Clueless 2
>CB: Briefly, the CPUSA from the 1920's to about 1950 or so held that Black people in the US had the right to self-determination in the Leninist sense. They had the right to secede from the U.S. if they so chose. If you are familiar with the Leninist approach to this, it implies not that the people in question are a nation, but that they have the right to choose to be one. Black people in the U.S. never decided to exercise that right to a separate nation. Then in the 50's the CPUSA changed its assessment, because a large part of the Black population had migrated out of the South, and there was no longer the territorial/population compactness for a "land".
Here Melvin P. criticizes the CPUSA for the changed assessment. I don't know whether that means he thinks that Black Americans still constitute a nation for purposes of the self-determination question.
<Most Marxists in the U.S. today do not hold that Black people constitute a separate nation today, in direct answer to your question.
CB
Reply
Any Marxist in history who has held that "Black people constitute a separate nation," misunderstands what a nation is. What Comrade Charles alludes to is a bourgeois separatist conception of the Negro National Colonial Question, that is alive and well within the tiny radical black intelligencia.
He states the position of the CPUSA as "a large part of the Black population had migrated out of the South, and there was no longer the territorial/population compactness for a "land"."
In other words: 1. The Black population migrated from the South; and 2. Because the black skin people are the nation, 3. Their dispersal dissolved the nation. As a result, "Most Marxists in the U.S. today do not hold that Black people constitute a separate nation today, in direct answer to your question."
In other words the Black people once constituted a separate nation but migration destroyed the nation, which was colonized as the result of its defeat during the Civil War in America. The other meaning of what Comrade Charles state is: the black people of the slaveholding area developed as a nation separate from the white people who lived across the tracks, and the black people once had the right to self determination but not the white people who live adjacent to them.
Is it not correct to call this proposition a bourgeois separatist tendency or theory. What is the nation that developed in the south and was colonized by Wall Street imperialism as the result of its defeat during the Civil War in America?
The nation or national formation that evolved in the South of the United States of North America, is a historically evolved stable community of Colored people - black slaves, along with the historically developed Anglo-American people, who lived in the old slave holding area of the South - the Black Belt, and the economically dependent area of the Southern USNA - border regions.
This nation, which evolved from the specifics of slavery, is a historically evolved stable community of black skin and white skin people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture. This is the classical Marxist definition of a nation written by Stalin, edited by Lenin and propagated by the Third Communist International.
In place of a Marxist disclose of the meaning of a "common land" Comrade Charles smuggles in the historical CPUSA conception called "the territorial/population compactness for a "land". Our Comrade faces an impossible situation and places land in quotes ("land"), because of the absurdity of the proposition. He has no way out of this absurd situation without resorting to the Marxist presentation of the national colonial question and this means consulting the classic, "Marxism and the National Question" and reading the section on the meaning of a "common land" as the basis for a development from pre-capitalist to capitalist production relations.
Let us return to the Comintern document again.
"Is the Southern region, thickly populated by Negroes to be looked upon as a colony, or as an "integral part of the national economy of the United States," where presumably a revolutionary situation cannot arise independent of the general revolutionary development in the United States?
"In the interest of the utmost clarity of ideas on this question, the Negro question in the United States must be viewed from the standpoint of its peculiarity, namely as the question of an oppressed nation, which is in a peculiar and extraordinary distressing situation of national oppression not only in view of the prominent racial distinction (marked difference in the color of skin, etc.) but above all, because of considerable social antagonism (remnants of slavery). This introduces in the American Negro Question an important, peculiar trait, which is absent from the national question of other oppressed people. Furthermore, it is necessary to face clearly the inevitable distinction between the position of the Negro in the South and in the North, owing to the fact that at least three-fourths of the entire Negro population in the United States (12,000,000) live in the compact masses in the South, most of them being peasants and agricultural laborers in a state of s!
emi-serfdom, settled in the "Black Belt" and constituting the majority of the population, whereas the Negroes in the northern states are for the most part industrial workers of the lowest categories who have recently come to the various industrial centers fro the South (having often fled from them)."
The question we want to explore is did "a revolutionary situation . . . arise independent of the general revolutionary development in the United States?" as the result of the colonial status of the Black Belt area of the South. The answer is yes. The area of the South that is a colony to this very day is said to have disappeared - dispersed, as the result of "the Black population . . . migrated out of the South."
Let us not even consider the millions of whites that migrated and continue to migrate from this poverty stricken colony within the multi-national state structure of the US.
