ALLIANCE
(MARXIST-LENINIST)
Number 23, JULY 1996
_______________________________________________________
THE THEORY OF THE ABLACK
NATION@
IN THE U.S.A.
In hard copy: Cover:WINSLOW HOMER:
THE COTTON PICKERS 1876.
-------------------------------------------------
THE THEORY OF THE ABLACK
NATION@
IN THE U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. THE VIEWS OF LENIN: THE TERMINOLOGY
: ABLACK NATION@
i) Lenin=s
First Citation : @Draft Theses
On the National -Colonial Question@
ii) Lenin=s
Second Citation: ANew Data on
the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture@
iii) Lenin=s
Third Citation : @Statistics
and Sociology@
iv) Other Discussions by Lenin Bearing on This
Theme- Upon Jews and the Bund
v) Polemics with Rosa Luxemburg
2. STALIN, THE NATIONAL QUESTION,
AND THE QUESTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABLACK
NATION@ THEORY
i) Stalin=s
Definition Of A Nation
ii) Stalin On The Rights Of Minorities And
The National Question
iii) Do Stalin=s
Criteria Fit the Theory of the ABlack
Nation?@
iv) The Modern Day Line of The Black Nation
In the USA
3. THE CHARACTER OF THE COMINTERN
AFTER LENIN=S DEATH
i) The Role of Zinoviev and Ultra-Leftism
ii) The Distortion of the Colonial Question
From 1921 Onwards
iii) Ultra Leftism in the Trade Unions
iii) The Sixth World Congress
4. THE FORMATION OF THE CPUSA
& ULTRA-LEFT DEVIATIONS
I) The Situation Before the Russian Bolshevik
Revolution
ii) National Left Wing Conference: a new Leninist
Communist Party
iii) Dual Unionism And Broad Front Work
iv) The Third Party - Farmer-Labor Party; the
LaFollette Movement
v)The Factional Battles Come to the Sixth Comintern
Congress
vi) The Black Movement In The USA.
vii) The Attitude of Stalin to the American CP in 1928
INTRODUCTION
The rights of ANational
minorities@; versus the rights
of ANations@
are of central strategic concern to the Marxist-Leninist movement, as it
strives for the proletarian revolution. Marxist-Leninists in North America
are particularly interested in this question because of the capitalist,
institutionalised racism rampant in both the USA and Canada. In the USA,
this racism peaks with the Negro (or black, or Afro-American) population,
and the Chicano (Those of Mexican origin) populations. In both the USA
and Canada the indigenous peoples, or the native Americans, also bear the
brunt of this problem.
We have already examined in Alliance 22, the views of
Marx and Engels on the formation of the USA and the Civil War in the USA,
and their views upon USA slavery. We noted that both Marx and Engels talked
only in terms of a single unitary nation, the USA, and not in terms of
a multi-national state.
We now examine how the Communist
Party of the USA (CPUSA) formulated their response to this
issue, in calling for ASELF
DETERMINATION OF THE BLACK NATION@.
The policy of Alliance is to assist a principled debate to define
the lines of the new evolving Marxist-Leninist party. Therefore we publish
this view in an anticipation of a principled debate. We aim to ask here,
whether the line adopted was objectively correct at the time, and if it
is correct today? We examine as part of this, the formation of the CPUSA,
and its functioning.
Marxist-Leninists have grappled with the central question
over several generations. This is fortunate for us, since their writings
can guide us . Both Marx and Engels, wrote on the USA and the Negroes of
America, and as seen, we have dealt with those views in Alliance 22. Later,
both Lenin and Stalin also wrote extensively on the USA. Moreover, Stalin
also wrote explicitly on the deficiencies of the former Communist Party
of the USA (CPUSA). As Marxists-Leninists, we should take their views into
account. How did these Marxist-Leninists view America? What positions did
they take, and how did they arrive at their conclusions? Were their positions
right then? Are their positions still right under today=s
situation?
This list of questions, will force us to consider larger
questions. These revolve around the character of the CPUSA and its leaders,
and the role of the Comintern in its decisions. So far, the available histories
of the CPUSA are either self-justifying revisionist
accounts (into which category William Z.
Foster=s history fits);
Trotskyite accounts (such
as those by James Cannon);
or bourgeois accounts.
One school of bourgeois historians, led by Theodore
Draper allege that the Comintern subverted this and other lines
of the CPUSA and imposed its will. Yet another school of historians led
by Maurice Isserman reply this is untrue,
and that the CPUSA made its own policies. This latter school, actually
derives from the Old CPUSA itself. In addition some memoirs
are relevant, such as the autobiography of HARRY
HAYWOOD, entitled ABlack
Bolshevik@.
All these offer various useful facts. But all these perspectives,
agree and take as a central premise that Stalin controlled the Comintern
and that Stalin was in full control of the USSR. This viewpoint unites
the bourgeois historians, the revisionist historians, the Trotskyites,
and finally even those like Haywood. As the career of Khrushchev as a high
priest of hidden revisionism shows, we argue that this viewpoint is no
longer tenable.
Today, genuine Marxist-Leninists, are confronted by revisionism.
This begs the question : AHow
did the movement fall into revisionism?@
Marxist-Leninists are faced with a stark decision regarding the origins
of international revisionism. Most genuine Marxist-Leninists today, reflexively
defend the history of the Comintern from 1919 to 1943, partly because they
believe any other response defends Trotsky. But this attitude is not adequate.
To answer the question : AHow
did the movement fall into revisionism?@
Three associated questions must be asked :
a) Was the line
itself correct or incorrect?
b) Was the leadership of the Comintern Marxist-Leninist or was it
revisionist?
c) Who formed the leadership of the Comintern?
Elsewhere we argue that the line of the Comintern was
subverted under the leadership of GRIGORY ZINOVIEV,
OTTO KUUSINEN, DIMITRI MANUILSKY AND GEORGY DIMITROV (See Alliance 5; 12;
19). We argue here, that the line of the CPUSA was also
subverted. But it was subverted NOT by Stalin, as alleged by Theodore
Draper, Trotsky and James Cannon. It was subverted, by others than Stalin
- by hidden revisionists. In relation to the USA, the line was first disrupted
by ZINOVIEV. Haywood notes that Zinoviev
brought up the question of the Black Nation in the USA, when he was in
charge of the Comintern, after Lenin=s
death. Haywood also comments that his own initial reaction to this line
was hostile :
AApparently
Zinoviev and others in the CI leadership were not satisfied with the formulation
that had rejected the self-determination for U.S. Blacks. Zinoviev had
instructed BOB MAZUT to investigate
the question.. I was present at the meeting of the Young Communist League
District Committee in Chicago in 1924 when Bob Mazut (then Young
Communist International representative to the US) at the behest of Zinoviev..
raised the question of self-determination... He had been shouted down by
white comrades.. To me the idea of a black nation within US boundaries
seemed far fetched and not consonant with American reality.@
(Haywood, ABlack Bolshevik: Autobiography
of An Afro-American Communist@;
Chicago 1978; p. 226, 219).
Of course Zinoviev was exposed and removed from the leadership
of the Comintern. All Marxist-Leninists accept that Zinoviev was revisionist.
But his work was continued by MANUILSKY,
and KUUSINEN, who ensured acceptance of the ABlack
Nation@ theory in the USA. The
first, and natural reaction of the CPUSA, including black activists such
as Harry Haywood himself, had been to reject this line as a form of Black
Separatism. Ultimately, by using a mixture of pressure and persuasion over
a long period, elements such as Harry Haywood were won over by SEN
KATAYAMA, and then by Kuusinen, to this line. We assert that Sen
Katayama, Kuusinen and Manuilsky were revisionists.
REVISIONISM whether
open or hidden, aims to subvert the socialist revolution. This line of
the ABlack Nation@,
was calculated to overturn a class solidarity of white and black, and foster
racial division between white and black workers. This line is and was,
usually justified by honest Marxist-Leninists, as being directly traceable
to Lenin and Stalin. But the evidence for these assertions does not exist.
As Draper says :
AAmerican
Communists have claimed that Lenin spoke of American Negroes as a nation
three times in his voluminous writings. Each of these citations fails on
examination to bear out the extreme construction that has been placed on
it@. (Theodore Draper AAmerican
Communism and Soviet Russia@;
New York; 1986; p. 335).
There is little doubt that this line of AThe
Black Nation@, was adopted by
the CPUSA at the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern. It was held from
17 July to 1 September 1928 in Moscow and was dominated by NIKOLAI
BUKHARIN. J.V.Stalin did not even attend the congress. From
many accounts the Congress was in a state of some apprehension over the
recent expulsion of Trotsky, and some were anticipating further ideological
attacks including against Bukharin, the apparent head of the current Comintern.
Draper alleges that Stalin foisted his views on the CPUSA because of his
authority on the National Question :
AAs the Russian
party=s specialist on the national
colonial question, Stalin considered the (Far Eastern University in Moscow),
his ward@. (Draper Ibid; p. 334).
The source cited by Draper, and by honest Marxist-Leninists,
to support the thesis that Stalin directly supported the theory of the
ABlack Nation@
is Harry Haywood, who is adamant that :
AStalin was
undoubtedly the person pushing the position (ie. That the Blacks were an
oppressed nation -Ed).@ (Harry
Haywood; Ibid; p. 223).
But in fact all authorities - whether those arguing for the
line of ABlack Nation@
or those arguing against the line of ABlack
Nation@ - acknowledge, that there
is no smoking-gun
in any text by Stalin, that can be linked to this adventure. Marxist-Leninist
forces do point to some textual references by Lenin. But we here show by
a full textual analysis, that these quotes are lifted out of context.
So, if the line did not come from Lenin and Stalin, where
did it emanate from? Haywood, while firmly maintaining that the line on
ABlack nation@
did emanate from Stalin, tells us that others actually imparted the AWord
From On High@. As if Stalin in
1928-30 can not speak for himself! In fact, Haywood was sold this line
by a chain of several revisionists - from Zinoviev to Sen Katayama to Otto
Kuusinen. The role of Sen Katayama was central to the initial persuasion
of those like Harry Haywood. Haywood states that :
ASen Katayama
had told us Black University Of The Toilers Of The East (Named after the
Russian letters - KUTVA - Ed) students
that Lenin had regarded U.S. Blacks as an oppressed nation and referred
us to his draft resolution on the national and colonial question which
was adopted by the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920. @
(Haywood; Ibid; p.219).
Haywood adds that whilst he was in Moscow, Sen Katayama :
>Was a special
friend of the Black students in Moscow. He was born to a Japanese peasant
family, was educated in the US and became one of the founders of the Japanese
Social Democratic Party in 1901. A member of the ECCI, he had spent several
years in exile in the U.S., and was considered an expert on the Afro-American
question. Katayama was most interested in our studies and our view on the
situation in the US., particularly as it concerned Blacks. AOld
Man@ Katayama knew all about
white folks and we regarded him as one of us. We often came to him with
our problems and he always had a receptive ear. It was Katayama who told
us of Lenins= earlier writings
about U.S. Blacks and Lenin=s
views on the Black belt. He died in Moscow in 1933 at the age of 74.@
(Haywood; Footnote; p. 656; Ibid).
But Sen Katayama had rather simplified Lenin=s
views, as we will discuss later. Moreover, and most unfortunately given
the influence he had over Haywood, it is clear that Sen Katayama was an
early adherent of LEON TROTSKY. Trotsky,
it will be recalled, just prior to the 1917 revolution had stayed in the
USA, intending to remain as an emigre. But when the Clarion call to Russia
came, he correctly went. But in the interim, he had been contending with
two other Russians for control of the USA fledgling movement of communists.
Acting on the behalf of Lenin=s
Bolsheviks were Bukharin and Alexandra Kollantai. As Draper puts it :
ALore and
Katayama agree that Trotsky talked himself into the momentary command of
the American left Wing." (Theodore Draper; AThe
Roots of American Communism@;
New York; 1957; (Hereafter Draper 2);
p. 82).
In fact Sen Katayma was explicit about his own role in that
business :
>We intended
to organise the Left wing under the direction of Comrade Trotsky, and Madame
Kollantai was going to Europe to establish the link between the European
and American Left Wing movements.@
(Katayama=s words cited in Draper
2; Ibid p. 82).
We suggest that it is most unlikely that Sen Katayma had
shaken off his adherence to Trotsky, at that very time that he was busily
influencing Haywood. The question then naturally arises, as to whether
Trotsky himself is on record on the ABlack
Nation@ question? Indeed he is.
Trotsky was interviewed by ARNE SWABECK,
a leader of the Trotskyite Communist Opposition in the USA,
and later by C.L.R.JAMES,
a militant Black Caribbean Trotskyite.
The two Trotskyites had arrived at the Master=s
feet, to seek guidance on the line of the CPUSA on the Black nation. Far
from attacking the line of the Comintern, Trotsky in fact, supported the
ABlack Nation@
line. He had to persuade the Trotskyite Opposition in the USA to embrace
this line. In fact, in a chain of argument to arrive at this position,
Trotsky first asserts that it is a fact that Negroes are Aa
race and not nation@. However,
Trotsky then states that Nationhood is Aa
question of their consciousness, that is, what they desire and what they
strive for@. His full words were
as follows :
@The Negroes
are a race and not a nation. Nations grew out of racial material under
definite conditions. The Negroes in Africa are not yet a nation, but they
are in the process of forming a nation. The American Negroes are on a higher
cultural level. But since they are under the pressure of the Americans
they become interested in the development of the Negroes in Africa. The
American Negro will develop leaders for Africa, that one can say with certainty
and that in turn will influence the development of political consciousness
in America. We of course, do not obligate the Negroes to become a nation;
whether they are is a question of their consciousness, that is to say,
what they desire and what they strive for. We say: If the Negroes want
that then we much fight against imperialism to that last drop of blood,
so that they gain the right wherever and when however they please, to separate
a piece of land for themselves. The fact that they are today not a majority
in any state does not matter." (Leon Trotsky ; AThe
Negro Question In America@, interview
with Arne Swabeck 1933; In @On
Black Nationalism and Self Determination@;
New York; 1967; p. 24-25).
Having >manufactured
a nation= from a wish; and denied
the relevance of a Amajority@;
now Trotsky asserts that this slogan will attract the petty-bourgeois primarily,
whilst deterring the workers. But he adds quickly, that this is irrelevant
since the white & black workers are divided as it is!:
AThat the
slogan of Aself-determination@
will win over the petty bourgeois more than the workers- that argument
also good for the slogan of equality. It is clear that those Negro elements
who play more of a public role (businessmen, intellectuals, lawyers etc)
are more active and react more actively against inequality=..
If the situation was such that in America common actions took place involving
black and white workers, that class fraternization already was a fact,
then perhaps our comrades= arguments
would have a basis (I do not say that it would be correct); the perhaps
we would divide the black workers from the white if we began to raise the
slogan ASelf-determination@.
(Leon Trotsky ; AThe Negro Question
In America@, interview with Arne
Swabeck 1933; In @On Black Nationalism
and Self Determination@; New
York; 1967; p. 24-25).
The identity of Trotsky with the Comintern should give rise
to pause for those adamant that the Comintern line was correct. Trotsky=s
line is a complete chain of specious arguments. First from asserting the
ability to Awish@
a nationhood; over to asserting the leading role of American blacks for
the ANegroes@
in Africa; through to the excusing of a policy that promotes division -@
because there is some division now@!.
Parts of this chain of argument are very similar to those that today, emphasise
the Awishes@
of a section of the Black petty-bourgeois. The ABlack
Nation@ line as accepted by Trotsky,
then became part of the policy of a prominent USA Trotskyite organisation,
the SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY (SLP) :
@The minority
status of the Negro in the political divisions of capitalist America, even
in the South, and the absence of a national Negro language and literature
and of differentiated political history as in prewar Poland or Catalonia
and the Ukraine of today, have caused in the past a too facile acceptance
of the Negroes as a merely a more than usually oppressed section of the
American workers and farmers... The desire to wipe out the humiliating
political subservience and social degradation of centuries might find expression
in an overpowering demand for the establishment and administration of a
Negro state.. The demand for a Negro state in America its revolutionary
achievement with the enthusiastic encouragement and assistance of the whites
, will generate such creative energy in every section of the Negro workers
and farmers in America as to constitute a great step forward too the ultimate
integration of the American Negroes into the United Socialist States of
North America." (Socialist Workers Party Convention; July 3, 1939; AResults
of The Discussions@ on The Right
of Self-Determination and the Negro In the United States of North America@;
in : Leon Trotsky ;@On Black
Nationalism and Self Determination@;
Ibid; p. 76-77).
It should be no surprise that the SLP, would later fully
support MALCOLM X.
Some in the international movement, have privately dismissed
the documentation amassed by Alliance and CL as Afictions@,
but have so far not enlightened us as to any documentary counter evidence.
Some honest advocates of the line of ABlack
Nation@, have argued in recent
principled discussions with Alliance, that quotes from Lenin and Stalin
can be used as Ascripture@,
to support Aany position@.
So, they argued, this was not a very useful way of confirming or refuting
the correctness of the line of AThe
Black Nation In the USA@. They
will also no doubt argue that the use of Trotsky=s
words, as a negative example, is also open to Asupport
any position@.
In general we agree that historically, the words of the
Marxist-Leninists leaders have often been deliberately misused. But we
argue that, since Haywood and many others, down to the present day
- including organisations such as Working People=s
News, Revolutionary Communist League (MLM), R.O.Light, Labour=s
Champion, Communist Party USA Marxist-Leninist; and
many others; all vigorously defend the line of the ABlack
Nation@, by themselves citing
Lenin and Stalin, we must all re-examine these texts. This is why we will
analyse Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin=s
actual written works in relation to the ABlack
Nation@ line. But, in any case,
we will argue that whether or not Lenin or Stalin supported it then; the
question should be whether or not the policy was correct? Furthermore,
is it correct now?
LENIN AND THE TERMINOLOGY : ABLACK
NATION@
The proponents of the ABlack
Nation A theory, insist that
they derive their position from Lenin. In fact there is little doubt that
Lenin did indeed, use the terminology ANEGRO
NATION@.
There are THREE MAIN CITATIONS
of Lenin, usually described in any description of Lenin that discusses
this question. We will analyse these. We also draw attention to other statements
of Lenin that abut onto this question.
Before examining Lenin=s
views as distinct from those of the earlier Marxist-Leninists, we will
briefly examine Lenin on the Civil War. This is logical as Lenin=s
views closely followed those of Marx and Engels. He echoed their views
on the Civil War and the naivete of Kriege. In distinction however to them,
he could closely analyse the phenomenon of Southern share-cropping. This
had been firmly established after the Reconstruction period of the South,
as Marx had noted. However, it had not yet had time to establish itself.
Lenin had recognised as clearly as Marx and Engels had, the progressive
nature of the Civil War in destroying old property relations of the Plantations
:
AThe representatives
of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing the rule
of the slave owner, it was worth letting the country go through long years
of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and terror that accompany
every war." (Lenin: From ALetter
to American Workers@; Aug 1918;
Vol 28; pp.62-75; In ALenin On
USA@; p. 342. CW Vol 28; pp 69-70).
As we saw above, Marx had thought the plantation economy
of Southern Slavery was in fact capitalist, though he had appended the
term a >formal capitalism=,
because of the fact of slavery as opposed to >free
labour=> being used. Lenin pointed
out that the full erection of a capitalist agriculture had developed out
of the Post-Reconstruction Land Deals that had been worked out :
AIt was not
the old slave holding economy of the big landowners that became the basis
of capitalist agriculture (the Civil War smashed the slave-owners estates)..
But the free economy of the free farmer working on free land - free from
all medieval fetters, from serfdom and feudalism@.
(Lenin : CW: Vol 15; p. 140).
But as his other works show, Lenin knew that this had led
to the institution of share-cropping. It is from this point that it is
logical to examine in detail the views of Lenin on the Black National Question.
We will examine in turn the citations cited by Harry Haywood and others.
They cite Lenin thrice, in support of this line.
-
Lenin=s
First Citation : @Draft Theses
On the National -Colonial Question@
HARRY HAYWOOD in his
autobiography, describes as a key ideological supporter of the theory of
the ABlack Nation@,
one SEN KATAYMA.
Katayama was a Japanese born member of the Comintern who had spent a great
deal of time in the USA and had worked with the CPUSA at an early stage
of its formation. We have already discussed in the introduction, Katayama=s
Trotskyite adherence. Katayama claimed that his own support of the theory
of the ABlack Nation@,
derived from Lenin. This claim, and Haywood=s
own offered version of the translated text of Lenin=s
@Draft Theses On the National
-Colonial Question@ is recorded
by Haywood :
ASen Katayma
told us black KUTVA students that Lenin had regarded U.S. Blacks as an
oppressed nation and referred us to his draft resolution
on the national and colonial question which was adopted by the Second Congress
of the Comintern in 1920.. It first appeared in Lenins=s
@Draft Theses On the National
-Colonial Question@.. The draft
which was later adopted called upon the communist parties to Arender
direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged
nations (for example Ireland, the American Negroes, etc) and in the colonies."(Cited
by Haywood; ABlack Bolshevik@;
Ibid; p.219, p. 223).
Haywood himself is certainly aware that some have offered
a different explanation of this citation. But Haywood relies only upon
the views expressed by Katayama to him. Haywood argument is simple, that
Katayama was there and must have known what >Lenin
really thought= :
ASome have argued
that Lenin=s reference to U.S.Blacks
as a subject nation was merely a tentative deduction. When he submitted
his draft, he asked the delegates for opinions and suggestion in 15 points,
one of which was @Negroes in
America@. It was recorded however
that the Colonial Commission of the Congress, which Lenin himself headed
and in which Sen Katayma was a leading member, held lengthy discussion
on the question of U.S.Blacks.. Sen Katayma told us of Lenin=s
earlier writings about U.S. Blacks, and about Lenin=s
views on the Black Belt." (Haywood ABlack
Bolshevik@; Ibid; p.223; and
footnotes on p. 656).
This is only an indirect view that at the moment, because
for lack of archival evidence, we cannot corroborate this. But furthermore,
there is a problematic question of the exact translation of the text. Theodore
Draper argues that there has been a mis-translation :
@This translation
is based on the final text in German and Russian. The key phrase : AAmong
the dependent nations and those without equal rights,@
reads in German : Aunter den
abhangigen und nicht gleichberectigten Nationen@
(Protokoll des II Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen International, p.228)
It reads similarly in Russian : Azavicimykh
ili neravnopravnikh natsiakh@
(Vtori Kongress Cominterna, revised edition, 1934, p.493 for resolution
and p.648 for draft). The adjectival use of Awithout
equality@ cannot be rendered
literally in English." (Draper T; AAmerican
Communism and Soviet Russia@;
New York; 1986; p. 337).
Draper comments correctly that :
AA strange fate
awaited these few words. American Communists .. Have known them in inaccurate
English translations. In the official German and Russian texts of these,
Awithout equal rights@
appears as an adjective before Anations@.
Communist translations have changed Awithout
equal rights@ into Asubject@
or Asubordinated@
nations, or have omitted it altogether. By accident or not, these mistranslations
have oversimplified what :
Lenin may have had in mind for the American Negroes."
(Draper; Ibid, p. 337-338).
What does the text actually say? A well recognised un-impeachable
source for Comintern documents, is JANE DEGRAS,
whose three volume text of the Document of the Comintern from 1922-1943
is a basic and much used source. The exact wording according to that text
is this:
A(9). In regard
to relations within States, the Communist International>s
national policy cannot confine itself to the bare and formal recognition
of the equality of nations expressed only in words only and involving no
practical obligations, to which bourgeois democracies-even if they call
themselves >socialist=-
restrict themselves. Offences against the equality of nations and violations
of all the guaranteed rights of national minorities, repeatedly committed
by all capitalist states despite their >democratic=
constitution, must be inflexibly exposed in all the propaganda and agitation
carried on by the communist parties, both inside and outside parliament.
But that is not enough. It is also necessary: first to make clear all the
time that only the Soviet system is able to ensure real equality all the
time that only the Soviet system is able to ensure real equality for the
nations because it unites first the proletarians, and then all the masses
of the working people, in the struggle against the bourgeoisie; secondly
communist parties must give direct support to the revolutionary movements
among the dependent nations and those without equal rights (eg in Ireland
, and among the American Negroes), and in the colonies. Without this last
particularly important condition the struggle against the oppression of
the dependent nations and colonies, and the recognition of their right
to secede as separate States remains a deceitful pretence, as it is in
the parties of the Second International." (J.Degras :@Documents:
The Communist International 1919-1943; Volume 1 1919-1922"; London; 1971
; p.142).
On the text as it stands in Degras, it is certainly clear
that Lenin did not view the ABlack
Nation@ in the USA as an entity;
but he viewed the position of the Negro as one of Awithout
equal rights@. What did take
place in the discussions in the Colonial Commission on this particular
issue? It appears that the American Delegate to the Colonial Commission
was JOHN REED who
argued against the view that there was a ABlack
Nation@ within the USA. Reed
argued that the problem of U.S. Blacks was that of :
ABoth a strong
race movement and a strong proletarian workers movement which is rapidly
developing into class consciousness." (Cited by Haywood; ABlack
Bolshevik@; Ibid; p. 223).
Most authors accept that this was how the matter was left,
and accepted by the Comintern at that time, and by the CPUSA.
-
Lenin=s
Second Citation: ANew Data on
the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture@
The Second written piece of evidence from Lenin, that is
usually quoted, including by Haywood, is ANew
Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture@.
Only the first section entitled APart
One Capitalism and Agriculture in the USA@,
was ever completed. This magnificent piece was written by Lenin in 1918,
to counter the views of Mr.Himmer, an Aextreme
left wing bourgeois=, who had
argued that in the USA >family
labour= and >small
scale farming= was dominant.
