Re:Text File Capitalist Slavery/Race

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>CB: You have not been persuasive.<

Obviously you jest.

Comrade, you first asked me to define the content of the Marxist analysis of the African American national colonial question concerning Booker T.  Washington and Dr. Dubois and I answered this question concretely and destroyed your racial analysis with a very clear dichotomy of these two men as representative of the bourgeoisie or capital. I am prepared to answer every single question you posed concerning the Marxist proletariat approach to the African American National Colonial Question.

Search the web for a level of Marxism such as I inherited. I state for the record that prior to the early 1970s and the formation of the Communist League and our publication of the first edition of the Negro National Colonial Question that no segment of the Marxist movement in the history of America formulated the amalgamation of the various people of African, European and "Native" heritage into a new people - the African American people, as the result of the passing from patriarchal forms of economic to the capitalist mode of production, as the genesis of the "African American National Colonial Question."

Here is the presentation of the African American National Colonial Question - again, from the standpoint of its development in the Marxist movement reconsolidated by the Third Communist International, after the mechanization of and in this new period. Let us begin at the beginning with Marx.


"In the second type of colonies - plantations- where commercial speculation figure from the start and production is intended for the world market, the capitalist mode of production exist, although only in a formal sense, since the slavery of Negroes precludes free wage laborers, which is the basis of capitalist production. But the business in which slaves are used is conducted by capitalist (italicized capitalist in original)."  Theory of Surplus Value Volume 2.

Further Marx says, "Where the capitalist outlook prevails, as on American plantations, this entire surplus value is regarded as profit . . ." Capital Volume 3 page 804.

Marx has a way with words. Comrade Charles please try and follow the logic or rather dialectic of the economic development that produced on the one hand a historically evolved people, not a race  - (stop pause and consider), and then - (the historically evolved people is now in back of us), a historically evolved economic unit that cannot be classified as feudal economic organization of production.

What is peculiar in "American" development is our specific capitalist development, not racial development. This peculiar development calls for - nay demands, an indigenousness and militant Marxism, although the various Marxist amongst the Native Bands would approach this matter from a different vantage point. Indeed, the intellectual sectors of the various Native Bands - who are Marxist or simply rigorous intellectuals, would approach the matter from the actual development of the process called by Marx, the primitive accumulation of capital or the historic process that separated the producer from the land as the fundamental attribute of an emerging mode of production. For the Native bands primitive accumulation of capital meant annihilation. The survived never forgets "his" annihilation even when he or she survives as part of the peoples who did the annihilation. For the black, primitive accumulation of capital meant slavery as it was transformed from a system riveted to! the production of use-values to a unity of the labor process called the production of exchange values.  For the Irish the potato famine and the people removal from the land in favor of wool or rather sheep describes the primitive accumulation of capital.  

Here at one blow, Marx clearly sets forth the character of capitalist slavery in North America in distinction to the slavery in some other areas in the Americas. Marx says:

"It is however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange value but the use value of the product predominated, the surplus labor will be limited by a given set of wants, which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus labor arises from the nature of production itself. Hence in antiquity, overwork become horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognized form of over-work." (Capital Volume 1).

Marx further explain slavery under capitalism:

"But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower form of slave labor, corvee labor. Etc. arte dawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalist mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming the principle interest, the civilized horrors of overwork are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slaver, serfdom, etc. hence the Negro labor is the Southern states of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate consumption. But in proportion as the export of cotton become of vital interest to these states, the over working of the Negro and sometimes the using up of his life in seven years labor becomes a factor in a calculated and calculating system."  (Capital Volume 1)

In the Poverty of Philosophy Marx shows the decisive role of slavery in the USNA in the development of capitalism:

"Direct slavery (repeat: D-I-R-E-C-T  S-L-A-V-E-R-Y) is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc,. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their values; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.

"Without slavery, North America, the most progressive of countries would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy - the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Abolish slavery and you will have wiped America off the map of nations."

Further in Capital Volume 1, Marx continues:

"Whilst the cotton industry introduced child slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world."