The "revolutionary situation (that arose) independent of the general revolutionary development in the United States," was called the Civil Rights movement and this happened as the result of the mechanization of agriculture. The CPUSA abandoned the conception of the Negro Question as a national question due to racial theory and theories dealing in skin color and consequently missed the greatest upsurge to take place in American history since the Civil War in America. The CPUSA literally abolished the party in the South in 1949 in violation of the party program and democratic centralism and William Z. Foster pioneered the theory of Blacks people being a nation within a nation.
Later Dr. James Jackson - the Negro psychopath, wrote "New Theoretical Aspect of the Negro Question," where he put forth the theory of the immigration of the colonial workers from the areas of the black belt cause the colony to disappear because to many people left the area. This line of thought - if one can call this thinking, is what Charles literally states.
"the Black population had migrated out of the South, and there was no longer the territorial/population compactness for a "land"" and the right of self determination for the colony in the South, which is not a real colony because a bunch of the people who made up the colony - a whole lot of them, left the colony for the North. Charles asserts that his presentation is part of the conception of the Marxist who has "an authentic conception" - his words, "of race."
Is this not absurd? I guess Puerto-Rico is in the process of disappearing, and if ten more Irishmen come to America it too shall disappear. How can one call this a Marxist presentation, when upon examination this theory reveals itself to be utter madness? The CPUSA adopts a similar "theoretical thread" towards the working class movement, which in the previous period led to the conception of the "anti-monopoly coalition" and the Trotskyite movement has no coherent theory of presentation of anything, except a historic unity against the Soviet state.
It is no wonder that the Marxist movement in American has been the laughing stock of the world communist movement. Stalin should have jailed the American CPUSA leaders for simple-mindedness and made them read some books on American history.
Charles says, "If you are familiar with the Leninist approach to this, it implies not that the people in question are a nation, but that they have the right to choose to be one. Black people in the U.S. never decided to exercise that right to a separate nation."
Well comrade, what you espouse is the CPUSA approach, not Lenin's and have no conception of the colonial movement within the South following the Civil War; its transformation on the basis of the defeat of Reconstruction and then the transition from what in history is called, "from the Negro Bourgeois Democratic National Movement to the Negro Peoples National Liberation Movement."
Lenin's comments on the Negro Question occur in the period of the former, not the latter. In the area of the former slaveholding South during Lenin's time the anti-colonial struggle was a "Negro Bourgeois Democratic Movement" of the former slaves and whites against the Wall Street financed reaction and sharecropping system. Who on earth were the freedmen bureaus fighting and the farmers associations if not the Wall Street back landlords and reactionaries?
After the October Revolution a new political alignment was created on earth, where movements of the colonials were fought out on the basis of the proletariat's assertion for political authority. This is the reason the book "The October Revolution and the National Question" was written.
Now the concrete question is does the colony in the South still exist and are the Negroes - African Americans still the majority in the heart of the old slave plantation areas? The answer to both questions is of course yes. The issue is not self-determination for the black autoworker in Detroit, or a proposition that states simply because his skin is black this entitles him to the right of succession from Wall Street imperialism. Nor did the question of self-determination apply to the black workers in Detroit when the Comintern document was written.
"If you are familiar with the Leninist approach to this, (is this not sinning against reality and Lenin?) it implies not that the people in question are a nation, (that is black people everywhere in the continental United States) but that they have the right to choose to be one. (The black people in the United States have the right to choose to be a nation! Nations are products of history not multiple-choice questions! "To be or not to be a nation!" - gimme a break.)
Finally we are given the punch line:
"Black people in the U.S. never decided to exercise that right to a separate nation."
You present the entire question outside Marxism and common sense. Actually the natural and consistently expressed drive of the African Americans has been to become equal members of American society. There has been bitter struggle over the tactics, but there has never been serious struggle over goals. The Leninist presentation of the question demand that the communist and proletariat in the imperialist nation - not necessarily the colony, puts forth the right of self-determination up to and including the break up of the multi-national state structure.
It is outright bourgeois nationalism to state: "Black people in the U.S. never decided to exercise that right to a separate nation." What you espouse is bourgeois separatist thinking or the Marxist standpoint of "an authentic concept of race."
I guess if a group of black cats in Chicago, Detroit and Philly put forth a demand for their self-determination, we communist are not to explain that they misunderstand the national colonial question, and happen to reside in the imperial nation, but are to seriously consider this demand.
Sorry Comrade but what you bring to this question is horrendous, you need repentance. You make me want to throw my hands up in the air and scream "God save us" from the Marxist of "an authentic concept of race."
Melvin P