Haywood cites only this following paragraph in ANegro
Liberation@. It clearly shows
that Lenin recognised that the Negro in the South USA was in dire straits.
In this quote, Lenin sees the Negro in a position similar to that of the
serfs of 1860 Russia:
AThe farmers
we are discussing are not tenants in the European, civilized modern capitalist
sense; they are mainly semi-feudal or - what is the same in the economic
sense - semi-slave share tenants. The sharecropping region.. is the region
of the greatest stagnation, where the toiling masses are subjected to the
greatest degradation and oppression.. Segregated, hidebound, a stifling
atmosphere, a sort of prison for the >emancipated=
Negroes - this is what the American South is like." (In AHaywood
H: @Negro Liberation@;
Chicago; 1976; p. 48).
It will be noted that Lenin does
not here use the terminology of the ABlack
nation@. This is so
for the rest of the document. But nonetheless the work is of major importance
for us to understand the process of transition from the latifundia through
to share cropping. In several places, Lenin reminds us that the transition
from Plantation (or other forms of pre-capitalist agriculture) to capitalist
agriculture, is not against Marxist predictions :
AIn Volume
III of Capital Marx had already pointed out that the form of landed property
with which the incipient capitalist mode of production is confronted does
not suit Capitalism. Capitalism creates for itself the required forms of
agrarian relationships out of the old forms, out of feudal landed property,
peasants commune property, clan property etc.. Marx compares the different
methods by which capital creates the required forms of landed property..
In America this re-shaping went on in violent way as regards the slave
farms in the Southern States. There violence was applied against the slave-owning
landlords, Their estates were broken up and the large feudal estates were
transformed into small bourgeois farms." (Lenin, In AThe
Agrarian Programme of Social Democracy In the First Russian Revolution
1905-07); In ALenin on the USA@
Moscow 1967; From Vol 13; pp 275-76. p.40).
Lenin does not deny that the transition from slavery towards
capitalism was slow :
AIf we get
down to brass tacks, however has it happened in history that a new mode
of production has taken root immediately without a long secession of setbacks,
blunders and relapses? Half a century after the abolition of serfdom there
were still quite a number of survivals of serfdom in the Russian countryside.
Half a century after the abolition of slavery in America the position of
the Negroes was still very often one of semi-slavery." (Lenin: AA
Great Beginning.@; July 1919;
Vol 29; p.425; In Collection ALenin
On USA@; Ibid; p. 397).
Nonetheless, the work New Data on
the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture@does
detail the transition into capitalism; and contrasts this passage as it
occurred in the South, to that as it occurred in the North of the USA.
In graphic detail, Lenin outlines the process by which the Afreed@
Negroes were re-enslaved; and how their actual Afreedom@
had still left them, on the whole illiterate :
@The South
of the U.S.A was slave owning until slavery was swept away by the Civil
War of 1861-65. To this day, the Negroes who make up no more than 0.7-2.2
% of the population in the North and the West, constitute from 22.6% to
33.7% of the population in the South. For the U.S.A. as a whole the Negroes
constitute 10.7% of the population. There is no need to elaborate on the
degraded social system of the Negroes. The American bourgeoisie is in no
way better than the bourgeoisie of any other country. Having Afreed@
the Negroes, it took good care under Afree@,
republican-democratic capitalism, to restore everything possible and do
everything possible and impossible for the most shameless and despicable
oppression of the Negroes. A minor statistical fact will illustrate their
cultural level. While the proportion of illiterates in 1900 among the white
population of the U.S.A. of 10 years of age and over was 6.2%, among the
Negroes it was as high as 44.5%! More than seven times as high!" (Lenin,
AData On Development of Capitalism
In Agriculture In the USA.@ In
Lenin On the USA@; Moscow 1967;
Ibid; p. 123-4).
Lenin goes on to describe the economic system - share cropping
- that leaves them in this condition. He will later define share cropping
in detail (See below):
AWhat then
is the economic basis that has produced and continues to support this fine
>superstructure?=
It is the typically Russian, Apurely
Russian@ labour service system
which is known as share-cropping.
In 1910 Negroes owned 920,883 farms ie 14.5% of the total. Of the total
number of farmers, 37% were tenants; 62.1%, owners; the remaining 0.9%
of the farms were run by managers. But among the whites 39.2 % were tenant
farmers, and among the Negroes -75.3% The typical white farmer is an owner.
The typical Negro farmer is a tenant. This proportion of the tenants in
the West was only 14%.. In the North the proportion of tenant farmers was
26.5% and in the South 49.6! Half of the Southern farmers were tenants.
But that is not all. These are not even tenants in the European civilised
modern capitalist sense of the word. They re chiefly semi-feudal or- which
is the same thing in economic terms-semi-slave share-croppers. In the Afree@
West, share croppers were in the minority (25,000 out of a total of 53,000
tenants). In the old North, which was settled long ago, 483,000 out of
766,000 tenant farmers ie 63% were share croppers. In the South 1,021,000
out of 1,537,000 tenant farmers ie 66% were share croppers. In 1910 , free
republican-democratic America had 1,5000,000 share-croppers of whom more
than 1,000,000 were Negroes. And the proportion of share croppers to the
total number of farmers is not decreasing, but is on the contrary steadily
and rather rapidly increasing. In 1880, 17.5% of the farmers in the USA
were share-croppers, in 1890 18.4%; in 1900 22.2% and in 1910, 24%. In
1910, free republican-democratic America had 1,500,000 share-croppers,
of whom more than 1,000,000 were Negroes. And the proportion of share-croppers
to the total number of farmers is not decreasing, but is on the contrary
steadily and rather rapidly increasing. In 1880, 17.5% of the farmers in
the USA were share-croppers; in 1890, 18.4%; in 1900 22.2%; and in 1910,
24%." (Lenin, ADevelopment of
Capitalism In Agriculture In USA.@
In Lenin On USA@; Ibid; p. 123-4).
Lenin then goes on to show that the tenant farms arose from
the plantations of Aconsiderable
size from before the Civil War@.
He quotes American statisticians to corroborate this. Lenin uses figures
from the American Census to point out that conditions are so dreadful in
the South, that the peasantry are Afleeing@.
He later uses the term Adisplacement@
:
ATo show what
the South is like, it is essential to add that its population is fleeing
to other capitalist areas, and to the towns, just as the peasantry in Russia
is fleeing from the most backward central agricultural gubernias, where
the survival of serfdom have most greatly preserved.. To those areas of
Russia which have a higher level of capitalist development, to the metropolitan
countries the industrial gubernias and the South. The sharecropping area
both in America and in Russia is the most stagnant area where the masses
are subjected to the greatest degradation and oppression. Immigrants to
America who have such an outstanding role play in the country=s
economy and all its socials life, shun the South... The South is distinguished
by the immobility of its population and by the greatest Aattachment
to the land@... Negroes are in
full fight from the two Southern division where there is no homesteading:
these two division provided other parts of the country with almost 600,000
Ablack@
people. The Negroes flee mainly to the towns, in the South, 77-80 % of
all the Negroes live rural communities; in other areas only 8-32%. @
(Lenin; AData On Development
of Capitalism in Agriculture@;
Ibid; p. 125; & Ibid; p. 123-24).
This leads on to a detailed analysis of the transition in
the South of the USA in particular (as opposed to the North) from the LATIFUNDIA
to Asmall
commercial agriculture@. In the
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1973, Latifundia are defined as : ALarge
estates@. Lenin=s
working definition of Latifundia is given below :
AI designate
latifundia farms with an area of 1,000 acres and over. In 1910, the proportion
of such farms in the USA was 0.8% (50,135 farms) and they added up to 167.1
million acres, or 19.0% of the total amount of land.. During the 10 years
from 1900 to 1910 the total acreage of the latifundia, but only of the
latifundia, showed a decrease. The reduction was quite substantial: from
197.8 million to 167.1 million acres 30.7 million acres. In the South there
was a reduction of 31.8 million acres.. Consequently it is in the South
and in the slave owning South alone, that the latifundia with their negligible
proportion (8.5%) of improved land are being broken up on a really vast
scale. The inescapable conclusion is that the only exact definition of
the economic process under way is - a transition from the slave holding
latifundia, nine-tenths of which remained unimproved to small commercial
agriculture. It is a transition to commercial farms." (Lenin Ibid; p. 129).
This transition to a commercial farming was to one of a state
of dependency for the smallest farmers on landowners, which is the state
of SHARE-CROPPING :
AThere is
no doubt that in America as in all the other capitalists countries a part
of the handicapped farmer have to sell their labour power.. more than one
third of the farmers are directly exploited by the landlords and capitalists
(24% share-croppers who are exploited by former slave-owners in feudal
or semi-feudal fashion, plus 10% who are exploited by the capitalists or
altogether 34%). This means that of the total number of farmers a minority
, hardly more than one-fifth or one-quarter neither hire labourers or nor
hire themselves out or sell themselves into bondage." (Lenin Ibid; p. 133).
Because share cropping is in essence one step up from slavery,
although >free=
labour, it utilises very little machinery. It is the lowest rung of farms
in post-Reconstruction USA in its use of machinery :
AThe former
slave owning South, the area of share cropping occupies a bottom place
in the use of machinery. The value of implements and machinery per acre-
for its three divisions - is one-third, one-quarter, one-fifth of the figures
for the intensive states of the North. The latter lead the rest, and in
particular are afar ahead of the West North Central states, Americas=
most agricultural area and her granary.. (moreover) In the Northern intensive
states, capitalism is growing faster." (Lenin; Ibid, p. 144; p. 145).
What makes an agricultural system capitalist? is the central
theme of Lenin=s article. The
use of machinery is one major hallmark of the advent of capitalism in agriculture.
Lenin warns against the equation of latifundia with capitalism, using purely
the criteria of large size to mean capitalism. In addition to the importance
of mechanisation for understanding the penetration by capital into the
countryside, another factor limits the use of purely size as a characteristic
of capitalism in agriculture. Lenin describes the universal tendency in
systems which are disintegrating their Apre-capitalist
farming systems@, for the continual
break up of outdated modes of land owning into smaller fragments. This
stands in contrast to the tendency under capitalism for an ever increasing
farm size. But it does not change the character of capitalism in agriculture
:
AIt would
be imprudent to confuse the latifundia with large-scale capitalist agriculture,
and the latifundia are frequently survivals of pre-capitalist relationships-
slave owning, feudal or patriarchal. A break-up, a parcelling out of the
latifundia is taking place both in the South and in the West. In the North
the total farm acreage increased by 30.7 million of which only 2.3 million
is accounted for by latifundia, while 32.2 million belongs to big capitalist
farms (175-999 acres). In the South the total acreage was reduced by 7.5
million. The latifundia decreased by 31.8 million acres. On the small farms
there was an increase of 13 million, and on the medium farms 5 million
acres." (Lenin; Ibid; p. 151).
This universal tendency for farms to grow in size under capitalism
is due to the Adisplacement@
or expropriation of the small farmers by the large farmers
:
AIn effect
the fundamental and principal trend of capitalism is the displacement of
small-scale by large scale production both in industry and in agriculture.
But this displacement should not be interpreted merely as immediate expropriation.
Displacement also implies the ruin of the small farmers and a worsening
of conditions on their farms, a process that may go on for years." (Lenin;
Ibid; p. 172).
AThe tendency
of capitalism to expropriate small scale agriculture is so strong that
the American ANorth@
shows an absolute decrease in the number of landowners in spite of the
distribution of tens of millions of acres of unoccupied free land. Only
two factors still serve to paralyse this tendency in the U.S.A. : (1) The
existence of the still unparcelled slave holding plantations in the South,
with its oppressed and downtrodden Negro population; and (2) that fact
that the West is still partly unsettled." (Lenin; Ibid; p. 190-191).
Part of this process entails the drift of the population,
towards the towns (Now termed >urban-isation).
Lenin shows this process was at work, even in the Arural@
South of the USA :
AThe general
statistics show that the urban population is growing at the expense of
the rural, the population is abandoning the countryside. The proportion
of the urban population increased from 29.5% in 1880 to 36.1% in 1890,
40.5% in 1900 and 46.3% in 1910. In every part of the country the urban
population is growing more rapidly than the rural population: from 1900
to 11910, the rural population in the industrialised North went up by 3.9%
and the urban by 29.8%= in the
former slave holding South the rural population increased by 14.8% and
the urban by 41.4%". (Lenin; Ibid.; p.187).
In conclusion in this work Lenin describes the passage of
the Negro from slavery through
into a form of capitalist agriculture - sharecropping.
He depicts the misery of this existence. He shows the Negro Afleeing@
and becoming Aurbanised@.
But as to the description of a Negro, or Black nation, this is not
clearly described.
iii) Lenin=s
Third Citation : @Statistics
and Sociology@:
The Third piece of
work cited by Haywood in Lenin=s
writings regarding the ABlack
Nation@ theory, is in an unfinished
work entitled : @Statistics
and Sociology@ begun
in 1917. Haywood cites only one fraction of the unfinished piece. The fraction
cited by Haywood reads as follows :
AIn the United
States, the Negroes (and also the Mulattoes and Indians) account for only
11.1%. They should be classed an oppressed nation, for the equality won
in the Civil War of 1861-65 and guaranteed by the Constitution of the republic
was in many respects increasingly curtailed in the chief Negro areas (the
South) in connection with the transition from the progressive pre-monopoly
capitalism of 1860-70 to the reactionary monopoly capitalism (imperialism)
of the new era." (As cited by Haywood p. 224-225).
Clearly, in this quote, and quite unequivocally, Lenin
does use the term : AOppressed
nation@ to describe the situation
of the Negroes of the USA. But this truncation of the quote, is most unfortunate.
Because in fact, the thrust of the article is slightly different. Lenin
is describing an analysis of the diminution of national differences in
A14 advanced A
countries, who have made Aespecially
great strides in colonial policy@.
Lenin is actually pointing out the rapidly disappearing significance of
Anations@
within states like the USA.
Just prior to the quote cited
by Haywood, Lenin discusses the older states of Western Europe. Then just
following the quote cited by Haywood, Lenin is referring to
the Asmoothing
out@ (or assimilation) to form
a single AAmerican@
nation@. We will therefore
pick up Lenin after he has first discussed
the significance of the advanced states of the Western Europe who have
in the main got a homogenous population. He first calculates how many per
cent within the population of those countries could be classed as Aoppressed
nations@; finds that this amounts
a low figure, and asks way that should be? He then lists the features of
these Aadvanced countries@:
AObtaining
12 Western European countries with a total population of 242 million. Of
these only about 9.5 million ie only 4% represents oppressed nations (In
England and Germany - ie Ireland for England; and Germany Poles (5.47%)
Danes (0.25%); and Alsace Lorraine (1.87 million) [of whom Lenin felt that
Aan unknown part of the latter@
undoubtedly incline toward Germany] - leaving Aabout
5 million of Germany=s population
belonging to alien unequal and oppressed nations@.
If we add together these sections of the population in all these countries
we will get about 15 million, ie 6%.
On the whole consequently, this group of states is characterised
by the following: they are the most advanced capitalist countries, the
most developed both economically and politically. Their cultural level
too is the highest. In national composition most of these countries are
homogeneous or nearly homogeneous. National inequality as a specific political
phenomenon plays a very insignificant part. What we have is the type of
Anational state@
people often refer to, oblivious, in most cases, to the historically conditional
and transitory character of this type in the general development of mankind.
But that will be dealt with in its proper place.@
He then asks whether this situation applies outside of Europe?
It does in the USA and Japan, he replies. In the USA the Negroes form an
Aoppressed nation@
:
It might be asked: @Is
this type of state confined to Western Europe@?
Obviously not. All its basic characteristics - economic (high and particularly
rapid capitalist development), political (representative government), cultural
and nationals- are to be observed also in the advanced states of America
and Asia: The United States and Japan. The latter=s
national composition took shape long ago and is absolutely homogenous :
Japanese make up more than 99% of the population. In the United States,
the Negroes (and also the Mulattoes and Indians) account for only 11.1%.
They should be classed an oppressed nation, for the equality won in the
Civil War of 1861-65 and guaranteed by the Constitution of the republic
was in many respects increasingly curtailed in the chief Negro areas (the
South) in connection with the transition from the progressive pre-monopoly
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." (Lenin: AStatistics&Sociology@
unfinished work; Vol 23: pp 273-76. In ALenin
On USA;@ Ibid; p. 301-306).
But the significance of this oppression is not as intended
by Haywood, since Lenin points out that as a consequence of the Aadvanced
nature@ of these countries, differences
are being eliminated, in the forming of a single AAmerican
nation@. Lenin has introduced
the concept of Asmoothing out
differences@, similar to Aassimilation@
:
AThe white
population of the US makes up 88.7% of the total and of this figure 74.3%
are Americans and only 14.4% foreign born, ie, immigrants. We know that
the especially favourable conditions for the development of capitalism
and the rapidity of this development have produced a situation in which
vast national differences are speedily and fundamentally, as nowhere else
in the world, smoothed out to form a single AAmerican@
nation." (Lenin; From AStatistics
and Sociology@; Ibid; p. 306).
-
THIS VIEWPOINT OF LENIN=S,
AS EXPRESSED IN THESE WORKS CITED BY HAYWOOD; IS NOT FOR A BLACK NATION
- AS IS PRESENTED BY HAYWOOD AND OTHERS.
iv) Other Discussions by Lenin Bearing
on This Theme - Critical Remarks on the National Question@.
On Jews and the Bund
Are there any other indications of how Lenin regarded
Minorities, and those who saw themselves as Nations? The Jews were a group
who crossed borders of countries and who certainly had some common identity,
during Lenin=s life. Moreover
they had the desire to be liberated from oppressions, and these desires
frequently took the form of National aspirations. These were supported
by the socialists of the Jewish ABund@.
What was Lenin=s
views on this? In his ACritical
Remarks on the National Question@,
Lenin is quite vocal that they are not a nation, that assimilation
is the order of the day, and that they are often worse off than Negroes.
In the following text, the term APURISHKEVICH@
derives from the landowner and monarchist, Vladimir
Mitrofanovich Purishkevich; who
founded the reactionary Black Hundreds organisations in the 1905-07 period
in Russia to ward off revolution:
AIt is the
Jewish nationalists in Russia in general and the Bundists in particular
who vociferate most about Russian orthodox Marxists - being Aassimilators@.
And yet ..out of the ten and a half million Jews all over the word, about
half that number live in the civilised world, where conditions favouring
Aassimilation@
are strongest, whereas the unhappy downtrodden disfranchised Jews in Russia
and Galicia who are crushed under the heel of the Purishkeviches (Russian
and Polish) live in conditions for Aassimilation@
least prevail where there is most segregation and even a APale
of Settlement@, a Anumerous
clausus@ and other charming features
of the Purishkevich regime. The Jews in the civilised world are not a nation,
they have in the main become assimilated, say KARL
KAUTSKY and OTTO BAUER. The Jews in Galicia and in Russia
are not a nation; unfortunately (through no fault of their own but through
that of the Purishkevices) they are still a caste here." (Lenin ACritical
Remarks on the National Question@
In Collection ALenin On USA@;
p. 87. Written 1913; Vol 20; pp 28-30, and 37).
Lenin moves from this overall discussion of assimilation
to point out the rapidity of this process in the USA :
AA rough idea
of the scale which the general process of assimilation is assuming under
the present conditions of advanced capitalism may be obtained from the
immigration statistics of the United States of America.. The 1900 census
in the USA recorded over 10,000,000 foreigners. New York state.. grinds
down national distinctions." (Ibid; p. 88).
He concludes that the plan for non-assimilation is reactionary,
and directly links this with the introduction of Aseparate@
school systems in the South of the USA :
AIn practice
the plan for Aextra-territoriality@
or @cultural national@
autonomy could mean only one thing: the division of educational affairs
according to nationality re the introduction of national curia in school
affairs.. How utterly reactionary it is even for the standpoint of democracy
let alone from that of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.. A
single instance and a single scheme for the Anationalisation@
of the school system will make this point abundantly clear. In the USA
the division of the States into Northern and southern holds to this day
in all departments of life: the former possess the greatest traditions
of freedom and of struggle against the slaveowners; the latter possess
the greatest traditions of slave ownership, survivals of persecution of
the Negroes, who are economically oppressed and culturally backward (44%
of Negroes are illiterate and 6% of whites), and so forth. In the Northern
states Negro children attend the same schools as white children do. In
the South there are separate Anational@,
or racial , whichever you please, schools for Negro children. I think this
is the sole instance of actual Anationalisation@
of schools.. In Eastern Europe there exists a country where things like
the Beilis case are still possible, and Jews are condemned by the Purishkeviches
to a condition worse than that of the Negroes. In that country a scheme
for nationalisation Jewish schools was recently mooted in the Ministry.
Happily this reactionary utopia is no more likely to realised than the
utopia of the Austrian petty bourgeois." (Lenin ACritical
remarks on the National Question@;
Ibid; p. 88-89).
v) Polemic with Rosa Luxemburg -
On AThe Right Of Nations To Self-Determination@
Of course elsewhere Lenin talks of Stalin as AThat
great Georgian@ who wrote on
the National Question. But before examining Stalin on the National Question,
what else did Lenin write on the National Question? In his polemics with
ROSA LUXEMBURG, Lenin had a great deal
to say about this. In his AThe
Right Of Nations To Self-Determination@
written in 1914, Lenin firmly upholds the rights of nations to self determination,
against Luxemburg=s hesitations.
This is not controversial to Marxist-Leninists where there is proven to
be a nation. Lenin also discusses issues regarding the multi-national state.
If there are indeed Two nations
within the USA, then the USA is a Multi-national State. This
would be composed of (as the Comintern, Harry Haywood, the CPUSA and all
his later followers have maintained) the ANegro
nation@ and a AEuro-American@
nation. [We leave aside for the moment the assertions that there
are two other nations within the USA, The AChicano
Nation@ and the ANative
American@ nation]. But Lenin
holds that the Atypical normal@
capitalist state is one inhabited by a single nation :
AThe tendency
of every national movement is towards the formation of national states,
under which.. Requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. The
most profound economic factors drive towards this goals and, therefore
for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world, the
national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period." (Lenin;
ARight Of Nations to Self Determination@;
Sel Ws; Vol 1; Moscow; 1977; p.569; C W 20; p 393).
Lenin goes on to say that the then Marxist Karl Kautsky agreed
that multi-national states are formed in territories where the state structure
remains Aabnormal or underdeveloped@
in relation to the needs of capitalist society :
AStates of
mixed national composition (known as multi-national states, as distinct
from national states) are Aalways
those whose internal constitution has for some reason remained abnormal
or underdeveloped (backward)@.
Needless to say, Kautsky speaks of abnormality exclusively in the sense
of lack of conformity with what is best adapted to the requirements of
a developing capitalism." (Lenin;ARight
Of Nations to Self Determination@;
Ibid; p.569).
There were indeed remnants of the slave owning system in
the South. But as Lenin pointed out, this was confined to the South where
the USA state was not constructed. This USA state was constructed in the
North, and this state forcibly destroyed, the Confederate State of the
Southern slave owners during the Civil War of 1861-65. At this time the
authority of the North was established throughout the territory of the
United States. Moreover Lenin showed how rapidly the system of capitalism
had transformed the slavery system into share-cropping; and that even though
this held back capitalism, as compared to the North, this was only in a
relative comparison to the North. Those factors then that would operate
in forming multi-national states were NOT
operating in the USA. This must of itself rise serious doubts about the
presentation of the USA as a Amulti-national
state@.
In conclusion, Lenin was not
in favour of the theory ABlack
Nation@ as argued by the proponents
of the ABlack Nation@
theory.
2) STALIN, THE NATIONAL QUESTION,
AND THE QUESTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABLACK
NATION@ THEORY
a) Stalin=s
Definition Of A Nation
Lenin took the work by J.V.Stalin, AOn
the National Question@, as a
useful starting point to understand the National Question. It is not remarked
by the proponents of the theory of the ABlack
nation@, that in this work, Stalin
speaks unequivocally of :
AThe American
nation.. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries..
The Americans.. already constituted a nation distinct from England." (J.V.Stalin
AWorks=
Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; AMarxism
and the National Question@; p.
311).
What does Stalin consider the definition of a Nation? He
explains that it is not dependent upon religion, nor upon a racial mixture.
The famous succinct definition given
by Stalin is that :
AA nation
is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the
basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological
make-up manifested in a common culture." (J.V.Stalin AWorks=
Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; AMarxism
and the National Question@; p.
307).
Stalin pointed out, that under national oppression the workers
suffer more than the bourgeoisie:
ARestriction
of freedom of movement, disfranchisement, repression of language, closing
of schools, and other forms of persecution affect the workers no less,
if not more, than the bourgeoisie. Such a state of affairs can only serve
to retard the free development of the intellectual forces of the proletariat
of subject nations. One cannot speak seriously of a full development of
the intellectual faculties of the Tartar or Jewish worker if he is not
allowed to use his native language at meetings and lectures, and if his
schools are closed down." (Stalin; Ibid; p. 304).
Therefore the National Liberation struggle was a key issue
for the workers movement. But the national liberation struggle must also
be supported for another reason. Because the national struggle is diversionary
and obscures, it diverts, from the real workers struggle - for socialism
:
AThe policy
of nationalist persecution is dangerous to the cause of the proletariat
.. It diverts the attention of large strata from social questions, questions
of the class struggle, to national questions, questions Acommon@
to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And this creates a favourable soil
for lying propaganda about Aharmony
of interests@, for glossing over
the class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement
of the workers. This creates a serious obstacle to the cause of using the
workers of all nationalities". (Stalin; Bid; p.320-321).
