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<h2>George Breitman <em>et al.</em></h2>
<h1>Eight Ex-GIs Raise Objection to<br>
Our Demand for Military Training<br>
Under Control of Trade Unions</h1>
<h3>(July/August 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_32" target="new">Vol. X No. 32</a>, 10 August 1946, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="letter"></a>
<h3>A Letter</h3>
<p class="date">Chicago, Ill. <br>
July 24, 1946</p>
<p class="fst">Editor:</p>
<p class="fst">We the undersigned wholly disagree with Phase No. 7 in <strong>The Militant</strong>
<em>Program</em>, which is as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Military training of workers, financed by the Government, but under control of the trade unions! Trade union wages for all workers in the armed forces.”</p>
<p class="fst">We sincerely believe this phase would be used for personal gains and ambition, by mercenary leaders in the various trade unions. This we believe would lead to fascism, under a new title.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="33%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td width="33%">
<p>ALL EX-GIs</p>
</td>
<td width="33%">
<p class="fst">Respectfully submitted,<br>
<em>E. Stack<br>
F. Mauro<br>
N. Thermos<br>
R. Coccio<br>
S. Rizzo<br>
Wm. Klick<br>
Paul Iaccino<br>
Sig Dedo</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="reply"></a>
<h3>And an Answer</h3>
<p class="fst">The editors of <strong>The Militant</strong> have asked me, as a former soldier, to answer your letter and explain the meaning of the slogan with which you disagree. They tell me that you are not only ex-GIs, but also members of an important local of the CIO-United Auto Workers in Chicago. That means you and I have at least two things in common: We know what life is like in the armed forces. And we are concerned with the best interests of the labor movement.</p>
<p>Point 7 in <em>Our Program</em> (on page 5 of this issue) is a very condensed slogan of an idea hard to explain in a sentence or two, and we are glad of this opportunity to explain its meaning at greater length.</p>
<p>Our program as a whole – Point 7, and all the other points – is based on the fact that there is a struggle going on all the time between the two most important forces in our country; the capitalist class and the working class. In order for the working class to be successful in that struggle, it must follow an independent policy and create its own organizations.</p>
<p>On the economic field the workers have to create their own organizations, the unions. If they don’t do this, if they act alone and individually, then it is extremely easy for the employers to defeat them, cut their wages, lengthen their hours, speed them up mercilessly, and so on. Most workers have learned this from their own experience.</p>
<p>On the political field it is also necessary for the workers to have their own organization, an independent labor party. Without a party seeking to take power in the interests of labor, the capitalists are able by their hold on the government and their two parties to pass and enforce all kinds of laws weakening and crippling the labor movement. Many workers have begun to understand this, and that is why the sentiment for an independent labor party is today greater than ever.<br>
</p>
<h4>Independent Policy Needed</h4>
<p class="fst">But it is also necessary for the workers to have an independent policy in the military field. Not many workers understand this yet, but we are certain that experience will show them the need for this too. Let me try to explain why.</p>
<p>The capitalists have many ways of keeping themselves in power. They have the schools and the radio and the newspapers and the movies, where they get their propaganda across. They also have the government – the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court, which all look out for the best interests of the Sixty Families that rule this country. But that isn’t all. In case these aren’t enough, they also have the police and the courts and the prisons – and the armed forces, especially the General Staff.</p>
<p>There isn’t another institution in the country which is as anti-democratic as the general staff. By its very nature the general staff is dictatorial through and through. You have been in the armed forces, so you know that it is hard to distinguish between fascism and the way the Army and Navy are run.<br>
</p>
<h4>Role of the Brass</h4>
<p class="fst">The brass hats have no use for democracy. They are enemies of labor and everything the labor movement stands for. By their training, by their outlook the (generals become the fiercest defenders of the ruling class – and the more dictatorial the ruling class is, the better the brass hats like it.</p>
<p>This has always been the case. In Germany the officer caste was the first important group to back Hitler and bring him to power. In Italy too the generals sided with the fascists. The General Staff is no different in this country. After the workers have created their own party and try to establish a Workers and Farmers Government, the capitalists are going to try to overthrow it by violence, and their most dependable supporters will be the anti-democratic generals.</p>
<p>At this point, let me recall what happened ir. Spain just ten years ago, because that experience has a very direct connection with the slogan of military training under trade union control.</p>
<p>A new government was elected in Spain in 1936 by the overwhelming majority of the workers and poor farmers. It wasn’t a revolutionary government, but it did have a program of mild reforms (something along the lines of the New Deal). The capitalists refused to stand for such a government, even though its election had been perfectly legal. So they prepared to overthrow it. And they naturally turned to the most reactionary elements in the country to do their work for them – the generals.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Lesson of Spain</h4>
<p class="fst">These generals were headed by Franco, who had a position in the Army something like that held by Eisenhower in the U.S. today. They did not have much following among the population as a whole, but they did have complete control over most of the men in the armed forces. They organized a conspiracy among the generals, and used their control over the army to stage a rebellion against the government for the purpose of establishing fascism.</p>
<p>The government had only a small part of the army to support it. To fight fascism, the unions and the working class parties had to organize their own divisions and send, them to the front lines to fight the fascist troops. If not for these workers’ military units, Franco would have won in short order. How much better it would have been if the workers had received military training under the control of their unions before the fascist insurrection! Perhaps they could even have crushed Franco’s forces before Hitler and Mussolini were able to reinforce him.- Perhaps the whole world situation would have been changed by that.</p>
<p>As you have already noticed, we are not pacifists. We are living in a period when all the great Issues are decided by force or threat of force. Therefore we never tell the workers that they can solve any of their problems by pacifism, by refusing to fight.</p>
<p>On the contrary, we believe that the labor movement can solve its problems only through struggle. When the employers attack the conditions of the workers in a plant, we believe in fighting back, and we tell the workers that. When scabs or cops try to break through a picket line, we believe in self-defense. When vigilantes or the Ku Klux Klan attack workers’ organizations and meetings, we call on the workers to resist by forming workers’ defense guards. When the fascists will try to set up their dictatorship (and some of them are laying the groundwork now), we call for armed struggle to defeat them. The workers can never defend their gains, let alone win anything, by refusing to fight. And in order for them to be able to win, they must know HOW to fight. That is why we are in favor of military training for the workers.</p>
<p>But we are not in favor of capitalist conscription. We are opposed to giving the brass hats control over millions of young men. We don’t want to see the power of the militarists increased, the way it was in most European countries. We don’t want to give them the force for another imperialist war or to dominate colonial countries. We know that the militarists are anti-labor to the core, and that they will use added power against the labor movement. (Just a few weeks ago they were all ready to use the Army and Navy to break the railroad and maritime strikes.) For these reasons we opposed the extension of the draft.</p>
<p>Since we are in favor of military training and opposed to capitalist conscription, we worked out a bill which we want introduced in Congress, and will be produced there if any of our candidates get elected in November. This is what we propose:</p>
<p>Let the government appropriate the necessary money to give the workers military training. But instead of putting these millions of workers under the control of the brass hats, let their training be under the control or their own class organizations, the unions.</p>
<p>Furthermore we want this system of military training to be democratic – unlike training in the Army. We want the workers to retain all their democratic rights. In this way they will be able to point out and correct errors and likewise. take steps leading to the removal of officers who are incompetent, hostile or indifferent to the interests of the workers.</p>
<p>Another thing we dislike about the regular army is that most of its officers are drawn from the ranks of the capitalist class. Under these conditions, the same things could very well happen here that happened in Spain. Therefore our bill not only provides military training for the workers, but also officer-training for those workers who display leadership qualities and who are loyal to the interests of the labor movement.</p>
<p>These are the ideas at the bottom of the brief Point No. 7 in <em>Our Program</em>.<br>
</p>
<h4>How to Pose the Question</h4>
<p class="fst">So I ask you to think over the question of military training. You know what it was – and is – like in the Army, You saw what the caste system was – with the officers living an entirely different kind of life from the rank and file. You saw or heard of incompetent officers needlessly sacrificing the lives of men who could be court-martialed for even protesting ... You know about the court-martial system, where an enlisted man practically never has a chance, even when he is completely in the right. You know race discrimination and segregation in the Army was as bad as anything in the South.</p>
<p>We used to talk about it a lot in our outfit. Some of the men said there wasn’t much difference they could see between Army life and fascism. Others said they were sure of one thing – they didn’t want their kid brothers or sons to ever be in the Army. Once we had an “orientation” discussion and everybody in the outfit except one man was against peacetime conscription.</p>
<p>We think military training is a necessary thing today. The question then is: <em>Who is going to control it</em> – the workers (through their unions) or the enemies of labor (through the General Staff)? This is how the issue is really posed. I think that is the way you, too, should pose the question.</p>
<p>Is there a danger that certain ambitious and unscrupulous union leaders might try to use their leadership for their own selfish interests? Of course there is. But it will be far easier to fight against such a possible menace than it is to fight against the present and certain danger arising from brass hat control of military training.<br>
</p>
<h4>One Great Difference</h4>
<p class="fst">Because as we have already explained, one great difference about union control of military training is its democratic nature. The rank and file will be able to protest (which they are not able to do now.) The rank and file will have democratic rights and will be able to form their own grievance committees (which they are not able to do now). The rank and file will be able to vote misleaders out of their posts (which they are not able to do now). In that way, the workers taking military training under union control will be able to prevent such training from being used against the labor movement (which it is very difficult for them to do under the brass hats).</p>
<p>One thing is sure, workers receiving military training under such a system could not be used to break strikes. Nor help the fascists set up their dictatorship. On the contrary, workers trained under such a system would throw fear into the hearts of all strikebreakers and fascists!</p>
<p>No one will dispute the daggers arising from a corrupt leadership in the unions. But that is no argument against unions, is it? Suppose a worker told you he didn’t want to join the union because its leaders might use their office for selfish ends. Wouldn’t you answer him somewhat like this: “That may be true, but it is better to be in a union with a poor leadership than not to be in a union at all. Join the union and then fight with us to improve the leadership.” And that answer would be 100 per cent correct. The same kind of reasoning can and should be applied to our slogan.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Source of Fascism</h4>
<p class="fst">If you are troubled by corruption and mercenary leaders, then a good place to do something about it is certainly in the present military leadership. Read about the scandals coming out before the Mead Committee in Washington, and you will see that the worst union leaders are pikers alongside of the officers in charge of war contracts. The real source of fascism is not the union leaders, because the first thing fascism does is destroy the labor movement. The real source is capitalism and its political and military supporters.</p>
<p>I hope that my explanation has been convincing, and that you will think further about this matter. If you still have doubts or disagreements, I am sure that the editors of <strong>The Militant</strong> will permit us to continue this discussion in its columns. Meanwhile, if you want to read more about it, I recommend the pamphlet <strong>Socialism On Trial</strong>, which contains James P. Cannon’s very educational testimony on this and similar questions in the famous Minneapolis’ Labor Trial of 1941.</p>
<p class="author"><em>George Breitman</em></p>
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Breitman Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
George Breitman et al.
Eight Ex-GIs Raise Objection to
Our Demand for Military Training
Under Control of Trade Unions
(July/August 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 32, 10 August 1946, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A Letter
Chicago, Ill.
July 24, 1946
Editor:
We the undersigned wholly disagree with Phase No. 7 in The Militant
Program, which is as follows:
“Military training of workers, financed by the Government, but under control of the trade unions! Trade union wages for all workers in the armed forces.”
We sincerely believe this phase would be used for personal gains and ambition, by mercenary leaders in the various trade unions. This we believe would lead to fascism, under a new title.
ALL EX-GIs
Respectfully submitted,
E. Stack
F. Mauro
N. Thermos
R. Coccio
S. Rizzo
Wm. Klick
Paul Iaccino
Sig Dedo
*
And an Answer
The editors of The Militant have asked me, as a former soldier, to answer your letter and explain the meaning of the slogan with which you disagree. They tell me that you are not only ex-GIs, but also members of an important local of the CIO-United Auto Workers in Chicago. That means you and I have at least two things in common: We know what life is like in the armed forces. And we are concerned with the best interests of the labor movement.
Point 7 in Our Program (on page 5 of this issue) is a very condensed slogan of an idea hard to explain in a sentence or two, and we are glad of this opportunity to explain its meaning at greater length.
Our program as a whole – Point 7, and all the other points – is based on the fact that there is a struggle going on all the time between the two most important forces in our country; the capitalist class and the working class. In order for the working class to be successful in that struggle, it must follow an independent policy and create its own organizations.
On the economic field the workers have to create their own organizations, the unions. If they don’t do this, if they act alone and individually, then it is extremely easy for the employers to defeat them, cut their wages, lengthen their hours, speed them up mercilessly, and so on. Most workers have learned this from their own experience.
On the political field it is also necessary for the workers to have their own organization, an independent labor party. Without a party seeking to take power in the interests of labor, the capitalists are able by their hold on the government and their two parties to pass and enforce all kinds of laws weakening and crippling the labor movement. Many workers have begun to understand this, and that is why the sentiment for an independent labor party is today greater than ever.
Independent Policy Needed
But it is also necessary for the workers to have an independent policy in the military field. Not many workers understand this yet, but we are certain that experience will show them the need for this too. Let me try to explain why.
The capitalists have many ways of keeping themselves in power. They have the schools and the radio and the newspapers and the movies, where they get their propaganda across. They also have the government – the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court, which all look out for the best interests of the Sixty Families that rule this country. But that isn’t all. In case these aren’t enough, they also have the police and the courts and the prisons – and the armed forces, especially the General Staff.
There isn’t another institution in the country which is as anti-democratic as the general staff. By its very nature the general staff is dictatorial through and through. You have been in the armed forces, so you know that it is hard to distinguish between fascism and the way the Army and Navy are run.
Role of the Brass
The brass hats have no use for democracy. They are enemies of labor and everything the labor movement stands for. By their training, by their outlook the (generals become the fiercest defenders of the ruling class – and the more dictatorial the ruling class is, the better the brass hats like it.
This has always been the case. In Germany the officer caste was the first important group to back Hitler and bring him to power. In Italy too the generals sided with the fascists. The General Staff is no different in this country. After the workers have created their own party and try to establish a Workers and Farmers Government, the capitalists are going to try to overthrow it by violence, and their most dependable supporters will be the anti-democratic generals.
At this point, let me recall what happened ir. Spain just ten years ago, because that experience has a very direct connection with the slogan of military training under trade union control.
A new government was elected in Spain in 1936 by the overwhelming majority of the workers and poor farmers. It wasn’t a revolutionary government, but it did have a program of mild reforms (something along the lines of the New Deal). The capitalists refused to stand for such a government, even though its election had been perfectly legal. So they prepared to overthrow it. And they naturally turned to the most reactionary elements in the country to do their work for them – the generals.
The Lesson of Spain
These generals were headed by Franco, who had a position in the Army something like that held by Eisenhower in the U.S. today. They did not have much following among the population as a whole, but they did have complete control over most of the men in the armed forces. They organized a conspiracy among the generals, and used their control over the army to stage a rebellion against the government for the purpose of establishing fascism.
The government had only a small part of the army to support it. To fight fascism, the unions and the working class parties had to organize their own divisions and send, them to the front lines to fight the fascist troops. If not for these workers’ military units, Franco would have won in short order. How much better it would have been if the workers had received military training under the control of their unions before the fascist insurrection! Perhaps they could even have crushed Franco’s forces before Hitler and Mussolini were able to reinforce him.- Perhaps the whole world situation would have been changed by that.
As you have already noticed, we are not pacifists. We are living in a period when all the great Issues are decided by force or threat of force. Therefore we never tell the workers that they can solve any of their problems by pacifism, by refusing to fight.
On the contrary, we believe that the labor movement can solve its problems only through struggle. When the employers attack the conditions of the workers in a plant, we believe in fighting back, and we tell the workers that. When scabs or cops try to break through a picket line, we believe in self-defense. When vigilantes or the Ku Klux Klan attack workers’ organizations and meetings, we call on the workers to resist by forming workers’ defense guards. When the fascists will try to set up their dictatorship (and some of them are laying the groundwork now), we call for armed struggle to defeat them. The workers can never defend their gains, let alone win anything, by refusing to fight. And in order for them to be able to win, they must know HOW to fight. That is why we are in favor of military training for the workers.
But we are not in favor of capitalist conscription. We are opposed to giving the brass hats control over millions of young men. We don’t want to see the power of the militarists increased, the way it was in most European countries. We don’t want to give them the force for another imperialist war or to dominate colonial countries. We know that the militarists are anti-labor to the core, and that they will use added power against the labor movement. (Just a few weeks ago they were all ready to use the Army and Navy to break the railroad and maritime strikes.) For these reasons we opposed the extension of the draft.
Since we are in favor of military training and opposed to capitalist conscription, we worked out a bill which we want introduced in Congress, and will be produced there if any of our candidates get elected in November. This is what we propose:
Let the government appropriate the necessary money to give the workers military training. But instead of putting these millions of workers under the control of the brass hats, let their training be under the control or their own class organizations, the unions.
Furthermore we want this system of military training to be democratic – unlike training in the Army. We want the workers to retain all their democratic rights. In this way they will be able to point out and correct errors and likewise. take steps leading to the removal of officers who are incompetent, hostile or indifferent to the interests of the workers.
Another thing we dislike about the regular army is that most of its officers are drawn from the ranks of the capitalist class. Under these conditions, the same things could very well happen here that happened in Spain. Therefore our bill not only provides military training for the workers, but also officer-training for those workers who display leadership qualities and who are loyal to the interests of the labor movement.
These are the ideas at the bottom of the brief Point No. 7 in Our Program.
How to Pose the Question
So I ask you to think over the question of military training. You know what it was – and is – like in the Army, You saw what the caste system was – with the officers living an entirely different kind of life from the rank and file. You saw or heard of incompetent officers needlessly sacrificing the lives of men who could be court-martialed for even protesting ... You know about the court-martial system, where an enlisted man practically never has a chance, even when he is completely in the right. You know race discrimination and segregation in the Army was as bad as anything in the South.
We used to talk about it a lot in our outfit. Some of the men said there wasn’t much difference they could see between Army life and fascism. Others said they were sure of one thing – they didn’t want their kid brothers or sons to ever be in the Army. Once we had an “orientation” discussion and everybody in the outfit except one man was against peacetime conscription.
We think military training is a necessary thing today. The question then is: Who is going to control it – the workers (through their unions) or the enemies of labor (through the General Staff)? This is how the issue is really posed. I think that is the way you, too, should pose the question.
Is there a danger that certain ambitious and unscrupulous union leaders might try to use their leadership for their own selfish interests? Of course there is. But it will be far easier to fight against such a possible menace than it is to fight against the present and certain danger arising from brass hat control of military training.
One Great Difference
Because as we have already explained, one great difference about union control of military training is its democratic nature. The rank and file will be able to protest (which they are not able to do now.) The rank and file will have democratic rights and will be able to form their own grievance committees (which they are not able to do now). The rank and file will be able to vote misleaders out of their posts (which they are not able to do now). In that way, the workers taking military training under union control will be able to prevent such training from being used against the labor movement (which it is very difficult for them to do under the brass hats).
One thing is sure, workers receiving military training under such a system could not be used to break strikes. Nor help the fascists set up their dictatorship. On the contrary, workers trained under such a system would throw fear into the hearts of all strikebreakers and fascists!
No one will dispute the daggers arising from a corrupt leadership in the unions. But that is no argument against unions, is it? Suppose a worker told you he didn’t want to join the union because its leaders might use their office for selfish ends. Wouldn’t you answer him somewhat like this: “That may be true, but it is better to be in a union with a poor leadership than not to be in a union at all. Join the union and then fight with us to improve the leadership.” And that answer would be 100 per cent correct. The same kind of reasoning can and should be applied to our slogan.
The Source of Fascism
If you are troubled by corruption and mercenary leaders, then a good place to do something about it is certainly in the present military leadership. Read about the scandals coming out before the Mead Committee in Washington, and you will see that the worst union leaders are pikers alongside of the officers in charge of war contracts. The real source of fascism is not the union leaders, because the first thing fascism does is destroy the labor movement. The real source is capitalism and its political and military supporters.
I hope that my explanation has been convincing, and that you will think further about this matter. If you still have doubts or disagreements, I am sure that the editors of The Militant will permit us to continue this discussion in its columns. Meanwhile, if you want to read more about it, I recommend the pamphlet Socialism On Trial, which contains James P. Cannon’s very educational testimony on this and similar questions in the famous Minneapolis’ Labor Trial of 1941.
George Breitman
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(17 January 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_03" target="new">Vol 6 No. 3</a>, 17 January 1942, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>15 Other Negro Heroes</h4>
<p class="fst">After reading again the other day about the heroic exploits of the Negro mess attendant on the sinking battleship, <i>U.S.S. Arizona</i>, my mind went back to the case of 15 other Negro mess attendants on another Navy ship, the <i>U.S.S. Philadelphia</i>.</p>
<p>The <i>Arizona</i> mess attendant, I thought, “forgot his place,” which, according to Navy regulations, is down in the galley. On Dec. 7, at Pearl Harbc|r, he “forgot his place” and seized a machine gun and used it till his ammunition ran out.</p>
<p>The 15 <i>Philadelphia</i> mess attendants also “forgot their place.” They had joined the Navy to become sailors and soon learned that in the Navy Negroes can serve only as sea-going dishwashers and lackeys. On top of this, they were subjected to all kinds of insult and abuse from their officers.</p>
<p>They sat down and wrote a letter to a Negro newspaper, <b>The Pittsburgh Courier</b>, protesting against the Jim Crow regulations which bar them from Navy positions outside of the mess division, and expressing the desire to get training in the Navy just as all other sailors do. They all signed their names to the letter.</p>
<p>As soon as the letter was printed, they were placed under arrest. A few weeks later, during the first week of Dec., 1940, almost a year to the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the case had reached its end, they were fired out of the Navy with “undesirable discharges”— for “the good of the service,” as it was put by Admiral Nimitz, then chief of the Bureau of Navigation.</p>
<p>I was reminded of those 15 Negro sailors because to my mind, although they did not get honorable mention, although practically nobody wrote about their bravery, their action was every bit as heroic as that which characterized the mess attendant on the <i>Arizona</i>. Their action in writing that letter should be remembered and honored just as much as the different kind of action of the <i>Arizona</i> sailor.</p>
<p><i>P.S. After looking up the stories about the 15 sailors printed in this paper over a year ago, I find that at the time they signed that letter, the </i><i><b>Philadelphia</b></i><i> was stationed at ... Pearl Harbor.</i><br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The Symbols of Democracy</h4>
<p class="fst">Democracy apparently means different things to different people. It certainly doesn’t mean the same thing to an auto magnate and an auto worker thrown out of his job. It doesn’t mean the same thing for a worker on strike and a boss trying to break a strike. It doesn’t mean the same thing for a lynch mob and the intended victim of a lynch mob. It doesn’t mean the same thing for Secretary of the Navy Knox and ... a Negro mess attendant.</p>
<p>But what we want to discuss here is not democracy, but a symbol of democracy. We are certain that there are many symbols of democracy, and that they differ as much and as often as the definitions of democracy itself. To a member of the Sixty Families, democracy's best symbol is probably a dollar sign. A rope and a torch would go good as a symbol of democracy as it is understood by the defenders of Jim Crow.</p>
<p>Mr. S. Sloan Colt, Director of the Red Cross War Drive, has his own ideas about democracy and its symbols.</p>
<p>In reply to a letter from a doctor protesting the refusal of the Red Cross to accept blood from Negroes for its blood bank, Colt wrote as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Red Cross is now able to obtain from white donors enough blood to keep all the processing plants fully occupied so that the total amount of blood plasma available to the armed forces is not lessened by our inability to accept Negro donors.”</p>
<p class="fst">If this statement has any pertinence, it is that the Red Cross doesn’t care very much if Negroes are angry about being Jim Crowed even when they want to donate their very blood, as long as they were able to get the amount of blood they want from white people. This implies that maybe later on, when it needs more blood than it can get from white donors, the Red Cross will do something about the protests of the Negro people.</p>
<p>Then after admitting that there are no scientific objections to transfusions of the blood of Negroes, Colt went on to say:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“<i>It seems that the feelings and perhaps even the prejudices of individuals to whom transfusions are given should be respected as a symbol of democracy.”</i></p>
<p class="fst">If Jim Crow prejudices are the symbol, then what must be the democracy they symbolize for which Negroes are called on to give up their lives?<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Joe Louis and the Navy</h4>
<p class="fst">Joe Louis was on the receiving end of a lot of applause on Jan. 9 because he risked his title in a bout against Buddy Baer without getting a nickel in return. Even Secretary of the Navy Knox sent a telegram and a special representative for the occasion. All of Louis’ share of the purse was contributed to the Naval Relief Fund.</p>
<p>But if Louis had gone down to the Naval recruiting station the next morning, he would still have been told that they were sorry, “but Negroes are admitted into the Navy only as mess attendants.”</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(17 January 1942)
From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 3, 17 January 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
15 Other Negro Heroes
After reading again the other day about the heroic exploits of the Negro mess attendant on the sinking battleship, U.S.S. Arizona, my mind went back to the case of 15 other Negro mess attendants on another Navy ship, the U.S.S. Philadelphia.
The Arizona mess attendant, I thought, “forgot his place,” which, according to Navy regulations, is down in the galley. On Dec. 7, at Pearl Harbc|r, he “forgot his place” and seized a machine gun and used it till his ammunition ran out.
The 15 Philadelphia mess attendants also “forgot their place.” They had joined the Navy to become sailors and soon learned that in the Navy Negroes can serve only as sea-going dishwashers and lackeys. On top of this, they were subjected to all kinds of insult and abuse from their officers.
They sat down and wrote a letter to a Negro newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier, protesting against the Jim Crow regulations which bar them from Navy positions outside of the mess division, and expressing the desire to get training in the Navy just as all other sailors do. They all signed their names to the letter.
As soon as the letter was printed, they were placed under arrest. A few weeks later, during the first week of Dec., 1940, almost a year to the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the case had reached its end, they were fired out of the Navy with “undesirable discharges”— for “the good of the service,” as it was put by Admiral Nimitz, then chief of the Bureau of Navigation.
I was reminded of those 15 Negro sailors because to my mind, although they did not get honorable mention, although practically nobody wrote about their bravery, their action was every bit as heroic as that which characterized the mess attendant on the Arizona. Their action in writing that letter should be remembered and honored just as much as the different kind of action of the Arizona sailor.
P.S. After looking up the stories about the 15 sailors printed in this paper over a year ago, I find that at the time they signed that letter, the Philadelphia was stationed at ... Pearl Harbor.
The Symbols of Democracy
Democracy apparently means different things to different people. It certainly doesn’t mean the same thing to an auto magnate and an auto worker thrown out of his job. It doesn’t mean the same thing for a worker on strike and a boss trying to break a strike. It doesn’t mean the same thing for a lynch mob and the intended victim of a lynch mob. It doesn’t mean the same thing for Secretary of the Navy Knox and ... a Negro mess attendant.
But what we want to discuss here is not democracy, but a symbol of democracy. We are certain that there are many symbols of democracy, and that they differ as much and as often as the definitions of democracy itself. To a member of the Sixty Families, democracy's best symbol is probably a dollar sign. A rope and a torch would go good as a symbol of democracy as it is understood by the defenders of Jim Crow.
Mr. S. Sloan Colt, Director of the Red Cross War Drive, has his own ideas about democracy and its symbols.
In reply to a letter from a doctor protesting the refusal of the Red Cross to accept blood from Negroes for its blood bank, Colt wrote as follows:
“The Red Cross is now able to obtain from white donors enough blood to keep all the processing plants fully occupied so that the total amount of blood plasma available to the armed forces is not lessened by our inability to accept Negro donors.”
If this statement has any pertinence, it is that the Red Cross doesn’t care very much if Negroes are angry about being Jim Crowed even when they want to donate their very blood, as long as they were able to get the amount of blood they want from white people. This implies that maybe later on, when it needs more blood than it can get from white donors, the Red Cross will do something about the protests of the Negro people.
Then after admitting that there are no scientific objections to transfusions of the blood of Negroes, Colt went on to say:
“It seems that the feelings and perhaps even the prejudices of individuals to whom transfusions are given should be respected as a symbol of democracy.”
If Jim Crow prejudices are the symbol, then what must be the democracy they symbolize for which Negroes are called on to give up their lives?
Joe Louis and the Navy
Joe Louis was on the receiving end of a lot of applause on Jan. 9 because he risked his title in a bout against Buddy Baer without getting a nickel in return. Even Secretary of the Navy Knox sent a telegram and a special representative for the occasion. All of Louis’ share of the purse was contributed to the Naval Relief Fund.
But if Louis had gone down to the Naval recruiting station the next morning, he would still have been told that they were sorry, “but Negroes are admitted into the Navy only as mess attendants.”
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>In Defense Of Black Power</h1>
<h3>(October 1966)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/isr/index.htm#isr67_01" target="new">vol. 28 No. 1</a>, January–February 1967, pp. 4–16.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Up to now the capitalist masters of this country have been able to control or contain the efforts of black people to liberate themselves. Directly and indirectly, they have set down the rules and the boundaries within which the Negro organizations have operated. As a result, the leaders of those organizations have usually been “the right kind” — moderates and liberals, who know what they may and may not do, who abide by the rules and do not cross the boundaries. The main reason why black Americans are not closer to their goal of freedom, justice and equality is that they have lacked a mass movement and a leadership truly independent of the ruling class, its ideology and its institutions.</p>
<p>Malcolm X set out early in 1964 to build such a movement, but he was killed before he could do more than expound some basic principles and offer a personal example of fearless independence. The Black Power tendency is an attempt, starting from a slightly different direction, to do essentially the same thing that Malcolm tried to do. Its appearance marks another stage in the radicalization of the Negro people, in accord with the law that the more independent any oppressed group is of the ruling class, the more radical it tends to be.</p>
<p>Organizationally, the Black Power tendency is only in the early stages of its development; the various groups and individuals who have raised the Black Power banner have not yet defined their relations to each other or united into a single movement or federation. But numerically it is already considerably stronger than the organized adherents of Malcolm’s movement. The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), groups in the new tendency, are national organizations, with thousands of members or sympathizers. They have an experienced cadre of dedicated leaders and activists, hardened in battle along many fronts and equipped with a variety of skills. They represent the best of the new generation of young freedom fighters who appeared on the scene around 1960, with a consistently more militant outlook than that of previous generations and an enviable ability to learn from experience and grow.</p>
<p>Ideologically and politically, the Black Power tendency is also still in the process of crystallization. But its direction-to the left-is unmistakably indicated by the way it has broken away from several of the premises and shibboleths of the old “civil rights” consensus. Internationalist and anti-imperialist, it expresses solidarity with the worldwide struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism, condemns the US war in Vietnam and rejects the contention that the freedom movement “should not mix civil rights and foreign policy.” It spurns the straitjacket of “non-violence” and proclaims the right of self-defense. It challenges the fraudulent claim that freedom can be won through the passage of a series of civil-rights laws that are largely un-enforced and benefit mainly middle-class Negroes.</p>
<p>Some of its adherents still believe in working inside the Democratic Party, but others advocate a complete break with the Democrats and Republicans and the establishment of independent black or black-led parties — not only in Lowndes County, Ala., but in the Northern ghettos. Some accept capitalism; others are talking rather vaguely about a cooperative based economy for the black community that they think would be neither capitalist nor socialist; and there is also evidently a pro-socialist grouping, as was shown when delegates at a Black Power planning conference in Washington Sept. 3 posed the need to “determine which is more politically feasible for the advancement of black power, capitalism or socialism.”</p>
<p>It was therefore to be expected, and logical, that Johnson, Humphrey and the capitalist brainwashers would oppose and attack Black Power, and not surprising that most liberals tagged along behind them. But how account for the attitudes of the Socialist and Communist parties and the forces close to them? Why do they respond with distress, fear or hostility, to the development of a radical and potentially pro-socialist movement among the Negro people?<br>
</p>
<h4>Radical Critics of Black Power</h4>
<p class="fst">Bayard Rustin, social-democrat and director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, is one of the harshest critics of Black Power. Writing in the September issue of <strong>Commentary</strong>, he says that it “not only lacks any real value for the civil rights movement, but that its propagation is positively harmful. It diverts the movement from a meaningful debate over strategy and tactics, it isolates the Negro community, and it encourages the growth of anti-Negro forces.” SNCC and CORE once “awakened the country, but now they emerge isolated and demoralized, shouting a slogan that may afford a momentary satisfaction but that is calculated to destroy them and their movement.”</p>
<p>Paul Feldman, a member of the Socialist Party’s national executive committee and editor of its paper, <strong>New America</strong>, is equally antagonistic. In the June 30 issue of his paper and in the September-October issue of <strong>Dissent</strong>, he says that Black Power “as it is practiced by SNCC means only the continuation of protest outside the political framework.” “Slogans like ‘black power’ are substitutes for some painful rethinking; they are an attempt to stir a lagging movement by injecting heady verbal stimulants.” In the same way that the social-democrats in the McCarthy era used to criticize Truman and Eisenhower for “encouraging communism,” Feldman charges that:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Through the inadequacy of its approach to poverty and unemployment, the Johnson administration has encouraged nationalistic tendencies in both the civil rights movement and the Negro community.”</p>
<p class="fst">James E. Jackson, a leading Communist Party spokesman, is more circumspect than Rustin and Feldman. That is because he burned his fingers last June at the CP’s national convention when he criticized Black Power; among the younger members of the CP and among the DuBois Clubs there is sympathy for Black Power, and even some sentiment for black nationalism, and they voiced strong objection to Jackson’s remarks. As a result, Jackson’s article in the September issue of <strong>Political Affairs</strong> finds some favorable things to say about the Black Power tendency, and he couches his opposition to its essential characteristics in softer language than the kind he used to use about Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams. But this does not alter the CP’s basic position, which remains, like that of the SP’s, opposed to the most radical aspects and implications of Black Power.</p>
<p>In their efforts to belittle the Black Power tendency, Rustin and Feldman occasionally go to ridiculous lengths. “In some quarters,” Rustin says, Black Power connotes “a repudiation of non-violence in favor of Negro ‘self-defense.’ Actually this is a false issue, since no one has ever argued that Negroes should not defend themselves as individuals from attack.” No one! Ever! Rustin must think his readers have short memories or have never heard his ally, Martin Luther King, admonishing black people that if blood must flow, it should be theirs. In an attempt to support his claim, Rustin adds a footnote recalling that “as far back as 1934” (he means 1943) he, A. Philip Randolph and others “had joined a committee to try to save the life of Odell Waller ... a sharecropper [who] had murdered his white boss in self-defense.” But that doesn’t prove anything; it is perfectly possible to defend someone on trial for self-defense while opposing self-defense, just as it is possible to defend a terrorist on trial for his life while remaining opposed to terrorism.</p>
<p>Anyway, Rustin completes the circle and compounds the confusion by adding the charge that “the new militant leadership, by raising the slogan of black power and lowering the banner of non-violence, has obscured the moral issue facing this nation [?], and permitted the President and Vice President to lecture us about ‘racism in reverse’ instead of proposing more meaningful programs for dealing with the problems of unemployment, housing and education.” Of course this doesn’t explain what kept Johnson and Humphrey from proposing “more meaningful programs” before the Black Power tendency “permitted” them not to. But it does show that “someone” is still arguing against self-defense. Feldman does not discuss self-defense at all. Jackson endorses the concept, but seems a little uneasy at the suggestion, by “some speakers,” that “Negroes could organize their own policing system to counter the violence of the racists and the police.” He deems it necessary to remind Negroes that they must continue to demand that “the government ... discharge its duty to safeguard the lives and property of all its citizens.”</p>
<p>Feldman doesn’t concede that the Black Power tendency is militant, let alone radical. <a href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> “The militant verbiage that frightens so many whites may well hide conservative tendencies,” he says. This may explain why he never mentions the SNCC-CORE opposition to the Vietnam war, which is certainly couched in militant and radical terms, and is one of the main reasons for the conservative-liberal attack on Black Power. This is an odd omission for the editor of a paper that is in its own way critical of the war. Odder yet is Rustin’s sole reference to the Black Power position against the war:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael may accuse Roy Wilkins of being out of touch with the Negro ghetto, but nothing more completely demonstrates their own alienation from ghetto youth than their repeated exhortations to these young men to oppose the Vietnam war when so many of them tragically see it as their only way out.”</p>
<p class="fst">Such contortions — by a man who still calls himself a pacifist — are all the more notable because this is the first time that a significant section of the organized freedom movement has flatly opposed a major war of the American ruling class. It may be news to Rustin, but the Black Power stand against the war is one of the major sources of its popularity in the ghetto, among both young and old. This is something that Jackson has the sense to recognize, despite his trepidation on other points.</p>
<p>If, in the political arena, the Black Power tendency was concerned only with electing black representatives to public office, our three critics would have no objections. Jackson approves the objective of winning “the political power in those areas where Negroes predominate,” and says the CP has long advocated this. Rustin sees “nothing wrong” (and “nothing inherently radical”) in “the effort to elect Negroes to office in proportion to Negro strength within the population,” although he doesn’t think it important because there are only 80 counties and two congressional districts in the South where Negroes are a majority. Feldman says its all right too, but adds that no special strategy is needed in Southern areas where Negroes are a majority because they would win office anyway “more or less naturally as more and more Negroes in the Black Belt got the vote.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Independent Political Action</h4>
<p class="fst">But their reaction is quite different when certain advocates of Black Power call for the election of black representatives through <em>independent</em> political action, through the creation of political parties independent of the Democratic Party-such as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (“Black Panther”) in Alabama. Then the fur begins to fly.</p>
<p>Rustin rejects independent black political action (“SNCC’s Black Panther perspective”) as “simultaneously Utopian and reactionary” – Utopian, because “one-tenth of the population cannot accomplish much by itself”; reactionary, because “such a party would remove Negroes from the main area of political struggle in this country (particularly in the one-party South, where the decisive battles are fought out in Democratic primaries), and would give priority to the issue of race precisely at a time when the fundamental questions facing the Negro and American society alike are economic and social.” Rustin says that “Southern Negroes, despite exhortations from SNCC to organize themselves into a Black Panther party, are going to stay in the Democratic party ... and they are right to stay,” because their winning the right to vote “insures the eventual transformation of the Democratic party, now controlled primarily by Northern machine politicians and Southern Dixiecrats.” The Black Power perspective, he declares, flows from despair, frustration, pessimism and “the belief that the ghetto will last forever.” The best alternative that he can see is “a liberal-labor-civil rights coalition which would work to make the Democratic party truly responsive to the aspirations of the poor.”</p>
<p>Feldman’s arguments are similar. Since Negroes are a minority, they can at best be “a swing vote under certain conditions.” The Black Panther strategy will deprive them of the ability “to affect the choice between a Wallace and a Richmond Flowers.” SNCC’s “most positive quality” has been “prodding liberal elements into action” and that will be dissipated if it breaks from the Democratic Party coalition. “The quick demise of the all-Negro ‘Freedom Now’ Party started in 1963 does not augur well for those who would start a similar political group in the North.” Black Power “continues to bring the racial issue to the forefront when it is vital instead to raise and make central the economic issues that can unite the black and white poor against their exploiters.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The real alternative to the coalition strategy for the Negro community is not, as SNCC would have it, a radical movement of the Negro masses but the kind of Negro machines run by Congressmen Powell in New York and Dawson in Chicago, who act as the middle men between machine hacks and power centers in the Democratic Party.”</p>
<p class="fst">Black Power “is aimed at the liberal coalition as well as at white racists; and it signifies a rejection of alliance with liberals. It sounds militant, but it marks a retreat into the ghettos of the North and enclaves in the South — a continuation of protest without politics.” And probably worst of all, if SNCC and CORE turn away from a coalition strategy, “the coalition itself faces a major crisis” and may disintegrate.<br> </p>
<h4>Breaking with the Democratic Party</h4>
<p class="fst">What comes through very distinctly from Rustin and Feldman is the notion that black people are helpless, impotent, unable to do anything significant by themselves, doomed to the auxiliary role of “prodding liberal elements into action.” The social-democrats of course did not originate this view; they absorbed it from the capitalist ideologists — so thoroughly that it is as natural to them now as breathing in and breathing out. Ossified by the dogmas of gradualism and reformism, their minds cannot entertain any part for Negroes to play beyond helping “to affect the choice between a Wallace and a Richmond Flowers” in 1966 (like the choice between Goldwater and Johnson in 1964). Their thinking is so frozen that they equate “political framework” with “Democratic Party,” as though political action outside the Democratic Party, by Negroes or anyone else, is the ultimate absurdity. The <em>revolutionary</em> conception of the American black minority — as a vanguard of social change — is utterly alien to them.</p>
<p>But the most advanced Black Power forces are moving toward this conception, even though their spokesmen do not always formulate it consistently or precisely. Some of them are beginning to grasp the fact that, thanks to discrimination and segregation, which keep them at the bottom of the social structure but also tend to unite them in resistance to their oppression, the Negro people of this country, although they are a minority, are in the uniquely favorable position of being able, through their own efforts (“by themselves”) if necessary, to set into motion a series of changes that can upset the social and political equilibrium and transform the whole future of the United States.</p>
<p>The first step in this process is political — a break by the Negro people with the Democratic Party and the two-party system as a whole, and the formation of a political party of their own. (Whether such a party will be black-led and controlled like the Lowndes County Freedom Organization or all-black, like the Freedom Now Party of 1963–64, is a secondary and tactical question.) This would give them, for the first time, a political instrument that they themselves controlled, through which they could elect their own representatives in both the Southern counties and the Northern cities where they are majorities or the single biggest bloc. For the first time in American history Negroes would have a party that really represented them and that they could count on to contend in their interest against the parties of their oppressors.</p>
<p>And that would be only part of the story. The other part would be the effect their withdrawal would have on the Democratic Party and its coalition with the labor leaders and liberals. In a word, it would be devastating. Without the support it now enjoys from Negroes, the Democratic Party would come apart at the seams; the coalition would be thrust into what Feldman fears so much — “a major crisis.” The Democratic Party would cease to be the major national party. The unions would be forced to reconsider their relations to a party that could no longer win national elections; in the long run, this would strengthen sentiment for independent labor politics and a labor party. Political realignment, about which there has been so much talk for so long, would become a probability, and along more fundamental lines than the liberals have ever conceived. All this would not yet give the Negro what he needs and wants, but it would create infinitely better conditions for him to obtain it than he now has. Contrary to Rustin, “one-tenth of the population” can do quite a lot by themselves when they utilize all the opportunities within their reach.</p>
<p>Rustin claims that independent black politics is “utopian,” but he is the last man who should use that word; it is impossible to think of a more Utopian task than trying to make the world’s major capitalist party “truly responsive to the aspirations of the poor.” Rustin and Feldman attribute Black Power to despair and frustration, but the only sense in which this is true is that increasing numbers of black people are beginning to recognize the futility of trying to reform the Democratic Party; in general, desperate and frustrated people do not undertake a task as difficult as building a new political party. Feldman argues that independent black politics must fail because the Freedom Party suffered “a quick demise.” By this “logic” — that you should never try anything again if it doesn’t succeed at the first attempt — he would have a hard time justifying his policy of working in the Democratic Party after so many decades of defeats and betrayals. The fact is that there is already a sufficiently large body of Negroes disillusioned with the Democratic and Republican parties to provide the initial mass base for an independent black party. According to a recent national survey by <strong>Newsweek</strong> (printed Aug. 22), 17 per cent of the Negroes <a href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a> are in favor of “dumping the Democratic Party, and going it alone in all-black political organizations, while 74 per cent are against this course. A majority of black people are not yet ready for an independent party, but no political party starts with a majority of its intended constituency. If around one-sixth of the 22–23 million black people are in favor of an independent party now, before it exists, then the possibility of starting such a party, and winning the majority of Negroes to it, certainly cannot be dismissed as Utopian.</p>
<p>When Rustin argues that Black Power moods result from “the belief that the ghetto will last forever,” he may be right. Of course forever is a long time, and it is unhistorical to think the ghetto will survive long after the system that brought it into being is replaced by a non-exploitative system. But militants who expect the ghetto to last forever are more realistic than Rustin, who thinks it will be eliminated by a reformed Democratic Party. Correct strategy and tactics must flow from the understanding that the ghetto is here to stay as long as capitalism stays, and that capitalism will stay as long as the two-party system remains unchallenged. Anyway, all such beliefs are subject to modification through experience. The real question is not how long one believes the ghetto will last, but what one proposes to do about the ghetto: Do you strive to keep its residents handcuffed to capitalist politics, or do you work to liberate them for action by organizing them in a party of their own to fight against capitalist, that is, racist, politics?</p>
<p>The Black Power tendency is clearing the ground for the emergence of an independent black party. The basis for such a party is the oppression common to the Negro people, or, to use the shorthand equivalent in this racist society, their “blackness.” When Rustin complains that Black Power “would give priority to the issue of race” and Feldman that it “continues to bring the racial issue to the forefront,” they are standing things on their heads. The “racial issue” is already to the forefront, it already has priority. The responsibility for that rests on the ruling class, not on SNCC or CORE. What they are attempting to do is utilize a situation that they did not create in order to change the situation; they are attempting to extract certain tactical advantages from that situation that will enable them to organize the black masses, whom the old civil-rights movement never organized and who cannot be organized by the Rustin-Feldman method of denying the importance of the “racial issue.” At the end of this process lies not racism but equality, which will be advanced by the proper mobilization and politicalization of black consciousness, just as a classless society will be achieved through the promotion of proletarian class consciousness.</p>
<p>Jackson’s article avoids many of the pitfalls plunged into by Rustin and Feldman, but only by refusing to discuss some of the basic questions. He is for Black Power if all it means is “the struggle to create the conditions for the Negro people to exercise the power in the areas of their majority.” But he adds, ever so delicately, “In terms of the country as a whole, Negro Americans are more often than not cast in a minority situation.” So? So “more than the political and organizational build-up of ‘Black Power,’ more than the self-organization and militant action of the Negro people themselves is required.” He even seems to be willing to grant, conditionally without enthusiasm, that a “Black Panther” approach may be permissible in certain local situations, but he insists that a different strategy is needed nationally:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The perspective and struggle to establish Black Power bases of local political control in the deep South and in metropolitan slums of the North ... would prove useful to a total strategy of Negro freedom only insofar as they enhanced the capability of the Negro movement to consummate more favorable alliance relations with comparable disadvantaged and objectively ‘anti-establishment’ classes and forces among the white population.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Anti-Monopoly Coalition</h4>
<p class="fst">This doesn’t mean quite what it may seem to the unwary reader. When Jackson and the CP talk about “objectively ‘anti-establishment’ classes and forces,” they are not talking only about poor whites or white workers and they are not proposing an anti-capitalist alliance. What they favor is a coalition against the <em>monopoly</em> capitalists, in which “good” and “liberal” capitalists would be included. Politically, they mean the Democratic Party, the same thing the social-democrats mean. The CP wants the black people to remain inside the national Democratic Party even if, in isolated instances, Negroes create local political organizations outside the local Democratic Party. Jackson’s article neither proposes nor attacks the “Black Panther” approach — it is written in the hope of influencing Black Power partisans in a pro-national Democratic Party direction. He will attack the Black Power tendency if it definitively rejects such “favorable alliance relations.” He will call it “political isolationism” — the CP’s name for any breakaway from the Democratic Party to the left.</p>
<p>It is misleading to read “isolationism” into the statements of the major Black Power spokesmen. When they project a new, more independent and more radical movement, and concentrate on the questions that will help to bring it into being, that does not mean they are opposed to alliances with other forces, or indifferent to them. It means only that they are putting first things first. Feldman tries to make fun of the “small groupings of alienated white radicals” (he means chiefly the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance) who do not see any contradiction between the independent organization of black people and their subsequent collaboration with revolutionary white workers in a struggle against capitalism. He wants us to insist that black people must commit themselves to such collaboration even before they have organized themselves. Thanks immensely for the unalienated advice, Mr. Feldman, but the days are gone when militant Negroes will give blank checks to anyone — and that, we think, is the best thing that’s happened in decades. First things first.</p>
<p>First the Black Power movement will seek to organize the black masses independently, and then they will consider the question of alliances. How can we be sure? Because every movement does that, and has to. Capitalists look for allies, small businessmen look for allies, the labor movement looks for allies. The real question is what kind of alliances will an independent black movement seek. Will it be the kind that has existed up to now, where the methods and goals are dictated by other forces, and where black people are subordinates, with little voice and little choice but to do the legwork? Or will it be a new kind of alliance, where the blacks will have an equal say in the leadership and determination of policy — and the power to withdraw from unsatisfactory arrangements precisely because they are independently organized? The difference between an independent movement and a dependent movement is not over their willingness to enter into alliances, but over the kinds of alliances they enter.</p>
<p>The thing that worries the Socialist and Communist parties about the Black Power tendency is not that it may reject alliances, but that it may reject alliances limited to reforming capitalism and the Democratic Party. Here their fears are soundly based. For the emergence of an independent mass black movement will create “a major crisis” for the non-revolutionary Socialist and Communist parties as well as the Democratic Party.</p>
<p class="date"><em>October 1966</em></p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> In the summer Stokely Carmichael and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell jointly announced that a Black Power conference would be held in Washington later in the year. Powell’s advocacy of Black Power was seized on by Feldman (“it is especially to be noted”) and Rustin (“it is no accident”) as evidence of its non-radical character. It turned out to be poor evidence. On Sept. 8 Powell explained that he was trying to “channelize” the tendency to assume constructive roles in American society. Later, on Oct. 9, the Harlem opportunist publicly denounced Carmichael and said, “Any effort to tie me with the SNCC definition of black power is totally erroneous.”</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> There is a close correspondence between this figure and the 19 per cent of the Negroes surveyed who voiced approval of Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael as leaders.</p>
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George Breitman
In Defense Of Black Power
(October 1966)
From International Socialist Review, vol. 28 No. 1, January–February 1967, pp. 4–16.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Up to now the capitalist masters of this country have been able to control or contain the efforts of black people to liberate themselves. Directly and indirectly, they have set down the rules and the boundaries within which the Negro organizations have operated. As a result, the leaders of those organizations have usually been “the right kind” — moderates and liberals, who know what they may and may not do, who abide by the rules and do not cross the boundaries. The main reason why black Americans are not closer to their goal of freedom, justice and equality is that they have lacked a mass movement and a leadership truly independent of the ruling class, its ideology and its institutions.
Malcolm X set out early in 1964 to build such a movement, but he was killed before he could do more than expound some basic principles and offer a personal example of fearless independence. The Black Power tendency is an attempt, starting from a slightly different direction, to do essentially the same thing that Malcolm tried to do. Its appearance marks another stage in the radicalization of the Negro people, in accord with the law that the more independent any oppressed group is of the ruling class, the more radical it tends to be.
Organizationally, the Black Power tendency is only in the early stages of its development; the various groups and individuals who have raised the Black Power banner have not yet defined their relations to each other or united into a single movement or federation. But numerically it is already considerably stronger than the organized adherents of Malcolm’s movement. The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), groups in the new tendency, are national organizations, with thousands of members or sympathizers. They have an experienced cadre of dedicated leaders and activists, hardened in battle along many fronts and equipped with a variety of skills. They represent the best of the new generation of young freedom fighters who appeared on the scene around 1960, with a consistently more militant outlook than that of previous generations and an enviable ability to learn from experience and grow.
Ideologically and politically, the Black Power tendency is also still in the process of crystallization. But its direction-to the left-is unmistakably indicated by the way it has broken away from several of the premises and shibboleths of the old “civil rights” consensus. Internationalist and anti-imperialist, it expresses solidarity with the worldwide struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism, condemns the US war in Vietnam and rejects the contention that the freedom movement “should not mix civil rights and foreign policy.” It spurns the straitjacket of “non-violence” and proclaims the right of self-defense. It challenges the fraudulent claim that freedom can be won through the passage of a series of civil-rights laws that are largely un-enforced and benefit mainly middle-class Negroes.
Some of its adherents still believe in working inside the Democratic Party, but others advocate a complete break with the Democrats and Republicans and the establishment of independent black or black-led parties — not only in Lowndes County, Ala., but in the Northern ghettos. Some accept capitalism; others are talking rather vaguely about a cooperative based economy for the black community that they think would be neither capitalist nor socialist; and there is also evidently a pro-socialist grouping, as was shown when delegates at a Black Power planning conference in Washington Sept. 3 posed the need to “determine which is more politically feasible for the advancement of black power, capitalism or socialism.”
It was therefore to be expected, and logical, that Johnson, Humphrey and the capitalist brainwashers would oppose and attack Black Power, and not surprising that most liberals tagged along behind them. But how account for the attitudes of the Socialist and Communist parties and the forces close to them? Why do they respond with distress, fear or hostility, to the development of a radical and potentially pro-socialist movement among the Negro people?
Radical Critics of Black Power
Bayard Rustin, social-democrat and director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, is one of the harshest critics of Black Power. Writing in the September issue of Commentary, he says that it “not only lacks any real value for the civil rights movement, but that its propagation is positively harmful. It diverts the movement from a meaningful debate over strategy and tactics, it isolates the Negro community, and it encourages the growth of anti-Negro forces.” SNCC and CORE once “awakened the country, but now they emerge isolated and demoralized, shouting a slogan that may afford a momentary satisfaction but that is calculated to destroy them and their movement.”
Paul Feldman, a member of the Socialist Party’s national executive committee and editor of its paper, New America, is equally antagonistic. In the June 30 issue of his paper and in the September-October issue of Dissent, he says that Black Power “as it is practiced by SNCC means only the continuation of protest outside the political framework.” “Slogans like ‘black power’ are substitutes for some painful rethinking; they are an attempt to stir a lagging movement by injecting heady verbal stimulants.” In the same way that the social-democrats in the McCarthy era used to criticize Truman and Eisenhower for “encouraging communism,” Feldman charges that:
“Through the inadequacy of its approach to poverty and unemployment, the Johnson administration has encouraged nationalistic tendencies in both the civil rights movement and the Negro community.”
James E. Jackson, a leading Communist Party spokesman, is more circumspect than Rustin and Feldman. That is because he burned his fingers last June at the CP’s national convention when he criticized Black Power; among the younger members of the CP and among the DuBois Clubs there is sympathy for Black Power, and even some sentiment for black nationalism, and they voiced strong objection to Jackson’s remarks. As a result, Jackson’s article in the September issue of Political Affairs finds some favorable things to say about the Black Power tendency, and he couches his opposition to its essential characteristics in softer language than the kind he used to use about Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams. But this does not alter the CP’s basic position, which remains, like that of the SP’s, opposed to the most radical aspects and implications of Black Power.
In their efforts to belittle the Black Power tendency, Rustin and Feldman occasionally go to ridiculous lengths. “In some quarters,” Rustin says, Black Power connotes “a repudiation of non-violence in favor of Negro ‘self-defense.’ Actually this is a false issue, since no one has ever argued that Negroes should not defend themselves as individuals from attack.” No one! Ever! Rustin must think his readers have short memories or have never heard his ally, Martin Luther King, admonishing black people that if blood must flow, it should be theirs. In an attempt to support his claim, Rustin adds a footnote recalling that “as far back as 1934” (he means 1943) he, A. Philip Randolph and others “had joined a committee to try to save the life of Odell Waller ... a sharecropper [who] had murdered his white boss in self-defense.” But that doesn’t prove anything; it is perfectly possible to defend someone on trial for self-defense while opposing self-defense, just as it is possible to defend a terrorist on trial for his life while remaining opposed to terrorism.
Anyway, Rustin completes the circle and compounds the confusion by adding the charge that “the new militant leadership, by raising the slogan of black power and lowering the banner of non-violence, has obscured the moral issue facing this nation [?], and permitted the President and Vice President to lecture us about ‘racism in reverse’ instead of proposing more meaningful programs for dealing with the problems of unemployment, housing and education.” Of course this doesn’t explain what kept Johnson and Humphrey from proposing “more meaningful programs” before the Black Power tendency “permitted” them not to. But it does show that “someone” is still arguing against self-defense. Feldman does not discuss self-defense at all. Jackson endorses the concept, but seems a little uneasy at the suggestion, by “some speakers,” that “Negroes could organize their own policing system to counter the violence of the racists and the police.” He deems it necessary to remind Negroes that they must continue to demand that “the government ... discharge its duty to safeguard the lives and property of all its citizens.”
Feldman doesn’t concede that the Black Power tendency is militant, let alone radical. [1] “The militant verbiage that frightens so many whites may well hide conservative tendencies,” he says. This may explain why he never mentions the SNCC-CORE opposition to the Vietnam war, which is certainly couched in militant and radical terms, and is one of the main reasons for the conservative-liberal attack on Black Power. This is an odd omission for the editor of a paper that is in its own way critical of the war. Odder yet is Rustin’s sole reference to the Black Power position against the war:
“Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael may accuse Roy Wilkins of being out of touch with the Negro ghetto, but nothing more completely demonstrates their own alienation from ghetto youth than their repeated exhortations to these young men to oppose the Vietnam war when so many of them tragically see it as their only way out.”
Such contortions — by a man who still calls himself a pacifist — are all the more notable because this is the first time that a significant section of the organized freedom movement has flatly opposed a major war of the American ruling class. It may be news to Rustin, but the Black Power stand against the war is one of the major sources of its popularity in the ghetto, among both young and old. This is something that Jackson has the sense to recognize, despite his trepidation on other points.
If, in the political arena, the Black Power tendency was concerned only with electing black representatives to public office, our three critics would have no objections. Jackson approves the objective of winning “the political power in those areas where Negroes predominate,” and says the CP has long advocated this. Rustin sees “nothing wrong” (and “nothing inherently radical”) in “the effort to elect Negroes to office in proportion to Negro strength within the population,” although he doesn’t think it important because there are only 80 counties and two congressional districts in the South where Negroes are a majority. Feldman says its all right too, but adds that no special strategy is needed in Southern areas where Negroes are a majority because they would win office anyway “more or less naturally as more and more Negroes in the Black Belt got the vote.”
Independent Political Action
But their reaction is quite different when certain advocates of Black Power call for the election of black representatives through independent political action, through the creation of political parties independent of the Democratic Party-such as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (“Black Panther”) in Alabama. Then the fur begins to fly.
Rustin rejects independent black political action (“SNCC’s Black Panther perspective”) as “simultaneously Utopian and reactionary” – Utopian, because “one-tenth of the population cannot accomplish much by itself”; reactionary, because “such a party would remove Negroes from the main area of political struggle in this country (particularly in the one-party South, where the decisive battles are fought out in Democratic primaries), and would give priority to the issue of race precisely at a time when the fundamental questions facing the Negro and American society alike are economic and social.” Rustin says that “Southern Negroes, despite exhortations from SNCC to organize themselves into a Black Panther party, are going to stay in the Democratic party ... and they are right to stay,” because their winning the right to vote “insures the eventual transformation of the Democratic party, now controlled primarily by Northern machine politicians and Southern Dixiecrats.” The Black Power perspective, he declares, flows from despair, frustration, pessimism and “the belief that the ghetto will last forever.” The best alternative that he can see is “a liberal-labor-civil rights coalition which would work to make the Democratic party truly responsive to the aspirations of the poor.”
Feldman’s arguments are similar. Since Negroes are a minority, they can at best be “a swing vote under certain conditions.” The Black Panther strategy will deprive them of the ability “to affect the choice between a Wallace and a Richmond Flowers.” SNCC’s “most positive quality” has been “prodding liberal elements into action” and that will be dissipated if it breaks from the Democratic Party coalition. “The quick demise of the all-Negro ‘Freedom Now’ Party started in 1963 does not augur well for those who would start a similar political group in the North.” Black Power “continues to bring the racial issue to the forefront when it is vital instead to raise and make central the economic issues that can unite the black and white poor against their exploiters.”
“The real alternative to the coalition strategy for the Negro community is not, as SNCC would have it, a radical movement of the Negro masses but the kind of Negro machines run by Congressmen Powell in New York and Dawson in Chicago, who act as the middle men between machine hacks and power centers in the Democratic Party.”
Black Power “is aimed at the liberal coalition as well as at white racists; and it signifies a rejection of alliance with liberals. It sounds militant, but it marks a retreat into the ghettos of the North and enclaves in the South — a continuation of protest without politics.” And probably worst of all, if SNCC and CORE turn away from a coalition strategy, “the coalition itself faces a major crisis” and may disintegrate.
Breaking with the Democratic Party
What comes through very distinctly from Rustin and Feldman is the notion that black people are helpless, impotent, unable to do anything significant by themselves, doomed to the auxiliary role of “prodding liberal elements into action.” The social-democrats of course did not originate this view; they absorbed it from the capitalist ideologists — so thoroughly that it is as natural to them now as breathing in and breathing out. Ossified by the dogmas of gradualism and reformism, their minds cannot entertain any part for Negroes to play beyond helping “to affect the choice between a Wallace and a Richmond Flowers” in 1966 (like the choice between Goldwater and Johnson in 1964). Their thinking is so frozen that they equate “political framework” with “Democratic Party,” as though political action outside the Democratic Party, by Negroes or anyone else, is the ultimate absurdity. The revolutionary conception of the American black minority — as a vanguard of social change — is utterly alien to them.
But the most advanced Black Power forces are moving toward this conception, even though their spokesmen do not always formulate it consistently or precisely. Some of them are beginning to grasp the fact that, thanks to discrimination and segregation, which keep them at the bottom of the social structure but also tend to unite them in resistance to their oppression, the Negro people of this country, although they are a minority, are in the uniquely favorable position of being able, through their own efforts (“by themselves”) if necessary, to set into motion a series of changes that can upset the social and political equilibrium and transform the whole future of the United States.
The first step in this process is political — a break by the Negro people with the Democratic Party and the two-party system as a whole, and the formation of a political party of their own. (Whether such a party will be black-led and controlled like the Lowndes County Freedom Organization or all-black, like the Freedom Now Party of 1963–64, is a secondary and tactical question.) This would give them, for the first time, a political instrument that they themselves controlled, through which they could elect their own representatives in both the Southern counties and the Northern cities where they are majorities or the single biggest bloc. For the first time in American history Negroes would have a party that really represented them and that they could count on to contend in their interest against the parties of their oppressors.
And that would be only part of the story. The other part would be the effect their withdrawal would have on the Democratic Party and its coalition with the labor leaders and liberals. In a word, it would be devastating. Without the support it now enjoys from Negroes, the Democratic Party would come apart at the seams; the coalition would be thrust into what Feldman fears so much — “a major crisis.” The Democratic Party would cease to be the major national party. The unions would be forced to reconsider their relations to a party that could no longer win national elections; in the long run, this would strengthen sentiment for independent labor politics and a labor party. Political realignment, about which there has been so much talk for so long, would become a probability, and along more fundamental lines than the liberals have ever conceived. All this would not yet give the Negro what he needs and wants, but it would create infinitely better conditions for him to obtain it than he now has. Contrary to Rustin, “one-tenth of the population” can do quite a lot by themselves when they utilize all the opportunities within their reach.
Rustin claims that independent black politics is “utopian,” but he is the last man who should use that word; it is impossible to think of a more Utopian task than trying to make the world’s major capitalist party “truly responsive to the aspirations of the poor.” Rustin and Feldman attribute Black Power to despair and frustration, but the only sense in which this is true is that increasing numbers of black people are beginning to recognize the futility of trying to reform the Democratic Party; in general, desperate and frustrated people do not undertake a task as difficult as building a new political party. Feldman argues that independent black politics must fail because the Freedom Party suffered “a quick demise.” By this “logic” — that you should never try anything again if it doesn’t succeed at the first attempt — he would have a hard time justifying his policy of working in the Democratic Party after so many decades of defeats and betrayals. The fact is that there is already a sufficiently large body of Negroes disillusioned with the Democratic and Republican parties to provide the initial mass base for an independent black party. According to a recent national survey by Newsweek (printed Aug. 22), 17 per cent of the Negroes [2] are in favor of “dumping the Democratic Party, and going it alone in all-black political organizations, while 74 per cent are against this course. A majority of black people are not yet ready for an independent party, but no political party starts with a majority of its intended constituency. If around one-sixth of the 22–23 million black people are in favor of an independent party now, before it exists, then the possibility of starting such a party, and winning the majority of Negroes to it, certainly cannot be dismissed as Utopian.
When Rustin argues that Black Power moods result from “the belief that the ghetto will last forever,” he may be right. Of course forever is a long time, and it is unhistorical to think the ghetto will survive long after the system that brought it into being is replaced by a non-exploitative system. But militants who expect the ghetto to last forever are more realistic than Rustin, who thinks it will be eliminated by a reformed Democratic Party. Correct strategy and tactics must flow from the understanding that the ghetto is here to stay as long as capitalism stays, and that capitalism will stay as long as the two-party system remains unchallenged. Anyway, all such beliefs are subject to modification through experience. The real question is not how long one believes the ghetto will last, but what one proposes to do about the ghetto: Do you strive to keep its residents handcuffed to capitalist politics, or do you work to liberate them for action by organizing them in a party of their own to fight against capitalist, that is, racist, politics?
The Black Power tendency is clearing the ground for the emergence of an independent black party. The basis for such a party is the oppression common to the Negro people, or, to use the shorthand equivalent in this racist society, their “blackness.” When Rustin complains that Black Power “would give priority to the issue of race” and Feldman that it “continues to bring the racial issue to the forefront,” they are standing things on their heads. The “racial issue” is already to the forefront, it already has priority. The responsibility for that rests on the ruling class, not on SNCC or CORE. What they are attempting to do is utilize a situation that they did not create in order to change the situation; they are attempting to extract certain tactical advantages from that situation that will enable them to organize the black masses, whom the old civil-rights movement never organized and who cannot be organized by the Rustin-Feldman method of denying the importance of the “racial issue.” At the end of this process lies not racism but equality, which will be advanced by the proper mobilization and politicalization of black consciousness, just as a classless society will be achieved through the promotion of proletarian class consciousness.
Jackson’s article avoids many of the pitfalls plunged into by Rustin and Feldman, but only by refusing to discuss some of the basic questions. He is for Black Power if all it means is “the struggle to create the conditions for the Negro people to exercise the power in the areas of their majority.” But he adds, ever so delicately, “In terms of the country as a whole, Negro Americans are more often than not cast in a minority situation.” So? So “more than the political and organizational build-up of ‘Black Power,’ more than the self-organization and militant action of the Negro people themselves is required.” He even seems to be willing to grant, conditionally without enthusiasm, that a “Black Panther” approach may be permissible in certain local situations, but he insists that a different strategy is needed nationally:
“The perspective and struggle to establish Black Power bases of local political control in the deep South and in metropolitan slums of the North ... would prove useful to a total strategy of Negro freedom only insofar as they enhanced the capability of the Negro movement to consummate more favorable alliance relations with comparable disadvantaged and objectively ‘anti-establishment’ classes and forces among the white population.”
Anti-Monopoly Coalition
This doesn’t mean quite what it may seem to the unwary reader. When Jackson and the CP talk about “objectively ‘anti-establishment’ classes and forces,” they are not talking only about poor whites or white workers and they are not proposing an anti-capitalist alliance. What they favor is a coalition against the monopoly capitalists, in which “good” and “liberal” capitalists would be included. Politically, they mean the Democratic Party, the same thing the social-democrats mean. The CP wants the black people to remain inside the national Democratic Party even if, in isolated instances, Negroes create local political organizations outside the local Democratic Party. Jackson’s article neither proposes nor attacks the “Black Panther” approach — it is written in the hope of influencing Black Power partisans in a pro-national Democratic Party direction. He will attack the Black Power tendency if it definitively rejects such “favorable alliance relations.” He will call it “political isolationism” — the CP’s name for any breakaway from the Democratic Party to the left.
