the col
laboration of the oppressor and the oppressed."
In the edited, printed version of his speech, his remarks
were toned down somewhat, but he said essentially the same
thing: that Trotsky's approach "militates against building the
unity of the working class.ft
Monteiro is dead wrong. Just as all U.S. workers have eco
nomic and social privileges that result from the exploitation
of the colonial world by U.S. imperialism, white workers have

privileges that result from the oppression of all Blacks. As a
norm, white workers and their families have better jobs, hous
ing, education, and health facilities.
However, the extra privileges permitted by American im
perialism to white workers cannot, in the long run, overcome
the effects of their class exploitation as workers. They cannot
indefinitely block the deepening of class consciousness. Racist
illusions and privileges cannot forestall the cumulative effects
of unemployment, wars, inflation, union-busting, and other
consequences of capitalism that all workers face. In fact, failure
to combat oppression of Blacks helps keep down the wages
of all workers by creating a large pool of mainly Black and
Brown workers who are either unemployed or paid very low
wages.
Thus, white workers have the same principal enemy as Black
workers-the capitalist ruling class- and they must unite . in
a common struggle if this enemy is to be defeated.
Monteiro claims that Trotsky's references to racist white work
ers as "scoundrels" are anti-Leninist He equates Black nation
alist attitudes with ch.auvinism and implies that Leninists should
reject Black nationalism on the grounds that it divides Black
and white workers. In his article, he says: "U.S. imperialism
will use racism for whites and nationalism for oppressed p_eo
ples in America to divide the peoples' opposition and to create
the conditions for a fascist takeover."
On the contrary, attacks on the privileges and racism of
white workers are hardly attacks on the working class in this
country, either Black or white. Racist privileges are contrary
to the interests of the working class in its struggle against
capitalist rule.
Unlike Monteiro, Lenin was for unity in struggle against
special privileges such as those most white American workers
have. Like Trotsky, Lenin understood that if the workers of
an. oppressor nation are to forge unity with those of the op
pressed nation, it is absolutely necessary to attack the chau
vinism of the workers of the oppressor nation. Terms similar
to Trotsky's "beasts," "scoundrels," and "hangmen" were far
from alien to Lenin.
In fact, he said in 1916: "In the internationalist education
of the workers of the oppressor countries, emphasis must
necessarily be laid on their advocating freedom for the op
pressed countries to secede and their fighting for it. ... It
is our right and duty to treat every SoCial Democrat [i.e.,
revolutionist] of an oppressor nation who fails to conduct

such propaganda as a scoundrel and an imperialist" ( Ques
tions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism
[Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1968], p. 171, emphasis added).
By refusing to support the demands of Black workers and the
Black community, racist white workers-and organizations that
reflect their prejudices- prevent unity of the working class in
struggle against the racist oppressors of Black people and work
ing people. Black nationalism, because it does not subordinate
the demands of Black people to racism from any quarter,
prevents one form of destructive "working-class unity"-unity
of the workers around a program of adaptation to racism.
It will be the deepening struggle of the whole working class
against every form of oppression-national, class, or .sexist
that will lead to effective unity against the capitalists. Antlracist
platitudes are not enough.
For example, in recent years Blacks have fought against the
all-white hiring practices in some industries, such as the skilled
construction trades. Not only employers have mobilized against
Black demands, but the all-white construction wor-kers' job trusts
have also fought demands that more Blacks be hired. In some
cases, lacks have won employment concessions from the bosses
but have been refused entry into unions and apprentice
programs controlled by privileged, racist white workers. Would
Monteiro deny that the maintenance of these white job trusts
is the work of "beasts" and "scoundrels"? It is only in fighting
against such practices, . supported by the bosses and union
bureaucrats, that any unity in struggle for working-class in
terests can be achieved. The burden is on the white workers,
not the Black.
The long teachers' strike in Newark that ended in April 1971,
ended with a weakened union because the Newark Teachers
Union bureaucrats refused to support and fight for the just
demands of the Black community to control its own schools.
Because the teachers were unable to mobilize wide support for
their strike, the Board of Education was able to grind them
down and force them back to work-substantially on the
board's conditions.
There will probably be more such setbacks for the working
class due to the raci.st refusal of union bureaucrats to take up
the fight for the demands of the Black community. But through
these conflicts white workers will learn that victory depends
on unity, and that unity can only be achieved on the basis
of supporting the struggle for Black self-determination.
Monteiro cannot understand Trotsky's statement that Afro

Americans, as the most oppressed sector of the working class,
with nothing to lose and everything to gain, might play the
vanguard role in the struggle against capitalist domination.
He quotes Trotsky: "It is very possible that the Negroes .. .
through self-determination will proceed to the proletarian dicta
torship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead of the great bloc
of white workers." Monteiro selectively quoted this sentence,
hoping to mislead people into thinking that revolutionary so
cialists see the radicalization of Blacks as something. unrelated
to the radicalization of whites. However, if Monteiro had read
Trotsky further, he would have learned that Blacks "... will
then furnish the vanguard. I am absolutely sure that they
will in any case fight better than the white workers. That,
however, can only happen provided that the Communist Party
carries on an .uncompromising struggle not against the sup
posed national prepossessions of the Negroes, but against
the colossal prejudices of the white workers and gives it no
concession whatever" (Monteiro, Political Affairs, July 1971,
p. 39; Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism, p.18).
Monteiro's inability to understand the elementary strategic
concept that the most oppressed fight the hardest amounts to
a mawkish and paternalistic romanticization of white workers.
This leads him to reject the nationalist awakening now taking
place, and to deny its role in leading the way to a mass work
ing-class radicalization.
Malcolm X's program for Black liberation

Malcolm X, the most outstanding spokesperson the Black
liberation movement has yet produced, also came under attack
by Monteiro. He attempted to slander Malcolm by claiming
that he had no effective program and further .that he (Malcolm)
"was drawn into an unprincipled attack upon the mass move
ment which was in process at the time."
Malcolm's every action- particularly after he broke with the
Nation of Islam in 1964- proves that the opposite was true.
According to Monteiro, "Malcolm's critique never provided
the basis for the development of a mass movement which could
effectively challenge the system he so eloquently ci-iticized."
Monteiro reveals by this statement his opposition to the path
that the most militant activists of the Black liberation struggle
have taken, following the footsteps of Malcolm X.
Monteiro to the contrary, Malcolm X's program said a great
deal about the day-to-day problems of Black people. In fact,

his strategy centered on them. Thi is what enabled him to be
supported by the masses of Afro-American people. And he
continues to be accepted in a way that no other revolutionary
Black leader has been in our time.
For Malcolm, the main problem facing us as Black people
was our lack of control of the institutions of this society and of
the Black community in particular. He defined Black national
Ism as the will of our people to struggle by any means neces
sary to control these institutions.
He focused on such problems as poor housing, police bru
tality, drug addiction, inadequate and irrelevant education,
and the criminal wars of U.S. imperialism.
Although Malcolm's position on separation was in continual
evolution, he never saw the demand for separation as an excuse
for giving up the everyday struggles to improve the conditions
of Blacks now. In fact, one of the reasons he split from the
Nation of Islam was that Elijah Muhammad abstained from
these struggles.
In 1964, after the split with Muhammad, he said, "Separation
. . . is stl
il a long-range program, and while it is yet to
materialize, twenty-two million of our people who are still here
in America need better food, clothing, housing, education, and
jobs right now. . . .
"The political philosophy of Black nationalism means: we
must control the politics and politicians of our communities.
They must no longer take orders from outside forces. We will
organize, and sweep out of office all Negro politicians who are
puppets for the outside forces" (Malcolm X Speaks [Merit Pub
Ushers, 1965], pp. 20-21 ).
Malcolm's strategy for Black liberation was most clearly
outlined in his J1ine 1964 "Program for the Organization of
Afro-American Unity," presented in his book, By Any Means
Necessary (Pathfinder Press, 1970).
The program for the new organization that he and his fol
lowers formed emphasized the fight for community control and
support to the then current mass movements for voting rights,
desegregated public facilities and schools, and jobs for Blacks
in the South.
Just by examining his attitude to three of the major areas
of everyday Black struggle, we can see how Malcolm related
to the immediate and urgent concerns of Black people.
One of the problems Malcolm dealt with in his program for
the Organization of Afro-American Unity was drug addiction

a very pressing problem facing Afro-Americans today. He
stressed that this problem, like all others in the Black com
munity, flows from the fact that we are an oppressed people
who do not control our own communities.
He said: "We must establish a clinic whereby one can get
aid and cure for drug addiction.
"When a person is a drug addict, he's not the criminal; he's
the victim of the criminal. The criminal is the man downtown
who brings this drug into the country .... It is not you who
is responsible for bringing in drugs. You're just a little tool
that is used by the man downtown. The man that controls the
drug traffic sits in city hall or he sits in the statehouse. Big
shots who are respected, who function in high circles- those
are the ones who control these things. And you and I will
never strike at the root of it until we strike at the man down
town "(By Any Means Necessary, p.51).
. ..
Malcolm's approach to the problem of imperialist wars, such

as U.S. aggression in Vietnam, was the mobilization of the
Black community against these wars as part of the struggle
around "day-to-day" problems.
First of all, he understood that Blacks, as an oppressed
people, are on the same side as the victims of U.S. imperialism.
He said, "our problem is the same as the problem of the P.eople
who are being oppressed in South Vietnam....
"
Second, he understood that wars like Vietnam directly affect
the lives of Black people in this country. "What happens in
South Vietnam can affect him [the Black] if he's living on St
Nicholas Avenue [in Harlem).... The person who realizes
the effect that things all over the world have right on his block,
on his salary, on his reception, or lack of reception into society,
immediately becomes interested in things international" (Mal
colm X on Afro-Am erican History (Pathfinder Press, 1970],
pp.5-6).
The war is part of th.e everyday problems faced by the Black
community where inflation, budget cutbacks, and unemploy
ment bred by the racist war in Vietnam are lowering the al
ready low living standards we are forced to suffer.
.Finally, in contrast to Monteiro's reliance on lesset-evil politi
cians to stop the wars of U.S. imperialism, Malcolm relies on
the organization and struggle of our people against them.
Applying this approach to the threat of U.S. intervention in
Africa, he said: "You and I should be organized in such a way
that the American government will think a long 'time before it

takes any steps towards dropping bombs on Africans who are
our brothers and sisters.This is why we must organize....We
have to organize ourselves and then organize the city and then
organize the state and then organize the country. Once you do
this, the government is not going to intervene in Africa" (By
Any Means Necessary, pp.105-106).
To solve the educational problems of our people, Malcolm
called for community control of the schools. In the speech
introducing his program for the Organization of Afro-AmericaJ:!.
Unity, he said, "A first step in the program to end the existing
system of racist education is to demand that 10 percent of the
[New York City] schools the Board of Education will not in
clude in its plans be turned over and run by the Afro-American
community itself....
"What do we want? 'We want Afr.o-American principals to
head these schools. We want Afro-American teachers in these
schools.... We want textbooks written by Afro-Americans
that are acceptable to our people before they can be used in
these schcols'" (By Any Means Necessary, p. 44 ).
MaI
: colm's strategy has been confirmed across the country
in hundreds of struggles for Black control of the schools, for
Black history courses, Black study courses, and for more
Black administrators, teachers, and students. These projections
of Malcolm's are very close to the daily lives of Black Ameri
cans. And thousands, perhaps millions, have participated in
these struggles.
Malcolm understood that the day-to-day oppression we face
is rooted in the capitalist system itself and that these struggles
around our immediate needs would lead to confrontations
with the capitalist system, especially the racist Republican and
Democratic parties. He explained that these parties stand in
the way of the mass struggles that can win many of the de
mands we are raising and eventually win our liberation ..He
saw that hopes centered on liberal and not-so-liberal candi
dates deflected energy from the mass struggle, especially be
cause many Black people were persuaded that the twin parties
of racism and exploitation would provide a solution.
This is why Malcolm said, "We won't organize any Black
man to be a Democrat or a Republican, because both of them
have sold us out; both parties have sold us out" (By Any
Means Necessary, p. 46).
Not only did he attack the impetialist political parties, but he
also urged Black people to organize an independent political

movement to carry out the program for mass nationalist action,
and to run candidates nominated and controlled by our com
munity.
This course is in sharp conflict with that of the YWL , the
CP, and all other reformist supporters of Democratic Party
liberals. Monteiro and reformists of his ilk slander Brother
Malcolm X as having little to offer our day-to-day struggles,
because Malcolm exposed the bankruptcy of their perspective
of working inside the Democratic Party.
Malcolm X and the civil rights struggle

Monteiro continues his attack by claiming that the SWP, the
YSA, and Malcolm, who had similar approaches to the Black
liberation struggle, held an unprincipled attitude toward the civil
rights movement of the early 1960s. He charged that it was
Malcolm's "criticism of the mass movement that most attracted
the Trotskyites.n
On one hand, Monteiro charges that the Trotskyists' "most

vicious attacks were focused upon Martin Luther King, Jr.
and the SCLC." On the other hand, he says that "they attempted
to worm their way into the movement on Malcolm X's coat
tails, using Malcolm in support of their position on the national
question .... While lauding Malcolm X these overwhelmingly
white Trotskyrte organizations were referring to Marti Luther
King and others in the movement as 'Uncle Toms' and 'hand
kerchief heads.
"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
civil rights leaders advocated, he felt that the demands for

equality were part of the fight of Afro-Americans against white
oppression.
Thus, he saw participation in the civil rights struggles as a
way of building Black consciousness. "I am prepared," he said,
"to participate in local civil rights actions in the South and
elsewhere and shall do so, because every campaign for specific
objectives can only heighten the political consciousness of the
Negroes and intensify their identification against white society"
(quoted in George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X:
The Evolution of a Revolutionary [Pathfinder Press, 1970 ],
p. 19).
Malcolm also felt that the fight against segregation was part
of the struggle for Black control of the Black community.
"A segregated district or community," he stated, "is a commu
nity in which people live, but outsiders control the politics and
the economy of that community. They never refer to the white
section as a segregated community.... The white man con
trols . . . his own community-but he also controls yours.
When you're under someone else's control, you're segregated.
. . . You've got to control your own" (Malcolm X Speaks,
p. 42).
Malcolm's attitude was that Black nationalists should work
with every organization in the Black community-including
organizations and individuals with whom they might disagree
on many other questions-on specific issues oJ common agree
ment He staled that, "We are willing to work with anybody who
is sincerely interested in eliminating injustices that Negroes suf
fer at the hands of Uncle Sam."
Malcolm's support to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s
was not limited to verbal statements, but was concretized in
action. He participated in building support rallies and move
ments in New York for Black organizations in the South. He
went to Selma, Alabama, during the struggle that erupted there
in 1965. His plans for more active support for the Southern
based struggles were cut short by his ssassination on Feb
ruary 21, 1965.
Thus, in no way could Malcolm be accused of abstaining
from the civil rights movement or of counterposing Black
nationalism to the struggle for equality. He saw the fight
against segregation as part of a unified program for Black
liberation. This was precisely the view of the YSA and SWP.
Malcolm did have real differences, however, with the leaders

of the civil rights movement. These differences, in the final
analysis, centered on whether the Black movement was to be

subordinated to "liberal" whites, particularly the Democratic
Party.
Does Monteiro think that Malcolm's criticism of Martin Luther
King for supporting the racist Democratic Party was "unprin
cipled" and "abstentionist"? Obviously so, because the CP, YWLL,
and Monteiro call on supporters of Black liberation to support
Democratic Party liberals.
In fact, it was Martin Luther King, Jr., not Malcolm X,
who called for "abstention from the mass movement" in 1964.
On July 24 of that year, Martin Luther King, president of
SCLC; Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive secretary; A. Philip
Randolph, chairman of the Negro American Lbor Council;
Whitney Young, executive director of the Urban League; John
Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com
mittee; Bayard Rustin, vice-chairman of the 1963 civil rights
march on Washington; and James F.armer, national director
of the Congress of Racial Equality, called for "a broad curtail
ment, if not total moratorium" of all civil rights actions until
the November 3 elections. This action was taken because these
"leaders" felt that any civil rights actions might hinder the
chances of electing Lyndon Baines Johnson president.
The statement was denounced_-by many local Black leaders

and later repudiated by Farmer nd Lewis.