And linked to this, moreover, >nationalism=
allows a policy of >divide and
rule=, again diverting from the
main struggle:
AThe >system=
of oppression to a >system >
of inciting nations against each other to a Asystem@
Aof massacres and pogroms.. Of
course the latter system is not everywhere and always possible, but where
it is possible- int the absence of elementary civil rights - it frequently
assumes horrifying proportions and threatens to drown the cause of unity
of the workers in blood and tears. The Caucasus and the South Russia furnish
numerous examples. ADivide and
rule@- such is the purpose of
the policy of incitement. And where such policy succeeds, it is a tremendous
evil for the proletariat and a serious obstacle to the cause of uniting
the workers of all the nationalities in the state." (Stalin; ibid; p.321).
The Leninist position, and Stalin=s
own position, was always that Nations should have the full
Right to Self Determination.
AThe right
of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way
it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy.
It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It
has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign, and all nations
have equal rights." (Stalin; Ibid; p.321).
But even if there is a nation, not
all claims to nationhood are strategically defensible from the workers
perspective. Obviously the Marxist-Leninist will not necessarily
support all claims to nationhood if they obstruct the working peoples.
For instance, the resurrection of >beys
and mullahs= influence in Transcaucasia
would not have been in the best interests of the >toiling
strata. The answer that is best for the workers and toilers depends upon
the precise historical situation and must be carefully assessed on the
precise facts=:
AA nation
has the right to arrange its life on autonomous lines. It even the has
the right to secede. But this does not mean that it should do so under
all circumstances, that autonomy or separation, will everywhere and always
be advantageous for a nation; ie. For its majority, ie for the toiling
strata. The Transcacausian Tartars as a nation may assemble , let us say,
in their Diet and succumbed to the influence of their beys and mullahs,
decide to restore the old order of things and to secede from the state.
According to the meaning of the clause on self-determination they are fully
entitled to do so. But will this be in the interest of the toiling strata
of the Tartar nation? Can Marxists look on indifferently when the beys
and mullahs assume the leadership of the masses in the solution of the
national question?.. Should not Marxist come forward with a definite plan
for the solution of the question, a plan which would be most advantageous
for the Tartar masses?.. But what solution would be most compatible with
the interests of the toiling masses? Autonomy, federation or separation?
All these are problems the solution of which will depend on the concrete
historical conditions in which the given nation finds itself.. Conditions
like everything else change, and a decision which is correct at one particular
time may prove to be entirely unsuitable at another." (Stalin; Ibid; p.
324).
b) Stalin On The Rights Of Minorities
And The National Question
Another situation where this issue of nationhood, must
be closely examined, is where there is one region with different minorities,
or >proto-nations=
lying side by side. There are different racial minorities in the same geographical
area of the South of the USA. This is a special type of national problem.
Such situations have been frequent, including in Stalin=s
times. At that time, in the European world, the situation in TRANSCAUCASIA
was an example. As a precondition to solve the problems of these areas,
Stalin insisted that :
AThe complete
democratisation of the country is the basis and condition for the solution
of the national question". (Stalin; bid; p. 373).
But, Stalin recognised that there was a possibility that
independence and secession was >necessary=
for some parts. However, he then considered the possibility that for some
parts >regional autonomy=
was preferable. This was so : AFor
the Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus,
the Poles in the Ukraine and so on...@.
This was for two reasons; namely, because it disposed of a >fiction
bereft of territory=, and, it
did not divide people by nation:
AThe only
correct solution is regional autonomy, autonomy for such crystallised units
as Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, the Caucasus etc. The advantage of regional
autonomy consists first of all in the fact that it does not deal with a
fiction bereft of territory, but with a definite population inhabiting
a definite territory. Next it does not divide people according to nations,
it does not strengthen national barriers; on the contrary it breaks down
these barriers and unites the population in such a manner as to open the
way for division of a different kind, division according to classes...
Of course, not one of these regions constitutes a compact homogeneous nation,
for each is interspersed with national minorities. Such are the Jews in
Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus, the Poles
in the Ukraine, and so on. It may be feared therefore that the minorities
will be oppressed by the national majorities. But there will be grounds
for fear only if the old order continues to prevail in the country. Give
the country complete democracy and all grounds for fear will vanish." (Stalin;
Ibid, p. 376).
The key issue for Stalin, was that there should be definite
and clear democratic rights. So much so that he repeats this again :
AWhat the
minorities want is not an artificial union but real rights in the localities
they inhabit. What can such a union give them without complete democratisation?
On the other hand, what need is there for a national union when there is
complete democratisation? What is that particularly agitates a national
minority? A minority is discontented not because there is not national
union but because it does not enjoy the right to use its native language.
Permit it to use its native language and the discontent will pass of itself.
A minority is discontented not because there is no artificial union but
because it does not possess it own schools. Give it its own schools and
all grounds for discontent will disappear.. A minority is discontented
not because there is not national union, but because it does not enjoy
liberty of conscience (religious liberty), liberty of movement, etc. Give
it those liberties and it will cease to be discontented. Thus equal rights
of nation in all forms (language, schools, etc) is an essential element
in the solution of the national question.. Complete democratisation of
the country is required." (Stalin; Ibid.; p. 375-377).
c) Stalin On Multi-National States
Views regarding the formation of multi-national states
are relevant to this discussion. Stalin=s
view became the basis for Lenin=s
viewpoint that echoed Kautsky (See above). This was that the formation
of multi-national states, is a Aspecial
method@ of the formation of states,
and one which takes place in territories where certain conditions hold.
These are :
1) Where more than one pre-nation (nationality) exists;
2) Where capitalism has not yet been eliminated; and
3) Where capitalism is feebly developed but is more developed
in one of the pre-nations concerned than in the other (or others) :
For Stalin the formation of multi-national states was
more common in the East:
AWhereas in
the West (of Europe-ed) nations developed into states, in the East multi-national
states were formed.. This special mode of formation of states could take
place only where feudalism has not yet been eliminated, where capitalism
was feebly developed, where the nationalities which had been forced into
the background had not yet been able to consolidate themselves economically
into integral nations". (Stalin; J.V; Ibid; p.314).
Again, even in this context, Stalin=s
view regarding the example of Transcaucasia
holds. ie that Stalin favoured Democratisation and Regional Autonomy -
equating with national status - within a larger federation.
IN CONCLUSION
regarding the written views of Stalin upon nationhood :
Unless it can be demonstrated that there is a true Nation and not
a national minority of blacks in the Southern areas, the implications of
these views are self-evident. If Marxist-Leninists insist that their line
does adhere to the line of Stalin, they have an onus to demonstrate exactly
how this accords with a line of Athe
Black Nation@.
iii) Do Stalin=s
Criteria Fit the Theory of the ABlack
Nation?@
Let us examine the criteria one at a time, as they apply
to the ANegro Nation@.
Historically Constituted Stable
Area
Clearly there is a historically constituted area of the
South of the USA. It should be noted that this is not
however, distinct from the historic continuity of the Whites in the South.
Furthermore, it is not stable, as it has shown a major tendency
of a drop in the numbers of Negroes resident in the South. The proportion
of the total Negro population of the USA living in the ABlack
Belt@ at the beginning of the
20th Century was 90%. (M.Ellison: AThe
Black Experience: American Blacks Since 1865"; London; 1974; p.58). This
population of Negroes then was, it was true at that time, mainly located
in the South:
AThus by 1900..
African-Americans collectively.. Were larger by about 4.5 million over
1860. .. African-Americans numbered nine million by the turn of the century.
Of that number fully 90% that is nearly 8 million , of all African-Americans
still lived in the South. The percentage of urban dwellers varied across
the South from a high of 27% in Tennessee to a low of 6% in Mississippi..
By 1940 the black population had grown by an average of only 9% that, slightly
more than a million per decade or at an annual rate of less than 1%". (Denoral
Davis, APortrait of 20th Century
African-. Americans@, USCensus
in @Black Exodus@;
Ibid; p.7).
But there was a steady and accelerating drift away from the
South, by the Negroes. Here we cite figures summarising the so called
AGREAT MIGRATION@.
This had been described, it will be remembered by Lenin under the term
Adisplacement@:
ADuring the
Great Migration=, 1915 to 1960,
about five million rural southern African-Americans migrated to the northern
industrialised cities of America. The immediate conditions for the Agreat
Migration@ were created after
the Civil War when African-Americans were not given Aforty
acres and a mule@A, the means
of economic survival at that time." (Preface :ABlack
Exodus: The Great Migration From the America South@;
Ed Alferdeteen Harrison; p. vii).
After the Second World War the pace of out-migration accelerated.
In fact, it only slowed towards the end of the 1970's, as the increasing
post-war crisis of American industry was deepening :
AThe post-1940
demographic trends of African-Americans.. The once closed black population
of the South would over the next 4 decades become decidedly more open.
In the 1940's the South suffered a loss of 1.5 million of its African-American
resident which represented a 1.5% drop in the region=s
black populace. It was the most substantial net migration loss for any
single decade ever. Nevertheless, during that decade the South=s
black population increased by 6% and 543,000 in absolute numbers. The volume
and the pace of the exodus was basically re-enacted in the 1950's when
another roughly 1.5 million black southerners absconded the region. The
South=s black population again
showed a net increase the time of 3% and 320,000 in absolute numbers for
the decade.. A slight easing of the out-migrating pace of the past decades
beginning in the 1960's, for in the 1960's nearly a hundred thousand free
blacks forsook the South..The slowing of the black out-migrating in the
1960's albeit only slightly, was tantamount to a turning point as the past
two decades of migrating patterns were dramatically reversed. In fact by
the early 1970's there was emerging evidence of a black re-migration to
the South. This early period of re-migration even resulted in a net migration
increase for the South; it was the first time that had happened in 30 years."
(p.11-12; D.Davis; APortrait
of 20th century African Americans@,
Ibid).
Clearly, as unemployment and poverty in the Northern cities
affecting the proletariat grew worse, under the crises of capitalism over
the last few decades, there was a tendency which continues, for the Negroes
or Blacks to move back to the South:
AFrom March
1985, until March 1988, of blacks in America, 586,385 went from the North
back to the South. In these same three years only 326,842 blacks followed
the original pattern of the Great Migration and went from the South to
the North.. The present reverse emigration during the three years cited
has brought 219,809 blacks.. back to the South east. Simultaneously only
51,083 blacks have taken this lane North. Along the far Western lane, comparable
figures show 186,196 blacks returning to the South and only 92,085 journeying
toward the states beyond the Rocky Mountains. The Midwestern lane.. from
1985 to 1988 back migration.. going in a Southerly direction totalled 183,083.
Those going North were in aggregate 183,674." (Introduction in ABlack
Exodus@; Ibid; p. xvii-xviii).
Despite this, the net result has been an enormous demographic
change :
AThe impact
nonetheless of three decades of out-migrating was enormous. African-Americans
were by 1970 more geographically diffused across the American landscape
than ever before. In general they were both less rural and southern. Fully
80% of African-Americans in 1970 were urban dwellers. In the South the
figure was in excess of 70%. This compares with less than 50% of all African-Americas
in 1940 and about ne in four Black Southerners. In effect a dual migration
had occurred with significant numbers of blacks leaving the South, one
in seven to take up residence in the Northeast, Midwest, and increasingly
the West - but at the same time non-migrating black southerners were exiting
the rural South for its urban environs. And by 1970 blacks were more urbanized
than whites nationally as Well as regionally." (D.Davis@
Portrait of 20th Century African-Americas@;
Ibid; p.12).
There is little doubt that most of the Black migrants were
going into the work places of capitalism, they were moving from share-croppers
to becoming proletarians :
AMigrants
were directed to specific industrial centers industries and jobs. Between
1910 and 1920 for example New York experienced a 66% increase in its black
population; Chicago a 148% increase; Detroit a 611 % increase; and Philadelphia
a 500% increase. By 1920 almost 40% of the black population in the North
was concentrated in these four cities. The great bulk of migrants found
their way into manufacturing industries with a 40% increase over levels
found in 1910. Gains were most dramatic in the packing houses and steel
industries in Chicago. In packing houses there were 67 blacks employed
in 1910 and nearly 3 thousand in 1920. In steel black representation increased
from 6% in 1910 to 17% in 1920." (Carol Marks:@
Social and Economic Life of Southern Blacks@;in
ABlack Exodus@
Ibid; p. 46-47).
Marks describes that the first to be able to move North were
the best literate. When they got there of course, they got only the lowest
paid, hardest and dirtiest jobs. These were the jobs that were available
to them. Nonetheless, the industrialisation of the black sharecropper had
transformed the political and social life of the Negro Americans.
See : Table 1.1: Shows
the Persons Engaged in Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits as percentage
of Total Gainfully employed By Selective Region 1880-1900 for the North
East and South. (From Statistical Abstracts of the US; Washington DC Government
Printing Office; 1932; Cited by C. Marks, Ibid, p. 39).
Table 1.2 shows
the same picture in more detail for the period 1910-1920 for only the major
Southern States. (Data from US Census of the Population 1910-1920).
(p.43 Marks, Ibid).
Common Language
Stalin points out that a Common
Language does not imply a nationhood of itself. Stalin refers
to the Norwegians and the Danes who (Stalin; Ibid; p. 308):
ASpeak one language, but
they do not constitute a single nation owing to the absence of the other
characteristics.@
AA common
language is one of the characteristic features of nation. This, of course,
does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different
languages, or that all who speak one language necessarily constitute one
nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessary different
languages for different nations!.. Englishmen and Americas speak one language,
but they do not constitute one nation. The same is true of the Norwegian
and the Danes, the English and the Irish." (Stalin; Ibid; p. 304).
Language then does not disqualify the Negroes from constituting
a Nation; but nor does it assist in establishing that the Negroes are a
Nation.
A Common Territory
Those who present the Negroes in the ABlack
Belt@ of the USA as a Aseparate
nation@ generally claim that
it has a Acommon territory@
in the ABlack Belt@.
As the ECCI resolution states:
AAt least
three-fourths of the entire Negro population of the United States.. live
..(and are-ed) settled in the >Black
Belt= and constitute the majority
of the population.. In the South.. The main communist slogan must be :
AThe Right of self determination
of the Negroes in the >Black
Belt". (Political Secretariat, ECCI: Resolution on the Negro Population
In the United States@; In; J.Degras
(Ed): Volume 3; p.125-126).
But this is certainly not true today. The counties where
the Negroes constitute a Amajority
of the population@ are shown
in the map on the next page. Several points must be made regarding this
map:
MAP OF COUNTIES OF USA WITH
NEGRO MAJORITY
Firstly the counties
where the Negroes form a majority of the population - although lying generally
but not absolutely within the ABlack
Belt@, form only a portion of
it;
Secondly, these
counties do not make up a contiguous territory, but at disconnected and
scattered;
Thirdly these counties
contain a Negro population of only 1.1 million (5% of the total Negro population
of the USA).
Fourthly, even
in these counties, more than 40% of the population is Aeuro-American@,
ie white.
Fifthly the number
of counties where the Negro people constitute a majority of the population
has shrunk rapidly throughout the present century, together with the Negro
population residing in them (See Table 3) :
TABLE 3.
YEAR NUMBER OF COUNTIES NEGRO
POPULATION
1900 286 4 Million
1950 158 2 Million
1970 105 1 Million
Thus while it took 50 years (from
1900 to 1950) for the Negro population of such counties to drop by 50%,
it took only another 20 years (from 1950-19700), for it to drop by a further
50%. Clearly the ABlack
Belt@ can in no way be regarded
as a Acommon territory@
for the ANegro Nation@
in the South USA. Stalin pointedly asks :
AWhat common
territory can there be among people who inhabit different territories?"
(JVS :@Marxism and the National
Question@; Ibid; p. 309-10 ).
Common Economic Life
The proponents of the Negro ABlack
Nation@ theory generally claim
that it has a Acommon economic
life@ in agriculture :
AThe bulk of
the Negro population (86%) live in the Southern States; of this number
74% live in the rural districts and are dependent almost exclusively upon
agriculture for a livelihood." (PS ECCI: Resolution on the Negro Question,
In J.Degras (Ed): Ibid; Volume 2; p.553).
But the 1970 Census reveals that less than 3% of the occupied
Negroes are engaged in agriculture. In the South the figure is only 5%.
Even so, perhaps it is still a separate economic unit in the South? But
even this is not the case. There is no integral economic unit more
or less distinct from the economy of the rest of the USA either. Of course
those proponents of the ABlack
Nation@ deny this is the case
:
AThe ABlack
Belt@.. is not, either economically
or politically, such an integral part of the whole US as any other part
of the country.. The capitalist economic system there.. still has semi-colonial
features." (PS ECCI; Degras; Vol 3; Ibid; p. 129, 130).
But as a result of the uneven development of capitalism,
all capitalist countries have areas
and regions which are more or less regions which are less, industrially
developed. And moreover the regions which are less well developed generally
have a kind of dependancy or Asemi-colonial@
economic relationship to those areas which are more industrially developed.
This does not mean however, that such a less industrially developed region
of a country forms an Aintegral
economic unit more or less distinct from the economy of the rest of the
country@; such as would create
the basis of separate nationhood.
For example the South of Italy, has long been industrially
less well developed than the North, to which it has a semi-colonial relationship;
but this does not mean that the South of Italy forms an Aintegral
economic unit distinct from the economy of the rest of the country@,
such as would create the basis of a separate ASouth
Italian@ nation.
The PS of the ECCI admitted that the question of the level
of industrialisation was irrelevant to the national question in the USA
:
AIndustrialisation
in the ABlack Belt@
is not, as is generally the case in the colonies properly speaking, in
contradiction with the ruling interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie
which has in its hands the monopoly of the entire industry." (PS ECCI;
Degras Vol 3; Ibid; p. 129).
In fact the ECCI went further, it actually admitted that
the ABlack
Belt@, did not constitute
an Aintegral economic unit more
or less distinct from the economy of the rest of the country@
:
AThe ABlack
Belt@ is not in itself either
economically or politically such a united whole as to warrant its being
called a special colony of the United States." (PS ECCI; Degras Vol 3;
Ibid; p.129).
A fall back argument was used by the ECCI, (and its later
adherents) that the ABlack Belt@
was, and is now, an integral economic unit that is : Amore
or less distinct from the rest of the USA@.
This argument rests on the grounds that its=
economy contains significant survivals of slavery, manifested in such Apre-capitalist@
systems of exploitation as share cropping:
AThe Negro..
oppressed nation is in a peculiar and extraordinary distressing situation
of national oppression.. Above all because of considerable.. remnants of
slavery.. At least three-fourths of the entire Negro population of the
United States lives... most of them being peasants and agricultural labourers
in a state of semi-serfdom settled in the ABlack
Belt@.. The agrarian question..
lies at the basis of the national question.. In the ABlack
Belt@.. the capitalist economic
system still has pre-capitalist.. features." (PS, ECCI, Degras Vol 3; Ibid;
p.125, 129, 130).
AThe remnants
of slavery in all their ramifications explain the basic content of the
Negro question in the US. The chief factor which has preserve the area
of Negro majority to the present time, in the face of the conflicting forces
tending to redistribute the Negro population is the modern plantation system
based upon forms of labour which are survivals of chattel slavery." (J.S.Allen:
AThe Negro Question in the United
States@; London; 1936; p.169).
It is true that in the absence of land reform in the South,
the plantation owners took great advantage of the weak economic position
of the Negro Freedmen, to impose upon them forms of exploitation which
may justly be described as Asemi-serfdom@.
And it is true, that out of these forms of exploitation, share-cropping
emerged dominant as form of exploitation, that was best suited to the needs
of the plantation owners :
AIt (ie share-cropping)
was the outcome of years of experimentation to find out what method would
produce them to constant supply of submissive labour at the lower cost."
(F.A.Shannon : AThe Farmers=
Last Frontier: Agriculture : 1860-1897"; New York; 1955; p. 87).
But the system of sharecropping is not
confined to Negroes, nor to the ABlack
Belt@. Furthermore, share cropping
has rapidly declined in the South since 1930 :
AShare cropping
once typical of the cotton-growing areas of the South is now history..
Share cropping tenancies.. are today found only in the Mississippi Delta
and on the coastal plains of the Carolinas." (A.N.Duckham and G.B.Masefield
:@Farming Systems of the World@;
London; 1971; p.113, 155).@
The advent of the mechanised farming made possible by the
invention of the Hopson mechanical cotton picker in 1944, was the final
nail in the coffin of share cropping. This dramatically reduced the cost
of picking cotton :
>Picking a
bale of cotton by machine cost (Hopson) $5.26, and picking it by hand cost
him $39.41. Each machine did the work of fifty people." (Nicholas Lemann;
AThe Promised Land@;
New York; 1992; p.5).
But it should not be thought that the system was only in
disintegrations during the war. The system had been crumbling even before
then, ever since the price of cotton had fallen dramatically from $.00
per pound in 191 to $0.10 cents per pound in 1920; and the dramatic exodus
of workers from the Cotton Belt to the North (Lemann, Ibid; p.15). And
in any case, particular forms of exploitation (such as share-cropping for
instance) do not make the region in which they are operating Aan
integral economic unit more or less distinct from the economy of the rest
of the country@, to provide the
basis of a separate nation. For example share-cropping remains the predominant
form of agricultural exploitation in Lombardy and Emilia, but this does
not mean that these regions form Aintegral
economic units.@; such as would
provide a basis for separate nationhood for these regions of Italy. Thus
even the PS of the ECCI was forced to acknowledge :
AThe ABlack
Belt@ is not in itself, either
economically or politically, such a united whole as to warrant its being
called a special colony of the United States." (PS ECCI; Degras Vol 3;
Ibid; p.129).
Common Psychological Make-up
The advocates a ABlack
nation@ hold that there is a
Acommon psychological make-up
manifested in a common culture@.
The ancestors of the present Negro inhabitants of the United States were
brought from Africa to serve as slaves, for the most part on the plantations
in the Deep South. But the social formations of the regions of Africa from
which they came were those of the tribe and the tribal federation, from
regions where pre-nations (nationalities) had not yet been formed, and
they came from different regions having no common culture or common language.
Clearly therefore the Negro community did not constitute a pre-nation -
much less a nation - at the time the Negroes arrived in North America.
If so - a common make-up was formed in the crucible of the USA. Some of
those advocating that this occurred, point to a statement by Frederick
Engels:
AThe working
class has gradually become a race apart from the English bourgeoises..
The workers speak other dialects, have other thoughts and ideals, other
customs and moral principles, a different religion and other politics than
those of the bourgeoises, they are two radically dissimilar nations. "
(F.Engels: AThe
Condition of the Working Class In England@;
London; 1969; p. 154).
But it is clear that in speaking of the British capitalist
class and the British working class as separate Anations@,
Engels is speaking no more literally than when in the earlier sentence
he refers to them as belonging to separate Araces@,
he is speaking metaphorically, in order to emphasise the differences in
the Acommon psychological make-up
manifested in a common culture@
possessed by the two main antagonistic classes within the British nation.
But in addition to these radically dissimilar psychological
make-ups and cultures which reflect class differences, the British capitalist
class and the British working class have in common a certain Acommon
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture@
which reflect that both classes belong a single British nation.
Thus the fact that during the period of slavery, in North
America, the Negro people a acquired a distinct Acommon
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture@
which reflected their social position as a slave class, and so was radically
dissimilar from the psychological make-up and culture of other social classes
in no way means they acquired a Apsychological
make-up manifested in a common culture@
appropriate to a separate nation.
With the abolition of slavery, by the 13th
Amendment to the US Constitution of December 18th, 1865
- the Negro people ceased to form a slave social class,
and so in time, they ceased to have the Acommon
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture@
appropriate to a slave class. Though it is true that the features of minority
oppression and racism did not ever disappear. It is true that this continues
to be an issue every day for Negroes in the USA. But it is also true that
this is not the basis for a national movement. It is also true that this
can only be overcome by a joint Communist struggle with whites.
iii) Stalin and the ABlack
Nation@ - What Evidence of Stalin=s
support?
As seen , we ahve argued the case that Negroes are a minority.
It is likely that Stalin=s views
related to the Jewish minority fits the Negro population of the USA. Yet
this formulation is quite different from Athe
Black Nation@. The manifest injustice
then and now, to the Black people and in particular to the workers, underlies
the subjective drive of many Marxist-Leninists towards this theory. This
daily injustice spawns a subjective desire to assist their development,
and to harness their manifest alienation from capitalist America. This
must be considered honestly, as an honest confusion of subjective factors
for objective factors.
Marxist-Leninists accept that Stalin was a great working
class leader. Those who accept the theory of the ABlack
Nation@, claim therefore that
this line had the imprateur of Stalin on it. Perhaps, Stalin changed his
mind in his later years well after having written his influential work?
What evidence then is there that Stalin=s
view was altered into one favouring AThe
Black nation@? Yet in
all of Stalin=s written works,
nothing suggests that he supported a policy of Two nations in The USA.
To the contrary, it appears that he always talked of One Nation - The USA.
However proponents of the theory claim to the contrary, that indeed Stalin
did support this line. Where is the evidence of Stalin=s
support for this line supposed to be? The Marxist-Leninist supporters of
the Aline of The Black Nation@,
cite this evidence as lying in two sources:
One source of >evidence=
that Stalin supported the line of the ABlack
Nation@; is the assumption that
Stalin was in charge of the Comintern. We have already addressed
to some extent, in previous publications, that this interpretation is contrary
to the known facts (Please see Alliance Numbers 18; 12; 19). This analysis
is left to the Marxist-Leninist international left to either reject by
principled reply, or, to accept. In this document we discuss a little more,
the circumstances of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International.
This supplements previous writings on this question from both the Communist
League (UK); and ourselves.
Thus we argue, that the international Marxist-Leninist
left needs an open and clear principled debate, on the nature of the Comintern,
and its relationship to the rise of revisionism. Because Alliance is a
small organisation, it may be argued that this renders it un-necessary
to refute this line. Such comments have been voiced by some. We believe
that this is akin to closing one=s
eyes. Some international Marxist-Leninists have accused us of attacking
Stalin by this analysis. We wonder at their understanding of a Defence
of Stalin. Our record on Stalin speaks for itself in fact.