It is misleading to read “isolationism” into the statements of the major Black Power spokesmen. When they project a new, more independent and more radical movement, and concentrate on the questions that will help to bring it into being, that does not mean they are opposed to alliances with other forces, or indifferent to them. It means only that they are putting first things first. Feldman tries to make fun of the “small groupings of alienated white radicals” (he means chiefly the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance) who do not see any contradiction between the independent organization of black people and their subsequent collaboration with revolutionary white workers in a struggle against capitalism. He wants us to insist that black people must commit themselves to such collaboration even before they have organized themselves. Thanks immensely for the unalienated advice, Mr. Feldman, but the days are gone when militant Negroes will give blank checks to anyone — and that, we think, is the best thing that’s happened in decades. First things first.
First the Black Power movement will seek to organize the black masses independently, and then they will consider the question of alliances. How can we be sure? Because every movement does that, and has to. Capitalists look for allies, small businessmen look for allies, the labor movement looks for allies. The real question is what kind of alliances will an independent black movement seek. Will it be the kind that has existed up to now, where the methods and goals are dictated by other forces, and where black people are subordinates, with little voice and little choice but to do the legwork? Or will it be a new kind of alliance, where the blacks will have an equal say in the leadership and determination of policy — and the power to withdraw from unsatisfactory arrangements precisely because they are independently organized? The difference between an independent movement and a dependent movement is not over their willingness to enter into alliances, but over the kinds of alliances they enter.
The thing that worries the Socialist and Communist parties about the Black Power tendency is not that it may reject alliances, but that it may reject alliances limited to reforming capitalism and the Democratic Party. Here their fears are soundly based. For the emergence of an independent mass black movement will create “a major crisis” for the non-revolutionary Socialist and Communist parties as well as the Democratic Party.
October 1966
* * *
Footnote
1. In the summer Stokely Carmichael and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell jointly announced that a Black Power conference would be held in Washington later in the year. Powell’s advocacy of Black Power was seized on by Feldman (“it is especially to be noted”) and Rustin (“it is no accident”) as evidence of its non-radical character. It turned out to be poor evidence. On Sept. 8 Powell explained that he was trying to “channelize” the tendency to assume constructive roles in American society. Later, on Oct. 9, the Harlem opportunist publicly denounced Carmichael and said, “Any effort to tie me with the SNCC definition of black power is totally erroneous.”
2. There is a close correspondence between this figure and the 19 per cent of the Negroes surveyed who voiced approval of Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael as leaders.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Randolph and the Press</h1>
<h3>(19 April 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_16" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 16</a>, 19 April 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">I have before me the editorials of about 20 Negro newspapers on A. Philip Randolph’s proposal to launch a “civil disobedience” campaign if Jim Crow is not abolished in the armed forces, and the great majority of them make pretty sickening reading. Instead of pointing out the weak aspects of Randolph’s position, they attack it for the most part because it is “extreme,” they wave the flag, beat their breasts patriotically, and assure the Jim Crow ruling class that they can be depended on not to do anything “extreme” themselves.</p>
<p>The <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>’s editorial was typical in this respect: “We counsel at all times complete co-operation with the adopted policies of the government ... We should battle the issue to the point of decision, and then, if defeated, gracefully accept the decision and cooperate in its implementation.” Translated into plain English, that means: “We are against Jim Crow and will keep on writing articles to that effect. But if you insist on maintaining Jim Crow, we will be good sports and will even ‘gracefully’ help you in your dirty work of Jim Crowing us.”</p>
<p>The man who wrote that editorial wipes his feet on the real tradition of Negro struggle against oppression in this country; he dishonors the memory of the heroic Negro and white abolitionists who won immortal glory by defying the government’s fugitive slave law almost 100 years ago (instead of gracefully cooperating with it). That editorial would have made Uncle Tom blush in shame. And it undoubtedly brought hearty chuckles from Rankin, Eastland and the other Southern demagogues who know that the Jim Crow structure won’t even be dented as long as the Negro people listen to such servile advice.</p>
<p>These people denounce Randolph for being “extreme,” but how else can you end a brutal system like Jim Crow except by being extreme? When was tyranny ever ended by promising to be “loyal” to it?</p>
<p>When it comes to cooperating or not cooperating with the Jim Crow forces, the Negro people will instinctively side with Randolph, and they will be a thousand times right. But unfortunately, the problem is not settled by merely deciding not to cooperate. You are still faced with the questions of what to do, and how to do it, and when.</p>
<p>The first and most obvious weakness in Randolph’s position is that it places its main emphasis on action by the Negroes after the UMT or draft bills become law. From the viewpoint of tactics, that would be an error. The time to begin fighting most energetically on this question is right now, not after Congress acts. The labor movement’s experience with the Taft-Hartley Act proves that it is much harder to repeal reactionary legislation than it is to prevent its passage.</p>
<p>The second serious shortcoming in Randolph’s proposal is the kind of struggle it advocates. A mere refusal to register and serve in the armed forces will get the Negroes nowhere but in jail – which will remove the most active and courageous elements from the struggle where they are needed, and will leave untouched the power of the ruling class to maintain Jim Crow in full force. What is really needed is a program of positive struggle – mass meetings, demonstrations, a march on Washington, protest work stoppages, collaboration with the labor movement to end Jim Crow through independent political action.</p>
<p>Randolph’s proposal may lead to seriously embarrassing the ruling class. But a mass movement of relentless struggle, determined to return blow for blow instead of turning the other cheek, could and would lead to the complete destruction of Jim Crow.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Randolph and the Press
(19 April 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 16, 19 April 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
I have before me the editorials of about 20 Negro newspapers on A. Philip Randolph’s proposal to launch a “civil disobedience” campaign if Jim Crow is not abolished in the armed forces, and the great majority of them make pretty sickening reading. Instead of pointing out the weak aspects of Randolph’s position, they attack it for the most part because it is “extreme,” they wave the flag, beat their breasts patriotically, and assure the Jim Crow ruling class that they can be depended on not to do anything “extreme” themselves.
The Pittsburgh Courier’s editorial was typical in this respect: “We counsel at all times complete co-operation with the adopted policies of the government ... We should battle the issue to the point of decision, and then, if defeated, gracefully accept the decision and cooperate in its implementation.” Translated into plain English, that means: “We are against Jim Crow and will keep on writing articles to that effect. But if you insist on maintaining Jim Crow, we will be good sports and will even ‘gracefully’ help you in your dirty work of Jim Crowing us.”
The man who wrote that editorial wipes his feet on the real tradition of Negro struggle against oppression in this country; he dishonors the memory of the heroic Negro and white abolitionists who won immortal glory by defying the government’s fugitive slave law almost 100 years ago (instead of gracefully cooperating with it). That editorial would have made Uncle Tom blush in shame. And it undoubtedly brought hearty chuckles from Rankin, Eastland and the other Southern demagogues who know that the Jim Crow structure won’t even be dented as long as the Negro people listen to such servile advice.
These people denounce Randolph for being “extreme,” but how else can you end a brutal system like Jim Crow except by being extreme? When was tyranny ever ended by promising to be “loyal” to it?
When it comes to cooperating or not cooperating with the Jim Crow forces, the Negro people will instinctively side with Randolph, and they will be a thousand times right. But unfortunately, the problem is not settled by merely deciding not to cooperate. You are still faced with the questions of what to do, and how to do it, and when.
The first and most obvious weakness in Randolph’s position is that it places its main emphasis on action by the Negroes after the UMT or draft bills become law. From the viewpoint of tactics, that would be an error. The time to begin fighting most energetically on this question is right now, not after Congress acts. The labor movement’s experience with the Taft-Hartley Act proves that it is much harder to repeal reactionary legislation than it is to prevent its passage.
The second serious shortcoming in Randolph’s proposal is the kind of struggle it advocates. A mere refusal to register and serve in the armed forces will get the Negroes nowhere but in jail – which will remove the most active and courageous elements from the struggle where they are needed, and will leave untouched the power of the ruling class to maintain Jim Crow in full force. What is really needed is a program of positive struggle – mass meetings, demonstrations, a march on Washington, protest work stoppages, collaboration with the labor movement to end Jim Crow through independent political action.
Randolph’s proposal may lead to seriously embarrassing the ruling class. But a mass movement of relentless struggle, determined to return blow for blow instead of turning the other cheek, could and would lead to the complete destruction of Jim Crow.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(13 September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_37" target="new">Vol. V No. 37</a>, 13 September 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>The Kind of War That Negroes Can Support</h4>
<p class="fst">The Negro people are not pacifists. They view with suspicion the current talk about a war for democracy that will be conducted by a Jim Crow army and navy that will use equipment and munitions made in factories that refuse to hire Negroes. Rightly so.</p>
<p>But the Negro people have been ready to fight in the past on behalf of progress for society. They fought bravely in the American Revolutionary War in 1776, when this country won its independence. They fought bravely and eagerly in the Civil War of 1861 when the unity pf this nation was preserved, the political power of the South broken, and slavery abolished. Even in World War I, when they were told by their leaders that they would get their share of democracy after the war was won, they established an impressive fighting record.</p>
<p>Today they are justly suspicious about being fooled as they were in 1917. But they are ready to fight another war if it will be in their interests.</p>
<p>They are ready to fight against the anti-democratic forces at home, the ruling class that starves, cheats and insults them, that kicks them around, uses them and ignores them. In this war they will give their last drop of blood; no one will have to sell it to them with speeches; no one will have to try to sell them bonds to get them to give everything they have for its victory.</p>
<p><em>History will look back at it and call it another Revolutionary War, or maybe the Second Civil War, or the Third American Revolution. But the name won’t bother the Negro people so long as they know it will overthrow the whole system of Jim Crowism in all its spheres and permit them to raise their children in security and equality.</em></p>
<p>Once a serious struggle begins, and the Negro people see on the banners of one army the slogan, “Full social, economic and political equality for the Negro people,” they will rush to enlist in its ranks.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The Fighting Spirit Exists Now</h4>
<p class="fst">How can we be so sure of this? Because of everything we see around us today. There are some who look at the Uncle Toms and misleaders of the Negroes, the men who sell themselves for a government job or even just a pat on the shoulders by their oppressors – and they say, “My God! What ever makes you think the colored people will ever wake up and fight for their rights?”</p>
<p>But we do not make their mistake of confusing the Negro people with a handful of treacherous and self-seeking lackeys who are only too pleased to have the world think they represent the Negro masses.</p>
<p>Even now, while the Uncle Toms, the Pickenses and Pattersons and Chaplain Robinsons, are doing their best to confuse the Negro masses, there is one example after another of what heroic far-sightedness the masses are capable of.</p>
<p><em>There is the example of the Negro March On Washington, and the little colored woman, 77 years old, who exemplified the response of the masses to a just fight. She lived in Florida and spent all her time selling buttons to raise money for the March so her people could have jobs and equality. She had money enough to get only as far as Savannah, Ga., about 700 miles short of Washington, but she swore she would get to the capitol even if it meant she would have to walk the rest of the way.</em></p>
<p>Of course, Randolph and White and the others called off the march, and she was probably a little discouraged. But Randolph and White cannot kill that fighting spirit.</p>
<p><em>There is the example of the brutality of the white MPs to the Negro draftees at Fort Bragg, and of Private Ned Turman who spoke up against it and was shot dead after he resisted attacks and cried, “I’m going to break up you MPs beating us colored soldiers!”</em></p>
<p>True, there are men like Chaplain H.A. Robinson at the same fort, a Negro belly-crawler who tries to cover up and justify the murder of Turman, but he cannot cover up or destroy that fight-spirit of Turman’s which sends an inspirational thrill through militant Negroes every time they think that here was a man who did not hesitate to die fighting for democracy.</p>
<p>Why has that war not begun yet? Surely the Negro masses know what they want. But the trouble is that the Uncle Toms work so energetically beclouding the issues that the masses don’t know how to get what they want.</p>
<p>This is the task for the militant, class-conscious Negroes today. They must study the past experiences, they must learn what exactly they have to contend with, just what forces they must fight against, what methods they must use, who their allies and friends are. They must prepare themselves for leadership, and then go out and organize their brothers and sisters for this righteous war.</p>
<p>They will learn that their enemies are the capitalist class, the bosses, and their political organs, the Republican and Democratic Parties. They will learn that they can get even the smallest concessions from these enemies by only fighting with all their might. They will learn that there is another and a much stronger force that has reason to fight and hate the capitalist system, and that is the labor movement which is also oppressed and exploited by the bosses, and they will come to see that they must make common cause with the workers and fight side by side with them against their common enemy. And they will learn through their own experiences that the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyists, represent the most consistent force fighting against capitalism and Jim Crow.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(13 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 37, 13 September 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Kind of War That Negroes Can Support
The Negro people are not pacifists. They view with suspicion the current talk about a war for democracy that will be conducted by a Jim Crow army and navy that will use equipment and munitions made in factories that refuse to hire Negroes. Rightly so.
But the Negro people have been ready to fight in the past on behalf of progress for society. They fought bravely in the American Revolutionary War in 1776, when this country won its independence. They fought bravely and eagerly in the Civil War of 1861 when the unity pf this nation was preserved, the political power of the South broken, and slavery abolished. Even in World War I, when they were told by their leaders that they would get their share of democracy after the war was won, they established an impressive fighting record.
Today they are justly suspicious about being fooled as they were in 1917. But they are ready to fight another war if it will be in their interests.
They are ready to fight against the anti-democratic forces at home, the ruling class that starves, cheats and insults them, that kicks them around, uses them and ignores them. In this war they will give their last drop of blood; no one will have to sell it to them with speeches; no one will have to try to sell them bonds to get them to give everything they have for its victory.
History will look back at it and call it another Revolutionary War, or maybe the Second Civil War, or the Third American Revolution. But the name won’t bother the Negro people so long as they know it will overthrow the whole system of Jim Crowism in all its spheres and permit them to raise their children in security and equality.
Once a serious struggle begins, and the Negro people see on the banners of one army the slogan, “Full social, economic and political equality for the Negro people,” they will rush to enlist in its ranks.
The Fighting Spirit Exists Now
How can we be so sure of this? Because of everything we see around us today. There are some who look at the Uncle Toms and misleaders of the Negroes, the men who sell themselves for a government job or even just a pat on the shoulders by their oppressors – and they say, “My God! What ever makes you think the colored people will ever wake up and fight for their rights?”
But we do not make their mistake of confusing the Negro people with a handful of treacherous and self-seeking lackeys who are only too pleased to have the world think they represent the Negro masses.
Even now, while the Uncle Toms, the Pickenses and Pattersons and Chaplain Robinsons, are doing their best to confuse the Negro masses, there is one example after another of what heroic far-sightedness the masses are capable of.
There is the example of the Negro March On Washington, and the little colored woman, 77 years old, who exemplified the response of the masses to a just fight. She lived in Florida and spent all her time selling buttons to raise money for the March so her people could have jobs and equality. She had money enough to get only as far as Savannah, Ga., about 700 miles short of Washington, but she swore she would get to the capitol even if it meant she would have to walk the rest of the way.
Of course, Randolph and White and the others called off the march, and she was probably a little discouraged. But Randolph and White cannot kill that fighting spirit.
There is the example of the brutality of the white MPs to the Negro draftees at Fort Bragg, and of Private Ned Turman who spoke up against it and was shot dead after he resisted attacks and cried, “I’m going to break up you MPs beating us colored soldiers!”
True, there are men like Chaplain H.A. Robinson at the same fort, a Negro belly-crawler who tries to cover up and justify the murder of Turman, but he cannot cover up or destroy that fight-spirit of Turman’s which sends an inspirational thrill through militant Negroes every time they think that here was a man who did not hesitate to die fighting for democracy.
Why has that war not begun yet? Surely the Negro masses know what they want. But the trouble is that the Uncle Toms work so energetically beclouding the issues that the masses don’t know how to get what they want.
This is the task for the militant, class-conscious Negroes today. They must study the past experiences, they must learn what exactly they have to contend with, just what forces they must fight against, what methods they must use, who their allies and friends are. They must prepare themselves for leadership, and then go out and organize their brothers and sisters for this righteous war.
They will learn that their enemies are the capitalist class, the bosses, and their political organs, the Republican and Democratic Parties. They will learn that they can get even the smallest concessions from these enemies by only fighting with all their might. They will learn that there is another and a much stronger force that has reason to fight and hate the capitalist system, and that is the labor movement which is also oppressed and exploited by the bosses, and they will come to see that they must make common cause with the workers and fight side by side with them against their common enemy. And they will learn through their own experiences that the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyists, represent the most consistent force fighting against capitalism and Jim Crow.
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<h2 class="western">Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Conscientious Objectors Cannot Stop Jim Crow</h1>
<h3>(1 February 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_05" target="new">Vol. V No. 5</a>, 1 February 1941, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">When Ernest Calloway told a Chicago draft board last month that he wants exemption from military service because he is a conscientious objector against the Jim Crow treatment of the Negroes in the armed forces, he opened up a very important question for all those who are serious about the fight for equal rights in the Army.</p>
<p>That question is: Should other Negroes follow Calloway’s example? Should they declare that they are against being trained how to fight, and refuse military training? Can such a course of action have a decisive effect on the shameful treatment of the Negro soldiers by the officer clique in charge of conscription?</p>
<p>There can be no doubt here, of course, of our attitude toward the attacks that the draft officials are going to make on Calloway. Already his local board has turned down his request for exemption, and although he is appealing their decision with the aid of the N.A.A.C.P., it is pretty certain that they will prosecute and attempt to jail him if he persists in his determination not to he drafted. When the draft officials and the army bureaucrats launch their attack against him, they will do it because he has opposed their draft and has given publicity to the Jim Crow regime in the Army. All workers must defend Calloway against such attacks even if they don’t agree with Calloway’s method.</p>
<p>But it is one thing to oppose Jim Crowism in the army and another thing to oppose it correctly and successfully.<br>
</p>
<h4 class="western">What Is Wrong with Calloway’s Method</h4>
<p>We are certain that actions such as Calloway’s will not have any decisive effect on the fight for equal rights in the armed forces. It can’t, because it leaves untouched the power of the officer caste to do exactly what it pleases. As long as the labor-hating officers have the power to do what they want with the rank-and-file soldiers, there will be Jim Crowism in the army. Not until their complete and all-powerful control over military training is taken from them can the fight for equal rights be won.</p>
<p>What is wrong with Calloway’s method, even if it were followed by ten other men, or 1000, or 10,000, is that it does not touch this main problem at all. Whether Calloway is sent to jail or whether he will be set free will not in any way affect or diminish the powers of the officer caste. They’ll still have the power to Jim Crow Negroes and treat them as second-class citizens.</p>
<p>The second major weakness in Calloways’s method (which was conceived of and proposed by a Chicago organization, known as “Conscientious Objectors Against Jim Crow,” headed by St. Clair Drake, who is also executive secretary of the local branch of the Stalinist-controlled National Negro Congress) is that it does not take into consideration at all the need of the Negro people to learn the military arts.</p>
<p>This is a world of war and revolution today. Every important question is being decided by military means. The Negro people too will be able to solve their problems only by struggle against their armed and trained enemies. Whoever denies that the Negro people must master the other military arts is misleading and disarming the Negroes in the face of their enemies. Whoever says that the Negro people in this country will win their freedom in any way other than by fighting for it is miseducating and confusing the Negro people.<br>
</p>
<h4 class="western">Negroes Must Join Fight for Military Training</h4>
<p>It is correct and necessary to maintain our opposition to conscription by the boss class, but it is useless to do so unless at the same time we present some other proposal which, while it will eliminate military Jim Crowism and anti-labor practices, will also provide for training the workers in the military arts.</p>
<p>Since the Calloway-Drake proposals ignore both the question of <em>control of military training and the necessity for such training</em>, they cannot be accepted as a program for Negro workers.</p>
<p>Since the Socialist Workers Party program for trade union control of military training has the answer to both these questions, it must be pushed by Negroes as the only real aud practical solution of discrimination and segregation in the armed forces.</p>
<p>To push this program requires not an arms-folded policy of individual abstention, which by itself can never win anything, but militant activity to mobilize the Negroes and the trade unions to struggle against the bosses for its realization.</p>
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Albert Parker
Conscientious Objectors Cannot Stop Jim Crow
(1 February 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 5, 1 February 1941, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
When Ernest Calloway told a Chicago draft board last month that he wants exemption from military service because he is a conscientious objector against the Jim Crow treatment of the Negroes in the armed forces, he opened up a very important question for all those who are serious about the fight for equal rights in the Army.
That question is: Should other Negroes follow Calloway’s example? Should they declare that they are against being trained how to fight, and refuse military training? Can such a course of action have a decisive effect on the shameful treatment of the Negro soldiers by the officer clique in charge of conscription?
There can be no doubt here, of course, of our attitude toward the attacks that the draft officials are going to make on Calloway. Already his local board has turned down his request for exemption, and although he is appealing their decision with the aid of the N.A.A.C.P., it is pretty certain that they will prosecute and attempt to jail him if he persists in his determination not to he drafted. When the draft officials and the army bureaucrats launch their attack against him, they will do it because he has opposed their draft and has given publicity to the Jim Crow regime in the Army. All workers must defend Calloway against such attacks even if they don’t agree with Calloway’s method.
But it is one thing to oppose Jim Crowism in the army and another thing to oppose it correctly and successfully.
What Is Wrong with Calloway’s Method
We are certain that actions such as Calloway’s will not have any decisive effect on the fight for equal rights in the armed forces. It can’t, because it leaves untouched the power of the officer caste to do exactly what it pleases. As long as the labor-hating officers have the power to do what they want with the rank-and-file soldiers, there will be Jim Crowism in the army. Not until their complete and all-powerful control over military training is taken from them can the fight for equal rights be won.
What is wrong with Calloway’s method, even if it were followed by ten other men, or 1000, or 10,000, is that it does not touch this main problem at all. Whether Calloway is sent to jail or whether he will be set free will not in any way affect or diminish the powers of the officer caste. They’ll still have the power to Jim Crow Negroes and treat them as second-class citizens.
The second major weakness in Calloways’s method (which was conceived of and proposed by a Chicago organization, known as “Conscientious Objectors Against Jim Crow,” headed by St. Clair Drake, who is also executive secretary of the local branch of the Stalinist-controlled National Negro Congress) is that it does not take into consideration at all the need of the Negro people to learn the military arts.
This is a world of war and revolution today. Every important question is being decided by military means. The Negro people too will be able to solve their problems only by struggle against their armed and trained enemies. Whoever denies that the Negro people must master the other military arts is misleading and disarming the Negroes in the face of their enemies. Whoever says that the Negro people in this country will win their freedom in any way other than by fighting for it is miseducating and confusing the Negro people.
Negroes Must Join Fight for Military Training
It is correct and necessary to maintain our opposition to conscription by the boss class, but it is useless to do so unless at the same time we present some other proposal which, while it will eliminate military Jim Crowism and anti-labor practices, will also provide for training the workers in the military arts.
Since the Calloway-Drake proposals ignore both the question of control of military training and the necessity for such training, they cannot be accepted as a program for Negro workers.
Since the Socialist Workers Party program for trade union control of military training has the answer to both these questions, it must be pushed by Negroes as the only real aud practical solution of discrimination and segregation in the armed forces.
To push this program requires not an arms-folded policy of individual abstention, which by itself can never win anything, but militant activity to mobilize the Negroes and the trade unions to struggle against the bosses for its realization.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Wallace’s Move Spotlights<br>
Need for Labor Conference</h1>
<h4>Third Capitalist Party Cannot Serve<br>
Interests of American Workers</h4>
<h3>(5 January 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_01" target="new">Vol. XII No. 1</a>, 5 January 1948, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Henry Wallace’s announcement that he will run as a third party candidate for president has exploded like a bombshell on the political arena. It splits the Democratic Party and deals the Truman candidacy a blow from which it may not recover. It opens the way for new political alignments and struggles of crucial significance. Most important, it poses again, and in the sharpest form, the task of the labor movement in the 1948 elections.</strong></p>
<p>Wallace has long been the chief spokesman of those forces who preached the possibility of reforming the Democratic Party into an organization that could serve the interests of the working people, farmers and minorities. His withdrawal from the party will weaken that illusion.</p>
<p>Although the Democrats are trying (with quavering voices) to dismiss the importance of the Wallace move, serious opinion holds that he will draw a strong vote. Because in the absence of a Labor Party, Wallace will exploit the deep-going mass discontent with postwar conditions.</p>
<p>While his program is vague to an extreme and fails to provide an effective alternative to the evils of capitalism, it does denounce those evils and calls on the workers, Negroes and small businessmen to join in a political struggle against them.</p>
<p><em>But the Wallace movement is not a Labor Party such as the Socialist Workers Party and <strong>The Militant</strong> have vigorously advocated for many years, and which we will support against the capitalist parties.</em></p>
<p>A Labor Party is required today because the American workers while strongly organized economically, possess no broad national political organization of their own through which they can defend their interests against the political attacks of the ruling class. But such a party must be an expression of the organized working class, that is, of the trade union movement, and responsible to it.<br>
</p>
<h4>Capitalist Party</h4>
<p class="fst">That is exactly what the Wallace party is not. Its main base is not the labor movement, but the Stalinists and their liberal fellow-travelers. Its control is not in the hands of the union movement, but of a single individual supported by the Stalinists and those unions influenced by them. Regardless of the support it may pick up from individual workers, it does not have the character of a Labor Party movement. It is a third capitalist party.</p>
<p><em>Our criticism of this movement has nothing in common with the attacks launched on it bv the official union leaders – the Murrays, Greens, and Reuthers. Their opposition is in part based on their support of the Truman-Marshall Doctrine and of Wall Street’s program for war with the Soviet Union. We criticize the Wallace-Stalinist foreign policy from an opposite point of view; because it fails to oppose the Truman-Marshall Doctrine, with a working class program to abolish capitalism.</em></p>
<p>The labor bureaucrats further denounce the Wallace movement because they are opposed to any third party, no matter what its character, no matter who controls it. That is because they are on the Truman bandwagon and intend to stump the country trying to line up labor support for the Democratic Party. We, on the other hand, favor the formulation of a Labor Party, the kind that can arouse the necessary support and enthusiasm among the masses to defeat all the capitalist parties.<br>
</p>
<h4>Bureaucrats’ Opposition</h4>
<p class="fst">The opposition of the union bureaucrats to Wallace does not have any progressive content whatever. Instead of mobilizing the workers as an independent force on the political field, these bureaucrats seek to maintain the capitalist monopoly of politics which is responsible for the Taft-Hartley Act, high prices, housing crisis, racial oppression and the mounting danger of a new war.</p>
<p>Despite their opposition, the top union leaders have, in reality, made possible this Stalinist third party adventure. At a time when even Wallace must break with the discredited Democratic Party and admit that it can no longer be regarded as the lesser of two evils, the Murrays, Greens and Reuthers continue to hang onto this capitalist party, slavishly bolstering it up and trying to whitewash its anti-labor character.</p>
<p><em>Isn’t it plain that if the departure of Wallace can so shake the Democratic Party, it would crumple and disappear as a national party if the union leaders would break with it? Isn’t it obvious that by taking such a long-overdue step, the unions could quickly replace the Wallace-Stalinist adventure and become the rallying point for all the exploited and oppressed masses in this country?</em></p>
<p>What is the labor movement going to do in 1948? The reactionary intentions of most of the union bureaucracy are already all too clear. But there is still time for the rank and file workers to intervene.<br>
</p>
<h4>No Explanation</h4>
<p class="fst">The false argument, repeated by the labor bureaucrats, day in, day out, that “now is not the time” to launch a new party, because it would help elect a Republican, has lost all semblance of reason. Because Truman faces defeat despite the support of the labor union bureaucracy. This false policy of the “lesser evil,” drummed into the heads of the workers by the AFL and CIO leaders, as well as the Stalinists – can how be shaken off more easily. The labor leaders simply do not have any real explanations any more why they will not join in building a new party of labor.</p>
<p><em>Now, when the whole political situation has been shaken tip by the Wallace move, when political interests among the people is mounting to an air-time high, it is more than ever necessary for the trade unions to meet and to map out a program of united labor political action for 1948.</em></p>
<p>Now is the time for a United Labor Conference in Washington, to be attended by all the international and, local unions, AFL, CIO, Railroad Brotherhoods and independents. Now is the time for labor’s representatives to get together and democratically discuss the union movement’s attitude toward Truman and toward Wallace. Now is the time for labor to take its rightful place on the political field by launching an independent Labor Party and by running its own candidates for national, state and local office!</p>
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George Breitman
Wallace’s Move Spotlights
Need for Labor Conference
Third Capitalist Party Cannot Serve
Interests of American Workers
(5 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 1, 5 January 1948, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Henry Wallace’s announcement that he will run as a third party candidate for president has exploded like a bombshell on the political arena. It splits the Democratic Party and deals the Truman candidacy a blow from which it may not recover. It opens the way for new political alignments and struggles of crucial significance. Most important, it poses again, and in the sharpest form, the task of the labor movement in the 1948 elections.
Wallace has long been the chief spokesman of those forces who preached the possibility of reforming the Democratic Party into an organization that could serve the interests of the working people, farmers and minorities. His withdrawal from the party will weaken that illusion.
Although the Democrats are trying (with quavering voices) to dismiss the importance of the Wallace move, serious opinion holds that he will draw a strong vote. Because in the absence of a Labor Party, Wallace will exploit the deep-going mass discontent with postwar conditions.
While his program is vague to an extreme and fails to provide an effective alternative to the evils of capitalism, it does denounce those evils and calls on the workers, Negroes and small businessmen to join in a political struggle against them.
But the Wallace movement is not a Labor Party such as the Socialist Workers Party and The Militant have vigorously advocated for many years, and which we will support against the capitalist parties.
A Labor Party is required today because the American workers while strongly organized economically, possess no broad national political organization of their own through which they can defend their interests against the political attacks of the ruling class. But such a party must be an expression of the organized working class, that is, of the trade union movement, and responsible to it.
Capitalist Party
That is exactly what the Wallace party is not. Its main base is not the labor movement, but the Stalinists and their liberal fellow-travelers. Its control is not in the hands of the union movement, but of a single individual supported by the Stalinists and those unions influenced by them. Regardless of the support it may pick up from individual workers, it does not have the character of a Labor Party movement. It is a third capitalist party.
Our criticism of this movement has nothing in common with the attacks launched on it bv the official union leaders – the Murrays, Greens, and Reuthers. Their opposition is in part based on their support of the Truman-Marshall Doctrine and of Wall Street’s program for war with the Soviet Union. We criticize the Wallace-Stalinist foreign policy from an opposite point of view; because it fails to oppose the Truman-Marshall Doctrine, with a working class program to abolish capitalism.
The labor bureaucrats further denounce the Wallace movement because they are opposed to any third party, no matter what its character, no matter who controls it. That is because they are on the Truman bandwagon and intend to stump the country trying to line up labor support for the Democratic Party. We, on the other hand, favor the formulation of a Labor Party, the kind that can arouse the necessary support and enthusiasm among the masses to defeat all the capitalist parties.
Bureaucrats’ Opposition
The opposition of the union bureaucrats to Wallace does not have any progressive content whatever. Instead of mobilizing the workers as an independent force on the political field, these bureaucrats seek to maintain the capitalist monopoly of politics which is responsible for the Taft-Hartley Act, high prices, housing crisis, racial oppression and the mounting danger of a new war.
Despite their opposition, the top union leaders have, in reality, made possible this Stalinist third party adventure. At a time when even Wallace must break with the discredited Democratic Party and admit that it can no longer be regarded as the lesser of two evils, the Murrays, Greens and Reuthers continue to hang onto this capitalist party, slavishly bolstering it up and trying to whitewash its anti-labor character.
Isn’t it plain that if the departure of Wallace can so shake the Democratic Party, it would crumple and disappear as a national party if the union leaders would break with it? Isn’t it obvious that by taking such a long-overdue step, the unions could quickly replace the Wallace-Stalinist adventure and become the rallying point for all the exploited and oppressed masses in this country?
What is the labor movement going to do in 1948? The reactionary intentions of most of the union bureaucracy are already all too clear. But there is still time for the rank and file workers to intervene.
No Explanation
The false argument, repeated by the labor bureaucrats, day in, day out, that “now is not the time” to launch a new party, because it would help elect a Republican, has lost all semblance of reason. Because Truman faces defeat despite the support of the labor union bureaucracy. This false policy of the “lesser evil,” drummed into the heads of the workers by the AFL and CIO leaders, as well as the Stalinists – can how be shaken off more easily. The labor leaders simply do not have any real explanations any more why they will not join in building a new party of labor.
Now, when the whole political situation has been shaken tip by the Wallace move, when political interests among the people is mounting to an air-time high, it is more than ever necessary for the trade unions to meet and to map out a program of united labor political action for 1948.
Now is the time for a United Labor Conference in Washington, to be attended by all the international and, local unions, AFL, CIO, Railroad Brotherhoods and independents. Now is the time for labor’s representatives to get together and democratically discuss the union movement’s attitude toward Truman and toward Wallace. Now is the time for labor to take its rightful place on the political field by launching an independent Labor Party and by running its own candidates for national, state and local office!
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>GPU Concocts New Forgery<br>
to Smear Leon Trotsky</h1>
<h3>(5 April 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_14" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 14</a>, 5 April 1948, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Stalin’s GPU murder machine, which could not destroy the stainless revolutionary reputation of Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International even though it resorted to the Moscow Trial frame-ups and the assassination of Trotsky, last week launched a new frame-up in the form of a crude forgery called “Trotsky’s secret political testament.”</p>
<p>The purpose of this forged document, every line of which is covered with the political fingerprints of the GPU, is to spread the slander that in the final months of his life the great Marxist leader renounced “all the ideas and all the conceptions which he had formerly held.” It seeks to discredit the world Trotskyist movement, which represents the most serious threat within the working-class to the domination of Stalinism; and thus to prevent the adherence to the Fourth International of leftward moving groups formerly belonging to the Social Democracy, especially in France and Italy.</p>
<p>This crude forgery, while written by the GPU, was naturally not released in the name or in the official press of the Stalinists, because that would have destroyed its effectiveness. Instead) it was planted in the weekly <strong>France Dimanche</strong> in Paris and, according to this paper, also in the Swiss <strong>Die Wochen Zeitung</strong>. <strong>France Dimanche</strong> boasts of its “customary objectivity” in the article containing the alleged “testament,” but as seen below, this is not the first time it has been hired by the GPU for its dirty work.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Thanks to an incredible combination of circumstances,” the March 21 leading article in this paper begins, “the political testament which Leon Trotsky wrote just before he was assassinated, has arrived in Europe ... This document, so extraordinary in every respect, has remained secret for eight years. It was believed to have been destroyed. It was written by Leon Trotsky on May 20, 1940 at the time when Hitler was winning the battle of France.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Why did it remain secret? Who believed it to have been destroyed? The people who never heard of its existence, or the people who had it and therefore knew it wasn’t destroyed? These are questions never answered in the article.<br>
</p>
<h4>Obtained from Whom?</h4>
<p class="fst">“Toward the end of July 1940 a Soviet agent succeeded in securing a copy of the testament which Trotsky had entrusted to one of his intimate friends and the document was transmitted to Moscow.” From whom did <strong>France Dimanche</strong> obtain this information? The only possible source was. the GPU itself. This is a convenient preparation for a possible future “confirmation” of the frame-up by the Kremlin itself. And again – who was this unnamed “intimate friend”?</p>
<p>“On July 20 Trotsky was assassinated by one of his collaborators, Jacques Mornard.” That is the signature of Stalin himself. THE WHOLE WORLD NOW KNOWS THAT MORNARD (ALIAS “FRANK JACSON”), FAR FROM BEING A COLLABORATOR OF TROTSKY, WAS AN AGENT ACTING UNDER TIIE ORDERS OF THE GPU.</p>
<p>Only last year this fact was confirmed by Louis F. Budenz, former managing editor of the New York <strong>Daily Worker</strong>, who admitted in his book, <strong>This Is My Story</strong>, that he had worked with the GPU in the preparations for devising an entry for “Jacson” into the Trotsky household in 1940. (Incidentally, “Jacson” murdered Trotsky on August 20, not July 20.)</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Three copies of the testament remained in the hands of a personal friend of Trotsky’s ... Victor Serge ... It is one of his [Serge’s] friends to whom he had entrusted one of the copies, who has just brought it to Europe.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Thus we come to the one and only name used to corroborate the incredible history of this “testament.” Serge died a few months ago, and so cannot defend himself from the GPU fabrication. There are sufficient facts known, however, to rip the fabrication to shreds.</p>
<p>Far from being a personal friend of Trotsky’s, Serge was a political antagonist and was so designated in all of Trotsky’s many references to him during the last years of his life. Why should Trotsky entrust his last testament (in three copies) to such a man and not to Trotsky’s loyal wife or his trustworthy political collaborators? And what was the name of Serge’s friend who brought it to Europe?</p>
<p>MOREOVER, SERGE DID NOT ARRIVE IN MEXICO UNTIL AFTER TROTSKY’S ASSASSINATION – IN SEPTEMBER 1941. HOW COULD TROTSKY HAVE GIVEN HIM HIS “TESTAMENT”?</p>
<p>The GPU authors of the article naturally do not provide answers to these questions, nor to the even more numerous ones raised by the text of the alleged document itself:<br>
</p>
<h4>Why a Secret?</h4>
<p class="fst">Why, for example, should Trotsky, the most prolific political writer of modern times, have confined his change in opinion to a secret document, whose authenticity would certainly be questioned – to counterbalance the hundreds he had printed on behalf of a contrary view?</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the GPU authors of this clumsy forgery, the Fourth International, on the very day that this “testament” is supposed to have been written, was holding an international Emergency Conference, “somewhere in the Western Hemisphere” (May 19–26, 1940), one of whose main actions was the adoption of a Manifesto on the <strong>Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution</strong> (Pioneer Publishers), which reaffirmed the Marxist program in the most decisive manner. The author of this Manifesto was none other than Trotsky himself!</p>
<p>Furthermore, why in the entire “testament” is there not a single reference to the Fourth International, to the building of which Trotsky devoted the last 17 years of his life, and why does the only reference to a new revolutionary international carry the implication that it wasn’t even formed?</p>
<p>Why, if Trotsky changed the ideas of a lifetime on May 20, did he continue – in the scores of articles he wrote and interviews he held from then until the day of his death three months later – to reaffirm with his characteristic vigor all of the ideas which he had allegedly “secretly” repudiated? This single discrepancy is sufficient proof that the so-called “’testament” is nothing but a forgery of the GPU.</p>
<p>The so-called “testament” states that Trotsky expects to be killed by Stalin because Stalin “judges a Russo-German war as inevitable.” Notice how neatly that fits into the Kremlin lie that Trotsky was an agent of Hitler: Stalin supposedly seeks to murder Trotsky not because the latter is the last great representative of the Bolshevik leadership, but because a Russo-German war is inevitable (and therefore imposes on Stalin the need to eliminate all Hitlerite agents).</p>
<p>ACTUALLY, OF COURSE, WHILE TROTSKY PREDICTED A RUSSO-GERMAN WAR, AND WARNED THE SOVIET UNION TO PREPARE FOR IT, STALIN AT THIS TIME WAS STILL CUDDLING UP TO HITLER IN THE ILLUSION THAT THE HITLER-STALIN PACT GUARANTEED PEACE.</p>
<p>The forgery then has Trotsky describe his life-long devotion to the working class (“I found myself as if fascinated by the splendor of the magnificent conception limned by Marx and Engels”) and his hope that the working class would emancipate both itself and the whole of humanity.</p>
<p><em>Then the “testament” jumps directly to the question of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalin’s policy, which “sought ... to convert the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bureaucracy.” Trotsky, it continues, used to hope that the workers in the Soviet Union would “react” against Stalin’s policy, which is here credited With having “succeeded in making of his Bonapartist clique the ruling class of a pseudo-socialist State.” But the Soviet workers, the document states, did not fulfill this hope.</em></p>
<p>The conception flies in the face of everything Trotsky ever actually wrote or said. Ever since the beginning of the degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin, Trotsky fought against those who designated the Stalinist bureaucracy as a new “ruling class,” Trotsky demonstrated the erroneousness of this designation, showing that the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia was not a ruling class, but, a bureaucratic clique without solid class foundations, which was able to seize power in a degenerated workers’ state because of the temporary defeat of the world revolution but which would disappear with the victory of the revolution in other countries.</p>
<p>In his work written in 1939–40. <strong>In Defense of Marxism</strong> (Pioneer Publishers), Trotsky expounds this idea in great detail. The Emergency Conference Manifesto, of the Fourth International, written by Trotsky, again repeats this thought. And so did every single article on the Soviet Union written by Trotsky until the day Stalin’s agent struck him down.</p>
<p><em>Supposedly disillusioned about Russia, Trotsky is made to say that he then turned his attention to the “international proletariat,” expecting to see it rally to “the struggle for a new ‘International’.” But “this was not the case. The Communist parties did not react.”</em> This makes it seem that Trotsky had equated the international working class with the Stalinist parties, or that he had had some hopes about reforming them when as a matter of fact, he had long before concluded they were irredeemably corrupted.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“It was with great bitterness that I was forced to admit that the only ones who grasped the true nature of the Stalinist danger and who tried to put up dikes against the Bonapartist and bureaucratic tide were certain elements in the left wing of the Socialist movement.”</em><br>
</p>
<h4>The Real Reason</h4>
<p class="fst">Here is the tip-off on one of the aims of the supposed “testament” – on the one hand to smear left socialist opponents of Stalinism in Europe as “Trotskyist agents of fascism” and on the other to attempt by this smear to frighten them off from moving toward unity with the Trotskyists.</p>
<p><em>Then, the Trotsky invented by the GPU continues,</em></p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“I recalled that in the past, in Russia as elsewhere, the purifying waves of the proletarian revolution were set in motion primarily in time of war when the repressive machine of the capitalist state found itself weakened by bloodletting and by economic difficulties and was no longer in a condition to resist the revolutionary forces.” The war had entered its second phase, and “it is possible to expect that in a little while Soviet Russia and the United States will become involved in it ...</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“The working class of the Soviet Union ought to profit from this war in order to open up fierce hostilities against Stalin’s Bonapartist bureaucracy. We ought to exert here the same furious energy that Lenin showed in opposing himself to Kerensky during the First World War ... even if it is bound to assist it [fascism] in gaining temporary military successes.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">This is one of the biggest lies in the whole Stalinist fabric of falsification. As is well known, Trotsky was an advocate of a political revolution against the Soviet bureaucracy, with the aim of restoring working class democracy and returning the Soviet government to the path of internationalism. BUT AT THE SAME TIME THAT HE FOUGHT THE STALINIST BUREAUCRACY, HE WAS ALSO THE MOST DETERMINED DEFENDER OF THE SOVIET UNION AGAINST ALL ATTACKS BY IMPERIALISM. Both before and after May 20, 1940, he explained again and again:</p>
<p class="quoteb">We must formulate our slogans in such a way that the workers see clearly just what we are defending (state property and planned economy), and against whom we are conducting a ruthless struggle (the parasitic bureaucracy and its Comintern.) We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that <em>the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR;</em> that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.” (<strong>In Defense of Marxism</strong>, p. 21)</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, Trotsky’s approach to the defense of the Soviet Union (a degenerated workers’ state) against the attack of imperialism was necessarily different from that of Lenin’s approach to Kerensky’s war to defend Russia in 1917 (when it was a capitalist state).</p>
<p>Trotsky is then quoted as declaring that he had long believed that a revolution in “the progressive capitalist countries” (whatever that may mean) would “necessarily lead to the downfall of Stalin’s clique and the regeneration of Soviet democracy. I consider it necessary to say openly to the workers of the world that <em>I no longer hold this opinion</em>.” If Trotsky supposedly deems it necessary to state his change of opinion “openly to the workers of the world,” why didn’t he do so, instead of incorporating it in a secret “testament”?</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the GPU liars, Trotsky wrote in his <em>Letter to the Workers of the USSR</em>, <em>written the same month as the so-called testament</em>,</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The present war will spread more and more, piling ruins on ruins, breeding more and more sorrow, despair and protest, driving the whole world toward new revolutionary explosions. The world revolution shall re-invigorate the Soviet working masses with new courage and resoluteness and shall undermine the bureaucratic props of Stalin’s caste.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Fantastic Lies</h4>
<p class="fst">From this point on the falsifications grow wilder and more fantastic. Trotsky is presented as giving, up not only the defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack, but even the idea that the workers are capable of achieving socialism:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“The victory of this Stalinist bureaucracy over the forces of workers’ democracy will open the doors for the darkest period in history ever known by mankind. This will be the epoch of a new exploitive class, born from the Bonapartist bureaucracy of Stalin.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“It will then be necessary to recognize that this bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union brings with it proof of the congenital incapacity of the proletariat to become a ruling class and that the Soviet Urtion will become the precursor and embryo of a new and terrible exploitive regime on a world scale.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">The real authors of this “testament” must have guffawed with satisfaction as they composed this section. Because it repeats some of the phraseology actually used by Trotsky in an article written in September 1939, called <em>The USSR in War</em> published in the book <strong>In Defense of Marxism</strong>. The “trick” is that Trotsky is here presented as affirming what he specifically denied!</p>
<p>But, it may be asked by some people not acquainted with Trotsky’s views in his last months, perhaps something happened be ween September 1939 and May 20, 1940, when this testament presents him as saying:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I am a veteran of the revolution who in the last hours of his life finds himself compelled to revise all the ideas and all the conceptions which he had formerly held. I firmly believed in the regeneration of mankind through the proletarian revolution. I begin to doubt that the class on which I had placed all my hopes is capable of attempting the colossal task which history wants to assign to it.”</p>
<p class="fst">Yes, something happened in that period – Hitler broke through his western front and began the drive which ended in the fall of France in June. BUT AT THE END OF JUNE, 1940, TROTSKY WROTE AN ARTICLE ON THE VERY PROBLEMS RAISED BY THIS IMPORTANT EVENT. ITS TITLE INDICATES ITS CONTENTS: <em>WE DO NOT CHANGE OUR COURSE.</em> PRINTED IN THE OCTOBER 1940 <strong>FOURTH INTERNATIONAL</strong>.</p>
<p><em>And Trotsky’s dying words, after the GPU assassin had struck him down and he knew that he was actually uttering his last testament, were:</em></p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Please say to our friends that I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International. Go forward.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">But <strong>France Dimanche</strong>’s article does not end with the end of the “testament.” As if wanting to guarantee that all informed readers will recognize that the whole thing was a GPU job, it continues by recalling that a “special envoy” of this sheet had had an interview with Stalin’s assassin, Mornard-Jacson, printed in its Dec. 8, 1946 issue.</p>
<p>The substance of that interview is then reprinted: Mornard repeats the long-demolished alibi put in his month by the GPU and adds a few newly-invented details – about how Trotsky ordered him to go to Shanghai, then enter Russia to train “squads of saboteurs”; how the assassin thought to himself that this would be dangerous and “Moreover, during the previous month I had been astonished by the frequent visits of the German consul to Trotsky”; how he refused to go, and Trotsky attacked him, threatening to have him shot by the guards; and how he then had no alternative but to murder Trotsky ...</p>
<p>And of this the editors say with a straight face: “Trotsky’s testament illumines in a singular manner the declarations of his assassin.”</p>
<p>WHAT IT ACTUALLY ILLUMINES IS THE FACT THAT EVEN THOUGH STALIN MURDERED TROTSKY, HE HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO DESTROY TROTSKYISM – TROTSKY’S PROGRAM AND THE WORLD ORGANIZATION HE BUILT.</p>
<p>The Kremlin still stands in deathly fear that the revolutionary program of Bolshevism, which it has betrayed – and which is represented today by Trotsky’s Fourth International – will win out and destroy not only capitalism, but also the Stalinist murder machine.</p>
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George Breitman
GPU Concocts New Forgery
to Smear Leon Trotsky
(5 April 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 14, 5 April 1948, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Stalin’s GPU murder machine, which could not destroy the stainless revolutionary reputation of Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International even though it resorted to the Moscow Trial frame-ups and the assassination of Trotsky, last week launched a new frame-up in the form of a crude forgery called “Trotsky’s secret political testament.”
The purpose of this forged document, every line of which is covered with the political fingerprints of the GPU, is to spread the slander that in the final months of his life the great Marxist leader renounced “all the ideas and all the conceptions which he had formerly held.” It seeks to discredit the world Trotskyist movement, which represents the most serious threat within the working-class to the domination of Stalinism; and thus to prevent the adherence to the Fourth International of leftward moving groups formerly belonging to the Social Democracy, especially in France and Italy.
This crude forgery, while written by the GPU, was naturally not released in the name or in the official press of the Stalinists, because that would have destroyed its effectiveness. Instead) it was planted in the weekly France Dimanche in Paris and, according to this paper, also in the Swiss Die Wochen Zeitung. France Dimanche boasts of its “customary objectivity” in the article containing the alleged “testament,” but as seen below, this is not the first time it has been hired by the GPU for its dirty work.
“Thanks to an incredible combination of circumstances,” the March 21 leading article in this paper begins, “the political testament which Leon Trotsky wrote just before he was assassinated, has arrived in Europe ... This document, so extraordinary in every respect, has remained secret for eight years. It was believed to have been destroyed. It was written by Leon Trotsky on May 20, 1940 at the time when Hitler was winning the battle of France.”
Why did it remain secret? Who believed it to have been destroyed? The people who never heard of its existence, or the people who had it and therefore knew it wasn’t destroyed? These are questions never answered in the article.
Obtained from Whom?
“Toward the end of July 1940 a Soviet agent succeeded in securing a copy of the testament which Trotsky had entrusted to one of his intimate friends and the document was transmitted to Moscow.” From whom did France Dimanche obtain this information? The only possible source was. the GPU itself. This is a convenient preparation for a possible future “confirmation” of the frame-up by the Kremlin itself. And again – who was this unnamed “intimate friend”?
“On July 20 Trotsky was assassinated by one of his collaborators, Jacques Mornard.” That is the signature of Stalin himself. THE WHOLE WORLD NOW KNOWS THAT MORNARD (ALIAS “FRANK JACSON”), FAR FROM BEING A COLLABORATOR OF TROTSKY, WAS AN AGENT ACTING UNDER TIIE ORDERS OF THE GPU.
Only last year this fact was confirmed by Louis F. Budenz, former managing editor of the New York Daily Worker, who admitted in his book, This Is My Story, that he had worked with the GPU in the preparations for devising an entry for “Jacson” into the Trotsky household in 1940. (Incidentally, “Jacson” murdered Trotsky on August 20, not July 20.)
“Three copies of the testament remained in the hands of a personal friend of Trotsky’s ... Victor Serge ... It is one of his [Serge’s] friends to whom he had entrusted one of the copies, who has just brought it to Europe.”
Thus we come to the one and only name used to corroborate the incredible history of this “testament.” Serge died a few months ago, and so cannot defend himself from the GPU fabrication. There are sufficient facts known, however, to rip the fabrication to shreds.
Far from being a personal friend of Trotsky’s, Serge was a political antagonist and was so designated in all of Trotsky’s many references to him during the last years of his life. Why should Trotsky entrust his last testament (in three copies) to such a man and not to Trotsky’s loyal wife or his trustworthy political collaborators? And what was the name of Serge’s friend who brought it to Europe?
MOREOVER, SERGE DID NOT ARRIVE IN MEXICO UNTIL AFTER TROTSKY’S ASSASSINATION – IN SEPTEMBER 1941. HOW COULD TROTSKY HAVE GIVEN HIM HIS “TESTAMENT”?
The GPU authors of the article naturally do not provide answers to these questions, nor to the even more numerous ones raised by the text of the alleged document itself:
Why a Secret?
Why, for example, should Trotsky, the most prolific political writer of modern times, have confined his change in opinion to a secret document, whose authenticity would certainly be questioned – to counterbalance the hundreds he had printed on behalf of a contrary view?
Unfortunately for the GPU authors of this clumsy forgery, the Fourth International, on the very day that this “testament” is supposed to have been written, was holding an international Emergency Conference, “somewhere in the Western Hemisphere” (May 19–26, 1940), one of whose main actions was the adoption of a Manifesto on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution (Pioneer Publishers), which reaffirmed the Marxist program in the most decisive manner. The author of this Manifesto was none other than Trotsky himself!
Furthermore, why in the entire “testament” is there not a single reference to the Fourth International, to the building of which Trotsky devoted the last 17 years of his life, and why does the only reference to a new revolutionary international carry the implication that it wasn’t even formed?
Why, if Trotsky changed the ideas of a lifetime on May 20, did he continue – in the scores of articles he wrote and interviews he held from then until the day of his death three months later – to reaffirm with his characteristic vigor all of the ideas which he had allegedly “secretly” repudiated? This single discrepancy is sufficient proof that the so-called “’testament” is nothing but a forgery of the GPU.
The so-called “testament” states that Trotsky expects to be killed by Stalin because Stalin “judges a Russo-German war as inevitable.” Notice how neatly that fits into the Kremlin lie that Trotsky was an agent of Hitler: Stalin supposedly seeks to murder Trotsky not because the latter is the last great representative of the Bolshevik leadership, but because a Russo-German war is inevitable (and therefore imposes on Stalin the need to eliminate all Hitlerite agents).
ACTUALLY, OF COURSE, WHILE TROTSKY PREDICTED A RUSSO-GERMAN WAR, AND WARNED THE SOVIET UNION TO PREPARE FOR IT, STALIN AT THIS TIME WAS STILL CUDDLING UP TO HITLER IN THE ILLUSION THAT THE HITLER-STALIN PACT GUARANTEED PEACE.
The forgery then has Trotsky describe his life-long devotion to the working class (“I found myself as if fascinated by the splendor of the magnificent conception limned by Marx and Engels”) and his hope that the working class would emancipate both itself and the whole of humanity.
Then the “testament” jumps directly to the question of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalin’s policy, which “sought ... to convert the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bureaucracy.” Trotsky, it continues, used to hope that the workers in the Soviet Union would “react” against Stalin’s policy, which is here credited With having “succeeded in making of his Bonapartist clique the ruling class of a pseudo-socialist State.” But the Soviet workers, the document states, did not fulfill this hope.
The conception flies in the face of everything Trotsky ever actually wrote or said. Ever since the beginning of the degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin, Trotsky fought against those who designated the Stalinist bureaucracy as a new “ruling class,” Trotsky demonstrated the erroneousness of this designation, showing that the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia was not a ruling class, but, a bureaucratic clique without solid class foundations, which was able to seize power in a degenerated workers’ state because of the temporary defeat of the world revolution but which would disappear with the victory of the revolution in other countries.
In his work written in 1939–40. In Defense of Marxism (Pioneer Publishers), Trotsky expounds this idea in great detail. The Emergency Conference Manifesto, of the Fourth International, written by Trotsky, again repeats this thought. And so did every single article on the Soviet Union written by Trotsky until the day Stalin’s agent struck him down.
Supposedly disillusioned about Russia, Trotsky is made to say that he then turned his attention to the “international proletariat,” expecting to see it rally to “the struggle for a new ‘International’.” But “this was not the case. The Communist parties did not react.” This makes it seem that Trotsky had equated the international working class with the Stalinist parties, or that he had had some hopes about reforming them when as a matter of fact, he had long before concluded they were irredeemably corrupted.
“It was with great bitterness that I was forced to admit that the only ones who grasped the true nature of the Stalinist danger and who tried to put up dikes against the Bonapartist and bureaucratic tide were certain elements in the left wing of the Socialist movement.”
The Real Reason
Here is the tip-off on one of the aims of the supposed “testament” – on the one hand to smear left socialist opponents of Stalinism in Europe as “Trotskyist agents of fascism” and on the other to attempt by this smear to frighten them off from moving toward unity with the Trotskyists.
Then, the Trotsky invented by the GPU continues,
“I recalled that in the past, in Russia as elsewhere, the purifying waves of the proletarian revolution were set in motion primarily in time of war when the repressive machine of the capitalist state found itself weakened by bloodletting and by economic difficulties and was no longer in a condition to resist the revolutionary forces.” The war had entered its second phase, and “it is possible to expect that in a little while Soviet Russia and the United States will become involved in it ...
“The working class of the Soviet Union ought to profit from this war in order to open up fierce hostilities against Stalin’s Bonapartist bureaucracy. We ought to exert here the same furious energy that Lenin showed in opposing himself to Kerensky during the First World War ... even if it is bound to assist it [fascism] in gaining temporary military successes.”
This is one of the biggest lies in the whole Stalinist fabric of falsification. As is well known, Trotsky was an advocate of a political revolution against the Soviet bureaucracy, with the aim of restoring working class democracy and returning the Soviet government to the path of internationalism. BUT AT THE SAME TIME THAT HE FOUGHT THE STALINIST BUREAUCRACY, HE WAS ALSO THE MOST DETERMINED DEFENDER OF THE SOVIET UNION AGAINST ALL ATTACKS BY IMPERIALISM. Both before and after May 20, 1940, he explained again and again:
We must formulate our slogans in such a way that the workers see clearly just what we are defending (state property and planned economy), and against whom we are conducting a ruthless struggle (the parasitic bureaucracy and its Comintern.) We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR; that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.” (In Defense of Marxism, p. 21)
In other words, Trotsky’s approach to the defense of the Soviet Union (a degenerated workers’ state) against the attack of imperialism was necessarily different from that of Lenin’s approach to Kerensky’s war to defend Russia in 1917 (when it was a capitalist state).
Trotsky is then quoted as declaring that he had long believed that a revolution in “the progressive capitalist countries” (whatever that may mean) would “necessarily lead to the downfall of Stalin’s clique and the regeneration of Soviet democracy. I consider it necessary to say openly to the workers of the world that I no longer hold this opinion.” If Trotsky supposedly deems it necessary to state his change of opinion “openly to the workers of the world,” why didn’t he do so, instead of incorporating it in a secret “testament”?
Unfortunately for the GPU liars, Trotsky wrote in his Letter to the Workers of the USSR, written the same month as the so-called testament,
“The present war will spread more and more, piling ruins on ruins, breeding more and more sorrow, despair and protest, driving the whole world toward new revolutionary explosions. The world revolution shall re-invigorate the Soviet working masses with new courage and resoluteness and shall undermine the bureaucratic props of Stalin’s caste.”
Fantastic Lies
From this point on the falsifications grow wilder and more fantastic. Trotsky is presented as giving, up not only the defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack, but even the idea that the workers are capable of achieving socialism:
“The victory of this Stalinist bureaucracy over the forces of workers’ democracy will open the doors for the darkest period in history ever known by mankind. This will be the epoch of a new exploitive class, born from the Bonapartist bureaucracy of Stalin.
“It will then be necessary to recognize that this bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union brings with it proof of the congenital incapacity of the proletariat to become a ruling class and that the Soviet Urtion will become the precursor and embryo of a new and terrible exploitive regime on a world scale.”
The real authors of this “testament” must have guffawed with satisfaction as they composed this section. Because it repeats some of the phraseology actually used by Trotsky in an article written in September 1939, called The USSR in War published in the book In Defense of Marxism. The “trick” is that Trotsky is here presented as affirming what he specifically denied!
But, it may be asked by some people not acquainted with Trotsky’s views in his last months, perhaps something happened be ween September 1939 and May 20, 1940, when this testament presents him as saying:
“I am a veteran of the revolution who in the last hours of his life finds himself compelled to revise all the ideas and all the conceptions which he had formerly held. I firmly believed in the regeneration of mankind through the proletarian revolution. I begin to doubt that the class on which I had placed all my hopes is capable of attempting the colossal task which history wants to assign to it.”
Yes, something happened in that period – Hitler broke through his western front and began the drive which ended in the fall of France in June. BUT AT THE END OF JUNE, 1940, TROTSKY WROTE AN ARTICLE ON THE VERY PROBLEMS RAISED BY THIS IMPORTANT EVENT. ITS TITLE INDICATES ITS CONTENTS: WE DO NOT CHANGE OUR COURSE. PRINTED IN THE OCTOBER 1940 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL.
And Trotsky’s dying words, after the GPU assassin had struck him down and he knew that he was actually uttering his last testament, were:
“Please say to our friends that I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International. Go forward.”
But France Dimanche’s article does not end with the end of the “testament.” As if wanting to guarantee that all informed readers will recognize that the whole thing was a GPU job, it continues by recalling that a “special envoy” of this sheet had had an interview with Stalin’s assassin, Mornard-Jacson, printed in its Dec. 8, 1946 issue.
The substance of that interview is then reprinted: Mornard repeats the long-demolished alibi put in his month by the GPU and adds a few newly-invented details – about how Trotsky ordered him to go to Shanghai, then enter Russia to train “squads of saboteurs”; how the assassin thought to himself that this would be dangerous and “Moreover, during the previous month I had been astonished by the frequent visits of the German consul to Trotsky”; how he refused to go, and Trotsky attacked him, threatening to have him shot by the guards; and how he then had no alternative but to murder Trotsky ...
And of this the editors say with a straight face: “Trotsky’s testament illumines in a singular manner the declarations of his assassin.”
WHAT IT ACTUALLY ILLUMINES IS THE FACT THAT EVEN THOUGH STALIN MURDERED TROTSKY, HE HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO DESTROY TROTSKYISM – TROTSKY’S PROGRAM AND THE WORLD ORGANIZATION HE BUILT.
The Kremlin still stands in deathly fear that the revolutionary program of Bolshevism, which it has betrayed – and which is represented today by Trotsky’s Fourth International – will win out and destroy not only capitalism, but also the Stalinist murder machine.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Is Deutscher Objective About Trotsky?</h1>
<h3>(22 March 1954)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../newspape/themilitant/1954/v18n12-mar-22-1954-mil.pdf" target="new">Vol. 18 No. 12</a>, 22 March 1954.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Fahlgren for the <strong> Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) in 2012</strong><br>
<strong>Copyleft:</strong> Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the <a href="../../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0</a>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>THE PROPHET ARMED, Trotsky: 1879–1921</strong><br>
by Isaac Deutscher<br>
<em>Oxford. University Press, 1954, 540 pp., $6.</em></p>
<p class="fst">Next to Lenin, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was the greatest revolutionary thinker and fighter of the 20th century. At the age of 26 he was the outstanding leader of the unsuccessful Russian revolution of 1905. Twelve years later he and Lenin were co-leaders of the first successful working class revolution in history. He organized and led the Red Army to victory over Russian and foreign counter-revolution. In 1923 he and Lenin (soon to die) started a fight against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union represented by Stalinism. Expelled from the Communist International and exiled from the Soviet Union in the late 20’s, he kept the banner of revolutionary Marxism flying and gathered together the forces that formed the Fourth International in 1938, two years before he was assassinated by an agent of Stalin. A profound theoretician, he vastly enriched Marxist theory, illumined the major problems of our epoch, and pointed the road along which the international working class will march to socialist victory.</p>
<p>Isaac Deutscher, born in Poland and now a British subject, considered himself a Marxist in his youth. He is now a member of the editorial staff and “Russian expert” of the Economist. In 1949 he published the first part of a trilogy, <i>Stalin: A Political Biography</i>. In 1953, after Stalin’s death, he interrupted the trilogy with a book, <i>Russia: What Next?</i> The trilogy is resumed with the present book, the first half of a biography of Trotsky. After the second half, he plans to publish a study of Lenin.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Reaction to his books</p>
<p class="fst">Deutscher’s book on Stalin was widely hailed, especially in liberal circles, for its “objectivity.” The late John Dewey, for example, called it “a marvelous accomplishment” because of “the method by which he achieved an objective treatment,” which freed him from “the method of praise and blame.”</p>
<p>Our own review challenged this appraisal. We noted that Deutscher had borrowed liberally from Trotsky’s writings on the crimes of Stalin, while rejecting the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, and said: “He is well acquainted with the factual and documentary materials available on his subject and handles them scrupulously on the whole, although in general his method is to question all charges or testimony adverse to Stalin that cannot be verified beyond question, and to give him the benefit of the doubt in most such cases. It is this method, plus the curiously detached manner in which it is written, that has earned the book its reputation for objectivity in some quarters.”</p>
<p>The same thing has happened with. Deutscher’s book on Trotsky. While criticizing certain aspects, the liberal reviewers are impressed by its “objectivity.” Since this is its chief claim to serious attention, we must examine it more closely.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">The bystander</p>
<p class="fst">Just what do these people mean by “objectivity”? Most of the time, their ideal seems to be that, of the professor who devotes 15 minutes, to the pros of a question, 15 minutes to the cons, and 30 minutes to the wisdom of seeing both sides of the question and avoiding dogmatism. You ¥ start out with the notion that the truth generally lies somewhere in the middle, according to this conception, and that you are more likely to reach it when you are detached, impartial or even indifferent than when you are involved, passionate or partisan.</p>
<p>This is typically the view of the bystander (always ready to assure you that he is naturally a better judge of the rights and wrongs of a struggle than the participants in it) and it appeals most strongly to middle class thinkers.</p>
<p>Deutscher’s “Objectivity,” as we shall show, contains elements of the bystander conception.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Our conception</p>
<p class="fst">Our conception is different. To us objectivity is a scientific presentation of problems in such a way as to correspond most closely to reality. It involves approaching a problem honestly and with a check on one’s prejudices, viewing it historically and in its relation to other problems.</p>
<p>It should never be confused with detachment or impartiality: partisanship is not necessarily a bar to objectivity, and-impartiality is no guarantee of objectivity. The fan in the tenth row or even the referee in the ring is not necessarily a better judge of what happened during a mixup between two pugilists than they are. The professor in the classroom, even when he finally arrives at a conclusion, may, with all the advantages of his hindsight and study, understand less about the French revolution than an 18th century illiterate peasant who helped make it.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Can mask bias</p>
<p class="fst">Furthermore, there is reason to be suspicious of people whose chief credentials are their alleged impartiality. The professor who prides himself on his detachment may be just as biased as the revolutionary French peasant, though in a different direction.</p>
<p>It is relatively simple to consider strictly on its own merits a controversy over the quality of clothing worn in China in 400 B.C.; this is not an issue that directly concerns us, our struggles and our aspirations today. But it is not so easy to do the same thing with questions of a social-political-economic character that affect us most intimately.</p>
<p>The professor may or may not know it, but even his attitudes toward a revolution that happened almost 200 years ago are influenced and colored by the fact that he too lives in an age of revolution. “Objectivity” can mask the most pronounced (though unconscious) bias and partisanship. This is specially true of something like the Russian revolution, toward which no person with political interests today can really have any feeling of neutrality.</p>
<p>Deutscher, we shall show, is grinding an axe behind his pose of objective historian.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Historian’s duty</p>
<p class="fst">Trotsky, who was a great historian himself, touched on these matters because he was writing about history in which he had played a prominent part and recognized that some readers would reject his treatment of history for that very reason. In his preface to <i>The History of the Russian Revolution</i>, 1930, he urged the serious reader to demand from historians not “the so-called historian’s ’impartiality’ “ but “a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies &8211; open and undisguised &8211; seeks their real support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their development.</p>
<p class="quoteb">”That is the only possible his, tonic objectivism, and moreover it is amply sufficient, for it is verified and attested not by the good intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but by the natural laws revealed by him of the historic process itself.”</p>
<p class="fst">A year before, in the foreword to his autobiography, <i>My Life</i>, Trotsky dealt with the question as it related to biographical writing. He said:<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">”Conventional trick”</p>
<p class="quoteb">”This book is not a dispassionate photograph of my life, however, but a component part of it. In these pages, I continue the struggle to which my whole life is devoted. Describing, I also characterize and evaluate; narrating, I also defend myself, and more often attack. It seems to me that this is the only method of making an autobiography objective in a higher sense, that is, of making it the most adequate expression of personality, conditions, and epoch.</p>
<p class="quote">”Objectivity is not the pretended indifference with which confirmed hypocrisy, in speaking of friends and enemies, suggests in directly to the reader what it finds inconvenient to state directly. Objectivity of this sort is nothing but a conventional trick. I do not need it.”</p>
<p class="fst">But Deutscher needs this trick badly. Like Trotsky, like every historian, he writes in order to defend certain ideas. Unlike Trotsky, he does not avow these ideas openly and explicitly, but suggests them indirectly and cloaks himself behind the claim that he desires only to “restore the historical balance.” What his ideas are, and why he presents them in this way, will be discussed in <a href="deutscher-trotsky-2.htm">subsequent articles</a>.</p>
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George Breitman
Is Deutscher Objective About Trotsky?