Capitalism is a specific unity of the labor process and value creation. Capitalism is the commodity producing society where human labor itself appears on the market as a commodity. We assert - the brand of Marxist from which I evolved, that this describes slavery at a specific point in its evolution.  Simply because this slave labor was sold all at once - in the form of the slave who is sold to an owner of capital, does not change the character of the exploitation of that labor. The "character of the exploitation" means to what purpose it was put to use. Marx points out:

"The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity of the labor-process and the process of creating value, is the production of commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the labor process and the process of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or capitalist production of commodities." Capital Volume 1)

Prior to the publication of the Negro National Colonial Question in 1972 by the Communist League, - of which I was a founding member,  no section of the Marxist movement - including Foner Sr. took a non-racial view of the development of capitalism peculiar to America. Therefore, they could not unravel, the "character of the exploitation" . . . and . . .(the)  purpose it was put to use."

I am very familiar with Philip Foner Sr. writings on the labor movement. The following conclusion is written in direct opposition to his body of Marxism.

When chattel slavery was brought to an end by the Civil War there was no possibility of the slave population of merging into the mainstream of Anglo American life. The reason is not racial antagonism as such or race hatred or the color of ones skin. The conditions of a labor shortage; an international demand for cotton; a starving, defenseless ex-slave population allowed for - no- forced, the continuation of segregation, rule by terror and then a return to the field driven almost as brutally as before, but this time as sharecroppers and hired hands instead of slaves, under the jackboot of Wall Street Imperialism instead of the defeated slave oligarchy.

We are not "basically saying the same thing" using different terms. We are stating the historic polarity in the communist movement on this question that has spanned generations. Comrade Charles you made a decision to use Eric Foner "Expert Report" on the African American peoples conditions of second-class citizenship. Why? Because you felt it was a position that represents your thinking. This is fine and honest. Yours is the position of the petty bourgeois intellectual. The African American people are not a race but a distinct people formed during the transition from patriarchal slavery to that of latifundia. We are not saying anything even similar.

>"CB: Slavery is a class formation or "factor". In this specific report, Foner discusses slavery. In general, Foner uses a class, race, gender analysis of U.S. history."<

Within Marxism there is no such thing as a "race and gender analysis of U.S. history." Marxism poses the question as how nationality and gender "moves" within the unity of productive forces and relations of production. Society is formed on the basis of the unity of productive forces and production relations. In respect to gender, which is rooted in the historic division of labor in society, it would be a mistake to view nationality and gender as similar, which they are not, although many think to the contrary. The question of the emergence of modern imperialism is fundamentally different than the historic division of labor and the resultant subjugation of women.

Nor is "slavery . . a class formation or 'factor'" as such. This is an incorrect reflection of the unity of the laboring process and the production of value because it is combined with racial theory and misses the point. The point is that the slaves rapidly passed from patriarchal production to latifundia or became "proletarians in chains" and the masters became capitalist.

"Labor in white skin will not be free while labor in Black skin in branded" has nothing what so ever to do with any theory of race. Skin color - a social index,  is not race or a theory of race. What next, the theory of a "Yellow" race! Sir, your theory that skin color proves the authenticity of race is horrendous, you need repentance, before I take attendance.

This above statement is a fighting slogan.  Prior to the formation of the Communist League - during the era of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, we coined several slogans in our propaganda and organizing campaigns: "we went from picking cotton to picking steel" was one. It would be absurd to therefore state that steel is an agricultural product that can be "picked." Another slogan was the "niggermation of the production process," which described the influx of the national minority worker into the bottom of the industrial infrastructure and the resultant speedup on everyone by capital. It would be absurd to draw from this that blacks were transformed into machinery as opposed to everyone being pinned tighter to the automatic processes of the machine.

There has never and will never be an authentic concept of race. This begs the question "how does one determine authenticity."  "Authenticity" itself is a bourgeois philosophic concept - in general, until it is wedded to class phenomenon, because the "power of observation" - in the context of Marxist analysis, is much more than a stream of psychic experiences in the subject or what is called subjective idealism. In other words you read, "Labor in Black skin" to mean the "black race" in your subjective discernment, while I read,  "labor in Black skin" to mean "proletarians in chains" who have by definition passed from patriarchal relations and been drawn into the vortex of the capitalist mode of production." Race as such never enters the picture.