Malcolm's unequivocal response was that King and other
supporters of this "moratorium" had "sold themselves out and
become campaign managers in the Negro community for Lyn
don Johnson." His position was that the Democratic Party and
its "liberal" leaders like LBJ were just as responsible for the
racist system as more blatant racists like Barry Goldwater and
George Wall ace.
Whose strategy- Malcolm's or King's- proved itself? Did
Johnson, for whom King was willing to stop the Black libera
tion struggle, solve any of the problems of racism, repression,
and poverty faced by Black people? Wasn't it under Johnson
that the criminal war in Vietnam was escalated?
Another issue that divided King and Malcolm was the ques
tion of self-defense. Malcolm held that the civil rights move
ment should exercise its constitutional right to self-defense,
including armed self-detense.
Malcolm saw the right of self-defense as part of the mass
struggle for Black equality: "We here in the Organization for
Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one
In Defen.se of Black Nab:onalism 141
thousand percent We're with the efforts to register our people

in Mississippi one thousand percent. But we do not go along
with anyone telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if
the government says that Negroes have the right to vote, and
then some Negroes come out to vote, and some kind of Ku
Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the govern
ment doesn't do anything about it, it's time for us to orga
nize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify our
selves to protect ourselves. _And once you can protect your
self, you don't have to worry about being hurt" (Malcolm
X Speaks, p. 152).
King, however, held the position that nonviolent reaction
to racist beatings, shootings, and other forms of brutality
faced in the struggle, was a principle. The basis of his theory
was that by somehow awakening the "conscience" of the ruling
class, Black demands in the South could be won. King held
that Blacks and other. supporters of civil rights should love
rather than hate their racist oppressors and should sacrifice
their right of self-defense as an "act of love."
King's strategy of appeal to the conscience of the ruling
class, rather than the independent organization of Black peo
ple, flowed from his illusions about the role of capitalist liber
als. Rather than having its conscience awakened by. the bru
talities that the civilrights activists faced, the federal govern
ment refused to enforce its own laws, including the various
civil rights bills it cranked out Time after time, investigations
were launched against civil rights workers while racist mur
derers went scot-free.
Another test of Martin Luther King's love-thy-oppressor,
nonviolent stance was his attitude toward the use of violence
by the government to crush the Black rebellions that erupted
in Newark and Detroit in 1967. According to the July 27,
1967, New York Times, King, Wilkins, Randolph, and other
"moderate" Black leaders, "in response to an indirect request
from President Johnson," issued a statement supporting LBJ's
call for "law and order" and denouncing the riots as "mob
rule." Earlier King had stated, "I'm very sorry federal troops
had to be called in. But there's no question that when a riot_
erupts, it has to be halted."
Do Tony Monteiro, the YWLL, and the CP think that Mal
colm was "unprincipled" for demanding that the civil rights
movement use its constitutional right to self-defense, while Mar
tin Luther King, who proclaimed Black nonviolence a princi-
ple, condoned violence by the white racist government against

the Black community? We would like to have Monteiro tell us
who, in this instance, was responsible for attacking a "mass
movement which was in process at the time"-Malcolm X or
Reverend King?
Malcolm X also challenged the "tokenist" approach of King
and other civil rights leaders at that time. He felt that concen
trating on ending legalized segregation did not go far enough
in meeting the problems faced by Black people, particularly
in Northern cities where integration legally existed. "Tokenism,"
he said, "benefits only a few. It never benefits the masses, and
the masses are the ones who have the problem, not the
few . .
"The masses of our people still have bad housing, bad

schooling, and inferior jobs, jobs that don't compensate with
sufficient salaries for them to carry on their life in this world.
So that the problem for the masses has gone absolutely un
solved. The only ones for whom it has been solved are people
like Whitney Young, who is supposed to be placed in the cab
inet, so the rumor says . . ." (Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 189-90).
Malcolm saw the struggle not simply as a fight for "civil
rights"- the right to be allowed to integrate, drop by drop,
into white racist society- but for what he called "human
rights"- the right to live as a decent human being. He felt
that the Black liberation movement should raise demands
dealing with all the fundamental social and economic prob
lems faced by Black people.
At a time when Martin Luther King and other moderate
leaders of the civil rights movement called for separating
"domestic problems," that is, Black liberation from "inter
national problems," and attacked those Blacks who did take
a stand against the imperialist policies of the U.S. govern
ment-Malcolm opposed the war in Vietnam. He called for
total U.S. withdrawal two years before SNCC opposed the
war and three years before King did. Does Monteiro think
that this difference in attitude on the racist war in Vietnam
is a result of Malcolm's "lack of principle"?
Rather than an "unprincipled attack upon the mass move
ment," Malcolm's positions in these disputes represented an
attack on the unprincipled policy which led to the eventual
sellout of the mass movement. Malcolm's ideas found great
opposition from such national leaders of the civil rights move
ment as Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins.
But they found great popularity among the rank-and-me civil

rights workers. For many of us active in the struggle at that
time, his ideas confirmed our experiences.
Malcolm explained that "the local civil rights leaders are
usually involved right in the midst of the situation ... usually
they are more in tune and in touch with the people." The na
tionally known leaders are, however, paid professionals, and
"whoever pays their salari!!l! has a great say-so in what they
do and what they don't do. So naturally, the ones who pay
the salaries of these nationally known Negro leaders are the
white liberals, and the white liberals are shocked and frightened
whenever you mention anything about some X's" (By Any
Means Necessary, p. 8).
This is why Malcolm advocated all-Black, Black-controlled,
and Black-financed organizations as the chief vehicle of the
Black liberation struggle. He understood how organizations
like SCLC, the Urban League, and the NAACP, with white
members and dependent on white foundations and liberal cap
italists for donations, were unable to break with capitalist
politics;
Rank-and-file activists of SNCC and CORE began to reject
King's support of the Democratic Party, his opposition to
self-defense, and his support of "integrated" organizations fi
nanced by big foundations. Since then, these activists have
adopted many of Malcolm's ideas.
In all fairness to King, it should be pointed out that he

had one outstanding quality that placed him above other
reformist Black leaders-his willingness to mobilize Black peo
ple to struggle for their rights rather than relying exclusively
on behind-the-scenes deals with the government
Toward the end of his life, King began to take a broader
view of the Black liberation struggle. When he was murdered
in April 1968, he was preparing to lead a mass demonstration
in support of striking Black sanitation workers in Memphis,
Tennessee.
Black power, Black nationalism, self-defense, a shift from
civil rights to Black control_ and independent Black political
action have characterized the deepening Black radicalization.
By attempting to slander Malcolm X, the SWP, and the YSA
and promoting Martin Luther King's reformist strategy-it
is Monteiro, the CP, and the YWLL who really are attacking
the mass movement now in progress.
Revolutionary strategy for Black liberation

In his article, Tony Monteiro charges that the Socialist Work
ers Party and the Young . Socialist Alliance "do not see the
strategic significance of democratic s.truggles and of the struggle
against racism in particular." He charges that Trotskyists have
a "singleminded contempt. for democratic. struggle.... For
them all struggles under capitalism are 'transitional,' in the
sense of being merely tangential to the struggle for socialism."
He was not clear as to what he meant by "democratic" de
manch!, although he seemed to mean such nationalistdemands
as Black control of the Black community, preferential hiring
for Blacll;s, and Black studies in the schools. He was especially
confused as. to what the SWP and YSA mean by "transitional"
demands. He tried to give the impression that they are de
mands like "socialism now," "down with capitalism," and other
such ultraleft slogans.
This line of slander is a continuation of an attack made by
Donna Ristorucci, New York educational secretary ofthe YWLL,
in the March 12, 1970, Daily World. She charged that "in
demanding a 'revolutionary struggle' to achieve 'self-determina
tion.,' YSA rejects the everyday struggles of Black people for
equality, for better housing, community control of schools;
for all democratic reforms which could improve their lives
today."
These charges are, of course, totally false. But what ap
pears to be a simple confusion and/or slander actually bolls
down to different perspectives on the Blak liberation move
ment In faet, it is Monteiro, the CP, and the YWLL that see
a conflict between democratic demands and the struggle for
socialism.

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
Bella Abzug provide a program for Black liberation. For

example, an article by A. Krchmarek in the January 1970
Political Affairs, the theoretical organ of the Communist Party,
stated that Carl Stokes, Black Democratic mayor of Cleveland,
had "a comprehensive program for the needs of the city [of
Cleveland]."
The inadequacy of this "comprehensive program" was demon
strated recently when Stokes resigned after an abysmal four
years in office, with little to show for it but an increase in th e
size, salaries, and equipment o f the Cleveland police force.
The fact that Black people still suffer police brutality, un
employment, budget cutbacks, racist education, poor. health
care, and rotten housing in Gary, Cleveland, Newark, and
Washington, D. C.-where Black Democrats are in.office with
the kind of "comprehensive program" Monteiro evidently sup
ports- is damning proof of the bankruptcy of such reformist
programs.
The YWLL and CP see the struggle for democratic demands
as taking place within the limits of the capitalist system, under
the leadership of a capitalist p-olitical party, the Democratic

Party. Thus, they think the YSA and SWP insistence. on the
need to brea with capitalist politics and politicians and chart
an independent course toward Black liberation is "rejecting
the day-to-day" struggles of.Black people.
Nothing could be further from the truth. What we do insist
on-like Brother Malcolm-is that the day-to-day struggles
must mobilize the masses of the Black community and proceed
by any means necessary, regardless of the "sacred rights" of
private property, profit, and the state that defends those "rights."
Only such a revolutionary orientation and strategy can provide
a solution to the problems Black people face.
The last fifteen years of explosive struggle have shown the
revolutionary thrust of the most elementary demands of the
Black community. The urgent need for better housing, schools,
jobs, medical care, etc., as well as the democratic right to con
trol the political, social, and economic institutions of the Black
community cannot be realized except by undermining the basis
of the racist, imperialist society of th-is country.
The resources needed to finance the schools, housing,
hospitals, parks, and cultural institutions and to provide higher
pay and better jobs for Afro-Americans, represent too high a
price for the rulers of the U.S. And Black control of these
resources and institutions only raises the ante. The resources
would have to be diverted from other, more "profitable" in

vestments at home and abroad, severely undermining the very
foundations of capitalism.
The inability of the capitalist system to meet even the elemen
tary needs of Black Americans means that the struggle around
these immediate concerns is directly linked to the struggle
against capitalism. An effective strategy for Black liberation
takes this into account. It must combine the democratic de
mands of the oppressed Black nationality- including its doubly
and triply oppressed sectors -with the demands of Black work
ers as workers, .into a program that meets the objective needs
of Black people, one that promotes the transition from their
current consciousness to the realization that the capitalist system
must be abolished if their needs are to be met.
Brother Malcolm began .to develop this kind of program for
the day-to-day struggles of Blacks with the "Program for the
Organization of Afro-American Unity" (By Any Means
Necess ary). And his strategic concepts are being applied today
in the struggles of Blacks and oth.er oppressed peqple through
out this country.
Malcolm's program was elaborated upon, brought more up
to-date,
and systematized by the SWP in the Transitional
Program for Black Liberation (Pathfinder Press, 1969), re
printed in this book.
Like Malcolm, revolutionary socialists put forward a program
of mass action, independent- of the capitalist parties, around
the issues and problems of the Black community. Like Mal
colm's program for Black liberation, the revolutionary socialist
Transitional Program for Black Liberation and our attitude
of support for the Black liberation struggle are attacked by
Monteiro. Just as he dismisses Malcolm's program for the
civil rights struggle, Monteiro implies that revolutionaries deny
the importance of the day-to-day struggles of Black people for
the sake of ultraleft or sectarian demands. Just the opposite
is true.
The transitional program is not an abstract set of demands
for "socialism now" or for the "immediate and total dictatorship
of the proletariat now if not sooner." Rather, it is a strategic
approach and a program of demands, many of which are
being raised today in struggles all over the country. It is de
signed to help build a mass movement against the capitalist
rulers.
The Transitional Program for Black Liberation, which
Monteiro sniped at in passing but gave no indication that he

had read, states: "The key demands being raised in the Black
liberation struggle today, such as Black control of the Black
community, jobs for all, and self-determination ... have
this quality of being transitional in nature. They are rooted
in the needs and present understanding of the Black community,
yet they have a revolutionary logic because the capitalist }-&tern
does not have the capacity to meet them....
"The present-day struggles around these demands for changes
in the system can lead to and become part of the overall
struggle for. power. The mobilization of the masses thus takes
place as a process, with each struggle awakening, educating,
inspiring, and organizing new layers toward revolutionary
consciousness and action."
This, of course, doesn't mean that Black Americans can by
themselves bring down capitalist rule. But it does show the way
the maximum political power of the Black community can be
mobilized as an important, a leading part of the process.
To Monteiro, with his far-off view of a social revolution
and his strategy of support to liberal capitalists, such a
program is anathema. It is the polar opposite of the CP's per
spective of tailoring the Black struggle to what is acceptable
to Democratic politicians.Monteiro says he supports the demo
cratic struggles of Black people, but his kind of support means
blunting the revolutionary edge of these struggles in order to
limit them to demands for reforms that can be granted without
challenging the foundations of capitalism.
Does the transitional program propose that revolutionaries
abandon the fight for reforms that can be won under capital
ism? Indeed not! We see, for instance, the struggle for more
Black teachers in schools as an integral part of the fight for
Black control of the schools. Reforms won by independent
mass struggle can help to inspire confidence in our ablity
to fight and win, and can give us leverage to fight for more
gains.
Getting more Black teachers into the schools may be re
versed through firings initiated by racist school boards or re
stricted by school administrators. But in the process of the
struggle to win and maintain such victOries, we learn that
reverses can be prevented only if we control our own schools
and controlling our own schools means taking political power.
In the struggle for political power we must use all the means
at our disposal.
The Transitional Program for Black Liberation states that

"the demands ... have either already appeared in the Black
communities, in some instances with quite broad backing, or
they are easily understood and appreciated by wide groups
and, with correct leadership, could serve as rallying slogans
for very massive struggles. This is a first prerequite for any
program for revolutionary struggle. That is, above all, the
program must be based on the objective needs of Black
people."
The r oots of Black consciousness

Attempting to downgrade Black nationalism, Monteiro took
exception to the importance given by revolutionary socialists
to Black nationalist consciousness. This is linked to the CP's
refusal to support the independent nationalist course of struggle
that masses of Afro-Americans are embarking on.
Monteiro attacked the views of the Socialist Workers Party
and the Young Socialist Alliance in support of Black national
ism as divorced from any social or historical base. He claims
that "Trotsky would have us believe that the criteria for deter
mining nationhood are subjective, that this is determined by
how people think, rather than by the objective condition"s of
their lives." And he felt that the SWP and YSA "narrowness"
on this question was a consequence of Trotsky's errors.
Trotsky's ideas are recorded in the pamphlet Leon Trotsky
on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination, a collection of
discussions on Black liberation that Trotsky held in the 1930s
with Black and white leaders of the American Trotskyist move
ment. Although Trotsky was not an expert on the U.S., he was
able to generalize from his experience as part of the central
leadership of the Russian Revolution and to draw lessons from
that e,xperience for the Black struggle in the U.S.
On the issue of Black nationhood- in the 1.930s when nation
alist consciousness in the Black community was much lower
than today- Trotsky commented: "The Negroes are a race
and not a nation. Nations grow out of the racial material
under definite conditions. The Negroes in Africa are not yet a
nation, but they are in the process of building a nation....
"We do, of course, not obligate the Negroes to become a
nation; if they are, then that is a question of their conscious
ness, that is, what they desire and what they strive for. We
say: If the Negroes want that then we must fight against im-
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
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
and cultural life in the twentieth century. It has led to significant

mass Black nationalist movements in the 1920s, 1960s, and
1970s. And this consciousness has a profound social weight
because it is rooted among Black urban workers, the most
powerful section of the Black community.
Many have claimed that, despite this historical, national,
cultural, and political development, the Black nation, unlike
other nations, lacks definite geographical boundaries and is
therefore ineligible for the right to self-determination.