The Second source of >evidence=
that Stalin supported the line of the ABlack
Nation@
lies in the verbatim comments, and memories of leading Black members
of the former CPUSA, that the ABlack
Nation@ theory originated with
Stalin. We consider many of these verbatim comments and memories,
as both biased and in contradiction to the written evidence of Stalin=s
own writings. The enigma remains for Marxist-Leninist proponents of the
ABlack nation@,
why it is that Stalin never burst into print with this? As Draper says
:
AThe man whose
voice the American communists really heeded on the American Negro Question
never made a public statement about it. For lack of other evidence, Stalin=s
decisive influence in this area has hitherto been deduced or surmised from
his decisive influence in all areas and his special interest in the national
question." (Draper; Ibid; p. 342).
To accept this notion that anything significant that happened
in the Marxist-Leninist movement only happened if Stalin said AYes!@,
is to defer to the bourgeois and Trotskyite myth of the all Powerful Stalin.
Nevertheless, we examine these reminiscences. The first is from a prominent
black member of the CPUSA who was at the famous AFar
Eastern University for Toilers@
in Moscow. Draper reports the memories of OTTO
HALL :
AAccording
to Hall, the little group of five Negroes (Otto Hall, and four other Negroes-ed)
had not been at the Far Eastern university in Moscow more than a week when
Stalin sent for them.. The group was taken to the Kremlin..
KARL RADEK who knew enough English to serve as interpreter
was present.. They drank tea and talked informally for several hours. Stalin
held forth: AThe Negroes represented
the most oppressed section of the American working class. Therefore the
American party should have more Negroes than whites. Why weren=t
there more Negroes in the American party?" (Draper;
Ibid; p. 334).
Hall answered that prejudice and discrimination within
the party were largely responsible for the shortage of Negro members..
Hall remembers Stalin as saying :
AThe Whole approach
of the American party is wrong. You are indeed a national minority with
some of the characteristics of a nation.@
He asked them to write memoranda on the question.. To Hall and the others,
it sounded like Jim Crow Ain
revolutionary guise." (Draper; Ibid; p. 334).
But this terminology is far different from the terminology
of a ABlack Nation@.
In fact it accords with the written views of Stalin in his work on the
National Question that we have cited above. Otto Hall had one further memory
also involving Stalin on this question :
AOtto Hall
says that Stalin gave him and four other Negroes at the Far Eastern University
their first intimations of a Negro ANational
Question@ in 1925. One more direct
and one indirect association with Stalin has come to light. William F.Kruse
recalls that about 2 years later, he and other American students at the
Lenin School were invited to attend a discussion on the American Negro
question in the Anglo-American Secretariat of the Comintern. To their surprise
, among those seated around a long table was Stalin, flanked by two young
Russian members of the Institute of Red Professors. One of the Russian
professors read a long Athesis@
in support of the theory of self-determination as applied to the American
Negro question. Stalin himself said nothing throughout the entire session,
except for whispered consultations with the speaker. Kruse did most of
the talking and upheld the older position that equality rather than self-determination
constituted the revolutionary solution. The discussion ended without reaching
any conclusion." (Draper; Ibid; p. 343).
But there is NO indication
as to Stalin=s thought. It is
simply assumed what he thought!
In startling contrast to this picture of a vague, nebulous,
mythical >support=
from Stalin for the line, many known Ultra-Left revisionists in the international
movement openly fostered the theory of the ABlack
Nation@. We have already discussed
the role of Zinoviev, in the introduction. But after his exposure as a
revisionist others continued to promote the line. For example,
SALOMON LOZOVSKY. Again Draper cites the memories of CPUSA
members :
AFinally another
American student at the Lenin School, Joseph Zack,
says that he first heard of the doctrine of Negro self-determination in
the US from the head of Profintern, Lozovsky, who told him that it came
from Stalin himself. Like most Americans, Zack reacted unfavourably. A
week later, Lozovsky asked Zack to come to his apartment and showed him
the outline of a thesis by Stalin on the subject, consisting of a few brief
points." (Draper; Ibid; p. 343).
Another memory comes from GEORGE
PADMORE the West Indian born Communist. He remembered
OTTO KUUSINEN
as taking the lead role in promoting the theory. Kuusinen was the chairman
of the Negro Commission of the ECCI. Padmore :
ACalled Kuusinen
the >genius behind the scheme’."
(Draper Cited p. 349).
Of course Draper reverts quickly to the given stereotype,
and states emphatically - Espeially important is it to be emphatic and
dogmatic when there is only weak Aevidence@
- that :
AKuusinen
was no doubt entrusted with the management of this operation, but that
he did not originate this theory, there can also be no doubt. If there
was a Agenius@
in this scheme, it was undoubtedly Stalin, whose bidding Kuusinen unfailingly
obeyed." (Draper Cited p. 349-350).
TO CONCLUDE : Neither
do the writings of Stalin nor do the facts, support the view
that Stalin promoted the line of a ABlack
Nation@;.
We are forced then to consider why this line was adopted and who forced
the line onto the CPUSA? We will suggest, there is
good evidence that this came from the hidden revisionists in the Comintern
such as Kuusinen, assisted by Radek, Lozovsky, and Manuilsky, as they took
over, or hijacked, the Communist International. Furthermore
this process was assisted by the intense factionalism of the CPUSA. This
created the opportunity for frustrating the correct line in the USA. First,
we briefly ask whether the line of ABlack
Nation@ is still alive today?
v) The Modern Day Line of The
Black Nation In the CPUSA:
Is this line of the ABlack
Nation@ still voiced in the USA?
The answer is yes, and most emphatically. We will ignore the openly bourgeois
and petty bourgeois voices that articulate some form of Black Nationalism.
We will only point out that many voices on the Marxist-Leninist Left still
firmly accept the line of the ECCI nowadays. A number of parties and organisations
follow this line, though they may vary on some aspects of this. Nonetheless,
all are united on the line itself in broad measure. They are united in
saying that the ECCI was correct; and they are united in pointing to the
importance of Harry Haywood=s
articles. Rather than perform a detailed analysis at this time, of each
text by the various groups, we will concentrate on Haywood, since all groups
follow his lead.
By the time that EARL BROWDER
turned the party into open revisionism, the line of Black Nation was already
in disrepute as it had failed to ignite Black workers. But by this time
also, the victory of open right revisionism of the type of Khrushchev,
enabled the militants still within the CPUSA, to argue that fighting revisionism,
in part meant resurrecting the Black Nation line. In 1959, no doubt conscious
that the line of a black nation was not developing according to a full
adherence with the theory of Stalin, HARRY HAYWOOD
counter-attacked those who had shown the temerity to disagree with him
in this manner.
This included JAMES ALLEN,
until then a prominent writer on this question who had favoured a ABlack
Nation@ line. Allen had re-assessed
the position, and came under sharp attack from Haywood. Haywood=s
main attack was that in the present times of imperialism, all Aclassical@
roads to nation formation were closed, and that new routes were needed.
Haywood went so far as to say that the standard application of a Marxist
Leninist set of criteria was Arigid@.
Haywood made it clear that this meant the Aclassical@
interpretation was Atoo rigid@
to allow it to be used for the putative Black Nation of the Southern USA
:
AThe main
question for us is : Does there exist the objective conditions for the
development of a national revolutionary movement among the Negro people
in the Deep South as a phase in their struggle for socialism in the USA.
If there is even a possibility of such a development, the Party cannot
withdraw support to the right of self-determination as the strategic goal
of the Negro movement in the South. It is clear that the proponents of
the draft resolution deny the possibility of such a movement. It is clear
that the Anew@
line is against such a movement, and their arguments are designed to prove@
that there is no objective base for such a movent. In order to Aprove@
what they not wish to support is impossible or unnecessary, they distort
Marxist-Leninist theory on the national question, setting up a rigid test
which the Negroes in the Black Belt will pass before they will be accepted
as a nation having the right to self-determination. In fact so rigid is
this test, that very, very few oppressed nations in the contemporary period
could pass such a test. For example where does Comrade Allen expect to
find an oppressed nation in the epoch of imperialism taking the Aclassic
road to the formation of a nation?@
And, particularly when we are dealing with a submerged nation in the heartland
of US imperialism, the main bulwark of the collapsing capitalist and colonial
system? These dogmatic unhistorical structures would make support to a
national revolutionary movement contingent upon the Amaturing
of all elements of nationhood." (Harry Haywood:@On
the Negro question@; November
1959; In ATowards Victorious
Afro-American National Liberation@;
Boston; R.O.Light ; Appendix B; p.397).
Haywood correctly argues that Stalin pointed out some elements
of what constitutes a nation. But he hastens to add that these conditions
only apply to the formation of nation under >pre-capitalist
conditions=:
AThe elements
of nationhood- language, territory, culture etc do not fall from the skies,
but were evolved gradually in the pre-capitalist period. But these elements
were in a rudimentary state, and at best, were only a potentiality, that
is given the constituted the possibility of a nation in the future given
certain favourable conditions. The potentiality became a reality only in
the period of rising capitalism with its national markets and its economic
cultural centers. (The National Question and Leninism)." (Haywood,
Citing Stalin @On the Negro question@;
p. 398; Ibid).
Haywood completes this argument by stating that the Aclassic@
means of nation formation is now un-necessary. This is because in the conditions
of Apresent imperialist epoch@,
the classic means of nation forming cannot occur. He argues that to insist
upon a AStalinist@
line on this is to be Apurist@.
He advocates the model of China and the revisionist USSR of 1959 :
AIn the classic
epoch the epoch of transition to capitalism, favourable circumstances for
the conversion of this potentially into a reality were present in the bourgeois
- democratic revolution - the overthrow of feudalism. In the present imperialist
epoch, the epoch of transition to socialism, the essential condition for
the dull development of oppressed nations is the overthrow of imperialist
oppression and domination of weaker nations. It is socialism that offers
the most favourable conditions for the consolidation and full development
of oppressed nations and peoples. This is demonstrably proved by the experiences
of the Soviet Union and the Peoples=
China in the solution of the national question, and the resultant flowering
of the cultures of the formerly oppressed peoples." (Haywood
@On the Negro question@;
Ibid; p. 398).
Of course Haywood rather contradicts another point of Stalin=s,
in AThe National Question and
Leninism@. Stalin points out
that in nations in the usual sense, arise precisely in the era of capitalism
and imperialism. There is only one distinction from the >bourgeois
nation state=; and this is the
>socialist nation=
:
AThe bourgeoisie
and its nationalist parties were throughout this period the chief leading
force of such nations. Class peace within the nation for the sake of Anational
unity@; expansion of territory
of ones= own nation by seizure
of the national territories of others; distrust and hatred of other nations;
suppression of national minorities; a united front with imperialism-such
is the ideological, social, and political stock-in-trade of these nations.
Such nations must be qualified as bourgeois nations. Examples are the French,
British, Italians , North American and other Similar nations." (Stalin,
J.V. AThe National Question and
Leninism@; Vol 11; Moscow 1954;
p.353).
Leaving aside the differences with Stalin, there are further
problems with Haywood=s analysis.
He denies reality. Haywood, is forced to deny even the factual
evidence of the AGreat
Migration@ :
AAnother claim
that has no basis in fact is that there had been a Aradical
decline@ in the Aratio
of Negroes to whites@ in the
rural Black belt, the traditional area of Negro majorities. Negro majorities
still exist in the rural counties. It is the cities which reduce the proportion
of Negroes to whites, and in those cities an unprecedented majority in
their population! For example the Negro population of Memphis Tenne., increased
fro 37.2 in 1950 to 51.2 in 1955. And by that same year, the Negro had
become 49% of the population of Birmingham , Ala., 35% in New Orleans;
34.6% in Atlanta, Ga.; 38% in Charlotte, N.C.; and from 20.3% to 42.5%
in a number of other cities in or near the Black Belt... The growth of
the Negro urban population is unquestionable But is it correct to assume
that Negroes residing in towns and villages are, ipso facto, urban workers?
Perlo notes that Athere are increasing
numbers of Negro town and village dwellers who are farm labourers, migratory
or seasonal workers. Consequently there has been an actual increase in
the proportion of Negro people who earn their living mainly from agriculture.@
Perlo notes further that Athe
number of Negro people in the old south has remained stable,@
contrary to assertions that the Black Belt Negro community is no longer
a stable community. He foresees on the basis of this study, a Asharp
increase in the Negro population of the old South@
by 1970, and adds :
AThe potential
increase in the proportion of Negroes among the farm population of working
age is especially marked. In 1940, 46.7% of all farm children less than
5 years of age were Negroes. In 1950 this proportion had increased to 49%
in the six states as a whole, and to more than 60% in South Carolina and
Mississippi.@ The perspective
then is for an explosive increase of the Negro population in the rural
Black Belt, such as occurred in the period between 1910 and 1930 when,
despite the mighty migrations of that period, it showed an actual increase
of 192,000. Moreover in the Census South, the Negro population grew by
some one million between 1930 and 1950." (Haywood;
@On the Negro question@;
Ibid; p. 397).
These latter statements purport to
be facts, and as such they can be either verified, or refuted. Unfortunately
for Haywood=s theory, the facts
do not confirm his analysis.
-
There are very serious implications
in these statements by Haywood.
-
Modern day proponents of Haywood,
those who call themselves today AMarxist-Leninists@
have a duty to the rest of the Marxist-Leninists movement.
-
This is to bring Stalin=s
analysis of AThe Nation@
up-to-date.
-
The rest of the movement, including
Alliance, would be indebted to them if they can substantiate the deficiencies
of Stalin=s analysis that demand
such up-dating. Those of the Marxist-Leninists who have resisted Aupdating@
Stalin on this and many other questions, should be shown the error of our
ways!
3. THE CHARACTER OF THE COMINTERN AFTER
LENIN=S DEATH
We have in previous writings dealt in detail, with this
theme. Here we summarise some key aspects to facilitate this review of
the ABlack nation@
theory.
-
The basic contention put by Alliance
and Communist League of UK, is that the Comintern was increasingly led
into incorrect lines.
-
In effect, it was hijacked after
the death of Lenin, and by 1928, Stalin had been fully excluded from its
running. A summary of this prior work, must encompass three facts :
1. That Zinoviev, as
President of the Comintern, effectively moved the Comintern away from correct
Marxist-Leninist lines after the death of Lenin.
2. That the subversion
of the correct Marxist-Leninist line on the colonial Question occurred
in China (with the ECCI agent Borodin) in an alliance with the revisionist
Communist Party of China; this led to Stalin=s
exclusion at the 6th World Congress of the ECCI.
3. That, by and
at, the 6th World Congress the ECCI was now effectively in control of the
other remaining revisionists, Bukharin, Manuilsky and Kuusinen. They completed
the perversion of the correct tactics in the colonial and semi-colonial
countries.
At a time when the international Marxist-Leninist movement is re-forming
itself organisationally, it is remarkable that uncomfortable historical
facts are avoided by parties world wide. Even bourgeois historians now
challenge the mythology of the AAll
controlling Stalin@! This leads
Robert Conquest to fulminate against his fellow academic Arevisionist
historians A, who dare to challenge
his own propagandist views of a ABloody
Dictator Stalin@. Yet, Marxist-Leninist
forces have not risen to the challenge of re-assessing significant sections
of their history; and if need be refuting assertions on the basis of a
principled debate. In fact various of them state airily and from a great
height, that this is all a myth. If so, a counter argument is merited.
i) The Role of Zinoviev and Ultra-Leftism
Even before Lenin=s
death, the Comintern leadership, as President, was given to GRIGORI
ZINOVIEV. The major thrust of the Comintern was under Zinoviev=s
direction. But as Zinoviev himself stated the influence of Lenin whilst
still alive was enormous :
>Inasmuch
as in a thing like the Communist International one may speak about the
role of an individual, one may consider it as Lenin=s
creation." (Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachovitch;
ALenin and the Comintern Vol
1@; Stanford 1972;" ; p . 50).
Zinoviev created a triumvirate that ran the Comintern, with
Karl Radek, and Nikolai Bukharin. Zinoviev later formed close links with
the Trotskyists, culminating in the anti-Bolshevik conspiracy. It is not
surprising then that after Lenin=s
death, the Comintern slid off track. This first revealed itself to Stalin
over the issue of the attitude of the Comintern to the ALenin
Testament@ so called
(This is detailed in Alliance # 15).
Lenin=s terminal illness became
a pawn in the hands of the Trotskyites, who had isolated Lenin from Stalin
on the pretence of >illness=.
Trotsky then used a >Testament=
against the wishes of the Bolshevik Central Committee to surreptiously
attack Stalin. The documents were given to Max
Eastman, and they were published as ALenin=s
Testament@. Stalin wished to
fully expose this intrigue, by means of publishing the complete correspondence,
but he was prevented by Manuilsky and Zinoviev (This
is detailed in Alliance # 15).
By 1926 the British General Strike,
had revealed intense struggles at the top levels of the CI. Stalin's approach
was to win over workers within reformist trade unions. Stalin opposed Ultra-leftists,
who proposed setting up Red 'paper' unions. The rationale of the Ultra-leftists
was that the era was one of a decline of capitalism. In reality, capitalism
was at this time undergoing only partial stabilisation.
Opposing Zinoviev, Stalin's general assessment of the
General Strike was that it was >a
provocation=:
"A provocation of the general strike by the British
Conservatives, was capital's attempt to solidify stabilization-that is
in this case capital not revolution was on the attack.. Stabilisation had
not ended, although it has been and continues to be shaky." ("Stalin's
Letters to Molotov"; Edited Lars T. Lih; Oleg V. Naumov; and Oleg V. Khlevniuk;
Yale 1995. Letter 16; 3 June 1926. Ibid; p.108).
Although this provocation would not succeed in its aim, it
also was not likely to lead to success for the workers movement. The General
Strike:
"Did not lead to a strengthening of stabilisation nor
could it. But it also did not lead to a triumphant development of the workers
revolutionary struggle or to the destruction of stabilization; moreover
as a result of the strike some categories of workers were not able to preserve
even their former conditions of work and struggle." (J.V.Stalin;
In AStalin=s
Letters@; Ibid; p.108).
-
The tendency to Ultra-Leftism was by no means confined to
elements within the MINORITY MOVEMENT of
Great Britain. Proposals emanated from Zinoviev
and Salomon Lozovsky to :
-
Firstly, to break with United Front Tactics within the reformist trade
unions; and;
-
Secondly, to build "minorities" movement outside the "reactionary trade
unions@;
ie to build so called ARed
Trade Unions@.
But Stalin characterised Zinoviev's
overall position as Afundamentally
incorrect@
:
"Basically Zinoviev's theses proceed from the premise
that 1)Stabilization is ending or has already ended; 2) We are entering
into or have already entered into a phase of revolutionary explosions;
3) the tactic of gathering forces and working in the reactionary trade
unions is losing its viability and is receding into the background; 4)
the tactic of a united front has outlived itself; 5) We must build our
own trade unions by relying on the initiative for an outright break with
the General Council. In the general historical circumstances, this entire
premise is in my view, fundamentally incorrect because it plays into the
hands of Amsterdam and the Second International and dooms our Communist
parties to sectarianism." (J.V.Stalin; Letter 16,
Ibid; p.108).
Stalin summarised his view of the international climate as
one of a Acontinuing
stabilisation@ :
"As a result we do not have a new phase of stormy onslaught
by the revolution but a continuing stabilization, temporary, not enduring,
but stabilisation nonetheless; fraught with new attempts by capital to
make new attacks on the workers, who continue to be forced to defend themselves."
(J.V.Stalin; Ibid; Letter 16; p.108).
In terms of the practical decisions flowing from this analysis,
Stalin warned against isolation, while coupling this with advice to expose
the bourgeois leadership. These are complementary strands:
"Our task is to continue to gather forces and form a
real united front; to prepare the working class to resist new attacks by
capital; to turn this Defence into a broad based revolutionary attack by
the proletariat against capital, into a transition to a struggle for power.
6)Hence the need for more intense work by the Communists
in the reactionary trade unions for the purpose of internally transforming
them and of taking control of them…
7) hence the need for a determined struggle against Zinoviev
and Trotsky, who have been advocating splitting the trade union movement
and have opposed a united front…
8) Hence a decisive rebuttal of Zinoviev and Trotsky's
line which leads to the Communist parties isolation from the masses and
to the abandonment of the masses to a monopoly of the leadership by reformers….
10) Hence a decisive rebuttal of any attempt to take upon
ourselves the initiative of splitting the Soviet Trade Union Council from
the British trade union movement, since a break with the General Council
under these conditions must surely lead to a break with the trade unions
of England in favour of Amsterdam….
11) The break with the General Council will surely lead
to a disruption in the policy of a unified trade union movement in France
and Germany as well, since the reformers in France and Germany are not
better than the British reformers....
15) Ruthless criticism of centrists and leftists in the
General Council is absolutely necessary..
18) The trade union minority and the British CP should
launch a vigorous campaign for new elections to the executive committee
of the unions and the General Council aiming at the exclusion of the Thomas
traitors and their hangers on among the leftists; the British party should
support their replacement with new revolutionary leaders." ("Letter
15" "Stalin's Letters"; Ibid; p. 108-9).
In fact as far Stalin was concerned,
Zinoviev represented more of a danger than Trotsky.
This was due to his position
in the Comintern. (Detailed "Letter"No. 21, written 25.6.
1926):
"1) Before the appearance of the Zinoviev group, those
with oppositional tendencies (Trotsky the Workers' Opposition, and others)
behaved more or less loyally but were tolerable.
2) With the appearance of the Zinoviev group those with
oppositional tendencies began to grow more arrogant and break the bounds
of loyalty;
3) The Zinoviev group became the mentor of everyone in
the opposition who was for splitting the party; in effect it has become
the leader so the splitting tendencies in the party;
4) This role fell to Zinoviev's
group because:
-
a) it is better acquainted with
our methods than any other group;
-
b) It is stronger in general
than the other groups and has control of the Comintern
Executive Committee (Zinoviev is) chairman of the Comintern Executive Committee,
which represents a serious force;
-
c) because of this it behaves more arrogantly than any other
group, providing examples of "boldness" and "determination" to those with
other tendencies." (AStalin's
Letters." Ibid; p.115).
It was for this reason, that events in the Comintern took
on especial meaning, as Zinoviev and Trotsky manoeuvred to gain control
within the USSR. Zinoviev allied with M.M.LASHEVICH
to hold anti-party, underground and factional meetings in the USSR. They
organized with international Ultra-Leftist including
RUTH FISCHER (Germany) and BORDIGA (Italy) to try
to disrupt the line :
"If Lashevich is organizing illegal meetings, if Zinoviev
is organizing R.Fischer's flight to Germany, & if Sokolnikov is being
sent to France to the French CP V Congress- it means they have decided
along with Trotsky to break the party through the Comintern ."
(Letter 20; dated 15 June 1926; Ibid;
p.113."Stalin's Letters).
IT WAS IN FACT ZINOVIEV WHO
OPENED AFRESH THE ISSUE OF THE BLACK NATION AS A POTENTIALLY NEW STRATEGIC
DIRECTION FOR THE CPUSA .
Haywood writes that :
AH.V.PHILLIPS
and BOB MAZUT (A young Russian representative
of the Young Communist International (YCI) to the Young Workers Communist
League).. Told me of a discussion he had on the eve of his departure from
Russia. Zinoviev, then President of the Communist International, had asked
him to look closely into the Afro-American Question in the United States
and to see if he could find any confirmation for his belief and that of
other Russian leaders that the right of self-determination was the appropriate
slogan for Black rebellion. Zinoviev added that he had long believed that
the question would become the AAchilles
heel of American imperialism@.
I told Mazut that.. I didn=t
feel that the slogan of self-determination was applicable to U.S. Blacks...
Mazut nevertheless raised the question of self-determination for discussion
in meeting of the Chicago District Committee of the YCL.. He was literally
shouted down by the white comrades." (H. Haywood:
ABlack Bolshevik-Autobiography
of an Afro-American Communist@;
Chicago 1978; p. 134).
Even after Zinoviev=s
removal from the Comintern leadership, there were left ample enough revisionist
leaders, that allowed a further pushing of the line of the ABlack
Nation@.
ii) The Perversion of United
Front tactics in the Trade Unions
The suggestion that a new trade union international should
be founded was made by Zinoviev, in March 1920, to the Congress of the
Russian Communist Party. At a meeting in Washington sponsored in part by
the Second International, there had been a development, for an international
trade union council, which became the INTERNATIONAL
LABOUR ORGANISATION (ILO). Consequently the Russian trades unions
joined the Comintern, and asked other trades unions to do the same. An
international trade union council was formed to make preparations for an
Ainternational congress of trade
unions@. A letter was sent by
the ECCI to the trades unions of all countries. This proclaimed the following
:
>The new trade
union movement should throw overboard all vestiges of the craft spirit.
It should make its task the direct struggle - shoulder to shoulder with
the communist parties-for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviet
system.. It should place in the foreground the weapon of the general strike
and should prepare for combining the general strike with armed insurrection.
The new unions should cover the entire mass of workers and not only the
labour aristocracy. They should implement the principals of strict centralism
and organisation by industry, not by occupation.. The new unions should
start a revolutionary struggle for the immediate nationalisation of the
most important industries, while remembering that unless the proletariat
establishes a Soviet regime no genuine nationalisation is possible.@
(Extracts from Letter From ECCI to the Trade Unions
of All Countries@; J.Draper (Ed)
A Vol 1;@p.88-89).