(22 March 1954)
From The Militant, Vol. 18 No. 12, 22 March 1954.
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Fahlgren for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) in 2012
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
THE PROPHET ARMED, Trotsky: 1879–1921
by Isaac Deutscher
Oxford. University Press, 1954, 540 pp., $6.
Next to Lenin, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was the greatest revolutionary thinker and fighter of the 20th century. At the age of 26 he was the outstanding leader of the unsuccessful Russian revolution of 1905. Twelve years later he and Lenin were co-leaders of the first successful working class revolution in history. He organized and led the Red Army to victory over Russian and foreign counter-revolution. In 1923 he and Lenin (soon to die) started a fight against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union represented by Stalinism. Expelled from the Communist International and exiled from the Soviet Union in the late 20’s, he kept the banner of revolutionary Marxism flying and gathered together the forces that formed the Fourth International in 1938, two years before he was assassinated by an agent of Stalin. A profound theoretician, he vastly enriched Marxist theory, illumined the major problems of our epoch, and pointed the road along which the international working class will march to socialist victory.
Isaac Deutscher, born in Poland and now a British subject, considered himself a Marxist in his youth. He is now a member of the editorial staff and “Russian expert” of the Economist. In 1949 he published the first part of a trilogy, Stalin: A Political Biography. In 1953, after Stalin’s death, he interrupted the trilogy with a book, Russia: What Next? The trilogy is resumed with the present book, the first half of a biography of Trotsky. After the second half, he plans to publish a study of Lenin.
Reaction to his books
Deutscher’s book on Stalin was widely hailed, especially in liberal circles, for its “objectivity.” The late John Dewey, for example, called it “a marvelous accomplishment” because of “the method by which he achieved an objective treatment,” which freed him from “the method of praise and blame.”
Our own review challenged this appraisal. We noted that Deutscher had borrowed liberally from Trotsky’s writings on the crimes of Stalin, while rejecting the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, and said: “He is well acquainted with the factual and documentary materials available on his subject and handles them scrupulously on the whole, although in general his method is to question all charges or testimony adverse to Stalin that cannot be verified beyond question, and to give him the benefit of the doubt in most such cases. It is this method, plus the curiously detached manner in which it is written, that has earned the book its reputation for objectivity in some quarters.”
The same thing has happened with. Deutscher’s book on Trotsky. While criticizing certain aspects, the liberal reviewers are impressed by its “objectivity.” Since this is its chief claim to serious attention, we must examine it more closely.
The bystander
Just what do these people mean by “objectivity”? Most of the time, their ideal seems to be that, of the professor who devotes 15 minutes, to the pros of a question, 15 minutes to the cons, and 30 minutes to the wisdom of seeing both sides of the question and avoiding dogmatism. You ¥ start out with the notion that the truth generally lies somewhere in the middle, according to this conception, and that you are more likely to reach it when you are detached, impartial or even indifferent than when you are involved, passionate or partisan.
This is typically the view of the bystander (always ready to assure you that he is naturally a better judge of the rights and wrongs of a struggle than the participants in it) and it appeals most strongly to middle class thinkers.
Deutscher’s “Objectivity,” as we shall show, contains elements of the bystander conception.
Our conception
Our conception is different. To us objectivity is a scientific presentation of problems in such a way as to correspond most closely to reality. It involves approaching a problem honestly and with a check on one’s prejudices, viewing it historically and in its relation to other problems.
It should never be confused with detachment or impartiality: partisanship is not necessarily a bar to objectivity, and-impartiality is no guarantee of objectivity. The fan in the tenth row or even the referee in the ring is not necessarily a better judge of what happened during a mixup between two pugilists than they are. The professor in the classroom, even when he finally arrives at a conclusion, may, with all the advantages of his hindsight and study, understand less about the French revolution than an 18th century illiterate peasant who helped make it.
Can mask bias
Furthermore, there is reason to be suspicious of people whose chief credentials are their alleged impartiality. The professor who prides himself on his detachment may be just as biased as the revolutionary French peasant, though in a different direction.
It is relatively simple to consider strictly on its own merits a controversy over the quality of clothing worn in China in 400 B.C.; this is not an issue that directly concerns us, our struggles and our aspirations today. But it is not so easy to do the same thing with questions of a social-political-economic character that affect us most intimately.
The professor may or may not know it, but even his attitudes toward a revolution that happened almost 200 years ago are influenced and colored by the fact that he too lives in an age of revolution. “Objectivity” can mask the most pronounced (though unconscious) bias and partisanship. This is specially true of something like the Russian revolution, toward which no person with political interests today can really have any feeling of neutrality.
Deutscher, we shall show, is grinding an axe behind his pose of objective historian.
Historian’s duty
Trotsky, who was a great historian himself, touched on these matters because he was writing about history in which he had played a prominent part and recognized that some readers would reject his treatment of history for that very reason. In his preface to The History of the Russian Revolution, 1930, he urged the serious reader to demand from historians not “the so-called historian’s ’impartiality’ “ but “a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies &8211; open and undisguised &8211; seeks their real support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their development.
”That is the only possible his, tonic objectivism, and moreover it is amply sufficient, for it is verified and attested not by the good intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but by the natural laws revealed by him of the historic process itself.”
A year before, in the foreword to his autobiography, My Life, Trotsky dealt with the question as it related to biographical writing. He said:
”Conventional trick”
”This book is not a dispassionate photograph of my life, however, but a component part of it. In these pages, I continue the struggle to which my whole life is devoted. Describing, I also characterize and evaluate; narrating, I also defend myself, and more often attack. It seems to me that this is the only method of making an autobiography objective in a higher sense, that is, of making it the most adequate expression of personality, conditions, and epoch.
”Objectivity is not the pretended indifference with which confirmed hypocrisy, in speaking of friends and enemies, suggests in directly to the reader what it finds inconvenient to state directly. Objectivity of this sort is nothing but a conventional trick. I do not need it.”
But Deutscher needs this trick badly. Like Trotsky, like every historian, he writes in order to defend certain ideas. Unlike Trotsky, he does not avow these ideas openly and explicitly, but suggests them indirectly and cloaks himself behind the claim that he desires only to “restore the historical balance.” What his ideas are, and why he presents them in this way, will be discussed in subsequent articles.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1><em>New Republic</em> on Kutcher</h1>
<h3>(31 January 1949)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_05" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 5</a>, 31 January 1949, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Elsewhere in this issue we have reported on the reaction by the Stalinists to our exposé of the Louis Weinstock correspondence and of the Communist Party’s sabotage of the fight to smash the Smith Act in the Minneapolis case. But there is another postscript to the Weinstock story that deserves some comment.</p>
<p>Like many other periodicals, the Jan. 24 <strong>New Republic</strong>, in its column <em>Left of Center</em>, recorded the main facts we had published about Weinstock and the Minneapolis Trial, including the fact that despite the treachery of the Stalinists, we Trotskyists are defending the 12 Stalinists now on trial. Then it added:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Stalinists refuse to reciprocate, however. They continue to boycott the defense campaign for James Kutcher, legless veteran fired from the Veterans Administration for his Trotskyite affiliations.”</p>
<p class="fst">The author of these remarks evidently feels that such conduct – “boycotting” the Kutcher defense – is reprehensible. We think so too. And we’re not thinking only of the Stalinists.</p>
<p>The Kutcher case is now five months old. As we pointed out in the Jan. 17 <strong>Militant</strong>: “Virtually all the liberal journals have taken a stand [on it]; only the <strong>New Republic</strong> and <strong>Socialist Call</strong> have not yet found space to express their views.”</p>
<p>That was not because the editor of the <strong>New Republic</strong> did not know about the case. On the contrary. The Kutcher Civil Rights Committee has supplied the <strong>New Republic</strong> with all the information, just as it has done with other periodicals. Furthermore, the editor of the <strong>New Republic</strong> is a member of the National Planning Committee of the AVC, which voted unanimously to call “upon all liberal organizations and upon all individuals who believe in our Bill of Rights to come to his [Kutcher’s] defense.”</p>
<p>When the <strong>New Republic</strong> was approached for a short editorial statement on the Kutcher case last October, its spokesman replied that they were rather crowded for space at the time in covering the election campaign, but they would see what they could do. Perhaps they are still crowded because of preparations for the next election. At any rate the passing remarks in <em>Left of Center </em>are the very first ever printed in the <strong>New Republic</strong> about the dramatic case of the legless veteran.</p>
<p>These remarks may be regarded as a step forward for the <strong>New Republic</strong>, but they hardly represent taking a stand on the case. And they certainly don’t give the editor of the <strong>New Republic</strong> grounds for feeling any moral superiority over the Stalinists because they boycott the Kutcher defense.</p>
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George Breitman
New Republic on Kutcher
(31 January 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 5, 31 January 1949, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Elsewhere in this issue we have reported on the reaction by the Stalinists to our exposé of the Louis Weinstock correspondence and of the Communist Party’s sabotage of the fight to smash the Smith Act in the Minneapolis case. But there is another postscript to the Weinstock story that deserves some comment.
Like many other periodicals, the Jan. 24 New Republic, in its column Left of Center, recorded the main facts we had published about Weinstock and the Minneapolis Trial, including the fact that despite the treachery of the Stalinists, we Trotskyists are defending the 12 Stalinists now on trial. Then it added:
“The Stalinists refuse to reciprocate, however. They continue to boycott the defense campaign for James Kutcher, legless veteran fired from the Veterans Administration for his Trotskyite affiliations.”
The author of these remarks evidently feels that such conduct – “boycotting” the Kutcher defense – is reprehensible. We think so too. And we’re not thinking only of the Stalinists.
The Kutcher case is now five months old. As we pointed out in the Jan. 17 Militant: “Virtually all the liberal journals have taken a stand [on it]; only the New Republic and Socialist Call have not yet found space to express their views.”
That was not because the editor of the New Republic did not know about the case. On the contrary. The Kutcher Civil Rights Committee has supplied the New Republic with all the information, just as it has done with other periodicals. Furthermore, the editor of the New Republic is a member of the National Planning Committee of the AVC, which voted unanimously to call “upon all liberal organizations and upon all individuals who believe in our Bill of Rights to come to his [Kutcher’s] defense.”
When the New Republic was approached for a short editorial statement on the Kutcher case last October, its spokesman replied that they were rather crowded for space at the time in covering the election campaign, but they would see what they could do. Perhaps they are still crowded because of preparations for the next election. At any rate the passing remarks in Left of Center are the very first ever printed in the New Republic about the dramatic case of the legless veteran.
These remarks may be regarded as a step forward for the New Republic, but they hardly represent taking a stand on the case. And they certainly don’t give the editor of the New Republic grounds for feeling any moral superiority over the Stalinists because they boycott the Kutcher defense.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Expulsion of Max Bedacht</h1>
<h3>(29 November 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_48" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 48</a>, 29 November 1948, p. 4.<br>
ranscribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">You cannot hold the belief that the fundamental issue in America today is capitalism or socialism – and belong to the Communist Party at the same time.</p>
<p>That is the chief lesson to be drawn from the expulsion of Max Bedacht from the Stalinist party, announced in the <b>Daily Worker</b>, Nov. 19.</p>
<p>Bedacht, who was one of the founders of the Communist Party in this country and a leading Stalinist ever since the beginning of the American CP’s degeneration, was ordered expelled by the New Jersey Stalinist bureaucracy “on charges of factionalism against the party leadership.”</p>
<p>Because Bedacht has not yet issued a statement of his own, and because falsification and distortion are component parts of all Stalinist charges against dissidents, it is impossible to say with any certainty what the precise nature of Bedacht’s differences with the CP is. But that does not in any way alter the significance of the charges placed against him.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The main tenets of the line advanced by Bedacht,” says the New Jersey CP, “... were that the issue in America today was Capitalism <em>vs.</em> Socialism, and that the Progressive Party is equivalent to the French ‘Third Force.’”</p>
<p class="fst">Leaving aside the accuracy of this charge, the charge itself should serve as an eye-opener to those members and sympathizers of the CP who took seriously the Foster-Dennis attacks on the revisionist policy followed by the Stalinists under the leadership of Browder.</p>
<p>Again and again the Foster-Dennis leadership denounced Browder for revising Marxism, soft-pedaling on socialism and collaborating with capitalists. Again and again they promised to return the party to a consistently Marxist and class struggle policy.</p>
<p>Now comes the expulsion of Bedacht to demonstrate once again how worthless those promises were. What kind of Marxist party is it that expels people because they advocate a socialist alternative to the evils of capitalism? What kind of change has such a party made from “Browderism” when it has no room in its leadership or ranks for those who ask for the abandonment of class collaboration, which is the essence of “Browderism?”</p>
<p>Bedacht has been in disgrace for over two years, and has been up on these charges for some time. It is probably not coincidence that his expulsion took place just now.</p>
<p>The Nov. 20 <b>N.Y. Times</b> says: “During the recent campaign when the Progressive party backed the Presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace, many Foster followers were disquieted by Mr. Wallace’s repeated declarations that he stood for ‘progressive capitalism.’” This report has been confirmed on many occasions in recent months by people in close contact with the Stalinist ranks.</p>
<p>Bedacht’s expulsion, following on the heels of the Wallace fiasco in the election, is undoubtedly intended to give pause to the members who are uneasy over CP support for that millionaire capitalist.</p>
<p>“Don’t dare to question our policy of supporting progressive capitalists!” That is the substance of the CP leadership’s warning to the members, expressed in Bedacht’s expulsion. “Don’t dare to question this policy if you want to remain a member!”</p>
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George Breitman
Expulsion of Max Bedacht
(29 November 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 48, 29 November 1948, p. 4.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
You cannot hold the belief that the fundamental issue in America today is capitalism or socialism – and belong to the Communist Party at the same time.
That is the chief lesson to be drawn from the expulsion of Max Bedacht from the Stalinist party, announced in the Daily Worker, Nov. 19.
Bedacht, who was one of the founders of the Communist Party in this country and a leading Stalinist ever since the beginning of the American CP’s degeneration, was ordered expelled by the New Jersey Stalinist bureaucracy “on charges of factionalism against the party leadership.”
Because Bedacht has not yet issued a statement of his own, and because falsification and distortion are component parts of all Stalinist charges against dissidents, it is impossible to say with any certainty what the precise nature of Bedacht’s differences with the CP is. But that does not in any way alter the significance of the charges placed against him.
“The main tenets of the line advanced by Bedacht,” says the New Jersey CP, “... were that the issue in America today was Capitalism vs. Socialism, and that the Progressive Party is equivalent to the French ‘Third Force.’”
Leaving aside the accuracy of this charge, the charge itself should serve as an eye-opener to those members and sympathizers of the CP who took seriously the Foster-Dennis attacks on the revisionist policy followed by the Stalinists under the leadership of Browder.
Again and again the Foster-Dennis leadership denounced Browder for revising Marxism, soft-pedaling on socialism and collaborating with capitalists. Again and again they promised to return the party to a consistently Marxist and class struggle policy.
Now comes the expulsion of Bedacht to demonstrate once again how worthless those promises were. What kind of Marxist party is it that expels people because they advocate a socialist alternative to the evils of capitalism? What kind of change has such a party made from “Browderism” when it has no room in its leadership or ranks for those who ask for the abandonment of class collaboration, which is the essence of “Browderism?”
Bedacht has been in disgrace for over two years, and has been up on these charges for some time. It is probably not coincidence that his expulsion took place just now.
The Nov. 20 N.Y. Times says: “During the recent campaign when the Progressive party backed the Presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace, many Foster followers were disquieted by Mr. Wallace’s repeated declarations that he stood for ‘progressive capitalism.’” This report has been confirmed on many occasions in recent months by people in close contact with the Stalinist ranks.
Bedacht’s expulsion, following on the heels of the Wallace fiasco in the election, is undoubtedly intended to give pause to the members who are uneasy over CP support for that millionaire capitalist.
“Don’t dare to question our policy of supporting progressive capitalists!” That is the substance of the CP leadership’s warning to the members, expressed in Bedacht’s expulsion. “Don’t dare to question this policy if you want to remain a member!”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<h3>(28 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_13" target="new">Vol. VI No. 13</a>, 28 March 1942, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>Housing Question in Washington</h4>
<p class="fst">Washington is supposed to be the “headquarters of the democracies.” If you want to know what they mean by democracy in Washington, you ought to read the judgment handed down by District Court Justice McDonoghue early this month.</p>
<p>It seems that a colored woman was living in a part of the city where Negroes are not wanted. It also seems that they have some kind of law against this in the nation’s capital. The judge handed down a ruling ordering her to move in 60 days because she is a Negro. He also issued a permanent injunction against the owners of the building in which the woman lived to prevent them from selling or leasing the property to Negroes in the future.</p>
<p>In Washington, you see, they don’t need a Ku Klux Klan to segregate the Negroes in housing – the government does it for them!<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>N.J. CIO Sets Up a Committee</h4>
<p class="fst">The New Jersey CÍO took a very wise and important step last week when it established a special state committee, made up of Negro and white members, to investigate and take action on cases of anti-Negro discrimination in New Jersey plants.</p>
<p>Such a committee has the possibility of doing much more to wipe out industrial Jim Crow than most other organizations set up for the purpose in the past. It has the prestige and authority of the powerful state CIO movement behind it; it has the confidence of large masses of Negro workers in and out of the CIO, who have seen the state leaders of the CIO speak out boldly against Jim Crow on every possible occasion; it is in a good position to help to educate white as well as colored workers as to the meaning of Jim Crowism and to the need for racial solidarity in the fight against the employers’ offensive.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the committee does not intend to restrict its activities to job discrimination or the CIO members alone – it intends to take up other problems of discrimination and segregation as well and to cooperate Wherever possible with AFL unions and other organizations that have similar objectives.</p>
<p>Workers in other parts of the country will watch the development of this committee with interest; if it acts militantly and involves the rank-and-file members of the CIO in its work, similar committees will undoubtedly be set up elsewhere and it may prove to be the first, step toward the creation of a national orghnizatior of Negro trade-unionists fighting Jim Crow which has been so long awaited and is so urgently needed.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>Two Ways of Not Skinning the Cat</h4>
<p class="fst">The American ruling class seems to have two ways of approaching the problem of the growing dissatisfaction and anger of the Negro people With the way they are being treated today.</p>
<p>One way is that of the reactionary poll-tax Congressmen who charge that the Negroes are satisfied and happy, and there wouldn’t be any problem if people would just stop bothering them. Their attitude is expressed by the speech made by Rankin of Missouri in the House of Representatives on March 5:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Japanese fifth columnists have been, stirring race trouble in this country for a long time ...</p>
<p class="quote">“They are working through such organizations as this Civil Liberties Union and Associations for the Advancement of Colored People. In my opinion, they are behind this drive to try to stir up trouble between the whites and the Negroes here in Washington by trying to force Negroes into hotels, restaurants, picture shows, and other public places.</p>
<p class="quote">“They know that if they can start race riots in Washington and throughout the country, it will aid them in their nefarious designs against the people of the United States ...</p>
<p class="quote">“If these agitators will let the Negroes alone, we will have no trouble with them.</p>
<p class="quote">“The white people pf the South who have always been the Negroes’ best friends, and who know the Negro problem, will have no trouble with the colored race if these fifth columnists and the flannel-mouthed agitators throughout the country will let them alone.”</p>
<p class="fst">The other method is the one used by the “liberals”. Instead of shutting up the Negroes at a time they are boiling over with resentment, the “liberals” prefer to let the Negro leaders shoot off some steam. An example of this is the calling of a conference in Washington on March 20 by Archibald MacLeish, director of the Office of Facts and Figures. The conference, to which representatives of all the big Negro newspapers and organizations have been invited, will discuss the “wartime problems” of the Negro people, and develop an information program in connection with it.</p>
<p>When the conference is finished, MacLeish will probably hire a few more Negroes to work in his propaganda office. The “information program” they will develop will be used in an effort to convince the rank and file Negro people that everything is fine and dandy, that they are making progress even if they can’t see it, that they would be even worse off if Hitler wins the war, etc.</p>
<p>In short, the difference between these two methods is very superficial. The only way to eradicate the resentment of the Negro people is by wiping out the discrimination, segregation, insult and brutality which create that wholly justified resentment. Both the reactionaries and the “liberals” are united in opposing any steps that would accomplish that.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
(28 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 13, 28 March 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Housing Question in Washington
Washington is supposed to be the “headquarters of the democracies.” If you want to know what they mean by democracy in Washington, you ought to read the judgment handed down by District Court Justice McDonoghue early this month.
It seems that a colored woman was living in a part of the city where Negroes are not wanted. It also seems that they have some kind of law against this in the nation’s capital. The judge handed down a ruling ordering her to move in 60 days because she is a Negro. He also issued a permanent injunction against the owners of the building in which the woman lived to prevent them from selling or leasing the property to Negroes in the future.
In Washington, you see, they don’t need a Ku Klux Klan to segregate the Negroes in housing – the government does it for them!
N.J. CIO Sets Up a Committee
The New Jersey CÍO took a very wise and important step last week when it established a special state committee, made up of Negro and white members, to investigate and take action on cases of anti-Negro discrimination in New Jersey plants.
Such a committee has the possibility of doing much more to wipe out industrial Jim Crow than most other organizations set up for the purpose in the past. It has the prestige and authority of the powerful state CIO movement behind it; it has the confidence of large masses of Negro workers in and out of the CIO, who have seen the state leaders of the CIO speak out boldly against Jim Crow on every possible occasion; it is in a good position to help to educate white as well as colored workers as to the meaning of Jim Crowism and to the need for racial solidarity in the fight against the employers’ offensive.
Furthermore, the committee does not intend to restrict its activities to job discrimination or the CIO members alone – it intends to take up other problems of discrimination and segregation as well and to cooperate Wherever possible with AFL unions and other organizations that have similar objectives.
Workers in other parts of the country will watch the development of this committee with interest; if it acts militantly and involves the rank-and-file members of the CIO in its work, similar committees will undoubtedly be set up elsewhere and it may prove to be the first, step toward the creation of a national orghnizatior of Negro trade-unionists fighting Jim Crow which has been so long awaited and is so urgently needed.
Two Ways of Not Skinning the Cat
The American ruling class seems to have two ways of approaching the problem of the growing dissatisfaction and anger of the Negro people With the way they are being treated today.
One way is that of the reactionary poll-tax Congressmen who charge that the Negroes are satisfied and happy, and there wouldn’t be any problem if people would just stop bothering them. Their attitude is expressed by the speech made by Rankin of Missouri in the House of Representatives on March 5:
“Japanese fifth columnists have been, stirring race trouble in this country for a long time ...
“They are working through such organizations as this Civil Liberties Union and Associations for the Advancement of Colored People. In my opinion, they are behind this drive to try to stir up trouble between the whites and the Negroes here in Washington by trying to force Negroes into hotels, restaurants, picture shows, and other public places.
“They know that if they can start race riots in Washington and throughout the country, it will aid them in their nefarious designs against the people of the United States ...
“If these agitators will let the Negroes alone, we will have no trouble with them.
“The white people pf the South who have always been the Negroes’ best friends, and who know the Negro problem, will have no trouble with the colored race if these fifth columnists and the flannel-mouthed agitators throughout the country will let them alone.”
The other method is the one used by the “liberals”. Instead of shutting up the Negroes at a time they are boiling over with resentment, the “liberals” prefer to let the Negro leaders shoot off some steam. An example of this is the calling of a conference in Washington on March 20 by Archibald MacLeish, director of the Office of Facts and Figures. The conference, to which representatives of all the big Negro newspapers and organizations have been invited, will discuss the “wartime problems” of the Negro people, and develop an information program in connection with it.
When the conference is finished, MacLeish will probably hire a few more Negroes to work in his propaganda office. The “information program” they will develop will be used in an effort to convince the rank and file Negro people that everything is fine and dandy, that they are making progress even if they can’t see it, that they would be even worse off if Hitler wins the war, etc.
In short, the difference between these two methods is very superficial. The only way to eradicate the resentment of the Negro people is by wiping out the discrimination, segregation, insult and brutality which create that wholly justified resentment. Both the reactionaries and the “liberals” are united in opposing any steps that would accomplish that.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>The Future of the Negro Struggle</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1963)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/isr/index.htm#isr63spr" target="new">Vol.24 No.2</a>, Spring 1963, pp.52-54, 60.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<table width="90%" align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="c"><em>A symposium on this subject, celebrating the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, was held at the Eugene V. Debs Hall in Detroit on Jan. 4, 1963. The speakers, in the order of their presentations, were George Breitman, writer for <strong>The Militant</strong>; Reginald Wilson, managing editor of <strong>Correspondence</strong>; and Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., Contributing editor of <strong>The Illustrative News</strong>. Melissa Singler was chairman. The symposium was sponsored and transcribed by the Friday Night Socialist Forum.</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">Tonight we are commemorating the 100th anniversary – 100 years and three days – of the Emancipation Proclamation, a convenient date to mark the approximate end of chattel slavery and the approximate beginning of second-class citizenship for the Negro people of the United States. We commemorate that occasion, in line with the subject of tonight’s symposium, not by discussing the events of the past, which certainly deserve to be examined in detail, but by turning our attention to the future of the Negro struggle, whose aim is to abolish second-class citizenship and achieve complete equality.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">I NOTICE none of us three speakers has brought a crystal ball along with him. That’s good – it means we’ll have to rely on whatever powers of analysis, methods of analysis or theories we possess. The theory that I shall try to apply to tonight’s subject is Marxism, the theory of scientific, revolutionary socialism, which we think is the best instrument of analysis yet devised for understanding the world of today and tomorrow, even if some people mishandle it.</p>
<p>In trying to determine the probable future of the Negro struggle in this country, it is best to begin by considering the future of the world and of the country within which the Negro struggle will unfold. What we see there is a great and irrepressible conflict, headed for a showdown during the remaining years of this century. It is a conflict that will decide whether the world will continue to be dominated by capitalist and imperialist exploiters of labor, or whether the working people of all nations and colors will be able to free themselves from such domination, take their destiny into their own hands, and make the transition to a society where the exploitation of man by man will be abolished and replaced by a system capable of satisfying the needs of mankind, which include equality and peace as well as material abundance.</p>
<p>This irrepressible conflict is the world background and framework for the future of the American Negro struggle, and it is crucial for at least two reasons. One is that it will produce, already has produced, powerful allies of the American Negro all over the world, allies because they have similar objectives and because the enemies of the American Negro are their enemies too. The second reason why the world conflict is relevant to tonight’s subject is that no country is immune or will remain immune from the struggle for or against capitalism, not even the United States, the last stronghold of this dying system. Which means that here at home, as the world crisis of capitalism penetrates and deepens here, as the class struggle between the American capitalist and the American worker sharpens and explodes, here too the Negro will be able to find strong and numerous allies and reinforcements to fight together with him against their common enemy and exploiter. It’s unfortunate that lack of time permits tonight’s speakers only to state points rather than to develop them. But I think I’ve said enough about the world conflict to show that you cannot avoid thinking and talking about its direct and indirect impact on the Negro struggle here.</p>
<p>Turning now to the Negro struggle itself, I think we should start by noting the important developments in the Negro community during the last few years. I want to list some of these and try to explain what they mean, because I think their continuation and deepening are inevitable during the next period.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">TAKE just the last three years: The sit-ins that began Feb. 1, 1960, and quickly spread all over the South, brought a new force onto the scene, the Southern Negro youth, displaying impatience with the old-style moderate Negro leadership and building their own organizations, like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, because they are dissatisfied with the old ones. May, 1960 – organization by Negro trade unionists of the Negro American Labor Council, dedicated to fighting discrimination in industry and unions. September, 1960 – the big pro-Castro demonstration in Harlem after the government had launched a massive campaign of propaganda against the Cuban revolution. 1960 – the year that the Muslims were transformed from a sect to an important movement because its spokesmen dared say things about racial oppression that most Negroes wanted voiced. The year that small groups around the country began to form in sympathy with Robert F. Williams’ call for Negroes to defend themselves. The year that the press began to complain openly all over the North about Negroes rallying to the defense of victims of police brutality, sometimes disarming the cops and putting them to flight.</p>
<p>Then 1961 – the small but symptomatic demonstration at the UN against the murder of Lumumba, in February; the freedom rides in the spring; the filling of Southern jails in the summer; the independent mobilization of the Negro community in the Detroit mayoralty election – I could go on with this list all night, but time is limited, so I cut it off, because even a partial list makes the point that something new is happening.</p>
<p>These new events have produced new organizations and have compelled old ones to act and talk more militantly. Along with them have emerged new moods, new feelings, new demands – if not altogether new, at least they are expressed in new ways, more sharply and unequivocally. And if these new feelings and ideas are not already shared by a majority of the Negro people, they surely are, as Loren Miller said in <strong>The Nation</strong>, rapidly gaining support and respect among the majority.</p>
<p>What are these sentiments, or the most obvious ones? Anger at anyone who tells the Negro he must go slow, take it easy, or wait for the proper time, which is always in the future and never today. Resentment at any kind of paternalism. Suspicion and mistrust of whites, particularly liberals. Rejection of the liberal perspective of very gradual reform, whoever offers it, white liberals or Negro liberals. Contempt for tokenism and those who are satisfied or deceived by it. Mixed feelings about integration and where it will lead, if anywhere. Impatience with progress through gradual change over an indefinite period, and insistence on Freedom Now. A strong desire for racial solidarity and unity. Determination that the Negro should control his own struggles, that these struggles should be led by Negroes, that their tactics and strategy should be determined by Negroes – all resulting in a pronounced preference for all-Negro organizations. Growing support for bloc voting, that is, voting to elect Negroes to represent Negroes, whether in public office or union posts.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">NOW what do these new events and feelings represent, what do they signify for the future? We have given an answer in <strong>The Militant</strong> – that this marks the beginning of the radicalization of the Negro people. I still think that estimate is correct, but tonight I would like to approach the question, and if possible to throw light on it, from another angle.</p>
<p>What it signifies is that the Negro struggle is becoming more – independent. More independent – is that all and what’s so remarkable about that? My answer is: It’s the key to the whole future; when the labor movement starts out on the road to independence, as the Negroes are doing, <em>everything</em> will begin to change. What does Negro independence, complete independence, mean? Maybe you can grasp it better by considering what dependence means, the condition that has prevailed to a greater or lesser degree until now.</p>
<p>Dependence means that the Negroes must wait, wait until they get permission, the green signal, the OK, from other forces – from the employers, from the White House, from the Democratic Party, from Solidarity House, from City Hall. Dependence means that Negroes cannot act freely and in accord with their own interests as they see them; that they must wait for the go-sign before they can seriously launch their own demands, candidates and campaigns; that the Negro movement is and can only be the adjunct and appendage of other movements. In short, dependence has been the curse, the fatal weakness, the main source of defeats for the Negro struggle.<br>
</p>
<h4>Dawn of New Day</h4>
<p class="fst">And now at last, not slowly but rapidly, not tentatively but decisively and irreversibly, this state of dependence is being overcome, to use the Southern movement’s wonderfully expressive word. Dependence is being overcome, mental and psychological shackles are being broken and cast aside, and independence is becoming the goal, the hallmark, the method of decisive change all up and down the line. It is the dawn of a new day, so bright that not everyone has been able to adjust his eyes to it yet, a change every bit as momentous as the Emancipation Proclamation. I cannot think of any more favorable development in this country since the start of the cold war, nor one that holds greater promise for the future.</p>
<p>Conservatives are disturbed by this new tendency, and liberals recoil from it in horror with epithets about “racism” and “Jim Crow in reverse.” But revolutionary socialists support it and welcome it and hail it because it represents a transformation that spells nothing but good for the Negro people, nothing but good for the real interests of the working class, and nothing but good for the fight for socialism.</p>
<p>And here I cannot help using part of my precious time to inform or remind you that it was only the Socialist Workers Party, out of all political tendencies in this country, that foresaw this new development as long as 15 years ago – not in all of its concrete and complex detail, but in its essential characteristics; not only theoretically foresaw and predicted it, but even then, while it was still in an embryonic stage, even then advocated it and defended it as thoroughly legitimate, progressive and desirable. You will find the evidence for this claim, which is also a test of the relevance and validity of Marxism for radical-minded Negroes, in the new Pioneer Publishers publication which is on sale here tonight. It is entitled <strong>Documents on the Negro Struggle</strong>, covering the years 1933 to 1950, and the last two parts, dealing with the Socialist Workers Party’s 1948 convention resolution, are the ones dealing with the prospects and potential of the kind of independent Negro movement that is being built today.</p>
<p>NOW whenever the point is made that the immediate future will see the continuation and strengthening of the independent tendency that is already in motion, then certain questions and misgivings arise. I don’t mean the objections of conservatives and liberals, which I will disregard at this time. I mean questions that come up in the minds of Negro and white militants, which are pertinent and proper, questions like these:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Granting that a truly independent Negro movement is necessary, is it enough to insure victory? How far can such a movement go alone?”</p>
<p class="fst">In the first place, the independent Negro movement does not have to go it alone. I said earlier it already has allies abroad; even now it has some allies at home. But how far could it go alone, if it had to? I don’t think anybody can answer that question exactly, can say that this movement will be able to go just so far, and no farther. This is one of those questions that can be answered only in action, in practice, through the testing of the relation of forces. But it can be said with certainty that an independent Negro movement can go much farther, can achieve much more, can force much greater concessions from the rulers of this country than dependent and semi-dependent movements have won up to now. Our rulers know this just as well as we do; that’s why they’ve employed so much brainwash, bribery and brutality to keep the movement in a dependent status.</p>
<p>Another part of the question was: Can an independent Negro movement, by itself, achieve its goal of complete and unconditional equality? Our answer must be that this is very unlikely. Saying this does not contradict what we have said about the many positive features and the presently underrated potential of an independent movement. It is a conclusion imposed on us by a fact, a cold hard numerical fact, that the Negroes are a small numerical minority of the population – between one-ninth and one-tenth. This creates strategic and tactical problems quite different from those existing in countries like South Africa, where dark-skinned people are an overwhelming majority and where racial oppression can be uprooted through majority rule. In our country Negroes can win equality only if the white population is divided, only if a substantial part of the white population is won to the side of the Negro people as an ally.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">THE indicated major ally of the Negro people is the working class, the labor movement. For many reasons: Most Negroes are workers themselves. Negroes and white workers have common needs – decent jobs, housing, schooling, peace, etc. In addition, the white workers, even if most of them don’t understand it yet, are themselves injured by the Jim Crow system, and are weakened in the pursuit of their own main objectives by racial divisions and antagonisms. Nobody has to preach to the Negroes about the need and advantages of a labor-Negro alliance. They have been in favor of it for a long time; in fact, no section of the population has been more pro-labor during the last quarter-century than the Negro people.</p>
<p>If a labor-Negro alliance does not exist, or if it exists only in a partial and distorted way, it is not their fault, but the fault of the labor bureaucracy.</p>
<p>The real point is that there is no contradiction whatever, either in logic or in practice, between organizing or reorganizing the Negro movement along independent lines and achieving alliances with other sections of the population, starting with the working class. In fact, many militant Negroes view doing the first job as an indispensable condition for successfully doing the second. They believe – correctly, in my opinion – that first they must unite and shape and orient their own movement, and that only then will they be able to bring about an alliance that will have results – that is, an alliance of equals, where they can be reasonably sure their demands and needs cannot be subordinated by their allies. (When I say they must create their own movement first, I do not mean that they cannot also simultaneously begin the forging of alliances, but that if any temporary conflicts should arise between these two tasks, then priority should be given to the needs of creating the independent Negro movement.)<br>
</p>
<h4>No Easy Road</h4>
<p class="fst">So what revolutionary socialists foresee is this: The Negro people, drawn together by their common experiences as an oppressed minority, will build an increasingly independent movement, fighting militantly for equality under their own banner, with their own program and behind their own leaders. They will not build this movement easily, smoothly, without setbacks and defeats, without mistakes – but at least they will be the Negroes’ own mistakes, not those foisted on them by their enemies and false friends, and so they will be able to learn from such mistakes and correct them.</p>
<p>One effect of their independent struggles will be to shake up and divide the white population, which will simultaneously be shaken and divided by the many social and political conflicts flowing out of the international crisis and the domestic class struggles that I referred to in the beginning. Thus new alliances will emerge, particularly because the labor movement will not always remain as it is today, dominated and controlled by a narrow-minded and conservative bureaucracy; new op-positional and left-wing formations inside the unions will challenge the Meanys and Reuthers too.</p>
<p>A new alliance will be forged between the independent Negro movement and the leftward moving sections of the labor movement. We cannot supply any exact dates, or predict all the complicated forms this development will take, or foresee all the twists, turns, re-formations and realignments this will entail. But this alliance, we predict, will assume an advanced political character, breaking with the Democratic Party and building a new party whose goal will be to depose the present ruling class, and it will be the instrument through which the Negro people will win their second emancipation and the white workers their deliverance from capitalism. We place major stress on such a labor-Negro alliance because until it is created the next American revolution cannot take place, and because as soon as it is created basic social change will become a serious point at the very top of the American agenda. All this we socialists not only predict, but advocate and fight for.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">I THINK I have time within my 30-minute limit to squeeze in just one more point, and it is this: It’s common knowledge here that revolutionary socialists say the capitalist ruling class will never grant genuine equality to the Negro people. I haven’t the time to repeat our reasons for this belief, which would require us to discuss the basic cause of racial oppression, and the ways in which racial oppression is inextricably intertwined with the roots of the profit system in the United States; perhaps these things will come up in the discussion period. Anyhow, that’s what we think, and whether you agree or disagree with us, you will have to admit that the position you take on this question necessarily plays a big part in any forecasts you make about the future of the Negro struggle.</p>
<p>We not only think that American capitalism won’t grant equality to the Negroes, but we also think that the Negro people, by fighting for equality under this system, will inevitably, through their own expedience and not out of some socialist pamphlet, come to the most far-reaching revolutionary conclusions – including the conclusion that capitalism must go if racism is to be eliminated.</p>
<p>The correctness or incorrectness of our analysis of American capitalism will not be settled by debate tonight. It will be proved or disproved through action, action in the streets and in the ballot booths, through struggle, through the struggle of the Negroes and their allies for equality – equality within the capitalist system if it can be won there, or equality outside this system if it can’t be won here. We are quite willing to put our analysis to that test, and to join the Negro people in fighting for as much equality as can be achieved under this system. We are confident that the outcome of such a test will be enlightening and beneficial for both the Negro and socialist movements.</p>
<hr class="section">
<p class="fst">(<em>A speaker who identified himself as a Black Nationalist, opposing integration and favoring separation, asked what the small socialist movement had to offer black people, and why Debs Hall has pictures on the wall only of white men – Marx, Trotsky, Debs.</em>)</p>
<p class="fst">The question was about the relation between the independent Negro movement and the revolutionary socialist movement. First, however, I’d like to comment on Rev. Cleage’s remark that during the war all the radical groups he heard in San Francisco advised the Negroes to subordinate their struggle to the war effort. I want to say that Rev. Cleage evidently didn’t hear what the Socialist Workers Party had to say during World War II. Because the Socialist Workers Party was that section of the radical movement which insisted that the Negro struggle should not be subordinated, and which fought against the Jim Crow system and made the fight against it a paramount issue from the beginning to the end of the war.</p>
<p>The question was about the relations between the two movements and what the socialist movement has to offer to the Negro people. Now, certainly in terms of numbers, which is the way the question was posed, the revolutionary socialist movement is much smaller today than the Negro movement. But what is involved is more than numbers, what’s involved is a question of ideas, of program, of a program that is concerned with the relation of forces between Negroes and other sections of the population. Socialists are opposed to the Jim Crow system for the same reasons that Negro people are opposed to it and for other reasons, not only because it oppresses Negroes but also because it hurts white workers. We don’t consider the development of an independent, militant, mass Negro organization as being in contradiction with that movement also working with whatever allies are available ...<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">(<em>Interruption by questioner, who asked why black people should ally themselves with white workers when the latter are prejudiced</em>.)</p>
<p class="fst">There is no intention whatever on our part to deny that a majority of the white people in this country are prejudiced. If the situation as it is now were to continue forever, then our program would have no application. But we believe that things change, and that the thinking of the white workers will change too. Not today, not tomorrow completely, but we think they will respond to certain needs of their own, to certain pressures, international and national pressures, including those that result from the action of an independent Negro movement. That is one of the things we are trying to do – to help educate white workers to understand that their real interests are similar to those of the Negro people.</p>
<p>Now there are two main reasons why white workers are prejudiced. One is that they do have certain advantages from the Jim Crow system; it gives them certain privileges. But these privileges and advantages are nowhere near as great as they think they are, and in addition the Jim Crow system affects them adversely too. It distracts them from the struggle for their real objectives, aims and interests; the divisions between white and Negro workers hurt them both as members of the working class. The other reason why white workers are prejudiced is that they too have been brainwashed for a long time. They too have been subjected to the racist propaganda of the ruling class. We don’t think that this propaganda is always going to be effective. We think that the workers will be able to shake off its effects in the course of fighting for their own needs. The Negro people have been brainwashed for centuries, no group has been brainwashed for a longer time. Yet we see now that they have been able to throw off the effects of this brainwashing, declare their independence and start off on a new road. If Negroes can do it, if Negroes can overcome the pernicious effects of brainwashing, then we say it’s also possible for white workers to do it.</p>
<p>Therefore, when we talk about the future, we are not talking about the working class as it is today, with the kind of leaders it has today; we expect that the working class will change, as a result of its own experience and the pressure of its own needs. And the kind of alliance we predict for the future, and advocate and fight for, is not an alliance between prejudiced white workers and Negroes, but of Negroes with those white workers who have shaken off the ideas of the ruling class, including the racist prejudices that the ruling class persistently fosters and inculcates, and who recognize the necessity of working together with the Negro people for their common aims.</p>
<p>The question was also asked about the hall here, why do we put up pictures of white people? We put up pictures of these working class leaders because of the program they represent, not because of their race, and we will put up the pictures of other leaders who represent the program which we are trying to convince the American people will lead them to liberation, equality and peace.</p>
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George Breitman
The Future of the Negro Struggle
(Spring 1963)
From International Socialist Review, Vol.24 No.2, Spring 1963, pp.52-54, 60.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A symposium on this subject, celebrating the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, was held at the Eugene V. Debs Hall in Detroit on Jan. 4, 1963. The speakers, in the order of their presentations, were George Breitman, writer for The Militant; Reginald Wilson, managing editor of Correspondence; and Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., Contributing editor of The Illustrative News. Melissa Singler was chairman. The symposium was sponsored and transcribed by the Friday Night Socialist Forum.
Tonight we are commemorating the 100th anniversary – 100 years and three days – of the Emancipation Proclamation, a convenient date to mark the approximate end of chattel slavery and the approximate beginning of second-class citizenship for the Negro people of the United States. We commemorate that occasion, in line with the subject of tonight’s symposium, not by discussing the events of the past, which certainly deserve to be examined in detail, but by turning our attention to the future of the Negro struggle, whose aim is to abolish second-class citizenship and achieve complete equality.
I NOTICE none of us three speakers has brought a crystal ball along with him. That’s good – it means we’ll have to rely on whatever powers of analysis, methods of analysis or theories we possess. The theory that I shall try to apply to tonight’s subject is Marxism, the theory of scientific, revolutionary socialism, which we think is the best instrument of analysis yet devised for understanding the world of today and tomorrow, even if some people mishandle it.
In trying to determine the probable future of the Negro struggle in this country, it is best to begin by considering the future of the world and of the country within which the Negro struggle will unfold. What we see there is a great and irrepressible conflict, headed for a showdown during the remaining years of this century. It is a conflict that will decide whether the world will continue to be dominated by capitalist and imperialist exploiters of labor, or whether the working people of all nations and colors will be able to free themselves from such domination, take their destiny into their own hands, and make the transition to a society where the exploitation of man by man will be abolished and replaced by a system capable of satisfying the needs of mankind, which include equality and peace as well as material abundance.
This irrepressible conflict is the world background and framework for the future of the American Negro struggle, and it is crucial for at least two reasons. One is that it will produce, already has produced, powerful allies of the American Negro all over the world, allies because they have similar objectives and because the enemies of the American Negro are their enemies too. The second reason why the world conflict is relevant to tonight’s subject is that no country is immune or will remain immune from the struggle for or against capitalism, not even the United States, the last stronghold of this dying system. Which means that here at home, as the world crisis of capitalism penetrates and deepens here, as the class struggle between the American capitalist and the American worker sharpens and explodes, here too the Negro will be able to find strong and numerous allies and reinforcements to fight together with him against their common enemy and exploiter. It’s unfortunate that lack of time permits tonight’s speakers only to state points rather than to develop them. But I think I’ve said enough about the world conflict to show that you cannot avoid thinking and talking about its direct and indirect impact on the Negro struggle here.
Turning now to the Negro struggle itself, I think we should start by noting the important developments in the Negro community during the last few years. I want to list some of these and try to explain what they mean, because I think their continuation and deepening are inevitable during the next period.
TAKE just the last three years: The sit-ins that began Feb. 1, 1960, and quickly spread all over the South, brought a new force onto the scene, the Southern Negro youth, displaying impatience with the old-style moderate Negro leadership and building their own organizations, like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, because they are dissatisfied with the old ones. May, 1960 – organization by Negro trade unionists of the Negro American Labor Council, dedicated to fighting discrimination in industry and unions. September, 1960 – the big pro-Castro demonstration in Harlem after the government had launched a massive campaign of propaganda against the Cuban revolution. 1960 – the year that the Muslims were transformed from a sect to an important movement because its spokesmen dared say things about racial oppression that most Negroes wanted voiced. The year that small groups around the country began to form in sympathy with Robert F. Williams’ call for Negroes to defend themselves. The year that the press began to complain openly all over the North about Negroes rallying to the defense of victims of police brutality, sometimes disarming the cops and putting them to flight.
Then 1961 – the small but symptomatic demonstration at the UN against the murder of Lumumba, in February; the freedom rides in the spring; the filling of Southern jails in the summer; the independent mobilization of the Negro community in the Detroit mayoralty election – I could go on with this list all night, but time is limited, so I cut it off, because even a partial list makes the point that something new is happening.
These new events have produced new organizations and have compelled old ones to act and talk more militantly. Along with them have emerged new moods, new feelings, new demands – if not altogether new, at least they are expressed in new ways, more sharply and unequivocally. And if these new feelings and ideas are not already shared by a majority of the Negro people, they surely are, as Loren Miller said in The Nation, rapidly gaining support and respect among the majority.
What are these sentiments, or the most obvious ones? Anger at anyone who tells the Negro he must go slow, take it easy, or wait for the proper time, which is always in the future and never today. Resentment at any kind of paternalism. Suspicion and mistrust of whites, particularly liberals. Rejection of the liberal perspective of very gradual reform, whoever offers it, white liberals or Negro liberals. Contempt for tokenism and those who are satisfied or deceived by it. Mixed feelings about integration and where it will lead, if anywhere. Impatience with progress through gradual change over an indefinite period, and insistence on Freedom Now. A strong desire for racial solidarity and unity. Determination that the Negro should control his own struggles, that these struggles should be led by Negroes, that their tactics and strategy should be determined by Negroes – all resulting in a pronounced preference for all-Negro organizations. Growing support for bloc voting, that is, voting to elect Negroes to represent Negroes, whether in public office or union posts.
NOW what do these new events and feelings represent, what do they signify for the future? We have given an answer in The Militant – that this marks the beginning of the radicalization of the Negro people. I still think that estimate is correct, but tonight I would like to approach the question, and if possible to throw light on it, from another angle.
What it signifies is that the Negro struggle is becoming more – independent. More independent – is that all and what’s so remarkable about that? My answer is: It’s the key to the whole future; when the labor movement starts out on the road to independence, as the Negroes are doing, everything will begin to change. What does Negro independence, complete independence, mean? Maybe you can grasp it better by considering what dependence means, the condition that has prevailed to a greater or lesser degree until now.
Dependence means that the Negroes must wait, wait until they get permission, the green signal, the OK, from other forces – from the employers, from the White House, from the Democratic Party, from Solidarity House, from City Hall. Dependence means that Negroes cannot act freely and in accord with their own interests as they see them; that they must wait for the go-sign before they can seriously launch their own demands, candidates and campaigns; that the Negro movement is and can only be the adjunct and appendage of other movements. In short, dependence has been the curse, the fatal weakness, the main source of defeats for the Negro struggle.
Dawn of New Day
And now at last, not slowly but rapidly, not tentatively but decisively and irreversibly, this state of dependence is being overcome, to use the Southern movement’s wonderfully expressive word. Dependence is being overcome, mental and psychological shackles are being broken and cast aside, and independence is becoming the goal, the hallmark, the method of decisive change all up and down the line. It is the dawn of a new day, so bright that not everyone has been able to adjust his eyes to it yet, a change every bit as momentous as the Emancipation Proclamation. I cannot think of any more favorable development in this country since the start of the cold war, nor one that holds greater promise for the future.
Conservatives are disturbed by this new tendency, and liberals recoil from it in horror with epithets about “racism” and “Jim Crow in reverse.” But revolutionary socialists support it and welcome it and hail it because it represents a transformation that spells nothing but good for the Negro people, nothing but good for the real interests of the working class, and nothing but good for the fight for socialism.
And here I cannot help using part of my precious time to inform or remind you that it was only the Socialist Workers Party, out of all political tendencies in this country, that foresaw this new development as long as 15 years ago – not in all of its concrete and complex detail, but in its essential characteristics; not only theoretically foresaw and predicted it, but even then, while it was still in an embryonic stage, even then advocated it and defended it as thoroughly legitimate, progressive and desirable. You will find the evidence for this claim, which is also a test of the relevance and validity of Marxism for radical-minded Negroes, in the new Pioneer Publishers publication which is on sale here tonight. It is entitled Documents on the Negro Struggle, covering the years 1933 to 1950, and the last two parts, dealing with the Socialist Workers Party’s 1948 convention resolution, are the ones dealing with the prospects and potential of the kind of independent Negro movement that is being built today.
NOW whenever the point is made that the immediate future will see the continuation and strengthening of the independent tendency that is already in motion, then certain questions and misgivings arise. I don’t mean the objections of conservatives and liberals, which I will disregard at this time. I mean questions that come up in the minds of Negro and white militants, which are pertinent and proper, questions like these:
“Granting that a truly independent Negro movement is necessary, is it enough to insure victory? How far can such a movement go alone?”
In the first place, the independent Negro movement does not have to go it alone. I said earlier it already has allies abroad; even now it has some allies at home. But how far could it go alone, if it had to? I don’t think anybody can answer that question exactly, can say that this movement will be able to go just so far, and no farther. This is one of those questions that can be answered only in action, in practice, through the testing of the relation of forces. But it can be said with certainty that an independent Negro movement can go much farther, can achieve much more, can force much greater concessions from the rulers of this country than dependent and semi-dependent movements have won up to now. Our rulers know this just as well as we do; that’s why they’ve employed so much brainwash, bribery and brutality to keep the movement in a dependent status.
Another part of the question was: Can an independent Negro movement, by itself, achieve its goal of complete and unconditional equality? Our answer must be that this is very unlikely. Saying this does not contradict what we have said about the many positive features and the presently underrated potential of an independent movement. It is a conclusion imposed on us by a fact, a cold hard numerical fact, that the Negroes are a small numerical minority of the population – between one-ninth and one-tenth. This creates strategic and tactical problems quite different from those existing in countries like South Africa, where dark-skinned people are an overwhelming majority and where racial oppression can be uprooted through majority rule. In our country Negroes can win equality only if the white population is divided, only if a substantial part of the white population is won to the side of the Negro people as an ally.
THE indicated major ally of the Negro people is the working class, the labor movement. For many reasons: Most Negroes are workers themselves. Negroes and white workers have common needs – decent jobs, housing, schooling, peace, etc. In addition, the white workers, even if most of them don’t understand it yet, are themselves injured by the Jim Crow system, and are weakened in the pursuit of their own main objectives by racial divisions and antagonisms. Nobody has to preach to the Negroes about the need and advantages of a labor-Negro alliance. They have been in favor of it for a long time; in fact, no section of the population has been more pro-labor during the last quarter-century than the Negro people.
If a labor-Negro alliance does not exist, or if it exists only in a partial and distorted way, it is not their fault, but the fault of the labor bureaucracy.
The real point is that there is no contradiction whatever, either in logic or in practice, between organizing or reorganizing the Negro movement along independent lines and achieving alliances with other sections of the population, starting with the working class. In fact, many militant Negroes view doing the first job as an indispensable condition for successfully doing the second. They believe – correctly, in my opinion – that first they must unite and shape and orient their own movement, and that only then will they be able to bring about an alliance that will have results – that is, an alliance of equals, where they can be reasonably sure their demands and needs cannot be subordinated by their allies. (When I say they must create their own movement first, I do not mean that they cannot also simultaneously begin the forging of alliances, but that if any temporary conflicts should arise between these two tasks, then priority should be given to the needs of creating the independent Negro movement.)
No Easy Road
So what revolutionary socialists foresee is this: The Negro people, drawn together by their common experiences as an oppressed minority, will build an increasingly independent movement, fighting militantly for equality under their own banner, with their own program and behind their own leaders. They will not build this movement easily, smoothly, without setbacks and defeats, without mistakes – but at least they will be the Negroes’ own mistakes, not those foisted on them by their enemies and false friends, and so they will be able to learn from such mistakes and correct them.
One effect of their independent struggles will be to shake up and divide the white population, which will simultaneously be shaken and divided by the many social and political conflicts flowing out of the international crisis and the domestic class struggles that I referred to in the beginning. Thus new alliances will emerge, particularly because the labor movement will not always remain as it is today, dominated and controlled by a narrow-minded and conservative bureaucracy; new op-positional and left-wing formations inside the unions will challenge the Meanys and Reuthers too.
A new alliance will be forged between the independent Negro movement and the leftward moving sections of the labor movement. We cannot supply any exact dates, or predict all the complicated forms this development will take, or foresee all the twists, turns, re-formations and realignments this will entail. But this alliance, we predict, will assume an advanced political character, breaking with the Democratic Party and building a new party whose goal will be to depose the present ruling class, and it will be the instrument through which the Negro people will win their second emancipation and the white workers their deliverance from capitalism. We place major stress on such a labor-Negro alliance because until it is created the next American revolution cannot take place, and because as soon as it is created basic social change will become a serious point at the very top of the American agenda. All this we socialists not only predict, but advocate and fight for.
I THINK I have time within my 30-minute limit to squeeze in just one more point, and it is this: It’s common knowledge here that revolutionary socialists say the capitalist ruling class will never grant genuine equality to the Negro people. I haven’t the time to repeat our reasons for this belief, which would require us to discuss the basic cause of racial oppression, and the ways in which racial oppression is inextricably intertwined with the roots of the profit system in the United States; perhaps these things will come up in the discussion period. Anyhow, that’s what we think, and whether you agree or disagree with us, you will have to admit that the position you take on this question necessarily plays a big part in any forecasts you make about the future of the Negro struggle.
We not only think that American capitalism won’t grant equality to the Negroes, but we also think that the Negro people, by fighting for equality under this system, will inevitably, through their own expedience and not out of some socialist pamphlet, come to the most far-reaching revolutionary conclusions – including the conclusion that capitalism must go if racism is to be eliminated.
The correctness or incorrectness of our analysis of American capitalism will not be settled by debate tonight. It will be proved or disproved through action, action in the streets and in the ballot booths, through struggle, through the struggle of the Negroes and their allies for equality – equality within the capitalist system if it can be won there, or equality outside this system if it can’t be won here. We are quite willing to put our analysis to that test, and to join the Negro people in fighting for as much equality as can be achieved under this system. We are confident that the outcome of such a test will be enlightening and beneficial for both the Negro and socialist movements.
(A speaker who identified himself as a Black Nationalist, opposing integration and favoring separation, asked what the small socialist movement had to offer black people, and why Debs Hall has pictures on the wall only of white men – Marx, Trotsky, Debs.)
The question was about the relation between the independent Negro movement and the revolutionary socialist movement. First, however, I’d like to comment on Rev. Cleage’s remark that during the war all the radical groups he heard in San Francisco advised the Negroes to subordinate their struggle to the war effort. I want to say that Rev. Cleage evidently didn’t hear what the Socialist Workers Party had to say during World War II. Because the Socialist Workers Party was that section of the radical movement which insisted that the Negro struggle should not be subordinated, and which fought against the Jim Crow system and made the fight against it a paramount issue from the beginning to the end of the war.
The question was about the relations between the two movements and what the socialist movement has to offer to the Negro people. Now, certainly in terms of numbers, which is the way the question was posed, the revolutionary socialist movement is much smaller today than the Negro movement. But what is involved is more than numbers, what’s involved is a question of ideas, of program, of a program that is concerned with the relation of forces between Negroes and other sections of the population. Socialists are opposed to the Jim Crow system for the same reasons that Negro people are opposed to it and for other reasons, not only because it oppresses Negroes but also because it hurts white workers. We don’t consider the development of an independent, militant, mass Negro organization as being in contradiction with that movement also working with whatever allies are available ...
(Interruption by questioner, who asked why black people should ally themselves with white workers when the latter are prejudiced.)
There is no intention whatever on our part to deny that a majority of the white people in this country are prejudiced. If the situation as it is now were to continue forever, then our program would have no application. But we believe that things change, and that the thinking of the white workers will change too. Not today, not tomorrow completely, but we think they will respond to certain needs of their own, to certain pressures, international and national pressures, including those that result from the action of an independent Negro movement. That is one of the things we are trying to do – to help educate white workers to understand that their real interests are similar to those of the Negro people.
Now there are two main reasons why white workers are prejudiced. One is that they do have certain advantages from the Jim Crow system; it gives them certain privileges. But these privileges and advantages are nowhere near as great as they think they are, and in addition the Jim Crow system affects them adversely too. It distracts them from the struggle for their real objectives, aims and interests; the divisions between white and Negro workers hurt them both as members of the working class. The other reason why white workers are prejudiced is that they too have been brainwashed for a long time. They too have been subjected to the racist propaganda of the ruling class. We don’t think that this propaganda is always going to be effective. We think that the workers will be able to shake off its effects in the course of fighting for their own needs. The Negro people have been brainwashed for centuries, no group has been brainwashed for a longer time. Yet we see now that they have been able to throw off the effects of this brainwashing, declare their independence and start off on a new road. If Negroes can do it, if Negroes can overcome the pernicious effects of brainwashing, then we say it’s also possible for white workers to do it.
Therefore, when we talk about the future, we are not talking about the working class as it is today, with the kind of leaders it has today; we expect that the working class will change, as a result of its own experience and the pressure of its own needs. And the kind of alliance we predict for the future, and advocate and fight for, is not an alliance between prejudiced white workers and Negroes, but of Negroes with those white workers who have shaken off the ideas of the ruling class, including the racist prejudices that the ruling class persistently fosters and inculcates, and who recognize the necessity of working together with the Negro people for their common aims.
The question was also asked about the hall here, why do we put up pictures of white people? We put up pictures of these working class leaders because of the program they represent, not because of their race, and we will put up the pictures of other leaders who represent the program which we are trying to convince the American people will lead them to liberation, equality and peace.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>After Randolph’s “Bomb”</h1>
<h3>(3 May 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_18" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 18</a>, 3 May 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The civil disobedience proposal of A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds has already had Some noteworthy results. For one thing, it has stirred up the thinking of millions of people over the problem of the next steps to be taken in the fight against Jim Crow. For another, it is separating the sheep from the goats among those who pretend to be friends of the Negro people. For a third, it is putting real pressure on the Negro leaders, forcing them to take a stronger stand than ever before.</p>
<p>Everyone knows now how Eisenhower was provoked by Randolph’s testimony into blurting out his own Jim Crow position on segregation in the army – which was all to the good because it cleared up many illusions that were being spread about this militarist. Not so well known, but just as significant, has been the behavior of the liberal Republican, Senator Wayne Morse.</p>
<p>Morse is the man who threatened Randolph with prosecution for treason. He is also a member (like Randolph) of the national board of directors of the NAACP. He threatened to resign from the board if the NAACP did not dissociate itself from Randolph’s proposal. Secretary Walter White assured him that the NAACP had not endorsed Randolph’s position, but reminded him that the Negro people are fed up with the way they are being treated, and thoroughly disgusted with the way both parties in Congress are playing politics with the civil rights program. White complained, for example, about the Republican Party’s decision to bury anti-poll tax and FEPC bills.</p>
<p>In reply, Morse rushed to the defense of the Republican Party, saying, that everything had been going well with the civil rights program in Congress “until the proposal for a civil disobedience program was dropped into our midst as a bomb.” To show what a ridiculous alibi this is, we need only point out that the Republicans had control of Congress for 15 months before Randolph’s proposal. What stopped them from passing the bills during that time? In other words, Morse is a stooge for the capitalist parties, and we have Randolph’s proposal to thank for exposing how foolish it is to place any hope at all in such people, even when they disguise themselves as liberals.</p>
<p>And last week we witnessed still another effect resulting from Randolph’s “bomb.” Fifteen conservative Negro leaders had been summoned to Washington by Secretary of Defense Forrestal, who expected to persuade them to again act as “front men” for continued Jim Crow practices, as most of them had done in the past. But the whole thing blew up in Forrestal’s face, because even these conservative Negro leaders feel the pressure of the Negro masses so sharply that they had to make an about-face and issue the following statement after the conference: “The group agreed that no one wanted to continue in an advisory capacity on the basis of continued segregation in the armed services.”</p>
<p>All these are heartening developments, signifying that the struggle against Jim Crow is rising to a new and higher level of militancy.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
After Randolph’s “Bomb”
(3 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 18, 3 May 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The civil disobedience proposal of A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds has already had Some noteworthy results. For one thing, it has stirred up the thinking of millions of people over the problem of the next steps to be taken in the fight against Jim Crow. For another, it is separating the sheep from the goats among those who pretend to be friends of the Negro people. For a third, it is putting real pressure on the Negro leaders, forcing them to take a stronger stand than ever before.
Everyone knows now how Eisenhower was provoked by Randolph’s testimony into blurting out his own Jim Crow position on segregation in the army – which was all to the good because it cleared up many illusions that were being spread about this militarist. Not so well known, but just as significant, has been the behavior of the liberal Republican, Senator Wayne Morse.
Morse is the man who threatened Randolph with prosecution for treason. He is also a member (like Randolph) of the national board of directors of the NAACP. He threatened to resign from the board if the NAACP did not dissociate itself from Randolph’s proposal. Secretary Walter White assured him that the NAACP had not endorsed Randolph’s position, but reminded him that the Negro people are fed up with the way they are being treated, and thoroughly disgusted with the way both parties in Congress are playing politics with the civil rights program. White complained, for example, about the Republican Party’s decision to bury anti-poll tax and FEPC bills.
In reply, Morse rushed to the defense of the Republican Party, saying, that everything had been going well with the civil rights program in Congress “until the proposal for a civil disobedience program was dropped into our midst as a bomb.” To show what a ridiculous alibi this is, we need only point out that the Republicans had control of Congress for 15 months before Randolph’s proposal. What stopped them from passing the bills during that time? In other words, Morse is a stooge for the capitalist parties, and we have Randolph’s proposal to thank for exposing how foolish it is to place any hope at all in such people, even when they disguise themselves as liberals.
And last week we witnessed still another effect resulting from Randolph’s “bomb.” Fifteen conservative Negro leaders had been summoned to Washington by Secretary of Defense Forrestal, who expected to persuade them to again act as “front men” for continued Jim Crow practices, as most of them had done in the past. But the whole thing blew up in Forrestal’s face, because even these conservative Negro leaders feel the pressure of the Negro masses so sharply that they had to make an about-face and issue the following statement after the conference: “The group agreed that no one wanted to continue in an advisory capacity on the basis of continued segregation in the armed services.”
All these are heartening developments, signifying that the struggle against Jim Crow is rising to a new and higher level of militancy.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Deutscher’s False Evaluation of Stalinism</h1>
<h3>(7 November 1949)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/v13n45-nov-07-1949.pdf" target="new">Vol. 8 No. 45</a>, 7 November 1949.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Falgren and David Walters for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>After recording the major crimes of Stalinism, Isaac Deutscher’s</strong> <em>Stalin: A Political Biography</em> comes to the conclusion that it is fundamentally revolutionary and progressive, despite its ruinous policies. despite the tyrannical and repressive methods it uses against the workers at home and abroad. Last week we discussed the fallaciousness of Deutscher’s evaluation of the role of Stalinism inside the Soviet Union: here we continue with an examination of ’his interpretation of the events in Eastern Europe since 1945.</p>
<p>To meet the economic crisis in the Soviet Union after the war, Deutscher says, Stalin resorted to two methods. One was the “nationalist” method, which consisted in plundering the defeated countries, dismantling and transferring factories, instituting slave labor on a mass scale, etc. The other he calls the “revolutionary” method, which consisted “in the broadening of the economic base on which planned economy was to operate, in an economic link-up between Russia and the countries within her orbit.” To achieve this, the Stalinists had to take power in those countries, although at the same time they helped to preserve the capitalist system intact in the more advanced countries of Western Europe.)<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Stalin’s new concept</p>
<p class="fst">In employing the second method, Deutscher continues, Stalin tacitly admitted that “socialism in one country” was impossible and vindicated Trotsky’s condemnation of it. But Deutscher does not completely endorse the vulgar distortion, now widely current, that Stalinist expansion proves Stalin has returned to Leninism. For although Stalin was forced in effect to repudiate his basic theory, he did not go “back to his starting point, to the conception of world revolution he had once shared with Lenin and Trotsky [before 1924]. He now replaced his socialism in one country by something that might be termed ‘socialism in one zone’.“ (Like its predecessor, this new Stalinist concept accepts and will even strengthen the capitalist order in the rest of the world in return for being allowed to strengthen its own position.)</p>
<p>From this Deutscher passes to a discussion of the Stalinist “revolutions.” “The old Bolshevism ... believed that the Socialist order would result from the original experience and struggle of the working classes abroad, that it would be the most authentic act of their social and political self-determination. The old Bolshevism, in other words, believed in revolution from below, such as the upheaval of 1917 had been. The revolution which Stalin now carried into eastern and central Europe was primarily a revolution from above,” which was “decreed, inspired and managed” by Stalin’s political and military agencies, although the workers also participated to one degree or another. “What took place within the Russian orbit was, therefore, semi-conquest and semi-revolution ... it is the blending of conquest and revolution that makes the essence of ‘socialism in one zone.’”<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Anti-socialist acts</p>
<p class="fst">Now, the statification of property in Eastern Europe has certain progressive features, even though it is incomplete and is achieved by military-bureaucratic means. But simultaneously with these measures, the bureaucracy moved against the masses, preventing them from taking power into their own hands and carrying through a genuine proletarian revolution. The bureaucracy, eventually drove out the old ruling classes, with whom it saw no reason to keep on sharing the privileges of power. But from the very beginning it struck most brutally at any independent action by the masses, whom it feared more than the old ruling classes and whom it was determined to keep in a subordinate position.</p>
<p>The attitude of revolutionary socialists to such measures was clearly expressed by Trotsky at the very beginning of the war, when Stalin’s troops had invaded eastern Poland: “The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to the world revolution.”<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Decisive standpoint</p>
<p class="fst">The decisive standpoint, Trotsky termed it, because the can be no socialist transformation of society unless the masses understand the need for it and carry it through themselves. The emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves; no one else can do it for them–that is the unique thing about the socialist revolution. It is a task they can carry through only when they are organized in a revolutionary party and in Soviets or their equivalent, democratically expressing their will–and all such organizations are prohibited and suppressed by the Stalinist policemen-bureaucrats.</p>
<p>The expression “revolution from above” is self-contradictory. We can conceive and have already witnessed, as the result of the continuing degeneration of the first workers state, the transformation of property relations by bureaucratic measures. But since these measures are directed as much against the revolutionary classes as against the old ruling classes, a more exact name would be “counter-revolution from above.” Even when they entail new property relations, changes that do not put power in the hands of the working class, changes in which the masses are relegated to a subsidiary if not a wholly passive role, are a grotesque abortion rather than a living expression of socialist transformation.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Historic parallel?</p>
<p class="fst">Stalinism strangles the socialist revolution even when it is compelled to transform property relations; its over-all character, therefore, is counter-revolutionary. That is why it must be fought and smashed, and that is why Deutscher is wrong when he attempts to establish historic parallels between Cromwell and Robespierre and the dictator in the Kremlin.</p>
<p>Stalin is like them, he says, in being despotic and in being “revolutionary, not in the sense that he has remained true to all the original ideas of the revolution, but because he has put into practice a fundamentally new principle of social organization, which, no matter what happens to him personally or even to the regime associated with his name is certain to survive, to fertilize human experience, and to turn it in new directions.” </p>
<p>We have already shown that the credit for the “new principle of social organization” belongs to the 1917 revolution and not to Stalinism; that what Stalin did was not to put it into practice but to alter and distort it, to weaken and undermine it, to pervert it and exploit. it. But this is only the beginning of Deutscher’s misinterpretation ...</p>
<p>Cromwell and Robespierre were petty bourgeois leaders of the bourgeois revolution in their respective countries. They represented the historically progressive tendencies of the capitalist system, which was then coming to power. They sought to defend the interests of the new social order, by violent means and dictatorship, on the one hand against the former ruling class, the aristocrats, and on the other hand against the plebeian elements who had been the best fighters for the bourgeois revolution and who attempted to go beyond the bounds of capitalist society.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">The difference</p>
<p class="fst">Stalin, like Cromwell and Robespierre, crushed the revolutionary mass movement on the left; in that sense, a certain limited analogy can be constructed. But when we examine the social content of their respective acts against the masses we can see that it refutes rather than confirms Deutscher’s attempt at a historic parallel. For Cromwell and Robespierre could crush the plebeians who were seeking to push the revolution beyond the bounds of capitalist inequality, without decisively impairing the new revolutionary (capitalist) structure.</p>
<p>But the social revolution of the 20th century differs from the bourgeois revolutions in this fundamental respect: It is impossible without the leadership, initiative and creative direction of the working class. When Stalin suppresses these, he undermines the degenerated workers state in the Soviet Union and prepares the way for the restoration of capitalism; much more important, he prevents the world socialist revolution.</p>
<p>Stalin cannot be compared with Cromwell and Robespierre, therefore, because on the whole they helped to build a new and progressive society (although they weakened it by suppressing the masses) while Stalinism on the whole blocks, impedes and opposes the construction of a new and progressive society; because they served the interests of the revolutionary capitalist class while he subverts the interests of the revolutionary working class for the benefit of a parasitic bureaucratic caste.</p>
<p>It is necessary to stress the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism over and over again because many people, seeking a way out of the present world crisis and seeing no other alternative as yet, are impelled to turn in the direction of Stalinism. Books like Deutscher’s must be combatted relentlessly because they help to sustain the illusion that Stalinism, despite its “faults,” is a “lesser evil” to capitalism–the main illusion diverting people from the revolutionary socialist movement which alone offers a program for social progress.</p>
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George Breitman
Deutscher’s False Evaluation of Stalinism
(7 November 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 8 No. 45, 7 November 1949.