They define nationality in terms of boundaries, current or
historical. But whether an oppressed people can point to geo
graphical boundaries for some future state is irrelevant to the
question of whether they constitute an oppressed nation or na
tionality.
Nations are not immutable entities with fixed criteria- culture,
boundaries, language, etc. Rather, they are products of definite
social and economic conditions.
Before the 1776 revolution, there was no United States of
America, but rather thirteen independent colonies with bound
aries and separate political systems. Boundaries for the U.S.
were not established until that "national liberation" struggle was
over. These initial boundaries were not secure until another war
had been fought with Britain in 1812. And those boundaries
have been changed a great deal since then, expanding through
the national oppression and even extermination of Native Amer
icans and Mexicans during the capitalist drive westward.
But those who try to reduce the question of nations or na.

tionalities to one of boundaries alone miss what is perhaps
the most crucial aspect of the question- the common national
ist consciousness that flows from the history of Black material
conditions. It is the common consciousness of oppression, of
self-identification, and of the cultural and social differences that
have developed from those conditions that has given rise to
the Black demand for self-determination- not any boundaries
or "common economy," which the opponents of Black national
ism are fond of citing.
It is indisputable that Blacks are an oppressed people strug
gling for some of the rights held by other nations. To deny the
right of Black people to self-determination, on the grounds that
we have not yet achieved separate boundaries defined by our
selves and not our oppressors, is to uphold U.S. imperialism's
decision to bind Blacks within its jurisdiction as an oppressed
people.
Because many people do not make a distinction in their own
minds between "nation" and "nation-state," it is often preferable

to use the term "oppressed nationality" when referring to Afro
Americans in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding.
The struggle of an oppressed nationality for self-determination
may or may not result in the creation of a nation-state. This is
a question to be answered by the oppressed nationality itself.
But, whatever the choice, revolutionists wholeheartedly support
and join the struggle to attain it.
The consciousness developing among masses of Black work
ers, students, and women of the national identity of Black peo
ple is a powerful force that will build a mass movement for
Black liberation which.will be a key component in the revolu
tion that will bring U.S. imperialism to an end.
Black liberation and Black separatism

Given this historical development, what attitude should rev
olutionists take toward the struggle of Black people for self
determination? In particular, what attitude should we take
toward Black separatism?
Tony Monteiro attacks Black separatism as reactionary while
giving lip-service to the right of Blacks to self-determination.
In his article, he equates Black separatism with chauvinism,
saying that "nationalism and separatism within the movement
are capitulations 'to racism. The ideologies of racism and na
tionalism have the same bourgeois class essence and cannot
serve to advance the common struggle of all workers for so
cialism and national liberation." This position runs directly
counter to both the reality of the Black liberation struggle
and the writings of Marx and Lenin.
The demand for Black separation, either a return to Mrica
or a Black state set up within current U.S. territory, has been
a significant trend in Black thought for at least 150 years.
The demand for separation stems from the fact that Blacks
are fed up with the racist, oppressive U.S. society in which
every institution, every value is used to maintain their op
pression.
While the majority of Black people at this time do not ac
tively support the demand for separation, there are obvious
indications that large numbers of Afro-Americans are sym
pathetic to such a solution. A poll taken by Newsweek magazine
in 1969 (when nationalist and separatist sentiment was less
prevalent than today) indicated that 21 percent of Black people
thought that Blacks should have their own nation and another
12 percent "quite seriously expect il" Organizations demanding
separation and/or return to Africa, such as the Nation of
Islam and the Republic of New Africa, have been an impor

tant part of the Black liberation movement since the late 1950s.
In the early 1920s, Marcus Garvey was able to build a move
ment with at least a million active supporters around the de
mand that Blacks should Teturn to Africa.
The logic of Monteiro's attack on Black separatism is that
it is "reactionary" to have a government and society in this
country on any basis except that determined by the white
racists. This cuts across the whole struggle of Black people
to overturn their oppression within the white racist state.
The demand for a separate state has historically been one
of the basic demands raised by oppressed nations. The tradi
tional revolutionary socialist approach to this question is to
support the unconditional right of oppressed nations to separate
if they so choose. Lenin said: "The right of nations to self
determination implies exclusively the right to independence
in the political sense, the right to free political separation from
the oppressor nation" (Questions of National Policy and Pro
letarian Inter'!tationalism, p. 127, emphasis added).
Monteiro would deny this right to oppressed peoples in the
name of "unity." Unity on the basis of Monteiro's position
that the demand for a separate state is reactionary is a unity
in which whites have a state and society controlled by them,
while Blacks and other oppressed peoples in this country lack
this basic democratic right
This can only lead to a collapse of any real solidarity. To
quote Lenin again: "The proletariat must demand freedom of
political separation for the colonies and nations oppressed
by 'their own' nation. If the reverse were true, the interna
tionalism of the proletariat would be nothing but empty words;
neither confidence nor class solidarity would be possible be
tween the workers of the oppressed and oppressor nation.s .
. . ."(ibid., pp. 129-30).

To be reactionary, as Monteiro claims, Black separatism
would have to serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class.
The most important element of capitalist oppression of Black
people is the billions of dollars reaped from it
Would tens of millions of Black people breaking from the
United States and taking a poTtion of the U.S. help this pro
cess of exploitation? What would this mean to Chicanos de
manding their own nation of Aztlan, and to Puerto Ricans
demanding independence? It is obvious that a United States
that won't allow the Vietnamese to control Vietnam isn't going
to allow Black Americans to set up a state without a mighty
struggle.
Thus, Black separatism, like other proposals for Black lib

eration- community control, or full social, economic, and po
litical equality-challenges the basic underpinnings of U.S.
capitalism. The revolutionary thrust of Black separatism is
reinforced by the fact that most separatists see it as a demand
on U-S. capitalists for reparations for the 400 years of anti
Black brutality and superexploitation.
While a leader of the Nation of Islam, Brother Malcolm X
formulated his demand for separation in this way: "... the
race problem can easily be solved, just by sending these 22
million ex-slaves back to their own homeland where we can
live in peace and harmony with our own kind. But this gov
ernment should provide transportation, plus everything else
we need to get started again in our own country. This govern
ment should provide everything we need in machinery, ma
terials, and finance; enough to last us from 20 to. 25 years,
until we can become an independent people in our own coun
try" (quoted in George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X:
The Evolution of a Revolutionary, p. 57).
In the same speech, he outlined how the variant of separation
within the U.S. might be expressed: "If our people number
one-seventh of America's total population, then give us one
seventh of this land. We don't want any land in the desert,
but where there is rain. and much mineral wealth.... we
should not be expected to go back to our homeland empty
handed. After 400 years of slave-labor, we have some 'back
pay' coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected" (ibid.,
pp. 58-59).
Malcolm X did not see a contradiction between fighting now
for better social, economic, and political conditions for .Afro
Americans in U.S. society and their desire for a separate Black
state. Both types of demand are challenges to the power U.S.
imperialism exercises over Black people. Both require a mass
movement that can overthrow capitalism if they are to be real
ized.
Monteiro gives lip service to the idea of self-determination
while denying any support for the demands raised by Blacks
to exercise that right While Blacks may differ on the advisa
bility of advocating separation at this time, the duty of all
revolutionaries is to support in action the right of Afro
Americans to separate, and if a majority choose this path, to
support them.
Monteiro, in his sharp attacks on Black separatists, fails
in this revolutionary duty.Quotations from Lenin torn out of

context, which the CP and other reformists utilize to cover
their anti-Marxist politics, do not disguise that failure.
In Russia in 1913, the Kadets (capitalist politicians similar
to the liberal Democrats Monteiro supports) attacked Dontsov,
a Ukrainian capitalist separatist, for being utopian. Lenin
replied: " ... the issue was not whether one agreed or disagreed
with Mr. Dontsov, whom many Ukrainian Marxists opposed;
we said it was impermissible to hurl such epithets at 'separa
tism' as 'delirium' and adventurism. We said that this was a
chauvinist approach, and that in criticizing any particular plan
for secession, a Great Russian democrat must agitate for free
dom to secede, for the right to secede.
"As the reader will see, this is a question of principle....
"
(Lenin Collected Works, vol. 19 [Progress Publishers: Moscow,
1963], p. 525). By attacking separatism rather than the refusal
of white "America .to allow Blacks who wish to separate to do
so, Monteiro adapts to the policies of the oppressor.
Just as socialists should at all times support the right to

separate, the demand for separation should be raised by social
ists only when and if the masses of Black people make the
decision.Self-determination means self-determination by the op
pressed people and nobody else. The CP's total exclusion of
separation as a revolutionary alternative for Blacks means
that it has already decided for Blacks the road to self-determi
nation.
The CP and YWLL attacks on separatists reflect a historic
disregard of Black people. In the late 1920s and early 19308,
when masses of Blacks were not demanding separation, the
Communist Party, at the insistence of Stalin, raised as one of
its principal demands "self-determination for the Black Belt"
calling for an independent Black state in the South. The CP
even drew maps charting the borders of this Black state. At
the same time, they supported "full equality" as the principal
demand for Blacks in the North. The same question was in-
volved then as now: the CP's refusal to support our right as
Blacks to decide what path we will take toward liberation.
Now that Blacks in large numbers are receptive to the idea
of sep.aration, Monteiro finds Black separatism reactionary.
This is because the demand of Blacks to separate from white
America runs against the thrust of the liberal capitalist politi
cians, whom the CP sees as crucial to thir strategy for Black
liberation.
156 Black L iberatio n and Socialism
Monteiro has no real understanding of Black nationalism

Monteiro, the YWLL, and the Communist Party have no real
understanding of the revolutionary dynamic of Bllick national
ism, and what they understand of it they reject. This is logical
for them, because the independent, anticapitalist thrust of Black
nationalism cuts across their strategy of subordinating the
mass movements to capitalist liberals and othe reformists. It
is clear that a mass movement demanding Black control of the
Black community would result in an independent Black political
party that would break the political power of the Democrats
supported by Monteiro and the CP.
The YSA and SWP, in contrast, see support to the nationalist
struggle of the Black people as the only revolutionary policy.
Black nationalism flows from our struggle against hundreds of
years of oppression. It is rooted in the most oppressed sector
of the U.S. working class. It can lead to the mobilization of
millions of Black people, challenging every aspect of this decay
ing capitalist system. It will lead the mass of Blacks to play
a vanguard role in the development of mass revolutionary
consciousness in the working class. As revolutionary socialists
who want to destroy the entire capitalist system and liberate
Afro-Americans and other oppressed peoples, the Young Social
ist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party give unequivocal
support to the Black nationalist movement
Leninism, Stalinism,
and Black Nationalism
by Tony Thomas
The confusion between Lenin's views on the national question

and the subsequent distortion of his views by the Soviet bureau
cracy under Stalin and by the Communist Party, USA. forms
the basis for the criticism leveled by an anti-Marxist current in
the nationalist movement that sees Black capitalism as the road
to liberation. A foremost proponent of Black capitalism is
Harold Cruse, himself a disillusioned former member of the
Communist Party. The following article, which first appeared
in the October 1970 issue of the International Socialist Review,
is a. critique of Cruse's views as set forth in his books The
Crl.sis of the Negro Intellectual and Rebellion or Revolution.
It has been revised for this collection. A full discussion of
Lenin's real views on nationalism will be found in the next
article.
At the first national convention of the National Association

of Black Students, held in Detroit in June 1969, James Forman,
former leader of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee), called on Black revolutionaries to become Marxists
and Leninist& as well as nationalists. This is but one indication
of the mounting identification of Black militants with Marxism.
Many Blacks, convinced of the revolutionary direction of our
struggle, are checking out Marxism as a strategy for Black
liberation. This has produced much discussion within the Black
liberation movement over such questions as the role of the
working class in the Black community, the relationship between
Black and white workers, the role of the vanguard party, and
th e merits- and shortcomings- of the different socialist ten
dencies, more especially the Communist Party and the Socialist
Workers Party.
The writings of Harold Cruse are the source of many of the
ideas of the opponents of revolutionary Marxism who are par
ticipating in this debate. Anti-Marxists of many types, from
miseducated militants to the most rotten reformists, draw upon
the "authority" of Cruse to refute the views of revolutionary
157
socialists. Cruse is a former Communist Party member, a

Black cultural critic, and a cultural nationalist who equates
Black nationalism with Black capitalism. He maintains that
Marxism is antithetical to Black nationalism and irrelevant
to the struggle for Black liberation. He claims that the Marxist
view that workers are a potentially revolutionary force is false
and that the "fixation" of Marxists on what he calls "white labor"
has made them unwilling and unable to accept the reality
of the independent dynamic of the Black liberation struggle.
In The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Cruse states: "Com
munists are opposed to black nationalist tendencies as a matter
of principle because they seek, or pretend to seek, international
solidarity of all la)>oring classes without regard for race and
ethnic differences" (New York: William and Morrow, 1967,
p. 138, emphasis added). In his essay "Revolutionary Na
tionalism and the Mro-American" in Rebellion or Revolutio n
Cruse states that American Marxists "have no more been able
to see the Negro as having revolutionary potentialities in his
own right, than European Marxists could see the revolutionary
aspirations of their colonials as being independent of, and not
subordinate to, their own" (New York: William and Morrow,
.
1968, p. 77).
Cruse's attacks on Marxism, especially in The Crisis of the
Negro Intellectual; are largely based on a rundown of the
C_ommunist Party and the dama,ge it has done to the Black
struggle. As a former member of the Communist Party, Cruse
is able to make some .observations about the Communist
PartY's antinationalist approach and has some interesting
criticisms of the adverse effect that the theory of socialist
realism, and Stalinist politics in general, have had on Black
artists and writers associated with the CP. He is also able
to point out how CP historians Herbert Aptheker and James
S. Allen tried to distort Black history to serve the political
purposes of the Stalinists.
But despite the validity of some aspects of his anti-CP critique,
Cruse is incapable of analyzing why the CP went wrong except
to say that during the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties it
was a "Jewish nationalist organization." Cruse falls victim to
the same theoretical error that led the New Left into a blind
alley. He makes a total identification of Marxism with Stalinism
by mistaking the Stalinist politics he learned from the CP for
authentic Marxism.
The range of errors-both historical and theoretical-which
Leninism, Stalinism, and Black Nationalism 159
Cruse commits is so far-reaching that it would take volumes

even to attempt to straighten them all out. But because so
many pople have the mistaken idea that Cruse is an expert
on Marxism, it is essential for revolutionary nationalists to
understand where Cruse goes wrong on Marxism, and to ex
plain the real views of Marxism on the national struggle. In
the process, we will come to grips with Cruse's own brand
of reformist solutions for the Black struggle.
Contrary to Cruse's contenti.on, the Marxist position on the
national question is totally consistent with Black nationalism.
Lenin is considered to be the prime authority on the Marxist
theory of the struggle of oppressed nationalities for self-deter
mination. Yet nowhere in the combined 866 pages of The
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual and Rebellion or Revolution
does Cruse deal at length with Lenin or the Leninist position
on national selfdetermination!
It was not by accident that Lenin became an authority on
the national question. The Russia of his time was a country
in which the majority of the population belonged to oppressed
nationalities, while the Russians themselves were an oppressing
minority. The oppressed groups under the czar's domain
ranged from those who were more advanced than the Russians
to those who had barely emerged from tribal society. It was
out of the necessity of dealing with the concrete problems of
the ripening revolution in Russia in the epoch of imperialism
that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party developed and expanded
the Marxist position on nationalism.