These were in general correct tactics, that followed the
spirit and letter of Lenin=s
counsel on the approach to the reformist trade unions. This is shown by
the letter that soon followed to the French Socialist Party. By July 1920
Red Trade Unions were being organised in France, but the counsel given
by the Comintern was to stay inside the old reformist unions. However the
letter also points out that there was being organised, at an international
level the RED CONGRESS OF TRADE UNIONS;
in opposition to the older reformist, yellow, AMSTERDAM,
OR SECOND INTERNATIONAL unions.
These were organised by the INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION
OF LABOUR UNIONS (IFTU). The French were urged to participate
:
AYou ask what
our attitude to the French trade unions is.. We are opposed to revolutionaries
and communist leaving the unions.. Revolutionaries and communists must
be where the working masses are.. We ask our adherents in France not to
leave the unions in any circumstances, On the contrary they are to perform
their duty towards the Communist International they must intensify their
work within the unions.. We must wrest these unions from the control of
the capitalists and social-traitors, and to do that we must be in the unions;
to do that we must direct our best forces there. In every union and in
every branch we must organise a communist group.. We must open the eyes
of the members.. Red trade unions are beginning to be organised on an international
level.. An international congress of red trade unions is to be convened
for August or September in opposition to the Amsterdam international of
yellow trade unions. Support this move in France. Get your unions to associate
themselves with the international of Red unions and to break once and for
all with the yellow unions. This is the task of the revolutionaries in
France.@ (Extracts
From A Letter From the ECCI to the French Socialist Party; Septem July
1920; JDraper (Ed) A Vol 1; Documents
of the Communist International; Ibid; p. 1237-8).
At the Second Congress, Zinoviev reported the first and preliminary
steps taken to found the RED INTERNATIONAL OF
LABOUR UNIONS (PROFINTERN OR RILU).
The line taken was to split the International movement away from the leaders
and representatives of the reformists sitting in Amsterdam :
AWe must split
Amsterdam.. AWe can now say to
every union:
@Leave the Amsterdam
International. You now have an international of red unions and you should
join it.@ (Introduction
to : Extracts from a Manifesto to All Trade Unions On the Decision to Found
a RILU; Sep 1920; In J.Draper (Ed); Vol 1; London; 1971 p. 185).
But despite the inflammatory verbiage, the line itself was
correctly stated. The wording used terms such as >taking
over the existing unions and ridding them of reformist leadership=:
AThe Communist
International summons all workers who stand for the social revolution and
the proletarian dictatorship to fight vigorously for the adherence of their
unions to the International Council of Trade Unions established in Moscow
on 15 July by the Unions of Russia, England, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia,
France and Georgia.. The Second World Congress of the CI summons you to
active struggle for the unions. Take into your own hands these powerful
organisations, not shrinking from the most resolute struggle against those
who are distorting the workers=
organisations into instruments of bourgeois policy. They try to frighten
you with splits and expulsions.. The Communist International does not want
to split the trade union movement, does not aim at it, but does not fear
it either.. It is not necessary to split the unions, but it is necessary
to expel from them the treacherous group of leaders who are making the
unions into a plaything of the imperialists.@
(Extracts from Manifesto to All Trade Unions On..
Found a RILU; Aug1920; In J.Draper Vol 1; p.187-188).
But the sense of a dichotomy between >national=
work (Work within the Unions) and the international line (Split the unions)
was confusing. For some, like those of the American
International Workers of the World (IWW), the injunction to
work within the unions was anathema. Alfred Rosmer
recalls that after these theses had been adopted John
Reed said to him:
AWe cannot
go back to America with a decision like that. In the American unions the
Comintern has friends only in the IWW, and we are being sent into the AFL
where it has nothing but bitter enemies.@
(AManifesto
to All Trade Unions On the decision to Found a RILU:; Cited
J.Draper Ibid; Vol 1; p. 185).
This reflected the heavy base of Ultra-Leftism that was throughout,
a major problem for the American party. In the ECCI however, even by 1922,
a correct line was still being taken. This correct line was designed
in fact to prevent splitting. It was carefully delineated that,
if there were >splitters=,
these were to be clearly seen as in fact the Yellow
Second International - who wished by splitting, to hermetically
insulate Atheir=
workers against the revolutionary plague injected by the revolutionary
elements inspired by the Comintern, working INSIDE
the reformist unions :
A5. In the
forthcoming period the task of the communists is to extend their influence
in the old reformist trade unions to fight the splitting policy of the
Amsterdam leaders, and to carry out carefully and consistently the tactics
of the united front in the trade union movement. However large the minority
within an individual union or trade unions Federation is, communists must
see that this minority stays within its organisation and fights for carrying
through the programme and tactics of the minority. The adherence of such
trade union minorities to the RILU can only be an ideological one, which
they must demonstrate by the practical execution of the decisions of the
first congress of the revolutionary unions and by following the Profintern
tactics.
6. Communists are obliged to work in favour of the individual
unions affiliated to the RILU remaining inside the international trade
and industrial secretariats.@
(ECCI Resolution on the Tasks of the Communists in
Trade Unions Feb 1922; Degras Vol 1; Ibid; p.321).
And by December 1922, still the ECCI was adhering to the
correct tactics. As late as June 1923 a correct
line was taken; as expressed at the Third ECCI Plenum
on the Trade Union Question.(In J.Degras; Ibid
p.33 Vol 2). The 1922 expression still held. As it
stated in 1922:
ANothing weakens
the proletarian resistance to the capitalist offensive so much as splitting
the unions. The reformist leaders are well aware of this, but since they
are also aware that they are losing ground.. They are anxious to split
the unions which are the irreplaceable instrument of the proletarian class
struggle so that the communists will inherit only the fragments and splinters
of the old trade union organisations... The reformists need a split. The
Communists are interested in rallying all the forces of the working class
against capitalism. The United Front tactic means that the communist vanguard
must take the lead in the day-to-day struggles of the broad working masses
for their most vital interests. In these struggles the communists are even
ready to negotiate with the treacherous social-democratic and Amsterdam
leaders. The attempts to the Second International to represent the United
Front as the organisational fusion of all Aworkers
parties@ must of course be decisively
rebutted." (From Theses on Tactics Adopted by Fourth
CI Congress, Dec 1922; In J.Degras; Ibid; Vol 1; p. 423-424).
But by 1929 there had been a significant change in the orientation
of the ECCI towards the Unions. Now a dangerous ULTRA-LEFTISM
had begun to enter. This was led by THAELMANN
of the KPD, and by LOZOVSKY, and was expressed at the Fourth RILU congress
(Moscow 17 March -3 April 1928):
AThaelmann
explained the concentration on unorganised workers as reflecting the shift
of emphasis from the unions, which were becoming fascist to the factories;
Lozovsky explained the ECCI=s
approval of new unions in the US by saying that there 90% of the working
class was unorganised. The CPGB had resisted the formation of a breakaway
union from the Scottish miners, but their resistance had been overcome-@We
argued with the CPGB for about a year=.
Whether or not communist parties should start new unions was a question
to be decided not theoretically but on practical grounds according to the
given situation. Lozovsky had examined the resolutions and decisions of
the Comintern and its sections onTrade unions, the industrial struggle,
etc.. He listed 94 defects and deficiencies... They ranged from underestimation
of the radicalisation of the masses to underestimation of the use made
of reformism by militarisation and imperialism; virtually all of them were
right wing failures... The main Resolution at the Fourth Congress of RILU
said.. There must be a vigorous struggle against the idea of >unity
at whatever price@, for unity
is not a goal but a means to a goal. A single trade union international
was still the goal, but this could only be attained by fighting the reformists
and Amsterdam. The policy adopted against strong opposition , called for
the >independent leadership of
the industrial struggle= by communist
and RILU supporters." (Intro. To AExtracts
from Theses of the Tenth ECCI Plenum on the Economic Struggle and Tasks
of Communist Parties.@July 1929;
J.Draper Vol 3; Ibid; p.52).
In the Theses of the Tenth ECCI
Plenum on the Economic Struggle and the Tasks of the Communist Parties
, from July 1929, and printed in Inprecorrr on 4 September 1929,
the new line was put under the heading AII.
The Radicalization of the Working Class and the Reformist Trade Unions":
A1...Just
as social democracy is evolving through social-imperialism to social-fascism,
joining the ranks of the vanguard of the contemporary capitalist State
in the suppression of the rising revolutionary movement of the working
class.. The social-fascist trade union bureaucracy is, during the period
of sharpening economic battles, completely going over to the side of the
big bourgeoisie... In this process of rapid fascization of the reformist
trade union apparatus and of its fusion with the bourgeois state, a particularly
harmful role is played by the so-called Left wing of the Amsterdam International
(Cook, Fimmen etc) who under the cloak of opposition to the
reactionary leaders of the Amsterdam International are trying to conceal
from the workers the real significance of this process and are forming
an active and constant part (and by far not the least important) in the
system of social-imperialism.@
(ATheses
Tenth ECCI Plenum ..Economic Struggle and Tasks..@July
1929; J.Draper Vol 3; Ibid p. 54).
A3.The present
stage of internal development in the reformist unions conforms to the general
transitional period in the co-relation of class forces on the whole. The
working class has already become sufficiently strong to be in a position
to take up the counter-offensive. The trade union bureaucracy is still
influential among certain sections of the workers, but the revolutionary
trade unions and the revolutionary trade union opposition are increasingly
winning over large masses of workers belonging to the reformist trade unions.
This predetermines also the tasks of the communists in the reformist trade
unions: not to withdraw from these unions but to contribute in every way
to the acceleration of the process of revolutionization of the rank-and-file
members of the reformist unions by placing themselves at the head of the
class struggle of the proletariat." (ATheses
Tenth ECCI Plenum ..Economic Struggle and Tasks..@July
1929; J.Draper Vol 3; Ibid p. 55).
The same article goes on to delineate the way forward. Under
the heading III. The Economic Battles and the revolutionary Trade Union
Opposition, the >legalism=
of the olde unions and its residue on the new unions is assailed :
A3. In countries
in which there are no independent revolutionary unions, trade union legalism
is still the greatest shortcoming of the revolutionary trade union movement..
4. Another shortcoming in these countries is the fear
to apply the new tactic of the revolutionary trade union opposition, believing
that they would thereby weaken their positions within the reformist trade
unions. This is exactly what the rights and conciliators are now harping
on.@ (ATheses
Tenth ECCI Plenum ..Economic Struggle and Tasks..@July
1929; J.Draper Vol 3; Ibid p. 56).
But the correct line was not fully jettisoned yet, as there
remained a half-way house - this was
the instruction to stay in the old unions: ANot
to withdraw from the (reformist trade unions)," as noted above under Number
3. (ATheses
Tenth ECCI Plenum ..Economic Struggle and Tasks..@July
1929; J.Draper Vol 3; Ibid p. 54). However very soon,
by 1930, this half-way house had gone. As Degras comments of Lozovsky:
@The establishment
of communist controlled unions had long been urged by Lozovsky.
At the 16th Party Congress CPSU he argued that there was far too much >trade
union legalism= in the American,
British, German and other communist parties; they submitted to trade union
discipline in preference to party discipline and independent leadership.
The old opportunist leadership of the Russian unions, he said, had sabotaged
the RILU, interpreting the united front as fraternization with Amsterdam,
and not as a revolutionary tactic to expose the IFTU leaders.. A year earlier
in the trade union commission of the ECCI (Feb 1929) Piatnitsky
had been extremely critical of the CGTU and the communist unions of Czechoslovakia
(where some members, he said, had acted as strikebreakers). The time might
come when it would be necesary to split the German unions; the harder they
worked in the reformist unions now, the better their chances later.@
(Introduction to AExtracts
From a Circular Letter On Factory Cells of the Organisation Department
of ECCI Endorsed by Polit Secr., Dec 1930; In Inprecorr 1930; Cited; Vol
3; J.Degras; p. 143).
AThe 5th RILU
Congress was held in Moscow in the latter half of August 1930.. The Resolution
adopted said the congress Amarked
a turning point in the strategy and tactics of the RILU in Western Europe=.
The congress ratified the decision of the revolutionary trade union opposition
in Germany and Poland to drop the slogan of Ainto
the reformist unions@. >Parallel
red trade unions were to be established wherever the situation warranted
this step, in preparation for taking over the leadership of the class struggle..
The splitting tactics of the social-fascist trade union leaders had to
be vigorously combatted, but this did not run counter to the need to build
independent unions@. (Introduction
to AExtracts From a Circular
Letter On Factory Cells@; Ibid;
Vol 3; J. Degras; p. 142).
iii) The Distortion of the Colonial
Question From 1921 Onwards
The Marxist-Leninist line on The Colonial Question was
hammered out by Lenin in
intense debate with M.N.Roy at the Second Congress of Comintern.
Over the next Comintern Congresses however it was perverted. The Comintern
took a Leftist line advocated by Trotsky and initiated after the Chinese
Revolution failed. The failure was used to remove Stalin and M.N.Roy from
any effective control in the Comintern. At the 6th Congress of Comintern
in 1928, a disastrous Ultra-Left line was taken that destroyed the Workers
and Peasant=s Parties of India
(See Alliance 5).
The Theses on the National and Colonial Question were
adopted at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International in 1920. As
Lenin stated, the issues raised by Roy were important . Lenin and the ECCI,
had ended up stating that a united front with the revolutionary bourgeoisie
was important to establish in the colonial and semi-colonial national liberation
movements. But when Trotsky
delivered the Main Report at the Third Congress
of the CI in 1921, he rejected Lenin=s
solutions.
According to Trotsky; all the bourgeoisie of a colonial
type country is essentially a comprador bourgeoisie "intimately bound up
with foreign capital", and "represents a large measure an agency of foreign
capital"; and the struggle of the bourgeoisie of colonial type country
against foreign imperialism is not merely "inconsistent"and "half-hearted",
but "semi-fictitious". Trotsky concluded that the development of a working
class in such a colonial type country paralyses national-liberation aspirations
on the part of the bourgeoisie; and that therefore even the national-democratic
revolution can only achieve victory under the leadership of the working
class. (L.Trotsky :Report in the World Economic Crisis
and the New task of the CI, 3rd Congress CI, In :"First Five years of The
Communist International." Vol 1, London, 1973; p.275).
This line of Trotsky was later taken over by the Comintern
entirely, by the Sixth Congress.
This is seen in the attacks launched on M.N.Roy and the struggle in India.
To foist the revisionist take over, Comintern foisted the Communist
Party Of Great Britain (CPGB) onto the developing Communist
Party of India (CPI). To facilitate this take over, Roy was diverted
on a special mission to the Communist Party of China in January 1927. Meanwhile
Ben Bradley and Philip Spratt
of the CPGB were given effective control of the CPI,
and Roy=s position was heavily
attacked. (C.V.Rao "Bharatha Communist Party Nirvana
Charitrea" ("Formation of CPI)", Vijyawadda 1943; p.26). But
not all the CPGB leaders were compliant to the wishes of the Comintern.
This was taken as reason to purge those leaders of the CPGB who did not
prove sufficiently revisionist. They were replaced at the 10th Plenum of
the CI in 1929. The new CPGB leadership was sponsored by the revisionist
CI, and included the crypto-revisionist HARRY
POLLITT (who later inaugurated the policy of the so called "Parliamentary
Road to Socialism") and R.P.DUTT.
Whilst in China Roy had followed Stalin=s
Marxist-Leninist line. Unfortunately owing to the revisionism of the Chinese
Communist Party (CPC), and another
envoy of the ECCI, Borodin, this correct
line was distorted. The resulting massacres of the Chinese workers were
nothing less than a sabotage perpetrated by Borodin and the CPC itself
(See Alliance/CL/MLCP (Turkey) (See "Joint Open Letter
To Ludo Martens@ Alliance, Communist
League and MLCP (Turkey); Hamburg, 1996.- found on web site of CPGermany
ML <http://memebers.xoom.com/cpgerml >). The ensuing
massacre of the Chinese workers and peasants was not due to Stalin or Roy.
It was NOT Stalin who had prevented
a timely rupture of the CPC with the counter revolutionary Kuomintang (Communist
League, M.N.Roy Report, Part II, London; December 1977. p.1-35).
It had been the Comintern ECCI revisionists.
But this Chinese failure, allowed Trotsky to launch an
open attack on Stalin, which was rebuffed. However Dmitri
Manuilsky and Otto Kuusinen were
more subtle. They used the debacle to distort the Marxist-Leninist line
on the role of the revolutionary bourgeois. The ECCI, having first dislodged
Roy as the leader of the Indian forces, now dislodged Stalin from the ECCI.
The Comintern at the Sixth Congress (17 July to
1 September 1928 in Moscow), now implemented a disastrous Ultra-Left
Turn. In colonial type countries, this line denied the United Front
with the revolutionary bourgeoisie. As part of this Ultra-Leftism, "non-pure"
Communist organisations, such as the AWorkers
and Peasants Parties@ were destroyed.
Although Stalin was elected to the Presidium of the 6th Congress, to the
commission to draft the "Theses on the International Situation and the
Tasks of the Communist International", and to draft the Programme of the
CI - crucially, he attended only the opening session of the congress. Stalin
took no part in the proceedings of the 6th Congress.
The Congress President was Nikolai
Bukharin. But sections of the congress
were dominated by Otto Kuusinen. Kuusinen
later showed himself as a proven open revisionist (See his participation
at the infamous 20th Party Congress of the CPSU). At the Sixth Comintern
Congress in 1928, Kuusinen attacked the powerful Workers and Peasants Parties
of India:
"For a time some comrades
considered the advisability of 'labour and peasant parties'.. It is now
clearer than before that this form is not to be recommended, especially
in colonial and semi-colonial countries. It would be an easy matter for
the labour and peasant parties to transform themselves into petty bourgeois
parties, to get away from the Communists, thereby failing to help them
to come into contact with the masses." (O.Kuusinen,
Report on the Revolutionary Movement in The Colonies and Semi-Colonies,
6th Congress, CI In : "International Press Correspondence", Volume 8, No.
70; October 4th, 1928, 1230-1).
The cryptic "Some Comrades" meant
Stalin -
who had favoured the formation of such parties in the colonial type countries
:
"In countries like Egypt and China.. a revolutionary
bloc of the workers and peasants and the petty bourgeoisie.. can assume
the form of a single party, a workers and peasants party, provided however,
that this distinctive party actually represents a bloc of two forces-the
Communist Party and the party of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie..
In countries like India.. a revolutionary anti-imperialist bloc.. can assume,
although it need not always necessarily do so, the form of a single workers'
and peasants' party, formally bound by a single platform". (Stalin,
"The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples' of the East",Vol
7; CW; Moscow, 1954; p.149,150-1).
But the attack on the Workers
and Peasants Parties (WPP) was entirely in
line with the documents written by Trotsky in June 1928, and submitted
to the congress :
"The cardinal question for us here as everywhere and
always, is the question of the communist party, its complete independence,
its irreconcilable class character. The greatest danger on this path is
the organisation of so-called "Workers and Peasants Parties" in the countries
of the Orient.. Stalin advanced the formula of the "two-class Workers'
and Peasants' Parties" for the Eastern countries.. It is a question here
of an absolutely new, entirely false and thoroughly anti-Marxist formulation
of the fundamental question of the party and of its relation to its own
class and other classes.. Without a relentless condemnation of the very
idea of workers and peasants parties for the East, there is not and cannot
be a programme for the Comintern." (Trotsky : "Summary
& Perspectives of Chinese Rev", In"Third International after Lenin"Lond;
1974; p.162-71).
The considerable opposition to the 6th Congress Theses was
crushed. As Kuusinen said :
'Our greatest weakness there is the fact that we have
not established ourselves as a Communist Party, A good many Indian Communists
have worked in the ranks of the "Workers And Peasants Party" (WPP). We
have advised them to endeavour to induce these Parties to reorganise themselves,
to assume another form, in keeping with the principles of Leninism." (Overstreet
G.D. and Windmiller M; ACommunism
In India@; Berkeley; 1960; p.139).
The Ultra-Left turn devastated
the CPI and its mass links, the WPP.
iv) The Sixth World Congress
As stated above, a major presence at the congress was
Bukharin, as the Secretary of the ECCI. In fact Bukharin gave the main
report on behalf of the ECCI. In this very long report, Bukharin presented
the viewpoint that there had been a relative stabilisation of capitalism.
Bukharin had departed from a normal and expected practice of delegations.
Instead of discussing the Report as a draft with the members of the CPSU(B)
delegation - his own delegation - he simply presented them to the CPSU(B)
at the same time, as it was being distributed to the foreign delegates.
This created the potential dilemma of a fait accompli. This dilemma was
put by Stalin :
@The theses
proved to be unsatisfactory on a number of points. The delegation of the
CPSU(B) was obliged to introduce about twenty amendments to the theses.
This created a rather awkward situation for Bukharin. But who was to blame
for that? Why was it necessary for Bukharin to distribute the theses to
the foreign delegates before they had been examined by the delegation of
the CPSU(B)? Could the delegation of the CPSU(B) refrain from introducing
amendments if the theses proved to be unsatisfactory?" (J.V.Stalin
ASpeech On Right Deviation in
the CPSU(B); to APlenum of the
Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU(B), @
Works; Moscow; 1955; Volume 12; p. 21).
At the Congress this had not been clear. This was only first
exposed, in a speech made by Stalin to the APlenum
of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU(B),@
entitled AThe
Right Deviation In the CPSU(B)@;
in April 1929. This was of course, a full 8 months after the ending of
the 6th World Congress. That it had taken eight months for a full exposure
of the events at the Sixth Congress, is another indication of how little
Stalin Acontrolled@
the Sixth Congress.
The delegation to the Congress of the CPUS(B), had concentrated
its counter-attack, on the major thrust
at the Congress. This was the characterisation
of the world period. It is on this
that certain ADisagreements in
Regard to the Comintern@, were
reversed by the Marxist-Leninist members of the CPSU(B) delegation. What
were these disagreements, that forced some corrections by the CPSU(B) delegation?
Stalin states these totalled 20, requiring amendments; but there were four
major ones Stalin comments that these amendments in entirety had that amounted
to Apractically new theses on
the international situation@
(Stalin; ASpeech
On Right Deviation in CPSU(B);@
Ibid: p. 22). The most important of these related
to the Acharacter
of the stabilisation of capitalism@.
Bukharin had alleged that capitalism was reconstructing itself. Stalin
points out that :
AAccording
to Bukharin=s theses it appeared
that nothing new was taking place at the present time to shake capitalist
stabilisation, but that, on the contrary, capitalism is reconstructing
itself and that on the whole, it is maintaining itself more or less securely.
Obviously the delegation of the CPSU(B) could not agree with such a characterisation
of what is called the Third period, ie the period through which we are
now passing. The delegation could not agree with it because to retain such
a characterisation of the third period might give our critics grounds for
saying that we have adopted the point of view of so-called capitalist Arecovery@,
ie. The point of view of Hileferding, a point of view we Communists cannot
adopt. Owing to this the delegation.. Introduced an amendment which makes
it evident that capitalist stabilisation is not, and cannot be secure,
that it is being shaken and will continue to be shaken by the march of
events owing to the aggravation of the crisis of world capitalism. This
question comrades is of decisive importance for the sections of the Comintern.
Is capitalist stabilisation being shaken or is it becoming more secure?..
The amendment.. Is a good one, for the very reason that gives a clear line
based on the.. prospect ..of maturing conditions for a new revolutionary
upsurge. (Ed- And AOf a new revolutionary
upsurge, a period of preparation for future class battles).@
(Stalin; Speech Right Deviation in the CPSU(B); Ibid;
p. 25).
The three other major points, mentioned
by Stalin related to the struggle within
the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In
total, Bukharins=
steps would have strengthened the
hand of the right wing led by Bukharin inside
the International. These were the following :
1. The Wittorf and Thalmann
case.
ERNST THALMANN was
being attacked by Aconciliators@
in the CC of the KPD, on the weak grounds that he was associated
with an embezzler. This was in violation of the Sixth Congress directive
to fighting the Right wing deviationism. This was supported by Bukharin.
This was fought by the CPSU(B) delegates. (Stalin Speech
Right Deviation in the CPSU(B); Ibid; p. 25-26).
2. On The Brandler and Thalheimer
factions of The KPD.
These had been expelled by the CPG. But Bukharin refused
to make this an issue to be taken up and settled. Bukharin=s
positions were rebuked. (Stalin Speech Right Deviation
in the CPSU(B); Ibid; p. 27)
3. The recall of Heinz Neumann
and rebuke of Thalmann
Bukharin demanded the recall of Neumann and the criticism
of Thalmann for having criticised . This would strengthen the hand of the
Right wingers in the international. The delegation of the CPSU(B) foiled
this. (Stalin Speech Right Deviation in the CPSU(B);
Ibid; p.28).
In summary, by the time of the
Sixth World Congress the Comintern had been subverted from a clearly Bolshevik
instrument, into a forum in which two forces contended:
1. Marxist-Leninist forces in a minority; in particular,
Stalin had been excluded from effective participation.
2. Revisionist forces in a majority.
WE WILL NOW RETURN TO THE
USA, AND THE FORMATION OF THE CPUSA, AND ITS ADOPTION OF THE THEORY OF
THE ABLACK NATION@.
In hard
copy only:DIAGRAM OF SPLITS AND UNIONS
TOWARDS CPUSA
4. THE FORMATION OF THE
CPUSA
So far we have put the following
views :
-
That the line of ABlack
Nation@ cannot be attached to
Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin;
-
That the Line was associated with
certain revisionists - Zinoviev, Sen Katayama, Kuusinen, and Manuilsky.
-
That there are very good grounds
to question the assumption that Stalin controlled the Comintern after the
Sixth World Congress;
Thus far we have not offered :
-
a detailed explanation of how the Line
of the ABlack Nation@
came to be accepted by the CPUSA.
-
We also have not examined what influence
did Lenin and Stalin have on the developing CPUSA.