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Falgren and David Walters for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
After recording the major crimes of Stalinism, Isaac Deutscher’s Stalin: A Political Biography comes to the conclusion that it is fundamentally revolutionary and progressive, despite its ruinous policies. despite the tyrannical and repressive methods it uses against the workers at home and abroad. Last week we discussed the fallaciousness of Deutscher’s evaluation of the role of Stalinism inside the Soviet Union: here we continue with an examination of ’his interpretation of the events in Eastern Europe since 1945.
To meet the economic crisis in the Soviet Union after the war, Deutscher says, Stalin resorted to two methods. One was the “nationalist” method, which consisted in plundering the defeated countries, dismantling and transferring factories, instituting slave labor on a mass scale, etc. The other he calls the “revolutionary” method, which consisted “in the broadening of the economic base on which planned economy was to operate, in an economic link-up between Russia and the countries within her orbit.” To achieve this, the Stalinists had to take power in those countries, although at the same time they helped to preserve the capitalist system intact in the more advanced countries of Western Europe.)
Stalin’s new concept
In employing the second method, Deutscher continues, Stalin tacitly admitted that “socialism in one country” was impossible and vindicated Trotsky’s condemnation of it. But Deutscher does not completely endorse the vulgar distortion, now widely current, that Stalinist expansion proves Stalin has returned to Leninism. For although Stalin was forced in effect to repudiate his basic theory, he did not go “back to his starting point, to the conception of world revolution he had once shared with Lenin and Trotsky [before 1924]. He now replaced his socialism in one country by something that might be termed ‘socialism in one zone’.“ (Like its predecessor, this new Stalinist concept accepts and will even strengthen the capitalist order in the rest of the world in return for being allowed to strengthen its own position.)
From this Deutscher passes to a discussion of the Stalinist “revolutions.” “The old Bolshevism ... believed that the Socialist order would result from the original experience and struggle of the working classes abroad, that it would be the most authentic act of their social and political self-determination. The old Bolshevism, in other words, believed in revolution from below, such as the upheaval of 1917 had been. The revolution which Stalin now carried into eastern and central Europe was primarily a revolution from above,” which was “decreed, inspired and managed” by Stalin’s political and military agencies, although the workers also participated to one degree or another. “What took place within the Russian orbit was, therefore, semi-conquest and semi-revolution ... it is the blending of conquest and revolution that makes the essence of ‘socialism in one zone.’”
Anti-socialist acts
Now, the statification of property in Eastern Europe has certain progressive features, even though it is incomplete and is achieved by military-bureaucratic means. But simultaneously with these measures, the bureaucracy moved against the masses, preventing them from taking power into their own hands and carrying through a genuine proletarian revolution. The bureaucracy, eventually drove out the old ruling classes, with whom it saw no reason to keep on sharing the privileges of power. But from the very beginning it struck most brutally at any independent action by the masses, whom it feared more than the old ruling classes and whom it was determined to keep in a subordinate position.
The attitude of revolutionary socialists to such measures was clearly expressed by Trotsky at the very beginning of the war, when Stalin’s troops had invaded eastern Poland: “The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to the world revolution.”
Decisive standpoint
The decisive standpoint, Trotsky termed it, because the can be no socialist transformation of society unless the masses understand the need for it and carry it through themselves. The emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves; no one else can do it for them–that is the unique thing about the socialist revolution. It is a task they can carry through only when they are organized in a revolutionary party and in Soviets or their equivalent, democratically expressing their will–and all such organizations are prohibited and suppressed by the Stalinist policemen-bureaucrats.
The expression “revolution from above” is self-contradictory. We can conceive and have already witnessed, as the result of the continuing degeneration of the first workers state, the transformation of property relations by bureaucratic measures. But since these measures are directed as much against the revolutionary classes as against the old ruling classes, a more exact name would be “counter-revolution from above.” Even when they entail new property relations, changes that do not put power in the hands of the working class, changes in which the masses are relegated to a subsidiary if not a wholly passive role, are a grotesque abortion rather than a living expression of socialist transformation.
Historic parallel?
Stalinism strangles the socialist revolution even when it is compelled to transform property relations; its over-all character, therefore, is counter-revolutionary. That is why it must be fought and smashed, and that is why Deutscher is wrong when he attempts to establish historic parallels between Cromwell and Robespierre and the dictator in the Kremlin.
Stalin is like them, he says, in being despotic and in being “revolutionary, not in the sense that he has remained true to all the original ideas of the revolution, but because he has put into practice a fundamentally new principle of social organization, which, no matter what happens to him personally or even to the regime associated with his name is certain to survive, to fertilize human experience, and to turn it in new directions.”
We have already shown that the credit for the “new principle of social organization” belongs to the 1917 revolution and not to Stalinism; that what Stalin did was not to put it into practice but to alter and distort it, to weaken and undermine it, to pervert it and exploit. it. But this is only the beginning of Deutscher’s misinterpretation ...
Cromwell and Robespierre were petty bourgeois leaders of the bourgeois revolution in their respective countries. They represented the historically progressive tendencies of the capitalist system, which was then coming to power. They sought to defend the interests of the new social order, by violent means and dictatorship, on the one hand against the former ruling class, the aristocrats, and on the other hand against the plebeian elements who had been the best fighters for the bourgeois revolution and who attempted to go beyond the bounds of capitalist society.
The difference
Stalin, like Cromwell and Robespierre, crushed the revolutionary mass movement on the left; in that sense, a certain limited analogy can be constructed. But when we examine the social content of their respective acts against the masses we can see that it refutes rather than confirms Deutscher’s attempt at a historic parallel. For Cromwell and Robespierre could crush the plebeians who were seeking to push the revolution beyond the bounds of capitalist inequality, without decisively impairing the new revolutionary (capitalist) structure.
But the social revolution of the 20th century differs from the bourgeois revolutions in this fundamental respect: It is impossible without the leadership, initiative and creative direction of the working class. When Stalin suppresses these, he undermines the degenerated workers state in the Soviet Union and prepares the way for the restoration of capitalism; much more important, he prevents the world socialist revolution.
Stalin cannot be compared with Cromwell and Robespierre, therefore, because on the whole they helped to build a new and progressive society (although they weakened it by suppressing the masses) while Stalinism on the whole blocks, impedes and opposes the construction of a new and progressive society; because they served the interests of the revolutionary capitalist class while he subverts the interests of the revolutionary working class for the benefit of a parasitic bureaucratic caste.
It is necessary to stress the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism over and over again because many people, seeking a way out of the present world crisis and seeing no other alternative as yet, are impelled to turn in the direction of Stalinism. Books like Deutscher’s must be combatted relentlessly because they help to sustain the illusion that Stalinism, despite its “faults,” is a “lesser evil” to capitalism–the main illusion diverting people from the revolutionary socialist movement which alone offers a program for social progress.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Doolittle Report Attacked by Caste-System Defender</h1>
<h3>(22 June 1946)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_25" target="new">Vol. 10 No. 25</a>, 22 June 1946, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Last month the Doolittle Board issued a report recommending the elimination of some of the differences in living conditions and privileges between officers and enlisted men. The War Department, which had appointed the Board, shrugged its shoulders in contempt when the report was issued.</p>
<p>Now Hanson W. Baldwin, military editor of the <strong>N.Y. Times</strong> and unofficial spokesman for the big brass, has come out with a blistering attack charging that adoption of the Doolittle Board’s report would turn the Army into “an armed mob.”</p>
<p>The Board had favored among other things “social fraternization” between officers and enlisted men, and had discussed without recommendation possible abolition of the “official gap or line of demarcation between the so-called officer and enlisted groups.”</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“These are dangerous suggestions,” Baldwin shrieked on June 12. “... An officer corps must be the heart and soul of any army. Abolish it, minimize its importance, try to merge it with enlisted ranks and you have no army.”</p>
<p class="fst">To prove this point, Baldwin refers to historical precedent – the Red Army. Since this same point is made in the Doolittle report, and was recently emphasized in articles by officers in <strong>Collier’s</strong> and the <strong>Saturday Evening Post</strong>, it is worth examining here:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“The Russians tried it, and for years there were no titles, no real badges of rank, no salutes and no distinction between officer and enlisted man in the Red Army,” Baldwin continues. “These regulations and the political commissars made the pre-war Russian Army an armed mob and cost Russia dearly in the first Finnish campaign and in the first years of the struggle against Germany.”</p>
<p class="fst">It is time this widely spread myth was punctured. The Red Army regulations abolishing the privileges of the officers had nothing whatever to do with the results in the Finnish war. That war took place in 1939–40. But the regulations referred to with such horror by Baldwin were rescinded as far back as 1935, when the reactionary Stalin bureaucracy restored the officer corps, and all the special officer privileges and rank which Baldwin thinks is so necessary for an army.</p>
<p>When the Red Army went into the second world war, it was hard to distinguish, so far as officer-enlisted men regulations were concerned, between it and the U.S. or German armies. And yet it suffered serious defeats in the first stage of the war.</p>
<p>Can’t Baldwin’s historical example thus be turned against him? For in the Red Army’s early days, under Lenin and Trotsky, when it was the most democratic army and had the highest morale in the world, this army succeeded in defeating the efforts of all the imperialist armies to destroy the Russian Revolution.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Use of Rank</h4>
<p class="fst">How can you have an effective army when you remove these “incentives to leadership,” that is, officer privileges, Baldwin demands? Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, answered this question 10 years ago when he denounced Stalin’s restoration of the officer corps:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“The restoration of hierarchical caste is not in the least demanded by the interests of military affairs. It is the commanding position, and not the rank, of the commander that is important. Engineers and physicians have no rank, but society finds the means of putting each in his needful place.</p>
<p class="quote">“The right to a commanding position is guaranteed by study, endowment, character, experience, which need continual and moreover individual appraisal. The rank of major adds nothing to the commander of a battalion. The elevation of the five senior commanders of the Red Army to the title of marshal gives them neither new talents nor supplementary powers.</p>
<p class="quote">“It is not the army that really thus receives a ‘stable basis,’ but the officers’ corps, and that at the price of aloofness from the army. The reform pursues a purely political aim: to give a new social weight to the officers ...” (<strong>The Revolution Betrayed</strong>, Pioneer Publishers)</p>
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George Breitman
Doolittle Report Attacked by Caste-System Defender
(22 June 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. 10 No. 25, 22 June 1946, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Last month the Doolittle Board issued a report recommending the elimination of some of the differences in living conditions and privileges between officers and enlisted men. The War Department, which had appointed the Board, shrugged its shoulders in contempt when the report was issued.
Now Hanson W. Baldwin, military editor of the N.Y. Times and unofficial spokesman for the big brass, has come out with a blistering attack charging that adoption of the Doolittle Board’s report would turn the Army into “an armed mob.”
The Board had favored among other things “social fraternization” between officers and enlisted men, and had discussed without recommendation possible abolition of the “official gap or line of demarcation between the so-called officer and enlisted groups.”
“These are dangerous suggestions,” Baldwin shrieked on June 12. “... An officer corps must be the heart and soul of any army. Abolish it, minimize its importance, try to merge it with enlisted ranks and you have no army.”
To prove this point, Baldwin refers to historical precedent – the Red Army. Since this same point is made in the Doolittle report, and was recently emphasized in articles by officers in Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post, it is worth examining here:
“The Russians tried it, and for years there were no titles, no real badges of rank, no salutes and no distinction between officer and enlisted man in the Red Army,” Baldwin continues. “These regulations and the political commissars made the pre-war Russian Army an armed mob and cost Russia dearly in the first Finnish campaign and in the first years of the struggle against Germany.”
It is time this widely spread myth was punctured. The Red Army regulations abolishing the privileges of the officers had nothing whatever to do with the results in the Finnish war. That war took place in 1939–40. But the regulations referred to with such horror by Baldwin were rescinded as far back as 1935, when the reactionary Stalin bureaucracy restored the officer corps, and all the special officer privileges and rank which Baldwin thinks is so necessary for an army.
When the Red Army went into the second world war, it was hard to distinguish, so far as officer-enlisted men regulations were concerned, between it and the U.S. or German armies. And yet it suffered serious defeats in the first stage of the war.
Can’t Baldwin’s historical example thus be turned against him? For in the Red Army’s early days, under Lenin and Trotsky, when it was the most democratic army and had the highest morale in the world, this army succeeded in defeating the efforts of all the imperialist armies to destroy the Russian Revolution.
The Use of Rank
How can you have an effective army when you remove these “incentives to leadership,” that is, officer privileges, Baldwin demands? Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, answered this question 10 years ago when he denounced Stalin’s restoration of the officer corps:
“The restoration of hierarchical caste is not in the least demanded by the interests of military affairs. It is the commanding position, and not the rank, of the commander that is important. Engineers and physicians have no rank, but society finds the means of putting each in his needful place.
“The right to a commanding position is guaranteed by study, endowment, character, experience, which need continual and moreover individual appraisal. The rank of major adds nothing to the commander of a battalion. The elevation of the five senior commanders of the Red Army to the title of marshal gives them neither new talents nor supplementary powers.
“It is not the army that really thus receives a ‘stable basis,’ but the officers’ corps, and that at the price of aloofness from the army. The reform pursues a purely political aim: to give a new social weight to the officers ...” (The Revolution Betrayed, Pioneer Publishers)
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(16 November 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_46" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 46</a>, 16 November 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">We urge our readers to pay particular attention to the articles in this and past issues of the <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, reporting the treatment by the Southern officer caste in the U.S. Navy of Negro sailors who have dared to expose to the world the vicious Jim Crow policies in force on the ships.</p>
<p>A number of these sailors are already in grave danger. To their aid have rallied sailors from other ships who are speaking up in their defense as well as they can, and signing their names too in many cases.</p>
<p>It is our duty on the outside to widely publicize the facts they have bared, to defend: them from punishment, by mass pressure and meetings, and to intensify our agitation for taking control of military training away from the bureaucrats and putting it in the hands of the trade unions.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>Into The Waste Basket</h4>
<p class="fst">Last Wednesday we threw into the wastebasket a lot of clippings, some of them a full page in size, from several Negro newspapers, containing the paid advertisements of the Republicans, and editorials from those papers that stumped for Willkie.</p>
<p>We had saved them just on the chance that Willkie might be elected. In that case we were going to use them in comparing his record from week-to-week with his promises.</p>
<p>Because. you see, Willkie was not stingy in this campaign in his promises to the Negroes. Realizing how important the Negro vote was in many key states, he promised them just about everything but socialism.</p>
<p>Lynching? No one looks at it with more condemnation than he does, he said, and furthermore, something should be done about it. A law Should foe passed.</p>
<p>... Jim Crowism? He was against it, he said. If he was elected, he would put an end to it. Yes, he said, he would even fire any of his subordinates “on the spot” if he caught them at it in civil service.</p>
<p>Segregation in the armed forces? He didn’t see any reason for it, he said.</p>
<p>Job discrimination? He didn’t like that either. And if he was elected, he would see to it that Colored men would have equal opportunity to get jobs in private industry.</p>
<p>Unemployment? Of course he was against that too. Just elect him and he would do away with it, and put everybody to work.</p>
<p>Relief? He promised to do away with “the theory that relief is a Negro reservation.” He said he would abolish discrimination in its administration and continue it for those who couldn’t get gainful employment.</p>
<p>These were the promises he made when he was speaking to colored audiences. Of course, he did not say these things when he was speaking in the south, as at Amarillo, Texas.</p>
<p>Nor did he explain why it was that in the utility industries, where he is already “elected,” he has never done anything to wipe out the Jim Crow hiring policies, which either exclude colored workers completely or confine them to common labor. He did not show how he could abolish job discrimination easier as head of the government than as head of a utility corporation.</p>
<p>Nor did he comment on the fact that the promises and general remarks he made now were made pretty much word for word by the Democrats in 1932 and 1936. He did not touch on this at all to show why he would keep these promises in contrast to the Democrats who broke them when they were once elected.</p>
<p>Nor did he spend much time explaining why the Republicans when they controlled Congress completely in 1921–22 killed the Anti-lynch Bill in exactly the same way that the Democrats who completely controlled Congress have been killing it ever since 1937.</p>
<p>Nor did he say much about the right to vote, although he talked a lot about equality, and he did not at all take up the question of how the Republicans have helped the Democrats kill the Geyer Anti-Poll Tax Bill this last year.</p>
<p>But those who were able to, voted, and settled the question. So we threw all these promises in the waste-basket, in the same way Willkie would have throw them in the waste-basket if he was elected, and in the same way that the Democrats have thrown theirs now that they have been elected.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Poll Taxes Hit Both</h4>
<p class="fst">The poll tax laws in operation in eight Southern states kept ten million people from voting in the presidential election last week.</p>
<p>This, says the Afro-American, was in addition “to some five million residents barred from the polls by sheer intimidation.”</p>
<p>These poll tax laws, originally passed to insure lily-white elections and to keep Negroes from exerting any political influence in Southern politics, today serve to disfranchise all workers, white as well as colored.</p>
<p>Most white workers in these states can’t vote there either, because they can’t pay the taxes, which range from $1 to $3. In some states these taxes are cumulative, that is, even workers who paid their taxes this year were not permitted to vote unless they paid up all their back poll taxes, from the time they were 21 years old and on. That means that the longer this thing goes on, the worse it gets, and the more people it robs of their right to vote. How many workers or sharecroppers could raise the money to pay for the years of the depression?</p>
<p>The result is that while almost 60% of the adults in the rest of the country participate in the elections, in these eight Southern states only about 10% can enter the voting booths. And these 10% represent the ruling class, of course.</p>
<p>The whole thing is the best possible proof of our contention that laws aimed against the Negro people inevitably hit and hurt the working class as a whole./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(16 November 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 46, 16 November 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
We urge our readers to pay particular attention to the articles in this and past issues of the Socialist Appeal, reporting the treatment by the Southern officer caste in the U.S. Navy of Negro sailors who have dared to expose to the world the vicious Jim Crow policies in force on the ships.
A number of these sailors are already in grave danger. To their aid have rallied sailors from other ships who are speaking up in their defense as well as they can, and signing their names too in many cases.
It is our duty on the outside to widely publicize the facts they have bared, to defend: them from punishment, by mass pressure and meetings, and to intensify our agitation for taking control of military training away from the bureaucrats and putting it in the hands of the trade unions.
Into The Waste Basket
Last Wednesday we threw into the wastebasket a lot of clippings, some of them a full page in size, from several Negro newspapers, containing the paid advertisements of the Republicans, and editorials from those papers that stumped for Willkie.
We had saved them just on the chance that Willkie might be elected. In that case we were going to use them in comparing his record from week-to-week with his promises.
Because. you see, Willkie was not stingy in this campaign in his promises to the Negroes. Realizing how important the Negro vote was in many key states, he promised them just about everything but socialism.
Lynching? No one looks at it with more condemnation than he does, he said, and furthermore, something should be done about it. A law Should foe passed.
... Jim Crowism? He was against it, he said. If he was elected, he would put an end to it. Yes, he said, he would even fire any of his subordinates “on the spot” if he caught them at it in civil service.
Segregation in the armed forces? He didn’t see any reason for it, he said.
Job discrimination? He didn’t like that either. And if he was elected, he would see to it that Colored men would have equal opportunity to get jobs in private industry.
Unemployment? Of course he was against that too. Just elect him and he would do away with it, and put everybody to work.
Relief? He promised to do away with “the theory that relief is a Negro reservation.” He said he would abolish discrimination in its administration and continue it for those who couldn’t get gainful employment.
These were the promises he made when he was speaking to colored audiences. Of course, he did not say these things when he was speaking in the south, as at Amarillo, Texas.
Nor did he explain why it was that in the utility industries, where he is already “elected,” he has never done anything to wipe out the Jim Crow hiring policies, which either exclude colored workers completely or confine them to common labor. He did not show how he could abolish job discrimination easier as head of the government than as head of a utility corporation.
Nor did he comment on the fact that the promises and general remarks he made now were made pretty much word for word by the Democrats in 1932 and 1936. He did not touch on this at all to show why he would keep these promises in contrast to the Democrats who broke them when they were once elected.
Nor did he spend much time explaining why the Republicans when they controlled Congress completely in 1921–22 killed the Anti-lynch Bill in exactly the same way that the Democrats who completely controlled Congress have been killing it ever since 1937.
Nor did he say much about the right to vote, although he talked a lot about equality, and he did not at all take up the question of how the Republicans have helped the Democrats kill the Geyer Anti-Poll Tax Bill this last year.
But those who were able to, voted, and settled the question. So we threw all these promises in the waste-basket, in the same way Willkie would have throw them in the waste-basket if he was elected, and in the same way that the Democrats have thrown theirs now that they have been elected.
Poll Taxes Hit Both
The poll tax laws in operation in eight Southern states kept ten million people from voting in the presidential election last week.
This, says the Afro-American, was in addition “to some five million residents barred from the polls by sheer intimidation.”
These poll tax laws, originally passed to insure lily-white elections and to keep Negroes from exerting any political influence in Southern politics, today serve to disfranchise all workers, white as well as colored.
Most white workers in these states can’t vote there either, because they can’t pay the taxes, which range from $1 to $3. In some states these taxes are cumulative, that is, even workers who paid their taxes this year were not permitted to vote unless they paid up all their back poll taxes, from the time they were 21 years old and on. That means that the longer this thing goes on, the worse it gets, and the more people it robs of their right to vote. How many workers or sharecroppers could raise the money to pay for the years of the depression?
The result is that while almost 60% of the adults in the rest of the country participate in the elections, in these eight Southern states only about 10% can enter the voting booths. And these 10% represent the ruling class, of course.
The whole thing is the best possible proof of our contention that laws aimed against the Negro people inevitably hit and hurt the working class as a whole./p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>How Negroes Voted – And Why</h1>
<h3>(15 November 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_46" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 46</a>, 15 November 1948, p. 4.<br>
ranscribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Immediately after Henry Wallace announced his candidacy, I wrote as follows in the Jan. 5 <strong>Militant</strong>: “If present indications mean anything, he will draw a very large Negro vote in 1948; perhaps even a majority of the Negro vote.” At the time that was written, Truman had already begun his demagogic appeal to Negroes by endorsing some of the recommendations of his Committee on Civil Rights. Despite that, I believed that Truman would be unable to convince large numbers of Negroes that he really meant business on civil rights, and that was why I predicted a strong vote for Wallace.</p>
<p>The Nov. 2 returns show I was wrong about the final election results, leaving aside the question of whether I was right about the sentiment existing last January. Although a study of the results in major Negro communities shows that Wallace did do relatively better there than elsewhere, it is plain that Truman got a clear majority of the Negro vote in the North as well as the South. I think I know why.</p>
<p>A change began at the Democratic convention in July. Truman had sought a compromise with the Southern wing of his party on civil rights. But the convention, realizing better than he did at that time the importance of the northern Negro vote, forced through a stronger-sounding plank than he had advocated. The result was the Dixiecrat walkout, and a few weeks later the Dixiecrat nomination of candidates.</p>
<p>In the eyes of many Negroes, this seemed to indicate the emergence of a new Democratic Party. With at least some of the most rabid race-hatcrs out of the party, the Democratic Party seemed to them to have undergone a progressive transformation. And although Truman carefully avoided discussing civil rights in the South, a majority of the Negro voters evidently decided enough of a change had been made to warrant the belief that Truman represented a lesser evil.</p>
<p>But it would be wrong to conclude from this that the Negro people are now strongly committed to the Democratic Party, or that they will be committed to it at all for any extended period. It is true that they suffered under an illusion in voting for Truman. But it is the kind of illusion that can disappear rapidly – in a matter of months even – and give way to a widespread recognition that the Democratic Party can never be a genuine instrument for Negro progress and emancipation.</p>
<p>This is not the first time the Democrats have been in power after making lavish promises to the Negroes. What reason is there to think, these promises will be kept better this time than before? None at all – especially when we can already see the Democrats preparing a reconciliation with their Southern wing, which wields such power in Congress, and when already there is talk about a “compromise” civil rights program acceptable to the Southern wing.</p>
<p>No, the Negroes are not going to get anything at all out of those civil rights promises unless they fight for it, and that is why increased struggles for equality must be expected in the coming period. In those struggles the Negroes are going to find themselves pitted against the Democratic Party leadership, including Truman. The experience they will pass through in that struggle will destroy illusions about the “lesser evil” nature of the Democratic Party. And that in turn, we are confident, will reawaken the movement in Negro ranks for a clean break with all capitalist parties and the establishment of an independent Labor Party based on the unions and Negro organizations.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
How Negroes Voted – And Why
(15 November 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 46, 15 November 1948, p. 4.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Immediately after Henry Wallace announced his candidacy, I wrote as follows in the Jan. 5 Militant: “If present indications mean anything, he will draw a very large Negro vote in 1948; perhaps even a majority of the Negro vote.” At the time that was written, Truman had already begun his demagogic appeal to Negroes by endorsing some of the recommendations of his Committee on Civil Rights. Despite that, I believed that Truman would be unable to convince large numbers of Negroes that he really meant business on civil rights, and that was why I predicted a strong vote for Wallace.
The Nov. 2 returns show I was wrong about the final election results, leaving aside the question of whether I was right about the sentiment existing last January. Although a study of the results in major Negro communities shows that Wallace did do relatively better there than elsewhere, it is plain that Truman got a clear majority of the Negro vote in the North as well as the South. I think I know why.
A change began at the Democratic convention in July. Truman had sought a compromise with the Southern wing of his party on civil rights. But the convention, realizing better than he did at that time the importance of the northern Negro vote, forced through a stronger-sounding plank than he had advocated. The result was the Dixiecrat walkout, and a few weeks later the Dixiecrat nomination of candidates.
In the eyes of many Negroes, this seemed to indicate the emergence of a new Democratic Party. With at least some of the most rabid race-hatcrs out of the party, the Democratic Party seemed to them to have undergone a progressive transformation. And although Truman carefully avoided discussing civil rights in the South, a majority of the Negro voters evidently decided enough of a change had been made to warrant the belief that Truman represented a lesser evil.
But it would be wrong to conclude from this that the Negro people are now strongly committed to the Democratic Party, or that they will be committed to it at all for any extended period. It is true that they suffered under an illusion in voting for Truman. But it is the kind of illusion that can disappear rapidly – in a matter of months even – and give way to a widespread recognition that the Democratic Party can never be a genuine instrument for Negro progress and emancipation.
This is not the first time the Democrats have been in power after making lavish promises to the Negroes. What reason is there to think, these promises will be kept better this time than before? None at all – especially when we can already see the Democrats preparing a reconciliation with their Southern wing, which wields such power in Congress, and when already there is talk about a “compromise” civil rights program acceptable to the Southern wing.
No, the Negroes are not going to get anything at all out of those civil rights promises unless they fight for it, and that is why increased struggles for equality must be expected in the coming period. In those struggles the Negroes are going to find themselves pitted against the Democratic Party leadership, including Truman. The experience they will pass through in that struggle will destroy illusions about the “lesser evil” nature of the Democratic Party. And that in turn, we are confident, will reawaken the movement in Negro ranks for a clean break with all capitalist parties and the establishment of an independent Labor Party based on the unions and Negro organizations.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Negro ‘Progress’: What the Facts Show</h1>
<h3>(November 1952)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Fourth International</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/fi/index2.htm#fi52_11" target="new">Vol.12 No.6</a>, November-December 1952, pp.173-178.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%">
<p class="fst">Two main camps, broadly speaking, are engaged in a
struggle for the leadership of the anti-Jim Crow movement in the United
States. One camp, temporarily dominant, stands for “gradual reform”
through class collaboration; it includes most labor and Negro leaders,
practically all capitalist liberals and some capitalist conservatives.
The other camp, whose direct influence is much weaker, stands for
radical change through militant class struggle; its chief organized
expression is the Marxist movement, although large numbers of Negroes
and workers sympathize with some or many of its practical conclusions.</p>
<p>The reformist camp takes this position:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We deplore Jim Crow and want to eliminate it. We
believe that this can be done, and should be done, within the framework
of capitalism and the two-party system. The way to achieve progress is
not by antagonizing those who control the country, but by persuading
them that Jim Crow is harmful, unjust and unnecessary. The facts show
that our approach is correct because the Negro has steadily been making
remarkable gains in all spheres of American life. Let us not become
impatient and throw away the method that has been tested and proved
successful. Let us continue to work as we have been doing, more
energetically of course, and through peaceful collaboration, appeals to
reason and willingness to compromise we will gradually but surely solve
the problem.”</p>
<p class="fst">The revolutionary camp takes this position:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The only way to make progress against Jim Crow is by
fighting tooth and nail against those who profit by it, the capitalist
class, just as the only way to end Jim Crow is by removing its
fundamental cause, the capitalist system. Whatever lasting gains the
Negro people have made in the 20th century were won through struggle in
alliance with other progressive sections of the population,
particularly the working class, and not by collaboration with the
capitalist beneficiaries of Jim Crow; and that is how future gains will
be made too. We deny that the economic gains of recent years are
substantial, or that they will necessarily be permanent, or that they
automatically signify further gains, or that they prove the correctness
of the reformist program To win the maximum gains possible under
capitalism, and to abolish Jim Crow, we need new methods, a new
leadership and a new party based on the labor and Negro movements.” <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1" target="_blank">[1]</a><br>
</p>
<h4>New Bible for Reformers</h4>
<p class="fst">As can be seen, part of the controversy revolves around
the extent and nature of recent gains by the Negro people. Since the
end of World War II the reformists have talked about little else, for
this is their strongest debating point. Now they have a Bible too — a
report entitled <strong>Employment and Economic Status of Negroes in
the United States</strong>, prepared for the Senate Subcommittee on
Labor and Labor-Management Relations and published on Nov. 20, 1952.
The air has been thick since then with claims that need to be examined.</p>
<p>An introductory note in the report says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“From all the information brought together, two
general facts seem to emerge. The first is that in almost every
significant economic and social characteristic that we can measure —
including length of life, education, employment and income — our Negro
citizens, as a whole, are less well off than our white citizens. The
second is that in almost every characteristic the differences between
the two groups have narrowed in recent years.”</p>
<p class="fst">(The second, naturally, was selected for priority and
the main emphasis in the headlines, news stories and editorial comment
of most of the capitalist press.)</p>
<p>In our opinion, the first of these general conclusi6ns, whose truth
no one can deny, is the more important of the two. The program of
gradual reform has had 8% decades since the Civil War to show what it
can do and yet 1950 found the Negro “less well off” than the white —
and that is an extreme understatement, as the statistics will show.
Nevertheless, since the reformists claim that the decade 1940-50 marked
such an acceleration of Negro progress that their policies have been
vindicated, it is necessary to examine the statistics supplied in the
report with a view to determining what changes took place in the status
of the Negro people during that decade, and what their implications are
for the future. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2" target="_blank">[2]</a></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc">Table 1 — <strong>Median wage and salary<br>
income of persons with wage and salary<br>
income, 1939 and 1947-50</strong> <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3" target="_blank">[3]</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Year</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Nonwhite</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">White</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Nonwhite<br>
as a percent<br>
of White</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1939</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">$ 364</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">$ 956</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">38%</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1947</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 863</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,980</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">44 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1948</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,210</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 2,323</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">52 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1949</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,064</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 2,350</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">45 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,295</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 2,481</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">52 </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="fst">According to Table 1, the average wage of the employed
Negro rose from $364 in 1939 to $1,295 in 1950, an increase of $931.
This is less than the average increase of the employed white in the
same period, $1,525. But since the Negro’s wage in the base year (1939)
was so much lower than that of the white, his smaller increase in
dollars works out as a bigger increase in percentages. In 1939 the
Negro’s wage represented 38% of the white’s, in 1950 it represented
52%. Thus this table shows a relative gain of 14% for the Negro in the
period considered.</p>
<p>This 14% figure is the most impressive in the entire report. The
table on average life expectancy shows a relative gain of only 5% for
Negro men and 8% for Negro women in the last 30 years; the table on
education shows a relative gain of 6% for the Negro from 1940 to 1950;
and the tables on occupational status vary too much from industry to
industry and between the sexes to permit an exact estimation. <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4" target="_blank">[4]</a> Most of this article, therefore,
will be concerned with an evaluation of the maximum change hailed by
the reformists, the 14% figure on wage income.</p>
<p>Most of the comparisons in the report are between 1940 and 1950 — 10
years, not 11 as in the wage income table. This at once raises a
question: Why did the government statisticians omit the 1940 figures,
which are available, and use the 1939 figures instead? It may help us
to note here that if we compare the 10 year period 1939-49, we find a
relative gain of 7% — only one-half the gain shown for the 11 year
period. Could it be that a comparison of 1940 and 1950 — the standard
procedure in most of the tables, we repeat — would show a much less
imposing relative gain than the 14% shown for 1939-50? The compilers of
the report will have to answer that question. Meanwhile, we see how
greatly the final result can be changed by a slight alteration in the
years picked for comparison, and we should be put on our guard by the
arbitrariness of the choice made in this table.</p>
<p>That leads us directly to a much more basic objection: Comparisons
of this kind have only a limited value unless they are accompanied by
an understanding of the specific conditions that prevailed in the
different years compared. (How useful for example, are figures
comparing agricultural production in two different years if you don’t
know that one of them was a drought year?) We must know in what
respects the economic situation of 1939 resembled that of 1950, and in
what respects they differed. Otherwise we are in no position to
evaluate the 14% figure or the impression, fostered by the report, that
it establishes a general trend.</p>
<p>The 1930’s were the years of the great depression; despite some
relative recovery around the middle of the decade there was another
recession in 1937 and unemployment was still heavy in 1939 (averaging
9½ million). It may be asked: What significance does that have
for our study — didn’t unemployment affect whites as well as Negroes?
Of course it did, but not proportionally — the percentage of
unemployment was much higher among Negroes. Then it may be asked: But
what difference does that make in considering Table 1, which gives
average incomes only of the employed? It makes plenty of difference:
The depression not only produced proportionally greater unemployment
among Negroes, it also reduced the average “income of those Negroes who
managed to get or keep jobs proportionally more than the income of
employed whites. This resulted from two factors: discrimination against
Negroes in hiring, and the depression-born practice of replacing
Negroes with whites in the better-paid of the so-called “Negro jobs.”
Thus we have good reason to believe that so far as income went, the
Negro was relatively, as well as absolutely, worse off in 1940 (or
1939) than he was in 1930.</p>
<p>Now we cannot prove that statistically because, for some reason, the
report does not give 1930 figures on Negro and white income (although
it supplies 1930 figures in many other tables). Nevertheless there is
evidence strongly supporting our conclusion that Negro income fell
relatively during the 1930’s — statistics on employment (not contained
in the report). We take the figures on manufacturing because this was
amongst the best-paid employment open to Negroes. In 1930. Negroes made
up 7.3% of all employees in manufacturing. By 1940, the figure had
fallen to 5.0% — a drop of almost one-third. According to the final
report of the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1947, the 1940
figure was even lower than that of 1910, which was 6.2%! In other
words, 1939 was not a “normal” year for Negroes in relative employment
or in relative income, but represented the lowest point reached in both
fields in at least 10 and possibly 20 or 30 years.</p>
<p>Consequently, the 14% relative gain computed by using 1939 as the
base year does not show the overall ware trend but a temporary
fluctuation. What actually happened in 1939-50 was that the Negro
recovered some of the ground lost in the depression. (His proportion in
manufacturing rose from 5.1% in 1940 to 6.8% in 1950 — which was still
below the figure in 1930.) Was the Negro relatively better off in
income in 1950 than in 1930? The government will have to release the
1930 statistics before we can answer that question with certainty. If
he was relatively better off in 1950 than 1930, how much? Again the
answer will have to await the release of the statistics, but one thing
is sure — the figure will be much less than 14%.</p>
<p>Whatever else Table 1 does, it does not show the overall wage trend
of recent times. A comparison of 1930 (when the depression was just
beginning) with 1950 (when employment was high) would provide a far
more accurate picture of the over-all trend than this table (which is
based on comparison of a depression year with a year of relative
prosperity).</p>
<p>Having filled in the background that is needed to assess the
relative gains shown during the 1940’s, we must now seek an explanation
for those gains. A good place to begin is with data on shifts in the
population.<br>
</p>
<h4>Shifts in Population</h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="7">
<p class="smc">Table 2 — <strong>Population by urban-rural
residence, 1920-50</strong> (in thousands) <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5" target="_blank">[5]</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th colspan="3">
<p class="sm1"> NONWHITE</p>
</th>
<th colspan="3">
<p class="sm1"> WHITE</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Year</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Urban</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Rural</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Percent<br>
Urban</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Urban</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Rural</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Percent<br>
Urban</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1920</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">3,685</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">7,205</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">34%</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">50,620</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">44,201</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">53%</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">5,395</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">7.094</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">43 </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">63,560</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">46,727</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">58 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1940</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">6,451</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">7,004</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">48 </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">67,973</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">50,242</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">58 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">9,389</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">6,092</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">61 </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">86,639</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">48,576</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">64 </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="fst">Another table, which we shall not reproduce here,
“reveals the shift of the Negro population, during this wartime decade
(1940-50), from Southern to Northern, Central and Western States. A
resulting decline in the number and proportion of Negroes in the
population occurred in the Southern States of West Virginia, Georgia,
Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Middle
Atlantic, East North Central, and Pacific States had the most
appreciable increases in their Negro population, and the percentage
increases for Negroes far exceed those of the white population.
Michigan’s Negro population more than doubled, while its white
population increased only 17%. In California the Negro population
increased 116%, compared with a 50% increase among whites.” Other data
dealing with population shifts in the big cities show heavy increases,
especially in non-Southern cities. These figures firmly establish the
shift in large numbers of Negroes from farm to city or town and out of
the South and the fact that proportionally this shift was greater among
Negroes than whites in the last decade.</p>
<p>Simultaneously came a shift in the proportion of people employed in
agriculture:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="8">
<p class="smc">Table 3 — <strong>Percent distribution of
employed men and women<br>
in agriculture, March 1940 and April 1950</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="smc"><em>Male Nonwhite</em></p>
</td>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="smc"><em>Male White</em></p>
</td>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="smc"><em>Female Nonwhite</em></p>
</td>
<td colspan="2">
<p class="smc"><em>Female White</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1940</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1940</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1940</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1940</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">41.7</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">25.2</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">21.5</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">15.3</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">16.1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">10.7</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">2.4</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">3.1</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="fst">These figures show that on the whole the proportion of
the employed Negroes who were engaged in agriculture dropped much more
than that of whites similarly employed in the period under examination.</p>
<p>The greater urbanization and proletarianization of Negroes shown in
Tables 2 and 3 are a fact of tremendous economic, political and
sociological importance, but here we want to discuss only their effects
on relative incomes.</p>
<p>To begin with, wages are higher in the North and West than in the
South; a steel worker who moves from Alabama to Pennsylvania gets
higher wages for the same work. Similarly, wages are higher in urban
than rural areas; a tenant farmer or sharecropper who moves to the city
and becomes a factory worker also gets higher wages. Since more Negroes
migrated relatively than whites, the Negro’s relative income would have
risen as a result of his migration even if wage rates for all
occupations had remained absolutely stationary during the last decade.
Consequently one part (maybe even the major part) of the 14% relative
gain is due solely to the existence of wage differentials between urban
and rural areas and between North and South, and not to a narrowing of
Negro-white wage differentials within any of these areas.</p>
<p>The migrations enable us to judge the validity of the 14% figure as
a guide to relative changes not in wages but in real income during the
last decade:</p>
<ol>
<li>Not only wages but living costs are higher in urban and
non-Southern areas. Negroes migrated more than whites, so this factor
affected them more. In terms of real income or purchasing power,
therefore, the relative gain must have been less than 14%.</li>
<li>Many people employed on the land receive part of their income “in
kind” (board, lodging, produce). But this part of the income of the
1939 farmer who became a worker by 1950 is not included in the Table 1
figures, and so the increase in his real income is not actually as
great as those figures would indicate. Since Negro urbanization was
proportionally higher than white urbanization, this points to the need
for making another reduction in that 14% figure.</li>
<li>The last decade was marked by inflation, which strikes at the
living standards of both whites and Negroes but always hits the
lowest-income groups the hardest (who must spend more of their incomes
on food and other necessities which have risen most in price). Since
Negro wage income is shown to be only 52% of that of the whites at the
end of the decade, this means that the Negro’s real standard of living
(as distinct from money income) was adversely affected by inflation
more than that of the white, and that in terms of real income the 14%
figure must be reduced further. <a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6" target="_blank">[6]</a><br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>“Progress” in the Last Decade</h4>
<p class="fst">Next we turn attention to what happened to relative
income <em>within</em> the last decade because it throws clearer light
on the causes for the change in the decade as a whole and at the same
time further refutes claims about the “steadiness” of Negro progress.
Table 1 has already shown that the Negro’s relative wage suddenly fell
7% in the single year 1948-1949, with the beginning of the depression
that was staved off only by increased cold war arms spending. But there
are other statistics in the report that are even more illuminating:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc">Table 4 — <strong>Median money income of
families, 1945 and 1947-50</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Year</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Nonwhite</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">White</p>
</th>
<th valign="top">
<p class="smc">Nonwhite<br>
as a percent<br>
of White</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1945</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">$1,538</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">$2,718</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 57% </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1947</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,614</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 3,157</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 51 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1948</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,768</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 3,310</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 53 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1949</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,650</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 3,232</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 51 </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc">1950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1,869</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 3,445</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 54 <a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7" target="_blank">[7]</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="fst">Table 4 indicates that the high point in the relative
gains did not come at the end of the decade but in the middle, when the
figure reached 57%, “a comparative level that has not yet again been
reached in recent years,” as the report states. This loss of 3% among
Negro families as a whole from 1945 to 1950 was even exceeded among
urban Negro families which fell from 67% to 58% between 1945 and 1949
(1950 figures for this category are not supplied).<br>
</p>
<h4>Causes for the Changes</h4>
<p class="fst">Now we have the clues to the two main causes of the
changes of the last decade. One was the mechanization of agriculture,
which drove many people off the land, especially in the South, and gave
an added impetus to the migrations and urbanization. The other was the
war needs of the capitalist class, which erased the unemployment
prevalent at the beginning of the decade. The requirements of war, and
structural changes in the agricultural economy — these were the primary
factors responsible for whatever relative gain may have taken place,
and they operated independently of the will of the reformists and of
the needs of the masses, white or Negro.</p>
<p>When we call these the primary factors we don’t mean that they were
the only ones. The Negro people themselves intervened effectively at
many points. It was they who pulled up stakes and moved to new areas
(often against the advice of timid leaders who feared that migration to
the cities would provoke anti-Negro riots). It was they who won
concessions by independent action, by struggles inside the plants where
they broke clown some of the barriers to upgrading and hiring, and by
struggles outside the plants through organizations like the March on
Washington Movement whose threats to undertake militant mass action did
more to win a wartime FEPC order from Roosevelt than all the efforts of
the reformists combined. It was the labor movement, acting mainly in
self-defense to be sure, that saw to it that the newly-migrated Negro
workers were paid the prevailing wage scales, more or less, in the
plants under union contract.</p>
<p>We have no wish to minimize these other factors — on the contrary —
because these struggles confirm the basic outlook of the Marxists, not
the reformists; our aim here is rather to stress the conditions which
enabled these factors to operate with some success. In fact, we can
even afford to attribute a measure of participation in the process to
the reformists, who tried in their own way to persuade the ruling class
to lift some of the obstacles to Negro employment, which they decried
as harmful to the war effort, morally unjust, etc.; but, this doesn’t
mean the tail wagged the clog. (The reformists also had a negative
effect for wherever they had the influence they restrained the masses
from independent struggle in a crisis where such struggle could have
induced even greater concessions from the ruling class.)</p>
<p>We cannot determine statistically which of the two primary factors
was the more decisive, but we conclude that it was the war. Because as
soon as the war ended, the Negro’s relative gains ended too, and were
succeeded by relative losses. When the cold war began to be heated up,
further relative gains were recorded in certain spheres, but not enough
to make up for the losses of the second half of the decade as a whole.
At this point we must also ask the reformists: If the over-all gains of
the decade are to be credited to your policies, won’t you also have to
take the credit for the losses of the last five years, or explain why
your policies did not work during 1945-50? (This period, incidentally,
coincided with the Truman administration’s conduct of the noisiest
anti-Jim Crow reform demagogy in the history of the country.)</p>
<p>Turning now to a discussion of what the future holds, we begin with
the report’s data on unemployment:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc">Table 5 — <strong>Unemployment Status of the<br>
civilian population, annual averages,<br>
1947, 1949 and 1951</strong><br>
(percent distribution).</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"><em>1947</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"><em>1949</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"><em>1951</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1">Nonwhite</p>
</th>
<td>
<p class="smc">5.4%</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">8.2%</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">4.8%</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1">White</p>
</th>
<td>
<p class="smc">3.3 </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">5.2 </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">2.8 </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="fst">This shows, the report says, that the average rate of
unemployment for Negroes has been “more than 50%” above that for whites
in recent years. (70% above in 1951.) “Although the rate was about 5%
for Negroes in 1951, compared with 3% for whites, about the same
relative improvement had taken place since 1949 when the economic
situation was less favorable.” (Again we must ask why the authors of
the report omitted the 1940 or 1939 figures, which are in their
possession. Because a comparison with the latest data would show a
considerable relative rise for Negroes in the average rate of
unemployment during the last decade?)</p>
<p>The same unfavorable proportions are shown in the data about
seniority. A survey in 1951 showed that “Negro workers had been on
their current jobs an average of 2.4 years, compared with an average of
3.5 years among white workers” — that is, seniority among white workers
is almost 50% higher than among Negroes. Moreover, “20% of urban white
men and only 13% of urban Negroes had worked on their current jobs
since before January 1940.”</p>
<p>Thus if a depression takes place before a global war, Negro workers
as usual will be first and hardest hit, with calamitous results for all
the relative gains of the last decade.</p>
<p>But let’s grant that the most likely variant for the next period is
not depression but continuation of the cold war leading to another
world war. Does that lend support to the vista, held out by the
reformists, of continued relative progress for the Negroes at
approximately the same rate as in the 1940’s, or anywhere near that
rate? Our answer must be a flat No because the special circumstances of
the last decade will not be operating in the next period, or not with
the same force. The same rate of relative gain will not continue
because the new base year (1950) is not a depression year such as 1939
was. It will not continue because the gap in urbanization has already
almost been closed (61% for Negroes to 64% for whites) and while
further migration will take plate it will be on a reduced scale and
therefore will not have the same impact on relative incomes as in the
40’s. And most of all it will not continue because World War III is
going to be a lot different from World War II.<br>
</p>
<h4>Prospects If War Comes</h4>
<p class="fst">Last time the US had strong allies abroad and a neutral
if not friendly attitude from many other countries; next time its
allies will be neither strong nor dependable and Washington will enter
the war with the hate and suspicion of most of the world. Last time the
fighting was conducted far from US shores; next time the US will learn
how it feels to receive as well as give bombings. Last time the war,
beginning in a depression, produced a switch from mass unemployment to
full employment and an economic revival which permitted the capitalists
to grant some concessions to keep the population at home from getting
too restless; next time the war will begin when production will already
be at near-capacity levels and the working class will already be fully
employed and therefore will not produce the same psychological effects
on the people. On the contrary, the counter-revolutionary attempt to
subjugate the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, the anti-capitalist
workers of Europe and the anti-imperialist masses of Asia. South
America, the Middle East and Africa will strain the economy to the
breaking point, impose crushing burdens on the American people and
generate discontent and resistance at home as well as abroad.</p>
<p>The inevitable tendency then will be not to grant but to withdraw
concessions from the masses. The ruling class will seek to freeze wages
solidly; to conscript labor and chain the workers to their jobs; to
regiment the unions and turn them into agencies of the state to
maintain labor discipline: to double and triple taxes until they
consume a majority of the workers’ income; and to set up a
military-police dictatorship to put down all opposition to this
program. Those who preach and practice class collaboration, those whose
first allegiance is to capitalism rather than the working class, will
be utterly unable to halt or reverse this tendency even if they should
want to; only the methods of militant class struggle will be able to
stop the onslaughts of reaction.</p>
<p>And what will happen to the economic status of the Negro people? It
is of course conceivable that, even in such circumstances Negroes at
first might register slight relative gains in income where they were
drafted out of inessential jobs and into war production. But that would
be both the beginning and end of it. With strictly enforced
wage-freezing and staggering taxes, the real income and living
standards of the people would go down and not up. The relative status
of the Negro would be frozen for the duration of a war that everyone
expects to be as prolonged as it will be terrible, and all efforts to
change his status would be branded “subversive” and punished by the
heavy hand of the state.<br>
</p>
<h4>No Hope in Reformist Program</h4>
<p class="fst">Thus if a depression signifies the rapid loss of all
recent relative gains by the Negro, war means absolute losses for white
and Negro workers, with the Negro’s relative status fixed and frozen,
at best, for an indefinite period. Either way, the reformist
perspective holds out little hope to the Negro for genuine progress in
the present or the achievement of equality in the future.</p>
<p>In essence, the advocates of gradual reform exaggerate the relative
gains of the past and ascribe them to the wrong causes in order to
conciliate the Negro with his oppressor and to divert him from the
militant action which can both alleviate and end his oppression. This
program has always been a hoax; now it is becoming a trap too. If it
was harmful in the past, it is doubly harmful today because the United
States is approaching a fateful turning point. The future, as we have
tried to show, will not be a mere repetition of the past. In the
absence of a social upheaval led by the labor movement, the war will
bring a savage dictatorship which the ruling class will have no desire
to relax When or if the war ends.</p>
<p>In the pamphlet <strong>The Jim Crow Murder of Mr. and Mrs. Harry
T. Moore</strong>, we related the prospects of the Negroes in the US to
the fate of the Jews in Europe during the last war and demonstrated
that “conditions can arise which will wipe out in a single decade all
the gains that have been painfully accumulated in a century of
strenuous effort.” Such conditions will flourish luxuriantly in the
soil of the reaction that will accompany the next war. Instead of
continuing progress, the next period can see the Negro people used as
scapegoats for the capitalist class and menaced with the loss of all
their liberties and even with mass extermination. These dangers cannot
be wished out of existence by shutting eyes and covering ears and
reciting twisted statistics: they must be reckoned with and actively
combatted. For this task the reformists and their program are worse
than useless; they get in the way of the job that has to be done.</p>
<p>This article is mainly negative because its aim is to refute certain
misconceptions. But the perspective that Marxism offers the Negro
people is neither negative nor pessimistic. Capitalism, which looks so
powerful and imposing in this country today although it is the only
part of the world capitalist system that has any stability whatever, is
headed for its doom. It will not be any more successful than Hitler in
conquering the world, and like him will probably break its neck in the
process. The convulsions and crises arising out of the drive to war or
the war itself will radicalize the American people; they will also
provide the American people with opportunities to check the assaults on
their living standards and liberties, and take the political power and
the fate of the nation out of the hands of the capitalist minority.</p>
<p>For this a new party is needed; the sooner the job of building an
independent labor party is started, the sooner, smoother and less
costly the transfer of power will be. The American workers in alliance
with the Negro people, the poor farmers and the lower middle classes
are just the ones to do this job. When they do it, the economic roots
of racial oppression will be eradicated, the Negro people will secure
the equality that capitalism has stubbornly denied them in the 90 years
since the Emancipation Proclamation, and Jim Crow will become a memory
to puzzle future generations.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top" target="_blank">Top of page</a><br>
</p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1" target="_blank">1.</a> The most
complete exposition of the Marxist position will be found in the
Socialist Workers Party resolution, <em>Negro Liberation through
Revolutionary Socialism</em>, <strong>Fourth International</strong>,
May-June, 1950.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2" target="_blank">2.</a> Our use of the
data in the report does not mean we endorse or accept them. Statistics
are not correct merely because they are official. These were prepared
for the Senate subcommittee by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
publisher of the cost-of-living index which is notorious for its
anti-labor bias. Their main source is the Bureau of the Census, whose
studies admittedly are often incomplete and, because of
inadequately-trained census-takers, inexact. Furthermore, the Bureau of
the Census sometimes changes its definitions so that comparisons
between two censuses may be based on different things (for example, the
1950 census defines “family” in such a way as to exclude four million
persons included in 1940). Victor Perlo, in an article <em>Trends in
the Economic Status of the Negro People</em> (<strong>Science &
Society</strong>, Spring, 1952) demonstrated that certain census
figures are misleading and different from those of other government
agencies. Consequently there is good reason to believe that the
statistics in the report give a rosier picture in many details than
reality warrants.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3" target="_blank">3.</a> In a number of
places the report uses tables on “median” income but refers to them in
the text as “average” income. Similarly most of the data in its tables
concern “nonwhites” but the text uses the term “Negro.” (“Since Negroes
comprise more than 95% of the nonwhite group, the data for nonwhite
persons as a whole reflect predominantly the characteristics of
Negroes.”) In both cases this article follows the usage of the report
in tables and text.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4" target="_blank">4.</a> Average life
expectancy at birth: In 1919-21 the figure for male Negroes was 84% of
that for male whites (47.1 years to 56.3 years); in 1949 it had become
89% (58.6 years for male Negroes to 65.9 years for male whites). Thus
male Negroes gained 2 years more than male whites and still lag behind
by over 7 years — a relative gain of 5%. For females, in 1919-21 the
figure for Negroes was 80% of that for whites (46.9 years to 58.5
years); in 1949 it had become 88% (62.9 years for Negroes to 71.5 years
for whites). Thus female Negroes gained 3 years more than female whites
and still lag behind 8½ years — a relative gain of 8%.</p>
<p class="note">Median school years completed by persons 25 years old
and over: In 1940 the school attendance record of Negroes was 5.7
years, while that of whites was 8.7 years. In 1950 the figure was 7
years for Negroes, 9.7 years for whites. The change was from 66% to
72%, a relative gain of 6%.</p>
<p class="note">Occupational shifts: The report sums this up as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... the highest proportions of Negro workers
continue to be found in the lower-paying and less-skilled occupations,
such as service workers and laborers. Comparatively low proportions are
found in the professional, technical, managerial, clerical, sales, and
craftsmen occupations. However, the shift of Negroes into better-paying
occupations and more skilled occupations, accelerated during the war
years, has in general been maintained.”</p>
<p class="note">This latter statement is true only as a generalization;
while gains made during the war were maintained in some of the better
jobs, they were lost in others.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5" target="_blank">5.</a> A different
definition of “urban” was used in 1950 than in 1940. With the old
definition, the total urban population would have been 8 million
smaller. For our purpose we will assume that the change in definition
does not affect the relative result.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6" target="_blank">6.</a> Perlo (previous
citation), for example, offers Census figures to show that in this
decade average rents for Negro families rose 150% while those of whites
rose 61%, and that even in absolute terms of dollars Negro rentals rose
more than white on the average.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7" target="_blank">7.</a> The difference
between this 1950 percentage for family income (54%) and the 1950
percentage for individual wage and salary income (52%) can be explained
as follows: In Negro families more members, especially married women,
are working than in white families.</p>
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George Breitman
Negro ‘Progress’: What the Facts Show
(November 1952)
From Fourth International, Vol.12 No.6, November-December 1952, pp.173-178.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Two main camps, broadly speaking, are engaged in a
struggle for the leadership of the anti-Jim Crow movement in the United
States. One camp, temporarily dominant, stands for “gradual reform”
through class collaboration; it includes most labor and Negro leaders,
practically all capitalist liberals and some capitalist conservatives.
The other camp, whose direct influence is much weaker, stands for
radical change through militant class struggle; its chief organized
expression is the Marxist movement, although large numbers of Negroes
and workers sympathize with some or many of its practical conclusions.
The reformist camp takes this position:
“We deplore Jim Crow and want to eliminate it. We
believe that this can be done, and should be done, within the framework
of capitalism and the two-party system. The way to achieve progress is
not by antagonizing those who control the country, but by persuading
them that Jim Crow is harmful, unjust and unnecessary. The facts show
that our approach is correct because the Negro has steadily been making
remarkable gains in all spheres of American life. Let us not become
impatient and throw away the method that has been tested and proved
successful. Let us continue to work as we have been doing, more
energetically of course, and through peaceful collaboration, appeals to
reason and willingness to compromise we will gradually but surely solve
the problem.”
The revolutionary camp takes this position:
“The only way to make progress against Jim Crow is by
fighting tooth and nail against those who profit by it, the capitalist
class, just as the only way to end Jim Crow is by removing its
fundamental cause, the capitalist system. Whatever lasting gains the
Negro people have made in the 20th century were won through struggle in
alliance with other progressive sections of the population,
particularly the working class, and not by collaboration with the
capitalist beneficiaries of Jim Crow; and that is how future gains will
be made too. We deny that the economic gains of recent years are
substantial, or that they will necessarily be permanent, or that they
automatically signify further gains, or that they prove the correctness
of the reformist program To win the maximum gains possible under
capitalism, and to abolish Jim Crow, we need new methods, a new
leadership and a new party based on the labor and Negro movements.” [1]
New Bible for Reformers
As can be seen, part of the controversy revolves around
the extent and nature of recent gains by the Negro people. Since the
end of World War II the reformists have talked about little else, for
this is their strongest debating point. Now they have a Bible too — a
report entitled Employment and Economic Status of Negroes in
the United States, prepared for the Senate Subcommittee on
Labor and Labor-Management Relations and published on Nov. 20, 1952.
The air has been thick since then with claims that need to be examined.
An introductory note in the report says:
“From all the information brought together, two
general facts seem to emerge. The first is that in almost every
significant economic and social characteristic that we can measure —
including length of life, education, employment and income — our Negro
citizens, as a whole, are less well off than our white citizens. The
second is that in almost every characteristic the differences between
the two groups have narrowed in recent years.”
(The second, naturally, was selected for priority and
the main emphasis in the headlines, news stories and editorial comment
of most of the capitalist press.)
In our opinion, the first of these general conclusi6ns, whose truth
no one can deny, is the more important of the two. The program of
gradual reform has had 8% decades since the Civil War to show what it
can do and yet 1950 found the Negro “less well off” than the white —
and that is an extreme understatement, as the statistics will show.
Nevertheless, since the reformists claim that the decade 1940-50 marked
such an acceleration of Negro progress that their policies have been
vindicated, it is necessary to examine the statistics supplied in the
report with a view to determining what changes took place in the status
of the Negro people during that decade, and what their implications are
for the future. [2]
Table 1 — Median wage and salary
income of persons with wage and salary
income, 1939 and 1947-50 [3]
Year
Nonwhite
White
Nonwhite
as a percent
of White
1939
$ 364
$ 956
38%
1947
863
1,980
44
1948
1,210
2,323
52
1949
1,064
2,350
45
1950
1,295
2,481
52
According to Table 1, the average wage of the employed
Negro rose from $364 in 1939 to $1,295 in 1950, an increase of $931.
This is less than the average increase of the employed white in the
same period, $1,525. But since the Negro’s wage in the base year (1939)
was so much lower than that of the white, his smaller increase in
dollars works out as a bigger increase in percentages. In 1939 the
Negro’s wage represented 38% of the white’s, in 1950 it represented
52%. Thus this table shows a relative gain of 14% for the Negro in the
period considered.
This 14% figure is the most impressive in the entire report. The
table on average life expectancy shows a relative gain of only 5% for
Negro men and 8% for Negro women in the last 30 years; the table on
education shows a relative gain of 6% for the Negro from 1940 to 1950;
and the tables on occupational status vary too much from industry to
industry and between the sexes to permit an exact estimation. [4] Most of this article, therefore,
will be concerned with an evaluation of the maximum change hailed by
the reformists, the 14% figure on wage income.
Most of the comparisons in the report are between 1940 and 1950 — 10
years, not 11 as in the wage income table. This at once raises a
question: Why did the government statisticians omit the 1940 figures,
which are available, and use the 1939 figures instead? It may help us
to note here that if we compare the 10 year period 1939-49, we find a
relative gain of 7% — only one-half the gain shown for the 11 year
period. Could it be that a comparison of 1940 and 1950 — the standard
procedure in most of the tables, we repeat — would show a much less
imposing relative gain than the 14% shown for 1939-50? The compilers of
the report will have to answer that question. Meanwhile, we see how
greatly the final result can be changed by a slight alteration in the
years picked for comparison, and we should be put on our guard by the
arbitrariness of the choice made in this table.
That leads us directly to a much more basic objection: Comparisons
of this kind have only a limited value unless they are accompanied by
an understanding of the specific conditions that prevailed in the
different years compared. (How useful for example, are figures
comparing agricultural production in two different years if you don’t
know that one of them was a drought year?) We must know in what
respects the economic situation of 1939 resembled that of 1950, and in
what respects they differed. Otherwise we are in no position to
evaluate the 14% figure or the impression, fostered by the report, that
it establishes a general trend.
The 1930’s were the years of the great depression; despite some
relative recovery around the middle of the decade there was another
recession in 1937 and unemployment was still heavy in 1939 (averaging
9½ million). It may be asked: What significance does that have
for our study — didn’t unemployment affect whites as well as Negroes?
Of course it did, but not proportionally — the percentage of
unemployment was much higher among Negroes. Then it may be asked: But
what difference does that make in considering Table 1, which gives
average incomes only of the employed? It makes plenty of difference:
The depression not only produced proportionally greater unemployment
among Negroes, it also reduced the average “income of those Negroes who
managed to get or keep jobs proportionally more than the income of
employed whites. This resulted from two factors: discrimination against
Negroes in hiring, and the depression-born practice of replacing
Negroes with whites in the better-paid of the so-called “Negro jobs.”
Thus we have good reason to believe that so far as income went, the
Negro was relatively, as well as absolutely, worse off in 1940 (or
1939) than he was in 1930.
Now we cannot prove that statistically because, for some reason, the
report does not give 1930 figures on Negro and white income (although
it supplies 1930 figures in many other tables). Nevertheless there is
evidence strongly supporting our conclusion that Negro income fell
relatively during the 1930’s — statistics on employment (not contained
in the report). We take the figures on manufacturing because this was
amongst the best-paid employment open to Negroes. In 1930. Negroes made
up 7.3% of all employees in manufacturing. By 1940, the figure had
fallen to 5.0% — a drop of almost one-third. According to the final
report of the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1947, the 1940
figure was even lower than that of 1910, which was 6.2%! In other
words, 1939 was not a “normal” year for Negroes in relative employment
or in relative income, but represented the lowest point reached in both
fields in at least 10 and possibly 20 or 30 years.
Consequently, the 14% relative gain computed by using 1939 as the
base year does not show the overall ware trend but a temporary
fluctuation. What actually happened in 1939-50 was that the Negro
recovered some of the ground lost in the depression. (His proportion in
manufacturing rose from 5.1% in 1940 to 6.8% in 1950 — which was still
below the figure in 1930.) Was the Negro relatively better off in
income in 1950 than in 1930? The government will have to release the
1930 statistics before we can answer that question with certainty. If
he was relatively better off in 1950 than 1930, how much? Again the
answer will have to await the release of the statistics, but one thing
is sure — the figure will be much less than 14%.
Whatever else Table 1 does, it does not show the overall wage trend
of recent times. A comparison of 1930 (when the depression was just
beginning) with 1950 (when employment was high) would provide a far
more accurate picture of the over-all trend than this table (which is
based on comparison of a depression year with a year of relative
prosperity).
Having filled in the background that is needed to assess the
relative gains shown during the 1940’s, we must now seek an explanation
for those gains. A good place to begin is with data on shifts in the
population.
Shifts in Population
Table 2 — Population by urban-rural
residence, 1920-50 (in thousands) [5]
NONWHITE
WHITE
Year
Urban
Rural
Percent
Urban
Urban
Rural
Percent
Urban
1920
3,685
7,205
34%
50,620
44,201
53%
1930
5,395
7.094
43
63,560
46,727
58
1940
6,451
7,004
48
67,973
50,242
58
1950
9,389
6,092
61
86,639
48,576
64
Another table, which we shall not reproduce here,
“reveals the shift of the Negro population, during this wartime decade
(1940-50), from Southern to Northern, Central and Western States. A
resulting decline in the number and proportion of Negroes in the
population occurred in the Southern States of West Virginia, Georgia,
Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Middle
Atlantic, East North Central, and Pacific States had the most
appreciable increases in their Negro population, and the percentage
increases for Negroes far exceed those of the white population.