Lenin drew a sharp distinction between the nationalism of
theoppressing imperiali.st nations and the nationalism of those
oppressed by the imperialists. The nationalism of the oppressors
had to be opposed while the nationalist struggle of the op
pressed, as an anti-imperialist struggle, had to be supported.
He saw self-determim(tion as a basic democratic demand.
With the development of imperialism, which thwarted self-
determination for oppressed peoples, and the resulting colonial
revolutions, the question of the relationship of self-determination
to the socialist revolution came to the fore. Lenin insisted that
revolutionary socialists should support without qualification the
struggle of the oppressed for national self-determination as
a just struggle against imperialist oppression. The nationalism
of any oppressed nation, he explained, "has a general demo
cratic content that is directed against oppression and it is that
content we unconditionally support" ("The Right of Nations
to Self-Determination," in Questions of National Pol i cy and

Proletarian Internationalism (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1968), p. 70).
Cruse claims that it is the Marxist recognition of the necessity
of international solidarity that makes Marxists antinationalist.
However, it was Lenin's stand on internationalism that made
him recognize that if class solidarity is to be achieved, it is
necessary for the proletariat to support the nationalism of
the oppressed: "In the internationalist education of the workers
of the oppressor countries, emphasis must necessarily be laid
on their advocating fr.eedom for the oppressed countries to
secede and their fighting for it. Without this there can be no
internationalism. It is our right and duty to treat every Social
Democrat of an oppressor nation who fails to conduct such
propaganda as a scoundrel and an imperialist. This is an
absolute demand, even where the chance of secession being
possible and 'practicable' before the introduction of socialism
be only one in a thousand" (ibid., p. 137).
The Bolsheviks in power, before the Stalinist degeneration;
showed in practice that they meant business on this question.
It was in line with their unconditional support to the complete
self-determination of oppressed nations that the Bolsheviks
allowed Finland and other nations to break from the Russian
workers state even though they set up capitalist states.
One of the charges that Cruse throws against Leninists is

that they believe the socialist revolution must come first in the
advanced countries and that the colonial and backward coun
tries must wait to be "liberated" by the workers of the advanced
world. If this was really the policy of Marx or Lenin or
Trotsky, we would have to agree with Cruse that their ideas
are faulty since up to now successful socialist revolutions have
taken place only in more or less backward o r colonial coun
tries: Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and the Russia of 1917.
However it was preCisely Lenin and Trotsky who, using
the tools of Marxism, established both in theory and in prac
tice that the socialist revolution could come first in a backward
or colonial country. Trotsky's theory of the permanent rev
olution not only held that "backward countries may, under
certain conditions, arrive at the dictatorship of . the proletariat
sooner than advanced countries" (Permanent Revolution [New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1972], p. 279) but went on to argue
that mass struggle for basic democratic demands in. the colonial
world, including self-determination, must take an anticapitalist

direction if it is to be successful. Lenin and Trotsky believed
the chain of world imperialism could be broken at its weakest
link.
In the Russian revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks under
the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky broke that chain, not
in an advanced country but in an extremely backward one.
These Marxists led the first socialist revolution to victory in
Russia, where the overwhelming majority of the populati.on
was not workers, but semifeudal peasants and serfs, where
Western imperialism controlled the industries and resources,
where the czarist despots ruled. Backward Russia was the
country where capitalism was first smashed, because the
workers' movement there undet:stood and accepted Trotsky
and Lenin's prognostications al)d proved them correct by
taking state power.
After the Russian revolution the Bolsheviks explicitly recog
nized that the struggle for national liberation was a central
part of the . world revolutionary struggle. On November 22,
1919, Lenin said "... the socialist revolution will not be solely
or chiefly a struggle of the revoutionary proletariats in each
country against their bourgeoisie- no, it will be a struggle of
all the imperialist-oppressed colonies and countries, of all the
dependent countries against international imperialism"("Address
to the Second All-Russian Congress of Communist Organiza
tions of the Peoples of the East," Collected Works, Vol. 30
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965 ], p. 159).
This is the genuine Leninist view of the national liberation
struggle,. and it was also applied by the leaders of the Russian
revolution to the situation of Black people in the United States.
Contrary to Cruse's claim that the irrelevancy of Marxism
flows from the fact that it is a "foreign ideology" and that
American radicals have to develop thei:r "own" ideology, Amer
ican revolutionaries first began to appreciate the revolutionary
nature of Black nationalism as a result of the participation
of the experience-rich Russian Bolsheviks in discussions within
the American radical movement in the early 1920s.
Prior to the Russian revolution, American socialists opposed
any tendency to view the Black struggle as an independent
struggle. Instead, as James P. Cannon has described it, they
looked upon.the struggle as "an economic problem, part of the
struggle between the workers and the capitalists; nothing could
be done about tlle . special problems of discrimination and
inequality this side of socialism" (The First Ten Years of Amer

ican Communism [New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973], p. 230).
Cannon, who was then as now a leader of the American Marx
ist movement, points out that this was nothing but a "formula
for inaction on the Negro front, and- incidentally- a con
venient shield for the dormant racial prejudices of the white
radicals themselves" (ibid., p. 233 ).
Lenin included Afro-Americans in his listing of oppressed
nationalities in his "Preliminary Draft Theses on the National
and Colonial Questions," a resolution for the second congress
of the Communist International, held in 1920. However, the
young American Communist Party was politically incapable
of grasping the importance of Lenin's position and did not
seriously apply Leninism to the national struggle of the Afro
American people.
In the middle and late 1920s a bureaucratic caste was. able
to win control in the Soviet Union as a result of the isolation
of Soviet Russia internationally, the ravaging of the Soviet
economy .by the civil war, the sabotage by procapitalist forces,
g
and the backward levels of technolo y and culture inherited by
the revolution. This bureaucratic grouping, headed by Stalin,
cloaked itself in the rhet.oric of Marxism and Leninism, but in
.
reality it abandoned the Marxist-Leninist political outlook,
including support to the struggles of oppressed nations.
This Stalinist bureaucracy exerted its domination on the
world movement through the Communist International. The
Stalinized Communist parties have done everything in their
power to disorient and derail revolutionary movements. Where
the class and national struggles have burst through the frame..
work of capitalist politics and onto a revolutionary course, as
-in Western Europe after World War II, as in Iraq in 1958, as
in France in 1968, and in many other instances, the .Stalinists
have blocked revolutionary action. Their continuing use of
Marxist rhetoric, however, has led many people who, like
Harold Cruse, don't understand Marxism to confuse Marxism
with Stalinism.
One of the first effects of the control of this Stalinist bureau
cracy within the Communist International was the infamous
ultraleft "third period" which extended from about 1928 to about
1935. The Stalinists preached that revolution was imminent
everywhere in the world and that it was the duty of Com
munists to raise only the most "revolutionary" slogans. This
designation of a uniform world wide revolutionary situation
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:
We do, of course, not obligate the Negroes to become a

nation; if they are, then that is a question of their con
sciousness, that is, what they desire and what they strive
for. We say: If the Negroes want that then we must fight

against imperialism 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.(New York: Pathfinder Press,
1972, p.13.]
I do not propose for the party to advocate, I do not
propose to Inject, but only to proclaim our obligation to
support the struggle for self-determination if the Negroes
themselves want it. It is not a question of our Negro com
rades. It is a question of thirteen or fourteen million Ne
groes.(Jbid., p. 29.]
.
This cuts across both the traditional antinationalist positions

of the American socialists and the Black Belt theory advocated
by the Stalinists. Trotsky showed- that the mistake of the Black
Belt theory was not that it posed a nationalist solution, but that
it violated the right of oppressed nations to self-determination
by calling for separation in the manner prescribed by the
Communist Party-more accurately; by Stalin-instead of by
Afro-Americans.
Trotsky felt that it was the lack of radicalization within the
Black masses, rather than any inherent Invalidity of Black
nationalism, which accounted for the absence of a large-scale
nationalist movement in his time. As to those who attacked
nationalism because it "divides" the workers on a race line,
Trotsky repeated. Lenin's view of the necessity of the workers
to support the right of self-determination of the oppressed.
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.)
Trotsky understood that nationalism would play a central

role in the development of the socialist revolution. "It is very
possible that the Negroes also. through ...self-determination

will proceed to the proletarian dictatorship in a couple of gi
gantic strides, ahead of the great bloc of white workers. They
will then furnish the vanguard" (ibid., p. 18).
In unraveling the confusions presented by Cruse, it has been
necessary first to separate out his erroneous conception of the
Marxist attitude toward nationalism. We have shown that his
"expertise" on this matter leaves much to be desired. Now,
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
a permanent "no-strike pledge" .and in some industries for a

return to piecework.
Communist Party leaders constantly lauded capitalist poli
ticians such as Roosevelt and Churchill and hailed the possi
bilities of permanent class peace after the war. Earl Browder,
U.S. Stalinist guiding light of the time, even announced that
he would unite with J.P. Morgan, a symbol of imperialism,
in the cause of the national interest. In an unparalleled show
of lackeyism, the Communists went so far as to dissolve them
selves as a political party in 1943.
During the war, CP policies on the Black liberation struggle

sank to a new low. Communist spokesmen declared that the
Black liberation struggle, like all other struggles, had to put
aside its demands so as not to interfere with "the war effort."
This betrayal by the Stalinists was shown by their attitude
toward the March on Washington Movement which Cruse briefly
notes in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.
The March on Washington Movement was a massive all
Black movement initiated by A. Philip Randolph around the
demand that equal-hiring practices be established in war in
dustries. Randolph threatened to mobilize tens of thousands
of Blacks in Washington on July 1, 1941, unless the demands
were met.
The march was called off just before July 1 under pressure
from the Roosevelt administration and moderate Black or
ganizations. Revolutionary socialists supported and participated
in the all-Black March on Washington Movement, but criticized
Randolph's failure to follow up the mass sentiment for the
march.
At first the Stalinists, who were on a brief anti-Roosevelt
fling as a result of the Soviet-Nazi pact, took a hostile attitude
toward the movement because it wasn't statedly anti-Roosevelt
However on June 21, 1941, just before the march was called
off, Hitler's armies moved against the Soviet Union and the
Stalinists traded their anti-Roosevelt banners for slogans urging
100 percent support to the U.S. government An article
published in 1942 in the Fourth International (predecessor of
the International Sociali$t Review) exposed this sell-out:
In February . . . [1942) James W. Ford wrote a pam

phlet entitled "The War and the Negro People," in which
he tries to justify the Stalinist policy by saying "Four hun
dred years of Negro slavery are nothing besides Nazi per-
secution of Jewish peoples, peoples of the occupied countries,

and 'races' of so-called 'inferior' status." In March [1942],
Eugene Gordon of the Daily Worker [CP newspaper] edi
torial staff came out at a symposium in opposition to the
Double V slogan of the Pittsburgh Courier ("double vic
tory for democracy at home {against racism] and abroad")
because, said the Stalinist, "Hitler is the main enemy" and
the "foes of Negro rights in this country should be considered
secondary." [Vol. 3 (May 1942), pp. 148-49.]
Thus the Stalinists soft-pedaled the Black struggle, and even

attacked its right to exist, due to the flips and flops of inter
national Stalinism.
In dealing with the CP's attitude toward ghetto rebellions
during the 1940s, Cruse quotes Ernest Kaiser's article in Phylon
magazine of 1948: "Oversimplification and sanguineness on the
Negro question led Communists during the war to blame all
anti-Negro riots and the like on fifth-column agents in this
country. The Harlem riot, a different kind of riot, became, in
the world of Michael Gold, a hoodlum-led Negro pogrom
against the Jewish shopkeepers of Harlem!" (Crisis, p. 52).
This explanation of the CP's attitude toward the ghetto re
bellions gives the CP too much cre,dit. It was not the "over
simplification and sanguineness" of the Communists which
was responsible for this position, but rather the political needs
of international Stalinism during the Second World War.
Marxism, however, dictated a different course. During the
second world war the Socialist Workers Party held to the
Leninist position of no support to imperialist war; its leaders
were persecuted and .jailed because they championed the con
tinuation of Black and labor struggles during the war.
Commenting on the Detroit ghetto rebellion in 1943, David
Ransom, in his article T
" he Detroit Pogrom" published in the
July 1943Fourth . International, pointed out: "The Stalinist
Daily Worker, anxious to whitewash the Roosevelt regime and
preserve 'national unity,' sees in the atrocities the handiwork
of Axis agents .... every Negro in Detroit, knows wnat hap
pened: a lynch mob had been permitted to run wild" (Vol.4,
p.207).
In his essays "Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro
American" and "Behind the Black Power Slogan," Cruse attempts
to refute the Stalinist historian Herbert Aptheker's appraisal of
W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. In the process
Cruse gives a fairly clear exposition of his own brand
of reformism. Before the incorrect analyses by both Cruse and

the Stalinists of these two representative figures can be
straightened out, it is necessary to look more closely at Cruse's
reformism.
Cruse attacks Marxists for not supporting Washington and
other Black capitalist ventures in this period as a central
strategy for Black liberation. He gives his own viewpoint by
saying: "It is not that the Negro suffers so much from cap
italism in America, but from a lack of capitalist development"
(Rebellion, p. 239).
Cruse says that "The only way for Marxist socialists to
analyze this . . . Negro movement correctly is to see it as
Lenin saw similar movements of his time, i.e., as a bourgeois
democratic revolution" (ibid., p. 232). By a bourgeois-demo
cratic revolution Cruse means a revolution that creates the
preconditions for capitalist development. He quotes Joseph
Stalin, apparently in agreement: "... a nation is not merely
a historical category, but a historical category belonging to
a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism," and adds
"For the Afro-American, 'the epoch of rising capitalism' was. . .
the epoch of black bourgeois capitalistic emergence beginning
around 1900 when Washington established the National Negro
Business League. Thus Booker T. Washington was expressing
the real, fundamental class aspirations of the epocii. He was the
bourgeois leader . . . who played the capitalistic game accord-
ing to the rule that prevailed (like all smart capitalists do)"
(ibid. p. 221). /
However, if Cruse wants to cite Lenin, he should remember

that Lenin dealt concretely with the problems of the "bourgeois
democratic revolution." In his small book Imperialism,
the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin shows that by the be
ginning of the twentieth century, the "epoch of rising capitalism"
had ended not just in a few countries but internationally, as
a result of the world domination of imperialism.
The class antagonisms between the working class of oppressed
nations and the capitalists of the oppressed nations are even
sharper in the current imperialist epoch than they were in the
early period of capitalism. The national capitalists are placed
in a marginal position because of the overwhelming power of
the imperialist oppressors. They are often forced to exploit
the workers of the nation at sharper rates than the imperialists
themselves, and moreover, in colonial countries they are usually
linked with reactionary landholding groups.
As in the revolutions of the bourgeois era in the U. S., France,

etc., only a powerful revolutionary wave can smash the political
and economic forms of national oppression. The national
capitalists in every instance have refused to carry out such a
mobilization against imperialism because they fear that the mo
bilization of the working masses would pose the question of
a social revolution not only against foreign imperialism but
against national capitalism as well. Without such a struggle,
every attempt at gaining national liberation has been crushed
by the might of imperialist economic and political domination.
The working class in oppressed nations, facing the brunt
of national oppression, having no ties with the capitalist and
imperialist systems, is the only force that can lead the national
liberation struggle to complete victory.
This combination of class and national goals, which is built
into the struggle for national liberation in oppressed nations,
contains a revolutionary potential that carries it beyond the
patriots' dreams of the eighteenth century. The idea that the
Black liberation movement in the U. S. can lead to the es
tablishment of th.e eonditions for the free development of Black
capitalism in twentieth-century America-to this and no more
is hopelessly out of touch with reality.. Cruse's appeal to Lenin
is particularly out of place in this respect
If Cruse is concerned with Lenin in regard to the bourgeois
democratic revolution, he should report what Lenin actually
did. In Russia where the bourgeois-democratic revolution was
on. the agenda, the Bolsheviks won the "argument" by taking
state power and carrying through tasks of both the democ-r atic
and the socialist revolutions-not by; supporting bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois leaderships who were for a continuation of the
old oppression, and therefore incapable of bringing about even
democratic reforms like giving land to the peasants.
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.
Ironically, on this point Cruse's politics converge with that

of the Stalinists on whom he pours so much invective. Like the
Stalinists, he supports a bourgeois leadership (Booker T. Wash
ington and the modern-day supporters of Black capitalism
like Nathan Wright) who see the solution within the context
of capitalist property relations.
Stalinism agrees with Cruse on the absolute necessity of
supporting bourgeois leaderships in the Third World. Cruse,
in "Behind the Black Power Slogan;" talks about the need to
support men like Sun Yat-sen, Gandhi, Nehru and Chiang
Kai-shek as "bourgeois nationalists" and bourgeois democrats,
though each one of these capitalist figures served to keep the
struggle of the masses within the context of exploitative capital
ism and imperialist domination. Cruses reformism is less well
structured than the Stalinists, but that's where the differences
end.
Nowhere in his writings does Cruse point out the necessity
of a revolutionary struggle against the enemy. In essence he
denies the oppression of Black people by capitalism. He believes
that it is possible to separate Black nationalism from struggle
against capitalism. Because of that blindness, he makes yet
another error in his analysis of the dynamics of the Black
liberation struggle.
While he acknowledges that there are differences among Black
nationalists and integrationists, he nevertheless comes to a
position that nationalism is inherently progressive and integra
tionism is inherently reactionary. He does not recognize that
both forms of struggle are part of Blacks' long fight for libera
tion.
The pational oppression that Black people have faced .on
this continent for the past four hundred years has developed
a common cultural, political, and economic situation among
them. Black liberationists have expressed a number of different
strategies to eliminate this oppression. Some solutions are inte
grationist, basically demanding that oppression be ended by
establishing equality between Blacks and whites in this country
-removing the national oppression within the context of one
nation-state. Though this approach does leave an opening
for reformists who advocate assimilation into "American" cul
ture and .the system as is, reformism is not inherently wound
up with integrationism. In fact, within the context of integra
tionism, only a program that outlines an economic and political .
struggle against the exploiters and oppressors of the mass
of Blacks can solve the problem.
Leninism, Stalinism, and Black NationaliSm 171
On the other hand, there is the nationalist current which