To do this; we must now enter the quagmire
of vicious factionalism and in-fighting of the CPUSA. Of course,
the masses were drawn into the conscious class struggle, by the CPUSA,
for all its faults. But the intensity and the narrow-mindedness of the
factionalism, was a good part of the serious problems of the CPUSA.
-
Here, we do have a smoking gun, in
the shape of Stalin=s critiques.
i) The Situation Before the Russian
Bolshevik Revolution
We left the American socialist movement at the time of
Engels. (See Issue 22 of Alliance – Also on this
web site listed as "MARXUSA.HTML"). Engels predicted that as the
movement was at a low theoretical level, it would commit many mistakes.
As well, Engels warned that the German Marxists, needed to become truly
American - to enter the American movement, in order to help Marxist development.
Only after the Bolshevik revolution was the passage from syndicalism and
labour politics, through to conscious working class communist tactics navigated.
Engels had described in the introduction to the American edition of AThe
Condition of the Working Class@,
three forces in the US workers movement. To recapitulate these were the
forces represented by Henry George; the Knights of Labour, and the Socialist
Labour Party (SLP).
The best of the Germans were led by
JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER, ADOLPH DOUAI; and FRIEDERICH SORGE,
who we met earlier in the era of the Civil War and the abolition struggles
against slavery. Although Sorge became the leader of the First International
in the USA, the International was soon breached by the petty bourgeois
elements of Steven Pearl Andrews
and Victoria Woodhull. This effectively killed it by
July 1876. (This is described in detail - Alliance
19- Please see web site of CP Germany ML for this document).
But only four days later, labour radicals and working
men formed the WORKING MEN=S
PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES. This was attended by Sorge and OTTO
WEDEMEYER, Joseph=
son. With 2,500 members, it became in 1877 the SOCIALIST
LABOR PARTY OF NORTH AMERICA. The
SLP was overwhelmingly controlled by the German immigrants, but not of
the type of Sorge and Wedemeyer. Initially the party was at the forefront
of the strike waves of 1874-75. This included the mining strikes led by
the Irish immigrant workers - the secretive AMolly
Maguires@. But, the German
provincials prevailed, they became a narrow party that entered purely electoral
roads. Sorge was thereafter sidelined in this organisation, and his last
25 years were spent in reporting on the labor movement.
Even by 1890 the SLP was still overwhelmingly German.
The SLP had become an electoral party by 1883, losing many members. Using
this approach, it formed short lived alliances with Henry George and the
>Single Taxers=.
Shortly they separated ways again. Under the leadership of DANIEL
DE LEON, it started to forge strong alliances with the Knights of
Labor. But they first contended with the electoral POPULIST
PARTY. The electoral programme of Populism, proposed the Government
ownership of railways and against monopoly. They were also for the small
farmer. As such they objectively represented a reactionary petty bourgeois
current. By 1891, De Leon citing this, withdrew from alliance with them.
Unfortunately he also withdrew from any broad front work with them, defining
Populism as :
AA fake movement,@
which had Aconfused the judgement
of our people, weakened the spring of their hope and drained their courage.
Hence the existing popular apathy. Hence the backwardness of the movement
here compared with that of Europe.@
(De Leon Cited :David Herreshoff; @The
Origins of American Marxism@;New
York; 1967 p.118).
His rejection of the Populist movement had sectarian strands,
with implications for the day-to-day work of the militants of the SLP.
Nevertheless, De Leon now forged firmer links with Labour. The KNIGHTS
OF LABOR were founded in 1869 by URIAH
S.STEPHENS, and from their origins in the garment industry,
they spread rapidly. The Knights were very progressive, having many Negro
workers in its ranks and with 10% of members being women. Ideologically,
the Knights were an eclectic mix of Marxism, Lassalleanism and >pure
and simple= trade unions. Its
program had a goal with the Lassalean objective :
ATo >establish
co-operative institutions such as will tend to supersede the wage system
by the introduction of a co-operative industrial system=.
It proposed a legislative program which included labor, currency, and land
reforms, and also government ownership of the railroads and land reforms.@
(William Z. Foster; AHistory
of the CPUSA@; New York; 1952;
p.68-9).
For all its limitations, the Knights of Labour was described
by Engels, as the
First organisation of the whole working class in the USA. It
had a large mass base. It :
AWas the most
powerful movement of unskilled workers in America prior to the CIO.. It
was a formidable rival to the American Federation of Labour. The Knights
were an all-purpose labor movement deeply involved in political action
and producers= co-operatives
as well as in strikes. They sought to organise the entire working class
rather than restrict themselves to the skilled craftsmen as did the AFL,
and while the AFL was plodding modestly ahead, they experienced huge gains
and losses in membership in the middle eighties. When De Leon joined them
the Knights were slumping rapidly. Having reached a peak membership of
7000,000 in 1886, they had fallen off to half a million in 1887, a quarter
of a million in 1888, and a 100,000 in 1890. The Knights ebbed away altogether
before the turn of the century.@
(Herreshoff: Ibid; p. 121).
The disintegration of the Knights of Labor in large part,
derived from a sectarian battle for influence within the Knights of labour
between the Populists and De Leon=s
SLP. Meanwhile the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOUR
(AFL) was formed in November 1881, from 6 trades or crafts -
painters, carpenters, molders, glass workers, cigar makers, and iron &
steel & tin workers. It had been set up in an opposition to the Knights
of Labor, by elements who had objected to the central autocratic Knights;
as well as its neglect of specific craft interests as opposed to the more
political issues.
The AFL was dominated by SAM
GOMPERS, P.J.McGUIRE, and ADOLF STRASER,
who were bureaucratic labour lieutenants of capitalists. As such
they were concerned to keep the labor movement >apolitical=,
and >clean=
from any socialist influence. Having organised the skilled, or craft workers,
the AFL had no interest in going on to organise the semi-skilled and the
unskilled workers. Early on, during the Eight Hours Movement, discussed
by Marx and Engels, the AFL began to outstrip the Knights in membership.
But the reactionary stance of the Gompers leadership retarded it to a large
extent, and it also spawned the reaction of more militant working class
unions.
The American Railway Union was an INDUSTRIAL-UNIONISM
(as opposed to the CRAFT-UNIONISM
of the AFL style) headed by EUGENE V. DEBS. In 1894 it
was strong enough to proclaim a rail general strike. The Miners were also
organising in separate unions. But both these and other industrial workers
unions were repeatedly sabotaged by Gompers. The Haymarket
Provocation by the capitalists in
1888, indicated the rising class tensions. In this battle Gompers displayed
his class collaboration. In the 1887 trial of the Haymarket
Martyrs, framed for deaths of workers,
resulting from the violent provocations of police suppressing a strike,
Gompers stated:
AI have differed
all my life with the principles and the methods of the condemned.@
(Cited William Haywood: AAutobiography
of Big Bill Haywood-1929"; 1983 ed New York; p.73).
This attitude disgusted working class militants. De Leon
refused his members to have any contacts with the AFL, despising Gomperism.
De Leon was a militant who understood the need for revolution, but this
was sectarian and it alienated many workers. In addition he rejected any
linkage with radical elements still under the sway of Populism. Furthermore,
he embraced syndicalism, and rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat.
All these issues came to a head in a struggle over De Leon=s
dogmatism. This led to the formation of the SOCIALIST
PARTY in 1900, led by MORRIS
HILLQUIT and by Eugene V. Debs. Both the SLP and the SP were
anti-imperialist. Debs and De Leon had both condemned the Spanish-American
war, and both condemned the seizure of the Philippines by the USA. But
the SP developed a policy of Aneutrality@
to the trade unions. This went to the other extreme, from the De Leon pole
in its attitudes to Gomperism and the class collaboration-ist policies
of the AFL.
Repugnance of the workers with the AFL led to a more representative
and militant organisation -THE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS
OF THE WORLD (IWW). This constituted
what came to be called ARevolutionary
ADual Unionism@.
Dual Unionism was a term coined, because it was set up as a Arevolutionary
union@ in parallel, and in opposition
to, the reformist trade unions of the AFL. The IWW strongly argued for
revolutionary and violent change to the existing order. The IWW
was born at a meeting of the Western Federation of Miners in 1905 . Its=
manifesto written and signed by WILLIAM HAYWOOD,
MOTHER JONES and EUGENE V.DEBS amongst others, sounded
a clear note linking labor union organisations and a political working
class struggle against capitalism. It stressed violent revolution. In its
political stance it became strongly syndicalist. Subsequently a Founding
Convention was held in June 1905 in Chicago. The SLP with its own labor
front, the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance took part. The De Leon tendency
to syndicalism took firm hold in the militant IWW. IWW militants were hunted
down by the state, and JOE HILL
was only one of its members who were killed.
By the period of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the
SP was quite dominant. The SP had 80,000 members in 1917, which soon shot
up to 110,000 in 1919. Partly this was because of the entry of Seven Aforeign
language federations@. These
were the Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, South Slavic and Lettish.
(Draper AAmerican
Communism and Soviet Russia@;
Ibid; p. 18). The foreign immigrants had all formed
their own groupings. These had a major influence on the movement. The
LETTISH (or LATVIAN) immigrant
movement, formed the bulwark of the left wing of the socialist party. The
Dutch Left Wing exerted a great influence and this extended
to the notion of Amass action@.
They derived partly from S.J.RUTGERS
and from ANTON PANNOEHK. But the Right wing of the National
Executive Committee of the SP expelled them and this precipitated the call
for the National Left Wing Conference,
that pushed for the formation of an American Bolshevik party.
As the Russian Bolshevik revolution threw all other trends
into ideological ferment, so it affected the American movement. All the
leading elements embraced Bolshevism. These elements included LOUIS
C. FRAINA; who had been till then in the SLP. He embraced the notions
of the Amass action@
and with MAX EASTMAN, FLOYD DELL AND WALTER LIPPMANN
he edited the journal AThe
New Review@. This was the forerunner
to the journals THE NEW INTERNATIONAL
and the CLASS STRUGGLE. With LOUIS
BOUDIN this latter journal published the first English collection
of Lenin and Trotsky, and began to publish the first issues of the new
journal the Communist in 1919. All these various forces came together to
attempt to form a new party. But this was riven by factionalism from the
very outset.
ii) National Left Wing Conference:
Attempts to form a new Leninist Communist Party
The Conference was precipitated by the expulsion from
the SP of the seven immigrant foreign language federations. The meeting
took place on June 1919, with 94 delegates in New York City. They split
over the question of whether they should wait for the Socialist party Chicago
convention ten weeks later. The Foreign language federations demanded an
immediate formation. The English language majority wished to delay. Whereupon
the minority walked out and set up a separate convention in Chicago in
September to form a Communist party. The majority elected a National Council
to pursue a goal to >take over=
the SP. However five weeks after this split, some of the majority walked
back - including CHARLES RUTHENBERG,
and LOUIS FRAINA. Others like JOHN
REED and BENJAMIN GITLOW refused
to do so, resenting the ABullying
methods of the Russian Federation leaders (like Alexander
Stokilitsky –ed)" (Draper Ibid; p. 19).
Two CP=s
then came into being, both organized in Chicago in September 1919. These
were :
1. The Communist Party of America
(CPA), with Ruthenberg as National secretary and Fraina
as International Secretary & Editors , with most of the foreign
federation.
2. The Communist Labor Party
of America (CLP) with ALFRED WAGENKNECT
as Executive secretary and JOHN REED
as International Delegates.
The CP claimed that the membership of the CP was 58,000
members, and the CLP about 10,000. (Draper Ibid; p.
19.). Quickly the objective need to unite became apparent
to both parties. Under the pressure of police attacks and arrests (the
so-called PALMER RAIDS of 1920) both
parties suffered. The CP underwent further splits. By May 1920 Ruthenberg=s
minority group demanded unity with the CLP and left the CP. This led to
the UNITED COMMUNIST PARTY, at the
Bridgeman, Michigan meeting This had Ruthenberg as executive secretary.
By 1921 this in turn united with the remaining CP into the Communist Party
America (CPA).
By 1921, the TRADE UNION EDUCATIONAL
LEAGUE (TUEL) had joined, under WILLIAM Z. FOSTER=s
leadership. This latter was a significant gain for the party. The
TUEL had its origins in the larger INTERNATIONAL
TRADE UNION EDUCATION LEAGUE (ITUEL), which itself was formed in St.
Louis in January 1915. It was based in Chicago under William Z. Foster=s
secretaryship. The ITUEL was avowedly syndicalist in origin. But Foster
had unionised large new sectors including the Chicago stock yards. He had
been careful to keep good relations with the AFL, and Gompers even vouched
for him in a Senate committee in 1919.
But further splits of the CPA occurred over the issue
of whether to retain a >legal=
party. The majority answered >Yes@
and formed the open American Labor Alliance.
This was later to be the WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA,
led by JAMES CANNON, and CHARLES RUTHENBERG. But a break
away came in response to this tactic and was also called the CPA. But it
then set up its own legal apparatus the UNITED
TOILERS. By 1922 Ruthenberg as secretary
of the Workers Party proposed to dissolve the underground CP. This led
to the factional struggle between the so called Geese
and Liquidators.
The SECOND CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN
demanded the unification of the American CP and the United Communist parties.
Even then, the Comintern had to send a delegation
to the USA, consisting of CHARLES E. SCOTT, LOUIS
FRAINA, and SEN KATAYMA to achieve
the unity. But opposition to this unity continued. A Second
Comintern Delegation was sent consisting
of H.VALETSKI, JOSEPH POGANY, and BORIS
REINSTEIN. During the COMINTERN FOURTH
CONGRESS in November 1922 held in Moscow, Cannon and MAX
BEDACHT met Leon Trotsky who also
urged the two parties to unite. Written instruction to this effect were
sent from the Comintern.
Finally it was only in the spring of 1923 (April 7th,
1922 at New York), that the legal and open WORKERS
PARTY, united all three tendencies, as the single, and above
ground, Communist Party. In 1925, the party was known as The
WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY of AMERICA. In
1929, the party was named the COMMUNIST PARTY,
USA. Charles Ruthenberg said that the unified result had been
only due to the interventions of the Comintern :
AHad there
been no Communist International, no deciding and directing body with authority
to pass upon questions of principles and tactics for the revolutionary
workers in the US and to direct their movements into the right channels,
the factional struggle might well have resulted otherwise than it did.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if there is today in the US one party-the
Workers Party-in which all Communist groups are untied, this is because
of the persistent effort and tactful guidance of the International." (Draper
; AAmerican Communism and Soviet
Russia@; Ibid; p. 27).
But as events would show the root of the party was still
beset by a rabid factionalism. This allowed serious errors of theory and
practice to emerge. Furthermore, the Comintern had left a significant destructive
Apresent@.
This was the accession to leadership of JOSEPH
POGANY alias JOHN PEPPER. He had
come to the USA as a member of the Second Comintern delegation led by Valetski
in 1922. The Secretary of the new party was Ruthenberg. The Central Executive
was balanced between the two factions of the Geese
and the Liquidators (The story goes
that as the >Geese=
had complained of the proposed dissolving of the underground wing by the
Liquidators-they were accused of cackling=;
to which they promptly replied that the cackling of geese had once saved
Rome from invasion).
To break the deadlock between Geese and Liquidators, two
so-called Anon-factional@
members were appointed. One was John Pepper,
and the other was William
Z. Foster. John Pepper was born in Hungary, and was a leader
of a Soldiers Soviet in Budapest in 1919. However he initially supported
Count Karolyi=s
policies. In that role he arrested some of the Communist leaders. But he
switched sides. By March 1919, when the Hungarian Socialist and Communist
parties merged, he was one of five who signed the document for the socialist
party. He played a part in two failed revolutions, the Hungarian and the
German :
AWhen the
Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed that month, he became the peoples=s
commissar of national defence, then deputy commissar of foreign affairs,
and finally commissar of public instruction; he was also a member of the
party=s control commission. When
the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell he fled to Vienna and then to Moscow,
where he held important positions in the Comintern apparatus for about
ten years. In March 1921 he went with Bela Kun to organise the March Action
of the KPD; after its defeat he retuned to Moscow and.. was sent to the
US where.. He became the de facto head of the CP America.. In the Fifth
Congress of the Comintern he was the American party=s
main spokesman and member of the political commission." (B.
Lazitch & M. M.Drachovitch; ABiographical
Dictionary of the Comintern@;
Stanford; 1973; p. 314-315).
Pepper=s history
of adventurism was perfectly suited to disrupt the developing CPA. Draper
alleges that Zinoviev promoted Pogany against Lenin’s views (Draper;
Ibid; p. 59). Pepper=s
star American pupil was JAY LOVESTONE.
In opposition to the growing power of John Pepper and Lovestone, by 1924,
an opposing faction was in effect formed of, James Cannon, Earl Browder
and William Foster. The key supporters for Pepper, Lovestone and Ruthenberg
in Moscow were Zinoviev, and then following his exposure, Bukharin. The
key supporter of the Foster group was Lozovsky. These factions hardened
into place after the debacle of the Farmers and Labourers=
Party.
iii) Dual Unionism And Broad
Front Work
The previous era struggles, of the radicals and Marxists
in the USA resulted in a complex co-existence of opportunism and a fierce
ultra-leftism. The legacy to the Workers Party, or the Communist party
of the USA, was a fertile Ultra-Left base. In this base germinated many
anti-Leninist weeds. The concrete issues that the party disputed were the
nature of work with non-communists, the broad front and the >Third
Party, and work within trade unions.
In a natural reaction to the class collaboration of Sam
Gompers, the IWW Ultra-leftism and syndicalist thought took hold. This
was expressed as a conscious policy of One Great
Industrial Union, to amalgamate
all workers. The IWW said it would work for not only economic but also
social and poetical change. This would culminate in the seizure of power
by the union. The IWW was thereby consciously syndicalist, thinking that
unionism culminates in the seizure of state power. To this end, the IWW
organised in conscious opposition to the AFL, to build up revolutionary
unions. This policy was therefore one of DUAL
UNIONISM.
The TRADE UNION EDUCATION LEAGUE
(TUEL) was organised in November 1920. It was not a factor
in the trade unions until 1922. As Foster explains the predecessor of the
TUEL had been openly syndicalist :
AA syndicalist
organisation, the ITUEL was anti-political endorsed industrial unionism,
and opposed the war. It held that trade unions as such were essentially
revolutionary, whether led by conservatives or revolutionaries.. they were
class organisations.. the ITUEL falsely assumed that the (trade unions)
could eventually culminate in the overthrow of the capitalist class by
the economic power of the trade unions.. By spring 1917, the ITUEL had
disappeared.@ (Foster,
AHistory CPUSA=
Ibid; p. 137).
After its collapse, the leading militants of the ITEUL continued
to organise. Still under Foster=s
leadership, the CHICAGO FEDERATION OF
LABOR organised the railroads. This resulted in an unofficial
strike of 200,000 members. Fairly soon after came the meat packing industry,
which had never before been unionised. The AFL had dismissed the industry
as Aimpossible to organise@.
From 1917-1918 the Chicago stockyards were fully organised legally and
had obtained dramatic improvements in work conditions. There were many
Negro workers in this section, about 20,000 of 200,000. Thereafter the
steel industry was part organised, against the massive forces organised
by Gompers and the AFL. The TUEL was formed in 1920, and was largely the
result of the lost steel battle. As Foster says :
AIt was an
important source of recruits for the CP.. The TUEL was not so definitely
syndicalist as its predecessors.. Foster was invited to the First Congress
of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), on July 3rd, 1921. There
the RILU definitely repudiated dual unionism." (Foster,
AHistory CPUSA=
Ibid; p. 185).
The leftism and anarcho-syndicalist tendencies of the previous
era were confronted by the Comintern. The IWW, and the SWP had refused
to work with or within the AFL. The Comintern Second
Congress instructed communists and militants to do so. In this
struggle to convince the American trades unionists and communists of the
importance of Leninism versus syndicalism, the TUEL became important. The
TUEL under Foster had for long been a supporter of the ABoring
from within@
point of view. Foster had acquired this belief from the French syndicalists,
and this led him to jettison his connections with the IWW, by 1913. By
1917 he could write :
AThe trade
unions will not become anti-capitalist through the conversion of their
members to a certain point of view or by the adoption of certain preambles;
they are that by their very makeup and methods.@
(Cited Draper; Ibid; p.64).
This viewpoint put him at odds with the IWW, who could not
conceive that the unions of the AFL were >progressive=
to any extent. For the IWW , a union was only progressive if it adopted
its viewpoint of the unity of the economic and revolutionary struggle.
Foster meanwhile could continue to work with the AFL, and Sam Gompers in
fact vouched for him at a Senate Committee in 1919.
Lenin had long criticised ultra-leftism in work with both
trade unions and with Social Democratic parties, such as the Labour Party
of Britain. Lenin again called for work within the >reactionary
trade unions=, in 1921. This
call hit the USA movement hard. But Foster had already come to a viewpoint
close to this. Accordingly he went by invitation of the first Comintern
delegation to the First Profintern Congress in Moscow in 1922. At this
time, Foster became close to Lozovsky, who later was his supporter in Moscow
:
AA pact was
struck between the TUEL=s leader,
Foster, and the Profintern=s
leader, A.Lozovsky (S.A.Dridzo), and for many years thereafter Lozovsky
served as Foster=s chief mentor
and protector in Moscow.@ (Draper;
Ibid; p. 70.).
For his part Foster was quite clear that the Comintern had
broken ADual Unionism@
in the USA :
ATo the Third
International, and particularly to the Russians at the head of it, is due
the credit for breaking the deadly grip of dual unionism in the American
labor movement@(
Draper; Ibid; p. 70).
One logical extension of breaking Dual Unions was an amalgamation
of the already split unions. At first, Foster was successful in achieving
this, which angered Gompers, who then ruptured his links with Foster. By
the fall of 1922, the Workers Party had considerable influence within the
unions by this policy. Foster followed a policy of supporting progressive
elements inside the unions against the AFL hacks. He was aided by the President
of the Chicago Federation of Labour, JOHN FITZPATRICK.
By this stage, JAMES CANNON
and EARL BROWDER, who had both worked with Foster at
various earlier stages, found their way to the Workers party. Foster publicly
denied his links with the Workers Party, working through Browder and Cannon.
Initially, Fitzpatrick was positive in his dealing with the Workers Party.
Under the sectarian influence of Pepper however, this would soon change.
This became clear in the moves to the Farmers and Labourers Party. After
this, moves to amalgamation came to an abrupt end.
iv) The Third Party - Farmer-Labor
Party; the LaFollette Movement
Foster=s work
in the Chicago trades unions, stimulated a strong relationship with a progressive
faction within the FARMER-LABOURER party (FLP),
which had broken away from the Conference
For Progressive Political Action (CPPA). This created an opportunity
for the new CP to find a mass forum within which to work. The FLP was formed
by John Fitzpatrick when, incensed
by a recent failure of a machinists strike in 1918, he urged a ALabour
party@.
But the leftism of the Workers Party had to be overcome.
Lenin had been urging the British CP to join the Labour Party at the Comintern
Second Congress. Lenin discussed this with Louis C Fraina, who argued against
him. This was consistent with the American Party=s
view. But at the Third Comintern Congress, Lenin again raised the issue,
this time meeting with the entire American delegation. (Draper;
AAmerican Communism and Soviet
Russia@; Ibid; p. 32).
Although Lenin=s advice was directed
mainly at the British party, to consider a united front with elements of
the reformist Labour Party, the same concept applied to the USA The FLP
had called for the nationalisation of all public utilities, basic industries,
natural resources, and banking and credit systems, an for workers participation
in industry. In the climate of intense victimisation of workers, the call
by the FLP to a Conference for the Progressive Political Action for February
1922 acquired major significance. But the Communists were not invited,
partly because their first program had made clear to even their own sympathisers,
their reluctance to get involved. They proclaimed :
AThere can
be no compromise either with Labourism or reactionary Socialism@.
(See Draper; Ibid; p. 31).
But Lenin had proposed not a compromise but a tactical alliance.
The confusion between the two was never resolved in the minds of the leaders
of the Workers Party. ALEXANDER BITTLEMAN,
one of the executive leaders of the CP later admitted :
AAnd only
after the party became more intimately familiar with the United Front tactics
of the Comintern and particularly with Lenin=s
advice to the British communists, to fight for admission into the labour
party, did the central executive committee finally feel justified in adopting
a complete thesis which committed the party to a labor-party policy.@
(Draper Cited Ibid; 32).
By 1922 the party came out in a modified line, in the pamphlet
AFor A Labour Party@.
But it was still very leftist in tone, and insisted for example upon a
pure Aclass party@.
Its actions confirmed its beliefs. This tendency was to destroy moves to
a labour party.
The Second CPPA conference
was held in Cleveland in December 1922. The FLP led by Fitzgerald, supported
the right of the CP to be present. The FLP tried to commit the CPPA for
a move to form a new party. But the CPPA vote went against this resolution
due to AFL reformist pressure. The FLP resigned from the CPPA in March
1923 . The FLP now moved to organise such a party in Chicago. The FLP leaders
- Fitzgerald and EDWARD N. NOCKELS and
JAY G. BROWN had worked for some time with the Chicago Communists : ARNE
SWABECK, EARL BROWDER, JACK JOHNSTONE.
But the New York leadership
of the Workers party led by Pepper and Ruthenberg, insisted upon personal
control of all contacts with the FLP. Pepper and Ruthenberg, alienated
the FLP leadership. By the time of the convention, Fitzpatrick suggested
a delay. Partly, this was because the FLP call was boycotted by the AFL
and other unions, and the SP. But although Ruthenberg was prepared to accept
this, Pepper refused. This sealed a confrontation with the FLP. At the
Conference, some 6000,000 workers and farmers were represented in Chicago
in July 1923. At the meeting the Communist leadership of Pepper and Ruthenberg
split the forces, by pushing though a move for a new
separate party, one that was distinct
from the FLP, and led by the Communists. This was called the FEDERATED-FARMERS=
LABOUR PARTY (F-FLP). As Fitzpatrick
said :
AWhat have
they done? They have killed the FLP, and they have killed the possibility
of uniting the forces of independent political action in America, and they
have broken the spirit of this whole thing so that we will not be able
to rally the whole forces for the next twenty years.@
(Draper Cited Ibid; p. 46-7).