Michigan’s Negro population more than doubled, while its white
population increased only 17%. In California the Negro population
increased 116%, compared with a 50% increase among whites.” Other data
dealing with population shifts in the big cities show heavy increases,
especially in non-Southern cities. These figures firmly establish the
shift in large numbers of Negroes from farm to city or town and out of
the South and the fact that proportionally this shift was greater among
Negroes than whites in the last decade.
Simultaneously came a shift in the proportion of people employed in
agriculture:
Table 3 — Percent distribution of
employed men and women
in agriculture, March 1940 and April 1950
Male Nonwhite
Male White
Female Nonwhite
Female White
1940
1950
1940
1950
1940
1950
1940
1950
41.7
25.2
21.5
15.3
16.1
10.7
2.4
3.1
These figures show that on the whole the proportion of
the employed Negroes who were engaged in agriculture dropped much more
than that of whites similarly employed in the period under examination.
The greater urbanization and proletarianization of Negroes shown in
Tables 2 and 3 are a fact of tremendous economic, political and
sociological importance, but here we want to discuss only their effects
on relative incomes.
To begin with, wages are higher in the North and West than in the
South; a steel worker who moves from Alabama to Pennsylvania gets
higher wages for the same work. Similarly, wages are higher in urban
than rural areas; a tenant farmer or sharecropper who moves to the city
and becomes a factory worker also gets higher wages. Since more Negroes
migrated relatively than whites, the Negro’s relative income would have
risen as a result of his migration even if wage rates for all
occupations had remained absolutely stationary during the last decade.
Consequently one part (maybe even the major part) of the 14% relative
gain is due solely to the existence of wage differentials between urban
and rural areas and between North and South, and not to a narrowing of
Negro-white wage differentials within any of these areas.
The migrations enable us to judge the validity of the 14% figure as
a guide to relative changes not in wages but in real income during the
last decade:
Not only wages but living costs are higher in urban and
non-Southern areas. Negroes migrated more than whites, so this factor
affected them more. In terms of real income or purchasing power,
therefore, the relative gain must have been less than 14%.
Many people employed on the land receive part of their income “in
kind” (board, lodging, produce). But this part of the income of the
1939 farmer who became a worker by 1950 is not included in the Table 1
figures, and so the increase in his real income is not actually as
great as those figures would indicate. Since Negro urbanization was
proportionally higher than white urbanization, this points to the need
for making another reduction in that 14% figure.
The last decade was marked by inflation, which strikes at the
living standards of both whites and Negroes but always hits the
lowest-income groups the hardest (who must spend more of their incomes
on food and other necessities which have risen most in price). Since
Negro wage income is shown to be only 52% of that of the whites at the
end of the decade, this means that the Negro’s real standard of living
(as distinct from money income) was adversely affected by inflation
more than that of the white, and that in terms of real income the 14%
figure must be reduced further. [6]
“Progress” in the Last Decade
Next we turn attention to what happened to relative
income within the last decade because it throws clearer light
on the causes for the change in the decade as a whole and at the same
time further refutes claims about the “steadiness” of Negro progress.
Table 1 has already shown that the Negro’s relative wage suddenly fell
7% in the single year 1948-1949, with the beginning of the depression
that was staved off only by increased cold war arms spending. But there
are other statistics in the report that are even more illuminating:
Table 4 — Median money income of
families, 1945 and 1947-50
Year
Nonwhite
White
Nonwhite
as a percent
of White
1945
$1,538
$2,718
57%
1947
1,614
3,157
51
1948
1,768
3,310
53
1949
1,650
3,232
51
1950
1,869
3,445
54 [7]
Table 4 indicates that the high point in the relative
gains did not come at the end of the decade but in the middle, when the
figure reached 57%, “a comparative level that has not yet again been
reached in recent years,” as the report states. This loss of 3% among
Negro families as a whole from 1945 to 1950 was even exceeded among
urban Negro families which fell from 67% to 58% between 1945 and 1949
(1950 figures for this category are not supplied).
Causes for the Changes
Now we have the clues to the two main causes of the
changes of the last decade. One was the mechanization of agriculture,
which drove many people off the land, especially in the South, and gave
an added impetus to the migrations and urbanization. The other was the
war needs of the capitalist class, which erased the unemployment
prevalent at the beginning of the decade. The requirements of war, and
structural changes in the agricultural economy — these were the primary
factors responsible for whatever relative gain may have taken place,
and they operated independently of the will of the reformists and of
the needs of the masses, white or Negro.
When we call these the primary factors we don’t mean that they were
the only ones. The Negro people themselves intervened effectively at
many points. It was they who pulled up stakes and moved to new areas
(often against the advice of timid leaders who feared that migration to
the cities would provoke anti-Negro riots). It was they who won
concessions by independent action, by struggles inside the plants where
they broke clown some of the barriers to upgrading and hiring, and by
struggles outside the plants through organizations like the March on
Washington Movement whose threats to undertake militant mass action did
more to win a wartime FEPC order from Roosevelt than all the efforts of
the reformists combined. It was the labor movement, acting mainly in
self-defense to be sure, that saw to it that the newly-migrated Negro
workers were paid the prevailing wage scales, more or less, in the
plants under union contract.
We have no wish to minimize these other factors — on the contrary —
because these struggles confirm the basic outlook of the Marxists, not
the reformists; our aim here is rather to stress the conditions which
enabled these factors to operate with some success. In fact, we can
even afford to attribute a measure of participation in the process to
the reformists, who tried in their own way to persuade the ruling class
to lift some of the obstacles to Negro employment, which they decried
as harmful to the war effort, morally unjust, etc.; but, this doesn’t
mean the tail wagged the clog. (The reformists also had a negative
effect for wherever they had the influence they restrained the masses
from independent struggle in a crisis where such struggle could have
induced even greater concessions from the ruling class.)
We cannot determine statistically which of the two primary factors
was the more decisive, but we conclude that it was the war. Because as
soon as the war ended, the Negro’s relative gains ended too, and were
succeeded by relative losses. When the cold war began to be heated up,
further relative gains were recorded in certain spheres, but not enough
to make up for the losses of the second half of the decade as a whole.
At this point we must also ask the reformists: If the over-all gains of
the decade are to be credited to your policies, won’t you also have to
take the credit for the losses of the last five years, or explain why
your policies did not work during 1945-50? (This period, incidentally,
coincided with the Truman administration’s conduct of the noisiest
anti-Jim Crow reform demagogy in the history of the country.)
Turning now to a discussion of what the future holds, we begin with
the report’s data on unemployment:
Table 5 — Unemployment Status of the
civilian population, annual averages,
1947, 1949 and 1951
(percent distribution).
1947
1949
1951
Nonwhite
5.4%
8.2%
4.8%
White
3.3
5.2
2.8
This shows, the report says, that the average rate of
unemployment for Negroes has been “more than 50%” above that for whites
in recent years. (70% above in 1951.) “Although the rate was about 5%
for Negroes in 1951, compared with 3% for whites, about the same
relative improvement had taken place since 1949 when the economic
situation was less favorable.” (Again we must ask why the authors of
the report omitted the 1940 or 1939 figures, which are in their
possession. Because a comparison with the latest data would show a
considerable relative rise for Negroes in the average rate of
unemployment during the last decade?)
The same unfavorable proportions are shown in the data about
seniority. A survey in 1951 showed that “Negro workers had been on
their current jobs an average of 2.4 years, compared with an average of
3.5 years among white workers” — that is, seniority among white workers
is almost 50% higher than among Negroes. Moreover, “20% of urban white
men and only 13% of urban Negroes had worked on their current jobs
since before January 1940.”
Thus if a depression takes place before a global war, Negro workers
as usual will be first and hardest hit, with calamitous results for all
the relative gains of the last decade.
But let’s grant that the most likely variant for the next period is
not depression but continuation of the cold war leading to another
world war. Does that lend support to the vista, held out by the
reformists, of continued relative progress for the Negroes at
approximately the same rate as in the 1940’s, or anywhere near that
rate? Our answer must be a flat No because the special circumstances of
the last decade will not be operating in the next period, or not with
the same force. The same rate of relative gain will not continue
because the new base year (1950) is not a depression year such as 1939
was. It will not continue because the gap in urbanization has already
almost been closed (61% for Negroes to 64% for whites) and while
further migration will take plate it will be on a reduced scale and
therefore will not have the same impact on relative incomes as in the
40’s. And most of all it will not continue because World War III is
going to be a lot different from World War II.
Prospects If War Comes
Last time the US had strong allies abroad and a neutral
if not friendly attitude from many other countries; next time its
allies will be neither strong nor dependable and Washington will enter
the war with the hate and suspicion of most of the world. Last time the
fighting was conducted far from US shores; next time the US will learn
how it feels to receive as well as give bombings. Last time the war,
beginning in a depression, produced a switch from mass unemployment to
full employment and an economic revival which permitted the capitalists
to grant some concessions to keep the population at home from getting
too restless; next time the war will begin when production will already
be at near-capacity levels and the working class will already be fully
employed and therefore will not produce the same psychological effects
on the people. On the contrary, the counter-revolutionary attempt to
subjugate the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, the anti-capitalist
workers of Europe and the anti-imperialist masses of Asia. South
America, the Middle East and Africa will strain the economy to the
breaking point, impose crushing burdens on the American people and
generate discontent and resistance at home as well as abroad.
The inevitable tendency then will be not to grant but to withdraw
concessions from the masses. The ruling class will seek to freeze wages
solidly; to conscript labor and chain the workers to their jobs; to
regiment the unions and turn them into agencies of the state to
maintain labor discipline: to double and triple taxes until they
consume a majority of the workers’ income; and to set up a
military-police dictatorship to put down all opposition to this
program. Those who preach and practice class collaboration, those whose
first allegiance is to capitalism rather than the working class, will
be utterly unable to halt or reverse this tendency even if they should
want to; only the methods of militant class struggle will be able to
stop the onslaughts of reaction.
And what will happen to the economic status of the Negro people? It
is of course conceivable that, even in such circumstances Negroes at
first might register slight relative gains in income where they were
drafted out of inessential jobs and into war production. But that would
be both the beginning and end of it. With strictly enforced
wage-freezing and staggering taxes, the real income and living
standards of the people would go down and not up. The relative status
of the Negro would be frozen for the duration of a war that everyone
expects to be as prolonged as it will be terrible, and all efforts to
change his status would be branded “subversive” and punished by the
heavy hand of the state.
No Hope in Reformist Program
Thus if a depression signifies the rapid loss of all
recent relative gains by the Negro, war means absolute losses for white
and Negro workers, with the Negro’s relative status fixed and frozen,
at best, for an indefinite period. Either way, the reformist
perspective holds out little hope to the Negro for genuine progress in
the present or the achievement of equality in the future.
In essence, the advocates of gradual reform exaggerate the relative
gains of the past and ascribe them to the wrong causes in order to
conciliate the Negro with his oppressor and to divert him from the
militant action which can both alleviate and end his oppression. This
program has always been a hoax; now it is becoming a trap too. If it
was harmful in the past, it is doubly harmful today because the United
States is approaching a fateful turning point. The future, as we have
tried to show, will not be a mere repetition of the past. In the
absence of a social upheaval led by the labor movement, the war will
bring a savage dictatorship which the ruling class will have no desire
to relax When or if the war ends.
In the pamphlet The Jim Crow Murder of Mr. and Mrs. Harry
T. Moore, we related the prospects of the Negroes in the US to
the fate of the Jews in Europe during the last war and demonstrated
that “conditions can arise which will wipe out in a single decade all
the gains that have been painfully accumulated in a century of
strenuous effort.” Such conditions will flourish luxuriantly in the
soil of the reaction that will accompany the next war. Instead of
continuing progress, the next period can see the Negro people used as
scapegoats for the capitalist class and menaced with the loss of all
their liberties and even with mass extermination. These dangers cannot
be wished out of existence by shutting eyes and covering ears and
reciting twisted statistics: they must be reckoned with and actively
combatted. For this task the reformists and their program are worse
than useless; they get in the way of the job that has to be done.
This article is mainly negative because its aim is to refute certain
misconceptions. But the perspective that Marxism offers the Negro
people is neither negative nor pessimistic. Capitalism, which looks so
powerful and imposing in this country today although it is the only
part of the world capitalist system that has any stability whatever, is
headed for its doom. It will not be any more successful than Hitler in
conquering the world, and like him will probably break its neck in the
process. The convulsions and crises arising out of the drive to war or
the war itself will radicalize the American people; they will also
provide the American people with opportunities to check the assaults on
their living standards and liberties, and take the political power and
the fate of the nation out of the hands of the capitalist minority.
For this a new party is needed; the sooner the job of building an
independent labor party is started, the sooner, smoother and less
costly the transfer of power will be. The American workers in alliance
with the Negro people, the poor farmers and the lower middle classes
are just the ones to do this job. When they do it, the economic roots
of racial oppression will be eradicated, the Negro people will secure
the equality that capitalism has stubbornly denied them in the 90 years
since the Emancipation Proclamation, and Jim Crow will become a memory
to puzzle future generations.
Top of page
Footnotes
1. The most
complete exposition of the Marxist position will be found in the
Socialist Workers Party resolution, Negro Liberation through
Revolutionary Socialism, Fourth International,
May-June, 1950.
2. Our use of the
data in the report does not mean we endorse or accept them. Statistics
are not correct merely because they are official. These were prepared
for the Senate subcommittee by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
publisher of the cost-of-living index which is notorious for its
anti-labor bias. Their main source is the Bureau of the Census, whose
studies admittedly are often incomplete and, because of
inadequately-trained census-takers, inexact. Furthermore, the Bureau of
the Census sometimes changes its definitions so that comparisons
between two censuses may be based on different things (for example, the
1950 census defines “family” in such a way as to exclude four million
persons included in 1940). Victor Perlo, in an article Trends in
the Economic Status of the Negro People (Science &
Society, Spring, 1952) demonstrated that certain census
figures are misleading and different from those of other government
agencies. Consequently there is good reason to believe that the
statistics in the report give a rosier picture in many details than
reality warrants.
3. In a number of
places the report uses tables on “median” income but refers to them in
the text as “average” income. Similarly most of the data in its tables
concern “nonwhites” but the text uses the term “Negro.” (“Since Negroes
comprise more than 95% of the nonwhite group, the data for nonwhite
persons as a whole reflect predominantly the characteristics of
Negroes.”) In both cases this article follows the usage of the report
in tables and text.
4. Average life
expectancy at birth: In 1919-21 the figure for male Negroes was 84% of
that for male whites (47.1 years to 56.3 years); in 1949 it had become
89% (58.6 years for male Negroes to 65.9 years for male whites). Thus
male Negroes gained 2 years more than male whites and still lag behind
by over 7 years — a relative gain of 5%. For females, in 1919-21 the
figure for Negroes was 80% of that for whites (46.9 years to 58.5
years); in 1949 it had become 88% (62.9 years for Negroes to 71.5 years
for whites). Thus female Negroes gained 3 years more than female whites
and still lag behind 8½ years — a relative gain of 8%.
Median school years completed by persons 25 years old
and over: In 1940 the school attendance record of Negroes was 5.7
years, while that of whites was 8.7 years. In 1950 the figure was 7
years for Negroes, 9.7 years for whites. The change was from 66% to
72%, a relative gain of 6%.
Occupational shifts: The report sums this up as follows:
“... the highest proportions of Negro workers
continue to be found in the lower-paying and less-skilled occupations,
such as service workers and laborers. Comparatively low proportions are
found in the professional, technical, managerial, clerical, sales, and
craftsmen occupations. However, the shift of Negroes into better-paying
occupations and more skilled occupations, accelerated during the war
years, has in general been maintained.”
This latter statement is true only as a generalization;
while gains made during the war were maintained in some of the better
jobs, they were lost in others.
5. A different
definition of “urban” was used in 1950 than in 1940. With the old
definition, the total urban population would have been 8 million
smaller. For our purpose we will assume that the change in definition
does not affect the relative result.
6. Perlo (previous
citation), for example, offers Census figures to show that in this
decade average rents for Negro families rose 150% while those of whites
rose 61%, and that even in absolute terms of dollars Negro rentals rose
more than white on the average.
7. The difference
between this 1950 percentage for family income (54%) and the 1950
percentage for individual wage and salary income (52%) can be explained
as follows: In Negro families more members, especially married women,
are working than in white families.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>Patriots at Work</h1>
<h3>(16 February 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_07" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 7</a>, 16 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="quoteb">“Those no-good, chicken-livered congressmen!” said the General. “They’re a perfect example of what’s wrong with this country. Not enough discipline. Wish I had some of them under my command. I’d teach them ...”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“But after all, it’s perfectly understandable,” said the Banker. “This is an election year, and no matter how much they sympathize with us, they don’t like to take chances. Especially since Wallace has made it such a big issue.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I hope no one will feel offended by my bringing this point up again.” said the Preacher a little hesitantly, because the Banker and the General were running the show and didn’t like to be crossed even when things were going well. “But I still think we would have been more successful if we’d called it universal training, rather than universal military training. In delicate situations of this kind a name can play a most important part. If we had only ...”</p>
<p class="fst">However, this was an old and familiar complaint, and the others ignored it. The problem now was how to get Congress to pass the peacetime conscription bill, not how to satisfy old women.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I don’t know what else we can do,” said the Editor with an audible sigh. “Editorials, front page stories, letters to the editor, excerpts from sermons – we can do more of it perhaps, but not better.”</p>
<p class="fst">The Bright Young Man who taught philosophy at one of the universities leaned forward and engaged the Banker in a whispered conversation. The General, who could hear them, grunted half-contemptuously and chewed on his cigar. Everyone else waited in respectful silence.</p>
<p>Then the Banker spoke:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“There is no need for us to reproach ourselves. Our work has been so effective that even the AFL Council is reconsidering its traditional opposition to UMT, and you all know how seldom they change their position on anything. The public opinion polls we took so much trouble to arrange have produced ‘results’ exceeding our wildest hopes. The government’s money used for our objectives has been well spent. If necessary, we could stage some dramatic international ‘incident’ but we would prefer to hold that as a last resort. Meanwhile, however, we can proceed to let the people exert direct pressure on Congress. How? By the holding of mass meetings and demonstrations which will raise such a clamor for UMT that Congress will have to act.”</p>
<p class="fst">As was to be expected, this proposal met with unanimous acclaim. Plans were quickly formulated. The opening shot in the campaign would be a meeting in New York. No expense was spared, no effort was overlooked, publicity was plentiful. The Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Ave. and 67th St. was chosen as the appropriate place. Feb. 5 was chosen as the time. The National Security Committee, which claims to represent 53 veteran and civilian organizations, all of them 100% patriots and advocates of UMT, was chosen as sponsor of the meeting.</p>
<p>President Truman was asked to send a special message to the audience. The list of distinguished speakers included Owen J. Roberts, former Supreme Court Justice and national chairman of the National Security Committee; Robert P. Patterson, former Secretary of War; Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan; and in keeping with the civilian tone of the meeting, only one general and no admirals.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The meeting was a grand success, judging by the four-foot-long report in the <strong>Times</strong> the next morning. All the dignitaries were present on the speakers’ stand, with lengthy speeches designed to prove peace was impossible without conscription. All the newspapers and press associations were represented at the press table. There was only one hitch – out of 7,835,000 people in New York, the 53 veteran and civilian organizations were able to round up less than 3,000, not counting a couple dozen pickets outside the armory. So we’d better get ready for that international incident.</p>
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John F. Petrone
Patriots at Work
(16 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 7, 16 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
“Those no-good, chicken-livered congressmen!” said the General. “They’re a perfect example of what’s wrong with this country. Not enough discipline. Wish I had some of them under my command. I’d teach them ...”
“But after all, it’s perfectly understandable,” said the Banker. “This is an election year, and no matter how much they sympathize with us, they don’t like to take chances. Especially since Wallace has made it such a big issue.”
“I hope no one will feel offended by my bringing this point up again.” said the Preacher a little hesitantly, because the Banker and the General were running the show and didn’t like to be crossed even when things were going well. “But I still think we would have been more successful if we’d called it universal training, rather than universal military training. In delicate situations of this kind a name can play a most important part. If we had only ...”
However, this was an old and familiar complaint, and the others ignored it. The problem now was how to get Congress to pass the peacetime conscription bill, not how to satisfy old women.
“I don’t know what else we can do,” said the Editor with an audible sigh. “Editorials, front page stories, letters to the editor, excerpts from sermons – we can do more of it perhaps, but not better.”
The Bright Young Man who taught philosophy at one of the universities leaned forward and engaged the Banker in a whispered conversation. The General, who could hear them, grunted half-contemptuously and chewed on his cigar. Everyone else waited in respectful silence.
Then the Banker spoke:
“There is no need for us to reproach ourselves. Our work has been so effective that even the AFL Council is reconsidering its traditional opposition to UMT, and you all know how seldom they change their position on anything. The public opinion polls we took so much trouble to arrange have produced ‘results’ exceeding our wildest hopes. The government’s money used for our objectives has been well spent. If necessary, we could stage some dramatic international ‘incident’ but we would prefer to hold that as a last resort. Meanwhile, however, we can proceed to let the people exert direct pressure on Congress. How? By the holding of mass meetings and demonstrations which will raise such a clamor for UMT that Congress will have to act.”
As was to be expected, this proposal met with unanimous acclaim. Plans were quickly formulated. The opening shot in the campaign would be a meeting in New York. No expense was spared, no effort was overlooked, publicity was plentiful. The Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Ave. and 67th St. was chosen as the appropriate place. Feb. 5 was chosen as the time. The National Security Committee, which claims to represent 53 veteran and civilian organizations, all of them 100% patriots and advocates of UMT, was chosen as sponsor of the meeting.
President Truman was asked to send a special message to the audience. The list of distinguished speakers included Owen J. Roberts, former Supreme Court Justice and national chairman of the National Security Committee; Robert P. Patterson, former Secretary of War; Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan; and in keeping with the civilian tone of the meeting, only one general and no admirals.
* * *
The meeting was a grand success, judging by the four-foot-long report in the Times the next morning. All the dignitaries were present on the speakers’ stand, with lengthy speeches designed to prove peace was impossible without conscription. All the newspapers and press associations were represented at the press table. There was only one hitch – out of 7,835,000 people in New York, the 53 veteran and civilian organizations were able to round up less than 3,000, not counting a couple dozen pickets outside the armory. So we’d better get ready for that international incident.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Negro Sailors Ousted for Protest</h1>
<h3>13 Discharged; 2 Face Navy Trial</h3>
<h4>Seamen Who Exposed Vicious Jim Crow In Navy Get<br>
“Undesirable” Discharges “For the Good of the Service”</h4>
<h3>(14 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_50" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 50</a>, 14 December 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Rear Admiral Nimitz, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, last week finally told what had happened to the fifteen Negro sailors on the <em>U.S.S. Philadelphia</em> who had written a letter protesting Jim Crow conditions in the Navy.</p>
<p><em>Nimitz announced, in an interview with P.L. Prattis, Executive Editor of the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>, that 13 of the sailors had been kicked out of the Navy with “undesirable” discharges, and that the other two were still in the brig, probably being held for even more drastic action.</em></p>
<p><em>The commanding officer of the <strong>Philadelphia</strong>, after the, boys’ letter had been printed in the <strong>Courier</strong> on Oct. 5, had placed them all under arrest. He had then forced them all to write statements, telling why they had signed the letter and who had suggested it.</em></p>
<p>This was obviously a move to find out who was the “brains” behind the letter.</p>
<p>When he had these letters, the commanding officer filed charges against the boys and recommended to the Navy Department that they be court-martialed.</p>
<p>He charged them with violating sub-paragraph 7 of Article 8 of Chapter 1 of the Articles of War, which reads:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Or joins in or abets any combination to weaken the lawful authority of or to lessen the respect due to his commanding officer.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">In addition to this charge was another “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Dangerous Precedent</h4>
<p class="fst">In other words, if a Negro sailor signs a letter saying he is being Jim Crowed and doesn’t like it, he is “joining a combination to weaken the lawful authority of his commanding officer”!</p>
<p>If he writes to the people outside of the Navy and asks to help put an end to the policy that permits Negroes to become only mess attendants and cooks, then he is guilty of “lessening the respect due his commanding officer”!</p>
<p><em>That, at least, is the viewpoint of the officer caste that runs the ships and every day violates the law passed by Congress that prohibits discrimination in the armed forces against any person because of race or color.</em></p>
<p>The commanding officer wanted them court-martialed. But the Bureau of Navigation takes a lighter view of the matter. It agrees that this action is almost as bad as a mutiny, but doesn’t feel it wise to have the mess boys hanged from the yard-arm.</p>
<p>So the Bureau over-ruled the recommendation of the highly respected officer and gave orders for thirteen of the boys to be transferred to the receiving station nearest their homes and there given “undesirable” discharges. (A discharge of this nature differs from a dishonorable discharge in that it does not deprive the man of his civil rights. It is a discharge, as the Navy officers call it, “for the good of the service.”)</p>
<p>The other two men are still in jail, which would indicate that the commanding officer decided that they had “instigated” the letter, and that Admiral Nimitz has accepted the recommendation of the commanding officer that they be court-martialed.</p>
<p>But the case would not be closed even if all the men had been set free. Indeed, the fight must go on as long as the officer caste controls military training and has the power to Jim Crow Negroes.</p>
<p>This was indicated also by the <strong>Courier</strong> in its issue of December 7 in the story entitled <em>Here Are Six More ‘Chambermaids’ You Can Fire, Rear Admiral Nitmitz</em>, which contained another letter, from a group of six Negro sailors of the <em>U.S.S. Davis</em>, stationed at San Diego. California.</p>
<p>This letter, which is the sixth signed by groups of mess attendants on as many different ships in the Navy in the last two months, tells the same story that the others did, of segregation,, brutal discrimination and vicious punishment for any “back-talk.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, like the others, the authors of this letter, while they demonstrate great courage in signing their names, make the mistake of urging as a solution “that the Negro youth of America ... cease to enlist in the U.S. Navy.”</p>
<p>As we have indicated in our pamphlet, <strong>Defend The Negro Sailors of the <em>U.S.S. Philadelphia</em></strong>, such a policy will not solve the problem because it is ineffective in the face of conscription: because it will not help the 4,000 Negro sailors, already <em>in</em> the Navy; and because it does not take into consideration the need for military training of all kinds by the oppressed Negro people and the working class, if they are to be able to defeat their enemies.</p>
<p>The latest developments in the <em>Philadelphia</em> case point once again to the need for the Negro people to join in the struggle for a system of military training under the control of the trade unions – take control and power out of the hands of the Jim Crow and anti-labor officers and put it in the hands of the workers themselves.</p>
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Albert Parker
Negro Sailors Ousted for Protest
13 Discharged; 2 Face Navy Trial
Seamen Who Exposed Vicious Jim Crow In Navy Get
“Undesirable” Discharges “For the Good of the Service”
(14 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 50, 14 December 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Rear Admiral Nimitz, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, last week finally told what had happened to the fifteen Negro sailors on the U.S.S. Philadelphia who had written a letter protesting Jim Crow conditions in the Navy.
Nimitz announced, in an interview with P.L. Prattis, Executive Editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, that 13 of the sailors had been kicked out of the Navy with “undesirable” discharges, and that the other two were still in the brig, probably being held for even more drastic action.
The commanding officer of the Philadelphia, after the, boys’ letter had been printed in the Courier on Oct. 5, had placed them all under arrest. He had then forced them all to write statements, telling why they had signed the letter and who had suggested it.
This was obviously a move to find out who was the “brains” behind the letter.
When he had these letters, the commanding officer filed charges against the boys and recommended to the Navy Department that they be court-martialed.
He charged them with violating sub-paragraph 7 of Article 8 of Chapter 1 of the Articles of War, which reads:
“Or joins in or abets any combination to weaken the lawful authority of or to lessen the respect due to his commanding officer.”
In addition to this charge was another “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.”
Dangerous Precedent
In other words, if a Negro sailor signs a letter saying he is being Jim Crowed and doesn’t like it, he is “joining a combination to weaken the lawful authority of his commanding officer”!
If he writes to the people outside of the Navy and asks to help put an end to the policy that permits Negroes to become only mess attendants and cooks, then he is guilty of “lessening the respect due his commanding officer”!
That, at least, is the viewpoint of the officer caste that runs the ships and every day violates the law passed by Congress that prohibits discrimination in the armed forces against any person because of race or color.
The commanding officer wanted them court-martialed. But the Bureau of Navigation takes a lighter view of the matter. It agrees that this action is almost as bad as a mutiny, but doesn’t feel it wise to have the mess boys hanged from the yard-arm.
So the Bureau over-ruled the recommendation of the highly respected officer and gave orders for thirteen of the boys to be transferred to the receiving station nearest their homes and there given “undesirable” discharges. (A discharge of this nature differs from a dishonorable discharge in that it does not deprive the man of his civil rights. It is a discharge, as the Navy officers call it, “for the good of the service.”)
The other two men are still in jail, which would indicate that the commanding officer decided that they had “instigated” the letter, and that Admiral Nimitz has accepted the recommendation of the commanding officer that they be court-martialed.
But the case would not be closed even if all the men had been set free. Indeed, the fight must go on as long as the officer caste controls military training and has the power to Jim Crow Negroes.
This was indicated also by the Courier in its issue of December 7 in the story entitled Here Are Six More ‘Chambermaids’ You Can Fire, Rear Admiral Nitmitz, which contained another letter, from a group of six Negro sailors of the U.S.S. Davis, stationed at San Diego. California.
This letter, which is the sixth signed by groups of mess attendants on as many different ships in the Navy in the last two months, tells the same story that the others did, of segregation,, brutal discrimination and vicious punishment for any “back-talk.”
Unfortunately, like the others, the authors of this letter, while they demonstrate great courage in signing their names, make the mistake of urging as a solution “that the Negro youth of America ... cease to enlist in the U.S. Navy.”
As we have indicated in our pamphlet, Defend The Negro Sailors of the U.S.S. Philadelphia, such a policy will not solve the problem because it is ineffective in the face of conscription: because it will not help the 4,000 Negro sailors, already in the Navy; and because it does not take into consideration the need for military training of all kinds by the oppressed Negro people and the working class, if they are to be able to defeat their enemies.
The latest developments in the Philadelphia case point once again to the need for the Negro people to join in the struggle for a system of military training under the control of the trade unions – take control and power out of the hands of the Jim Crow and anti-labor officers and put it in the hands of the workers themselves.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(9 November 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_45" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 45</a>, 9 November 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">We think that it will be generally agreed that the shabbiest Uncle Tom sell out o£ the whole electoral campaign was pulled off two weeks ago at the convention of the United Government Employees held in Washington. (This organization, led by Edgar G. Brown, claims a membership of 30,000 Negro federal employees. It also claims to speak in the interests of the Negro people. Both these claims are grossly exaggerated.)</p>
<p>For it was at this convention that the United Government Employees won the “honor” of being the first (and perhaps the only) colored organization in the country to go on record endorsing the vicious Jim Crow policies announced by Roosevelt a half month earlier for the armed forces of the United States.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>Endorse Segregation</h4>
<p class="fst">First they endorsed the principle of segregation in the Army. Then they went further. They asked that this principle be extended, that more Jim Crow army divisions be established. The only thing they asked in return was that colored officers, instead of white, be assigned to these divisions.</p>
<p>Not satisfied with segregation in the land forces, the men responsible for the adoption of this position by the U.G.E. then asked that it be extended to the Navy.</p>
<p>In the Navy Negroes can become only waiters and cooks. In this way they are segregated into one part of the ship. Instead of protesting this and demanding that they be permitted into all branches of the service, they asked instead for a separate battleship, cruiser, submarine, destroyer and airplane carrier “to be eventually manned and officered by Negroes.”</p>
<p>In this way they ask for <em>complete</em> segregation! They aren’t satisfied with half-way measures.</p>
<p>Negroes are also barred from the naval academy. Instead of demanding an end to this and equal rights for Negroes at the academy, they asked instead for a separate “Annapolis” in the Virgin Islands.</p>
<p>Of course, it isn’t too hard to figure out why the convention adopted this position. They knew what discrimination and segregation mean to the Negro people—but they weren’t thinking of the Negro people. They were thinking about themselves, and their jobs, and their salaries as government employees.</p>
<p>By telling the colored people, “This is a good thing for us; all we need now is more of it and more colored officers and our problems are solved,” they attempted to keep in office the Administration that signs their pay-checks and wipes its feet on them.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>What It Really Means</h4>
<p class="fst">But putting aside for a minute the sordid motives behind it, let’s examine the proposal on its own feet and see how well it stands up.</p>
<p>What people who support such proposals don’t understand is this: <em>The policy of discrimination and segregation in the armed forces places a stamp of approval on discrimination and segregation in civilian life.</em></p>
<p>When Roosevelt endorsed segregation in the Army, he said in effect: Yes, Negroes are not like other people, they should be placed off on a side, they are inferior, and they should be separated from white men in the Army just as they are separated from them outside the Army.</p>
<p>In other words, the Jim Crow policy in the Army is based on the theories of “inferiority of Negroes” and the “necessity for white supremacy.” Let Mr. Edgar Brown ask any Southern lyncher or Ku Kluxer and they’ll tell him that’s what it is!</p>
<p>Roosevelt, by announcing this policy for the Army, says to the owners of industry, to big business, to relief officials, to movie and restaurant proprietors, and even to some reactionary labor fakers: Sure, go ahead Jim Crowing them, the government, is doing the same!</p>
<p>And Brown and his supporters are themselves now in the position of saying: Roosevelt is right, we don’t deserve equal rights, we should be segregated.</p>
<p>Those who support this position now cannot complain about discrimination in civilian life either. If a reactionary school board in the North wants to send colored children to separate schools, how will Brown be able to argue against it? All !he could do is weakly say: All right, but don’t forget to give us colored teachers in the Jim Crow schools.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>Lives of Negroes Involved</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>As long as the Negroes are separated from the white soldiers, it is very easy for the labor-hating officer caste in charge of the Army to pick them out for special assignment and work: as labor battalions, digging trenches and latrines, and as suicide squads, for the most dangerous work, where men’s lives are thrown away cheaply.</em></p>
<p>This was the practice in the last war, and it will be the practice in this war, as long as the officer caste controls the Army, and as long as Negroes are in separate regiments.</p>
<p>Having Negro officers for these separate regiments will not change matters in this respect at all. They won’t be able to prevent choice of their regiments for dangerous assignments at all.</p>
<p>Consequently, in spite of who the officers are, separate regiments will not protect the Negro soldier from the most important discrimination of all: a high proportion of assignments that endanger his life.</p>
<p>Those who want to protect the Negroes from insult and discrimination must join the struggle for union control of training. This struggle alone will abolish Jim Crowism in the Army, will create the conditions whereby Negroes will be able to enter any regiment, free of discrimination, and officered by workers, black and white, selected by the soldiers themselves./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(9 November 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 45, 9 November 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
We think that it will be generally agreed that the shabbiest Uncle Tom sell out o£ the whole electoral campaign was pulled off two weeks ago at the convention of the United Government Employees held in Washington. (This organization, led by Edgar G. Brown, claims a membership of 30,000 Negro federal employees. It also claims to speak in the interests of the Negro people. Both these claims are grossly exaggerated.)
For it was at this convention that the United Government Employees won the “honor” of being the first (and perhaps the only) colored organization in the country to go on record endorsing the vicious Jim Crow policies announced by Roosevelt a half month earlier for the armed forces of the United States.
Endorse Segregation
First they endorsed the principle of segregation in the Army. Then they went further. They asked that this principle be extended, that more Jim Crow army divisions be established. The only thing they asked in return was that colored officers, instead of white, be assigned to these divisions.
Not satisfied with segregation in the land forces, the men responsible for the adoption of this position by the U.G.E. then asked that it be extended to the Navy.
In the Navy Negroes can become only waiters and cooks. In this way they are segregated into one part of the ship. Instead of protesting this and demanding that they be permitted into all branches of the service, they asked instead for a separate battleship, cruiser, submarine, destroyer and airplane carrier “to be eventually manned and officered by Negroes.”
In this way they ask for complete segregation! They aren’t satisfied with half-way measures.
Negroes are also barred from the naval academy. Instead of demanding an end to this and equal rights for Negroes at the academy, they asked instead for a separate “Annapolis” in the Virgin Islands.
Of course, it isn’t too hard to figure out why the convention adopted this position. They knew what discrimination and segregation mean to the Negro people—but they weren’t thinking of the Negro people. They were thinking about themselves, and their jobs, and their salaries as government employees.
By telling the colored people, “This is a good thing for us; all we need now is more of it and more colored officers and our problems are solved,” they attempted to keep in office the Administration that signs their pay-checks and wipes its feet on them.
What It Really Means
But putting aside for a minute the sordid motives behind it, let’s examine the proposal on its own feet and see how well it stands up.
What people who support such proposals don’t understand is this: The policy of discrimination and segregation in the armed forces places a stamp of approval on discrimination and segregation in civilian life.
When Roosevelt endorsed segregation in the Army, he said in effect: Yes, Negroes are not like other people, they should be placed off on a side, they are inferior, and they should be separated from white men in the Army just as they are separated from them outside the Army.
In other words, the Jim Crow policy in the Army is based on the theories of “inferiority of Negroes” and the “necessity for white supremacy.” Let Mr. Edgar Brown ask any Southern lyncher or Ku Kluxer and they’ll tell him that’s what it is!
Roosevelt, by announcing this policy for the Army, says to the owners of industry, to big business, to relief officials, to movie and restaurant proprietors, and even to some reactionary labor fakers: Sure, go ahead Jim Crowing them, the government, is doing the same!
And Brown and his supporters are themselves now in the position of saying: Roosevelt is right, we don’t deserve equal rights, we should be segregated.
Those who support this position now cannot complain about discrimination in civilian life either. If a reactionary school board in the North wants to send colored children to separate schools, how will Brown be able to argue against it? All !he could do is weakly say: All right, but don’t forget to give us colored teachers in the Jim Crow schools.
Lives of Negroes Involved
As long as the Negroes are separated from the white soldiers, it is very easy for the labor-hating officer caste in charge of the Army to pick them out for special assignment and work: as labor battalions, digging trenches and latrines, and as suicide squads, for the most dangerous work, where men’s lives are thrown away cheaply.
This was the practice in the last war, and it will be the practice in this war, as long as the officer caste controls the Army, and as long as Negroes are in separate regiments.
Having Negro officers for these separate regiments will not change matters in this respect at all. They won’t be able to prevent choice of their regiments for dangerous assignments at all.
Consequently, in spite of who the officers are, separate regiments will not protect the Negro soldier from the most important discrimination of all: a high proportion of assignments that endanger his life.
Those who want to protect the Negroes from insult and discrimination must join the struggle for union control of training. This struggle alone will abolish Jim Crowism in the Army, will create the conditions whereby Negroes will be able to enter any regiment, free of discrimination, and officered by workers, black and white, selected by the soldiers themselves./p>
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>New Military Code Foreshadows Revival of Purges in Red Army</h1>
<h3>(29 June 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_26" target="new">Vol. 10 No. 26</a>, 29 June 1946, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">More purges are on the order of the day in the Soviet Union, and they are coming – if they have not already begun – in the armed forces of the USSR. That is the political conclusion to be drawn from the new disciplinary code for the Red Army, Navy and Air Force signed by Stalin and reported by the official army newspaper <strong>Red Star</strong> on June 19.</p>
<p>The new code, according to this paper, has the following special features:</p>
<ol>
<li>Even more rigorous military discipline than in the past, with greater emphasis on saluting, etc., with an injunction to officers that “not a single offense or act of misconduct by subordinates should go unnoticed.”<br>
</li>
<li>The necessity and duty to report to the highest officials “the stealing or wasting of military property, unlawful spending of money or any misconduct in handling food supplies to troops” and “insubordinate acts that are lessening the military efficiency of the armed forces.”<br>
</li>
<li>The establishment of special “officers’ courts of honor which are created to preserve the dignity and honor of the officers’ rank.” These courts will rule on breaches of discipline unworthy of officers and contrary to the “understanding of the ethics and morality in the Red Army.”</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">How does it happen that after the war, after the Red Army has been hailed as the savior of the Soviet Union, it is discovered that stricter discipline is needed for peace time?</p>
<p>There can be only one answer: This stricter discipline is not needed to strengthen the Red Army, but to strengthen the bureaucratic grip <em>over</em> the Red Army, which the Kremlin had to relax somewhat during the war.</p>
<p>A rift must be taking place between the Stalinist bureaucracy and a section of the officer caste.</p>
<p>If this was not the case, Stalin would not take the grave step of in effect publicly reprimanding the officers and implying they have been guilty of military offenses.</p>
<p>The new code is a warning to the officers. At the same time under cover of talk about embezzlement, corruption and insubordination, it prepares Soviet public opinion for a general assault against all oppositional elements in the armed forces.<br>
</p>
<h4>Potential Victims</h4>
<p class="fst">That some of the victims of this new purge will be pro-capitalist elements in the officer corps may be taken for granted. There are such elements, reflecting primarily the growth of a pro-capitalist peasantry in the countryside, whose development is reported elsewhere on this page in the article by Ernest Germain. During the war they were encouraged and rewarded by Stalin himself, and it is quite likely that their influence has grown sufficiently to make them appear dangerous to the Kremlin.</p>
<p>But they will not be the only victims. It has always been a favorite Stalinist device to utilize the crimes and blunders of the bureaucracy or its pro-capitalist allies as a pretext for launching purges which wipe out opposition trends of all kinds. The bureaucracy can be expected in the new purge to strike also – and must brutally – at critics from the left (in the army) those who are discontented with the nationalist counter-revolutionary course of Stalinism and want to return to the program of Leninism.</p>
<p>At any rate the new code, like the purges it foreshadows, is a manifestation of the fact that the Stalin regime remains a regime of crisis. None of Stalin’s problems inside the Soviet Union have been solved by the war. On the eve of the war he had to carry through widespread and repeated purges in the army, decimating its leadership over and over again. Now at the termination of the war the same process is renewed.</p>
<p>Like all totalitarian dictatorships, the Stalin regime dares not permit the slightest sign of opposition and its only answer to discontent is new bloodbaths. These purges are a sign of the mortal weakness of the regime and its lack of support from the masses.</p>
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George Breitman
New Military Code Foreshadows Revival of Purges in Red Army
(29 June 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. 10 No. 26, 29 June 1946, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
More purges are on the order of the day in the Soviet Union, and they are coming – if they have not already begun – in the armed forces of the USSR. That is the political conclusion to be drawn from the new disciplinary code for the Red Army, Navy and Air Force signed by Stalin and reported by the official army newspaper Red Star on June 19.
The new code, according to this paper, has the following special features:
Even more rigorous military discipline than in the past, with greater emphasis on saluting, etc., with an injunction to officers that “not a single offense or act of misconduct by subordinates should go unnoticed.”
The necessity and duty to report to the highest officials “the stealing or wasting of military property, unlawful spending of money or any misconduct in handling food supplies to troops” and “insubordinate acts that are lessening the military efficiency of the armed forces.”
The establishment of special “officers’ courts of honor which are created to preserve the dignity and honor of the officers’ rank.” These courts will rule on breaches of discipline unworthy of officers and contrary to the “understanding of the ethics and morality in the Red Army.”
How does it happen that after the war, after the Red Army has been hailed as the savior of the Soviet Union, it is discovered that stricter discipline is needed for peace time?
There can be only one answer: This stricter discipline is not needed to strengthen the Red Army, but to strengthen the bureaucratic grip over the Red Army, which the Kremlin had to relax somewhat during the war.
A rift must be taking place between the Stalinist bureaucracy and a section of the officer caste.
If this was not the case, Stalin would not take the grave step of in effect publicly reprimanding the officers and implying they have been guilty of military offenses.
The new code is a warning to the officers. At the same time under cover of talk about embezzlement, corruption and insubordination, it prepares Soviet public opinion for a general assault against all oppositional elements in the armed forces.
Potential Victims
That some of the victims of this new purge will be pro-capitalist elements in the officer corps may be taken for granted. There are such elements, reflecting primarily the growth of a pro-capitalist peasantry in the countryside, whose development is reported elsewhere on this page in the article by Ernest Germain. During the war they were encouraged and rewarded by Stalin himself, and it is quite likely that their influence has grown sufficiently to make them appear dangerous to the Kremlin.
But they will not be the only victims. It has always been a favorite Stalinist device to utilize the crimes and blunders of the bureaucracy or its pro-capitalist allies as a pretext for launching purges which wipe out opposition trends of all kinds. The bureaucracy can be expected in the new purge to strike also – and must brutally – at critics from the left (in the army) those who are discontented with the nationalist counter-revolutionary course of Stalinism and want to return to the program of Leninism.
At any rate the new code, like the purges it foreshadows, is a manifestation of the fact that the Stalin regime remains a regime of crisis. None of Stalin’s problems inside the Soviet Union have been solved by the war. On the eve of the war he had to carry through widespread and repeated purges in the army, decimating its leadership over and over again. Now at the termination of the war the same process is renewed.
Like all totalitarian dictatorships, the Stalin regime dares not permit the slightest sign of opposition and its only answer to discontent is new bloodbaths. These purges are a sign of the mortal weakness of the regime and its lack of support from the masses.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(14 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_50" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 50</a>, 14 December 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>The Hampton Institute Conference</h4>
<p class="fst">To understand what happened at the much publicized Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense, held last week at Hampton Institute, Va., it is necessary to understand the reason the conference was held and the things it set out to do.</p>
<p>As a full page advertisement of the Institute put it, “Defense Conference Marks New Era. Symbolic of a new era ahead for Hampton was the two-day conference ... Nationally known authorities, both Negro and white, concentrated their thoughts on specific programs of both immediate and long time value on <em>how the Negro may best serve the country in the interests of total defense and national unity.</em> Their discussions covered comprehensive subjects – Military and Naval Defense, Industry, Family Life, Labor. The Consumer, Youth, Education, Business, The Press, Morale and Mental Hygiene, Agriculture, Public Health, Housing, Recreation and Religion ...”</p>
<p>It should be clear from the above statement that these “nationally known authorities” were interested in “serving the country” – i.e., the bosses of this country – not in serving the interests. of the Negro people who get such a raw deal in this country.</p>
<p>That the government itself did not see in this body any serious threat to its publicly announced and carefully worked out policies of Jim Crowism in the armed forces was made clear in the statement of Roosevelt himself, the author and executor of these policies:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is heartening to know that in this time of stress and strain, when the whole nation is engaged in a mighty effort to gird itself against any challenge which a mad world may hurl at it, you ... are to hold a two-day conference on the participation of the Negro in national defense ... There could be no finer manifestation of the loyalty of the Negro, no more fitting rededication of himself to the cause of America, than the conference which you are holding.”</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>This is Roosevelt’s nice and flowery way of saying: Go ahead, hold your conference, it will be heartening to me because by and large what you will do will help to get the Negroes to support my war program.</strong><br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Whitewashing the Bosses</h4>
<p class="fst">The highlight of a speech by Aubrey Williams was an attempt to set the Negro against the trade union movement:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Look at the Negro in the labor field. Negro youth is faced with the same difficulties that white youth faces, but added to these are the prejudiced barriers set up by many employees and the discriminatory practices set up by the labor and trade unions. What is the result? Only 2% get skilled jobs as against 8% for white youth – less than 10% get semi-skilled jobs against 20% for white youth. And when they do get full-time jobs, the Negro youth averages 49 hours a week for a wage of $8.75, while the white youth averages 44 hours for a wage of $15.71.”</p>
<p class="fst">Williams thus places the full blame for industrial discrimination against Negroes on the union movement as such, without bothering to indicate that this is not true of the CIO movement, and not true about many AFL unions. In this way, he whitewashes the forces chiefly responsible for discrimination in industry: the bosses who own and control the factories that Jim Crow or exclude colored workers. And he whitewashes the government which, if it wanted to, could easily have passed a law denying war contracts to those factories that discriminate against Negroes.</p>
<p>Yes, some trade union leaders are guilty of Jim Crowism, and we of the Socialist Workers Party have pointed out again and again that this can be corrected only by persistent and organized action of the progressive white and Negro members of the union movement.</p>
<p>Williams has a lot of nerve talking about someone else when he himself enforces a policy of segregation in the NYA, of which he is administrator, a policy which sets up “white projects” and “Negro projects” and does not permit mixing of the two races on any NYA project, even in the North where many of the white and Negro youth whom he separates used to attend school together.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>“The Nationally Known Authorities”</h4>
<p class="fst">As for the round-table sessions of the “authorities,” they were not much better.</p>
<p>As an example, consider the “authorities” scheduled to sit and solve the problems of the Negro on “Industry and Labor”:</p>
<p class="quoteb">One administrative assistant of the National Defense Advisory Commission; one superintendent of the Ford Industrial School; one director of the Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University; one representative of Hampton Institute; three officials of the Urban League; one race relations officer, Personnel Division, Federal Works Agency; and one representative of the Bureau of Employment Security.</p>
<p class="fst">That means: zero representatives of the trade union movement, and zero working men or women, present.</p>
<p>Yet, whatever else it might do or avoid doing, however much it might desire to curry favor with Roosevelt, there was one thing this conference could not avoid doing, and which served to expose Roosevelt: it had to adopt a resolution opposing Roosevelt’s anti-Negro policy in the armed forces and to ask for an end to certain phases of policy. It wasn’t a very strong resolution; on the contrary, it was weak, inadequate and vague – but it shows up Roosevelt because he will not end Jim Crow in the armed forces.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>(<a href="negros3.htm" target="">Another article on the Hampton Conference</a> will appear next week.)</strong>/p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(14 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 50, 14 December 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Hampton Institute Conference
To understand what happened at the much publicized Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense, held last week at Hampton Institute, Va., it is necessary to understand the reason the conference was held and the things it set out to do.
As a full page advertisement of the Institute put it, “Defense Conference Marks New Era. Symbolic of a new era ahead for Hampton was the two-day conference ... Nationally known authorities, both Negro and white, concentrated their thoughts on specific programs of both immediate and long time value on how the Negro may best serve the country in the interests of total defense and national unity. Their discussions covered comprehensive subjects – Military and Naval Defense, Industry, Family Life, Labor. The Consumer, Youth, Education, Business, The Press, Morale and Mental Hygiene, Agriculture, Public Health, Housing, Recreation and Religion ...”
It should be clear from the above statement that these “nationally known authorities” were interested in “serving the country” – i.e., the bosses of this country – not in serving the interests. of the Negro people who get such a raw deal in this country.
That the government itself did not see in this body any serious threat to its publicly announced and carefully worked out policies of Jim Crowism in the armed forces was made clear in the statement of Roosevelt himself, the author and executor of these policies:
“It is heartening to know that in this time of stress and strain, when the whole nation is engaged in a mighty effort to gird itself against any challenge which a mad world may hurl at it, you ... are to hold a two-day conference on the participation of the Negro in national defense ... There could be no finer manifestation of the loyalty of the Negro, no more fitting rededication of himself to the cause of America, than the conference which you are holding.”
This is Roosevelt’s nice and flowery way of saying: Go ahead, hold your conference, it will be heartening to me because by and large what you will do will help to get the Negroes to support my war program.
Whitewashing the Bosses
The highlight of a speech by Aubrey Williams was an attempt to set the Negro against the trade union movement:
“Look at the Negro in the labor field. Negro youth is faced with the same difficulties that white youth faces, but added to these are the prejudiced barriers set up by many employees and the discriminatory practices set up by the labor and trade unions. What is the result? Only 2% get skilled jobs as against 8% for white youth – less than 10% get semi-skilled jobs against 20% for white youth. And when they do get full-time jobs, the Negro youth averages 49 hours a week for a wage of $8.75, while the white youth averages 44 hours for a wage of $15.71.”
Williams thus places the full blame for industrial discrimination against Negroes on the union movement as such, without bothering to indicate that this is not true of the CIO movement, and not true about many AFL unions. In this way, he whitewashes the forces chiefly responsible for discrimination in industry: the bosses who own and control the factories that Jim Crow or exclude colored workers. And he whitewashes the government which, if it wanted to, could easily have passed a law denying war contracts to those factories that discriminate against Negroes.
Yes, some trade union leaders are guilty of Jim Crowism, and we of the Socialist Workers Party have pointed out again and again that this can be corrected only by persistent and organized action of the progressive white and Negro members of the union movement.
Williams has a lot of nerve talking about someone else when he himself enforces a policy of segregation in the NYA, of which he is administrator, a policy which sets up “white projects” and “Negro projects” and does not permit mixing of the two races on any NYA project, even in the North where many of the white and Negro youth whom he separates used to attend school together.
“The Nationally Known Authorities”
As for the round-table sessions of the “authorities,” they were not much better.
As an example, consider the “authorities” scheduled to sit and solve the problems of the Negro on “Industry and Labor”:
One administrative assistant of the National Defense Advisory Commission; one superintendent of the Ford Industrial School; one director of the Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University; one representative of Hampton Institute; three officials of the Urban League; one race relations officer, Personnel Division, Federal Works Agency; and one representative of the Bureau of Employment Security.
That means: zero representatives of the trade union movement, and zero working men or women, present.
Yet, whatever else it might do or avoid doing, however much it might desire to curry favor with Roosevelt, there was one thing this conference could not avoid doing, and which served to expose Roosevelt: it had to adopt a resolution opposing Roosevelt’s anti-Negro policy in the armed forces and to ask for an end to certain phases of policy. It wasn’t a very strong resolution; on the contrary, it was weak, inadequate and vague – but it shows up Roosevelt because he will not end Jim Crow in the armed forces.
(Another article on the Hampton Conference will appear next week.)/p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(22 March 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_12" target="new">Vol. V. No. 12</a>, 22 March 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Tenth Anniversary of Scottsboro Case</h4>
<p class="fst">This week marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of the now almost forgotten Scottsboro case.</p>
<p>We take note of it now, ten years after it began, to send our greetings to the five boys still held in the Alabama jails, to point out the remorseless class hatred of the Southern Bourbons who keep them there even though the whole world knows they are innocent.</p>
<p>Nine Negro boys, most of them still children, riding on a freight train from Chattanooga into Alabama, got into a fight with some white boys of around their own age and made them leave the train. When the train pulled into Paint Rock, Alabama, the train was stopped and the Negro boys picked up. On another car two white girls, dressed in men’s clothing, were also discovered, and taken into custody. They were taken to Scottsboro, the county seat, and word began to spread that the boys had raped them.</p>
<p>In short order, the boys were indicted for rape, quickly brought to “trial” and (with the exception of one child on whose case the jury disagreed) sentenced to death.</p>
<p>There was nothing unusual in this case. There have been scores of such cases in the South about which nothing has been written, which were passed off as a matter of course, where Negroes have been murdered to “teach them their place.”</p>
<p>But this case was not passed off. The Communist Party’s International Labor Defense entered it, provided lawyers and opened up a campaign which as it spread and secured support reached into every single important community in the country and every country in the world. Basing itself generally on a class struggle defense, the I.L.D. organized not only the legal defense, but mass demonstrations and meetings on a national and international scale.</p>
<p>Finally, one of the two girls confessed that they had been intimidated into telling the rape story. Because the case had reached such widespread proportions, however, the Alabama Bourbons determined to brazen it out, to show that Negroes have no rights in the South and had better not get any “uppity” ideas in their heads.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>What Saved the Boys</h4>
<p class="fst">It was the mass demonstrations and meetings in hundreds of cities which saved the boys’ lives. Again arid again, they were found guilty, again and again Alabama prepared to take their lives, but each time the courts, feeling the angry pressure of millions of White and Negro workers, retreated and ordered new trials.</p>
<p>Then, far away in Moscow, Stalin and his bureaucracy decided on the policy of “the people’s front, collective security and a Franco-Soviet Pact.” This was an order to the Communist Parties of the democratic imperialist nations such as France, England and the U.S.A., to try to line up the boss governments for an alliance with Stalin. To do this, they were told to support people like Roosevelt for elections, and in general to try to “soften” down the class struggle.</p>
<p>This meant, so far as the Scottsboro Case was concerned, an end to the class struggle policies which had saved the boyp up to that point. Early in 1936 the demonstrations had disappeared, and a new Scottsboro Defense Committee, hailed by the Stalinists, was set up. It turned down the class struggle program advocated by the Trotskyists and went to work on the case in a way that would suit the innumerable right reverend gentlemen on the committee.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>The Result of the Stalinist Line</h4>
<p class="fst">Ozie Powell, one of the boys, goaded by a sheriff driving from court, scratched back with a pen knife in self defense. The sheriff stopped the car, got out and put a bullet through Powell’s brain, paralyzing him for a long time and almost killing him. Despite the fact that everyone knew Powell had struck back in self-defense, the Scottsboro Defense Committee got him to plead guilty of assault with intent to kill! The result was that the state dropped the rape changes against him and sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment with no chance, because of the plea of guilty, of fighting the thing through the courts.</p>
<p>This was only one chapter in the story of a number of disgusting “deals” which were made at the time between the Committee and the Jim Crow judge handling the case. The whole story has not yet been told, but enough leaked out to show that both the Stalinists and the Norman Thomas Socialists had sanctioned a deal which would free some of the boys and keep others in jail. The deal did not go through exactly as planned, but four were released, and four besides Powell were kept in jail under sentences ranging up to 75 years on the same testimony which the state disregarded in freeing the other boys. When the whole truth comes out some time, it will be seen that these boys were sold down the river.</p>
<p>And meanwhile, nothing is being done by the Committee that can have any effect on freeing the remaining five. Attempts to organize committees in different cities by Trotskyists and other workers have been resisted by the Stalinists who point to the “official” committee that does nothing. No demonstrations are held, little is even written about the case. Requests for information from the committee bring answers like the following: “The only thing that can be done in the Patterson case is a request for a pardon from the Governor.” How? No answer. Who’s to force the pardon? No answer.</p>
<p>And meanwhile, with the defense movement bottled up by a class collaborationist committee, the remaining five boys continue to rot in jail and on the chain gang – while the Stalinists, who have put on a coat of “militancy” since the Stalin-Hitler Pact, dare not open their mouths about what really happened in the case nor reopen the case in a fighting campaign, because to do so would be a confession of their treacherous policies these last five years.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(22 March 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 12, 22 March 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Tenth Anniversary of Scottsboro Case
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of the now almost forgotten Scottsboro case.
We take note of it now, ten years after it began, to send our greetings to the five boys still held in the Alabama jails, to point out the remorseless class hatred of the Southern Bourbons who keep them there even though the whole world knows they are innocent.
Nine Negro boys, most of them still children, riding on a freight train from Chattanooga into Alabama, got into a fight with some white boys of around their own age and made them leave the train. When the train pulled into Paint Rock, Alabama, the train was stopped and the Negro boys picked up. On another car two white girls, dressed in men’s clothing, were also discovered, and taken into custody. They were taken to Scottsboro, the county seat, and word began to spread that the boys had raped them.
In short order, the boys were indicted for rape, quickly brought to “trial” and (with the exception of one child on whose case the jury disagreed) sentenced to death.
There was nothing unusual in this case. There have been scores of such cases in the South about which nothing has been written, which were passed off as a matter of course, where Negroes have been murdered to “teach them their place.”
But this case was not passed off. The Communist Party’s International Labor Defense entered it, provided lawyers and opened up a campaign which as it spread and secured support reached into every single important community in the country and every country in the world. Basing itself generally on a class struggle defense, the I.L.D. organized not only the legal defense, but mass demonstrations and meetings on a national and international scale.
Finally, one of the two girls confessed that they had been intimidated into telling the rape story. Because the case had reached such widespread proportions, however, the Alabama Bourbons determined to brazen it out, to show that Negroes have no rights in the South and had better not get any “uppity” ideas in their heads.
What Saved the Boys
It was the mass demonstrations and meetings in hundreds of cities which saved the boys’ lives. Again arid again, they were found guilty, again and again Alabama prepared to take their lives, but each time the courts, feeling the angry pressure of millions of White and Negro workers, retreated and ordered new trials.
Then, far away in Moscow, Stalin and his bureaucracy decided on the policy of “the people’s front, collective security and a Franco-Soviet Pact.” This was an order to the Communist Parties of the democratic imperialist nations such as France, England and the U.S.A., to try to line up the boss governments for an alliance with Stalin. To do this, they were told to support people like Roosevelt for elections, and in general to try to “soften” down the class struggle.
This meant, so far as the Scottsboro Case was concerned, an end to the class struggle policies which had saved the boyp up to that point. Early in 1936 the demonstrations had disappeared, and a new Scottsboro Defense Committee, hailed by the Stalinists, was set up. It turned down the class struggle program advocated by the Trotskyists and went to work on the case in a way that would suit the innumerable right reverend gentlemen on the committee.
The Result of the Stalinist Line
Ozie Powell, one of the boys, goaded by a sheriff driving from court, scratched back with a pen knife in self defense. The sheriff stopped the car, got out and put a bullet through Powell’s brain, paralyzing him for a long time and almost killing him. Despite the fact that everyone knew Powell had struck back in self-defense, the Scottsboro Defense Committee got him to plead guilty of assault with intent to kill! The result was that the state dropped the rape changes against him and sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment with no chance, because of the plea of guilty, of fighting the thing through the courts.
This was only one chapter in the story of a number of disgusting “deals” which were made at the time between the Committee and the Jim Crow judge handling the case. The whole story has not yet been told, but enough leaked out to show that both the Stalinists and the Norman Thomas Socialists had sanctioned a deal which would free some of the boys and keep others in jail. The deal did not go through exactly as planned, but four were released, and four besides Powell were kept in jail under sentences ranging up to 75 years on the same testimony which the state disregarded in freeing the other boys. When the whole truth comes out some time, it will be seen that these boys were sold down the river.
And meanwhile, nothing is being done by the Committee that can have any effect on freeing the remaining five. Attempts to organize committees in different cities by Trotskyists and other workers have been resisted by the Stalinists who point to the “official” committee that does nothing. No demonstrations are held, little is even written about the case. Requests for information from the committee bring answers like the following: “The only thing that can be done in the Patterson case is a request for a pardon from the Governor.” How? No answer. Who’s to force the pardon? No answer.
And meanwhile, with the defense movement bottled up by a class collaborationist committee, the remaining five boys continue to rot in jail and on the chain gang – while the Stalinists, who have put on a coat of “militancy” since the Stalin-Hitler Pact, dare not open their mouths about what really happened in the case nor reopen the case in a fighting campaign, because to do so would be a confession of their treacherous policies these last five years.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Rationalizations of the Renegades</h1>
<h3>(12 April 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_15" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 15</a>, 12 April 1948, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The 100th anniversary of the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong> was utilized as the occasion for a concerted attack on Marxism by virtually the whole capitalist press. Not to be outdone by its bigger and less cultured brothers was <strong>Partisan Review</strong>, whose March issue featured an article, <em>A Century’s Balance Sheet</em>. Its author, Jean Vannier, is introduced by the editors as “a French political writer for many years close to the Trotskyite movement.”</p>
<p>Vannier has actually had nothing to do with the Trotskyists for a couple of years. However, he held up the announcement of his own public recantation until he found the appropriate time and place. What better time than the anniversary when all the hacks of capitalism were sniping at Marxism, and what better place than <strong>Partisan Review</strong>?</p>
<p>This, in case you’re not acquainted with it, is a magazine Whose editors for a short period in the Thirties suffered from the delusion, that they were fellow-travelers of Marxism, but who managed to shake off that embarrassing notion in time to support the recent imperialist war. As for its politics today, it is sufficient to note that its advisory board is graced by such lapdogs of capitalism as James Burnham and Sidney Hook.</p>
<p><em>Vannier gives his article a certain revival-meeting touch by opening it with a quotation from Suderman: “We must grow in guilt if we are to grow at all.” But if this arouses the expectation that the author is going to confess his own misdemeanors, it is misleading. The only sin Vannier acknowledges is having once, accepted Marxism. His exhortation is addressed not to himself but to those hardened sinners who still have confidence that the workers will reconstruct society and who continue to work toward that goal.</em></p>
<p>Stripped of its shoddy “theoretical” trappings, Vannier’s rationalization for deserting the camp of socialist revolution emerges as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The Marxists expected the working class to take over society and build socialism. Although the workers have had 100 years since the publication of the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong> to do this job, they haven’t done it. The reason they haven’t done it is that they don’t have the political capacity to do it. The proof that they don’t have the political capacity is that they haven’t done it yet. The fact that they haven’t done it yet is reason enough to conclude, that they can’t and won’t do it in the future. Since the capacity of the workers to take power is the keystone of the whole Marxist system, this means Marxism has failed. Therefore now is the time for all good men to get together, sit down and discuss what is to be done about socialism in this lamentable (if not hopeless) situation.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Doomed” by the Vannierian Law</h4>
<p class="fst">To support this argument, Vannier promises to “examine the social situation and political history of the working class.” But instead of an all-sided historical survey of the workers’ past struggles, including defeats, he constructs a picture that seeks to explain everything, at all stages of capitalist history and under all conditions of the class struggle, by certain inherent and apparently unalterable qualities of the working class.</p>
<p>In the interest of establishing his “objectivity,” Vannier concedes that the working class has proved itself capable of heroism, self-sacrifice, demonstrations of great power, the ability to overcome long-held prejudices, audacity. BUT:</p>
<p>“But by and by, whatever the consequences of its action, whether victory or defeat, it is finally caught up in the sluggish, quotidian flow of things. The fetid backwaters of the past seep back; the proletariat sinks into indolence and cynicism. And even in its triumphant moments, it exhibits a want of consciousness in the choice of its leaders. The ‘instinctive sense of reality’ attributed to it by Auguste Comte, which it so readily reflects in many a circumstance, abandons it at such moments. Its courage and self-sacrifice are not enough to give it what, precisely, is needed in order to act out the role assigned to it by Marx: political capacity. What the proletariat is incapable of achieving is a leadership which will be faithful to its interests, will understand and defend them boldly, imaginatively, and tenaciously.”</p>
<p>Some workers – even those entirely free from idealized conceptions about the working class – may resent such sweeping charges of laziness, cynicism and stupidity. But Vannier wouldn’t want them to think he is indulging in mere name-calling.</p>
<p><em>For while he rejects Marx’s view that the conditions of capitalist production and decay inevitably prepare and drive the workers toward socialism, he does not at all reject all concepts of historical “inevitability.” A careful reading of the above quotation, and in fact of the whole article, will show that he is here presenting us with a veritable law, operating everywhere that capitalism exists. No matter, what happens in the class struggle, whether the workers, win, lose or draw, under the Vannierian Law they are inexorably doomed to sink back, deprived qf the fruits of their struggle. So don’t take it personally, workers. What must be, must be.</em></p>
<p>It’s not clear if this is another manifestation of the notorious shortcoming in “human nature” which the propagandists of Big Business point to as the basis of the permanence of capitalism, or if it is a characteristic only of people who work for a living. But what seems clear, once you accept this idea, is that there’s not much the workers can do about it, one way or another.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Landlord and His Mortgage</h4>
<p class="fst">Anyhow, like the hard-hearted landlord in the Victorian melodrama, Vannier now wants to foreclose the mortgage. But the Marxists never signed any mortgage putting a 100-year limit on their struggle and prediction that the workers would achieve their historic role. What the Marxists promised was that as long as capitalism endures, the working class struggle for socialism will endure too, and that the outcome of this struggle will be either socialism – or the destruction of society.</p>
<p>Reminding us that Marx and Engels compared the future triumph of the workers over capitalism to the earlier triumph of the capitalists over feudalism, Vannier insists that “the differences rather than the similarities must be emphasized.” (Of course the Marxists have always recognized the differences as well as the similarities, even if they reached conclusions directly opposite to Vannier’s.) And he proceeds to emphasize the differences to show what relative advantages the capitalists had when they fought for power, laying particular stress on the argument that the capitalists, unlike the workers, “as a whole ... understood very well how to take hold of society.”</p>
<p><em>That brings us right to the question of Vannier’s time limit. If the capitalists were in a better position to take power than the workers are today, then why did it take them so long? As is well known, they did not complete their revolutionary tasks within a 100-year period such as Vannier now seeks to saddle onto the workers. On the contrary, the capitalists’ rise to power took a much longer time than the life span of the modern industrial working class. Their struggle had its ups and downs too, its partial victories and sometimes staggering defeats, and in most countries it took two or three centuries before they won their full victory. Should they have given the whole thing up as a bad job at the end of the first 100 years?</em></p>
<p>The bourgeois revolutionists of the 18th and 19th centuries would not have shown much patience with the Vanniers of their day who came around – on the eve of decisive battles – to inform them that since they hadn’t succeeded in winning power during the first 100 years of their struggle, they had thereby demonstrated their “political incapacity” and had better retire to the sidelines to “grow in guilt” while thinking the whole thing over. Nor will the 20th-century revolutionary workers be diverted front the prosecution of their life-and-death struggle to save humanity by the sermons of the modern skeptics, cravens and renegades.</p>
<p><strong>(Next Week: The Workers and their Leaders)</strong></p>
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George Breitman
Rationalizations of the Renegades
(12 April 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 15, 12 April 1948, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The 100th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto was utilized as the occasion for a concerted attack on Marxism by virtually the whole capitalist press. Not to be outdone by its bigger and less cultured brothers was Partisan Review, whose March issue featured an article, A Century’s Balance Sheet. Its author, Jean Vannier, is introduced by the editors as “a French political writer for many years close to the Trotskyite movement.”