The only other materialist conception of "authenticity" and the "power of observation" is wedded - in general, to a concrete analysis of genetic factors or biology, which is devoid of a racial concept. There is not such thing as race. It is a bourgeois philosophic concept of the superstructure - ideological realm.

Marx used the word "nigger" before and this does not make him a racist, which is the logic of your non-Marxist argument. This is so because the use of a word converts "it" into a harmonious theoretical system according to your presentation of the question.   

Anyone that dispassionately reads our exchange will derived from "my brand of Marxism" every fundamental concept of the Marxist science of society or the specific development of the capitalist mode of production in our country. Your presentation of race is utterly devoid of science and the evolution of the African American people as a people and class before the Civil War. In your petty bourgeois hands, race really means its reverse ideological reflection: "white people" as opposed to the inverted presentation of the question that twists the concept of "labor in Black skin" into racial theory.

Here is the rub.

No Marxist on earth worth their salt would dare make a presentation using the concept of "white people." Your presentation and that of the petty bourgeois intellectual uses the concept of "black people"  - not as a slogan, which would still be incorrect, but as an authentic concept of Marxism. Yes there are human being with "black skin" but these people are composed of classes and various "ethnic" and nationality groups, or rather various peoples that fall into the category called nations, advanced national groups, less developed national groups and not simply "tribes."

>CB: I am not "the" petit bourgeois.  Lenin was a petit bourgeois. I'm in that tradition. As I said before, your class status as proletarian does not justify making assertions without support in an argument. Make arguments not pronouncements.  The proletariat can only reach trade union consciousness not socialist consciousness, with respect to race, nationality or anything else, based on its unique experience at the point of production alone. <

Comrade you most certainly do represent the petty bourgeoisie as class motion on this question and Lenin did not. You are not in the tradition of Lenin. The idea that I have not written exhaustively on this question is sinning against reality. My personal class status as an industrial proletarian is very important, not simply to me as an individual but the comrades who will ponder by what means a communist proletarian finds his bearing amid a world of change. It is because I have lived as industrial proletarian as did my mother and father, that I am imbued with a profound class instinct and feel for the Anglo American worker, which allows me to unravel most question from a proletarian class instinct. Here is my proposition, I live and fight as a representative - a communist representative of the Anglo American proletariat, not the "black race." I am a Yankee, which is repeated over and over in all my writings and this is extremely important.

Posing the question the " proletariat can only reach trade union consciousness not socialist consciousness," is incorrect for several reasons. First of all class instinct spontaneously ascend higher than trade union consciousness in all countries and our history proves this. Read P. Foner again and his description of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). The reason I mentioned Lenin's fight with the "Workers Opposition" is because when the workers - industrial proletarians ascend higher than trade union consciousness, they demand the overthrow of their bosses and the formation of syndicates or what evolved into the "Anarcho-syndicalist" deviation to Marxism. This process manifested itself clearly and in finality after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and after "What Is To Be Done" was written.

>CB:  You have not presented one argument from your reading of Lenin. From my reading of Lenin, he agrees with what I am saying here.<

The reason I raise the battle Lenin waged against the Workers Opposition is because this argument is generations old and I have studied the question for a long period. You are incorrect and misunderstand Lenin because you abstract him from a historical time frame and try to direct apply his specific formulations to May 2002.  

The worker's do in fact reach socialist consciousness. Socialist consciousness is the spontaneous demand for the elimination of the bosses - no private ownership of production, and the formation of cooperative society on their own. Lenin wrote "What Is To Be Done" -  ("The proletariat can only reach trade union consciousness not socialist consciousness") a century ago under specific conditions of the existence of feudal economic and social conditions in a country of basically peasants. Lenin wrote his article on the "Workers Opposition" and Anarcho-syndicalism two decades later. Transporting his concept of the 1900's, "lock, stock and barrel," without application to our history and reading all of Lenin - including Volumes 30, 31 and 32, is a level of Marxism, "my brand" transcended 30 years ago at our birth and the Marxist movement transcended eighty years ago.
I have in mind his articles, "Once Again on the Trade Unions, the current situation and the mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin," "The Party Crisis," "Report on Party Unity and the anarcho-syndicalist deviation," "Summing Up Speech on Party Unity and the Anarcho-syndicalist Deviation," all located in Volume 32 of Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers Moscow, 1973.
What it is the workers do not reach spontaneously is Marxism - the science of society, and this is a conclusion that "my brand of Marxism" observed and lived.  