calls for Black people to solve the problem of national op'
pression by gaining control of their own destinies, and estab
lishing an independent Black national identity-politically, eco
nomically, and culturally. Nationalism calls for a more abrupt
break with American society than integrationism, and is there
fore much more likely to develop a concrete social program
of its own: socialist, capitalist, welfare statist, etc. With this
program it has a better chance of winning large-scale support
within the mass of the Black community-the proletarian core
-and mobilizing working-class elements within the Black com
munity.
Within the context of these two trends, however, the differences
between militancy, revolutionism, and social conservatism do
not hinge on the question of nationalism versus integrationi.sm,
but rather on the attitude taken toward the white-capitalist
power structure.
For Cruse, the fact that Booker T. Washington was anti
integrationist-he didn't care to press even the question of
equality at the time-and proseparationist means that Wash
ington was a nationalist. Booker T. Washington's approach
to the white power structure was one of clear submission to
it. He was in no sense of the word a nationalist. Washington
was not for the development of an independent Black identity
on a political, economic, or cultural framework, nor was h.
for the organization of the Black community independent of
white capitalism. Washington acquiesced to segregated forms
of organization not as a separatist, but as an accomodationist
with the policies of the postreconstruction South and of the
imperialist Northern manufacturers.
Washington's policy-as correctly diagnosed by Cruse -was
to forsake any thought of political struggle for a purely eco
nomic approach. He opposed political action or demands for
social equality because he feared it would antagonize Southern
racism.
Did Washington's economic policy reflect a nationalist desire
to break with America and establish an independent Black
identity? Hardly. Washington saw the capitalist economic sys
tem as the "American way," a path for advancement within
the context of the society. Unlike Cruse or Black nationalists
who conceive of Black capitalism as a means of developing
a base for breaking with American imperialism, Washington
saw his strategy as one of eventually integrating Blacks into
the economic and political structures of the system.
Moreover, Washington's program of encouraging Blacks to

enter business was only one of his programs. More important
especially in terms of the debate between Washington and
DuBois-was his position on Black education. Washington's
main economic projection for the masses of the Black com
munity was manual and agricultural training, not to serve
the interests of an independent Black economy, but to make
Blacks more efficiently exploited cogs in the racist machine.
Washington's economic program based on capitalism prevented
him from posing the only economic program that could have
mobilized the Black farmers and workers of the time, and
could have provided a base for an independent Black state
or the achievement of real social and political equality: so
cialism-the seizure and control of the land and factories by
the oppressed.
Culturally, also, Washington maintained an assimilationist
policy. Tuskegee Institute over which Washington presided
was the model of the type of Black education he fostered. It
served not to develop a Black culture, but to educate Black
students in the traditions of racist white American culture.
Washington is standing proof of the inadequacy of procap-
italist leaderships in the struggle for self-determination, of the
contradiction between capitalism and real national liberation.
Washington's outlook never broke with American imperialism,
but won the support of imperialists like Andrew Carnegie and
John D. Rockefeller. Washington's strategies served to stand
in the way of the struggle for self-determination or equality.
Cruse attacks CP spokesman Aptheker for building up
Du Bois as a "revolutionary" alternative to Washington during
the years in which the ' two contended for leadership of the
Black community (1905-14). Cruse does raise an important
question when be questions the mythology of W. E. B. Du Bois
which has been consciously constructed by the .C P since
Du Bois entered their circles during the 1940s.
Aptheker falsely depicts the conflict between Du Bois and
Washington .as a struggle between revolution and reaction.
"The differences between Du Bois and Washington were basfc
and not simply tactical. ... Du Bois rejected subordination;
Washington accepted it. . Du Bois rejected colonialism; Wash
ington assumed its continuance. Du Bois was intensely critical
of capitalism long before World War I; Washington worshipped
it" (as quoted by Cruse in Rebellion, p.203).
The Stalinists portray Du Bois as the radical leader of Black
people at that time for two specific reasons.As a prominent
member of the Communist Party, whatever prestige could be

built around Du Bois as a pqlitical figure would rub off on
the Stalinists. Also, Du Bois' liberal ideas on political action,
which were at their height during the period of his dispute
with Washington, were consonant with the politics of the Com
munist Party. Thus the Communist Party, which had previously
attacked and maligned Du Bois, decided to build up an image
of Du Bois' role in the debate with Washington to prop. up
the CP's reformist politics.
Contrary to the mythology created by Aptheker and the
Stalinists, Du Bois' politics during the time of the Washington
Du Bois exchange were hardly militant-much less revolu
tionary. Faced with rising urbanization and proletarianization
of the Black community and with Washington's strategy of
orienting Black education around manual, industrial, and
agricultural training for their role in this newly industrializing
society, Du Bois developed the theory that the key to ending
Black oppression lay in increased academic education of the
Black middle class (the "talented tenth") allowing increased
participation of Blacks in traditional white-capitalist politics.
Through the right to vote, Du Bois thought, would be ob
tained "freedom, manhood, the honor of your wives, the chas
tity of your daughters, the right to work and the chance to
rise" (as quoted by William Gorman, "W.E.B. Du Bois and
His Works," Fourth International, Vol. 1 1 [May-June 1950],
p. 81).
Even from an integrationist point of view this strategy was
inadequate. It was not designed to eliminate the poverty and
economic exploitation of the mass of Black farmers and worlv
ers. At the most, Du Bois advocated that the educated talented
tenth teach the masses the manual, industrial, and agricultural
trades. Du Bois' program entailed no economic challenge to
the ruling class, no means of forcing the white bourgeoisie
to give jobs to this newly-educated Black middle class. Du Bois
supported the First World War, along with Washington's fol
lowers, opposed unionization, supported the racist president
Woodrow Wilson.
In short, Du Bois' program differed basically from Wash
ington's only in that he advocated more participation in the
capitalist economic and political system for the Black middle
class, not in that he "rejected subordination" or was "intensely
critical of capitalism."
The correct answer to the Du Bois-Washington debate lies
not in the debate between political and economic means of
struggle, or between nationalism and integration, as Cruse

sees it, but between capitalism and socialism. At the time of
the debate, neither Du Bois nor Washington was able to go
beyond the confines of the capitalist system in their attempts
to advance Black people. While Du Bois saw the answer in
politics he saw it through the politics of the system- capitalist
politics. While Washington saw the answer in economics, he
saw it within the confines of the system- capitalist economics.
Neither one can liberate Black people.
Cruse opposes the class analysis by claiming that the Stalin
i&ts (and therefore all Marxists) use such an analysis to mute
the national liberation struggle. He is right in one respect.
The Stalinists call for Black-white unity on the ground that
"it leads to working-class unity" but the kind of unity they are
talking about is not unity around a .revolutionary program
for the working class, but around submission to liberal politi
cians and political strategies.
Black nationalism and other social movements with a revolu
tionary potential cut across the Stalinist' reformist version of
"unity." At the same time they go in the direction of a Marxist
program. It is not because the Stalinists think that the workers
will make the revolution that they hold to this policy, but pre
cisely because they don't actually think this.

Obviously if you think, as Marxists do, that the workers

can and should destroy the entire world imperialist system,
then you must see nothing wrong in making a division b
tween those who support that system's oppressio.1;1 of Black
people and those who are ready to fight against it. Revolu
tionary socialists think that, to the degree that Black nation
alism polarizes the working class, it is positive, since it breaks
away that section willing to struggle around a revolutionary
program from the leadership of those who are tied to support-

ing the capitalist system.

For all his talk about class, Cruse sets forth no consistent
policy for Black workers. Instead he turns toward the Black
middle class and the nonexistent Black capitalist class. From
his ignorance of or disdain for the Black workers' role in the
process, he concludes that anyclass analysis or interest in trade
unionism would cut across Black nationalism and the right
of Blacks to independent organization.
In actuality, Black workers will be the most potent force
within the Black liberation struggle because they are the most
oppressed section of the community and the most alienated from
Leninism, Sta linism , and Black Nationalism 1 75
the white-capitalist ideology and culture; they are the largest

section of the Black community and the most powerful because
of their vital role in the process of production. Unlike either
the Black midqle class or the few Black capitalists they have
absolutely no stake in the continued existence of the capitalist
system. But they do have a basic interest in acquiring their
own power over production through workers' control.
They share with white workers a common oppression by
capitalism and a common objective interest in struggle around
economic issues. Black workers are more class-conscious and
are on a higher political level than whites, especially in regard
to the central question of supporting Black liberation. Unity
on a class basis can only be secured by the white workers'
supporting Black liberation- riot by making Blacks submit"to
some phony "unity." The way to facilitate that is for Black
workers and others who support the Black struggle to call for
the workers' movement to support their demands for .Black
liberation, and for the independent organization of the Black
community to continue and to heighten.
Marxists want real lack-white unity. We want Black workers,
white workers, Chicano workers, and everybody else to unite
around a program of struggle against their common enemies.
We think that this struggle and this unity can be waged not
only around common problems but also around full and un
conditional support to the right of self-determination of all
oppressed national minorities. To deny this, and refuse support
to the Black nationalist current, is to prevent the revolutionary
development of the class struggle.
More and more Black radicals are coming to recognize the
important iQterrelationship between the class struggle and the
national liberation struggle. More and more Blacks are be
coming attracted to Marxism and Leninism, rejecting anti-Marx-.
ists and "Black capitalists" of the Cruse variety. The strongest
refutation of Cruse's theory about a reformist, Black capitalist
thrust of Black nationalism is the deepening of revolutionary
consciousness within the Black liberation struggle.
If he had submitted his experiences in the Communist Party
to a more critical analysis, Cruse could have made a valuable
contribution toward the development of Black nationalism. In
stead he confronts the Stalinists with both hands tied behind
his back- countering their reformism with a reformism of
his own, meeting their antiJMarxism in practice with a literary
anti-Marxism of his own that actually helps them because it
reinforces the false claim that Stalinists are Marxists.

At a time when Blacks are concerned with the relationship
of Black workers to the nationalist struggle, Cruse is turning
toward Black capitalism and the Black middle class. At a
time when Black youth by the thousands are turning toward
Malcolm X and toward Marxism and Leninism, Cruse is turn
ing back to Booker T. Washington.
Cruse's positions have not been rendered more revolutionary
or correct by his repudiation of the teachings of Marx, Lenin,
and Trotsky. Instead he has fallen back upon a moth-eaten
analysis of the nature of American society which is dear to
academic sociology and to every liberal. He clings to the theory
of "cultural pluralism" which maintains that the United States,
far from being controlled by the capitalist class, is made up.of
a diverse multitude of ethnic groupings that have all striven
with unequal success but each in its appropriate time to move
upward in the social scale.
This leads him to the conclusion that the. current task of
Black natipnalism is not to overturn American capitalism but
to achieve its-- proper "place in the sun," or rather in the system
of competing ethnic groups within the framework of the existing
order. Thus he ends up with a toothless reformism in cultural
clothing.
Harold Cruse's confusion emphasizes the qecessity for Black
revolutionaries to learn the importance of rejecting Stalinism as
an anti-Marxist roadblock to Black liberation. His errors also
demonstrate that the only effective way to do this is to. arm
oneself with revolutionary Marxism.
Lenin's Real Views on Nationalism
by Tony Thomas
In the discussion on the relevance of revolutionary socialism

to Black liberation, Lenin's name has been invoked in defense
of numerous divergent and contradictory views. The following
article, first published in the January 1972 International Social
ist Review, establishes Lenin's view that the nationalism of
oppressed nationalities directed against their oppressors is pro
gressive and shows how Lenin's real views on nationalism can
be applied to the Black liberation struggle in the U. S. today.
It has been slightly revised for this collection.
The nationalist struggles of Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans,

Chicanos, and Native Americans have played a decisive role
in the radicalization of millions in the U.S. These stru_ggles
will play an even more decisive role in the socialist revolution
that will topple U.S. capitalism. The revolutionary potential
of the nationalist movements has already been shown in their
ability to invoh(e masses of Black, Brown, and Red workers
in action against their oppression. Major contributions in this
process have been made by Malcolm X, the independent
political action of the Raza Unida parties, and the mass mo
bilizations against the Vietnam War and the draft led by the
independence movement in Puerto Rico.
Leninists support these nationalist movements as part of
the revolutionary struggle of oppressed peoples against impe
rialism. However, a number of organizations and individuals
have attempted to counterpose Leninism to Afro-American,
Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Native American nationalism.
These range from the reformist Communist Party, to sectarian
ultraleftists like the Progressive Labor Party and the Workers
League, to groups within the Black liberation struggle itself
such as the Black Panthers, and the Black Workers Congress
led by James Forman.
Several of the main arguments supposedly drawn from Lenin
are: ( 1 ) Lenin held that nationalist movements only played
a progressive role in the bourgeois-democratic (capitalist) rev
olution, that this phase had been completed in the U.S. and
177
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.
Are nationalist demands outmoded?

Tim Wohlforth of the Workers League in his pamphlet Black
Nationalism and Marxist Theory argues that Lenin saw nothing
Lenin's Real Views on Nationalism 179
progressive in the struggles of oppressed national minorities

in the United States or Western Europe. "Here the bourgeois
democratic revolution was completed long ago," Wohlforth
writes, "and Lenin saw no validity whatsoever to the right
of self-determination of nations within such countries.
"In these countries its only importance was the absolute neces
sity for the workers' movement to defend this right in the colo
nial sphere, especially where their own imperialist bourgeoisie
was concerned" (pp. 6-7).
This is a position on the national and democratic questions
that Lenin polemicized against for years. Nikolai Bukharin,
Yuri Pyatakov, and Efgenia Bosch, within Lenin's Bolshevik
Party, and members of the international communist movement
such as Karl Radek and Rosa Luxemburg developed the theory
which Lenin called "imperialist economism."
They felt that the demand for self-determination for oppres
sed nations only applied in the colonies and not in Europe,
the U. S., or other imperialist centers. They claimed that demo
cratic political demands such as the right of oppressed peoples
to self-determination, equality, or autonomy were unrealizable
under imperialism and that only the demand of the "working
class as a whole" for socialism would eliminate the subjuga
tion of one nation by another and end all oppression.
Demands for national self-determination, they Claimed, would
foment democratic and "bourgeois" illusions among the masses,
and would be distorted and used by the ruling class.
While Lenin recognized more than' any other Marxist of his
time that the development of imperialism led to significant
changes in the international capitalist system, especially in
the character of struggles for national liberation, he rejected
this point of view. He divided the countries of the world into
three main types: imperialist advanced countries; semicolonial
areas (today we would call them neocolonial areas) such as
Persia and China of his time, formally independent but in
reality controlled by imperialist powers; and direct colonies.
Lenin held that national oppression took place in all three
types. He describes the advanced countries as follows:
First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe

and the United States. In these countries progressive bour
geois national movements came to an end long ago. Every
one of these "great" nations oppresses other nations both in
the colonies and at home. The tasks of the proletariat

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.]
It is clear that what Lenin saw as completed "long ago" was

the national struggle for self-determination only of the dominant
nationality that wound up in control of the bourgeois-impe
rialist state; not, as Wohlforth would have it, the struggle for
self-determination of Qppressed nations within the imperialist
countries.
For those nationalities still oppressed by the capitalists of
the dominant nation, Leninists continue to support the strug
gle for seir-determination and for national rights.
As Leninists we know that the capitalists allow only those
rights they have been forced to give as a result of mass strug
gles. Black nationalists, Raza militants, Native American ac
tivists, understand from their own experience how many real
rights have been granted by the victory of the U.s. capitalists.
By concretizing the process of the American capitalist revolu
tions (both the American Revolution of 1776 and the Civil
War) we come to a conclusion closer to Lenin and also closer
to the views of Black and Brown nationalists: (1) the American
white capitalist class gained complete power through the Ameri
can Revolution and the Civil War; (2) the capitalist ruling class
oppresses the Black, Chicano, Native American, Puerto Rican,
and other peoples within this country, denying them the basic
bourgeois-democratic rights it had won for itself.
Many of the "Leninisr opponents of Black nationalism argue
that in the case of Afro-Americans the demand for self-determi
nation is not applicable because Blacks do not constitute a "na
tion" in the traditional sense, i.e., they lack a separate language
and a contiguous territory of their own. The special oppression
of Blacks is reduced to the abstraction of "white racism," and
simply lumped together with other kinds of oppression that
will be solved by "working-class unity."
Lenin did not share this simplistic view but explicitly recog
nized the national character of Black oppression. Thus he
wrote in the unfinished article "Statistics and Sociology" in
January 1917:
In the United States, the Negroes .. . account for only