Vannier has actually had nothing to do with the Trotskyists for a couple of years. However, he held up the announcement of his own public recantation until he found the appropriate time and place. What better time than the anniversary when all the hacks of capitalism were sniping at Marxism, and what better place than Partisan Review?
This, in case you’re not acquainted with it, is a magazine Whose editors for a short period in the Thirties suffered from the delusion, that they were fellow-travelers of Marxism, but who managed to shake off that embarrassing notion in time to support the recent imperialist war. As for its politics today, it is sufficient to note that its advisory board is graced by such lapdogs of capitalism as James Burnham and Sidney Hook.
Vannier gives his article a certain revival-meeting touch by opening it with a quotation from Suderman: “We must grow in guilt if we are to grow at all.” But if this arouses the expectation that the author is going to confess his own misdemeanors, it is misleading. The only sin Vannier acknowledges is having once, accepted Marxism. His exhortation is addressed not to himself but to those hardened sinners who still have confidence that the workers will reconstruct society and who continue to work toward that goal.
Stripped of its shoddy “theoretical” trappings, Vannier’s rationalization for deserting the camp of socialist revolution emerges as follows:
The Marxists expected the working class to take over society and build socialism. Although the workers have had 100 years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto to do this job, they haven’t done it. The reason they haven’t done it is that they don’t have the political capacity to do it. The proof that they don’t have the political capacity is that they haven’t done it yet. The fact that they haven’t done it yet is reason enough to conclude, that they can’t and won’t do it in the future. Since the capacity of the workers to take power is the keystone of the whole Marxist system, this means Marxism has failed. Therefore now is the time for all good men to get together, sit down and discuss what is to be done about socialism in this lamentable (if not hopeless) situation.
“Doomed” by the Vannierian Law
To support this argument, Vannier promises to “examine the social situation and political history of the working class.” But instead of an all-sided historical survey of the workers’ past struggles, including defeats, he constructs a picture that seeks to explain everything, at all stages of capitalist history and under all conditions of the class struggle, by certain inherent and apparently unalterable qualities of the working class.
In the interest of establishing his “objectivity,” Vannier concedes that the working class has proved itself capable of heroism, self-sacrifice, demonstrations of great power, the ability to overcome long-held prejudices, audacity. BUT:
“But by and by, whatever the consequences of its action, whether victory or defeat, it is finally caught up in the sluggish, quotidian flow of things. The fetid backwaters of the past seep back; the proletariat sinks into indolence and cynicism. And even in its triumphant moments, it exhibits a want of consciousness in the choice of its leaders. The ‘instinctive sense of reality’ attributed to it by Auguste Comte, which it so readily reflects in many a circumstance, abandons it at such moments. Its courage and self-sacrifice are not enough to give it what, precisely, is needed in order to act out the role assigned to it by Marx: political capacity. What the proletariat is incapable of achieving is a leadership which will be faithful to its interests, will understand and defend them boldly, imaginatively, and tenaciously.”
Some workers – even those entirely free from idealized conceptions about the working class – may resent such sweeping charges of laziness, cynicism and stupidity. But Vannier wouldn’t want them to think he is indulging in mere name-calling.
For while he rejects Marx’s view that the conditions of capitalist production and decay inevitably prepare and drive the workers toward socialism, he does not at all reject all concepts of historical “inevitability.” A careful reading of the above quotation, and in fact of the whole article, will show that he is here presenting us with a veritable law, operating everywhere that capitalism exists. No matter, what happens in the class struggle, whether the workers, win, lose or draw, under the Vannierian Law they are inexorably doomed to sink back, deprived qf the fruits of their struggle. So don’t take it personally, workers. What must be, must be.
It’s not clear if this is another manifestation of the notorious shortcoming in “human nature” which the propagandists of Big Business point to as the basis of the permanence of capitalism, or if it is a characteristic only of people who work for a living. But what seems clear, once you accept this idea, is that there’s not much the workers can do about it, one way or another.
The Landlord and His Mortgage
Anyhow, like the hard-hearted landlord in the Victorian melodrama, Vannier now wants to foreclose the mortgage. But the Marxists never signed any mortgage putting a 100-year limit on their struggle and prediction that the workers would achieve their historic role. What the Marxists promised was that as long as capitalism endures, the working class struggle for socialism will endure too, and that the outcome of this struggle will be either socialism – or the destruction of society.
Reminding us that Marx and Engels compared the future triumph of the workers over capitalism to the earlier triumph of the capitalists over feudalism, Vannier insists that “the differences rather than the similarities must be emphasized.” (Of course the Marxists have always recognized the differences as well as the similarities, even if they reached conclusions directly opposite to Vannier’s.) And he proceeds to emphasize the differences to show what relative advantages the capitalists had when they fought for power, laying particular stress on the argument that the capitalists, unlike the workers, “as a whole ... understood very well how to take hold of society.”
That brings us right to the question of Vannier’s time limit. If the capitalists were in a better position to take power than the workers are today, then why did it take them so long? As is well known, they did not complete their revolutionary tasks within a 100-year period such as Vannier now seeks to saddle onto the workers. On the contrary, the capitalists’ rise to power took a much longer time than the life span of the modern industrial working class. Their struggle had its ups and downs too, its partial victories and sometimes staggering defeats, and in most countries it took two or three centuries before they won their full victory. Should they have given the whole thing up as a bad job at the end of the first 100 years?
The bourgeois revolutionists of the 18th and 19th centuries would not have shown much patience with the Vanniers of their day who came around – on the eve of decisive battles – to inform them that since they hadn’t succeeded in winning power during the first 100 years of their struggle, they had thereby demonstrated their “political incapacity” and had better retire to the sidelines to “grow in guilt” while thinking the whole thing over. Nor will the 20th-century revolutionary workers be diverted front the prosecution of their life-and-death struggle to save humanity by the sermons of the modern skeptics, cravens and renegades.
(Next Week: The Workers and their Leaders)
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(23 November 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_47" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 47</a>, 23 November 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>A Letter About the U.G.E. Article</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“I read with a considerable amount, of interest your remarks on the stand taken by the United Government Employees at their recent convention in Washington. I also read in the same issue the resolution of the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in which they give their position on the relation of the Negro to the armed forces.</p>
<p class="quote">“I find myself in agreement with most of what was said in both articles, but there is at least one thing which I am not sure I understand.</p>
<p class="quote">“In your party's resolution, under Point 5, is the following paragraph discussing the question of mixed or separate regiments:</p>
<p class="quote">“‘Because many Negroes have had personal experience of discrimination and segregation inflicted on them by backward workers in factories and in trade unions, a sentiment may arise in the course of the struggle for union control of military training for the right of Negro soldiers to choose for themselves whether they shall be in mixed regiments or in all-Negro regiments. In such a case we must pledge ourselves to support the right of the Negro soldiers to determine the question for themselves ...</p>
<p class="quote">“However, on the very next page, in your article on the United Government Employees, there occurs a case where a group of Negroes themselves have met and decided that they prefer separate regiments as long as they get colored officers— and you attack them very strongly for this. I do not dispute your attacking them, as I believe you were well justified in this. They were not considering the interests of the Negro people, they were carrying on a political fight to elect. Roosevelt and to cover up that be had announced a policy in the army that was aimed at Negroes. I also accept the other reasons you gave for attacking them.</p>
<p class="quote">“But what I do not understand is how this jibes with your party’s resolution which as I understand it says that Negroes themselves should have the right to determine this question.</p>
<p class="quote">“It seems to me that you owe your readers a bit of explanation on this contradiction. I feel that you should have discussed this, at least, in your article.”<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Answer to the Letter</h4>
<p class="fst">We do not find any inconsistency in the article on the U.G.E.’s endorsement on Roosevelt’s Jim Crow military policy and in the resolution our party has adopted on military policy.</p>
<p>We condemned the Edgar Brown-U.G.E. policy for the following reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>It was dictated by the political needs of the Roosevelt administration, not by the demands of the Negro people for equal rights in all phases of American life. Some Negro group was needed to win back the votes that were endangered or lost when Roosevelt himself said that the Jim Crow policies in the armed forces had proved “satisfactory over a long period of years.” As such, the U.G.E. resolution is an endorsement of the theory that the Negro is different and inferior, because that is the principle underlying segregation in the army. That means an endorsement and acceptance of Jim Crow policies everywhere!<br>
</li>
<li>The separate regiment policy cannot protect Negroes, even if they have Negro officers. What they have to be protected from is special choice for the menial, flunkey jobs and the assignments to duty in situations where mens’ lives are thrown away like matchsticks. Because the Negro soldiers will be off by themselves, the Jim Crow general staff, as long as it controls things, will always be able to pick them out for “special assignment,” as they did so often in the last war.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">Now what, on the other hand, does the fight for the right of the Negroes to decide the question imply?</p>
<p>First of all, it implies a fight against the government policy. The ruling class says, “Negroes must go into separate regiments, whether they like it or not, because we think it’s most satisfactory.” That is, since under the present policy Negroes don’t have any say in the matter, the first thing they must do is fight against the official policy that denies them any voice in the matter and segregates them at the same time.</p>
<p>Secondly, it means a fight for control of military training. Whoever controls military training is in a position to decide what happens to the soldiers, colored as well as white. A struggle for the right of the Negroes to determine whether they shall be in mixed or separate regiments means a struggle to take control from the officer caste that runs things today and to put it into the hands of the soldiers themselves.</p>
<p>How different this is, then, from the hat-in-hand, body-braced-for-a-kick attitude of Brown and his cohorts.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In short,” said the resolution of the Socialist Workers Party, “we differentiate between <em>segregation</em> under bosses’ control and <em>self-determination</em> under workers’ control. We are against the first, we are for the right of the second. It is part of our program, but is not a field for extensive agitation at this time.”</p>
<p class="fst">But our letter writer is correct in saying that in our article on Brown we should have contrasted his attitude with our own position on the question of “self-determination" on the question of mixed or separate regiments.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>Correction</h4>
<p class="fst">In <a href="negros3.html#pt2" target="new">our column last week</a> on the effect of the poll tax in eight southern states, we said “only about 10% (of the adult population) can enter the voting booths.” This is not correct. More near the figure for the presidential election of 1936 would be about 20%, although in some places it is 10%. This does not change the point of the article, for the figure of 60% quoted for the rest of the country is still correct./p>
</p><p class="link"> <br>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(23 November 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 47, 23 November 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A Letter About the U.G.E. Article
“I read with a considerable amount, of interest your remarks on the stand taken by the United Government Employees at their recent convention in Washington. I also read in the same issue the resolution of the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in which they give their position on the relation of the Negro to the armed forces.
“I find myself in agreement with most of what was said in both articles, but there is at least one thing which I am not sure I understand.
“In your party's resolution, under Point 5, is the following paragraph discussing the question of mixed or separate regiments:
“‘Because many Negroes have had personal experience of discrimination and segregation inflicted on them by backward workers in factories and in trade unions, a sentiment may arise in the course of the struggle for union control of military training for the right of Negro soldiers to choose for themselves whether they shall be in mixed regiments or in all-Negro regiments. In such a case we must pledge ourselves to support the right of the Negro soldiers to determine the question for themselves ...
“However, on the very next page, in your article on the United Government Employees, there occurs a case where a group of Negroes themselves have met and decided that they prefer separate regiments as long as they get colored officers— and you attack them very strongly for this. I do not dispute your attacking them, as I believe you were well justified in this. They were not considering the interests of the Negro people, they were carrying on a political fight to elect. Roosevelt and to cover up that be had announced a policy in the army that was aimed at Negroes. I also accept the other reasons you gave for attacking them.
“But what I do not understand is how this jibes with your party’s resolution which as I understand it says that Negroes themselves should have the right to determine this question.
“It seems to me that you owe your readers a bit of explanation on this contradiction. I feel that you should have discussed this, at least, in your article.”
Answer to the Letter
We do not find any inconsistency in the article on the U.G.E.’s endorsement on Roosevelt’s Jim Crow military policy and in the resolution our party has adopted on military policy.
We condemned the Edgar Brown-U.G.E. policy for the following reasons:
It was dictated by the political needs of the Roosevelt administration, not by the demands of the Negro people for equal rights in all phases of American life. Some Negro group was needed to win back the votes that were endangered or lost when Roosevelt himself said that the Jim Crow policies in the armed forces had proved “satisfactory over a long period of years.” As such, the U.G.E. resolution is an endorsement of the theory that the Negro is different and inferior, because that is the principle underlying segregation in the army. That means an endorsement and acceptance of Jim Crow policies everywhere!
The separate regiment policy cannot protect Negroes, even if they have Negro officers. What they have to be protected from is special choice for the menial, flunkey jobs and the assignments to duty in situations where mens’ lives are thrown away like matchsticks. Because the Negro soldiers will be off by themselves, the Jim Crow general staff, as long as it controls things, will always be able to pick them out for “special assignment,” as they did so often in the last war.
Now what, on the other hand, does the fight for the right of the Negroes to decide the question imply?
First of all, it implies a fight against the government policy. The ruling class says, “Negroes must go into separate regiments, whether they like it or not, because we think it’s most satisfactory.” That is, since under the present policy Negroes don’t have any say in the matter, the first thing they must do is fight against the official policy that denies them any voice in the matter and segregates them at the same time.
Secondly, it means a fight for control of military training. Whoever controls military training is in a position to decide what happens to the soldiers, colored as well as white. A struggle for the right of the Negroes to determine whether they shall be in mixed or separate regiments means a struggle to take control from the officer caste that runs things today and to put it into the hands of the soldiers themselves.
How different this is, then, from the hat-in-hand, body-braced-for-a-kick attitude of Brown and his cohorts.
“In short,” said the resolution of the Socialist Workers Party, “we differentiate between segregation under bosses’ control and self-determination under workers’ control. We are against the first, we are for the right of the second. It is part of our program, but is not a field for extensive agitation at this time.”
But our letter writer is correct in saying that in our article on Brown we should have contrasted his attitude with our own position on the question of “self-determination" on the question of mixed or separate regiments.
Correction
In our column last week on the effect of the poll tax in eight southern states, we said “only about 10% (of the adult population) can enter the voting booths.” This is not correct. More near the figure for the presidential election of 1936 would be about 20%, although in some places it is 10%. This does not change the point of the article, for the figure of 60% quoted for the rest of the country is still correct./p>
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(12 October 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_41" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 41</a>, 12 October 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Jim Crow in the Galley</h4>
<p class="fst">In this week’s issue of the <b>Pittsburgh Courier</b> there is a letter from 15 colored men now serving on the <i>U.S.S. Philadelphia</i>, stationed at Pearl Harbor, in which they bitterly condemn the Jim Crow system in the Navy, and sound a warning to all Negro youth considering entering this branch of the service.</p>
<p><i>Consider how they must have been driven and aroused, before they would write and sign a letter of this kind – when they are still in the Navy, and still under control of the southern officer caste who run the ship!</i></p>
<p>They write:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“On enlisting, we are given the same mental and physical examination as the white sailors and given to believe that we have the privilege of choosing any branch of the service the Navy offers. This is not true.</p>
<p class="quote">“With three months of training in making beds, shining shoes and serving officers completed, we are sent to various ships and stations of the Navy.</p>
<p class="quote">“The white sailor, after completing his training period, is not only eligible for the branch of service he has chosen, but he is automatically advanced in rating and his pay is increased to $36 a month without even having to take an examination.</p>
<p class="quote">“In our case, we have to be in the service a full year at $21 a month before we are eligible for advancement rating. It is also necessary for us to take a competitive examination. Even if we pass, it doesn’t mean necessarily that we will be rated and have our pay increased to $36 a month.</p>
<p class="quote">“On this ship, out of a crew of 750, there are 18 colored boys. ranging in ages from 18 to 25. They are fresh out of high school and some have a year or two of college education.</p>
<p class="quote">“Their work is limited to waiting on table and making beds for the officers.</p>
<p class="quote">“In the last nine months there have been nine mess attendants given solitary confinement on bread and water.</p>
<p class="quote">“Five of the nine were given brig time because of fighting and arguments with other enlisted men. From this you will probably think we are a pretty bad bunch. We are not.</p>
<p class="quote">“With the treading on and kicking around we receive here (without being able to do anything about it), every last one of us becomes bitter enough to fight a member of our own family.</p>
<p class="quote">“We, the mess attendants of the Philadelphia, are not merely stating these facts because of our own plight. In doing so, we sincerely hope to discourage any other colored boys from joining the Navy and make the same mistake we did.</p>
<p class="quote">“All they would became is sea-going bell hops, chambermaids and dishwashers.</p>
<p class="quote">“We take it upon ourselves to write this letter, regardless of any action the Naval authorities may take or whatever the consequences may be.</p>
<p class="quote">“We only know that it could not possibly surpass the mental cruelty inflicted upon us on this ship.”</p>
<p class="fst">And the letter ends with their signatures.</p>
<p>The same bitter story is told in an anonymous article in the July issue of <b>The Crisis</b>, monthly magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., written by a colored man on a warship whose home station is Long Beach, California.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>U.S. Government’s Color Line</h4>
<p class="fst">It points out that contrary to popular belief:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Negroes cannot become petty officers or chief petty officers. The highest rank that can be obtained is officers’ cook or steward, and even though a steward, one is still looked upon as a mess attendant.”</p>
<p class="quote">“After all, he is a mess attendant. Just a mess attendant. Or shall we say ‘officer’s boy’. His duties consist of serving officers’ meals, cleaning officers’ rooms, shining their shoes, checking their laundry, running errands for them, caring for their uniforms, etc.”</p>
<p class="quote">“The white officer is usually the type to persecute. He can and does make your career difficult for you, because he knows that you cannot defend yourself.</p>
<p class="quote">“Our Negro sailors should he warned never to show a spark of intelligence if they want to spend four years in the navy. Everyone does his best to keep a smart Negro ‘in his place’. If one doesn’t mind being insulted by his superiors, if he is the kind that wants to be the rag under the white man’s feet, if he is willing to stand by while others make ratings, then he is the type the navy wants. He is the type that will make a success as a messman.</p>
<p class="quote">“Most Negroes find that four years in the navy is much too much for them. Proof of this fact is evident in the fact that only 1% re-enlist for another four years. This shows conclusively the attitude of the modern Negro toward white supremacy and bigotry.”</p>
<p class="quote">“I would like to offer one suggestion, as this situation deeply concerns every Negro in America. Let’s not sit and talk, and wait for sympathy. The Navy department, and the government, can and will give you your equal rights when, and only when, you have fought and successfully demanded them.”</p>
<p class="fst">Fight against Jim Crow in the armed forces by demanding workers’ control of military training and service!</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(12 October 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 41, 12 October 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Jim Crow in the Galley
In this week’s issue of the Pittsburgh Courier there is a letter from 15 colored men now serving on the U.S.S. Philadelphia, stationed at Pearl Harbor, in which they bitterly condemn the Jim Crow system in the Navy, and sound a warning to all Negro youth considering entering this branch of the service.
Consider how they must have been driven and aroused, before they would write and sign a letter of this kind – when they are still in the Navy, and still under control of the southern officer caste who run the ship!
They write:
“On enlisting, we are given the same mental and physical examination as the white sailors and given to believe that we have the privilege of choosing any branch of the service the Navy offers. This is not true.
“With three months of training in making beds, shining shoes and serving officers completed, we are sent to various ships and stations of the Navy.
“The white sailor, after completing his training period, is not only eligible for the branch of service he has chosen, but he is automatically advanced in rating and his pay is increased to $36 a month without even having to take an examination.
“In our case, we have to be in the service a full year at $21 a month before we are eligible for advancement rating. It is also necessary for us to take a competitive examination. Even if we pass, it doesn’t mean necessarily that we will be rated and have our pay increased to $36 a month.
“On this ship, out of a crew of 750, there are 18 colored boys. ranging in ages from 18 to 25. They are fresh out of high school and some have a year or two of college education.
“Their work is limited to waiting on table and making beds for the officers.
“In the last nine months there have been nine mess attendants given solitary confinement on bread and water.
“Five of the nine were given brig time because of fighting and arguments with other enlisted men. From this you will probably think we are a pretty bad bunch. We are not.
“With the treading on and kicking around we receive here (without being able to do anything about it), every last one of us becomes bitter enough to fight a member of our own family.
“We, the mess attendants of the Philadelphia, are not merely stating these facts because of our own plight. In doing so, we sincerely hope to discourage any other colored boys from joining the Navy and make the same mistake we did.
“All they would became is sea-going bell hops, chambermaids and dishwashers.
“We take it upon ourselves to write this letter, regardless of any action the Naval authorities may take or whatever the consequences may be.
“We only know that it could not possibly surpass the mental cruelty inflicted upon us on this ship.”
And the letter ends with their signatures.
The same bitter story is told in an anonymous article in the July issue of The Crisis, monthly magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., written by a colored man on a warship whose home station is Long Beach, California.
U.S. Government’s Color Line
It points out that contrary to popular belief:
“Negroes cannot become petty officers or chief petty officers. The highest rank that can be obtained is officers’ cook or steward, and even though a steward, one is still looked upon as a mess attendant.”
“After all, he is a mess attendant. Just a mess attendant. Or shall we say ‘officer’s boy’. His duties consist of serving officers’ meals, cleaning officers’ rooms, shining their shoes, checking their laundry, running errands for them, caring for their uniforms, etc.”
“The white officer is usually the type to persecute. He can and does make your career difficult for you, because he knows that you cannot defend yourself.
“Our Negro sailors should he warned never to show a spark of intelligence if they want to spend four years in the navy. Everyone does his best to keep a smart Negro ‘in his place’. If one doesn’t mind being insulted by his superiors, if he is the kind that wants to be the rag under the white man’s feet, if he is willing to stand by while others make ratings, then he is the type the navy wants. He is the type that will make a success as a messman.
“Most Negroes find that four years in the navy is much too much for them. Proof of this fact is evident in the fact that only 1% re-enlist for another four years. This shows conclusively the attitude of the modern Negro toward white supremacy and bigotry.”
“I would like to offer one suggestion, as this situation deeply concerns every Negro in America. Let’s not sit and talk, and wait for sympathy. The Navy department, and the government, can and will give you your equal rights when, and only when, you have fought and successfully demanded them.”
Fight against Jim Crow in the armed forces by demanding workers’ control of military training and service!
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Defend Frank Barnes!</h1>
<h3>(24 May 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_21" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 21</a>, 24 May 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The Frank Barnes case in Santa Monica, California, teaches three important lessons to the Negro people in all parts of the country.</p> <o1>
<li>That the Truman administration, despite its promises to institute a civil rights program, is actually an accomplice of the capitalist class in preserving Jim Crow practices in employment.<br>
</li>
<li>That government witch hunts serve to undermine every progressive movement, including the fight for Negro rights.<br>
</li>
<li>That it is necessary to fight harder than ever before against Jim Crow and red-baiting, or else the Negro people will be deprived even of the few rights they now have.</li>
<p class="fst">Frank Barnes is the president of the Santa Monica NAACP branch and of the United Committee to End Discrimination at Sears, which the NAACP and two dozen other labor, Negro and civic organizations formed in order to win jobs for Negroes at the local store of Sears, Roebuck and Co. In this capacity Barnes did an excellent job, leading a struggle on the picket line which effectively cut down trade. Sears tried first of all to get the picketing prohibited and then, when mass protest prevented that, decided to go after Barnes himself.</p>
<p>Barnes makes his living as a mail carrier, that is, he works for the government. Sears therefore took its case to the Post Office and quickly Succeeded in getting Truman’s Postmaster General, Jesse M. Donaldson, to suspend Barnes on the charge that he is “disloyal to the government of the United States”! Why? Had he expressed any such disloyalty, had he called for the overthrow of the government? He obviously had not. But, said the Truman administration, Barnes was guilty of being “affiliated or sympathetic with an organization, association, movement, group, or combination of persons designated by the Attorney General as subversive.” Proof? One of the organizations affiliated with the United Committee to End Discrimination at Sears was the Communist Party.</p>
<p>And so Barnes has been deprived of his job in the Post Office, pending a hearing before the Loyalty Board. As in Hitlerite Germany and Stalinist Russia, a man can be persecuted not only for what he thinks or does, but even for the company he keeps and the people he associates with. That is the brand of democracy the ruling class is preparing a new world war to defend, and which they will order the Negro and white workers to shed their blood for.</p>
<p>This practice of “guilt by association,” if permitted to continue, will destroy democratic rights altogether. For that reason alone it is necessary for the labor and Negro movements to rally to the defense of Frank Barnes and force his unconditional reinstatement. But there is another and equally urgent reason, which will be quickly recognized by anyone studying this case: What the government is really driving to put over with this persecution is the notion that militant opposition to Jim Crow can be punished as “disloyalty to the government of the United States.” If they can get away with that, then naked dictatorship will be around the corner.</p>
<p>Some people hope that, as the outbreak of the next war approaches, the government is going to soften up and get rid of some of the Jim Crow regulations and practices. But if you disregard the token gestures and third-rate concessions, you can see that the reverse of such hopes seems to be the case. Instead of getting softer, capitalism in its death agony is accentuating its get-tough policies not only abroad but at home as well, not only against labor but also against the minorities.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Defend Frank Barnes!
(24 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 21, 24 May 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Frank Barnes case in Santa Monica, California, teaches three important lessons to the Negro people in all parts of the country.
That the Truman administration, despite its promises to institute a civil rights program, is actually an accomplice of the capitalist class in preserving Jim Crow practices in employment.
That government witch hunts serve to undermine every progressive movement, including the fight for Negro rights.
That it is necessary to fight harder than ever before against Jim Crow and red-baiting, or else the Negro people will be deprived even of the few rights they now have.
Frank Barnes is the president of the Santa Monica NAACP branch and of the United Committee to End Discrimination at Sears, which the NAACP and two dozen other labor, Negro and civic organizations formed in order to win jobs for Negroes at the local store of Sears, Roebuck and Co. In this capacity Barnes did an excellent job, leading a struggle on the picket line which effectively cut down trade. Sears tried first of all to get the picketing prohibited and then, when mass protest prevented that, decided to go after Barnes himself.
Barnes makes his living as a mail carrier, that is, he works for the government. Sears therefore took its case to the Post Office and quickly Succeeded in getting Truman’s Postmaster General, Jesse M. Donaldson, to suspend Barnes on the charge that he is “disloyal to the government of the United States”! Why? Had he expressed any such disloyalty, had he called for the overthrow of the government? He obviously had not. But, said the Truman administration, Barnes was guilty of being “affiliated or sympathetic with an organization, association, movement, group, or combination of persons designated by the Attorney General as subversive.” Proof? One of the organizations affiliated with the United Committee to End Discrimination at Sears was the Communist Party.
And so Barnes has been deprived of his job in the Post Office, pending a hearing before the Loyalty Board. As in Hitlerite Germany and Stalinist Russia, a man can be persecuted not only for what he thinks or does, but even for the company he keeps and the people he associates with. That is the brand of democracy the ruling class is preparing a new world war to defend, and which they will order the Negro and white workers to shed their blood for.
This practice of “guilt by association,” if permitted to continue, will destroy democratic rights altogether. For that reason alone it is necessary for the labor and Negro movements to rally to the defense of Frank Barnes and force his unconditional reinstatement. But there is another and equally urgent reason, which will be quickly recognized by anyone studying this case: What the government is really driving to put over with this persecution is the notion that militant opposition to Jim Crow can be punished as “disloyalty to the government of the United States.” If they can get away with that, then naked dictatorship will be around the corner.
Some people hope that, as the outbreak of the next war approaches, the government is going to soften up and get rid of some of the Jim Crow regulations and practices. But if you disregard the token gestures and third-rate concessions, you can see that the reverse of such hopes seems to be the case. Instead of getting softer, capitalism in its death agony is accentuating its get-tough policies not only abroad but at home as well, not only against labor but also against the minorities.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(7 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_49" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 49</a>, 7 December 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>The Army Is the Boss!</h4>
<p class="fst">Roosevelt knows how to put over his policy of Jim Crowism in the armed forces in a smooth and polished manner, but not all his assistants have the same experience and technique that he has. They often bungle and show the truth of the situation which his sweet words cover up.</p>
<p>For example, take the case of Brigadier General Hershey of the Selective Service Administration, one of the men in charge of the draft.</p>
<p>When he was asked in a recent interview how it happened that the administration was segregating colored soldiers and sailors when the Selective Service Act had a provision prohibiting racial discrimination in the armed forces, he replied:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The act says there is to be no discrimination, <em>the act also says that no man may come into the army who is not acceptable to the army</em>. The navy, of course, is worse, and the marines will not accept colored applicants. I regret this state, but, <em>unfortunately the army gets the final say</em>.”</p>
<p class="fst">And then, as if to make sure that everybody got the point, he said, in discussing the policy of separate regiments for colored men:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The selective service system has nothing to do with where the man goes. We are purchasing agents. What they do later is of no interest to us ... <em>Even though the act provides against discrimination, the army has the right, to introduce the question of acceptability.</em>”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>A Scabby Role</h4>
<p class="fst">We have had occasion in the past to criticize the action of Edgar Brown, head of the United Government Employees, in approving Roosevelt’s Jim Crow policies in the armed forces, and to point out how he in this way played into the hands of the Negro people.</p>
<p>Now comes new testimony to corroborate our charges against him.</p>
<p>For last week, Judge William Hastie, civilian aide to Secretary of War Stimson, issued a statement which by implication at least tries to divert part of the blame from Roosevelt. Said he:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“divided opinion among colored citizens on the problem of segregation in the army makes for great difficulty in solving the problem. As long as people who are opposed to mixed units are able to point to colored persons as also agreeing with this position, our problem is extremely difficult ...”</p>
<p class="fst">Usually, when the great majority of the workers in a factory have organized a union and presented demands to the bosses for a contract and better conditions, one or two scabs appeal’ "who say that the boss is a great guy and doing what he can to help the workers, and so on, and the bosses always point to these scabs as justification of their attempts to smash the union. Brown is playing the same role as a scab in the fight against Jim Crowism.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>It’s Always There</h4>
<p class="fst">In Philadelphia last week “the city’s business, professional and military leaders” threw a luncheon at the exclusive Manufacturers’ and Bankers’ Club in honor of the first 150 young men they were sending off to the draft from that city. Among these were 16 colored men.</p>
<p>Then, the story goes, “twenty gifts were presented each of them by mid-city merchants and pretty girls pinned carnations on their lapels.”</p>
<p>Then Judge Vincent A. Carroll, a colonel in the Cavalry Reserves, had a speech to make about the Negroes and “national defense.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“You are showing the world,” said he, “that the Negro people of this nation have at heart the maintenance of democratic freedom, as they have since Crispus Attucks, one of their race, lost his life on Boston Common with the other patriot martyrs of the Revolution.”</p>
<p class="fst">But the photograph of the affair printed in the newspapers shows – yes, you guessed it – the 16 Negroes segregated off at a separate table!</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="pt4"></a>
<h4>Cavalrymen Won’t Be Jim Crowed</h4>
<p class="fst">An interesting story was printed in the <strong>Afro-American</strong> last week, telling of the determination of several members of the Tenth Cavalry situated at Fort Dix, N.J., not to be Jim Crowed.</p>
<p>Motion pictures were being shown at the post ’ theatre, and those in charge of it attempted to segregate Negro soldiers into one part of the building. They refused to be party to such an act, and left the theatre, demanding their money back.</p>
<p>But the most interesting part of the story tells the complaint of one of the men to the <strong>Afro</strong> reporter:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The colored soldier is not promoted because of his character, intelligence and ability, he said, he is promoted because of his docile attitude, his inability to think for himself, and his willingness to accept orders from his superiors in a ‘hat-in-hand manner.’ The order to segregate the soldiers at the post theatre would be rescinded if our (colored) officers demand it, he said.”</p>
<p class="fst">This emphasizes again the need for a system of military training under control of the trade unions, which would end discrimination and segregation, and would establish special officers’ training camps to train workers to become officers, so that the worker-soldiers would have officers on whom they could depend to fight for their rights.</p>
<p>Next week we shall discuss the widely publicized <a href="negros2.htm" target="new"><em>Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense</em></a>, held at Hampton Institute, Va., and see what if anything it contributed to the fight for equality in the armed forces./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(7 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 49, 7 December 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Army Is the Boss!
Roosevelt knows how to put over his policy of Jim Crowism in the armed forces in a smooth and polished manner, but not all his assistants have the same experience and technique that he has. They often bungle and show the truth of the situation which his sweet words cover up.
For example, take the case of Brigadier General Hershey of the Selective Service Administration, one of the men in charge of the draft.
When he was asked in a recent interview how it happened that the administration was segregating colored soldiers and sailors when the Selective Service Act had a provision prohibiting racial discrimination in the armed forces, he replied:
“The act says there is to be no discrimination, the act also says that no man may come into the army who is not acceptable to the army. The navy, of course, is worse, and the marines will not accept colored applicants. I regret this state, but, unfortunately the army gets the final say.”
And then, as if to make sure that everybody got the point, he said, in discussing the policy of separate regiments for colored men:
“The selective service system has nothing to do with where the man goes. We are purchasing agents. What they do later is of no interest to us ... Even though the act provides against discrimination, the army has the right, to introduce the question of acceptability.”
* * *
A Scabby Role
We have had occasion in the past to criticize the action of Edgar Brown, head of the United Government Employees, in approving Roosevelt’s Jim Crow policies in the armed forces, and to point out how he in this way played into the hands of the Negro people.
Now comes new testimony to corroborate our charges against him.
For last week, Judge William Hastie, civilian aide to Secretary of War Stimson, issued a statement which by implication at least tries to divert part of the blame from Roosevelt. Said he:
“divided opinion among colored citizens on the problem of segregation in the army makes for great difficulty in solving the problem. As long as people who are opposed to mixed units are able to point to colored persons as also agreeing with this position, our problem is extremely difficult ...”
Usually, when the great majority of the workers in a factory have organized a union and presented demands to the bosses for a contract and better conditions, one or two scabs appeal’ "who say that the boss is a great guy and doing what he can to help the workers, and so on, and the bosses always point to these scabs as justification of their attempts to smash the union. Brown is playing the same role as a scab in the fight against Jim Crowism.
* * *
It’s Always There
In Philadelphia last week “the city’s business, professional and military leaders” threw a luncheon at the exclusive Manufacturers’ and Bankers’ Club in honor of the first 150 young men they were sending off to the draft from that city. Among these were 16 colored men.
Then, the story goes, “twenty gifts were presented each of them by mid-city merchants and pretty girls pinned carnations on their lapels.”
Then Judge Vincent A. Carroll, a colonel in the Cavalry Reserves, had a speech to make about the Negroes and “national defense.”
“You are showing the world,” said he, “that the Negro people of this nation have at heart the maintenance of democratic freedom, as they have since Crispus Attucks, one of their race, lost his life on Boston Common with the other patriot martyrs of the Revolution.”
But the photograph of the affair printed in the newspapers shows – yes, you guessed it – the 16 Negroes segregated off at a separate table!
* * *
Cavalrymen Won’t Be Jim Crowed
An interesting story was printed in the Afro-American last week, telling of the determination of several members of the Tenth Cavalry situated at Fort Dix, N.J., not to be Jim Crowed.
Motion pictures were being shown at the post ’ theatre, and those in charge of it attempted to segregate Negro soldiers into one part of the building. They refused to be party to such an act, and left the theatre, demanding their money back.
But the most interesting part of the story tells the complaint of one of the men to the Afro reporter:
“The colored soldier is not promoted because of his character, intelligence and ability, he said, he is promoted because of his docile attitude, his inability to think for himself, and his willingness to accept orders from his superiors in a ‘hat-in-hand manner.’ The order to segregate the soldiers at the post theatre would be rescinded if our (colored) officers demand it, he said.”
This emphasizes again the need for a system of military training under control of the trade unions, which would end discrimination and segregation, and would establish special officers’ training camps to train workers to become officers, so that the worker-soldiers would have officers on whom they could depend to fight for their rights.
Next week we shall discuss the widely publicized Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense, held at Hampton Institute, Va., and see what if anything it contributed to the fight for equality in the armed forces./p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>The Cause of Race Prejudice</h1>
<h3>(29 March 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_13" target="new">Vol. XII No. 13</a>, 29 March 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Although it is now two months since the publication of Oliver C. Cox’s book – <strong>Caste, Class and Race</strong> (Doubleday and Co., $7.50) – very little attention has been given to this scholarly work by the capitalist press. This annoys us because in our opinion it is the most important book published in this country since the war and by far the best ever written by an American on the question of race prejudice.</p>
<p>It is interesting to contrast this with the big build-up a few years ago for a book that really isn’t in the same class – Myrdal’s <strong>An American Dilemma</strong>. Of course, you don’t have to search far to learn the reason for the different receptions given these books. Myrdal’s represents an apology for the <em>status quo</em>, implying that race prejudice presents a problem that only time can solve. On the other hand, Cox’s book, despite certain defects, leads to profoundly revolutionary conclusions, showing that Negro oppression is product of capitalism and can be ended by socialism.</p>
<p>Perhaps we can indicate the value of this book by referring to the section analyzing the theories of the conservative, orthodox and non-revolutionary schools of thought on race relations in the U.S. Among those dealt with are:</p>
<p class="fst">The Theory that race prejudice is due to some fundamental color antipathy between the races. The theory that it is due to “custom” or the “irrational upthrust of primitive folk attitudes.” The theory that it can be explained by “ethnocentrism,” that is, “the view of things in which one’s own group, is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated in reference to it.” The theory of race prejudice as a “belief” without regard for the “materialistic” source of the rationalization.”</p>
<p>After presenting these and other theories objectively, the author subjects them to historical and materialistic tests, exposing all their contradictions, shortcomings, reactionary implications and scientific worthlessness. On the contrary, he shows, “the race problem developed out of the need of the planter class, the ruling class, to keep the freed Negro exploitable. To do this, the ruling class had to do what every ruling class must do; that is, develop mass support for its policy. Race prejudice was and is the convenient vehicle.”</p>
<p>Then there is the large school of writers relying on the theory of the caste system as their guide to the study of race relations in the U.S. Actually, as Dr. Cox demonstrates on the basis of a detailed examination of the caste system in India, this analogy has no basis whatever, either historically or sociologically. It falsely assumes that each of the races isolates itself, thus denying the aspirations of the Negroes for equality of social opportunity, and implying at best that segregation is the real solution.</p>
<p>Dr. Cox also deals effectively with the Myrdal book, which presents a variation of the caste theory. Myrdal’s approach is shown to be based on a misrepresentation of the problem as a “moral issue,” void of all class analysis, and as a “mistaken” or “wicked” idea shared by all the whites equally, and thus in effect exonerating the ruling class from its responsibility for instigating and promoting race prejudice.</p>
<p>Finally, for the benefit of those who think the answer lies in “education,” we present this quotation from Dr. Cox:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We cannot defeat race prejudice by proving that it is wrong. The reason for this is that race prejudice is only a symptom of a materialistic social fact. If, for instance, we should discover by ‘scientific’ method that Negroes and Chinese are ‘superior’ to tall, long-skulled blonds ... then, to the powers that be, so much the worse for Negroes and Chinese. Our proof accomplishes nothing. The articulate white man’s ideas about his racial superiority are rooted deeply in the social system, and it can be corrected only by changing the system itself.”</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
The Cause of Race Prejudice
(29 March 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 13, 29 March 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Although it is now two months since the publication of Oliver C. Cox’s book – Caste, Class and Race (Doubleday and Co., $7.50) – very little attention has been given to this scholarly work by the capitalist press. This annoys us because in our opinion it is the most important book published in this country since the war and by far the best ever written by an American on the question of race prejudice.
It is interesting to contrast this with the big build-up a few years ago for a book that really isn’t in the same class – Myrdal’s An American Dilemma. Of course, you don’t have to search far to learn the reason for the different receptions given these books. Myrdal’s represents an apology for the status quo, implying that race prejudice presents a problem that only time can solve. On the other hand, Cox’s book, despite certain defects, leads to profoundly revolutionary conclusions, showing that Negro oppression is product of capitalism and can be ended by socialism.
Perhaps we can indicate the value of this book by referring to the section analyzing the theories of the conservative, orthodox and non-revolutionary schools of thought on race relations in the U.S. Among those dealt with are:
The Theory that race prejudice is due to some fundamental color antipathy between the races. The theory that it is due to “custom” or the “irrational upthrust of primitive folk attitudes.” The theory that it can be explained by “ethnocentrism,” that is, “the view of things in which one’s own group, is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated in reference to it.” The theory of race prejudice as a “belief” without regard for the “materialistic” source of the rationalization.”
After presenting these and other theories objectively, the author subjects them to historical and materialistic tests, exposing all their contradictions, shortcomings, reactionary implications and scientific worthlessness. On the contrary, he shows, “the race problem developed out of the need of the planter class, the ruling class, to keep the freed Negro exploitable. To do this, the ruling class had to do what every ruling class must do; that is, develop mass support for its policy. Race prejudice was and is the convenient vehicle.”
Then there is the large school of writers relying on the theory of the caste system as their guide to the study of race relations in the U.S. Actually, as Dr. Cox demonstrates on the basis of a detailed examination of the caste system in India, this analogy has no basis whatever, either historically or sociologically. It falsely assumes that each of the races isolates itself, thus denying the aspirations of the Negroes for equality of social opportunity, and implying at best that segregation is the real solution.
Dr. Cox also deals effectively with the Myrdal book, which presents a variation of the caste theory. Myrdal’s approach is shown to be based on a misrepresentation of the problem as a “moral issue,” void of all class analysis, and as a “mistaken” or “wicked” idea shared by all the whites equally, and thus in effect exonerating the ruling class from its responsibility for instigating and promoting race prejudice.
Finally, for the benefit of those who think the answer lies in “education,” we present this quotation from Dr. Cox:
“We cannot defeat race prejudice by proving that it is wrong. The reason for this is that race prejudice is only a symptom of a materialistic social fact. If, for instance, we should discover by ‘scientific’ method that Negroes and Chinese are ‘superior’ to tall, long-skulled blonds ... then, to the powers that be, so much the worse for Negroes and Chinese. Our proof accomplishes nothing. The articulate white man’s ideas about his racial superiority are rooted deeply in the social system, and it can be corrected only by changing the system itself.”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Randolph Calls for<br>
a New Negro Movement</h1>
<h4>Says Million Negroes Must Organize<br>
for a Serious Struggle Against Jim Crowism</h4>
<h3>(27 September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_39" target="new">Vol. V No. 39</a>, 27 September 1941, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">In an article printed in a number of Negro newspapers last week, A. Philip Randolph, president of the AFL Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and national director of the March on Washington Committee, called for the organization of a million Negroes to fight against racial discrimination.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Negroes,” said Randolph, “must no longer think in terms of little units, or small maneuvers. To this end, the March on Washington committees are out to enlist-a million Negroes to increase the striking and driving power of the Negro masses for their rights.</p>
<p class="quote">“Recent history in international and national affairs shows that it is not enough to be right. You must also be powerful. You must also build the machine with which to work and fight for justice.</p>
<p class="quote">“It was just, proper and right for the President to issue an Executive Order in the early stages of discriminations in national defense on account of race, color, religion or national origin as it was proper and just, June 25. But it never happened until the March on Washington movement was launched ...</p>
<p class="quote">“A million Negroes speaking at one time behind one vital issue will shake America and is certain to get a serious and respectful hearing.</p>
<p class="quote">“Let the Negro masses speak through a million voices.”</p>
<p class="fst">Randolph does not indicate whether he is just talking about something that would be nice or whether he plans to go ahead and take concrete steps to actually organize a Negro mass movement.</p>
<p>At any rate, his actual proposals are quite vague. All he says about the organizational work involved in creating such a movement is that it would be “an herculean task” and that “it perhaps will not proceed with a blitzkrieg tempo” because the March on Washington committee “does not have a quarter” and therefore the work will have to be carried forward “with volunteer workers.”</p>
<p>No Negro worker will deny the need for a mass organization that will fight for equality. With production expanding, with talk about democracy increasing on all sides, with their youth being called on to undergo military training, the Negro masses are ready to conduct a vigorous fight for their rights.</p>
<p>Money is not the decisive question. Plenty of organizations with finances cannot win the allegiance of the masses – and for a very good reason. They don’t have the proper program, they don’t have the proper internal structure. These are the [<em>some text appears to be missing here</em>]</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Let the Negro masses speak through a million voices,” says Randolph. Yes, but what words Randolph offer as the program for this organization? Is it going to make deals with the powers that be and call off militant action in return for promises, as the March on Washington Committee did last June? Is it going [<em>some text appears to be missing here</em>]</p>
<p class="fst">Is the organization going to be democratically run? Are the masses going to have the decisive word about the organization’s policies? Or is the organization to be controlled and directed from the top with a small committee not only making day-to-day organizational decisions but also the vital and fundamental decisions of policy?</p>
<p>All that Randolph has said on the question is this: “In it the organization proposed) every Negro will count. The highest will be as low as the lowest and the lowest will be as high as the highest.” This may be the answer in Randolph’s own style. But then again it may only be an evasion of the question.</p>
<p>But Randolph has never asked the masses to decide anything of importance – the program of the March on Washington, the right to decide whether the March should have been called off or carried through, the right to decide on the personnel on the national committee “announced” by Randolph after the March was called off.</p>
<p>Such a handling of questions is not only dangerous for the future of the proposed organization, but it also tends to hold back the initial steps. For many of the local committees will think:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If Randolph doesn’t let us decide what our organization should do on a question like this, what reason do we have to believe that we will be permitted to decide policy later on? What guarantees then will be have against being sold down the river by a leadership over which we have no control?”</p>
<p class="fst">We Trotskyists do not hesitate for a moment to criticize the March on Washington Committee and its shortcomings when our criticisms can serve the interests of the masses. We feel all the more free to do so because from the start we gave wholehearted support to the progressive acts of the movement and defended it at each stage of its development against those forces which attacked it for being “too militant.”</p>
<p>Today we make our criticisms of Randolph’s call not because we are opposed to the creation of a Negro mass movement but because we are in favor of such a movement and want to see. it grow into a powerful force against Jim Crowism. We urge all advanced and class conscious Negroes to join this movement, to support and build it, and to try to make it the kind of organization that will win real successes for the masses. In addition, we urge the Negro people to be vigilant within the organization against any harmful policies or procedure.</p>
<p>If Randolph’s procedure in calling off the March last June had been correct – and we said before and after it happened that no greater mistake could be made – then he would not have to be coming before the people today. and saying that a million Negroes are needed to be “certain to get a serious and respectful hearing” from the ruling class and its government.</p>
<p>We warned that nothing could come of deals with the Jim Crow forces, that Negroes must organize to fight them all the way through. Randolph’s article is proof that we were correct, that his past procedure was incorrect and inadequate.</p>
<p>Negroes can learn much from the lessons of that March, and it is their duty to do so if they want within the proposed organization to avoid the mistakes its leaders have made in the past.</p>
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Albert Parker
Randolph Calls for
a New Negro Movement
Says Million Negroes Must Organize
for a Serious Struggle Against Jim Crowism
(27 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 39, 27 September 1941, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In an article printed in a number of Negro newspapers last week, A. Philip Randolph, president of the AFL Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and national director of the March on Washington Committee, called for the organization of a million Negroes to fight against racial discrimination.
“Negroes,” said Randolph, “must no longer think in terms of little units, or small maneuvers. To this end, the March on Washington committees are out to enlist-a million Negroes to increase the striking and driving power of the Negro masses for their rights.
“Recent history in international and national affairs shows that it is not enough to be right. You must also be powerful. You must also build the machine with which to work and fight for justice.
“It was just, proper and right for the President to issue an Executive Order in the early stages of discriminations in national defense on account of race, color, religion or national origin as it was proper and just, June 25. But it never happened until the March on Washington movement was launched ...
“A million Negroes speaking at one time behind one vital issue will shake America and is certain to get a serious and respectful hearing.
“Let the Negro masses speak through a million voices.”
Randolph does not indicate whether he is just talking about something that would be nice or whether he plans to go ahead and take concrete steps to actually organize a Negro mass movement.
At any rate, his actual proposals are quite vague. All he says about the organizational work involved in creating such a movement is that it would be “an herculean task” and that “it perhaps will not proceed with a blitzkrieg tempo” because the March on Washington committee “does not have a quarter” and therefore the work will have to be carried forward “with volunteer workers.”
No Negro worker will deny the need for a mass organization that will fight for equality. With production expanding, with talk about democracy increasing on all sides, with their youth being called on to undergo military training, the Negro masses are ready to conduct a vigorous fight for their rights.
Money is not the decisive question. Plenty of organizations with finances cannot win the allegiance of the masses – and for a very good reason. They don’t have the proper program, they don’t have the proper internal structure. These are the [some text appears to be missing here]
“Let the Negro masses speak through a million voices,” says Randolph. Yes, but what words Randolph offer as the program for this organization? Is it going to make deals with the powers that be and call off militant action in return for promises, as the March on Washington Committee did last June? Is it going [some text appears to be missing here]
Is the organization going to be democratically run? Are the masses going to have the decisive word about the organization’s policies? Or is the organization to be controlled and directed from the top with a small committee not only making day-to-day organizational decisions but also the vital and fundamental decisions of policy?
All that Randolph has said on the question is this: “In it the organization proposed) every Negro will count. The highest will be as low as the lowest and the lowest will be as high as the highest.” This may be the answer in Randolph’s own style. But then again it may only be an evasion of the question.
But Randolph has never asked the masses to decide anything of importance – the program of the March on Washington, the right to decide whether the March should have been called off or carried through, the right to decide on the personnel on the national committee “announced” by Randolph after the March was called off.
Such a handling of questions is not only dangerous for the future of the proposed organization, but it also tends to hold back the initial steps. For many of the local committees will think:
“If Randolph doesn’t let us decide what our organization should do on a question like this, what reason do we have to believe that we will be permitted to decide policy later on? What guarantees then will be have against being sold down the river by a leadership over which we have no control?”
We Trotskyists do not hesitate for a moment to criticize the March on Washington Committee and its shortcomings when our criticisms can serve the interests of the masses. We feel all the more free to do so because from the start we gave wholehearted support to the progressive acts of the movement and defended it at each stage of its development against those forces which attacked it for being “too militant.”
Today we make our criticisms of Randolph’s call not because we are opposed to the creation of a Negro mass movement but because we are in favor of such a movement and want to see. it grow into a powerful force against Jim Crowism. We urge all advanced and class conscious Negroes to join this movement, to support and build it, and to try to make it the kind of organization that will win real successes for the masses. In addition, we urge the Negro people to be vigilant within the organization against any harmful policies or procedure.
If Randolph’s procedure in calling off the March last June had been correct – and we said before and after it happened that no greater mistake could be made – then he would not have to be coming before the people today. and saying that a million Negroes are needed to be “certain to get a serious and respectful hearing” from the ruling class and its government.
We warned that nothing could come of deals with the Jim Crow forces, that Negroes must organize to fight them all the way through. Randolph’s article is proof that we were correct, that his past procedure was incorrect and inadequate.
Negroes can learn much from the lessons of that March, and it is their duty to do so if they want within the proposed organization to avoid the mistakes its leaders have made in the past.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Why the Lichfield Trials?</h1>
<h3>(11 May 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_19" target="new">Vol. X No. 19</a>, 11 May 1946, pp. 3 & 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Readers of <strong>The Militant</strong> are already acquainted with the main facts about the Lichfield trials; with the reports of brutal beatings and sadistic treatment of American prisoners – many of them wounded and decorated combat soldiers – at the Army’s Tenth Reinforcement Depot guardhouse in England; with the proceedings of the first two courts-martial, which ended in the conviction of two sergeants. Even the capitalist press is finally beginning to give a little space to these atrocities (along with the much greater space they give to advertisements seeking enlistments in the armed forces).</p>
<p>These facts have given rise to certain questions which must be answered before one can see the Lichfield case in its proper perspective:</p>
<p>What is the Army’s aim in holding these trials? Does it want to really punish the guilty parties? Does it aim by these trials to prevent similar brutality elsewhere?</p>
<p>The first thing to remember is that the Army was in no hurry to prosecute this case. The Inspector General’s Department was acquainted with the facts for almost a year before the first court martial was convened. During this war thousands of soldiers were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced in a week or two on far less evidence than was available in the Lichfield case. One can therefore say that the Army appeared strangely reluctant to even bring the case to trial at all.</p>
<p>But in a certain sense it could not help itself. Lichfield and the methods employed there were notorious throughout the Army in Western Europe. I, who was never near Lichfield, heard about it in France almost a year before the trials began, and so did hundreds of thousands of other troops. (Interest in it was so great in the ETO that the Army paper <strong>Stars and Stripes</strong> was often compelled to feature news of the first trial ahead of the Nuremberg “war criminals” trial which began around the same time.) When the war ended in Europe, many soldiers acquainted with the story had gone home and spread it further.</p>
<p>The Army was thus faced with an unwelcome choice: Take the chance of perhaps letting it get to a Congressional committee and having an investigation by some outside body – or of proceeding on its own and trying to make the best of a bad business. Its hand was forced, and naturally it took the second course.</p>
<p>But the Army did not intend to do more than make a facesaving gesture. This was demonstrated beyond any possibility of doubt when it confined its charges to a number of enlisted men and the two junior officers at the Lichfield guardhouse. One of them was admittedly a psychoneurotic, the otb«r a lieutenant who had so disliked his job there that he made repeated efforts to be transferred to some other post. It omitted charging the commanding officer, Col. James A. Kilian, who was responsible for setting the guardhouse policy. It was demonstrated again in the middle of the first trial when the War Department had to withdraw its recommendation to the Senate of a promotion for this same Kilian, although the War Department had known the facts about Lichfield long before it submitted this recommendation.</p>
<p>Kilian and some of the other officers at Lichfield are now also facing trial. This happened because the Lichfield guards, who had been perjuring themselves at the beginning of the trial on Kilian’s orders, began to tell some of the truth after they saw their case was hopeless. But even after Kilian was charged, a member of the Western Base Section general staff contacted the enlisted defendants and tried to make an out-of-court deal favorable to the officers. If Kilian faces trial, it is not because the Army wanted it but because Kilian’s conspiracy to silence the guards could not survive the testimony of soldiers who had been beaten at his orders.</p>
<p>On top of this it must be remembered that the Army has shown no intention of going higher than Kilian – of investigating, for example, the eight generals who in one month inspected the Lichfield guardhouse at the time of the atrocities and found it very satisfactory – of inquiring, for another example, into the statement to a guard by Major General Brown, commander of the Ground Forces Reinforcement Command: “You’re not tough enough on these men. You’re not running a hotel, sergeant.”</p>
<p>This leads to another series of questions: Was Lichfield unique? Was it an exception in the Army? Were other guardhouses, stockades and detention centers operated on other, more humanitarian principles?</p>
<p>To these questions it is possible to answer with a categoric No! Lt. Granville Cubage, one of the junior officer defendants, testified that Kilian had told him Lichfield could be “as tough as any DTC” (Disciplinary Training Center).</p>
<p>The defense counsel asked him: “Did other DTCs use methods similar to Lichfield that the guards at Lichfield might have been aware of, supporting their belief that they were carrying out a legal order?” To which Cubage replied:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“Yes. When I took prisoners from Lichfield to the DTCs, I took guards with me from Lichfield ... The commandant at DTC 2913 at Langford, England, for instance, took myself and the guards through their solitary confinement cells in October, 1944, and showed us the punishment the men got there ... Also when we returned from DTC 3 at Sudbury, England, I told our guards that the commandant there had told me his men used clubs for beating prisoners. I told the men that at Langford they had a dungeon far below ground, you couldn’t see the light and the officer in charge laughingly told me that occasionally someone fell down these stairs on his face.”</p>
<p class="fst">Here is some additional evidence from George Fielding Eliot, military commentator of the <strong>N.Y. Herald-Tribune</strong>:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“... there is strong reason to believe that Lichfield is only one among many. There are too many other reports of similar tenor from other parts of the world where American soldiers have been serving to make it possible to think that the conditions at Lichfield were exceptional. Bitter stories come back by various means – stories of the ‘Black Hole’ of Le Mans, stories of men staked out naked in the African sun at the detention center of Casablanca, stories of men ‘on the rock pile’ in the Pacific theater, stories of clubbings, stringing up by the thumbs, of worse – and nameless – brutalities practiced by American soldiers.” (Feb. 2, 1946)</p>
<p class="fst">Surely the Army, equipped with an Inspector General’s Department whose job is supposed to be the investigation of all “irregularities,” knows as much about these hell-holes as Eliot. Yet no one anywhere has heard any plans for courts-martial involving them. Why?</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that the Army has something to conceal – and that is its own policy. Eliot, whose only fear is that the Army may go too far and thus discredit itself, admits the existence of a policy:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">”There seems to have been a consistent Army policy to make detention so dreaded that men would avoid it like a plague ...”</p>
<p class="fst">And his counterpart on the <strong>N.Y. Times</strong>, Hanson W. Baldwin, who apologizes for the Lichfield brutalities on the grounds of military necessity – that old alibi used to cover up most crimes and blunders in wartime – also admits there was a policy; even calls it official: “... the men on trial (with definite exceptions) probably are not so much the sadists they have been pictured as executors of an official Army policy of toughness ...” (April 24)</p>
<p>Any conclusion of the Lichfield case which does not bring the indictment, trial and destruction of this Army policy will expose the Lichfield courts-martial as a whitewash, no matter what happens to the individual defendants.</p>
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George Breitman
Why the Lichfield Trials?
(11 May 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 19, 11 May 1946, pp. 3 & 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Readers of The Militant are already acquainted with the main facts about the Lichfield trials; with the reports of brutal beatings and sadistic treatment of American prisoners – many of them wounded and decorated combat soldiers – at the Army’s Tenth Reinforcement Depot guardhouse in England; with the proceedings of the first two courts-martial, which ended in the conviction of two sergeants. Even the capitalist press is finally beginning to give a little space to these atrocities (along with the much greater space they give to advertisements seeking enlistments in the armed forces).
These facts have given rise to certain questions which must be answered before one can see the Lichfield case in its proper perspective:
What is the Army’s aim in holding these trials? Does it want to really punish the guilty parties? Does it aim by these trials to prevent similar brutality elsewhere?
The first thing to remember is that the Army was in no hurry to prosecute this case. The Inspector General’s Department was acquainted with the facts for almost a year before the first court martial was convened. During this war thousands of soldiers were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced in a week or two on far less evidence than was available in the Lichfield case. One can therefore say that the Army appeared strangely reluctant to even bring the case to trial at all.
But in a certain sense it could not help itself. Lichfield and the methods employed there were notorious throughout the Army in Western Europe. I, who was never near Lichfield, heard about it in France almost a year before the trials began, and so did hundreds of thousands of other troops. (Interest in it was so great in the ETO that the Army paper Stars and Stripes was often compelled to feature news of the first trial ahead of the Nuremberg “war criminals” trial which began around the same time.) When the war ended in Europe, many soldiers acquainted with the story had gone home and spread it further.
The Army was thus faced with an unwelcome choice: Take the chance of perhaps letting it get to a Congressional committee and having an investigation by some outside body – or of proceeding on its own and trying to make the best of a bad business. Its hand was forced, and naturally it took the second course.
But the Army did not intend to do more than make a facesaving gesture. This was demonstrated beyond any possibility of doubt when it confined its charges to a number of enlisted men and the two junior officers at the Lichfield guardhouse. One of them was admittedly a psychoneurotic, the otb«r a lieutenant who had so disliked his job there that he made repeated efforts to be transferred to some other post. It omitted charging the commanding officer, Col. James A. Kilian, who was responsible for setting the guardhouse policy. It was demonstrated again in the middle of the first trial when the War Department had to withdraw its recommendation to the Senate of a promotion for this same Kilian, although the War Department had known the facts about Lichfield long before it submitted this recommendation.
Kilian and some of the other officers at Lichfield are now also facing trial. This happened because the Lichfield guards, who had been perjuring themselves at the beginning of the trial on Kilian’s orders, began to tell some of the truth after they saw their case was hopeless. But even after Kilian was charged, a member of the Western Base Section general staff contacted the enlisted defendants and tried to make an out-of-court deal favorable to the officers. If Kilian faces trial, it is not because the Army wanted it but because Kilian’s conspiracy to silence the guards could not survive the testimony of soldiers who had been beaten at his orders.
On top of this it must be remembered that the Army has shown no intention of going higher than Kilian – of investigating, for example, the eight generals who in one month inspected the Lichfield guardhouse at the time of the atrocities and found it very satisfactory – of inquiring, for another example, into the statement to a guard by Major General Brown, commander of the Ground Forces Reinforcement Command: “You’re not tough enough on these men. You’re not running a hotel, sergeant.”
This leads to another series of questions: Was Lichfield unique? Was it an exception in the Army? Were other guardhouses, stockades and detention centers operated on other, more humanitarian principles?
To these questions it is possible to answer with a categoric No! Lt. Granville Cubage, one of the junior officer defendants, testified that Kilian had told him Lichfield could be “as tough as any DTC” (Disciplinary Training Center).
The defense counsel asked him: “Did other DTCs use methods similar to Lichfield that the guards at Lichfield might have been aware of, supporting their belief that they were carrying out a legal order?” To which Cubage replied:
“Yes. When I took prisoners from Lichfield to the DTCs, I took guards with me from Lichfield ... The commandant at DTC 2913 at Langford, England, for instance, took myself and the guards through their solitary confinement cells in October, 1944, and showed us the punishment the men got there ... Also when we returned from DTC 3 at Sudbury, England, I told our guards that the commandant there had told me his men used clubs for beating prisoners. I told the men that at Langford they had a dungeon far below ground, you couldn’t see the light and the officer in charge laughingly told me that occasionally someone fell down these stairs on his face.”
Here is some additional evidence from George Fielding Eliot, military commentator of the N.Y. Herald-Tribune:
“... there is strong reason to believe that Lichfield is only one among many. There are too many other reports of similar tenor from other parts of the world where American soldiers have been serving to make it possible to think that the conditions at Lichfield were exceptional. Bitter stories come back by various means – stories of the ‘Black Hole’ of Le Mans, stories of men staked out naked in the African sun at the detention center of Casablanca, stories of men ‘on the rock pile’ in the Pacific theater, stories of clubbings, stringing up by the thumbs, of worse – and nameless – brutalities practiced by American soldiers.” (Feb. 2, 1946)
Surely the Army, equipped with an Inspector General’s Department whose job is supposed to be the investigation of all “irregularities,” knows as much about these hell-holes as Eliot. Yet no one anywhere has heard any plans for courts-martial involving them. Why?
The truth of the matter is that the Army has something to conceal – and that is its own policy. Eliot, whose only fear is that the Army may go too far and thus discredit itself, admits the existence of a policy:
”There seems to have been a consistent Army policy to make detention so dreaded that men would avoid it like a plague ...”
And his counterpart on the N.Y. Times, Hanson W. Baldwin, who apologizes for the Lichfield brutalities on the grounds of military necessity – that old alibi used to cover up most crimes and blunders in wartime – also admits there was a policy; even calls it official: “... the men on trial (with definite exceptions) probably are not so much the sadists they have been pictured as executors of an official Army policy of toughness ...” (April 24)
Any conclusion of the Lichfield case which does not bring the indictment, trial and destruction of this Army policy will expose the Lichfield courts-martial as a whitewash, no matter what happens to the individual defendants.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Debs’ Great Revolutionary Stature Revealed<br>in His Speeches, Writings</h1>
<h3>(31 May 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_22" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 22</a>, 31 May 1948, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs</strong><br>
<em>Hermitage Press, 1948, 512 pages, $4</em></p>
<p class="fst">Here is a book to; cheer about! For it gives us the real Debs in his own words – the indomitable working class rebel who devoted his whole life to the struggle for the socialist revolution – and thus annihilates the insidious campaign of the Social Democrats and liberals to transform him into a harmless pacifistic humanitarian and reformist.</p>
<p>This is the true Debs, revealed in speeches, articles and pamphlets written over a 30-year span – the lion-hearted, fighter who stands as an inspiration to the revolutionists of our own day, the incorruptible son of the working class who spurned the opportunity to become a respectable politician and labor bureaucrat, our revolutionary forefather who did so much to Americanize socialism during the period when capitalism was Europeanizing the social and political structure of this country.</p>
<p><em>Read this book, and you will become acquainted with Debs in all his true grandeur. Read his own words, and you will understand why he was the instinctive foe of everything represented by the Truman-socialists, Eisenhower-socialists, Norman Thomas and Stalinist People’s Fronters.</em> Read what he actually fought for, and you will perceive that behind their claims to; represent and continue the Debs tradition is a calculated effort to bury his real, his revolutionary, significance – similar to the effort that was made tq dilute the doctrines of Marx by the men who betrayed them in the name of Marxism.<br>
</p>
<h4>“With the Ranks”</h4>
<p class="fst">Debs began as a “pure and simple” trade union organizer; was shown the meaning of capitalism and politics when he was railroaded to prison for “contempt” of courts and injunctions used to break the great Pullman strike that be led; became a socialist agitator whose aim was to rise “with the ranks, and not from the ranks”; ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket five times, the last time from a prison cell; defied the first imperialist war and refused to ask for mercy when he was thrown into a federal prison for expressing his antiwar convictions; and in his 64th year declared in ringing words: “From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and proud of it.”</p>
<p><em>And the whole story is included in this book – a collection so rich and rewarding that we can call attention to only a part of its contents. First of all, there are the long-out-of print Canton, Ohio, speech (for which he was convicted of violating the Espionage Act); his address to the jury before its verdict was handed down; and his statement to the court before a vindictive 10-year sentence was imposed on him.</em></p>
<p>Reprinted here are his warm tributes to the militants and martyrs of the labor movement and his stirring appeals for solidarity with the McNamara brothers, Tom Mooney, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Ludlow strikers, the IWWI victims of witch hunts and red-baiting, etc. His defense of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone in the article, <strong>Roosevelt’s Labor Letters</strong>, constitutes one of the most savage pieces of polemical literature in the history of the labor movement.</p>
<p>Those who conceive of Debs as a turn-the-other-cheek pacifist should read his 1906 article, <em>Arouse, Ye Slaves!</em>, in which he warned: “If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns ... Let them dare to execute their devilish plot and every state in this Union will resound with the tramp of revolution.”</p>
<p>In the same spirit was his appeal, after the 1914 Ludlow massacre, for the United Mine Workers and the Western Federation of Miners to levy an assessment for a Gunmen Defense Fund, “to provide each member with the latest high power rifle, the same as used by the corporation gunmen, and 500 rounds of cartridges. In addition to this every district should purchase and equip and man enough Gatling and machine guns to match the equipment of Rockefeller’s private army of assassins. This suggestion is made advisedly and I hold myself responsible for every word of it. <em>If the corporations have the right to recruit and maintain private armies of thieves, thugs and ex-convicts to murder striking workingmen, sack their homes, insult their wives, and roast their babes, then labor unions not only have the right but it is their solemn duty to arm themselves to resist these lawless attacks and defend their homes and loved ones.”</em> Can anyone picture Norman Thomas uttering such words?</p>
<p>Debs was not primarily a theoretician, and he made political errors, easily understood in the light of the development of American socialism before the Russian revolution. <em>But his heart was always on the right side, and he unerringly lined up beside the oppressed. This is best illustrated in his two articles on the Negro question, where he made the the common error of failing to recognize the special revolutionary significance of the Negro struggle for equality, but at the same time vigorously advocated admitting Negroes with equal rights into the labor and socialist movement, and the expulsion of all white supremacists.</em> Debs had nothing but contempt and hatred for every variety of prejudice, as he showed in his letter denouncing “socialists” who wanted their party to adopt a reactionary policy barring certain races from immigrating to the U.S., and in his article attacking male chauvinism.</p>
<p>Two selections in this book strike a poignant note. One is from Debs’ only book, <strong>Walls and Bars</strong>, dealing with the thundering ovation given this beloved fighter for all the oppressed by his 2,300 fellow-prisoners as he walked out of the Atlanta penitentiary in 1921. The other is the article, <em>Serving the Labor Movement</em>, written in 1922 when the delegates of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, to their undying discredit, voted down a motion to invite Debs to address their convention.<br>
</p>
<h4>Deeply Wounded</h4>
<p class="fst">This wounded the old fighter so deeply that he wrote a defense of himself, sketchily listing his long years of service and self-sacrifice in building the American union movement. “Had I betrayed the organization instead of serving it, it would be different ... Were I prime favorite with the railroad magnates instead of their uncompromising enemy, the invitation to address the convention would have been extended by acclamation.” But even in this moment of genuine unhappiness, the larger man emerges: “I did not start out expecting gratitude and I have never been disappointed. To be true to my principles and my ideals and to have my place in the ranks with the Comrades who share them has been more than sufficient ...”</p>
<p>One thing mars this book, and mars it badly. That is the introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger. Jr., the liberal historian. Any introduction by this person, would be offensive to those who love Debs, for this servile supporter of Truman and Eisenhower stands for everything that Debs fought against. Especially offensive are his attempt to sum up Debs as a mere “democrat” and his remark that Debs’ “own career disproved his repeated assertion that capitalism would destroy political freedom” (for Schlesinger the jailing of Debs was evidently of little significance).</p>
<p><em>We regard it as malicious and downright insulting when Schlesinger. quotes with approval a Social Democrat’s statement that Debs’ long years of agitation for socialism were worthwhile because the “education [thus] forced on the people ... saved this country from civil war in the depths of depression, and gave Franklin D. Roosevelt ... the understanding public and trained workers for the immediate job he had on taking over.”</em></p>
<p>This book was long overdue. Nevertheless, its publication this year is especially timely because 1948 witnesses the first presidential campaign launched by the Socialist Workers Party, whose, members alone consciously and militantly bear aloft the flag of Debs and honor his tradition in the only way he wanted it honored – by fighting for the socialist revolution. Campaign orators and propagandists would do well to read this volume carefully for what they can learn from a great agitator about how to speak and write the language of revolution so that the masses can understand it.</p>
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George Breitman
Debs’ Great Revolutionary Stature Revealedin His Speeches, Writings
(31 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 22, 31 May 1948, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs
Hermitage Press, 1948, 512 pages, $4
Here is a book to; cheer about! For it gives us the real Debs in his own words – the indomitable working class rebel who devoted his whole life to the struggle for the socialist revolution – and thus annihilates the insidious campaign of the Social Democrats and liberals to transform him into a harmless pacifistic humanitarian and reformist.