Now the proletarians class instinct - cooperative or socialist consciousness, overrides the "color factor" spontaneously. My class instinct tells me that the Marxist of race are out of kilter because I have lived and worked under industrial conditions with the Anglo-American workers for a life time. I live in the "black ghetto" - the lowest sector of the proletariat, but my life activity is industrial. The Anglo-American proletariat - "white proletariat," is profoundly class orientated and I am honored that they chose to elect me as their representative - repeatedly, because I am incapable of catering to the petty bourgeoisie, despite my historic anarcho-syndicalist tendency.

Comrade Charles, what you bring to this question under review sounds horrendous, you need repentance, before the Anglo-American proletariat takes attendance. We are on the same side, but my striving is to represent the Anglo-American proletariat and all questions will be subordinated to my class instinct, no matter how much the "womanist" scream injustice or the "black-ist" - theorist of race, scream "you don't understand the authentic concept of race."  I in fact do understand the "color question" profoundly and from the historic evolution of our specific communist movement.

Comrade Charles, you state:

">For Lenin, contra your assertions, there is such a thing as an oppressed race. It is a form of oppressed nationality, in terms of your reference to national and colonial questions." <

I will agree to this after you have been forcefully bent to the will of the Anglo-American proletariat's class instinct. Lenin use the word race to means peoples one hundred years ago. Today race is a bankrupt concept that masks the specific evolution of Wall Street imperialism and the colonial subjugation of the "South:" as a region. Lenin said the Negro people should be considered as an oppressed nation. The Negro people expressed the salient feature of the colonization of a nation without question, but what about using ones "gray matter" and thinking the question out 90 years after Lenin's statement?  

To the point: Lenin's use of the term "race" at the turn of the century, is qualitatively different - almost 100 years later, than the use of the term race in 2002. Lenin spoke to the world's workers and was a proletarian intellectual and not a petty bourgeoisie in his life activity. Specifically, Lenin's people - parents, were property owners and his father was a school administrator. Lenin kept impeccable receipts of his life activity and was funded based on the revolutionary movement in Russia and the border regions. Lenin was not a petty bourgeois intellectual and you represent them o this question under discussion. You call Lenin a petty bourgeoisie and your statement does not separate class inheritance from class stance.  You take a man or women class inheritance and laboring to be their class stance and instinct.  

Comrade, what our debate is over is an "authentic concept of race" versus "the Marxist presentation of the national-colonial question," which sticks like a bone in your petty bourgeois intellectual throat. You have not grasped the question based on the evolution of generation of Marxist or rather, side with the historic right wing of the CPUSA. You won't even honor Harry Haywood or Claudia Jones. Instead you side with the Anglo-American petty bourgeois intellectual and when I seek refuge within the most proletariat sector of the Anglo-American proletariat, you scream "give me proof."  

You were given proof in the class content of Booker T and Dr. Dubois as representatives of the colonial bourgeois spilt into the "comprador bourgeoisie" - Sambo (Booker T), and the national bourgeois (Dr. Dubois and Malcolm X).  You will not acknowledge simple and obvious truth because it means repudiating your concept of race.

One cannot not prove the obvious to the petty bourgeois intellectual, who cannot criticize himself and "keep stepping." Prove racial theory, which is impossible Mister man of an "authentic concept of race."  You have written "black is beautiful" thirty years after the fact! Your task is to sublate 100 years of history and an industrial worker has presented you with the theoretical conclusions to accomplish this task. I had to come out of industry - not because I am "me" - but because of our history, which I do not reject.

I have proven the national colonial question. You will never prove an authentic concept of race - and be inside Marxism. You are the petty bourgeois intellectual on this question and resort to Eric Foner and legal Marxism.

Charles, you miss the theory and the presentation of the question from the standpoint of the mode of production. I am the proletariat on this question and this isn't subjective. You insult the most proletarian sector of the Anglo-American proletariat because we have "flaws" and do not conform to your level of purity.   

Melvin P.