11.1 per cen [of the population]. They should be classep
as an oppressed nation, for the equality won in the Civil
War of 1861-65 and guaranteed by the Constitution of the
republic was 1n many respects increasingly curtailed in the
chief Negro areas (the South) in connection with the transi
tion from the progressive, premonopoly capitalism of 1860-
70 to the reactionary, monopoly capitalism (imperialism)
of the new era, which in America was especially sharply
etched out by the Spanish-American imperialist war of 1898
.... [Vol.23, pp. 275-6.]
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:
In all their propaganda and agitation- both within par

liament and outside it- the Communist parties must con
sistently expose that constant violation of the equality of na
tions and of the guaranteed rlght.s of national minorities
which is to be seen in all capitalist countries, despite their
"democratic" constitutions. It is also necessary, fi.I'st, constant
ly to explain that only the Soviet system is capable of en
suring genuine equality of, #ations, by uniting fi.I'st the prole
tarians and then the whole mass of the working population
in the struggle against the bourgeoisie; and, second, that

all Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolfY
tionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged
nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and
in the colonies.
Without the latter condition, which is particularly important,
the struggle against the oppression of the dependent nations
and colonies, as well as recognition of their right to secede,
are but a false signboard, as is evidenced by the parties of
the Second International. [Vol. 31, pp. 147-8. Emphasis
added.)
The two-stage theory of revolution

Other opponents of the national struggles of oppressed peoples
have claimed that the national struggle can only lead to a vic
tory of nationalist capitalists. They have even charged that Len
in's strategy of support to national struggles was based on a
two-stage theory of the revolution- nationalist revolution led
by the capitalists flrst, and socialist revolution later.
Thus the ex-Maoist Progressive Labor Party states:
From the point of view of workers, peasants, and other

oppressed people, there is no way to "sell out" a struggle
for "national liberation"-because this itruggle itself is a
sellout in its very conception. The history of the past 50
years shows that national liberation movements are the po
litical embodiment 'of the fight waged by local "national bour
geoisies" to accumulate large amounts of capital and establish
themselves either as important junior partners of imperialism
or as the rulers of an independent capitalist economy in
their own right. [Progressive Labor,
. November 1971, p.
60.]
PL incorrectly and narrowly identifies the struggle for na

tional self-determination on the part of oppressed peoples with
the subjective wishes of the so-called national bourgeoisie. In
reality the "national bourgeoisie" in the colonial world and
among oppressed national minorities in the advanced countries
is too weak to initiate genuine nationalist struggles for fear
the leadership will pass to the working class. While the national
bourgeoisies may dream of ruling "an independent capitalist
economy in their own right," they are in fact tied hand and
foot to imperialism and consist'iifiJ.y oppose a real struggle for
national independence.
PL, with a peculiar illogic, argues that "Trotsky's position

that only communists could guarantee the success of a nation
al liberation struggle" was tantamount to political support to
capitalist rule in the underdeveloped nations. (That Lenin
shared Trotsky's position is indicated by the citation above
from the "Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions.")
To compound the confusion they have created, the ex-Maoists
depict Lenin as even more capitulatory, according to them,
to the national bourgeoisie. Thus they write:
"Lenin's retort [to Trotsky!) that communists should support
national liberation struggles led by the local 'oppressed' bour
geoisie amounts in essence to the same thing. As we have
shown above, he [Lenin] held the view that tbe free, 'democratic'
development of capitalism in countries where such struggles
took place represented the essntial first stage on the road
to socialism" (Progressive Labor, November 1971, p. 61).
It is true that Lenin in his early work thought that the first
task in Russia would be the completion of the bourgeois-dePl
ocratic revolution. He left open .the question of how soon after
such a revolt against czarism socialist measures would be
possible. Lenin's views changed, particularly as a result of
the experience of 1917, as we shall see.
But even Lenin's early position stands in sharp opposition
to the two-stage theory attributed to him by PL. In reality
this two-stage theory was put forward by the Mensheviks and
was later elaborated by Stalin and used by both the Russian
and Chinese governments.
Both the Mensheviks and later the Stalinists projected the
.
bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped world as cap able of playing
an independent, progressive role in opposition to the powerful
imperialist centers. The Mensheviks felt that the working class
and peasantry should form a close political alliance with the
bourgeoisie in Russia. Stalin and Mao used the two-stage theory
as a pretext for unprincipled deals with bourgeois govern
ments in the underdeveloped world'. In order to preserve their
diplomatic alliances Peking and Moscow to this day call on
mass movements in various countries to subordinate their
independent struggles to support of the existing bourgeois re
gimes.
Prior to 1917 Lenin believed that the coming Russian Revolu
tion would be bourgeois-democratic in character, but he did
not advocate an alliance with the Russian national bourgeoisie
or place political confidence in this class as PL implies. He
put forward the formula of a "democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry," that is, an alliance of the two

main oppressed classes in Russian society. He did not call for
the dictatorship of the proletariat and direct implementation
of socialist measures after a projected victory. This was not
because he believed that the Russian capitalists would be in
the leadership of the revolution but because he left open the
question of the relative weight of the peasantry in the alliance.
Trotsky also believed that the Russian Revolution would
undertake the solution of bourgeois-democratic tasks such as
land reform, but he rejected the idea that the peasantry could
play an important independent role in deciding the program of
the revolution. They would, he said, join in an alliance under
the leadership either of the working class or of the capitalists,
and that the revolutionary workers' party must plan to imple
ment democratic and socialist tasks simultaneously after win
ning power.
Lenin adopted Trotsky's position in his famous April Theses
in 1917 that oriented the Bolshevik Party toward the seizure
of power.
It had become clear that the working class would have to
play the decisive role. It was imperative that it have the support
of the peasantry, but the parties of the peasantry and the pea
antry itself did not have enough cohesiveness and pelitical
stability to conduct through to the end the fight against the
resistance of the bourgeoisie and the landlords. But more than
that-the resistance to the developing power of the Soviets
was so marked that Lenin saw that the new government would
have to work toward measures that would change property
relations, carry out a socialist revolution, if even bourgeois
democratic <lemands were to be carried out. The Kerensky Pro
visional Government was proving incapable of solving the
agrarian and national problems, and the problems of war
and peace.
Lenin had to fight against tendencies within his own party
that were moving toward the Menshevik position of subordina
tion of the revolution to bourgeois liberal parties.
The experience of the October Revolution, particularly as
it involved the many oppressed nationalities in the Russian state,
provided rich lessons in the direct relationship between nation
al struggles and socialist revolution.
Even while he still clung to the slogan of the "democratic
dictatorship" Lenin had worked out a perfectly clear and still
valid strategy for dealing with the national bourgeoisie in
the colonial world. National struggles in such countries were

to be defended from imperialism despite their leadership, while
within the colonial nation the revolutionary party would give
no political support to the national bourgeoisie and would
seek to win for itself the leadership of the nationalist n;tove
ment.
It was only through support to the democrat ic demands
and concrete anti-imperialist actions of such a movement for
self-determination that the workers' party could win the masses
to a socialist perspective. To stand aside in a sectarian manner
was only to surrender the political initiative to the national
bourgeoisie. This had nothing in common with the strategy of
political support to the national bourgeoisie embodied in the
two-stage theory.
In an article entitled "The Revolutionary Proletariat and
the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" written in October
1915, Lenin strongly attacked Karl Radek (who was then writ-_
ing under the pen name Parabellum), a . partisan of the view
that the arrival of imperialism made support by workers _in
the advanced countrie:s to national liberation .struggles super
fluous.
Furthermore imperialism means that capitalism has out

grown the framework of national states; it means that
national oppression has been extended and heightened on
a new historical foundation. Hence, it follows that, despite
Parabellum, we must link the revolutionary struggle for
socialism with a revolutionary programme on the national
question.
From what Parabellum says, it appears -that, in the name
of the socialist revolution, he scornfully rejects a consistently
revolutionary programme in the sphere of democracy. He
is wrong to do so. The proletariat cannot be victorious
except through democracy, ie., by giving full effect to
democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle
democratic demands Jormulated in the most resolute terms.
It is absurd to contrapose the socialist revolution and the
revolutionary struggle against capitalism. to a single prob
lem of democracy, in this case, the national question. We
must combine revolutionary programme and tactics on
all democratic demands: a republic, a militia, the popular
election of officials, equal rights for women, the self-deter
mination of nations, etc. While capitalism exists, these de-
186 Black Nationalism and Socialism
mands- all of them-can only be accomplised as an

exception, and even then in an incomplete and distorted
form. Basing ourselves on the democracy already achieved,
and exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we de
mand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of
the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both for the abolition
of the poverty of the masses and for the complete and
all-round institution of all democratic reforms. Some of
these reforms will be started before the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie, others in the course of that overthrow, and
still others after it The social revolution is not a single
battle, but a period covering a series of battles over all
sorts of problems of economic and democratic reform,
which are consummated only by the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie. [Vol. 21, p. 408. Emphasis in original.]
For these reasons, the Socialist Workers Party has charac

terized the coming American revolution as a combined rev
olution, joining the tasks of the national-democratic revolution
left unfulfilled-especially the national liberation of oppressed
nationalities -with the proletarian struggle for socialism. .
Lenin rejected the two-stage theory in both the advanced
countries such as the United States !llld in the backward coun
tries.. In his "Report for the Commission on National and
Colonial Questions" at the Second Congress of the Communist
International Lenin said:
The question was posed as follows: are we to consider

as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic
development is inevitable for backward nations now on
the road to emancipation .. ? We replied in the negative.
.
H the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts sys

tematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet govern
ments come to their aid with all the means at their
disposal-in that event it will be mistaken to assume that
the backward peoples must inevitably go through the cap
italist stage of development . . . the Communist Interna
tional should advance the proposition ... that with the
aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward
countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through
certain stages of development, to communism, without
having to pass through the capitalist stage. [Vol. 31, p.
244.]
Lenin's Real Views on Nationali$Tn 187
Rather than rejecting the demand for national liberation

as "illusory" under capitalism, or propounding a two-stage
theory in which victory of the exploiting classes of the op
pressed nation must be obtained before any thought is given
to socialist revolution, Lenin saw support to the national rev
olution internationally as an integral part of the immediate
struggle for socialism.
The American Communist Party

Some opponents of the nationalism of oppressed peoples,
while claiming to support the right of self-determination of
Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans, are
against nationalism. They claim that Lenin's position was
that all natiomilism of oppressed peoples is essentially cap
italist oriented and in this country will be represented by Black,
Brown, and Red capitalists.
Thus Jose Stevens, Harlem Communist Party leader, says that
P.an-Africanism "has become the new dressing for bourgeois
nationalism." He claims that. it is "nothing but a new cloak
for the aspirations of the Black bourgeoisie and petit bour
geoisie to establish their right to reap more of the benefits
from the exploitation of the Black masses. . . . Any careful
e::&:amination will show that these ideas are being supported
and fmanced by monopoly" ("Party Work in Halem, Political
Affairs, September 1971, p. 38).
Tony Monteiro, a leader of the Young Workers Liberation
League, in an article in the July 1971 issue of the same maga
zine states: ". . . . nationalism and separatism within ,the move
ment are capitulations to racism. The ideologies of racism
and nationalism have the same bourgeois class essence and
cannot serve to advance. the common struggle of all workers
for socialism and national liberation" (p. 44).
Supporters of this viewpoint attempt to distort .quotations
from Lenin's attacks on bourgeois nationalism on which he
concentrated in his early writings on self-determination.
(It should be pointed out that the American CP openly ad
vocates alliances with the national bourgeoisie in the colonial
world and itself practices class-collaboration in its long-time
support for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party at home.
The arguments it puts forward against Black nationalism are
inconsistent with the CP's whole program and practice. The
only reasonable conclusion is that the CP suddenly resorts
to this demagogic ultraleftism not because it really sees Black
nationalism as "bourgeois" but precisely because of the na

tionalist movement's independence from capitalist politics.)
The l:tight of Nations to Self-Determination was Lenin's flrst
major work on the question, written in the spring of 1914.
He had written "Critical Remarks on the National Question"
on the issue of cultural-national autonomy and "national cul
ture" earlier in the winter of 1913, but had deferred the question
of self-determination to the later article.
Viewed in the proper context, these articles run against the
thrust of Monteiro's and Stevens's views.

First, Lenin saw the national movement and its demands
as products of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, in--the same
sense as demands for freedom of speech, the right to vote,
the freedom to organize, etc. Thus he wrote in his article, "The
Cadet5 and 'The Right of Nations to Self-Determination"': "All
general democratic demands are bourgeoemocratic de
mands; but only the anarchists and opportunists can deduce
from this that it is not the business of the proletariat to back
these demands in the most consistent manner possible" (VoL
19, p. 526, emphasis in original).
Second, he characterized the speciflc movements led by the
national capitalists of oppressed countries as bourgeois. It
was this concrete type of capitalist nationalism that he dealt
with in The Right of Nations to Self-Determination.
Lenin concentrated on the role of the national capitalist-led
movements in this article for a particular reason. This was the
specific character-of the national movements faced by the Rus
sian, Polish, and Austrian Marxists with whom he was arguing.
He emphasized getting. down to the concrete because Rosa
Luxemburg, to whom he directed this polemic, was unne&
sarily abstract, raing in her examples over centuries and
continents without centering on the particulars of the national
movement in Poland.
Lenin insisted that the struggle on the part of the national
capitalists and the movement supporting them against their
oppressors has a progressive content He states: "The bourgeois
nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic
content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content
that we unconditionally support" (Vol. 20, p. 412, emphasis
in original).
At the same time he rea z
il ed the specific class nature of the
nationalism of the capitalists. He pointed out that one of the
basic tendencies of this bourgeois nationalism is to get the
bourgeoisie into a position in which it can oppress and exploit
other nationalities and classes.
Lenin's Real Views
. on Nationalism 189
This was a particul!lr problem in the Eastern Europe of

Lenin's time. Borders shifted back and forth over the centuries,
turnuig oppressed 'ntlons . into -oppressors, oppressor into op
.
pressed. The states conquering each' other were- rarely homo

geneous national sttes, but were most" often multinationalstates
made up of oppressor and oppressed.
In many areas formerly oppressing people maintained many
privileges 11nd superior economic positions that allowed them to
continue certain aspects of the oppression of subject peoples
even while they themselves were oppressed by other nations.
Thus the Russians oppressed the Poles, the Poles the Ukrainians
within Poland, and all oppressed the Jews.
It is not surprising that the national movements led by the

capitalists of that period in Eastern Europe were permeated with
the spirit of return to oppressing other nations. Thus. Lenin
states:
The working class supports the bourgeoisie only in order

to secure national peace (which the bourgeoisie cannot
bring about completely and which can be achieved only
with complete democracy), in order to secure equal rights
and to create the best conditions for the class struggle. . . .
What every bourgeoisie is out for in the national question
is either privileges for its own nation, or exceptional ad
vantages for it; this is. called being "practical". The prol&
tariat is opposed to all privileges, to all exclusiveness. [Vol.
20, pp. 409-10. Emphasis in original.]
It was this type of dynamic that Lenin described as bourgeois

nationalism. It is of this he speaks when he stated "we strictly
distinguish it {support to the nationalism of the bourgeoisie
directed against the oppressors- T. T.] from the tendency to
wards national exclusiveness; we fight against the tendency of
the Polish bourgeoisie to oppress the Jews, etc., etc."
This is the spirit of the bourgeois nation8Jism that Lenin
attacked, which differed from what Monteiro and Stevens claim
to b e bourgeois nationalism- all nationalism on the part of
oppressed peoples. The opponents of the oppressed peoples'
nationalist struggles slip into a vague classless view of the
question.
There are currents within the Black liberation movement

that can in many ways be compared with these bourgeois
nationalists-groups like Innis's CORE which projects an
expansion of Black capitalism in cooperation with big U. S.

corporations; the Congressional Black Caucus, which sees
solutions to Black people's problems through the imperialist
Democratic Party. These organizations, however, are much
weaker than the actual "bourgeois nationalists" that Lenin por
trayed. There is no real Black bourgeoisie on the order even
of the Polish or Ukrainian bourgeoisies of Lenin's time. All
that exists is a minute Black petty bourgeoisie and some
numbers of Black people with delusions about the possibility
of developing Black capitalism.