And so it proved, because the victory
of the Workers Party was a hollow one, for the links with a wider labour
circle were in effect broken by the sectarian battle fought and won by
the Workers party.
The line of Pepper and Ruthenberg had a Left Sectarian
approach to the whole matter of labour and progressive alliances. The membership
of the F-FLP was in effect the same membership of the WP. These tactics
cost the TUEL the tremendous support it had won. It had even to been able
to challenge Gompers by the proposed amalgamation of all Trade unions.
But now, the embittered Fitzpatrick turned against any dealing with the
sectarian Workers Party. In fact later, in 1957, Foster publicly declared
at the American Communist Convention in 1957 that the error had been, one
of the two biggest in party history.
Yet another opportunity was lost for the creation of a
broad labour front at the time of the La FOLLETTE
movement of 1923. Senator Robert
La Follette, of Wisconsin, was a representative of the petty bourgeoisie
who had begun to rally the former Farmers and Labourers supporters behind
him in a move for a Third party. This was going to contest the Presidential
elections. The party only gave luke warm support to this movement, but
recognised it as a potential for united front activity to draw in as yet,
uncommitted radicals. At first both the Pepper wing and the Foster wing
was united on this point. The Communists pitted the remnants of the old
FLP against La Follette=s movement.
As it became clear the FLP wanted to back La Follette more definitely,
the Workers Party split on the issue. One part wanted to have a separate
FLP candidate, preferably and either control. Another section wanted to
hew close to the FLP wish and select La Follette if that was the wish of
the convention of May 30 1924. The latter faction, led by Foster won.
An internal factional struggle for
power in the Workers Party had broken out between two factions:
1. CANNON; FOSTER; BITTLEMAN;
LORE; and BROWDER.
2. PEPPER; RUTHENBERG; LOVESTONE.
At the Workers Party Third Convention, of December 1923,
the Foster faction had won the majority. They won the seat of Chairman
for Foster, with Cannon as Assistant Secretary and Ruthenberg remained
as Executive Secretary. But the controlling margins were in Foster=s
factions: By a vote of 8:5 in the Central executive Committee and a vote
of 4:3 in the Politbureau. The issue of the Third Party was a major point
of division between the two factions. Foster supported it, and Pepper did
not.
The two factions appealed to the Comintern for >arbitration=.
Pepper asked the Comintern to remove Foster and vice versa. Because Lore
had initially been a Trotskyist, Pepper used this historical fact to attack
Foster in 1924. The Plenum of the ECCI in April-May 1924 was the >judgement=
ground. Here Zinoviev held sway, after the death of Lenin. But he was forced
to deal with an attack from Trotsky. Trotsky alleged >opportunism=
-included the policies of alliances of the US Workers Party with LaFollette.
Zinoviev used this attack from Trotsky, to denounce cooperation with social
democratic parties. This applied to the American Party.
At the Fifth Plenum Zinoviev put the Resolution of the
fifth congress Comintern on the Report
of the ECCI (26 June 1924), which said :
A12. Right
wing deviations were also apparent on the question of the united front
in England and America, and on the attitude of the CP to the Labour Party
leaders (In America, the so called Third party). The Executive was able
to convince the English and the American comrades of the necessity to revise
their ideas; the new and peculiar problems of the revolutionary movement
in the Anglo-Saxon countries were considered in great detail by the Executive
many times, and the parties there will need much greater attention in future
from the international leadership.@
(In J.Degras; Vol 2; Ibid; p. 105).
And, in the July 1924 Theses On Tactics Adopted by the Fifth
Comintern Congress, the line of Pepper was endorsed by Zinoviev. In fact
the germs of a future revisionist idea were laid, that of the identity
of social democracy with fascism :
AIn America
a great fuss is being made abut the foundation of a >third=
party of the bourgeoisies (the petty bourgeois). In Europe social democracy
has already become , in a certain sense, the >third=
bourgeois party. This is particularly obvious in England where, in addition
to the two classical bourgeois parties which took it in turn to rule, a
Labour Party which in fact pursues a policy close to that of one of the
two wings of the bourgeoisies... For a number of years social -democracy
has even been caught up in a process of change; from being the right wing
of the labour movement, it is becoming one wing of the bourgeoisie, in
places even a wing of fascism. That is why it is historically incorrect
to talk of a >victory of fascism
over socials-democracy=. So far
as their leading strata are concerned, fascism and social-democracy are
the right and the left hands of modern capitalism.@
(J.Degras; Ibid; Vol 2; p. 147).
Swiftly the factional leaders of the US party, jumped towards
this policy. The furthest jump was made by Foster, who now discarded his
previous support of it. Foster went even further - he actually proposed
that the Workers Party run its own candidates against the FLP (Draper;
Ibid; p.109).
At the same time the Comintern took the step of agreeing
with Foster that Pepper should be removed form the Workers Party, and be
instructed to return to Moscow.
It is clear that various factions in the USA were being
>picked up=,
at various times by various of the Comintern revisionists. Already we have
noted that Foster was supported by Lozovsky and Zinoviev. But, Radek
(then head of the American Commission of the Comintern) said of Foster
:
>As far as the
work of Comrade Foster is concerned, I believe that we may have serious
difficulties with this comrade@.
(Comments of Lovestone; Cited; Draper; Ibid; p. 110).
Radek supported Pepper and later, Pepper=s
pupil, Lovestone. Pepper was able to attend the Comintern=s
Fifth Congress (June 1924), and became chief of the Comintern=s
Information Department. Zinoviev was also supporting Pepper at various
time. The conclusion grows clear that the Comintern itself was assisting
and fanning the factionalist fires at various times.
The Comintern=s
verdict was against the Third Party, and the result was that the communists
stood separately from the FLP, for election, with Foster as Presidential
nomination and BENJAMIN GITLOW
as vice president. This effectively killed the last support
that FLP members had for the communists. The votes were :
Coolidge 15,720,00 votes; Davis 8,380,000; LaFollette
4,825,00 ; Foster 33,300.
Bittleman attacked later, the sectarian mistake that had
been made :
AAll our tactics
all our literature, all of our slogans formulated, were based on this general
idea of the third party alliance, and then at a certain moment the Comintern
said to our party you cannot do it, and the Central executive committee
was confronted with a very critical situation.. Completely reorientating
ourselves practically within 24 hours.. A reorientation.. Under the fire
of the enemy, because .. at the same time La Follette and Gompers opened
their attack on… the communists." (Draper Ibid; p
113).
Even the Comintern itself now reversed itself. At the Fifth
Enlarged Plenum of the ECCI, meeting in March-April 1925, 34 sections attended.
The Plenum, came fairly close to admitting that moves to a Labour Party
were in fact correct:
AThe American
delegation was as usual, sharply divided. The majority of the CC led by
Foster and Cannon, disappointed by their failure to make headway in LaFollette=s
Farmer-Labour Party, argued that the policy of trying to form a labour
party on the British model was opportunist, and wanted to concentrate on
capturing the unions. The minority led by Ruthenberg and Lovestone disagreed,
and were supported by the ECCI. The Workers Party said the resolution drafted
by a commission composed of Bukharin, Zetkin and Kuusinen, should not proceed
immediately to the formation of a labour party, but should try to get support
for the idea among the unions. The US had overcome the economic crisis
at the expense of the working class and small farmers. The working class
though not revolutionary, was becoming more class conscious; the politically
inexperienced masses followed the La Follette party, which acted as a capitalist
safety valve.@ (Introduction
to Fifth Plenum; by J.Degras; In Degras; Vol 2; Ibid; p. 186-87).
As cited by Draper, the Comintern gave :
AFull credit
to LaFollette for an important victory in the elections.@
(Draper; Ibid; p.137).
The Comintern of course, had one year prior stated clearly
and vigorously, along with Trotsky, that even the idea of a Third party
was incorrect! BUT this view was contrary
to that of Lenin before that statement; and Stalin after that statement!
The ECCI had to some extent in that year, trimmed sail, in order
to sail the factional seas of the US party better.
But the retraction of the ECCI was only partial. That
Stalin fully agreed with Bittleman, that a sectarian mistake had been made,
IN THE USA,
even as late as 1927, is easily inferred. This is from the comments he
made in his interview with members of the First USA Labour Delegation.
After first answering their questions, he then asked them if he could put
some to them, in return. One question that Stalin posed was :
AHow do you
explain the absence of a special mass workers=
party in the United States? The bourgeoisie have two parties the Republican
Party and the Democratic Party, but the American workers have no mass political
party of their own. Do not the comrades think that the absence of such
a mass workers= party, even like
that in Britain (The Labour Party) weakens the working class in its political
fight against the capitalist? " (JV Stalin: AInterview
with the First American Labour Delegation@;
Works; Vol 10; Moscow; 1954; p. 146).
It appeared from the answers that Stalin got, that he was
not satisfied with the analysis offered by the US Labour representatives.
The history of the American attitudes to the FLP and the LaFollette movement
show, that the CPUSA did not take firm note of Lenin on the United Front.
Indeed it appears that the Comintern knowingly ignored Lenin on these matters.
v)The Factional Battles Come
to the Sixth Comintern Congress
The factional struggle in the CP was notorious. But it
reflected the factional , more hidden battles of the ECCI itself. As we
saw, the Foster faction held control of the party. Zinoviev at the Fifth
Plenum of 1925, (where there had been partial retraction of the mistaken
ECCI line on the LaFollette episode) tried to impose a continued Foster
majority, But Ruthenberg refused, and the ECCI was no longer quite so dominated
by Zinoviev. A decision was taken that at the forthcoming American Fourth
Congress, a Aneutral comrade@
from the ECCI was to have powers to settle matters at the AParity
Commission@. This >neutral
comrade= was a delegate of the
ECCI named SERGEI IVANOVICH GUSEV.
Gusev had been an Old Bolshevik, and had been a member of the Revolutionary
Military Council under Trotsky. But he had sided with Stalin against Trotsky
in the disputes over the Southern Front (Draper; Ibid; p. 141).
At the Fourth Congress in Chicago August 21, 1925, Foster
was elected chairman by a large vote. Certain sections of the party had
Aarmed themselves with pistols,
and barricaded@ in the expectation
of a split. (Draper; Ibid; p. 143).
But Gusev intervened with instructions sent by cable from
the ECCI. These ensured in the demands; that Ruthenberg would get 40% Central
Executive Committee seats; and that Ruthenberg be considered Amore
loyal to the ECCI than Foster@;
that Ruthenberg be retained in post of secretary; that Lovestone be placed
on the Central executive; demanded the Foster majority to refrain from
factionalism. (Draper, Ibid; p.144).
The majority left to the Foster faction was even further
constrained. This was shown in the statement made by Gusev at the first
meeting of the new Central executive committee on September 1; 1925. Far
from being >neutral=
Gusev had been given instructions to always support the Ruthenberg faction
:
AOf course
we now have a parity CEC, but it is not exactly a parity CEC. With the
decision of the ECCI On the questions of the groups in the American party
there goes parallel instructions to the CI representative to support that
group which was the former minority... Although we have a nearly parity
CEC, we have a majority and a minority in the CEC.@
(Draper Ibid; p. 147).
Since at this time the ECCI was under Bukharin=s
increasing control, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that both Ruthenberg
and Lovestone were the favored sons of Bukharin. The line of the TUEL was
swung away from Foster=s control
now. It was now Aconverted@
into a broad left bloc organisation. Foster=s
mentor, Lozovsky tried to intervene in his capacity as Profintern head
(Draper Ibid; p. 220.) When the Workers Party under
Gitlow and Ruthenberg moved to disrupt an anthracite strike using the name
of the party and not the TUEL, they failed. This allowed Foster and Lozovsky
a counter weapon. The strike at Passaic mills, saw the emergence under
party direction of a ARed Union=
in the shape of an United Front Committee which was acting as if it was
a new union (Draper; ibid; p. 225).
At the Sixth Plenum of the ECCI in February 1926, the
Foster faction was given control of the Trade union committee. Despite
the ECCI granted control of the Central Committee to the Ruthenberg faction.
This was decided at the American commission, and so important was it that
Zinoviev Bukharin and Stalin - all attended (Draper Ibid; p. 228).
Following Ruthenberg=s
death, in March 1927, the party leadership was seized by his protege Jay
Lovestone. At the Seventh Plenum of the ECCI in Moscow a precarious balance
between the two factions was again achieved, appointing Foster and Lovestone
as >Joint secretaries=.
But this was then disrupted by further factionalism from the Foster group,
who formed an AOpposition Bloc"
(Draper Ibid; p. 261). The balance was over-turned
in the ensuing squabble, and factional infighting. Now Kuusinen could ensure
that Lovestone was the Afirst@
of two secretaries-the other being Foster (Draper Ibid; p. 264).
The line of Lovestone was to follow the assessment=s
of the ECCI under Bukharin=s
domination. As such, the ECCI had endorsed the views of EUGENE
VARGA. Varga had pronounced that American capital was in healthy
situation. The 1925 Resolution by he ECCI on America took a similar line,
and Varga proposed at the Comintern Sixth Plenum. that AAmerican
capitalism was on the Aupgrade"
(Draper Ibid; p. 270). As the January 1926 ECCI Agitprop
Theses for Propagandists on the Second Anniversary of Lenin=s
Death expressed it :
A1. The 5thWorld
Congress of the CI noted an improvement in the position of world capitalism....
4... The US which changed its former debtor position in
regard to Europe into an uncontested financial and economic hegemony and
with emerged from the world war as the strongest imperialist war.. With
the London conference of 1924, which adopted the Dawes Plan, America began
to bring Europe under its economic and political control..
6. ..The US and the England have won the economic hegemony
of the capitalist world, but the rivalry between them for sole supremacy
reflects.. Inner contradictions of capitalism.. The rivalry can be summarized
in simple formula-America is trying to break up the English world empire
from within, by bringing the Dominions particularly Canada and Australia
under its financial and hence its political sway..@
(Degras; Vol 2; Ibid; p. 237-8).
This view that USA capitalism had achieved stability, and
was not yet at its peak, allowed the poor impact of the American CP to
be somehow >excused@.
Bukharin endorsed this. However, an attack was launched by M.N.ROY
at the Comintern Seventh Plenum of Comintern, on whether
or not the American party had assessed the stage of US capital correctly
:
AI must declare
before the the plenum of the Communist International that the general view
prevailing in the Comintern regarding the strength of the American party
is absolutely incorrect. The American party is not a negligible factor.@
(Roy, Cited; Draper; Ibid; p. 272.).
Furthermore, at the Fourth RILU Congress Lozovsky now attacked
the American party. But since he had been switching toward the policy of
the Red Unions, he attacked saying that the American party was >afraid
of dual unionism=. (Draper,
Ibid; p. 287). In the March 15, 1928 issue of The
Communist International, Lozovsky told :
AThe Americans
to >stop dancing a quadrille
the whole time around the AFL and its various unions." (Draper,
Ibid; p. 289-90).
This ultra-pseudo leftist attack of Lozovsky, enabled a critical
mine strike that had been long prepared by the CP under the slogan of ASave
The Union@ to be completely destroyed.
In the process an alliance with John Brophy, a key Progressive in the Union
Mine Workers, was destroyed also (Draper, Ibid; p.
290). A strange alliance now arose between Pepper
(who had returned to New York against Comintern instructions to go to Korea);
and Lovestone and Foster. This was consummated at the plenum of the American
party in May 1928. They took as the starting point the issue a resistance
to Lozovsky=s instructions on
Dual Unionism in the USA. This position of Foster had been long integral
to his political thinking. He could not jettison it now.
The Foster coalition fell apart and Cannon spear-headed
an attack on Foster. During this process Cannon and Lozovsky were to be
proven incorrect by the push of the AFL and the CIO, to form new unions.
Now the Workers Party set up a presidential campaign. By the time of the
Comintern Sixth Congress, in July 1928; there were two dividing issues
that had caused major upheaval. The attitude of American stabilization
-ie American Exceptionalism; and the
attitude to the new formation of Dual Unions.
But despite the apparent unity of Foster and Lovestone
regarding the issue of the new unions, their >alliance=
fell apart in the Comintern Sixth Congress. They were both aware that Bukharin
was himself attacking verbally the ARight
wing@. They both jumped onto
this bandwagon, in an attempt o curry favour. Foster had to relinquish
the battle to his henchmen Bittleman and Cannon as he could not himself
face the issue of New Unions. But Foster still was a key member and secured
an interview with Stalin. He claimed that Stalin had supported him. As
we shall see this was not correct, in writings made available in 1929.
At the Sixth Congress, the resistance of the Americans
to the critiques on AAmerican
Exceptionalism@, were to be dealt
with again. In the meantime, James Cannon had discovered Trotskyism and
so was born American Trotskyism. And the Negro Nation line was put.
vi) The Black Movement
In The USA
Even in the early days of the Abolition movement against
slavery, there was a tension between AAfro-American
Nationalist@ separatists and
the integrationists. The differences between MARTIN
ROBINSON DELANY and FREDERICK DOUGLASS
reflected this :
ASome Negroes
in America showed an interest in Africa before the 1860's - usually in
the face of the criticism of the black abolitionists such as Frederick
Douglass who considered the African dream a dangerous diversification of
energies which were needed in the fight for emancipation and civil rights
at home@. (George
Shepperson, ANotes on Negro American
Influence on African nationalism@;
J African Hist; 1, No 2; 1960, p.301; Cited by Harold Cruse;@Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual@; New
York; 1984; p.4).
In 1852 Martin R.Delany stated whilst advocating a Negro
nation on the eastern coast of Africa for Acoloured
adventurers from the Untied states and elsewhere@,
that :
AWe are a
nation within a nation, as the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria,
the Welsh, Irish, and Scottish in the British dominions.@
(Cited Draper; Ibid; p.317).
Douglass disagreed and argued for betterment of Negro life
and full equality in the USA. Other advocates of a ABack
TO Africa= movement in the post
Civil War era included Bishop HENRY M. TURNER.
There were some attempts to form a predominantly Negro state in parts of
Oklahoma or Texas. These came to naught. (Draper;
Ibid; p.317).
This tension was to echo down to through Garvey-ism,
to the speeches of Malcolm X more recently. But other trends of the Negro
movement also developed . Openly subservient leaders were always available,
such as BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, who accepted
a subordinate state of the Negro. Wilson Record gives an overview of Washington
:
AThe Negro
was to accept the biracial system and this subordinate status. He was to
seek advancement within the confines of his segregated black world. He
was to develop the friendship of the influential whites and use their assistance.
By cultivating habits of hard work, thrift and honesty he was to demonstrate
his claim to wider acceptance and better treatment. Above all he was never
to present any organised challenge to the existing order of things or engage
in movements which might be regarded by whites as detrimental to their
economic and political interests.@
(Wilson Record:@The
Negro and The Communist Party@;
Chapel Hill, 1951; p. 6).
The original strength of Washington=s
movement, rested on the Educational college at Tuskegee Alabama, which
he had founded in 181. It was this that gave rise to the term AThe
Tuskegee Machine@. This machine
was oiled by Washington=s assiduous
cultivation of rich and prominent people. This began when he came to national
attention in 1895 at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition, where he gave a speech
(Dubbed the "Atlanta Compromise@
by Dubois), only seven months after the death of Frederick
Douglass. In this speech he offered the labour of the Negro to the rulers
of the South . ACast down your
buckets where you are ;A was
his call to the Negroes to prevent further out-migration from the Cotton
lands. He said to the white planters in turn, that this offer of labour
form the Negroes, was to be matched by Planters Acasting
down their buckets= into the
labor of the Negro, and hiring them. Washington later organised the
NATIONAL NEGRO BUSINESS LEAGUE in 1900. We can agree with
Haywood=s description of Booker
T. Washington : AHere definitely
was the voice of the embryonic Negro middle class.@
(Cited by Foster in ANegro
People In American History@ ;
New York; 1954; p. 414).
By the turn of the century, significant Negro intellectuals
were repudiating both the ABack
To Africa@ movements of Delany
and the servile fore lock tugging of Washington. They formed the NIAGARA
movement, which was focused on the personality of W.E.B.DuBOIS.:
AIts purpose
was to form a national protest organisation with branches in a number of
states to wage a fight against segregation and discrimination on all forms.
It was extremely critical of Booker Washington, who along with this may
white friends, in turn vigorously opposed it. The Niagara movement floundered
for a few short years.. a few years later a number of its leaders were
instrumental in organising the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLOURED PEOPLE (NAACP),
which took over a number of important points in its programme.@
(Wilson R; Ibid; p. 10).
The NAACP was founded
in 1909, from amongst others, the leadership of WILLIAM
WALLING ENGLISH, FLORENCE KELLEY,
- both socialists of the Socialist Party; and many progressive reformers
like OSWALD VILLARD , RABBI STEPHEN WISE, REVEREND
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES. This grouping
unified a number of Negro protest groups. Later JAMES
WELDON JOHNSON was to join. From the beginning the mandate of
the NAACP was somewhat divided, but Dubois was its best element. He recognised
clearly what role Washington was playing :
AThe vested
interests who so largely support Mr.Washington=s
programme.. Are to large extent men who wish to raise in the South a body
of labouring men who can be used as clubs to keep white labourers from
demanding too much@. (David
Levering Lewis; AW.E.B.DuBois-Biography
of a Race. 1868-1919" New York; 1995; ; p.401).
The NAACP worried those conservative whites who supported
Washington, and they
formed the National Urban League in an attempt to counter
the influence of the NAACP.
Although the NAACP contained socialists of the SP, these
socialists did not yet think in a Leninist way. The lessons of Lenin, including
those of correct work in broad front organisations had not yet penetrated
the Socialist Party. As Foster says :
AThere were
it is true, several prominent Socialists among the founders of the NAACP;
but they acted more in the spirit of liberals that socialist Party members.
There were no trade unionists among this group.. Few Negroes became socialists.
Dr Dubois joined the party in 1911, but sinking no roots in its infertile
soil, he quit in 1912." (Foster;@Negro
People In America History@; Ibid;
p. 429).
Although DuBois was a powerful Black fighter, he failed to
see the unity of Black and white transcended capital. He said in 1940:
AThe split
between white and black workers was greater than that between white workers
and capitalists; and this split depended not simply on economic exploitation
but on racial folklore grounded on centuries of instinct, habit and thought...This
incontrovertible fact , imported Russian Communism ignored, would not discuss."
(Cruse H@Crisis
Negro Intellectual@; Ibid; p.
176-77)
In the Socialist or Communist movement, there was a general
neglect of the Black movement. At worst there were the chauvinist positions
of the Socialist Party=s Southern
based branches. They went so far as to call for segregation of Negroes
and whites in a ASocialist separate
America. Although Debs did not agree with this, he said simply that :
AThe Socialist
Party is the party of the whole working class regardless of colour-the
whole working class of the world@.
(Cited Wilson@Negro
and CP@; Ibid; p.19).
Whist this was true, it did not attempt to make any specific
strategy for the special oppressions of the Negro workers in the USA. There
were insufficient attempts by the SP to organise in the black working class.
The IWW upheld the battle against racism, and issued many Negroes with
membership cards. In the meantime further Black movements were forming
that were to later enter the Communist movement. These were centred on
the AMessenger@.
THE MESSENGER was
established in 1917 by a group of Negro intellectuals and trade unionists
including A.PHILIP RANDOLPH, CHANDLER OWEN, RICHARD
B. MOORE, AND CYRIL BRIGGS. They were influenced by
the Socialist Party in fact. Other Negro members of the SP, despite its
low total Negro membership, included such prominent Negro socialists as
OTTO HUISWOOD, LOVETT FORT WHITEMAN. Huiswood later became
the Executive secretary of the Comintern=s
International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers. A.Philip Randolph
went on to organise the negro-led Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
He did not drift towards the communists.
By 1920 there was for the : AFirst
time in the Negro=s history,
a left Wing or radical core.@,
proclaimed the >Messenger=.
(Cited Wilson@Negro
and CP@; Ibid; p.19). Both
Huiswood and Fort-Whiteman gravitated quickly to the Communists.
It was Cyril Briggs who married
Aself-determination@
strands to Socialist strands. He promoted his ideas that were
influenced to some extent by Garvey-ism (See below), in the Amsterdam News,
a Harlem paper, he explained in terms reminiscent of Delany :
ASecurity
of life for Poles and Serbs-Why Not for coloured Americas?.. Considering
that the more we are outnumbered, the weaker we will get, and the weaker
we get the less respect justice or opportunity we will obtain, is it not
time to consider a separate political existence with a government that
will represent, consider, and advance us? As one tenth of the population..
We can with reason and justice demand our portion for purposes of self-government
and the pursuit of happiness, in one-tenth of the territory of continental
US." (Cited; Draper Ibid; p. 323).
Interestingly he thought the Acoloured
autonomous states@
should be in either Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or California or Nevada.
Not in the Southern US. Briggs started AThe
crusader@ in 1919, and now began
urging the Negro state should be in Africa, South America, or Caribbean.
The Crusader attacked the Garvey movement, for its >one-man
movement=; meaning that Garvey
rejected the offers to combine forces with Briggs. Briggs went on to form
the magazine The AAFRICAN
BLOOD BROTHERHOOD@
(ABB), calling for African Liberation and redemption. One
of its eight points, incorporated anti-capitalist struggle. Although smaller
than the Garvey separationist movement, it was to link with the American
Communist movement. Zack was put in charge of the task of developing the
Negro movement for the Communists. He got in touch with Briggs and Richard
B Moore. Most of the ABB joined the party. It became the cadre of the American
Negro Communists, supplying many later important figures including such
as OTTO HALL AND HARRY HAYWOOD.