This is the true Debs, revealed in speeches, articles and pamphlets written over a 30-year span – the lion-hearted, fighter who stands as an inspiration to the revolutionists of our own day, the incorruptible son of the working class who spurned the opportunity to become a respectable politician and labor bureaucrat, our revolutionary forefather who did so much to Americanize socialism during the period when capitalism was Europeanizing the social and political structure of this country.
Read this book, and you will become acquainted with Debs in all his true grandeur. Read his own words, and you will understand why he was the instinctive foe of everything represented by the Truman-socialists, Eisenhower-socialists, Norman Thomas and Stalinist People’s Fronters. Read what he actually fought for, and you will perceive that behind their claims to; represent and continue the Debs tradition is a calculated effort to bury his real, his revolutionary, significance – similar to the effort that was made tq dilute the doctrines of Marx by the men who betrayed them in the name of Marxism.
“With the Ranks”
Debs began as a “pure and simple” trade union organizer; was shown the meaning of capitalism and politics when he was railroaded to prison for “contempt” of courts and injunctions used to break the great Pullman strike that be led; became a socialist agitator whose aim was to rise “with the ranks, and not from the ranks”; ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket five times, the last time from a prison cell; defied the first imperialist war and refused to ask for mercy when he was thrown into a federal prison for expressing his antiwar convictions; and in his 64th year declared in ringing words: “From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and proud of it.”
And the whole story is included in this book – a collection so rich and rewarding that we can call attention to only a part of its contents. First of all, there are the long-out-of print Canton, Ohio, speech (for which he was convicted of violating the Espionage Act); his address to the jury before its verdict was handed down; and his statement to the court before a vindictive 10-year sentence was imposed on him.
Reprinted here are his warm tributes to the militants and martyrs of the labor movement and his stirring appeals for solidarity with the McNamara brothers, Tom Mooney, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Ludlow strikers, the IWWI victims of witch hunts and red-baiting, etc. His defense of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone in the article, Roosevelt’s Labor Letters, constitutes one of the most savage pieces of polemical literature in the history of the labor movement.
Those who conceive of Debs as a turn-the-other-cheek pacifist should read his 1906 article, Arouse, Ye Slaves!, in which he warned: “If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns ... Let them dare to execute their devilish plot and every state in this Union will resound with the tramp of revolution.”
In the same spirit was his appeal, after the 1914 Ludlow massacre, for the United Mine Workers and the Western Federation of Miners to levy an assessment for a Gunmen Defense Fund, “to provide each member with the latest high power rifle, the same as used by the corporation gunmen, and 500 rounds of cartridges. In addition to this every district should purchase and equip and man enough Gatling and machine guns to match the equipment of Rockefeller’s private army of assassins. This suggestion is made advisedly and I hold myself responsible for every word of it. If the corporations have the right to recruit and maintain private armies of thieves, thugs and ex-convicts to murder striking workingmen, sack their homes, insult their wives, and roast their babes, then labor unions not only have the right but it is their solemn duty to arm themselves to resist these lawless attacks and defend their homes and loved ones.” Can anyone picture Norman Thomas uttering such words?
Debs was not primarily a theoretician, and he made political errors, easily understood in the light of the development of American socialism before the Russian revolution. But his heart was always on the right side, and he unerringly lined up beside the oppressed. This is best illustrated in his two articles on the Negro question, where he made the the common error of failing to recognize the special revolutionary significance of the Negro struggle for equality, but at the same time vigorously advocated admitting Negroes with equal rights into the labor and socialist movement, and the expulsion of all white supremacists. Debs had nothing but contempt and hatred for every variety of prejudice, as he showed in his letter denouncing “socialists” who wanted their party to adopt a reactionary policy barring certain races from immigrating to the U.S., and in his article attacking male chauvinism.
Two selections in this book strike a poignant note. One is from Debs’ only book, Walls and Bars, dealing with the thundering ovation given this beloved fighter for all the oppressed by his 2,300 fellow-prisoners as he walked out of the Atlanta penitentiary in 1921. The other is the article, Serving the Labor Movement, written in 1922 when the delegates of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, to their undying discredit, voted down a motion to invite Debs to address their convention.
Deeply Wounded
This wounded the old fighter so deeply that he wrote a defense of himself, sketchily listing his long years of service and self-sacrifice in building the American union movement. “Had I betrayed the organization instead of serving it, it would be different ... Were I prime favorite with the railroad magnates instead of their uncompromising enemy, the invitation to address the convention would have been extended by acclamation.” But even in this moment of genuine unhappiness, the larger man emerges: “I did not start out expecting gratitude and I have never been disappointed. To be true to my principles and my ideals and to have my place in the ranks with the Comrades who share them has been more than sufficient ...”
One thing mars this book, and mars it badly. That is the introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger. Jr., the liberal historian. Any introduction by this person, would be offensive to those who love Debs, for this servile supporter of Truman and Eisenhower stands for everything that Debs fought against. Especially offensive are his attempt to sum up Debs as a mere “democrat” and his remark that Debs’ “own career disproved his repeated assertion that capitalism would destroy political freedom” (for Schlesinger the jailing of Debs was evidently of little significance).
We regard it as malicious and downright insulting when Schlesinger. quotes with approval a Social Democrat’s statement that Debs’ long years of agitation for socialism were worthwhile because the “education [thus] forced on the people ... saved this country from civil war in the depths of depression, and gave Franklin D. Roosevelt ... the understanding public and trained workers for the immediate job he had on taking over.”
This book was long overdue. Nevertheless, its publication this year is especially timely because 1948 witnesses the first presidential campaign launched by the Socialist Workers Party, whose, members alone consciously and militantly bear aloft the flag of Debs and honor his tradition in the only way he wanted it honored – by fighting for the socialist revolution. Campaign orators and propagandists would do well to read this volume carefully for what they can learn from a great agitator about how to speak and write the language of revolution so that the masses can understand it.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Politics and the NAACP</h1>
<h3>(31 May 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_22" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 22</a>, 31 May 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The NAACP is now preparing to hold its annual conference – this time in Kansas City, Mo., from June 22 to 27. Over 1,000 delegates from 40 states are expected to attend. Enemies of Jim Crow throughout the country naturally wish the conference the best of success in working out a program to meet the needs of the Negro struggle.</p>
<p>But there is no use in hiding the fact that the delegates to this conference will be laboring under a severe handicap – the so-called “non-partisan” , political policy of the organization. Especially in an important election year this policy puts the delegates in the position of fighting Jim Crow with one hand tied behind their back.</p>
<p>Secretary Walter White tried to cover up this fact last week in his press release on the conference, which began as follows: “Political action to secure civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution will be one of the main themes at the 39th annual conference of the NAACP ...”</p>
<p>Sure enough, political action will be one of the subjects at the conference. But not the kind of political action that is required, not the kind that can achieve anything. When White and his fellow NAACP leaders talk about political action, here is what they mean:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The NAACP is going to put on a big campaign to have everybody register in order to be able to vote in November. Vote for what, vote for whom? The NAACP leaders refuse to answer. The most they intend to do is put out a record of the different candidates’ stand on various issues affecting the Negro people.</p>
<p class="fst">A better name for this kind of procedure would be “political INaction.” Because what it boils down to is a refusal to take sides in a most crucial election struggle. Negro voters are confronted on the one hand with candidates who are their bitter enemies and on the other hand with candidates who stand for a program of equality for the Negroes. Yet on the political field – which is the decisive field – the NAACP leaders refuse to lift a finger to fight their enemies or aid their friends.</p>
<p>The reactionary Southern Democrats know better than that. They fight the Negro people with every weapon at their disposal and the weapon they use most vigorously is politics. How can the Negro organizations possibly cope with their enemies unless they are equally active and aggressive in this field?</p>
<p>We are well acquainted with the NAACP leaders’ arguments against independent political action, but they are not very impressive. Walter White & Co. claim that if the NAACP gives up its outmoded “non-partisan” policy, it will lose many of its present big-shot friends. But what good are “friends” who would desert you because you showed you meant business about fighting Jim Crow? Instead of losing influence by a firm, independent political program, the NAACP would actually win millions of new adherents.</p>
<p>The best thing the coming NAACP conference can do will be to brush aside such silly arguments, flatly condemn the capitalist parties as Jim Crow enemies of the Negro people, and call on the trade union movement to join it in building an independent workingman’s party devoted to the interests of the working class and the Negro people. It is no longer possible to be “non-partisan” in the political fight against Jim Crow.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Politics and the NAACP
(31 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 22, 31 May 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The NAACP is now preparing to hold its annual conference – this time in Kansas City, Mo., from June 22 to 27. Over 1,000 delegates from 40 states are expected to attend. Enemies of Jim Crow throughout the country naturally wish the conference the best of success in working out a program to meet the needs of the Negro struggle.
But there is no use in hiding the fact that the delegates to this conference will be laboring under a severe handicap – the so-called “non-partisan” , political policy of the organization. Especially in an important election year this policy puts the delegates in the position of fighting Jim Crow with one hand tied behind their back.
Secretary Walter White tried to cover up this fact last week in his press release on the conference, which began as follows: “Political action to secure civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution will be one of the main themes at the 39th annual conference of the NAACP ...”
Sure enough, political action will be one of the subjects at the conference. But not the kind of political action that is required, not the kind that can achieve anything. When White and his fellow NAACP leaders talk about political action, here is what they mean:
The NAACP is going to put on a big campaign to have everybody register in order to be able to vote in November. Vote for what, vote for whom? The NAACP leaders refuse to answer. The most they intend to do is put out a record of the different candidates’ stand on various issues affecting the Negro people.
A better name for this kind of procedure would be “political INaction.” Because what it boils down to is a refusal to take sides in a most crucial election struggle. Negro voters are confronted on the one hand with candidates who are their bitter enemies and on the other hand with candidates who stand for a program of equality for the Negroes. Yet on the political field – which is the decisive field – the NAACP leaders refuse to lift a finger to fight their enemies or aid their friends.
The reactionary Southern Democrats know better than that. They fight the Negro people with every weapon at their disposal and the weapon they use most vigorously is politics. How can the Negro organizations possibly cope with their enemies unless they are equally active and aggressive in this field?
We are well acquainted with the NAACP leaders’ arguments against independent political action, but they are not very impressive. Walter White & Co. claim that if the NAACP gives up its outmoded “non-partisan” policy, it will lose many of its present big-shot friends. But what good are “friends” who would desert you because you showed you meant business about fighting Jim Crow? Instead of losing influence by a firm, independent political program, the NAACP would actually win millions of new adherents.
The best thing the coming NAACP conference can do will be to brush aside such silly arguments, flatly condemn the capitalist parties as Jim Crow enemies of the Negro people, and call on the trade union movement to join it in building an independent workingman’s party devoted to the interests of the working class and the Negro people. It is no longer possible to be “non-partisan” in the political fight against Jim Crow.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h4>Army Releases Two Reports Calculated to Whitewash<br>
Criticism of Cost System</h4>
<h1>Doolittle Board Advocates Policy<br>
of Limited Reforms</h1>
<h3>(8 June 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_23" target="new">Vol. X No. 23</a>, 8 June 1946, p. 8.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">“Recommendations of the Army’s GI gripe board for narrowing the gap between officers and enlisted men were applauded by GIs here today but many said the plan would never be put into effect – the brass would kill it.” That reaction, recorded in a May 28 AP dispatch from Tokyo, was undoubtedly shared by millions of veterans and servicemen all over the world.</p>
<p>These men, who know from their own unpleasant experiences what an undemocratic institution the Army is, agree with many of the specific recommendations of the War Department’s Doolittle Board, especially those calling for greater equality between officers and enlisted men in pay, living accommodations, food rations, travel allowances, treatment in military trials, privilege to accumulate furlough time and terminal leave pay, etc. They naturally agree with them because all through the war, whenever they had any freedom of expression, they themselves called for these and similar reforms.<br>
</p>
<h4>Cause of Suspicion</h4>
<p class="fst">But the veterans of World War II also know how little they can rely on the War Department and the General staff to make any real reforms in the caste-system of the Army.</p>
<p>When they were in the Army, they had a long experience with “eyewash” – Army measures and policies which look good on paper, which draw favorable comment from the generally uninformed public, but which are not observed in practice. That is why they are suspicious and cynical.</p>
<p>And they have every right to be. When the contents of the Doolittle Board report were made public, the press related that “there were guarded indications that the War Department was not upset by the findings,” and even that the report on the whole was “well received” by the high brass. There were three chief reasons for this:</p>
<ol>
<li>The War Department and the general staff were treated with kid gloves in a report which was supposed to summarize the soldiers’ complaints against the Army. On the whole, the Board said, the Army “did a truly magnificent job,” and the blame lay with “undeniably poor leadership on the part of a small percentage of those in positions of responsibility.” Under present conditions, when so many veterans are free to tell the truth about the Army, what general could ask for anything more in the way of a whitewash job?<br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>No Commitments</h4>
<ol start="2">
<li>The report, well-larded with high-sounding generalities about “full recognition of the dignity of man,” did not commit the War Department to anything. Secretary of War Patterson promised only that the report would be studied further and that “additional steps will be taken as may be indicated and possible.” Even the most insignificant recommendation that officers and enlisted men wear the same uniform – which was decided on by the War Department months ago, will not go into effect until the middle of 1948.<br>
</li>
<li>At the same time and at no cost to itself the War Department has received a lot of favorable publicity implying that it is seriously interested in improving conditions of the enlisted men. This is the most important consideration – and the main reason for the establishment of the Doolittle Board – because it will help Army recruitment and at the same time soften some of the opposition to peacetime conscription.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>Support Reforms</h4>
<p class="fst">Veterans, veteran organizations and the labor movement should support most of the Doolittle Board’s recommendations, no matter why they were made. And the more hesitant the War Department shows itself, the more vigorously they should demand their immediate adoption. But at the same time they must be aware of the extremely limited, inadequate and therefore unsatisfactory nature of these recommendations.</p>
<p>For while these recommendations will help reduce some of the more glaring differences between the living conditions of officers and enlisted men, they will by no means eliminate the caste system itself. And the adoption of every one of these recommendations will not change the fundamentally undemocratic structure of the army in any respect.</p>
<p>When we say that the Army is undemocratic, it is not only because officers enjoy privileges denied to enlisted men. it is above all because the enlisted man, when he is given a uniform, is simultaneously deprived of the democratic rights which are recognized as his in civilian life. Deprived of the protection of these rights, he is as much at the mercy of the military hierarchy as a German worker was under Hitler (or is today under the occupation authorities). And this is true, no matter how much the officers get paid or what kind of uniform they wear.<br>
</p>
<h4>Democratic Rights</h4>
<p class="fst">Among the most elementary of the rights taken away from the soldiers are the right of free speech and free press, the right of petition and assembly, the right to serve on military juries, the right to elect committees to present grievances. Under present regulations, for example, a soldier cannot – without specific authorization from the War Department – even write his Congressman to urge his support of legislation incorporating the recommendations of the Doolittle Board!</p>
<p>Without these rights, you cannot even speak of a democratic army. And since the servicemen are muzzled, it is up to the veterans and the labor movement to take the initiative in an aggressive fight to revise the military code for the. purpose of really democratizing the armed forces.</p>
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George Breitman
Army Releases Two Reports Calculated to Whitewash
Criticism of Cost System
Doolittle Board Advocates Policy
of Limited Reforms
(8 June 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 23, 8 June 1946, p. 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
“Recommendations of the Army’s GI gripe board for narrowing the gap between officers and enlisted men were applauded by GIs here today but many said the plan would never be put into effect – the brass would kill it.” That reaction, recorded in a May 28 AP dispatch from Tokyo, was undoubtedly shared by millions of veterans and servicemen all over the world.
These men, who know from their own unpleasant experiences what an undemocratic institution the Army is, agree with many of the specific recommendations of the War Department’s Doolittle Board, especially those calling for greater equality between officers and enlisted men in pay, living accommodations, food rations, travel allowances, treatment in military trials, privilege to accumulate furlough time and terminal leave pay, etc. They naturally agree with them because all through the war, whenever they had any freedom of expression, they themselves called for these and similar reforms.
Cause of Suspicion
But the veterans of World War II also know how little they can rely on the War Department and the General staff to make any real reforms in the caste-system of the Army.
When they were in the Army, they had a long experience with “eyewash” – Army measures and policies which look good on paper, which draw favorable comment from the generally uninformed public, but which are not observed in practice. That is why they are suspicious and cynical.
And they have every right to be. When the contents of the Doolittle Board report were made public, the press related that “there were guarded indications that the War Department was not upset by the findings,” and even that the report on the whole was “well received” by the high brass. There were three chief reasons for this:
The War Department and the general staff were treated with kid gloves in a report which was supposed to summarize the soldiers’ complaints against the Army. On the whole, the Board said, the Army “did a truly magnificent job,” and the blame lay with “undeniably poor leadership on the part of a small percentage of those in positions of responsibility.” Under present conditions, when so many veterans are free to tell the truth about the Army, what general could ask for anything more in the way of a whitewash job?
No Commitments
The report, well-larded with high-sounding generalities about “full recognition of the dignity of man,” did not commit the War Department to anything. Secretary of War Patterson promised only that the report would be studied further and that “additional steps will be taken as may be indicated and possible.” Even the most insignificant recommendation that officers and enlisted men wear the same uniform – which was decided on by the War Department months ago, will not go into effect until the middle of 1948.
At the same time and at no cost to itself the War Department has received a lot of favorable publicity implying that it is seriously interested in improving conditions of the enlisted men. This is the most important consideration – and the main reason for the establishment of the Doolittle Board – because it will help Army recruitment and at the same time soften some of the opposition to peacetime conscription.
Support Reforms
Veterans, veteran organizations and the labor movement should support most of the Doolittle Board’s recommendations, no matter why they were made. And the more hesitant the War Department shows itself, the more vigorously they should demand their immediate adoption. But at the same time they must be aware of the extremely limited, inadequate and therefore unsatisfactory nature of these recommendations.
For while these recommendations will help reduce some of the more glaring differences between the living conditions of officers and enlisted men, they will by no means eliminate the caste system itself. And the adoption of every one of these recommendations will not change the fundamentally undemocratic structure of the army in any respect.
When we say that the Army is undemocratic, it is not only because officers enjoy privileges denied to enlisted men. it is above all because the enlisted man, when he is given a uniform, is simultaneously deprived of the democratic rights which are recognized as his in civilian life. Deprived of the protection of these rights, he is as much at the mercy of the military hierarchy as a German worker was under Hitler (or is today under the occupation authorities). And this is true, no matter how much the officers get paid or what kind of uniform they wear.
Democratic Rights
Among the most elementary of the rights taken away from the soldiers are the right of free speech and free press, the right of petition and assembly, the right to serve on military juries, the right to elect committees to present grievances. Under present regulations, for example, a soldier cannot – without specific authorization from the War Department – even write his Congressman to urge his support of legislation incorporating the recommendations of the Doolittle Board!
Without these rights, you cannot even speak of a democratic army. And since the servicemen are muzzled, it is up to the veterans and the labor movement to take the initiative in an aggressive fight to revise the military code for the. purpose of really democratizing the armed forces.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Red Army Morale Astonishes Its Enemies</h1>
<h4>But Soviet Soldiers Fight Bravely Because They Have Something Worth Defending</h4>
<h3>(9 August 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_32" target="new">Vol. V No. 32</a>, 9 August 1941, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">On several occasions since the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war, the Nazi authorities have sought to explain the holding up of their war machine on the Eastern Front by the unusual way the Red Army soldiers fight back.</p>
<p>The <strong>New York Times</strong> of July 31 carries a story telephoned by their Berlin correspondent, C. Brooks Peters, containing the most recent of these “explanations”:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Russians, the Germans reiterate, simply do not fight according to the European rules of war. Regardless of the hopelessness of their positions, they allow their troops to be slaughtered rather than capitulate, it is asserted. Communist education and national administration for the last twenty years, the Germans add, have killed the souls of all Russians.</p>
<p class="quote">“For that reason, they continue, there is no possibility of the Russian armies suffering from a collapse of morale, because all the prerequisites of such a collapse are lacking’ as a result of the bestializing of the individual that has occurred in Russia.”</p>
<p class="fst">The predictions of “victory within six weeks” made by the Nazis and echoed by “informed” U.S. generals and military experts have fallen to the ground. They made their estimates on the basis of the weaknesses wrought by the Kremlin bureaucracy through its purges and repressions, and on the slow start of the Red Army in the 1939 Finnish war, a campaign toward which the Soviet masses for the most part had been lethargic. But they completely disregarded the other side of the picture. Leon Trotsky, because he understood that whole picture, often stated that the outbreak of a capitalist war against the Soviet Union would at the very beginning bring forth the strongest defensist tendencies in the country.<br>
</p>
<h4>Trotsky’s Prediction Now Comes True</h4>
<p class="fst">In 1934 he wrote in <em>War and the Fourth International</em> (and he repeated this thought many times thereafter):</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Within the USSR war against imperialist intervention will undoubtedly provoke a veritable outburst of genuine fighting enthusiasm. All the contradictions and antagonisms will seem overcome or at any rate relegated to the background. The young generations of workers and, peasants that emerged from the revolution will reveal on the field of battle a collossal dynamic power ...”</p>
<p class="fst">Trotsky was able to foresee this stubborn resistance chiefly because he understood the class character of the first worker’s state and as a result the determination of the workers and peasants, even under the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, to hold on to what they have.</p>
<p>Of course the Red Army soldiers don’t fight “according to the European rules of war.” That isn’t because they have a different military technique or different kinds of weapons, but because, unlike the European armies, the soldiers have something to fight for, and they know it!</p>
<p>The “European” armies (and this includes the United States and all other capitalist armies as well) have a different morale because they are made up of workers and farmers who don’t want imperialist Wars, who know they have nothing to gain because after the war as well as before, they will be victims of the same depressions, hunger and exploitation. They know that it is not the people who will benefit from the results of the war, but their masters, the imperialists, and thai the lives of the worker-soldiers are being thrown away in a cause that is not theirs.</p>
<p>That is why the soldiers in the “democratic” armies do not fight with any conviction. That is why they don’t feel ready to sacrifice their lives. That is why their main thought is to get cut of the army arid go back to their homes. That is why they have no confidence in their military leaders.</p>
<p>That is why the French army marched off to war, even against Hitler and everything hateful that he represents, with no cheers or enthusiasm; observers noted only lethargy. That is why in America today there is so little popular support of Roosevelt’s war plans. That is why the American draftees these past few weeks have been so resentful toward the presidential proposal to extend the term of their service indefinitely.<br>
</p>
<h4>Nazi Army Is “European” Too</h4>
<p class="fst">It is true that up to this point in the war the Nazis have maintained a certain high discipline in their armies, which would seem to indicate a much higher morale than is present in the armies of the democratic imperialists.</p>
<p>This morale, however, is only skin deep, and can disappear overnight. It was fostered by Hitler’s great successes, including the “peaceful” successes of 1933-1939 against the “democracies.” It continues to exist because the German soldiers know what happens to the vanquished in imperialist wars. They have suffered one Versailles Treaty already; they are desperately fighting to prevent another.</p>
<p>But once the series of Hitler victories is broken and the myth of Nazi invincibility exposed, and once the fear of another Versailles in the event of defeat is removed, discipline and morale in the Nazi army will fall even lower than in the armies of the “democracies.” Because fundamentally the German army too fights “according to European rules of war” and is made up of men who know they are not fighting for their own interests.</p>
<p>The Red soldiers, on the other hand, not only have something to fight against, as do all the other armies (against a semi-slave status under Hitlerism, or a semi-slave status under another Versailles Treaty), but they also have something to fight for.<br>
</p>
<h4>What the Red Army Defends</h4>
<p class="fst">The October revolution of 1917 destroyed the political power of the capitalist class, and then destroyed its economic power. The factories and industries were taken away from the bosses by the state, and the economy was nationalized. The peasants took the large estates away from the landlords and the land went to the peasants who tilled it. In spite of all the crimes and blunders of the Stalinist bureaucracy since then, the economic foundation established by the Russian Revolution still exists. It is this for which the Soviet troops are willing to give their lives rather than capitulate.</p>
<p>When the Red Army soldier fights the Nazi legions, he knows that he is not doing it for the benefit of a gang of bosses who will continue to exploit him after the war just as viciously as before. He knows that he is fighting for himself and his children; to preserve what he has left of the greatest revolution of all time, the nationalized economy which must exist and be extended before society can go ahead to socialism, peace and plenty.</p>
<p>The experiences of the last twenty years have not “killed the souls of all Russians” nor bestialized the individual. On the contrary, these experiences have shown the Russian masses the superiority of living in a workers’ state, even though isolated and, degenerated under Stalinism. Because they have freed themselves from the bestialization of capitalism and opened up the possibilities for a new life, they are ready against the greatest odds and with inferior military equipment, as in the civil war days following the October revolution, to fight until death to protect what they have already won.<br>
</p>
<h4>Red Army Fights Despite Stalinism</h4>
<p class="fst">The Nazis see in this great defensive struggle by the Soviet masses only “dead souls” and “bestialized individuals.” History however will decide differently and will record it as the beginning of the awakening of the masses of the world in World War II.</p>
<p>It is not that the Soviet workers live in a perfect state. No one knows better than they what is wrong with the regime whose foreign policies have done so much to alienate the sympathies of the workers of the world from the Soviet Union. No one knows better than the Soviet workers how this bureaucracy has fastened itself onto the state, sapped its energies and re – sources and weakened the nationalized economy.</p>
<p>They have seen with their own eyes the destruction of the Soviets, the emasculation of the trade unions, the elimination of workers’ democracy, and the transformation of the Communist Party from a party of Bolshevism to a mere docile figurehead for the bureaucracy.</p>
<p>But in spite of all this, they have something to defend. They know that if imperialism defeats them, not only won’t they get back the political rights and workers’ democracy usurped by Stalinism, but that they will also lose the economic foundations that they still have.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalinists Silent on Class Nature of Red Army Morale</h4>
<p class="fst">And when we consider how heroically they are fighting, we can correctly say that in their own language, spoken with the rifle and tank, the Soviet masses show a much clearer understanding of the historic processes of liberation than do the learned professors and lawyers who excel at “socialist” warmongering.</p>
<p>These “socialist” gentlemen find the task of herding the workers into the war in the “democracies” a far from easy one. But the Soviet masses, living on a progressive economic foundation, even though they have been robbed of their democratic rights, not only rush to the front but continue to fight when .it means almost certain death.</p>
<p>It is only the Trotskyists who understand, explain and support the real reasons for the great defensist struggles of the Soviet workers.</p>
<p>The Stalinists, who are afraid to speak in class terms, do not give the real reasons because it would offend the imperialists on whom they are placing so much confidence; and because it would open the eyes of the workers in the democracies, whom the Stalinists are urging to support the imperialists in the war, to the fact that they have nothing to fight for until they too establish a workers’ state.</p>
<p>Those “radicals” – in reality counter-revolutionists – who are indifferent to the outcome of the military struggle between the Red Army and Hitler also have nothing to say about the reasons for the S6viet workers’ fighting enthusiasm, because it ill fits their pseudo-revolutionary theory that the Soviet workers should not defend the Soviet Union.<br>
</p>
<h4>A Program for Soviet Victory</h4>
<p class="fst">Nevertheless, the resistance of the Soviet masses by itself cannot insure Soviet victory. For that a program is necessary.</p>
<p>This program must call for (1) the institution of a. revolutionary policy toward Germany, and (2) the extension of workers’ democracy, control and rights in all spheres of Soviet life.</p>
<p>Such a policy would include the open perspective of revolutionary unity of the Soviet working class with the German working class; a pledge that the Soviet Union would oppose another Versailles Treaty at the expense of Germany; propaganda for the proletarian revolution in Germany and the Socialist United States of Europe.</p>
<p>The morale and strength of the Soviet masses would be raised to the heights by the revival of workers’ democracy – the restoration of the Soviets and democracy in the trade unions, the legalization of all pro-Soviet political parties, the release of all pro-Soviet political prisoners and their return to their rightful places in the army and industry.</p>
<p>If the masses are waging such a heroic struggle for a degenerated workers’ state, how much more courageously will they strain all their energy and resources when they feel that political power belongs to them and not to the bureaucrats! When they feel that they have the right to determine the important questions, when they feel that their success on the battlefields will not merely bring back the status quo, but will facilitate the extension of the revolution to advanced capitalist countries and result in a socialist world that will forever destroy the possibility of imperialist invasion.</p>
<p>With the adoption of this program, the struggle of the Soviet masses would indeed be transformed from what is still essentially a defensive fight, to maintain what they already have, into an aggressive offensive to gain what they want: workers’ democracy inside the Soviet Union and the assistance and collaboration of workers’ states in the rest of the world.</p>
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George Breitman
Red Army Morale Astonishes Its Enemies
But Soviet Soldiers Fight Bravely Because They Have Something Worth Defending
(9 August 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 32, 9 August 1941, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On several occasions since the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war, the Nazi authorities have sought to explain the holding up of their war machine on the Eastern Front by the unusual way the Red Army soldiers fight back.
The New York Times of July 31 carries a story telephoned by their Berlin correspondent, C. Brooks Peters, containing the most recent of these “explanations”:
“The Russians, the Germans reiterate, simply do not fight according to the European rules of war. Regardless of the hopelessness of their positions, they allow their troops to be slaughtered rather than capitulate, it is asserted. Communist education and national administration for the last twenty years, the Germans add, have killed the souls of all Russians.
“For that reason, they continue, there is no possibility of the Russian armies suffering from a collapse of morale, because all the prerequisites of such a collapse are lacking’ as a result of the bestializing of the individual that has occurred in Russia.”
The predictions of “victory within six weeks” made by the Nazis and echoed by “informed” U.S. generals and military experts have fallen to the ground. They made their estimates on the basis of the weaknesses wrought by the Kremlin bureaucracy through its purges and repressions, and on the slow start of the Red Army in the 1939 Finnish war, a campaign toward which the Soviet masses for the most part had been lethargic. But they completely disregarded the other side of the picture. Leon Trotsky, because he understood that whole picture, often stated that the outbreak of a capitalist war against the Soviet Union would at the very beginning bring forth the strongest defensist tendencies in the country.
Trotsky’s Prediction Now Comes True
In 1934 he wrote in War and the Fourth International (and he repeated this thought many times thereafter):
“Within the USSR war against imperialist intervention will undoubtedly provoke a veritable outburst of genuine fighting enthusiasm. All the contradictions and antagonisms will seem overcome or at any rate relegated to the background. The young generations of workers and, peasants that emerged from the revolution will reveal on the field of battle a collossal dynamic power ...”
Trotsky was able to foresee this stubborn resistance chiefly because he understood the class character of the first worker’s state and as a result the determination of the workers and peasants, even under the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, to hold on to what they have.
Of course the Red Army soldiers don’t fight “according to the European rules of war.” That isn’t because they have a different military technique or different kinds of weapons, but because, unlike the European armies, the soldiers have something to fight for, and they know it!
The “European” armies (and this includes the United States and all other capitalist armies as well) have a different morale because they are made up of workers and farmers who don’t want imperialist Wars, who know they have nothing to gain because after the war as well as before, they will be victims of the same depressions, hunger and exploitation. They know that it is not the people who will benefit from the results of the war, but their masters, the imperialists, and thai the lives of the worker-soldiers are being thrown away in a cause that is not theirs.
That is why the soldiers in the “democratic” armies do not fight with any conviction. That is why they don’t feel ready to sacrifice their lives. That is why their main thought is to get cut of the army arid go back to their homes. That is why they have no confidence in their military leaders.
That is why the French army marched off to war, even against Hitler and everything hateful that he represents, with no cheers or enthusiasm; observers noted only lethargy. That is why in America today there is so little popular support of Roosevelt’s war plans. That is why the American draftees these past few weeks have been so resentful toward the presidential proposal to extend the term of their service indefinitely.
Nazi Army Is “European” Too
It is true that up to this point in the war the Nazis have maintained a certain high discipline in their armies, which would seem to indicate a much higher morale than is present in the armies of the democratic imperialists.
This morale, however, is only skin deep, and can disappear overnight. It was fostered by Hitler’s great successes, including the “peaceful” successes of 1933-1939 against the “democracies.” It continues to exist because the German soldiers know what happens to the vanquished in imperialist wars. They have suffered one Versailles Treaty already; they are desperately fighting to prevent another.
But once the series of Hitler victories is broken and the myth of Nazi invincibility exposed, and once the fear of another Versailles in the event of defeat is removed, discipline and morale in the Nazi army will fall even lower than in the armies of the “democracies.” Because fundamentally the German army too fights “according to European rules of war” and is made up of men who know they are not fighting for their own interests.
The Red soldiers, on the other hand, not only have something to fight against, as do all the other armies (against a semi-slave status under Hitlerism, or a semi-slave status under another Versailles Treaty), but they also have something to fight for.
What the Red Army Defends
The October revolution of 1917 destroyed the political power of the capitalist class, and then destroyed its economic power. The factories and industries were taken away from the bosses by the state, and the economy was nationalized. The peasants took the large estates away from the landlords and the land went to the peasants who tilled it. In spite of all the crimes and blunders of the Stalinist bureaucracy since then, the economic foundation established by the Russian Revolution still exists. It is this for which the Soviet troops are willing to give their lives rather than capitulate.
When the Red Army soldier fights the Nazi legions, he knows that he is not doing it for the benefit of a gang of bosses who will continue to exploit him after the war just as viciously as before. He knows that he is fighting for himself and his children; to preserve what he has left of the greatest revolution of all time, the nationalized economy which must exist and be extended before society can go ahead to socialism, peace and plenty.
The experiences of the last twenty years have not “killed the souls of all Russians” nor bestialized the individual. On the contrary, these experiences have shown the Russian masses the superiority of living in a workers’ state, even though isolated and, degenerated under Stalinism. Because they have freed themselves from the bestialization of capitalism and opened up the possibilities for a new life, they are ready against the greatest odds and with inferior military equipment, as in the civil war days following the October revolution, to fight until death to protect what they have already won.
Red Army Fights Despite Stalinism
The Nazis see in this great defensive struggle by the Soviet masses only “dead souls” and “bestialized individuals.” History however will decide differently and will record it as the beginning of the awakening of the masses of the world in World War II.
It is not that the Soviet workers live in a perfect state. No one knows better than they what is wrong with the regime whose foreign policies have done so much to alienate the sympathies of the workers of the world from the Soviet Union. No one knows better than the Soviet workers how this bureaucracy has fastened itself onto the state, sapped its energies and re – sources and weakened the nationalized economy.
They have seen with their own eyes the destruction of the Soviets, the emasculation of the trade unions, the elimination of workers’ democracy, and the transformation of the Communist Party from a party of Bolshevism to a mere docile figurehead for the bureaucracy.
But in spite of all this, they have something to defend. They know that if imperialism defeats them, not only won’t they get back the political rights and workers’ democracy usurped by Stalinism, but that they will also lose the economic foundations that they still have.
Stalinists Silent on Class Nature of Red Army Morale
And when we consider how heroically they are fighting, we can correctly say that in their own language, spoken with the rifle and tank, the Soviet masses show a much clearer understanding of the historic processes of liberation than do the learned professors and lawyers who excel at “socialist” warmongering.
These “socialist” gentlemen find the task of herding the workers into the war in the “democracies” a far from easy one. But the Soviet masses, living on a progressive economic foundation, even though they have been robbed of their democratic rights, not only rush to the front but continue to fight when .it means almost certain death.
It is only the Trotskyists who understand, explain and support the real reasons for the great defensist struggles of the Soviet workers.
The Stalinists, who are afraid to speak in class terms, do not give the real reasons because it would offend the imperialists on whom they are placing so much confidence; and because it would open the eyes of the workers in the democracies, whom the Stalinists are urging to support the imperialists in the war, to the fact that they have nothing to fight for until they too establish a workers’ state.
Those “radicals” – in reality counter-revolutionists – who are indifferent to the outcome of the military struggle between the Red Army and Hitler also have nothing to say about the reasons for the S6viet workers’ fighting enthusiasm, because it ill fits their pseudo-revolutionary theory that the Soviet workers should not defend the Soviet Union.
A Program for Soviet Victory
Nevertheless, the resistance of the Soviet masses by itself cannot insure Soviet victory. For that a program is necessary.
This program must call for (1) the institution of a. revolutionary policy toward Germany, and (2) the extension of workers’ democracy, control and rights in all spheres of Soviet life.
Such a policy would include the open perspective of revolutionary unity of the Soviet working class with the German working class; a pledge that the Soviet Union would oppose another Versailles Treaty at the expense of Germany; propaganda for the proletarian revolution in Germany and the Socialist United States of Europe.
The morale and strength of the Soviet masses would be raised to the heights by the revival of workers’ democracy – the restoration of the Soviets and democracy in the trade unions, the legalization of all pro-Soviet political parties, the release of all pro-Soviet political prisoners and their return to their rightful places in the army and industry.
If the masses are waging such a heroic struggle for a degenerated workers’ state, how much more courageously will they strain all their energy and resources when they feel that political power belongs to them and not to the bureaucrats! When they feel that they have the right to determine the important questions, when they feel that their success on the battlefields will not merely bring back the status quo, but will facilitate the extension of the revolution to advanced capitalist countries and result in a socialist world that will forever destroy the possibility of imperialist invasion.
With the adoption of this program, the struggle of the Soviet masses would indeed be transformed from what is still essentially a defensive fight, to maintain what they already have, into an aggressive offensive to gain what they want: workers’ democracy inside the Soviet Union and the assistance and collaboration of workers’ states in the rest of the world.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(25 January 1941)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa05_04" target="new">Vol. 5 No. 4</a>, 25 January 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>Lenin and the Negroes</h4>
<p class="fst">Those who are interested in the struggle of the Negro people for full equality have special reason to remember Lenin on this anniversary of his death.</p>
<p>For Lenin, more than any other man of our time, contributed toward an understanding and solution of the problems facing the Negro people. And his contributions were not only in a general sense, but in a specific sense as well; not only on a national, but on a world scale: not only in the sphere of general politics, but in the internal sphere of the revolutionary movement.</p>
<p>It is the general program of Leninism which will guide the workers, colored and white, to their victory over the capitalist system and put an end to its wars, fascism, unemployment, racial discrimination. Lenin taught that the workers must take <em>power</em> away from the bosses: take away their power to hire and fire, their power to control the factories and discriminate against Negroes in hiring and classification of work; take away their control of the armed, forces through their mercenary hirelings, the officer caste, whom they train to Jim Crow the Negro; take away their control of the press, the schools, the church, the movies, all of which they use to perpetuate the system of “white supremacy,” and thus keep white and colored workers divided and the bosses in power.</p>
<p>Workers, said Lenin, take power into your own hands. Set up your own government, run it yourselves, in your own interests. That is the only way to do away with war, unemployment, racial and national divisions.</p>
<p>And the Soviet Union of Lenin’s time showed that this was true, that it was only under workers’ power that the many different racial and national groups of that country could live together in peace and equality.</p>
<p>Lenin’s greatest contribution in this field was in connection with the colonial and national question, that is, the solution of the world Negro problem.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>What Lenin Taught Us</h4>
<p class="fst">In his famous theses on this task, adopted at the Second Congress of the Third International, he analysed the failure of the radical movements of the past to understand this problem. “The Second International failed to appreciate the importance of the colonial question. For them, the world did not exist outside of Europe. They could not see the necessity of co-ordinating the revolutionary movement of Europe with those in the. non-European countries. Instead of giving moral and material help to the revolutionary movement in the colonies, the members of the Second International themselves became imperialists.</p>
<p>Lenin, pointed out that as long as the capitalists in the imperialist countries could squeeze and bleed super-profits out of the natives in the colonies, they would be strong enough at home to resist the workers and remain in power and that, consequently, the workers in these advanced countries must help and strengthen the struggles of the colonies against their joint enemy and oppressor, the imperialists.</p>
<p>It was Lenin’s teachings, therefore, which developed the comradely attitude of the revolutionary workers toward the millions of oppressed colored peoples throughout the world, and made them understand the necessity of assisting in every way the struggle of the colored peoples for independence.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>Stalin and the Negroes</h4>
<p class="fst">The Communist International, which has degenerated under Stalin from the vanguard of the revolution to the watchdog of the bureaucrats in the Kremlin, still pretends to honor the memory and carry out the teachings of Lenin. There is no better yardstick for measuring the hypocrisy of the Stalinists than contrasting <em>their</em> practice on the colonial question with Lenin’s teachings.</p>
<p>During the period 1935–39, when they were wooing the democratic imperialists to get a pact with Stalin, they dropped the colonial peoples overboard. “Instead of giving moral and material help”, they ignored or sabotaged the struggles in the colonies, because they wanted to get the good will of the capitalists who oppress these colonies. In the quotation above, Lenin used the strongest terms in denouncing the Second International for doing this. We can be sure that his language would have been no more gentle about Stalin’s shipping of oil to Italy during the invasion of Ethiopia.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt4"></a>
<h4>For All Races!</h4>
<p class="fst">Just as Lenin clarified the attitude of the revolutionary movement toward the colonial people, so did he revolutionize its attitude toward the colored people in the capitalist countries. Here is what he said on it in the <em>Statutes</em>, adopted by the Communist International’s Second Congress.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Communist International once forever breaks with the traditions of the Second International which in reality only recognized the white race. The Communist International makes it its task to emancipate the workers of the entire world. The ranks of the Communist International fraternally unites men of all colors: white, yellow, and black – the toilers of the entire world.”</p>
<p class="fst">This was of especial significance for us here in the United States, where the Negro people, who form so large a proportion of the exploited population, had been completely overlooked or only formally recognized in the propaganda and organizational work of the Socialist Party, in much the same way that its parent body, the Second International, had, treated the colonial question.</p>
<p>It is necessary to support the movement for real equality among the American Negroes, Lenin pointed out in the theses on the colonial question, and thereby he opened the eyes of the American revolutionists to the unbreakable connection between the struggle of the Negroes for equality and the struggle for the social revolution./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(25 January 1941)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 4, 25 January 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Lenin and the Negroes
Those who are interested in the struggle of the Negro people for full equality have special reason to remember Lenin on this anniversary of his death.
For Lenin, more than any other man of our time, contributed toward an understanding and solution of the problems facing the Negro people. And his contributions were not only in a general sense, but in a specific sense as well; not only on a national, but on a world scale: not only in the sphere of general politics, but in the internal sphere of the revolutionary movement.
It is the general program of Leninism which will guide the workers, colored and white, to their victory over the capitalist system and put an end to its wars, fascism, unemployment, racial discrimination. Lenin taught that the workers must take power away from the bosses: take away their power to hire and fire, their power to control the factories and discriminate against Negroes in hiring and classification of work; take away their control of the armed, forces through their mercenary hirelings, the officer caste, whom they train to Jim Crow the Negro; take away their control of the press, the schools, the church, the movies, all of which they use to perpetuate the system of “white supremacy,” and thus keep white and colored workers divided and the bosses in power.
Workers, said Lenin, take power into your own hands. Set up your own government, run it yourselves, in your own interests. That is the only way to do away with war, unemployment, racial and national divisions.
And the Soviet Union of Lenin’s time showed that this was true, that it was only under workers’ power that the many different racial and national groups of that country could live together in peace and equality.
Lenin’s greatest contribution in this field was in connection with the colonial and national question, that is, the solution of the world Negro problem.
What Lenin Taught Us
In his famous theses on this task, adopted at the Second Congress of the Third International, he analysed the failure of the radical movements of the past to understand this problem. “The Second International failed to appreciate the importance of the colonial question. For them, the world did not exist outside of Europe. They could not see the necessity of co-ordinating the revolutionary movement of Europe with those in the. non-European countries. Instead of giving moral and material help to the revolutionary movement in the colonies, the members of the Second International themselves became imperialists.
Lenin, pointed out that as long as the capitalists in the imperialist countries could squeeze and bleed super-profits out of the natives in the colonies, they would be strong enough at home to resist the workers and remain in power and that, consequently, the workers in these advanced countries must help and strengthen the struggles of the colonies against their joint enemy and oppressor, the imperialists.
It was Lenin’s teachings, therefore, which developed the comradely attitude of the revolutionary workers toward the millions of oppressed colored peoples throughout the world, and made them understand the necessity of assisting in every way the struggle of the colored peoples for independence.
Stalin and the Negroes
The Communist International, which has degenerated under Stalin from the vanguard of the revolution to the watchdog of the bureaucrats in the Kremlin, still pretends to honor the memory and carry out the teachings of Lenin. There is no better yardstick for measuring the hypocrisy of the Stalinists than contrasting their practice on the colonial question with Lenin’s teachings.
During the period 1935–39, when they were wooing the democratic imperialists to get a pact with Stalin, they dropped the colonial peoples overboard. “Instead of giving moral and material help”, they ignored or sabotaged the struggles in the colonies, because they wanted to get the good will of the capitalists who oppress these colonies. In the quotation above, Lenin used the strongest terms in denouncing the Second International for doing this. We can be sure that his language would have been no more gentle about Stalin’s shipping of oil to Italy during the invasion of Ethiopia.
For All Races!
Just as Lenin clarified the attitude of the revolutionary movement toward the colonial people, so did he revolutionize its attitude toward the colored people in the capitalist countries. Here is what he said on it in the Statutes, adopted by the Communist International’s Second Congress.
“The Communist International once forever breaks with the traditions of the Second International which in reality only recognized the white race. The Communist International makes it its task to emancipate the workers of the entire world. The ranks of the Communist International fraternally unites men of all colors: white, yellow, and black – the toilers of the entire world.”
This was of especial significance for us here in the United States, where the Negro people, who form so large a proportion of the exploited population, had been completely overlooked or only formally recognized in the propaganda and organizational work of the Socialist Party, in much the same way that its parent body, the Second International, had, treated the colonial question.
It is necessary to support the movement for real equality among the American Negroes, Lenin pointed out in the theses on the colonial question, and thereby he opened the eyes of the American revolutionists to the unbreakable connection between the struggle of the Negroes for equality and the struggle for the social revolution./p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Can Liberals Be Trusted in Civil Rights Fight?</h1>
<h3>(20 December 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_51" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 51</a>, 20 December 1948. p. 2.<br>
ranscribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The struggle to win democratic rights for the Negro people will enter a new climactic Stage when the 81st Congress meets next month. In order to gain victory in this struggle, the enemies of Jim Crow must have a clear understanding of the strategy that will be employed against us.</p>
<p>The struggle for Negro equality is no longer a problem restricted only to the Negro community and the radical movement. One evidence of its new position was the prominence of the civil rights issue in the recent election campaign. Another evidence is the stream of documents on various aspects of the problem – the most famous being the report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the latest being the report on segregation in Washington. (See details on Page 1.)</p>
<p>These documents testify to the rising strength, militancy and Stubborn effectiveness of the Negro struggle as well as to the dynamic economic and social changes in the Negro’s status made by the unionization of the mass industries and the continued Negro ’urbanization during the last decade and a half.<br>
</p>
<h4>Talk and Action</h4>
<p class="fst">But there is another aspect of these reports – a dangerous aspect – to which insufficient attention has been paid. And that is the prestige which they create for their sponsors and signers as “progressives” who can be looked to for leadership in the fight against Jim Crow.</p>
<p>If talk is cheap, then signing reports is cheap too. Put your name to some document on the Negro question and overnight you can become a champion of Negro rights, hailed for your courage and liberalism. The more radical the document sounds and the more insistently it repeats charges that have been made a thousand times, the more heroic you are.</p>
<p>Many an enviable reputation has been built in this way by people who never lifted a finger to abolish the Jim Crow system. Hubert Humphrey, the Senator-elect from Minnesota who got national fame for pushing the civil rights plank at, the Democratic convention, is a case,in point. And there are many labor leaders whose progressive reputations on the Negro question are not .always justified by their actions as distinguished from their talk. For an example, (see the item about Philip Murray in <em>Notes from the News</em> on Page 4.)</p>
<p>This does not mean that the Trumanite liberals and labor leaders are going to confine themselves to talk on the Negro question when Congress meets. If they did, their progressive reputations would wither away as fast as they grew up, and they know it. They know that the time for mere talk and declarations and reports is reaching its end because the Negro people have had enough of such tricks, see through them and will not be satisfied unless action is taken. The liberal-labor coalition leaders know also that the Negro struggle acts as a ferment, stirring the working class into struggle, and they want, if possible, to quiet it down. <em>For all these reasons we can expect that they will carry on a noisy campaign for certain reforms, and that changes will be made.</em></p>
<p>Yes, changes will be made. Negroes will be appointed to additional posts in the government. Truman may set up a few interracial units in the armed forces. Congress may pass some watered-down version of an anti-lynching or FEPC bill. Some action will probably be taken to ease up on the pattern of strict segregation in the nation’s capital, which embarrasses the government in its international relations.</p>
<p>The purpose of these moves will be to convince the Negro people that a real change in race relations is being undertaken, that the way to achieve equality is through the “gradual” process of parliamentary reform, that Negroes can and must rely on the Democratic politicians, and especially the Trumanite liberals, to lead them to the promised land. All this is false to the core. Negroes who fall for this deception will experience the effects that follow the eating of soft-soap.</p>
<p><em>It is false because all of the changes envisioned by the liberals remain within the Jim Crow framework. Like unscrupulous landlords, they will replace some of the, broken windows and lay on a hew coat of paint, but the rotten Jim Crow structure itself will remain standing. They don’t Want and are incapable of making fundamental changes, no matter how radical their talk becomes.</em></p>
<p>The report on segregation in Washington is as radical gg such documents can ever be. “It is not the poor whites who set the pattern, but men of acknowledged culture and refinement, the leaders of the community,” says the report. Furthermore, the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” are responsible for planning segregation “as a matter of good business,” and the government for practicing discrimination in all departments.</p>
<p>Hubert Humphrey, Philip Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther, among others, sponsored this report. The question that must now be put to them is this: <em>Do they propose to deprive the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” of the political and economic power that these interests are able to use against the Negroes?</em> The answer is obviously No, as we can observe from their political behavior during the 1948 campaign when they worked to preserve the capitalist two-party system and to return to office the Democratic administration under which these evils have continued or , grown worse during the last 16 years.<br>
</p>
<h4>No Half-Way Thing</h4>
<p class="fst">Naturally, it is necessary to fight for minor changes while engaging in the battle for the basic changes. But never forget this: Equality cannot be a half-way thing. Either you have it in all spheres or you don’t really have it at all. And if you don’t have it in all spheres, then whatever gains you may make in any sphere, far from being secure and lasting, will be subject to sudden loss at the hands of the ruling class. That was the bitter story of the Jewish people in Germany, and the danger exists, if we don’t abolish the capitalist cause of race oppression, that it will be repeated on a larger and bloodier scale with regard to Negroes in the U.S.</p>
<p>The reformist theory of “gradual” gains, which the liberals want substituted for the fight for full equality, is not a new one. It has a long and instructive history, beginning with Booker T. Washington, and has had ample opportunity for over half a century to prove its value, in action. And yet the report on Washington admits that segregation there is worse today than it was 50 years ago. <em>If Negroes continue to follow such a program, the grandchildren of the present Humphreys and Murrays will undoubtedly sponsor another report in. 1998, saying substantially the same thing.</em></p>
<p>Full economic, political and social equality in our time – not in some, far distant future – must remain the unswerving demand of militant Negroes and white workers. We can accept the support of liberals for specific measures in line with our main objective (FEPC, anti-lynching, anti-poll tax bills, etc.). But we dare not yield the leadership of the Negro struggle to these liberals or to place an ounce of political credit in them, because their final objective is quite different from ours and because we will have to fight them as well as the conservative supporters of capitalism when we launch upon the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government which alone can institute true equality for all races and colors.</p>
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Albert Parker
Can Liberals Be Trusted in Civil Rights Fight?
(20 December 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 51, 20 December 1948. p. 2.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The struggle to win democratic rights for the Negro people will enter a new climactic Stage when the 81st Congress meets next month. In order to gain victory in this struggle, the enemies of Jim Crow must have a clear understanding of the strategy that will be employed against us.
The struggle for Negro equality is no longer a problem restricted only to the Negro community and the radical movement. One evidence of its new position was the prominence of the civil rights issue in the recent election campaign. Another evidence is the stream of documents on various aspects of the problem – the most famous being the report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the latest being the report on segregation in Washington. (See details on Page 1.)
These documents testify to the rising strength, militancy and Stubborn effectiveness of the Negro struggle as well as to the dynamic economic and social changes in the Negro’s status made by the unionization of the mass industries and the continued Negro ’urbanization during the last decade and a half.
Talk and Action
But there is another aspect of these reports – a dangerous aspect – to which insufficient attention has been paid. And that is the prestige which they create for their sponsors and signers as “progressives” who can be looked to for leadership in the fight against Jim Crow.
If talk is cheap, then signing reports is cheap too. Put your name to some document on the Negro question and overnight you can become a champion of Negro rights, hailed for your courage and liberalism. The more radical the document sounds and the more insistently it repeats charges that have been made a thousand times, the more heroic you are.
Many an enviable reputation has been built in this way by people who never lifted a finger to abolish the Jim Crow system. Hubert Humphrey, the Senator-elect from Minnesota who got national fame for pushing the civil rights plank at, the Democratic convention, is a case,in point. And there are many labor leaders whose progressive reputations on the Negro question are not .always justified by their actions as distinguished from their talk. For an example, (see the item about Philip Murray in Notes from the News on Page 4.)
This does not mean that the Trumanite liberals and labor leaders are going to confine themselves to talk on the Negro question when Congress meets. If they did, their progressive reputations would wither away as fast as they grew up, and they know it. They know that the time for mere talk and declarations and reports is reaching its end because the Negro people have had enough of such tricks, see through them and will not be satisfied unless action is taken. The liberal-labor coalition leaders know also that the Negro struggle acts as a ferment, stirring the working class into struggle, and they want, if possible, to quiet it down. For all these reasons we can expect that they will carry on a noisy campaign for certain reforms, and that changes will be made.
Yes, changes will be made. Negroes will be appointed to additional posts in the government. Truman may set up a few interracial units in the armed forces. Congress may pass some watered-down version of an anti-lynching or FEPC bill. Some action will probably be taken to ease up on the pattern of strict segregation in the nation’s capital, which embarrasses the government in its international relations.
The purpose of these moves will be to convince the Negro people that a real change in race relations is being undertaken, that the way to achieve equality is through the “gradual” process of parliamentary reform, that Negroes can and must rely on the Democratic politicians, and especially the Trumanite liberals, to lead them to the promised land. All this is false to the core. Negroes who fall for this deception will experience the effects that follow the eating of soft-soap.
It is false because all of the changes envisioned by the liberals remain within the Jim Crow framework. Like unscrupulous landlords, they will replace some of the, broken windows and lay on a hew coat of paint, but the rotten Jim Crow structure itself will remain standing. They don’t Want and are incapable of making fundamental changes, no matter how radical their talk becomes.
The report on segregation in Washington is as radical gg such documents can ever be. “It is not the poor whites who set the pattern, but men of acknowledged culture and refinement, the leaders of the community,” says the report. Furthermore, the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” are responsible for planning segregation “as a matter of good business,” and the government for practicing discrimination in all departments.
Hubert Humphrey, Philip Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther, among others, sponsored this report. The question that must now be put to them is this: Do they propose to deprive the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” of the political and economic power that these interests are able to use against the Negroes? The answer is obviously No, as we can observe from their political behavior during the 1948 campaign when they worked to preserve the capitalist two-party system and to return to office the Democratic administration under which these evils have continued or , grown worse during the last 16 years.
No Half-Way Thing
Naturally, it is necessary to fight for minor changes while engaging in the battle for the basic changes. But never forget this: Equality cannot be a half-way thing. Either you have it in all spheres or you don’t really have it at all. And if you don’t have it in all spheres, then whatever gains you may make in any sphere, far from being secure and lasting, will be subject to sudden loss at the hands of the ruling class. That was the bitter story of the Jewish people in Germany, and the danger exists, if we don’t abolish the capitalist cause of race oppression, that it will be repeated on a larger and bloodier scale with regard to Negroes in the U.S.
The reformist theory of “gradual” gains, which the liberals want substituted for the fight for full equality, is not a new one. It has a long and instructive history, beginning with Booker T. Washington, and has had ample opportunity for over half a century to prove its value, in action. And yet the report on Washington admits that segregation there is worse today than it was 50 years ago. If Negroes continue to follow such a program, the grandchildren of the present Humphreys and Murrays will undoubtedly sponsor another report in. 1998, saying substantially the same thing.
Full economic, political and social equality in our time – not in some, far distant future – must remain the unswerving demand of militant Negroes and white workers. We can accept the support of liberals for specific measures in line with our main objective (FEPC, anti-lynching, anti-poll tax bills, etc.). But we dare not yield the leadership of the Negro struggle to these liberals or to place an ounce of political credit in them, because their final objective is quite different from ours and because we will have to fight them as well as the conservative supporters of capitalism when we launch upon the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government which alone can institute true equality for all races and colors.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(8 November 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_45" target="new">Vol. V No. 45</a>, 8 November 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Looking through the Negro press the last week or so, we got a bird’s eye view of what many of the so-called “leaders” of the Negro people are up to. It has become a practice to call such people who betray the interests of the Negro masses “Uncle Toms”, but in actuality using such a term for these people is a slander of the original Uncle Tom.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The handful of Negro soldiers now being trained as officers by the Army are all getting their training in the same camps as white soldiers. Here they are by no means free from discrimination and segregation, but since they are in the same camps they escape some of the more obvious Jim Crow treatment they might have to suffer in separate camps.</p>
<p>Up pops that Negro advocate of Negro segregation, Edgar G. Brown, leader of the United Government Employees, with the request to Roosevelt and Secretary of War Stimson that a Jim Crow officers training school be established.</p>
<p>This gave a newscaster broadcasting over the Mutual Broadcasting System the opportunity to say, “A large group of the most responsible Negro leaders in the country has appealed to President Roosevelt in a formal, official letter opposing the present policy of the army whereby Negro officers are being trained in the same schools as white officers.”</p>
<p>And. according to the <strong>Chicago Defender</strong>, “anti-Negro forces in Washington and particularly the War Department are reported to be delighted at the request of Brown ... since it permits them to justify segregation on the ground that Negroes themselves have asked for it.”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">In Little Rock, Arkansas, the CIO has been active organizing cotton oil mill and compress workers, laundry workers, domestic workers, etc., many if not most of whom are Negro men and women. After the establishment of Camp Robinson, for example, the demand for domestic workers for the officers’ families rose – but the wages didn’t, remaining at $3–4 a week. The CIO is organizing these workers and trying to win them a minimum of $1 a day. The laundry workers too are grossly underpaid, overworked and exploited, and ready to respond to organization. The mill operators and planters in the area are getting a little worried, for they fear that the current CIO drive may make headway into the more important industries, and they are preparing to fight the CIO in every way possible.</p>
<p>So along come two Negro stooges, Attorney R.J. Booker of the Negro Chamber of Commerce and C.H. Jones of the so-called “Southern Mediators Association” calling meetings and issuing statements as “Negro” leaders urging the Negro workers to have nothing to do with the CIO and in general doing everything within their power to prevent them from receiving the benefits of unionism.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">Only two months ago Governor Stassen of Minnesota was widely attacked in the Negro and labor press for his refusal to permit Negroes to serve in the state Home Guards.</p>
<p>Then about two weeks ago Stassen came out with a statement calling on employers to hire Negroes without discrimination, one of those cheap statements that sound good and cost nothing.</p>
<p>Now, from Washington, D.C., Emmett J. Scott, who as “Negro advisor to the Secretary of War” did his “bit” in World War I in convincing the Negro people that it was a “war for democracy”, and who knows what Stassen’s record is, comes out with a disgusting article praising Stassen because he is one of those “engaged in battling the forces of intolerance and bigotry – not lip service-battling, but real battling ...”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">Today the Negro people have the greatest need and opportunity for agitation and struggle for equal rights. The government forces who want to stifle free speech also want to take away from the Negroes the right to speak and agitate against Jim Crowism, and in the name of “national defense” they propose to do this.</p>
<p>Dean Gordon Hancock, writing in his column, <em>Between The Lines</em>, this week gives them aid and comfort in their plans when he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Freedom of speech is a fine thing in times of peace, but it becomes exceedingly dangerous in times of war. At a time when we have to be concentrating everything on getting this nation’s mind made up to fight a war that is inevitable, we are still crying ‘freedom of speech’ with the result that our councils are divided and the people are confused and the nation is just piddling around. Whether we have a dictatorship or not, we certainly need one, and that very badly ...”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>This is only a small fraction of the large-scale treachery reported in the press in the last week or so. But as we were saying, alongside of some of these people. Uncle Tom was just a harmless old coot. Even if his philosophy was that they could beat his poor old body but his soul belonged to God, at least he didn’t go around selling out other Negroes to their oppressors. And he was supposed to be uneducated unlike many of these lawyers and doctors. And he didn’t pretend to be a leader!</em></p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(8 November 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 45, 8 November 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Looking through the Negro press the last week or so, we got a bird’s eye view of what many of the so-called “leaders” of the Negro people are up to. It has become a practice to call such people who betray the interests of the Negro masses “Uncle Toms”, but in actuality using such a term for these people is a slander of the original Uncle Tom.
* * *
The handful of Negro soldiers now being trained as officers by the Army are all getting their training in the same camps as white soldiers. Here they are by no means free from discrimination and segregation, but since they are in the same camps they escape some of the more obvious Jim Crow treatment they might have to suffer in separate camps.
Up pops that Negro advocate of Negro segregation, Edgar G. Brown, leader of the United Government Employees, with the request to Roosevelt and Secretary of War Stimson that a Jim Crow officers training school be established.
This gave a newscaster broadcasting over the Mutual Broadcasting System the opportunity to say, “A large group of the most responsible Negro leaders in the country has appealed to President Roosevelt in a formal, official letter opposing the present policy of the army whereby Negro officers are being trained in the same schools as white officers.”
And. according to the Chicago Defender, “anti-Negro forces in Washington and particularly the War Department are reported to be delighted at the request of Brown ... since it permits them to justify segregation on the ground that Negroes themselves have asked for it.”
* * *
In Little Rock, Arkansas, the CIO has been active organizing cotton oil mill and compress workers, laundry workers, domestic workers, etc., many if not most of whom are Negro men and women. After the establishment of Camp Robinson, for example, the demand for domestic workers for the officers’ families rose – but the wages didn’t, remaining at $3–4 a week. The CIO is organizing these workers and trying to win them a minimum of $1 a day. The laundry workers too are grossly underpaid, overworked and exploited, and ready to respond to organization. The mill operators and planters in the area are getting a little worried, for they fear that the current CIO drive may make headway into the more important industries, and they are preparing to fight the CIO in every way possible.
So along come two Negro stooges, Attorney R.J. Booker of the Negro Chamber of Commerce and C.H. Jones of the so-called “Southern Mediators Association” calling meetings and issuing statements as “Negro” leaders urging the Negro workers to have nothing to do with the CIO and in general doing everything within their power to prevent them from receiving the benefits of unionism.
* * *
Only two months ago Governor Stassen of Minnesota was widely attacked in the Negro and labor press for his refusal to permit Negroes to serve in the state Home Guards.
Then about two weeks ago Stassen came out with a statement calling on employers to hire Negroes without discrimination, one of those cheap statements that sound good and cost nothing.
Now, from Washington, D.C., Emmett J. Scott, who as “Negro advisor to the Secretary of War” did his “bit” in World War I in convincing the Negro people that it was a “war for democracy”, and who knows what Stassen’s record is, comes out with a disgusting article praising Stassen because he is one of those “engaged in battling the forces of intolerance and bigotry – not lip service-battling, but real battling ...”
* * *
Today the Negro people have the greatest need and opportunity for agitation and struggle for equal rights. The government forces who want to stifle free speech also want to take away from the Negroes the right to speak and agitate against Jim Crowism, and in the name of “national defense” they propose to do this.