This, however, is not the main thrust of Black nationalism.
To condemn all Black nationalists, regardless of program or
the social base they operate from, as "bourgeois nationalists,"
as Stevens and Monteiro propose, is thoroughly false.
Black, Brown, and Native American nationalism, in its most
essential forms- and not its distortion by reformist misleaders
-springs from the struggle against oppression of the almost
completely proletarianized ranks of the oppressed nationalities
in this country. It poses the combined national and class
problems of Afro-Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and
Native Americans. The actions for community contr-ol, and
for Black and Brown studies; the formation of Black and
Brown caucuses in the unions; and above all the revolutionary- .
nationalist program of Malcolm X and the Raza Unida pa+ties

display this proletarian thrust
Lenin further developed his analysis in the article The Right
of Nations to Self-Determination to explain that the tendency
of the national bourgeoisie is not in the direction of the most
consistent pursuit of national-democratic tasks, but in the direc
tion of compromise with the oppressor against the interests
of the national struggle. He -contrasts the attempts by the na
tional capitalists to make themselves look "practical" and "fea
sible" to the principled democratic position on the question of
self-determination that proletarian revolutionists must take.
Furthermore, Lenin pointed out that those who see the prin
cipal danger as the national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations
and. in such fear renounce the national struggle and its
demands, leave openings for concessions to the nationalism
of the oppressor: "Carried away by the struggle against na
tionalism in Poland, Rosa Luxemburg has forgotten the
nationalism of the Great Russians, although it is this nation
alism that is the most formidable at the present time. It is a
nationalism that is more feudal than bourgeois, and is the
principal obstacle to democracy and to the proletarian struggle"
(Vol. 20, p. 412, emphasis in original).
In a 1916 polemic with Pyatakov, "A Caricature of Marxism

and hnperialist Economism," Lenin indicated that he was fully
aware of the tendency on the part of the national bourgeoisie
of the oppressed nation to betray the struggle, buthe never
theless castigated those Marxists who refused to support na
tional liberation movements for fear of becoming compromised
by association with bourgeois nationalists. Lenin wrote:
Not infrequently (notably in Austria and Russia) we flnd

the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations talking of national
. revolt, while in practice it enters into reactionary compacts
with the bourgeoisie of the oppressor nation behind the
backs of, and against, its own people. In such cases the
criticism of revolutionary Marxists should be directed not
against th national n10vement, but against its degrada
tion, vulgarisation, against the tendency to ,reduce it to
a petty squabble. [Vol. 23, p. 61. Emphasis in originaL]
When Karl Radek attacked the 1916 Irish Rebellion as

"purely . . . petty-bourgeois" and "putchist," Lenin responded

with an unequivocal repudiation of this view.
He pointed out that the Irish nationalist movement was not
only a movement of 'the radical petty bourgeoisie but also of
"a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation,
demonstrations, suppression of papers, etc."
He further wrote:
To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without
revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe,
without .revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty
bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement
of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-prole
tarian masses against oppression by the lilndowners, the
church, and the monarchy, against national oppression,
etc.- to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution.
So one army lines up in one place and says, 'We are for
socialism", and another, somewhere else and says, 'We
are for imperialism", and that will be a social revolution!
Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view
could vilify the Irish rebellion ...
The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything
other than an .outburst of mass struggle on the part of all
and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inev
itably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the back
ward workers will participate in it-without such partici-
192 Black Liberation and SocialiSm
pation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revo

lution is possible-and just as inevitably will they bring
into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fan
tasies, their weaknesses and errors. But objectively they
will attack capital and the class-conscious vanguard of
the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this
objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and
outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite
and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate
the trusts which all hate (though for different reasons!),
and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their
totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie
and. the victory of socialism. . . . [Vol. 22, pp. 355-6. Em
phasis in original.]
Lenin added that in his opinion the national struggle in

advanced countries of his time would have greater impact than
that of the colonies:
The struggle of the oppressed nations in Europe, a strug

gle capable of going all the way to insurrection and street
fighting, capable of breaking down the iron discipline of
the army and martial law, will "sharpen the revolutionary
crisis in Europe" to an infinitely greater degree than a
much more developed rebellion in a remote colony ....
The general staffs in the current war are doing their
utmost to utilise any national and revolutionary move
ment in the enemy camp: the Germans utilise the Irish
rebellion, the French-the Czech movement, etc. They are
acting quite correctly from their own point of view. A seri
ous war would not be treated seriously if advantage were
not taken of the enemy's slightest weakness and if every
opportunity that presented itself were not seized upon, the
more so since it is impossible to know beforehand at what
moment, where, and with what force some powder maga
zine will "explode".We would be very poor revolutionaries
if, in the proletariat's great war of liberation for socialism,
we did not know how to utilise every popular movement
against every single disaster imperialism brings in order
to intensify and extend the crisis. If we were, on the one
hand, to repeat in a thousand keys the declaration that we
are "opposed" to all national oppression .and, on the other,
tq describe the heroic revolt of the most mobile and en
lightened section of certain classes in an oppressed nation
against its oppressors as a "putsch", we should be sinking
to the same level of stupidity as the Kautskyites [whom

Lenin called at that time social-chauvinists- T. T. ). [Vol.
22, pp. 356-58. Emphasis in original.}
By repudiating the tremendous revolutionary power of the

nationalist movements of Black and Brown people, the Com
munist Party and the lesser opponents of the nationalist move
ments are "repudiating social revolution" in the U.S. and are
thus ineligible to lead the workers of this country to socialism.
In his "Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions"
cited earlier, Lenin stated:
With regard to the more backward states and nations,

in which feudal or patriarchal and patriarchal-peasant
relations predominate, it is particularly important to bear
in mind:
first, that all Communist parties must assist the bour
geois-democratic liberation movement in these countries, and
that the duty of rendering the most active assistance. rests
primarily with the workers of the country the backward
nation is colonially or financially dependent on. [Vol. 31,
p. 149.)
Later, in his report to the Second . World Congress o f the

Comintern on these theses, Lenin clarified these statements.
He said he did not mean capitalist-run movements such as
those he attacked in The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,
but national movements based on the proletariat ad other op
pressed classes. He based this on the differentiation between two
types of national movements, because of the complicity between
imperialism and the national capitalists. He called for the
substitution of the term national-revolutionary for the term bour
geois-democratic so as to make this differentiation more clear
in discussing these non-capitalist-led movements,
There has been a certain rapprochement between the bour

geoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies,
so that very often-perhaps even in most-cases- the bour
geoisie of the oppressed countries, while it does support the
national movement, -is in full accord with the imperialist
bourgeoisie, i.e., joins forces with it against all revoiutionary
movements and revolutionary classes. This was irrefutably
proved i n the commission, and we decided that the only
correct attitude was to take this distinction into account
and, in nearly all cases, substitute the term "national-rev

olutionary" for the term "bourgeois-democratic". The signif
icance of this change is that we, as Communists, should
and will support bourgeois-liberation movements in the col
onies only when they are genuinely revolutionary, and
when their exponents do. not hinder our work of educating
and organizing in a revo1uti.onary spirit the peasantry and
the masses of the plotted. [Vol. 31, p. 242. Emphasis
in original. f'
Needless to say, Lenin did not counterpose support to and

participation in the organizations of these movements to the
construction of the Communist parties or other class organi
zations in the working class of either the oppressed nations or
of the oppressor nations.
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:
In the sphere of theory, the Austrian Social-Democracy,

in the persons of Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, considered
nationality independent of territory, economy and class,
transforming it into a species of abstraction limited by so
called "national character". In the field of national policy,
as for that matter in all other fields, it did not venture
beyond a corrective of the status quo. Fearing the very
thought of dismembering the monarchy, the Austrian So
cial-Democracy strove to adapt its national program to the
borders of the patchwork state. The program of so-called
"national cultural autonomy" required that the citizens o f
o n e and the same nationality, irrespective of their dispersal
over the territory of Austria-Hungary, and irrespective of

the administrative divisions of the state, should be united,
on the basis of purely personal attributes, into one commu
nity for the solution of their cultural" tasks {the theater,
the church, the school, and the like). That program was
artificial and utopian, in so far as it attempted to separate
culture from territory and economy in a society torn apart
by social contradictions; it was at the same time reaction
ary, in so far as it led to a forced disunion into various
nationalities of their class strength.
Lenin's position was the diiect opposite. Regarding nation
ality .as unseverably .connected with territory, economy and
class structure, he refused at the same time to regard the
historical state, the borders of which cut across the living
body of the nations, as a sacrosanct and inviolate category.
He demanded the recognition of the right to secession and
hidependent existence for each national portion of the state.
In so far as the various nationalities, voluntarily or through
force of necessity, coexist within the borders of one state,
their cultural interests must find the highest possible satis
faction within the framework of the broadest regional (and
consequently, territorial) autonomy, including statutory
guarantees of the rights of each minority. At the same time,
Lenin deemed it the incontrovertible duty of all workers
of a given state, irrespective of nationality, to unite in one
and the same class organizations. [Trotsky, Stalin (London:
Hollis and Carter, 1947), .pp. 152.:.S3.]
Bauer proposed cultural autonomy as a diversion to prevent

the nationalism of the oppressed from breaking up the power
of his own oppressing bourgeoisie either through self-determina
tion or political and territorial autonomy. Lenin counterposed
polcal autonomy- full community control by oppressed na
tionalities over all aspects of the community's life.
Lenin. held that by formally dividing all nationalities without
regard to the differentiation between oppressed and oppressor,
cultUral national autonomy altered very little of the material
aspects of national oppression. Also, by making this formal
division of all individuals, it precluded those nationalities who
wanted to opt for assimilation into other nations from doing
l ened this forced separation dictated by the oppressor
so. He ik
to racial segregation in the U.S. which he said was the sole
instance of the implementation of cultural-national autonomy.
(See "Critical Remarks on. the NatiQna

.
. l Question," in Vol. 20,
p.37.)
-
.
.
.
Lenin felt that the granting of national.autono:my to areas

populated by national: minorities was neeessary. "Obviously,
one cannot conceive of a modern, truly democratic state that
did not grantsuch autonomy to every region having any ap
preciably distinct economic and special features, populations
of a specific national composition, etc." (Vol. '20, p. 47).
Lenin not only applied this to big regions with millions, or
even hundreds of thousands, of inhabitants but to regions of
much smaller populations and of the smallest area. This po
sition was counterposed to that of the Russian Jewish Bundists
who were the Russian supporters of cultural-national autonomy.
"Why national areas with populations, not only of half a mil
lion, but even of 50,000, should not be able to enjoy autonomy;
why such areas should not be able to unite in the most di
verse ways with neighboring areas of different dimensions into
a single autonomous 'territory' if that is convenient or neces
sary for economic intercourse-these things remain the secret
of the Bundist Medem" (Vol. 20, p. 49).
This figure of 50,000 is of some practical use to us when we
see that fifty U.S. cities have Afro-American populations of
over 48,000 according to the 1970 census-which was noto
rious for not counting the whole of the Black community.
Moreover twenty-five of these cities had Black populations of
over 100,000 and one-third of all U.S. Blacks live in flfteen of
these cities.
Thus the Bolshevik& called for "wide regional autonomy and
fully democratic local self-government, with the boundaries
o f the self-governing and autonomous regions determined by
the local inhabitants themselves on the basis of their economic
and social conditions, national make-up of the population,
etc." ("Resolutions of the 1913 Conference of the C.C. o! the
R.S.D.L.P.," in Vol. 19, pp. 427-28).
In 1914 Lenin prepared a bill to be submitted to the Duma
,to reorganize Russia into autonomous regions. This was to
be done under the basis of census conducted by "commissions
elected by the local population on the basis of universal, direct
and equal suffrage by secret ballot with proportional repre
sentation, national minorities too small (under proportional
representation) to elect one commission member shall elect
a commission member with consultative vote.
". . . areas with specific geographical, living or economic
conditions or a special national composition of the popula

tion shall have the right to form autonomous regions with
autonomous regional Diets" (Vol. 20, p. 281 ).
These national communities were to have complete govern
mental control in these' areas. As in the census, national mi
norities even too small to qualify under these procedures were
to be given added representation.
While Marxism is not an analysiS of texts, but of social

struggles and development, such a serious examination of Len
in's works reveals that the enemies of the nationalist libera
tion struggles developing in the U.S. today oppose the essence
of Lenin's theory on the national questions. This includes self
proclaimed "Marxist-Leninists" such as the ComunistPar tY and
the Workers League.
Lenin's analysis rings true to the probiems revolutionaries
face today. His theory transformed into practice can result in
the type of massive revolutionary movement that can destroy
U.S. imperialism and win national' liberation for Afro-Amer
icans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, and other
oppressed peoples.
Pan-Africanism
and Black Liberation Today
by Tony Thomas
The following article was first published in the October 1971

International Socialist Review. It explores. the role of the Afro
American liberation mover:nent in supporting liberation move
ments in Africa and the West Indies. It opposes a revolutionary
socialist view of Pan-Africanism to the "land base" theory,
"African socialism," and support. to neocolonialist regimes.
The Pan-Africanism of today proceeds from Malcolm X's basic

precept that the struggles of all peoples of African descent,
whether in North America, Latin America, the West Indies,
or Africa, face a common enemy in .whie world imperialism.
Pan-Africanists are demanding that the political, economic,
and cultural domination of the Black world by white impe
rialists be ended, and that direct or indirect imperialist rule
be replaced by a transfer of power to the masses of African
peoples.
Precisely because of the importance that Pan-Africanism can
play in the U.S. and world revolutions, many vital questions
of revolutionary strategy and tactics are being raised within
the U.S. Pan-Africanist movement. Two of the most essential
concern the relationship between the worldwide African revolu
tion and the U.S. Black liberation movement, and the relation
ship between Pan-Afrlcanism and revolutionary socialism.
A .clear conception of the connection between the worldwide
African revolution and the struggle of Blacks in the U.S. is
required for the elaboration of a correct revolutionary Pan
Africanist strategy.
Some Pan-Africanists have adopted a stance called the "land
base" strategy. They say the completion of the African revolu
tion- either through the unification of Africa or the victory
of socialism in Africa- is required before any substantial
victories can be gained for Afro-Americans. They argue that
198
Pan-Africanism and Black Liberation Today 199
the political and economic power of an independent African

"land base" dedicated to liberating African people internation
ally is the only type of force that could pressure the U.S. to
grant significant gains to Afro-Americans. The supporters of
these views usually write off any revolutionary capacities of
the non-Afro-American part of the U.S. population. Faced
with an overwhelming majority in the U.S. that is allegedly
incapable of revolutionary actions, advocates of this trend
see the movement within the U.S. relegated to struggling for
"survival" until the African "land base" is acquired.
This point of view has been rejected by most Pan-Africanists.
Here is how Max Stanford deals with this theory as it was
once expounded by Stokely Carmichael (since Stanford wrote,
Carmichael has apparently altered his views on the subject):
..
Brother Carmichael's new strategy is that the African

American concentrate his efforts on possibly briDging
Nkrumah back into power in Ghana. The land base that
would be liberated would become a Pan-African state on
which Pan-African revolution would be based. Brothers
and sisters in the states are told that struggling for revolu
tion in the states will be a protracted affair and not possible
at this time. stokely fails to realize that all people must
make their own indigenous revolution led by people from
their own country. This does not mean we should not
help the brothers and sisters on the mainland. We should
help where we can, but must concentrate our efforts where
we are. And if we understand the nature of imperialism,
neocolonialism, we will realize that if we did create a Pan
Africanist socialist state, it would be faced with encirclement
and intervention from the United States government. Afri
cans in America and the Caribbean are actually Africa's
military rear. r'lbe Pan-African Party," Black Scholar,
February 1971, p. 26.]
The "land base" theory is wrong from several viewpoints.