The tensions between >integrationist=
and >segregationist-nationalist=,
were seen also in the career of MARCUS MOSES GARVEY.
He was born in the West Indies where he started in 1914, the UNIVERSAL
NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION (UNIA).
When he came to the USA, at Washington=s
invitation, the UNIA took root. Growing very fast, it developed branches
all over the USA. Its programme was for a militant struggle against Negro
oppression of all forms. But, this was to culminate in a ABack
to Africa@ movement. A complex
and absurd hierarchy (Knights of the Nile, Dukes of Nigeria etc) was adopted
and a pseudo-army was made. Huge embezzlements of the Negro people, were
undertaken to float the ABlack
Star Line@, which would transport
the Negroes back to Africa. This venture collapsed, though the extent of
Garvey=s personal involvement
in the financial corruption is unclear. But Garvey was imprisoned until
his release by Presidential pardon in 1925. The whole Garvey movement had
collapsed in the interim, leaving many disillusioned followers. Yet, in
the high flown anxiety to find >legitimate=
predecessors of the later ABlack
nation@ line, William Z. Foster
and Harry Haywood, find the charity to make Garvey
a forerunner of the Black Nationalists :
AThe UNIA
was a Negro bourgeois nationalist movement, a sort of Negro Zionism; and
Garvey was a bourgeois nationalist leader. Garvey talked mainly in terms
of Arace@;
but on the whole import of his movement was in the sprit of a Negro Anation@.
Often in fact, Garvey did speak in definitely nationalist terms. This was
the meaning of his whole concept of an African empire with a nobility and
army and state trappings. Garvey said :@The
Negro must have a country and a nation of his own.@..
Authorities on the Negro Question are generally agreed that Garvey was
an outspoken Negro nationalist. Haywood correctly sums up the Garvey movement
as follows: @The movement led
by Garvey cannot be explained purely by the personality of its leader...Garvey..
had a deep feeling for the intrinsic national character of the Negro problem@.
(Foster ANegro
People In American History@;
Ibid; p. 450-1).
The CPUSA was supportive of Garvey,
despite the overtones of ANegro
Zionism@. Just prior to
the collapse of the UNIA, ROBERT MINOR
a prominent CPUSA central committee member in charge of the work on Negroes,
continued to praise them :
AA breaking
up of this Negro association would be a calamity to the Negro people and
to the working class as a whole.. The organisation itself represents the
first and largest experience of the Negro masses in self-organisation..
It is composed very largely, if not almost entirely of Negro workers and
impoverished farmers, although there is a sprinkling of small business
men. In any case the proletarian elements constitute the vast majority
of the organisation.. We believe that the destruction of such an organisation
of the Negro masses under the circumstances would be a calamity." (Record;
ANegro & the CP@;
Ibid; p. 41).
Yet Garvey was not only mystical and
obscure, he was reactionary:
AEarly in
the 1920's Marcus Garvey came out against the Communist movement as follows:=
I am advising the Negro working man and labourer against the present brands
of Communism.. As taught in America, and to be more careful of the traps
and pitfalls of white trade unionism in affiliation with the American Federation
of white workers aor labourers.@
(A.J.Garvey, cited Cruse@Crisis
of the Negro Intellectual@; Ibid;
p. 46).
At the 1921 Comintern third congress, a proposal from the
South African delegation came forward to study the ANegro
question or the proletarian movement among the Negroes@.
At the Fourth congress a Negro communists took part for the USA party for
the first time, This was Otto Huiswood. Against opposition from the party,
the famous Black poet, CLAUDE McKAY,
also took part as a >special
delegate=. (Cruse
H:@Crisis of Negro Intellectual@;
Ibid; p. 54-55). There McKay accused the American
Communists of discrimination, and also of giving a over-optimistic gloss
to the likelihood of American revolution at that time. (Draper;
Ibid; p. 327; & Cruse H:@Crisis
of Negro Intellectual@; Ibid;
p. 54-55). The Comintern appointed the Negro
Commission which wrote the ATheses
on the Negro Question@, which
were presented at the Fourth congress.
In these it is stated that :
AThe history
of the Negro in America fits him for an important role in the liberation
struggle of the entire African race.. in a single world Negro movement."
(Draper; Ibid; p. 327).
The leadership of African liberation struggles was placed
in the hands of the American Negro. At this stage the ECCI and its Commission
were confronting the notion of the ABlack
Nation@. The Program commission
of the Fifth congress reported back that it could not substantiate the
Black Nation. AUGUST THALHEMIER reported
:
It was pointed out that a number of national questions
exist in countries like the US with an extraordinary national mixture of
populations where it cannot be said that the slogan of the right of self-determination
is the solution for all national questions, in which the race question
is also involved.. The Program Commission was of the opinion that the slogan
of the right of self Determination must be supplemented by another slogan
:@National equality for all national
groups and races@. (Cited;
Draper; Ibid; p. 328-329).
Draper points out that the Commission also decided that
it was >virtually impossible@
to define the concept of nation to satisfy all requirements. (Cited;
Draper; Ibid; p. 328-329). It is obvious that these
formulations are remarkably similar to those of Stalin when dealing with
the issue of the complex geographical areas such as Transcaucasia. The
party and Pepper noisily agreed. Fort-Whiteman however demanded further
emphasis on Arace@,
and stayed on in Moscow. The Comintern stayed firm at this stage, that
the primary goal was the proletarian revolution.
The problem of Garvey-ism was at this stage seriously
impeding organisation in the Negro working classes. The Comintern advised
the formation of an AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS
(ANLC). This was established in October 1925. The national organiser
was made Fort-Whiteman; and the communist H.V.PHILIPS
was made National Secretary. IT was consciously seen as United Front that
could bring the party into touch with Negro masses. The ANLC was bitterly
attacked by the AFL and branded >disruptive=.
It never made bridges effectively, and within 5 years
was dissolved into the League For Struggle for Negro Rights. The leadership
of the broad Negro movement had already been contested by the NAACP
They had :
AHeld an uncontested
position as spokesman for Negroes in their fight for legal justice and
civil rights. At the time the NAACP was composed largely of individuals
from the white and Negro middle classes. It was not hostile to the labor,
but lacked any important ties with the trade unions movement. Its aim was
to secure by judicial and legislative action a more equitable role for
the Negro in the major phases of American life. It was opposed to the Communist
programme, and had consistently refused to be drawn into any joint activity
with the leftists.@ (ARecord;
ANegroes & CP@;
Ibid; p. 36).
The NAACP clearly had the widest circle that should have
been penetrated by the Communists. They had relinquished tactics of fighting
for Negro rights within the trade unions and had isolated themselves there.
The NAACP, despite its hostility was also >avoided=
by the CP. As Record comments :
ADuring the
period from 1919 to 1928, the Party took a definitely hostile position
towards practically all moderate Negro organisations. The NAACP and the
National Urban League were in particular vigorously condemned. There was
some basis in fact for such criticism. The NAACP had been extremely cautious
in its legal and legislative work for Negroes during the early 1920's,
and the National Urban League (NUL) had applied a questionable role in
a number of the large industrial strikes during the immediate post-war
period.@ (ARecord;
ANegroes & CP@;
Ibid; p. 38).
In a further direct challenge to the NAACP, the CP set up
the INTERNATIONAL DEFENSE LEAGUE (ILD). But
although the CP had some reasons to distrust both the NAACP, and the NUL,
it had effectively isolated itself in yet another key front, this time
the Negro front.
-
BY NOW THE WORKERS PARTY HAD WORKED
IN AN INCORRECT AND GENERALLY SECTARIAN MANNER IN THREE KEY FRONTS :
-
THE TRADE UNIONS; THE THIRD PARTY;
AND THE NEGRO STRUGGLES.
The factional fights had not only played a part, but they
were central to obstructing the formation of a clear and a correct Marxist-Leninist
policy on any question! American Exceptionalism was an excuse to avoid
the reality- that there was not a united party. The Comintern had played
its part in the factional battles. In the middle of these factional battles,
the incorrect theory of the ABlack
Nation@ was endorsed.
vii)The Attitude of Stalin to
the American CP in 1928
What do we know of Stalin=s
attitude ot the American CP? It so happens that we are fortunate to know
a great deal. After the Sixth World Congress, Stalin was to speak his mind
in front of the Presidium of the ECCI that had been struck to examine the
question of factionalism in the American party, and their allegations of
American Exceptionalism. It will be remembered that they had put the thesis
that American capital had stabilized itself and was therefore to some extent
immune from the crisis of capitalism. They had drawn this >theory=
from two primary sources, Eugene Varga and Nikolai Bukharin. The attack
launched by Stalin on the issue of stabilization of capital has already
been discussed in his address to the Plenum of the CC CPSU(B) in 1929.
He had also previously attacked the notion of capitalist >stabilization=
at the 15 th Congress of the CPSU(B).
At this juncture, Stalin was trying to assess the way
forward for the USA party. He saw the position of the CPUSA as of immediate
and great world significance. But the weaknesses of both the minority and
the majority factions were Aopportunist@.
Moreover Stalin points out that in the context of the inner-Comintern struggle
then going on, it was not surprising that significant errors had been made
by the CPUSA :
AIt has become
evident during the course of the discussion that both groups are guilty
of the fundamental error of exaggerating the specific features of American
capitalism. You know that this exaggeration lies at the root of every opportunist
error committed both by the majority and the minority group. It would be
wrong to ignore the specific peculiarities of American capitalism.. But
it would be still more wrong to base the activity of the CP on these specific
features, since the foundation of the activities of every communist party,
Including the American Communist Party, on which it must base itself, must
be the general features of capital, which are the same for all countries
and not its specific features in any given country.. Specifics features
are only supplementary to the general features. The error of both groups
is that they exaggerate the significance of the specific features of American
capitalism and thereby overlook the basic features of American capitalism
which are characteristic of world capitalism as a whole. Therefore when
the leaders of the majority and the minority accuse each other of elements
of a Right deviation, it is obviously not without some measure of truth.
It cannot be denied that American conditions form a medium in which it
is easy for the American Communist Party to be led astray and to exaggerate
the strength and the stability of American capitalism. These conditions
lead our comrades from America, both the majority and the minority, into
errors of the type of the Right deviation.@
(Stalin=s
Speech to the Presidium in the American Commission of the ECCI; May 6th;
1929; In AStalin=s
Speeches on the American Communist Party@;
as re-printed in AThe Communist
International In America; Documents 1925-1933"; by the Bolshevik League
of the US New York, nd; c.1982; p. 80).
Stalin leaves no doubt that in his mind these Aopportunist
errors@ stem from factionalism
in CPUSA and Comintern:
AWhat are
the main defects in the practice of the leaders of the majority and the
minority?
Firstly that in their day-to-day work they, and particularly
the leaders of the majority , are guided by motives of unprincipled factionalism
and place the interests of their faction higher than the interests of the
Party.
Secondly that both groups and particularly the majority
are so infected with the disease of factionalism, that they base their
relations with the Comintern, not on the principle of confidence but on
policy of rotten diplomacy, a policy of diplomatic intrigue.@
(Stalin Ibid; p.81)
To illustrate this, he describes the behavior of the two
factions in trying to curry favour :
ALet us take
a few examples. I will mention such a simple fact as the speculations made
by the leaders both of the majority and the minority regarding the differences
within the CPSU(B). You know that both groups of American Communist Party,
competing with each other and chasing after each other like horses in a
race, are feverishly speculating on existing and non-existing differences
within the CPSU. Why do they do that? Do the interests of the CPA demand
it? No of course not. They do it order to gain some advantage for their
own particular faction and to cause injury to the other faction. Foster
and Bittleman see nothing reprehensible in declaring themselves AStalinites@,
and thereby demonstrating their loyalty to the CPSU. But, my dear comrades,
that is disgraceful. Do you not know that there are no AStalinites@,
that there must be no AStalinites@?
Why does the minority act in this unseemly fashion? In order to entrap
the majority group.. of Comrade Lovestone, and to prove that the Lovestone
group is opposed to the CPSU, and hence to the basic nucleus in the Comintern.
That is of course incorrect. It is irresponsible. But the minority cares
nothing about that: their chief aim is to ensnare and discredit the majority
in the interests of the faction of the minority.@
(Stalin Ibid; p.81)
Having shown the Foster group in >disgraceful
behavior=, he describes the Lovestone
group as >even more disgraceful=:
AAnd how does
the Lovestone group act in this connection? Does it behave more correctly
than the minority group? Unfortunately, its behavior is even more disgraceful
than that of the minority groups. Judge for yourselves. The Foster group
demonstrate their closeness to the CPSU by declaring themselves AStalinites@.
Lovestone perceives that his own faction thereby may lose something by
this. Therefore in order not to be outdone, the Lovestone group suddenly
performs a Ahair rasing@
feat and at the American party Congress, carrels through a decision calling
for the removal of Comrade Bukharin from the Comintern. And so you get
a game of rivalry on the principle of who will outdo whom. Instead of a
fight on principles you get the most unprincipled speculation of the differences
within the CPSU.@ (Stalin
Ibid; p.82)
The Comintern had made several demands that AComrade
Pepper A return to Moscow. The
CC of the CPA had resisted and:
AIn fact ignored
a number of the decisions of the ECCI regarding Pepper. Thereby the majority
of the American CP demonstrated its fellowship with Pepper, whose opportunist
vacillations everybody knows.. Fosters=
group utilizes this situation against the Lovestone (and Gitlow-ed) group,
stating that the majority group within the CPA is against the Comintern.
Accordingly the Lovestone groups performs another Ahair-raising@
feat and expels Comrade Pepper.. The same Pepper whom only the day before
they had defended against the Comintern. How can we explain the resistance
to the decisions of the Comintern regarding Pepper on the art of the majority
group? Not of course in the interests of the Party. It was exclusively
in the interests of the majority faction. Why was it that the majority
made a sudden right-about-face and unexpectedly expelled Pepper from the
party? Was it in the interests of the Party? OF course not. It was purely
in the interests of the Lovestone faction, who were anxious not to surrender
a trump card to their enemy, namely the Foster-Bittleman factional group.
Faction interests above all!@
(Stalin Ibid; p.82-3)
Stalin=s
prescription was clear: End factionalism :
A In order
to put an end to these foul methods and place the American Communist Party
on the lines of Leninist policy, it is necessary first of all to put an
end to factionalism in that Party.. What is the solution? Comrade Foster
mentioned one. According to this proposal the leadership should be handed
over to the minority. Can that solution be adopted? No, it cannot. The
delegation of the ECCI committed an error when it sharply dissociated itself
from the majority, without at the same time dissociating itself equally
sharply from the minority. It would be very unfortunate it the commission
of the Presidium repeated the error of the delegation of the ECCI. I think
the Commission of the Presidium of the ECCI should in its draft dissociate
itself both from the errors of the majority and from the errors of the
minority. And for that very reason that it must dissociate itself from
both, it must not propose to turn over the leadership to the minority.
.. The American delegation proposed a different solution directly contrary
to the proposal of Comrade Foster. .. Ten points. The substance of this
proposal is to the effect that the leadership of the majority should be
fully rehabilitate, the factional work of the majority should be considered
correct that the decision of the Presidium to eh ECCI to withdraw Comrade
Lovestone should be annulled and that thus the practice of suffocating
the minority should be endorsed. Can this solution be adopted? No, it cannot,
for it would mean, not eradicating factionalism, but elevating it to a
principle.@ (Stalin Ibid;
p.86-7)
AWhat then is
the solution?
1. The actions and the proposals of the delegation of
the ECCI must in the main be approved, with the exclusion from the proposals
of those points which approximate to the proposals of Comrade Foster.
2. An open letter must be sent in the name of the ECCI
to the members of the American Communist Party setting forth the errors
of both sections of the party and sharply emphasizing the question of eradicating
all factionalism.
3. The action of the leaders of the majority a the Convention
of the Communist party of America particularly on the question of Pepper,
must be condemned.
4. And end must be put to the present situation in the
CPA, in which the questions of positive work, the questions of the working
class against the capitalists, questions of wages, working hours, work
in the trade unions, the fight against reformism, the fight against the
Right Deviation, - when all these questions are kept in the shade, and
are replaced by petty questions of the factional struggle between the Lovestone
group and the Foster group.
5. The Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the American
CP must be reorganized with the inclusion of such workers therein as are
capable of seeing something more than the factional struggle, the struggle
of the working class against the capitalists, who are capable of placing
the interests and the unity above the interests of individual groups and
their leaders.
6. Comrades Lovestone and Bittleman must be summoned to
be placed at the disposal of the Comintern, in order that the members of
the American CP should at last understand that the Comintern intends to
fight factionalism in all seriousness.@
(Stalin Ibid; p.87-88)
Lest any one was deceived, Stalin made it clear that this
was not any ordinary party, because it had a job of work that was Adecisive@
for the Aworld revolutionary
movement@. There was all the
more reason to get it right in the CPUSA :
AA word or
two regarding the tasks and the mission of the American Communist Party.
I think comrades that the American CP is one of this few CP=s
in the world upon which history has laid tasks of a decisive character
from the point of view of the world revolutionary movement. You now very
well the strength and power of the American capitalism. Many now think
that the general crisis of world capitalism will not affect America. That
, of course, is not true. It is entirely untrue, comrades. The crisis of
world capitalism is developing with increasing rapidity and cannot but
affect American capitalism. The three million now unemployed in America
are the first swallows indicating the ripening of the economic cris in
America. The sharpening antagonism between America and England, the struggle
for markets and raw materials, and finally, the colossal growth of armaments-than
is the second portent of the approaching crisis. It is essential that the
American CP should be capable of meeting than historical movement fully
prepared and of assuming the leadership of the impending class struggle
in America. For that ed the American CP must work for the complete liquidation
of factionalism and deviations in the Party.. For the reestablishment of
unity in the American CP.. To forge a real revolutionary cadre and a real
revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, capable of leading the many
millions of the American working class towards the revolutionary class
struggles.@ (Stalin:
Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of The ECCI On the American Question:
In ; p. 91).
Second speech :
Unfortunately the factions continued their own way even
after this clear, but comradely upbraid from Stalin. In between the first
and the second of the speeches that Stalin made on this question, the members
of the American Majority delation - Gitlow and Lovestone made a declaration.
This contravened the standards of the Comintern in that it ruled out the
agreement of the American delegation to any of the declaration of the ECCI
Presidium. Stalin called attention to this :
@The fundamental
nature of this declaration is that it proclaims the thesis of non-submission
to the decisions of the Presidium of the ECCI. That means the extreme factionalism
of the leaders of the majority has driven them into the path of insubordination,
and hence of warfare against the Comintern@.
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 91).
Of course Stalin agreed that discussion and principled debate,
was right, and he upheld the Communist=s
rights to disagree. But he pointed to the need for individual rights to
bow, after a full and principled discussion to the view of the majority
:
AIt cannot
be denied that our American comrades like all Communists, have the right
to disagree and the have the right to oppose it. And as long as they confine
themselves to the exercise of that right, there is not, and cannot be anything
wrong. But the trouble is that the declaration of May 14th does not stop
there. It goes further: It considers that the fight must be continued even
after the draft becomes the decision of the Presidium of the ECCI. Therefore
we must put it the question squarely to the members of the American delegation:
When the Draft assumes the force of an obligatory decision of the Comintern,
do they consider themselves entitled not to submit to that decision?@
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 91).
Stalin goes on to expose the manoueverings and Apetty-fogging@
and Adeceit@
of the Majority (He uses those words-ed). He then turns to the Commission=s
draft :
AWhat is the
basis of the draft of the Commission which is now offered for the consideration
of the Presidium the ECCI? It is based on the idea of maintaining the line
of the Comintern, on the idea of Bolshevizing the American Communist party,
on the idea of fighting the deviation form the Marxist line, and, above
all, the Right deviation, on the idea of Leninist Party unity, and finally,
and above all on the idea of completely liquidating factionalism. For it
must be realized after all, comrades, that factionalism is the fundamental
evil of the American Communist Party.@
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 95).
Again Stalin points out that both wings were being factionalist.
But he also points out again, but in more detail, why it is that factionalism
is weakening to the party. He mentions three reasons.
The First :
AWherein consists
the evil of factionalism within the ranks of a Communist party? Firstly
in that factionalism weakens the party spirit, it dulls the revolutionary
sense and blinds the Party workers to such an extent that in the factional
passion, they are obliged to place the interests of the faction above the
interests of the party.. Did not Comrade Lovestone and his friends know
that they should have held themselves aloof from Pepper and they should
have repudiated him so as not to compromise themselves as revolutionaries..
Factional blindness compelled them to place the interests of the factions
above the interests of the party..Did not Comrade Foster know that he should
have held aloof from the concealed Trotskyites that were in his group?
Why.. did he not repudiate them at the time. Because he behaved first and
foremost as a factionalist.@
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 96.
Stalin points to the Second reason
for fighting factionalism as being its interference with :
AThe training
of the Party in the spirit of a policy of principles.@
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 97).
And, the Third Reason
:
Athat factionalism
by weakening the will for unity in the party and by undermining its iron
discipline, creates within the Party a peculiar factional regime, as a
result of which the whole internal life of our Party is robbed of its conspirative
protection in the face of the class enemy, and that party runs the danger
of being transformed into a plaything of the bourgeoisie@.
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 97)
And Finally he writes:
AThe evil
of factionalism lies in the fact that it completely nullifies all positive
work done in the party, it robs the workers of all desire to concern themselves
with the day-to-day needs of the working class (wages, hours, the improvement
of the material welfare of the workers etc); it weakens the Party in preparing
the working class for the class conflicts with the bourgeoisie and thereby
creates a state of affairs in which the authority of the Party must inevitably
suffer in the eyes of the workers.@
(Stalin: Speech May 14th, 1929 to the Presidium of
The ECCI On the American Question: In ; p. 98).
He now paints the consequences of
the actions of the American factions:
AWhat they
said amounted to this, that since they do not agree with the decision of
the Presidium, they cannot submit to that decision and carry it into effect.
But only Anarchists can talk like that, not Bolsheviks, not Leninists..
Members of the American delegation, do not think that the conscience and
convictions of Comrade Gitlow are above the conscience and convictions
of the overwhelming majority of the Presidium of the ECCI Do you begin
to understand that if each of us starts to act according to his won will
without reckoning with the will of the collective, we shall never come
to any decision; we shall never have any collective will, nor any leadership?@
(Stalin Second Speech of May 14th In Ibid;
p. 106).
Stalin advised that Lovestone and the others should accept
the proposal of the ECCI Presidium. As they comforted themselves with being
popular, he advised that their popularity would vanish if the Comintern
rejected them; because the masses followed the line of the Comintern. But
Lovestone and Gitlow rejected this.
-
A second speech by Stalin on the
same day, to the same Presidium, pointed out that eight of the ten American
delegates had refused to accept the draft of the Commission.
Stalin reminded them, that the Bolshevik CC had been divided
on some occasions, such as in the 1907 controversy to partake in Duma elections.
But, Stalin pointed out, that at that time the minority had bowed to the
wishes of the majority. He pointed to the ability to act collectively,
to conform will of individuals to the Awill
of the collective@, as the major
test of ABolshevik@
behavior. He then pointed out that Gitlow, Lovestone and Bloor had stated,
that their consciences did not allow them submit to the Presidium. Stalin
commented :
AWhat they
said amounted to this, that since they do not agree with the decision of
the Presidium, they cannot submit to that decision and carry it into effect.
But only Anarchist can talk like that, not Bolsheviks, not Leninists..
Members of the American delegation, do not think that the conscience and
convictions of Comrade Gitlow are above the conscience and convictions
of the overwhelming majority of the Presidium of the ECCI Do you begin
to understand that if each of us starts to act according to his own will
without reckoning with the will of the collective, we shall never come
to any decision; we shall never have any collective will, nor any leadership?@(Stalin
Second Speech of May 14th In Ibid; p. 106).
The factions of Lovestone were expelled for intransigent
disregard of the Comintern injunctions against factionalism. In the middle
of all this, the theory of the ABlack
Nation@, became part of the CPUSA
programme. Summarising the overall international state, at the 1930 Meeting
of 16th CPSU Congress, Molotov reported that the :
AComintern
had 53 parties and 3 sympathising national-revolutionary parties. I.. He
said that right-opportunist tendencies had been so marked in a number of
central committees (he mentioned Czechoslovakia, Sweden, and the United
States) that their composition had to be changed.@
(Cited in Degras J. Vol 3; Ibid; p. 102).
CONCLUSION:
We believe that we have shown good evidence that :
1. The CPUSA was riven with factionalism.
2. The Line of the ABlack
Nation@; is not supported by
a thorough reading of the Marxist-Leninist literature; nor by facts of
Negro migrations and their lives.
3. There were serious departures
from Marxism-Leninism in the
Comintern that allowed the mistaken
theories of Red Trade Unionism; and Black Nation to arise in the CPUSA.
4. The general pattern of Ultra-Left
sectarianism, impeded the implementation of a correct policy to a Labour
Party in the USA.
These questions must be further examined. Let the Marxist-Leninist
movement shred this analysis - if it so chooses. But it should for the
movement=s sake, do so only on
the basis of factual and scientifically reasoned Marxist-Leninist analysis.
We have had enough dogma.
Failing that, we are condemned to more self serving opportunism,
or honest meanderings between Africa and the home of the USA blacks- the
USA. In the process more false routes will inevitably divert our best and
most militant youth. In this article we have not analysed some of the later
mistaken routes - the Black Panther Movement and the Malcolm X phenomenon.
We will endeavour to do so shortly.
The formation of a Marxist-Leninist
party of the USA and Canada is an urgent priority.
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!
_______________________________________________________
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