For example, it refuses to recognize that the destruction of
U.S. imperialism is central to the completion of the interna
tional African revolution. This requires the development of
a program of action for the Afro-American liberation struggle.
If anything the struggle in America is paramount-not
only because Black people (Africans) around the world
look to us for leadership. It is also because America, the
world's number one imperialist, is an octopus, with ten

tacles choking other nations all over the world. Though
it may be desirable and useful to chop off a tentacle here
and there, including its strongest and most destructive
tentacles in our Africa, the most lasting and devastating
damage will be done in the heart of the octopus. [Nathan
Hare, "Wherever We Are," Black Scholar, March 1971,
pp. 34-35.]
Every reactionary regime in the capitalist world is propped

up by U.S. imperialism. The U.S. stands poised to intervene
in. any revolutionary development in Africa, just as it has
done in Vietnam and Santo Domingo. Even the completion
of a successful revolution on the African continent, as Stanford
has pointed out, will not lessen the U.S. threat. In Vietnam,
Korea, and the Bay of Pigs, we have seen U.S. imperialism
use its military might to attempt to wipe out the smaller non
capitalist states. The colossal military machine of the U.S.
imperialist octopus retains its ability to attack any and all
bastions of the world revolution as long as its heartland is
intact.
Facing these realities, we would have to draw a negative
balance sheet on the prospects for Black revolution, not only
in the U.S. but also in Africa and the West Indies as well,
if we were to accept the views of those Pan-Africanists who
believe that serious revolutionary action within the U.S. is
limited to Afro-Americans attempting to "survive."

This is because on a military, economic, and industrial
scale-given the indefmitely prolonged internal quiescence some
Pan-Africanists are willing to grant U.S. capitalism- white
America could easily overwhelm any or all African or West
Indian revolutions.
During World War II-with a smaller population and a
weaker wartime economy- U.S. imperialism was able to raise
over 10 million troops, an army that could easily smash a
revolution in a country like Ghana. Indeed, this threat of an
overwhelming U.S. intervention-which has been made very
real by the U.S. war against Vietnam-is utilized by reformist
and neocolonial forces in Africa and the West Indies as an
excuse for totally rejecting revolutionary struggle.
The success of the Vietnamese revolution has proven that
this pessimistic view of the relationship between the national
liberation struggles and U.S. imperialism is wrong. The de
velopments connected with the Vietnam war have shown that
the U.S. is not a solid block of reaction in which Pan-African

ists can at best hope to "survive." The antiwar movement has
proven that an essential part of the forces that will help liberate
Africa, Asia, and Latin America is the opposition within the
U.S. itself, that can be mounted against Washington's attempts
to put down revolutionary struggles. This is the meaning for
oppressed Blacks in both hemispheres of mass actions against
the war in Vietnam.
Promoting a program of action

Within this context, many Pan-Africa
nists are realizing that
the development of a program based on revolutionary na
tionalist mass action for the Afro-American community is the
first priority in our task of furthering the Pan-African revolu
tion. Key elements in such a program are the demands now
being raised for Black control of the Black community, for
freeing political prisoners, for an end to the war and the draft.
By promoting actions around these specific issues relating to
the consciousness and problems of the masses of our people
in the schools, the communities, the factories, and the armed
forces, Pan-Africanism can be transformed in the minds of
the people of the community from an abstract ideology 11nd
a banner to a signpost defining a concrete path for Black lib
eration. Action around such demands can lead to the Black
political party that Pan-Africanists and other Black liberation-
ists are calling for.
Central to the program must be a readiness to mobilize

Afro-Americans against U.S. intervention in Africa and the
West Indies.Malcolm pointed this out when he said:
You and I should be organized in such a way that the

American government will think a long time before it takes
any steps toward dropping bombs on Africans who are
our brothers and sisters. This is why we must organize....
We have to organize ourselves and then organize the city
and then organize the state and then orga-nize the country.
Once you do this, the government is not going. to inter
vene in Africa. [By Any Means Necessary, (New York:
Pathfinder Press, 1970), pp. 105-106.]
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.
By building Black actions against the Vietnam war, Pan-Af

ricanists serve to undermine future U.S. intervention in Africa
by strengthening the antiwar and anti-imperialist consciousness
and activity within the U.S. population as a whole. These can
also be a further tool for organizing Afro-Americans into the
Pan-African and Black nationalist movements. And of course,
such expressions of solidarity can help our brothers and sis
ters in Vietnam win.
The "land base" concept dismisses any prospects for revolu
tionary victory in the U.S. because it excludes the potential
for revolutionary action from no1:1-Afro-Americans. This pre
supposes that U.S. capitalism is almighty both at home and
abroad, and possesses the ability to solve the problems of the
great masses of people in this country, who will never challenge
its domination. As we have already pointed out, this concept,
which dooms the possibility of revolution gaining victory out
side as well as inside the U.S., has been invalidated by the
unparalleled mass opposition to the U.S. intervention in Viet
nam.
The capitalist system is based on exploitation and oppres
sion of the great majority by a tiny handful. In addition, be
cause of the role of the U.S.as world-cop, it faces direct attacks
from every sector of the world revolution. Thus, many other
social groups besides Afro-Americans can be pitted against the
system that is likewise against their interests.
Millions of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Latinos, Asians, and
Native Americans suffer conditions that differ only slightly
and in the case of NativeAmericansareeven worse-from those
we experience. The incapabilities and irrationalities of this sys
tem continue to spawn contradictions within the white population.
We have seen the development of mass opposition to the Viet
nam war. We have also seen women struggling against their
oppression as a sex. Workers, who have just been hit by a
wage-freeze, face exploitation from the capitalist bosses.
U.S. imperialism which appeared so impregnable for the past
quarter century, is now entering a grave internal and interna
tional crisis, initiated in large part by the anti-imperialist strug
gles of the Third World and the new upsurge of Black resist
ance. It is less and less able to grant economic concessions and
social privileges even to the white majority and more and
more forced to make outright attacks on them. This is the
meaning of Nixon's "new economic policy."
This does not mean that Afro-Americans are not oppressed
as a people. Nor does it mean that whites do not benefit in

some ways from the oppression of our people. Nor does it
mean that we can forget the bitter lessons of past struggles in
which organized labor as well as the Communist and Socialist
parties have sold Black people down the river. We need our
own independent nationalist movement, controlled by Black
people, charting its own course and strategies. The fact that
Pan-Africanism insists upon this is a sign of its revolutionary
potential.
However, we would be foolish if we did not ut
i
lize the di
visions within U.S. society in our struggle to destroy its white
supremacist structure. Movements like the antiwar movement,
struggling within the U.S. against oppression and imperialism,
can be powerful allies on the side of the Pan-African revolu
tion. The deepening divisions between the rulers and the ruled.
mean that the perspectives of Pan-Africanists within the U.S.
need not and should not be litnited to sheer survival until an
African "land base" is secured. If we combine mass nation7
alist action with a revolutionary utilization . of the divisions
within U.S. society, we can realistically project ending capital
ist domination of the U.S. and achieving Afro-American con
trol of our communities and/or a Black nation on the terri
tory of the present U.S. We can deal a deadly blow to the
heart of the octopus.
Marxism- an alien European ideology?

The relationship between Pan-Africanism ahd socialism has
always been crucial. Both Pan-Africanism and socialism are
products of the struggle by the masses of the modern world'
against imperialist oppression. The two have gone hand in
hand. Prominent figures identified with Pan-Africanism in the
English-speaking countries such as W.E.B. Du Bois, George
Padmore, and C.L.R. James, to name a few, have identified

themselves with various soCialist tendencies as wen as the Pan
Africanist movement Many, if not most, Pan-Africanists in the
U.S. today reject Black or African capitalism as neocolonialism
and adhere to "African sqcialism," or Ujamaa, as a program
for Pan-African revolution.
On the other hand, many Pan-Africanists reject Marxism and
socialism as alien European-oriented ideologies and movements.
They identify Marxism with the betrayals of the Pan-African
struggles by forces claiming to stand for socialism such as the
leadership of the Soviet Union and the Communist parties of
Western Europe an<;{ the U.S.
By counterposing Marxism to Pan-Africanism, these Pan

Africanists are giving credence to the pretenses of the pseudo
Marxists who want to palm off their antirevolutionary pol
icies as Marxism. Every position that the Soviet bureaucracy,
the Communist and Socialist parties have taken against Pan
African revolution stands against the real teachings of Marx
ism and has nothing in common with them. The Pan
Africanists who demand the unconditional liberation of all
African peoples by any means necessary stand more in the
tradition of authentic revolutionary Marxism than these mis
leaders and betrayers.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all felt that unconditional
support to the national liberation movements of all oppressed
people.s was a revolutuonary principle and duty. The early
Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky's time organized
Blacks on a worldwide basis in anti-imperialist organizations
linking sisters and brothers from Africa, the U.S., and the West
Indies in a joint struggle for independence and socialism. While
he was a member of the revolutionary socialist movement of
the Fourth International, C.L.R. James, along with other J?an
Africanlsts, launched the . International African Service Bureau.
This was one of the key organizations in the development of
Pan-Africanism in which Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta, Nkrumah,
and other figures also participated. Trotsky, in his discussions
with James in 1939, stressed the Importance of linking this or
ganization with the U.S. Black struggle and touring African
brothers and sisters through the. Afro-Am.erlcan communities
as a means of developing revolutionary consciousness. When
Stalinists such as Jarvis Tyner (CP vice-presidential candidate
and Young Workers Liberation League chairman) along with
Angela Davis launched their recent attac,ks on Pan-Africanism
as a reactionary diversion, they spoke not only against Pan
Africanism but againstMarxism as well.
The real dichotomy is not Marxism and socialism versus
Pan-Africanism, but Marxism and Pan-Africanism versus anti
Marxist, anti-Pan-Africanist pseudosocialism. Pan-Africanists
should use the tools of Marxism and Leninism to expose these
reformists and antlrevolutionaries.
Another dispute concerning the relevance of Marxism to Pan
Africanism is over the path to socialism in Africa and the
West Indies. A section of the Pan-Africanist movement, fol
lowing African leaders such as Nkrumah, Sekou Toure,
Uganda's Obote, Nyerere, and others, rejects the revolutionary
socialist view that full victory in the national liberation strug
gle cannot be achieved until capitalism has been totally de-
stroyed; giv.i:og complete power to the workers and peasants

and smashing the politicar p:owe: of the capitalists both of the
'
iinperialist nations and amon.g. the oppressed people.

.
The anti-Marxists maintain or imply that the internal class
struggle within Afriean and West Indian nations is irrelevant
or of secondary importance. They project-oractuallygovern
states presumably representing the "national "stage of the revo
lution rather than the rule of specific classes.
Julius K. Nyerere, president of Tanzania, described some
of the basic components of this theory:
It [African socialism] did not start from the existence o f

. conflicting "classes" in society . . , .
The true African socialist does not look on one class of

men as his brethren and another as his natural enemies.
He does not form an alliance with "brethren" for the ex
termination of "non-brethren." He rather regards all men
as his brethren .... It is opposed to capitalism ... and it
is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism, which seeks
to build its happy society on a philosophy of inevitable
conflicts between man and man.rAfricanSocialism: Ujamaa
in Practice," Black Scholar, February 1971, p. 7.)
Nyerere disregards the fundam.ental fact that "inevitable con

flicts between man and man" are not the product of any philo
sophical concept. Such conflicts are the inevitable result of the
pattern of political and economic life under both imperialism
and indigenous capitalism. We must erase that pattern totally,
not ignore it, if we are to achieve freedom from such antag
onisms and their consequences for our peoples.
White colonialism has grafted class divisions, through cap
italism, onto African and West Indian societies. It has created
classes whose basic interests lie in the exploitation of African
brothers and sisters, not only within the colonialist countries
but among African peoples as well. African capitaUsts and
would-be capitalists, with the aid of the coloniaUsts, and not
"doctrinaire socialists," have caused some sections of African
peoples to wage war against other sections in defiance of the
common Pan-African goals. This is the old story of the house
slave (serving the master class) versus the field slave.
The history of the African and Third World revolutions since
World War II records the failure of those "progressive" regimes
that tried to get around these conflicts by denying their exis-
tence. Nkrumah, Sukarno, and Obote were all overthrown

by elements within their own society tied by class interests
to world imperialism. This is the social root of neocolonialism
in the Pan-African world.
The history of African and Third World revolutions has
demonstrated that no matter how radical the verbiage, no
matter how nationalist the rhetoric, regimes that have not
broken with the national capitalist classes remain based on
capitalism. This applies to the most left-sounding governments
such as Nkrumah's Ghana, Tanzania, and Guinea. The powe.r
of the house slaves has not yet been broken.
To complete the Pan-African revolution, supreme power has
to be given to the field slaves, the classes within our peoples
who are oppressed and exploited, the workers and the poor
peasants. They must conquer real political, social, economic,
and military power. Through their class struggle culminating
in a socialist revolution, the kind of Pan-African society can
be built that will do away with the reactionary indigenous
classes, backed by. imperialism, such as those that overthrew
Lumumba.
Such a consistent revolutionary strategy rejects program
matic concessions to the neocolonial classes for the sake of
maintaining a "national fronf'- the subordination of the work
ers' and peasants' demands to the blackmail of the landholders
and capitalists. Placing the demands of the oppressed in the
forefront of the liberation struggle will give workers and peas
ants all the greater reasons to flock to the Pan-African banner.
Of course, we should never carry our opposition to giving
power to these neocolonial forces to the ultraleft extreme of
opposing whatever specific steps forward they are forced to
take in the overall struggle against imperialism. While all
Pan-Africanists recognize the reactionary role of Haile Selassie
of Ethopia and support the struggles being waged against
his tyranny by both the Eritrian and Ethiopian peoples, it
would obviously be our duty to defend his country if his king
dom were again attacked by imperialism, as it was in 1935
with the invasion of Mussolini's army.
Contrary to the contentions of the anti-Marxists, revolution
ary socialism provides the kind of program around which
the Pan-African revolution can be completed and a mass Pan
Africanit movement built It provides a revolutionary explana
tion of the errors of anti-Pan-Africanists, such as Ron Dellums
and the Communist Party, as well as a program that cuts
through the limitations of the policies followed by the Nkrumahs

and Nyereres. Through such a program, the revolutionary
forces of Pan-Africanism can play a central role in the libera
tion of humanity.

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PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK

Copight 1974 by Pathfmder Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-75358

Pathfinder Press, Inc.

I. BLACK LIBERATION AND THE COMING

II. PROBLEMS OF STRATEGY

III. MARXISM AND BLACK NATIONALISM

PAUL BOUTELLE was active in the Freedom Now Party in

DERRICK MORRISON is a Marxist journalist and the 1974

ANDREW PULLEY gained national prominence as a leader of

TONY THOMAS is a staff writer for The Militant and an

MAXINE WILLIAMS, 1974 SWP candidate for Congress in

How can Afro-Americans win liberation? In recent years fol

Black liberation. The landed estates remained intact, Black

ican families own 65 percent of inve

along with the special problems of the oppressed nationalities

of crucial importance. for establishing the theoretical grounds

changes have been minor. In our opinion all the material

November 30, 1973 TONY THOMAS

The Combined Character

"The Combined Character of the Coming American Revolution,"

Two events of supreme significance occurred in May 1954.

a complete reversal of a decision handed down by the Supreme

impression of equal rights for the Black man and woman,

people were demanding was that these documents be .enforced

a question of morality, or brotherhood, 'or a question of good

But by the end of 1964, we had to agree that instead of

The ghetto rebellions caught the civil-rights organizations

community. The independent organization of Black college

We now see independent organization spreading to various

these modern-day plantations called automobile plants.

by the expansion of English capitalism. In fact, all of the

Blacks without a similar distribution to the poor whites. And

And because there is no other course, the struggle for self

Maoist-Stalinist rap and pick-up-the-gun rhetoric was aimed

Party. This clearly distinguished them from the Mensheviks

groups only aids the ruling class in smashing that potential

In the South, the struggle is becoming increasingly explosive

The struggle for control is also broadening very rapidly

ills of the community, such as lead poisoning and drug ad

one sphere led to struggle for independence in all spheres.

To conclude, I want to quote from a statement Trotsky

I believe that by the unheard-of political and theoretical

"A Transitional Program for Black Liberation" first appeared

Introduction by Andrew Pulley

A Transitional Program for Black Liberation was adopted by

boycotts have taken place- at first demanding civil rights and

the living standards of Black people. Heroin addiction and

abortion laws and free abortion on demand; ending of forced

. Black feminists are not attacking the right of Blacks to have

The epidemic of heroin addiction has been an important

As the struggle for Afro-American liberation continues, the

A Transitional Program For Black Liberation

It is becoming more and more clear to increasing numbers

What do the developments of the past fifteen years demon

that the '60s must be recorded as an accelerating generation,

A pile of economic statistics confirms what almost every

ceive inferior education. Just one figure from the bottom of

The fraud of Black capitalism

economic exploitation. They have shown by the use of police,

for their Black wage-slaves or eliminate the higher rate of

The liberal approach

Hatcher admitted his administration has little control over

Black Liberation & Socialism

Black Liberation & Socialism