Dean Gordon Hancock, writing in his column, Between The Lines, this week gives them aid and comfort in their plans when he says:
“Freedom of speech is a fine thing in times of peace, but it becomes exceedingly dangerous in times of war. At a time when we have to be concentrating everything on getting this nation’s mind made up to fight a war that is inevitable, we are still crying ‘freedom of speech’ with the result that our councils are divided and the people are confused and the nation is just piddling around. Whether we have a dictatorship or not, we certainly need one, and that very badly ...”
* * *
This is only a small fraction of the large-scale treachery reported in the press in the last week or so. But as we were saying, alongside of some of these people. Uncle Tom was just a harmless old coot. Even if his philosophy was that they could beat his poor old body but his soul belonged to God, at least he didn’t go around selling out other Negroes to their oppressors. And he was supposed to be uneducated unlike many of these lawyers and doctors. And he didn’t pretend to be a leader!
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(1 February 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_05" target="new">Vol. V No. 5</a>, 1 February 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Jim Crow Air Pilots</h4>
<p class="fst">One section of Public Law No. 18 of the last Congress, adopted almost two years ago, directed the War Department to train Negro air pilots. The War Department, undoubtedly with a wink of the eye from the White House, ignored this section of the bill completely.</p>
<p>Last week, however, it announced that qualified Negroes would be accepted into the Army Air Corps with the formation of a squadron that will begin training this month.</p>
<p>This announcement has been a long time coming, and it undoubtedly would have been longer if it hadn’t been that a long series of Negro protests developed. Then Yancey Williams, engineering student at Howard University, filed suit in the United States District Court, against the Secretary of War and four major-generals, for their rejection of his application to enlist in the Air Corps. Only then did the War Department move.</p>
<p>But anyone who concludes from this that the generals in the Army or the bureaucrats in Washington have in any way changed their basic policies toward the Negro people, because of a little law suit, is quite wrong.</p>
<p>For the bone that has been thrown the Negro people to shut them up is Jim Crow through and through.</p>
<p>The new unit, a pursuit squadron, which will receive its flying instruction at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, is for colored only, and will be the only unit for colored. This means that the policy of segregation, which has been praised as “satisfactory” by Roosevelt, remains untouched.</p>
<p>Creation of the new unit, said Undersecretary of War Patterson, “is in keeping with a policy of including colored persons in every branch of the Army.”</p>
<p>To which Marjorie McKenzie, <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> columnist, has aptly replied:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“According to our interpretation, this is in line with a policy of <em>excluding</em> colored persons from every branch of the Army, except a few Jim Crow set-ups ...”</p>
<p class="fst">There isn’t much to the bone. When the squadron is finally organized it will include only 33 pilots and 27 planes, with a ground force of about 400 enlisted men.</p>
<p>Immediately after the plan was announced, the National Airmen’s Association, made up of Negro flyers throughout the country, passed a strong resolution condemning the plan and reaffirming its determination to win complete equality in the Air Corps.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Both the army and navy have stressed tradition in arguing against the abolition of segregated units,” said C.R. Coffey, national president. “In the air corps there is no tradition, either favorable or unfavorable to complete racial integration. If we permit the establishment of a Negro unit, it will be establishing a precedent which will be hard to break down. We’d rather be excluded than to be segregated ...”</p>
<p class="fst">The whole incident is striking proof of our contention that regardless of what Congressional or legal action is taken or decision made, the officer clique, as long as they are in control of things, will disregard them or find some way of getting around them and maintaining their segregation-discrimination policies. <em>The way out is to take that control away from them.</em> That is why we call for trade union control of military training.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>War Industries Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">The recent report by the National Urban League, the organization most closely in touch with statistics dealing with hiring and barring of Negroes from the war industries, shows that very little progress has been made in breaking down the discriminatory practices employed by the bosses and their employment managers.</p>
<p>According to the report, those employers who were questioned were “practically unanimous” in claiming that they barred Negroes not because they themselves personally were opposed to them, but because they were afraid that the white workers in their plants would resent it, and “it might lead tor serious labor trouble, or at least sufficient ill will to interfere with efficient production”.</p>
<p>In this way, the bosses who are guilty of Jim Crowing the Negro try to palm off the responsibility on the white workers – who were never consulted in a single case by the bosses about what they thought about hiring Negroes. Thus the bosses accomplish two things: they bar the Negro, and then they build up antagonism among the Negroes toward the white workers. “Divide and rule” is the motto of the bosses.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(1 February 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 5, 1 February 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Jim Crow Air Pilots
One section of Public Law No. 18 of the last Congress, adopted almost two years ago, directed the War Department to train Negro air pilots. The War Department, undoubtedly with a wink of the eye from the White House, ignored this section of the bill completely.
Last week, however, it announced that qualified Negroes would be accepted into the Army Air Corps with the formation of a squadron that will begin training this month.
This announcement has been a long time coming, and it undoubtedly would have been longer if it hadn’t been that a long series of Negro protests developed. Then Yancey Williams, engineering student at Howard University, filed suit in the United States District Court, against the Secretary of War and four major-generals, for their rejection of his application to enlist in the Air Corps. Only then did the War Department move.
But anyone who concludes from this that the generals in the Army or the bureaucrats in Washington have in any way changed their basic policies toward the Negro people, because of a little law suit, is quite wrong.
For the bone that has been thrown the Negro people to shut them up is Jim Crow through and through.
The new unit, a pursuit squadron, which will receive its flying instruction at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, is for colored only, and will be the only unit for colored. This means that the policy of segregation, which has been praised as “satisfactory” by Roosevelt, remains untouched.
Creation of the new unit, said Undersecretary of War Patterson, “is in keeping with a policy of including colored persons in every branch of the Army.”
To which Marjorie McKenzie, Pittsburgh Courier columnist, has aptly replied:
“According to our interpretation, this is in line with a policy of excluding colored persons from every branch of the Army, except a few Jim Crow set-ups ...”
There isn’t much to the bone. When the squadron is finally organized it will include only 33 pilots and 27 planes, with a ground force of about 400 enlisted men.
Immediately after the plan was announced, the National Airmen’s Association, made up of Negro flyers throughout the country, passed a strong resolution condemning the plan and reaffirming its determination to win complete equality in the Air Corps.
“Both the army and navy have stressed tradition in arguing against the abolition of segregated units,” said C.R. Coffey, national president. “In the air corps there is no tradition, either favorable or unfavorable to complete racial integration. If we permit the establishment of a Negro unit, it will be establishing a precedent which will be hard to break down. We’d rather be excluded than to be segregated ...”
The whole incident is striking proof of our contention that regardless of what Congressional or legal action is taken or decision made, the officer clique, as long as they are in control of things, will disregard them or find some way of getting around them and maintaining their segregation-discrimination policies. The way out is to take that control away from them. That is why we call for trade union control of military training.
War Industries Jim Crow
The recent report by the National Urban League, the organization most closely in touch with statistics dealing with hiring and barring of Negroes from the war industries, shows that very little progress has been made in breaking down the discriminatory practices employed by the bosses and their employment managers.
According to the report, those employers who were questioned were “practically unanimous” in claiming that they barred Negroes not because they themselves personally were opposed to them, but because they were afraid that the white workers in their plants would resent it, and “it might lead tor serious labor trouble, or at least sufficient ill will to interfere with efficient production”.
In this way, the bosses who are guilty of Jim Crowing the Negro try to palm off the responsibility on the white workers – who were never consulted in a single case by the bosses about what they thought about hiring Negroes. Thus the bosses accomplish two things: they bar the Negro, and then they build up antagonism among the Negroes toward the white workers. “Divide and rule” is the motto of the bosses.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Pact’s Aims Are War, Dictatorships</h1>
<h4>Pledges Military Aid of U.S. to Crush Popular Uprisings</h4>
<h3>(28 March 1949)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_48" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 13</a>, 28 March 1949, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Preparations for World War III and counter-revolution in Europe are the main aims of the North Atlantic Pact, scheduled to be signed in Washington by representatives of eight countries during the first week of April.</strong></p>
<p>This pact marks the formal establishment of a military “holy alliance” dominated by American imperialism and designed to promote the transformation of the present cold war into hot wars against (1) the Soviet Union and her satellites, (2) rebellious workers and peasants seeking to establish socialism in the countries bound by the pact.</p>
<p>This program, giving Washington a ring of advanced military bases around the Soviet Union, is presented to the world in the name of “international peace and security and justice” as a defense against “aggression.” But how would it look if the Soviet Union had pressured Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America into signing a pact which established Russian bases in those countries, supplied them with arms and committed them to come to the aid of the Soviet Union in any war in which it became involved?<br>
</p>
<h4>Pact’s Main Clauses</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>Would such an act be any more aggressive than the one the U.S. government is now committing through the formation of the Atlantic Pact and the diplomatic strong-arm methods it used to drive several small European nations into line for the pact?</em></p>
<p>Article 3 of the pact calls for a vast expansion inarms and military forces. Article 4 calls for consultation whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.” Article 5 provides that in case of an “armed attack” on any of the pact members, each of them will take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” Article 9 establishes a council and a “defense committee” to implement the pact. Article 10 permits the inclusion of other European states by unanimous agreement. Article 11 provides for the ratification of the pact by individual members after it has been signed. Article 13 binds them to the pact for at least 20 years.<br>
</p>
<h4>Against Revolution</h4>
<p class="fst">At a press conference on Mar. 18, the day the details of the pact were finally released, Secretary of State Acheson undertook to explain the meaning of Article 4 when a reporter asked if it meant the council could take action in case of an internal revolution in any of the countries.</p>
<p>Yes, there would be consultation, Acheson replied. In his opinion, “purely internal revolutionary activity would not be regarded as an armed attack; a revolutionary activity inspired, armed, directed from outside, however, was a different matter.”</p>
<p><em>The important thing here is not the diplomatic reservation about revolutionary activity from “outside,” but the fact that under this pact the participating governments assume the power to intervene When revolutions threaten or take place. “Purely internal” revolutions usually are, can, and under this pact surely will be denounced as foreign-instigated.</em> (Remember, for example, that when the Dutch imperialists attacked the Indonesian Republic a few months ago, they called it a communist movement instigated from “outside.”)</p>
<p>Acheson also noted that under Article 4, Greece, if it was a member of the pact, could ask for help and the other members could send armed forces there to put down the opponents of the regime. The same thing, under the “outside direction” formula, could be done in France or Italy or any other country where the majority of the people rebelled against their capitalist rulers and sought to establish a workers and farmers government.</p>
<p>And even if all the pact members would not intervene in such situations, it is obvious that the governments getting arms from the U.S. will use them against “purely internal” revolutionary movemehts at home, or in their colonies.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Freedom of the Air”</h4>
<p class="fst">Equally ominous were Acheson’s replies to other questions, particularly about the conditions Under which a third world war could be initiated. A reporter asked if “an attack on aircraft flying over Soviet territory into Berlin” would be considered an armed attack within the meaning of the pact.</p>
<p><em>It would, Acheson answered, emphasizing that it wouldn’t make any difference where it occurred. United States entry into World Wars I and II was hastened by the assertion of her right to “freedom of the seas” – to send ships wherever she pleased. The same thing is threatened by this new assertion of “freedom of the air.”</em></p>
<p>The pact pays its respects to “constitutional processes” and Acheson took special pains to stress that it would not commit the U.S. to "automatic” war because “under our constitution, the Congress alone has the power to declare war.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Constitutional Problem</h4>
<p class="fst">But, he added immediately, the U.S. would be “bound to take promptly the action which we deemed necessary to restore and maintain security in the North Atlantic area ... This is pot a legalistic question. It is a question we have frequently faced, the question of faith and principle in carrying out treaties.”</p>
<p><em>Acheson was talking out of both sides of his mouth – one of the specialties of capitalist diplomacy – but he cannot cover up the fact that by approving the pact, Congress would in effect transfer the real war-making powers into the hands of Truman and the State Department, whose actions in the pact council and whose power to send U.S. troops abroad would have twenty times greater weight in initiating war than a subsequent decision by Congress, which could only have a rubber-stamp character because of the “obligations” under the pact.</em></p>
<p>Support of two-thirds of the Senators voting will be needed for U.S. ratification of the pact. (Thus a smaller proportion of the Senate is required to approve a fateful decision to drag the American people into atomic war than is needed to stop a filibuster againstj civil rights legislation – where a two-thirds vote of the <em>entire</em> Senate is now needed.) There is little doubt that the necessary votes for the pact will be forthcoming in short order. (War is far more popular in the 81st Congress than civil rights.) The mepibers of Congress seem quite willing to grant, the wars making powers to the White House, provided they can retain the face-saving formality of participating in the decision.<br>
</p>
<h4>Arms Plan Next</h4>
<p class="fst">The pact itself contains no provisions on when or how or how much U.S. aid will be given to expansion of European armaments and military forces. But, as Acheson explained, the U.S. is the only power with the resources to rearm western Europe, and “therefore, we expect to ask the Congress to supply our European partners some of the weapons and equipment ...” Estimated costs for the first year are over one billion dollars.</p>
<p>This move is not as popular in Congress as the pact itself. That is why the arms plan has been separated from the pact; as a separate measure only a majority vote will be needed for its enactment. But after all, sending the arms is a logical consequence of the pact, just as the pact itself is a logical consequence of the Marshall Plan, and it is highly unlikely that the present bipartisan Congress would do anything to block it.<br>
</p>
<h4>Who Can Block War?</h4>
<p class="fst">Capitalist politicians certainly cannot be depended on to oppose either the pact or its consequences because in the last analysis all of them are committed to a war to preserve or restore the capitalist system throughout the world, and all of them support increased armament production as a means of staving off a catastrophic depression at home.</p>
<p><em>The only ones who can block the war drive are the people of the United States and Europe – the workers and farmers who will be sweated to pay for the whole project through higher taxes; who will have to give up some of their butter if they permit the capitalists to build mote guns; who will be asked to surrender more and more of their liberties if the ruling class is permitted to have its way in dictating the conditions of political life to the whole world; and who in the end will be ordered to serve as cannon-fodder in a war they never wanted and were never consulted about.</em></p>
<p>Their voice must be raised now, their energies aroused, to prevent mass murder and reaction on a scale never before witnessed in human affairs.</p>
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George Breitman
Pact’s Aims Are War, Dictatorships
Pledges Military Aid of U.S. to Crush Popular Uprisings
(28 March 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 13, 28 March 1949, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Preparations for World War III and counter-revolution in Europe are the main aims of the North Atlantic Pact, scheduled to be signed in Washington by representatives of eight countries during the first week of April.
This pact marks the formal establishment of a military “holy alliance” dominated by American imperialism and designed to promote the transformation of the present cold war into hot wars against (1) the Soviet Union and her satellites, (2) rebellious workers and peasants seeking to establish socialism in the countries bound by the pact.
This program, giving Washington a ring of advanced military bases around the Soviet Union, is presented to the world in the name of “international peace and security and justice” as a defense against “aggression.” But how would it look if the Soviet Union had pressured Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America into signing a pact which established Russian bases in those countries, supplied them with arms and committed them to come to the aid of the Soviet Union in any war in which it became involved?
Pact’s Main Clauses
Would such an act be any more aggressive than the one the U.S. government is now committing through the formation of the Atlantic Pact and the diplomatic strong-arm methods it used to drive several small European nations into line for the pact?
Article 3 of the pact calls for a vast expansion inarms and military forces. Article 4 calls for consultation whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.” Article 5 provides that in case of an “armed attack” on any of the pact members, each of them will take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” Article 9 establishes a council and a “defense committee” to implement the pact. Article 10 permits the inclusion of other European states by unanimous agreement. Article 11 provides for the ratification of the pact by individual members after it has been signed. Article 13 binds them to the pact for at least 20 years.
Against Revolution
At a press conference on Mar. 18, the day the details of the pact were finally released, Secretary of State Acheson undertook to explain the meaning of Article 4 when a reporter asked if it meant the council could take action in case of an internal revolution in any of the countries.
Yes, there would be consultation, Acheson replied. In his opinion, “purely internal revolutionary activity would not be regarded as an armed attack; a revolutionary activity inspired, armed, directed from outside, however, was a different matter.”
The important thing here is not the diplomatic reservation about revolutionary activity from “outside,” but the fact that under this pact the participating governments assume the power to intervene When revolutions threaten or take place. “Purely internal” revolutions usually are, can, and under this pact surely will be denounced as foreign-instigated. (Remember, for example, that when the Dutch imperialists attacked the Indonesian Republic a few months ago, they called it a communist movement instigated from “outside.”)
Acheson also noted that under Article 4, Greece, if it was a member of the pact, could ask for help and the other members could send armed forces there to put down the opponents of the regime. The same thing, under the “outside direction” formula, could be done in France or Italy or any other country where the majority of the people rebelled against their capitalist rulers and sought to establish a workers and farmers government.
And even if all the pact members would not intervene in such situations, it is obvious that the governments getting arms from the U.S. will use them against “purely internal” revolutionary movemehts at home, or in their colonies.
“Freedom of the Air”
Equally ominous were Acheson’s replies to other questions, particularly about the conditions Under which a third world war could be initiated. A reporter asked if “an attack on aircraft flying over Soviet territory into Berlin” would be considered an armed attack within the meaning of the pact.
It would, Acheson answered, emphasizing that it wouldn’t make any difference where it occurred. United States entry into World Wars I and II was hastened by the assertion of her right to “freedom of the seas” – to send ships wherever she pleased. The same thing is threatened by this new assertion of “freedom of the air.”
The pact pays its respects to “constitutional processes” and Acheson took special pains to stress that it would not commit the U.S. to "automatic” war because “under our constitution, the Congress alone has the power to declare war.”
Constitutional Problem
But, he added immediately, the U.S. would be “bound to take promptly the action which we deemed necessary to restore and maintain security in the North Atlantic area ... This is pot a legalistic question. It is a question we have frequently faced, the question of faith and principle in carrying out treaties.”
Acheson was talking out of both sides of his mouth – one of the specialties of capitalist diplomacy – but he cannot cover up the fact that by approving the pact, Congress would in effect transfer the real war-making powers into the hands of Truman and the State Department, whose actions in the pact council and whose power to send U.S. troops abroad would have twenty times greater weight in initiating war than a subsequent decision by Congress, which could only have a rubber-stamp character because of the “obligations” under the pact.
Support of two-thirds of the Senators voting will be needed for U.S. ratification of the pact. (Thus a smaller proportion of the Senate is required to approve a fateful decision to drag the American people into atomic war than is needed to stop a filibuster againstj civil rights legislation – where a two-thirds vote of the entire Senate is now needed.) There is little doubt that the necessary votes for the pact will be forthcoming in short order. (War is far more popular in the 81st Congress than civil rights.) The mepibers of Congress seem quite willing to grant, the wars making powers to the White House, provided they can retain the face-saving formality of participating in the decision.
Arms Plan Next
The pact itself contains no provisions on when or how or how much U.S. aid will be given to expansion of European armaments and military forces. But, as Acheson explained, the U.S. is the only power with the resources to rearm western Europe, and “therefore, we expect to ask the Congress to supply our European partners some of the weapons and equipment ...” Estimated costs for the first year are over one billion dollars.
This move is not as popular in Congress as the pact itself. That is why the arms plan has been separated from the pact; as a separate measure only a majority vote will be needed for its enactment. But after all, sending the arms is a logical consequence of the pact, just as the pact itself is a logical consequence of the Marshall Plan, and it is highly unlikely that the present bipartisan Congress would do anything to block it.
Who Can Block War?
Capitalist politicians certainly cannot be depended on to oppose either the pact or its consequences because in the last analysis all of them are committed to a war to preserve or restore the capitalist system throughout the world, and all of them support increased armament production as a means of staving off a catastrophic depression at home.
The only ones who can block the war drive are the people of the United States and Europe – the workers and farmers who will be sweated to pay for the whole project through higher taxes; who will have to give up some of their butter if they permit the capitalists to build mote guns; who will be asked to surrender more and more of their liberties if the ruling class is permitted to have its way in dictating the conditions of political life to the whole world; and who in the end will be ordered to serve as cannon-fodder in a war they never wanted and were never consulted about.
Their voice must be raised now, their energies aroused, to prevent mass murder and reaction on a scale never before witnessed in human affairs.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Negro March Leaders Yielded to FDR</h1>
<h4>In Calling Off Protest Against Jim Crowism, Randolph Betrayed People</h4>
<h3>(5 July 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_27" target="new">Vol. V No. 27</a>, 5 July 1941, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The Negro March on Washington, scheduled for July 1, has been called off.</p>
<p>Thousands of Negroes, preparing to leave for the demonstration, with the promises of the official March leaders still ringing in their ears, at the last minute heard A. Philip Randolph, over the radio Saturday night, declare that “the March is unnecessary at this time” and therefore the committee in charge has called it off.</p>
<p>Thus ended a hectic ten day period during which the Roosevelt administration had used every ace it had up its sleeve and which ended in the March being called off only because the Randolph-White leadership was willing to “compromise” and call it off if they were offered something they could use to save face before the thousands who insisted on the March going through until all their demands were granted. Roosevelt finally granted them this face-saving device in his “executive order” of Jurie 25.</p>
<p>Last week <strong>The Militant</strong> reported that the leaders of the March were being subjected to all kinds of pressure from their “friends” in the administration, but that they were forced to resist it because nothing concrete had been offered them as a bribe to call off the March. Then Randolph and Walter White were called to Washington.<br>
</p>
<h4>Roosevelt’s Line</h4>
<p class="fst">Here, at a conference attended by many government officials, Roosevelt condescended to give his own views on the March.</p>
<p>He declared that the March was bad and unintelligent. He said that the March would give the impression to the American people that Negroes are seeking to exercise force to compel the government to do certain things and that this attitude would do more harm than good.</p>
<p><em>(What the Negroes are really trying to get the government to do is to live up to the laws of the United States, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which are supposed to guard all races against discrimination!)</em></p>
<p>Although Randolph pointed out that the demands of the marchers were completely just and reasonable, Roosevelt persisted that it was a grave mistake and would not accomplish the object sought, but on the contrary might create serious trouble. He did not state what this serious trouble was, nor who would create it. “What would happen if Irish and Jewish people were to march on Washington?” was the kind of argument he used.</p>
<p><em>Roosevelt refused to speak to the marchers, claiming that it is his policy not to talk to any groups who come to Washington. White replied that the president had spoken before the American Youth Congress a little over a year ago. Roosevelt became a little confused and said, “And you see what happened, too,” referring to the fact that he had been booed by part of his audience.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>FDR Defends Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">When it was pointed out to Roosevelt that Negroes in the Navy are permitted to serve only in the most menial and low-paid capacities, his reply was that the stokers on the ships pefformeci even more menial work than the messmen. <em>He deliberately avoided the point that white men, who serve as stokers, can also serve elsewhere, while Negroes are not permitted to serve anywhere but in the mess department.</em></p>
<p>Roosevelt then rose to go, saying that he wanted to see discrimination against Negroes eliminated in the war industries, and that he wanted the conference to continue without him. He suggested that perhaps much could be accomplished along these lines if a board were set up which would receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in industry.<br>
</p>
<h4>Sidney Hillman’s Alibi</h4>
<p class="fst">Sidney Hillman claimed progress was being made by his office in breaking down discrimination. He was then asked if his office would withdraw a contract from a business concern that practiced discrimination. He evaded the question by saying that there are many factors involved and that “national defense has to come first.”</p>
<p><em>In other words, the preparations for a fake war for democracy abroad are more important to him than the question of democracy at home.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Knudsen’s Line</h4>
<p class="fst">Knudsen stated that he did not think an executive order necessary, that “more can be done through persuasion and education than through force.”</p>
<p><em>This is the administration’s attitude when it crimes to dealing with the employers, but not when it comes to dealing with the workers, as was shown in the governmental strikebreaking at Inglewood, California.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Secretary Knox’s Policy</h4>
<p class="fst">Then Secretary of the Navy Knox said he wanted to ask Randolph a direct question and that he hoped he would receive an honest reply. “Do you take the position that Negro and white sailors should be compelled to live together on ships?” Randolph replied in the affirmative, and Knox stated lamely that “in time of national defense, experiments of this kind cannot be carried on.” <em>Here better than anything else is an indication of where the administration realty stands on Jim Crowism. For if the head of the Navy believes that it is a dangerous experiment for Negro and white to work together on ships, how can anyone expect the Administration to be sincere iri its efforts to see to it that Negro and white work together in the factories?</em></p>
<p>A committee headed by LaGuardia was finally set up to make recommendations to Roosevelt, but as the conference ended it was still clear that no gains had been made, and Randolph again issued a statement that the March was still to be held.</p>
<p>The March leaders were under pressure not only from Roosevelt, but also from the masses supporting the March and insisting that it be carried out unless their full demands were granted. These full demands were for</p>
<p>the abolition of discrimination by the employers in industry and by the government in all its departments, including civil service jobs and the armed forces. The form of the demand was that Roosevelt should instruct the OPM, through a presidential proclamation or “executive order,” to withhold contracts from those companies practicing discrimination; and by virtue of his power as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces to order an end to discrimination in all governmental departments.<br>
</p>
<h4>Randolph Caves In</h4>
<p class="fst">On the evening of June 25, as the important Harlem March committee was making its final preparations for the March and a demonstration at New York City Hall before that, a telegram arrived from Randolph proclaiming “victory” and ordering the March to be held up.</p>
<p>Instead of securing the agreement of the local committees to calling off the March, Randolph went on the radio Saturday evening.</p>
<p>In his address, entitled <em>A Pledge of Unity</em>, he declared that the March was “unnecessary at this time” and then referred to and quoted an “executive order” issued by Roosevelt on June 25. He explained that the Committee had been intent on going through the March until they got something with “teeth in it.” Now they had the “executive order.”<br>
</p>
<h4>What Randolph Got</h4>
<p class="fst">In the order Roosevelt says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labbr organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin;</p>
<p class="quote">“And it is hereby ordered as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="quoteb">1. “All governmental agencies concerned with vocational and training programs for defense production shall take special measures to assure such programs are administered without discrimination;</p>
<p class="quoteb">2. “All contracting agencies of the Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin;</p>
<p class="quoteb">3. “There is established in the Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice” consisting of five members to be appointed by the President. “The Committee shall receive and investigate complaint? of discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h4>What Negroes Didn’t Get</h4>
<p class="fst">It does not require great study of this document to understand that while it certainly is an executive order, it is not the executive Order demanded by the Marchers.</p>
<p>The most obvious shortcomings in the document are that it refers only to “defense” industries; it does not say a word about discrimination and segregation in the governmental departments and in the armed forces. Even Randolph had to recognize this in his speech. <em>But Randolph says nothing about the fact that the order refers only to contracts “hereafter negotiated” and thus leaves untouched the 15 billion dollars worth of contracts already negotiated.</em> But even this is not the main point.</p>
<p>The order provides that future contracts must have a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate. That is all right. But the question is – and this goes to the heart of this particular problem – suppose the contractor gets the contract containing this provision, and continues to practice discrimination? What will happen then?</p>
<p><em>The answer is: The contract will not be withdrawn. This was what was asked of Roosevelt. The fact that he didn’t include it in his order is proof that contracts won’t be withdrawn.</em></p>
<p>We have a direct precedent for our answer to this question. When the different departments of the government negotiate contracts nowadays, they include a clause providing that the contractor must live up to federal laws, including the National Labor Relations Act, Walsh-Healy Act, etc. <em>Yet it is a well-known fact that the army one navy have refused to withhold contracts from bosses who consistently violate these laws.</em> The whole labor movement has fought time and again to get the government to withhold or withdraw contracts from such anti-labor employers. The government has the power to do so, according to the laws – but it has always refused to use them.<br>
</p>
<h4>No Real Victory</h4>
<p class="fst">That is why we can say categorically that if the government would not crack down on the employers for violating the labor laws, it certainly won’t crack down on them for violating the president’s executive order “abolishing” discrimination. You see they are concerned first and foremost about “national defense” and “Uninterrupted production.” If this is the case, and all the evidence points that way, then the March was called off without any thing fundamental having been won.</p>
<p>We could understand, although we would not agree to it, calling off or postponing the March for tactical reasons, after winning a partial victory that would meanwhile build up and maintain the morale of the Negro people.</p>
<p><em>But nothing was won, nothing at all, but a recognition by Roosevelt that a problem exists and an executive order that changes nothing basic and sets up the 88th committee to investigate and recommend.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Damned by Own Words</h4>
<p class="fst">Everything Randolph and White said a week ago about the memorandum still applies today. “It is not a proclamation or executive order which would give assurance of discontinuance of discrimination.” “What Negroes want now is action, not words.”</p>
<p><em>Randolph last week said: “Let the masses speak!” But now he says, “I’ll decide the questions, not you.” Randolph said, “Let the masses march!” Now he says, “It is unnecessary at this time.” Randolph stands condemned by his own words. If there is anyone who still doubts this, let him go back into the files and read the statements Randolph made when he declared the March was necessary.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Keep Committees Intact</h4>
<p class="fst">Partly in order to cover up his own betrayal of the March, Randolph has called “upon the Negro March on Washington Committees in various sections of the country to remain intact in order to watch and check how industries are observing the executive order the President has issued.”</p>
<p>We of the Socialist Workers Party also want to warn the members of the local committees that their job is far from done.</p>
<p><em>Do not disband your committees, but on the contrary, build them stronger and larger. Get more members, more organizations, more trade unions to join in the fight. The mere threat of a March frightened Washington half out of its wits. Further organization, careful study of the problems involved, greater militancy will bring real concessions.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>No More Sellouts!</h4>
<p class="fst">And in addition to building the committees, the rank-and-file Negroes must take some steps to see to it that they are not again sold out. This movement does not belong to Randolph and Co. It belongs to the Negro masses, to those who contributed their time and their money to building up the movement – without which Randolph would not have been permitted to enter even the back door of the White House.</p>
<p>The movement belongs to the masses, and it is they who must decide its policies. This time Randolph cannot complain that there is no time for such things. Let the masses decide the policies of the movement, and let them select its leaders, let them appoint people whom they can trust to follow out their directions and aspirations.</p>
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Albert Parker
Negro March Leaders Yielded to FDR
In Calling Off Protest Against Jim Crowism, Randolph Betrayed People
(5 July 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 27, 5 July 1941, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Negro March on Washington, scheduled for July 1, has been called off.
Thousands of Negroes, preparing to leave for the demonstration, with the promises of the official March leaders still ringing in their ears, at the last minute heard A. Philip Randolph, over the radio Saturday night, declare that “the March is unnecessary at this time” and therefore the committee in charge has called it off.
Thus ended a hectic ten day period during which the Roosevelt administration had used every ace it had up its sleeve and which ended in the March being called off only because the Randolph-White leadership was willing to “compromise” and call it off if they were offered something they could use to save face before the thousands who insisted on the March going through until all their demands were granted. Roosevelt finally granted them this face-saving device in his “executive order” of Jurie 25.
Last week The Militant reported that the leaders of the March were being subjected to all kinds of pressure from their “friends” in the administration, but that they were forced to resist it because nothing concrete had been offered them as a bribe to call off the March. Then Randolph and Walter White were called to Washington.
Roosevelt’s Line
Here, at a conference attended by many government officials, Roosevelt condescended to give his own views on the March.
He declared that the March was bad and unintelligent. He said that the March would give the impression to the American people that Negroes are seeking to exercise force to compel the government to do certain things and that this attitude would do more harm than good.
(What the Negroes are really trying to get the government to do is to live up to the laws of the United States, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which are supposed to guard all races against discrimination!)
Although Randolph pointed out that the demands of the marchers were completely just and reasonable, Roosevelt persisted that it was a grave mistake and would not accomplish the object sought, but on the contrary might create serious trouble. He did not state what this serious trouble was, nor who would create it. “What would happen if Irish and Jewish people were to march on Washington?” was the kind of argument he used.
Roosevelt refused to speak to the marchers, claiming that it is his policy not to talk to any groups who come to Washington. White replied that the president had spoken before the American Youth Congress a little over a year ago. Roosevelt became a little confused and said, “And you see what happened, too,” referring to the fact that he had been booed by part of his audience.
FDR Defends Jim Crow
When it was pointed out to Roosevelt that Negroes in the Navy are permitted to serve only in the most menial and low-paid capacities, his reply was that the stokers on the ships pefformeci even more menial work than the messmen. He deliberately avoided the point that white men, who serve as stokers, can also serve elsewhere, while Negroes are not permitted to serve anywhere but in the mess department.
Roosevelt then rose to go, saying that he wanted to see discrimination against Negroes eliminated in the war industries, and that he wanted the conference to continue without him. He suggested that perhaps much could be accomplished along these lines if a board were set up which would receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in industry.
Sidney Hillman’s Alibi
Sidney Hillman claimed progress was being made by his office in breaking down discrimination. He was then asked if his office would withdraw a contract from a business concern that practiced discrimination. He evaded the question by saying that there are many factors involved and that “national defense has to come first.”
In other words, the preparations for a fake war for democracy abroad are more important to him than the question of democracy at home.
Knudsen’s Line
Knudsen stated that he did not think an executive order necessary, that “more can be done through persuasion and education than through force.”
This is the administration’s attitude when it crimes to dealing with the employers, but not when it comes to dealing with the workers, as was shown in the governmental strikebreaking at Inglewood, California.
Secretary Knox’s Policy
Then Secretary of the Navy Knox said he wanted to ask Randolph a direct question and that he hoped he would receive an honest reply. “Do you take the position that Negro and white sailors should be compelled to live together on ships?” Randolph replied in the affirmative, and Knox stated lamely that “in time of national defense, experiments of this kind cannot be carried on.” Here better than anything else is an indication of where the administration realty stands on Jim Crowism. For if the head of the Navy believes that it is a dangerous experiment for Negro and white to work together on ships, how can anyone expect the Administration to be sincere iri its efforts to see to it that Negro and white work together in the factories?
A committee headed by LaGuardia was finally set up to make recommendations to Roosevelt, but as the conference ended it was still clear that no gains had been made, and Randolph again issued a statement that the March was still to be held.
The March leaders were under pressure not only from Roosevelt, but also from the masses supporting the March and insisting that it be carried out unless their full demands were granted. These full demands were for
the abolition of discrimination by the employers in industry and by the government in all its departments, including civil service jobs and the armed forces. The form of the demand was that Roosevelt should instruct the OPM, through a presidential proclamation or “executive order,” to withhold contracts from those companies practicing discrimination; and by virtue of his power as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces to order an end to discrimination in all governmental departments.
Randolph Caves In
On the evening of June 25, as the important Harlem March committee was making its final preparations for the March and a demonstration at New York City Hall before that, a telegram arrived from Randolph proclaiming “victory” and ordering the March to be held up.
Instead of securing the agreement of the local committees to calling off the March, Randolph went on the radio Saturday evening.
In his address, entitled A Pledge of Unity, he declared that the March was “unnecessary at this time” and then referred to and quoted an “executive order” issued by Roosevelt on June 25. He explained that the Committee had been intent on going through the March until they got something with “teeth in it.” Now they had the “executive order.”
What Randolph Got
In the order Roosevelt says:
“I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labbr organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin;
“And it is hereby ordered as follows:
1. “All governmental agencies concerned with vocational and training programs for defense production shall take special measures to assure such programs are administered without discrimination;
2. “All contracting agencies of the Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin;
3. “There is established in the Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice” consisting of five members to be appointed by the President. “The Committee shall receive and investigate complaint? of discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid.”
What Negroes Didn’t Get
It does not require great study of this document to understand that while it certainly is an executive order, it is not the executive Order demanded by the Marchers.
The most obvious shortcomings in the document are that it refers only to “defense” industries; it does not say a word about discrimination and segregation in the governmental departments and in the armed forces. Even Randolph had to recognize this in his speech. But Randolph says nothing about the fact that the order refers only to contracts “hereafter negotiated” and thus leaves untouched the 15 billion dollars worth of contracts already negotiated. But even this is not the main point.
The order provides that future contracts must have a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate. That is all right. But the question is – and this goes to the heart of this particular problem – suppose the contractor gets the contract containing this provision, and continues to practice discrimination? What will happen then?
The answer is: The contract will not be withdrawn. This was what was asked of Roosevelt. The fact that he didn’t include it in his order is proof that contracts won’t be withdrawn.
We have a direct precedent for our answer to this question. When the different departments of the government negotiate contracts nowadays, they include a clause providing that the contractor must live up to federal laws, including the National Labor Relations Act, Walsh-Healy Act, etc. Yet it is a well-known fact that the army one navy have refused to withhold contracts from bosses who consistently violate these laws. The whole labor movement has fought time and again to get the government to withhold or withdraw contracts from such anti-labor employers. The government has the power to do so, according to the laws – but it has always refused to use them.
No Real Victory
That is why we can say categorically that if the government would not crack down on the employers for violating the labor laws, it certainly won’t crack down on them for violating the president’s executive order “abolishing” discrimination. You see they are concerned first and foremost about “national defense” and “Uninterrupted production.” If this is the case, and all the evidence points that way, then the March was called off without any thing fundamental having been won.
We could understand, although we would not agree to it, calling off or postponing the March for tactical reasons, after winning a partial victory that would meanwhile build up and maintain the morale of the Negro people.
But nothing was won, nothing at all, but a recognition by Roosevelt that a problem exists and an executive order that changes nothing basic and sets up the 88th committee to investigate and recommend.
Damned by Own Words
Everything Randolph and White said a week ago about the memorandum still applies today. “It is not a proclamation or executive order which would give assurance of discontinuance of discrimination.” “What Negroes want now is action, not words.”
Randolph last week said: “Let the masses speak!” But now he says, “I’ll decide the questions, not you.” Randolph said, “Let the masses march!” Now he says, “It is unnecessary at this time.” Randolph stands condemned by his own words. If there is anyone who still doubts this, let him go back into the files and read the statements Randolph made when he declared the March was necessary.
Keep Committees Intact
Partly in order to cover up his own betrayal of the March, Randolph has called “upon the Negro March on Washington Committees in various sections of the country to remain intact in order to watch and check how industries are observing the executive order the President has issued.”
We of the Socialist Workers Party also want to warn the members of the local committees that their job is far from done.
Do not disband your committees, but on the contrary, build them stronger and larger. Get more members, more organizations, more trade unions to join in the fight. The mere threat of a March frightened Washington half out of its wits. Further organization, careful study of the problems involved, greater militancy will bring real concessions.
No More Sellouts!
And in addition to building the committees, the rank-and-file Negroes must take some steps to see to it that they are not again sold out. This movement does not belong to Randolph and Co. It belongs to the Negro masses, to those who contributed their time and their money to building up the movement – without which Randolph would not have been permitted to enter even the back door of the White House.
The movement belongs to the masses, and it is they who must decide its policies. This time Randolph cannot complain that there is no time for such things. Let the masses decide the policies of the movement, and let them select its leaders, let them appoint people whom they can trust to follow out their directions and aspirations.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(8 March 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_10" target="new">Vol. V. No. 10</a>, 8 March 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Jim Crow Means Death</h4>
<p class="fst">Last Fall, Roosevelt laid down the law that Negro soldiers are to be segregated into separate regiments in his statement:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has proved satisfactory over a long period of years, and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparations for national defense.”</p>
<p class="fst">In an effort to stem the nation-wide protest that arose over this, Edgar G. Brown, an Uncle Tom “leader,” endorsed this policy and called for its extension.</p>
<p>In our criticism, of Brown, printed last November, we pointed out that not only does this policy in the armed forces place a stamp of approval on Jim Crowism and segregation in civilian life, but also that it directly involved the question or the life and safety of the Negro soldier in the segregated regiments. We said then:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“<em>As long as the Negroes are separated from the white soldiers, it is very easy for the labor-hating officer caste in charge of the Army to pick them out for special assignment and work: as labor battalions, digging trenches and latrines, and as suicide squads, for the most dangerous work, where men’s lives are thrown away cheaply.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Now, our charge that segregated regiments means more deaths has been proved to the hilt, in the European battles of the Second World War.</p>
<p>In the Battle of France, the Negro soldiers in the Senegalese and other African regiments were used purely and simply as a body and flesh barrier against the advance of the Nazi war machine. Hundreds of thousands of their lives were thrown away by the French-British army commands in an attempt to save what was left of their white regiments.</p>
<p>All this is demonstrated in the reports of R. Walter Merguson in his current series in the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>, and in the first article of a series by William Veasey in the <strong>New Jersey Herald Notes</strong>. Both have just returned, from Europe where they were able to witness many of the the events they write of and to talk to the Negro soldiers who managed to survive.</p>
<p>Veasey shows how the retreat from Dunquerque was made possible only by the sacrifice of scores of thousands of Negroes who were rushed up and thrown into the breach to hold up the Nazis long enough for the British soldiers to get away. If there were Negroes in the United States who didn’t understand what Roosevelt’s Jim Crow ruling meant before, they should certainly understand it now.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>British “Democracy” at Work</h4>
<p class="fst">An American Negro Press dispatch from Johannesburg, South Africa, reveals that not only are the Negro soldiers on service in Africa treated worse and used for more menial tasks than the white soldiers, but that they get paid less too.</p>
<p><em>Speaking in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament recently, a white major who had induced a number of Negroes to “go to serve the Empire in East Africa” stated that he had felt “uneasy in mind ever since, in view of the bad conditions and the low rates of pay which I induced them to accept, also the inadequate allowance we are making for their dependents and the generally unsatisfactory manner in which they have been treated.</em></p>
<p class="quoteb">“<em>The pay of these men is only three shillings, six pence per day (about 43 cents). White soldiers get more than twice that much.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">They must be fighting for democracy at half price.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Lawson Defends Judas Goats</h4>
<p class="fst">Edward Lawson, ardent supporter of the war and managing editor of <strong>Opportunity</strong>, magazine of the Urban League, sale of which – ironically enough! – has just been banned in government-operated post exchanges at army stations, has broken into print again. Recently he branded as assistants of Hitler those who call for the establishment of real democracy for Negroes in this country before they go to fight for it elsewhere.</p>
<p>This time he is engaged in defending the Negro “assistants” to various departments in Washington, who have been attacked because they only serve to prevent Negroes from demanding equal rights in the armed forces and industry.</p>
<p>Lawson’s defense, after rambling around and showing what a tough time these assistants have and now humiliating and tiresome their work is, concludes on the note that it is the masses of the Negro people who are responsible for “the apparent impotence of many of those who represent us in Washington.” Why? Because they haven’t insisted on giving these assistants “positions of greater importance,” and because they don’t give them “the full backing of our acknowledged political strength.”</p>
<p>This phoney alibi will he successful only with those people who accept Lawson’s premise that these people in Washington “represent” the Negro people.</p>
<p>It is precisely this which we challenge. We deny that they represent the Negro people. We maintain that they represent Roosevelt and the governmental and military bureaucracies which are trying to sell the war to the Negroes. That’s what they were put in there for, and that, by and large, to the extent that they can, is what they are doing.</p>
<p>As long as the Negroes depend on anyone in the Jim Crow government to solve their problems for them, whether its white administrators or colored administrative assistants, their problems will not. be solved.</p>
<p>It will be only through their own strength, independently exerted and allied with the trade union movement, that the Negro people will be able to wipe out Jim Crowism in the armed forces and industry. And then stooges in Washington and men like Lawson won’t be able to stop them.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(8 March 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 10, 8 March 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Jim Crow Means Death
Last Fall, Roosevelt laid down the law that Negro soldiers are to be segregated into separate regiments in his statement:
“The policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has proved satisfactory over a long period of years, and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparations for national defense.”
In an effort to stem the nation-wide protest that arose over this, Edgar G. Brown, an Uncle Tom “leader,” endorsed this policy and called for its extension.
In our criticism, of Brown, printed last November, we pointed out that not only does this policy in the armed forces place a stamp of approval on Jim Crowism and segregation in civilian life, but also that it directly involved the question or the life and safety of the Negro soldier in the segregated regiments. We said then:
“As long as the Negroes are separated from the white soldiers, it is very easy for the labor-hating officer caste in charge of the Army to pick them out for special assignment and work: as labor battalions, digging trenches and latrines, and as suicide squads, for the most dangerous work, where men’s lives are thrown away cheaply.”
Now, our charge that segregated regiments means more deaths has been proved to the hilt, in the European battles of the Second World War.
In the Battle of France, the Negro soldiers in the Senegalese and other African regiments were used purely and simply as a body and flesh barrier against the advance of the Nazi war machine. Hundreds of thousands of their lives were thrown away by the French-British army commands in an attempt to save what was left of their white regiments.
All this is demonstrated in the reports of R. Walter Merguson in his current series in the Pittsburgh Courier, and in the first article of a series by William Veasey in the New Jersey Herald Notes. Both have just returned, from Europe where they were able to witness many of the the events they write of and to talk to the Negro soldiers who managed to survive.
Veasey shows how the retreat from Dunquerque was made possible only by the sacrifice of scores of thousands of Negroes who were rushed up and thrown into the breach to hold up the Nazis long enough for the British soldiers to get away. If there were Negroes in the United States who didn’t understand what Roosevelt’s Jim Crow ruling meant before, they should certainly understand it now.
* * *
British “Democracy” at Work
An American Negro Press dispatch from Johannesburg, South Africa, reveals that not only are the Negro soldiers on service in Africa treated worse and used for more menial tasks than the white soldiers, but that they get paid less too.
Speaking in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament recently, a white major who had induced a number of Negroes to “go to serve the Empire in East Africa” stated that he had felt “uneasy in mind ever since, in view of the bad conditions and the low rates of pay which I induced them to accept, also the inadequate allowance we are making for their dependents and the generally unsatisfactory manner in which they have been treated.
“The pay of these men is only three shillings, six pence per day (about 43 cents). White soldiers get more than twice that much.”
They must be fighting for democracy at half price.
Lawson Defends Judas Goats
Edward Lawson, ardent supporter of the war and managing editor of Opportunity, magazine of the Urban League, sale of which – ironically enough! – has just been banned in government-operated post exchanges at army stations, has broken into print again. Recently he branded as assistants of Hitler those who call for the establishment of real democracy for Negroes in this country before they go to fight for it elsewhere.
This time he is engaged in defending the Negro “assistants” to various departments in Washington, who have been attacked because they only serve to prevent Negroes from demanding equal rights in the armed forces and industry.
Lawson’s defense, after rambling around and showing what a tough time these assistants have and now humiliating and tiresome their work is, concludes on the note that it is the masses of the Negro people who are responsible for “the apparent impotence of many of those who represent us in Washington.” Why? Because they haven’t insisted on giving these assistants “positions of greater importance,” and because they don’t give them “the full backing of our acknowledged political strength.”
This phoney alibi will he successful only with those people who accept Lawson’s premise that these people in Washington “represent” the Negro people.
It is precisely this which we challenge. We deny that they represent the Negro people. We maintain that they represent Roosevelt and the governmental and military bureaucracies which are trying to sell the war to the Negroes. That’s what they were put in there for, and that, by and large, to the extent that they can, is what they are doing.
As long as the Negroes depend on anyone in the Jim Crow government to solve their problems for them, whether its white administrators or colored administrative assistants, their problems will not. be solved.
It will be only through their own strength, independently exerted and allied with the trade union movement, that the Negro people will be able to wipe out Jim Crowism in the armed forces and industry. And then stooges in Washington and men like Lawson won’t be able to stop them.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Save the Ingram Family</h1>
<h3>(15 March 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_11" target="new">Vol. XII No. 11</a>, 15 March 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram and her two young children are Georgia sharecroppers who have been sentenced to the electric chair because they defended them selves against a murderous attack. The blood-stained system, oppressing the Negro people has marked them down as its next victims and can be expected to fight to the last ditch to see that they do not get away.</p>
<p>Read the <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/v12n11/ingram.html" target="new">article</a> about the Ingram family on Page 1 of this issue, and you will have. most of the essential information about the case. Then ask yourself these questions:</p>
<p class="fst">Suppose the Ingrams had been white and the dead man had been a Negro – do you think the Georgia sheriff would have arrested the Ingrams? Do you think they would have been thrown into jail and denied the services of a lawyer until the day of their so-called trial? Do you think there would have even been a trial, or that anybody outside of Georgia would ever have heard about the case?</p>
<p>The answer to all these questions is, of course, No. There never would have been any arrests, there would have been no trial and no conviction, and the whole thing would have been written off as a case of self-defense. But everything happens differently in the South when a Negro is accused.</p>
<p>Why? Are the rulers of Georgia and their servants on the judge’s bench and in the sheriff’s office afraid of Mrs. Ingram? Do they think that this poverty-stricken widow is going to threaten their power if she is set free? Of course not. They know very well that if she is let alone, they will never see her again.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, they want her blood, because they regard her as a symbol. She and her sons dared to lift their hands in self-defense, they committed the unpardonable sin of fighting back when they were assaulted by a white man. The rulers of Georgia want to burn the Ingrams to death in order to “teach a lesson” to the Negro people as a whole, to terrorize them so that they will be afraid to resist, so that they will “stay in their place,” so that they will never on any occasion attempt to fight for their rights – whether in a dispute on a farm, or in a controversy over wages, or in a struggle at the ballot.</p>
<p>And that is why the Ingram case has an importance even greater than the ordinary individual instance of tragic injustice. Mrs. Ingram and her sons are a symbol to us too – to all of us who want to smash the oppressive Jim Crow system. That’s why we have a double reason for snatching them out of the hands of their would-be executioners – first of all, because they’re not guilty, and secondly, because saving them will help to undermine Jim Crow rule. Do everything you can to stop these murders!</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Save the Ingram Family
(15 March 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 11, 15 March 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram and her two young children are Georgia sharecroppers who have been sentenced to the electric chair because they defended them selves against a murderous attack. The blood-stained system, oppressing the Negro people has marked them down as its next victims and can be expected to fight to the last ditch to see that they do not get away.
Read the article about the Ingram family on Page 1 of this issue, and you will have. most of the essential information about the case. Then ask yourself these questions:
Suppose the Ingrams had been white and the dead man had been a Negro – do you think the Georgia sheriff would have arrested the Ingrams? Do you think they would have been thrown into jail and denied the services of a lawyer until the day of their so-called trial? Do you think there would have even been a trial, or that anybody outside of Georgia would ever have heard about the case?
The answer to all these questions is, of course, No. There never would have been any arrests, there would have been no trial and no conviction, and the whole thing would have been written off as a case of self-defense. But everything happens differently in the South when a Negro is accused.
Why? Are the rulers of Georgia and their servants on the judge’s bench and in the sheriff’s office afraid of Mrs. Ingram? Do they think that this poverty-stricken widow is going to threaten their power if she is set free? Of course not. They know very well that if she is let alone, they will never see her again.
Nevertheless, they want her blood, because they regard her as a symbol. She and her sons dared to lift their hands in self-defense, they committed the unpardonable sin of fighting back when they were assaulted by a white man. The rulers of Georgia want to burn the Ingrams to death in order to “teach a lesson” to the Negro people as a whole, to terrorize them so that they will be afraid to resist, so that they will “stay in their place,” so that they will never on any occasion attempt to fight for their rights – whether in a dispute on a farm, or in a controversy over wages, or in a struggle at the ballot.
And that is why the Ingram case has an importance even greater than the ordinary individual instance of tragic injustice. Mrs. Ingram and her sons are a symbol to us too – to all of us who want to smash the oppressive Jim Crow system. That’s why we have a double reason for snatching them out of the hands of their would-be executioners – first of all, because they’re not guilty, and secondly, because saving them will help to undermine Jim Crow rule. Do everything you can to stop these murders!
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>Workers’ Forum</h4>
<h1>Corrects Mistakes in Editorial on Jim Crow</h1>
<h3>(25 October 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_43" target="new">Vol. V No. 43</a>, 25 October 1941, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Editor:</p>
<p class="fst">I would like to call your attention to a mistake in the editorial entitled <em>Whitewashing Jim Crow</em> in the October 18 issue of <strong>The Militant</strong>.</p>
<p>In this editorial you declared that “while Elliot was dismissed from command of Fort Bragg, he was not dismissed from the army. He was only transferred another fort, where he will be able to continue to carry out the same practices and policies he carried out at Bragg."</p>
<p>Colonel Elliot, who was in command at Fort Bragg the night of the shooting of Ned Turman, Negro draftee, and the terror that followed, was transferred from Fort Bragg, but not to another fort. He has been transferred to the job of instructor in the ROTC at Mississippi State College.</p>
<p>I make this correction in the interests of exactness, and not because I have any disagreement with the main point in your editorial.</p>
<p>For even if Elliot had been dishonorably discharged from the army, rather than transferred to a minor post, it would still be true that this is no “victory for Negro rights” as the Stalinists pretend. Elliot was only carrying out the official Jim Crow policy of the army, and he was dismissed to cover up the fact that this Jim Crow policy is maintained on orders from the White House itself. Regardless of who took Elliot’s place, the Negro soldiers at Bragg will still be segregated and discriminated against.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em>Albert Parker</em><br>
New York City</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
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Albert Parker
Workers’ Forum
Corrects Mistakes in Editorial on Jim Crow
(25 October 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 43, 25 October 1941, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Editor:
I would like to call your attention to a mistake in the editorial entitled Whitewashing Jim Crow in the October 18 issue of The Militant.
In this editorial you declared that “while Elliot was dismissed from command of Fort Bragg, he was not dismissed from the army. He was only transferred another fort, where he will be able to continue to carry out the same practices and policies he carried out at Bragg."
Colonel Elliot, who was in command at Fort Bragg the night of the shooting of Ned Turman, Negro draftee, and the terror that followed, was transferred from Fort Bragg, but not to another fort. He has been transferred to the job of instructor in the ROTC at Mississippi State College.
I make this correction in the interests of exactness, and not because I have any disagreement with the main point in your editorial.
For even if Elliot had been dishonorably discharged from the army, rather than transferred to a minor post, it would still be true that this is no “victory for Negro rights” as the Stalinists pretend. Elliot was only carrying out the official Jim Crow policy of the army, and he was dismissed to cover up the fact that this Jim Crow policy is maintained on orders from the White House itself. Regardless of who took Elliot’s place, the Negro soldiers at Bragg will still be segregated and discriminated against.
Albert Parker
New York City
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<h2>George Breitman</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>Washington and Lincoln – Part of the<br>
American Revolutionary Tradition</h1>
<h3>(23 February 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_08" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 8</a>, 23 February 1948, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Nothing embarrasses the American capitalists so much as the truth about their own revolutionary past. That is illustrated in their current eulogies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion of their birthday celebrations. How the present rulers hate to be reminded that the United States was born and grew great as the result of two revolutions conducted and won by “force and violence”! How they squirm at the memory that their own ancestors led “subversive” movements! How they sweat, even while paying tribute to these two national heroes, to obscure and belittle the real significance, achievements and traditions of the 18th and 19th century revolutionists!</p>
<p><em>The reasons for such behavior are not hard to find. When American Big Business is reaching out for imperialist domination of the world and using all its resources to preserve an outworn and oppressive social system, it is naturally not interested in extolling American revolutions and civil wars for independence and the establishment of new social systems.</em></p>
<p>But every man should have his due, and those of us who are the most consistent fighters against the tyranny of Big Business willingly give credit to the revolutionary forerunners of the present ruling class for the struggles they led against tyranny in the past. For us, unlike the apologists of Big Business, the truth about the revolutionary past, and such figures as Washington and Lincoln, is not a source of embarrassment but of enlightenment and inspiration, providing many rich lessons still applicable in the current struggles against oppression.<br>
</p>
<h4>Why They Are Remembered</h4>
<p class="fst">Washington and Lincoln are remembered with affection by the American people above all because they were leaders of revolutionary struggles. True, they were not the most consistent or most far-sighted leaders of these struggles and there was much that they left undone, but that does not detract from the honor due them for what they were and what they did achieve.</p>
<p>The fight for independence from Britain and for democracy in the American Colonies did not begin when Washington took command of the Continental armies. That struggle had been going on for many years before 1776; with the most energetic role being played by the radical elements among the working population. It assumed organized form with the demonstrations by the Sons of Liberty against the oppressive Stamp Act and then ebbed and flowed for over ten years before it erupted in civil war to overthrow the British crown.</p>
<p><em>The revolution was made by an alliance between several classes – the planters of the South, the radical merchants of the North, the farmers, and the artisans and mechanics in the cities. The merchants and planters were sometimes at odds with the democratic and popular elements; they were often shocked by the militant methods of the masses, and they showed a greater readiness to conciliate with the British. But compromise was, not in the cards, and in the end the planters and merchants provided most of the top leaders for the revolution.</em></p>
<p>George Washington represented the Virginia planters and laud speculators. He himself was the richest planter in the colonies. Like the others of his class he deeply resented British restrictions and taxes which held down the native propertied interests in favor of their British counterparts.</p>
<p>He became part of a syndicate that laid claim to hundreds of thousands of acres on the western frontier. As a youth he made a trip to this territory to survey it. Later he joined Braddock’s troops to smash the French attempt to seize this territory. But the Quebec Act of 1765 took away the colonists’ right to claim these lands and reserved them for the British crown. Measures of this kind were the source of Washington’s radicalism.</p>
<p>Freedom from British rule therefore had a very definite content for men like Washington. It meant the chance to end British taxation, the opportunity to repudiate debts that were crushing many planters and merchants, it meant free trade and free access to the land. It meant freedom for capitalist relations here to expand without hindrance by the British. To the poor farmers and working people it also meant many of these things – and much more besides: A chance for greater equality, democracy, opportunity. Thus they were able to unite in the struggle against the common foe.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Seditious and Subversive”</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>That struggle was labelled seditious, disloyal and subversive by the forces of “law and order” – and so it was from the viewpoint of the British crown and its Tory supporters in America. But that’s how American democracy came into power – by defying oppressive edicts and laws and by overthrowing oppressive institutions and governments. American history would have taken a different and less dynamic course if the Revolutionists of the 1770s had capitulated to the powers-that-be in the way that the labor bureaucrats today have capitulated to the Taft-Hartley Slave Labor Act.</em></p>
<p>Washington was neither the founder, the theoretician nor the political leader of the revolution. His selection as commander-in-chief was due primarily to the desire of the Massachusetts merchants to cement their alliance with the Virginia planters. But he grew steadily in stature as a leader.</p>
<p>Those were the times that tried men’s souls; the revolutionary war was conducted under extremely discouraging conditions and lasted for seven long years. But Washington never faltered. He “pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor” to the rebel cause, and in the end he led it to victory. That alone was enough to establish his claim to lasting fame and gratitude in the hearts of his countrymen.</p>
<p>But although the first successful revolution laid the foundation for a free and united nation and for the development of the productive forces, its results were not equally satisfactory to all the classes participating and it did not by any means achieve all the democratic changes sought by the masses. The merchants and planters, taking over the reins of government, made considerable gains, but they retained slavery, limitations on the right to vote and many other anti-democratic restrictions. The manufacturers and slaveholders who came to the fore as the new ruling classes were on the whole content, but the working people found it necessary to continue the struggle for freedom and security.</p>
<p>The next major phase of this struggle was conditioned by the rise of a new obstacle to progress – the growing power and domination of the slaveholders, whose interests clashed more and more with those of the other classes. The slaveholders demanded the extension of the slave system, westward as the country expanded, domestic and foreign policies favoring the slave system, further restrictions on the democratic rights of the enemies of slavery, etc. And since they controlled all branches of the federal government, they got much of what they wanted.</p>
<p><em>Again it was the masses who launched the fight against reaction. The radical farmers and workers, who wanted access to the western lands coveted by the slaveholders, pressed for vigorous action against the slaveholding oligarchy, and where necessary fought them, arms in hand, long before the outbreak of the Civil War. The slaves, who wanted freedom, staged rebellions, ran away, organized underground railways and engaged in other forms of active and passive resistance. The petty bourgeois abolitionist movement carried on militant propaganda and agitation for emancipation. And they were joined later by the Northern capitalists, who could expand production and intensify the exploitation of the national resources only on the basis of wage labor and the overthrow of the slaveholders’ power.</em></p>
<p>Like Washington, Abraham Lincoln represented the conservative rather than the more radical elements in the revolutionary coalition of his time. Unlike Washington, he was born poor and had to educate himself and make his own way in society. A product of the small-farming system on the frontier seething with democratic ideas, the slave system had no attraction for him. Like many talented youth in that period, he placed himself at the service of the rising capitalist class, becoming a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad.</p>
<p><em>He entered politics and proved to be a skillful speaker. His humble origins and frontier background enhanced his popularity among the masses; his carefully expressed political views won him a following among the capitalist politicians. He shone most brightly in the task of mediator and arbitrator between the right and left wings of the Republican Party which was formed in 1854 to bring together most of the opponents of the slaveholders.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>The Crucial Emancipation Issue</h4>
<p class="fst">While Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery to the western territories and worked on behalf of the capitalists to take the power out of the hands of the slaveholders’ representatives in Washington, his stanef on slavery was conciliatory to say the least. For one thing, he favored enforcing the fugitive slave law; for another, he preached the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution which permitted slavery. Even after his election to the presidency and the outbreak of the slaveholders’ insurrection, he refused for two years to accede to the demand of the abolitionists that he emancipate the slaves.</p>
<p>His first concern was to maintain (and then regain) the unity of the country and safeguard the newly acquired political power of the capitalist class. He said again and again that he would do this any way he could – by preserving slavery if necessary – or by abolishing it. The long protracted and hard-fought Civil War convinced him that he had no alternative, and from Jan. 1, 1863 he was compelled to take the road of the abolitionists.</p>
<p><em>That is a tribute to the far-sightedness of the most radical elements in the fight against the slave system. Lincoln’s hesitancy and reluctance to take the step which won him the love and admiration of succeeding generations strike an ironic note today. But they do not and cannot take away from him the credit for carrying through this great act that dealt the death blow to the slave system, nor for his stubborn prosecution of the war that smashed the counter-revolution.</em></p>
<p>This second revolution cleared the way for the rapid development of capitalism and the growth of our modern industrial civilization with its potentiality for universal abundance. But again most of the benefits were drained off by the ruling class. Establishing themselves as a dictatorship of Big Business, the capitalists began in the interests of private profit to erect their own roadblocks in the path to freedom and security for those who had done the hardest fighting in the second American revolution – the workers, poor farmers and Negroes. And so the masses today are driven by the very conditions of their existence in the direction of a third American revolution.<br>
</p>
<h4>Nature of the Coming Revolution</h4>
<p class="fst">This time the goal is on a higher plane than in the past. It is nothing less than the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government preparing the way for a classless society. This will climax and complete the progressive tasks begun in the earlier American revolutions. At the same time it will open a new chapter in world history, for the other nations will not be far behind once the American colossus shows the way.</p>
<p><em>This coming revolution cannot be prevented by red scares and witch hunts any more than its predecessors were. Indeed, the working are being steeled and mobilized to take their places in this revolution just as the revolutionists were in the past – by the compulsion to fight against oppressive legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act, the proposed peace time conscription program, the drive to institute thought control through “subversive” blacklists, the ruling class’s refusal to grant equality to the Negro people, the preparations for war, militarization and fascism.</em></p>
<p>Of course the next revolution will differ in important respects those of the past. Previous revolutions, while they made possible certain advances for humanity, also resulted in the establishment of the rule of a new minority. The coming revolution will for the first time bring power to the representatives of the overwhelming majority of the population.<br>
</p>
<h4>A New Science</h4>
<p class="fst">Furthermore, while the revolutionists of the past had to improvise and grope their way forward because they were exploring new terrain, the 20th century revolutionists have the advantage of their predecessors’ experience. They have also the benefit of a new science – socialism – which provides them with a guide to action in the present and for the future.</p>
<p>The faults and shortcomings of Washington and Lincoln were due in great part to the fact that they represented classes forming a minority of the population, with interests antagonistic to those of the majority. Instead of them, therefore, the great models of the next revolution will be the Sons of Liberty and John Brown and Negro rebels like Douglass. Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman. But Washington and Lincoln too, will have their place in the hall of fame of the future socialist society. Associated with the father of his country and the great emancipator will be precisely those truths that capitalist propagandists try to gloss over today:</p>
<p class="fst">That the upholders of outworn and decaying social systems never voluntarily give up power, but must be driven from the scene by mass action. That revolutionary struggle requires no justification other than the needs of oppressed classes and the requirements of establishing a higher form of society. And that capitalism, which came to power by revolution, can, like other outworn systems, only be replaced by the same process.</p>
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George Breitman
Washington and Lincoln – Part of the
American Revolutionary Tradition
(23 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 8, 23 February 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Nothing embarrasses the American capitalists so much as the truth about their own revolutionary past. That is illustrated in their current eulogies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion of their birthday celebrations. How the present rulers hate to be reminded that the United States was born and grew great as the result of two revolutions conducted and won by “force and violence”! How they squirm at the memory that their own ancestors led “subversive” movements! How they sweat, even while paying tribute to these two national heroes, to obscure and belittle the real significance, achievements and traditions of the 18th and 19th century revolutionists!
The reasons for such behavior are not hard to find. When American Big Business is reaching out for imperialist domination of the world and using all its resources to preserve an outworn and oppressive social system, it is naturally not interested in extolling American revolutions and civil wars for independence and the establishment of new social systems.
But every man should have his due, and those of us who are the most consistent fighters against the tyranny of Big Business willingly give credit to the revolutionary forerunners of the present ruling class for the struggles they led against tyranny in the past. For us, unlike the apologists of Big Business, the truth about the revolutionary past, and such figures as Washington and Lincoln, is not a source of embarrassment but of enlightenment and inspiration, providing many rich lessons still applicable in the current struggles against oppression.
Why They Are Remembered
Washington and Lincoln are remembered with affection by the American people above all because they were leaders of revolutionary struggles. True, they were not the most consistent or most far-sighted leaders of these struggles and there was much that they left undone, but that does not detract from the honor due them for what they were and what they did achieve.
The fight for independence from Britain and for democracy in the American Colonies did not begin when Washington took command of the Continental armies. That struggle had been going on for many years before 1776; with the most energetic role being played by the radical elements among the working population. It assumed organized form with the demonstrations by the Sons of Liberty against the oppressive Stamp Act and then ebbed and flowed for over ten years before it erupted in civil war to overthrow the British crown.
The revolution was made by an alliance between several classes – the planters of the South, the radical merchants of the North, the farmers, and the artisans and mechanics in the cities. The merchants and planters were sometimes at odds with the democratic and popular elements; they were often shocked by the militant methods of the masses, and they showed a greater readiness to conciliate with the British. But compromise was, not in the cards, and in the end the planters and merchants provided most of the top leaders for the revolution.
George Washington represented the Virginia planters and laud speculators. He himself was the richest planter in the colonies. Like the others of his class he deeply resented British restrictions and taxes which held down the native propertied interests in favor of their British counterparts.
He became part of a syndicate that laid claim to hundreds of thousands of acres on the western frontier. As a youth he made a trip to this territory to survey it. Later he joined Braddock’s troops to smash the French attempt to seize this territory. But the Quebec Act of 1765 took away the colonists’ right to claim these lands and reserved them for the British crown. Measures of this kind were the source of Washington’s radicalism.
Freedom from British rule therefore had a very definite content for men like Washington. It meant the chance to end British taxation, the opportunity to repudiate debts that were crushing many planters and merchants, it meant free trade and free access to the land. It meant freedom for capitalist relations here to expand without hindrance by the British. To the poor farmers and working people it also meant many of these things – and much more besides: A chance for greater equality, democracy, opportunity. Thus they were able to unite in the struggle against the common foe.
“Seditious and Subversive”
That struggle was labelled seditious, disloyal and subversive by the forces of “law and order” – and so it was from the viewpoint of the British crown and its Tory supporters in America. But that’s how American democracy came into power – by defying oppressive edicts and laws and by overthrowing oppressive institutions and governments. American history would have taken a different and less dynamic course if the Revolutionists of the 1770s had capitulated to the powers-that-be in the way that the labor bureaucrats today have capitulated to the Taft-Hartley Slave Labor Act.
Washington was neither the founder, the theoretician nor the political leader of the revolution. His selection as commander-in-chief was due primarily to the desire of the Massachusetts merchants to cement their alliance with the Virginia planters. But he grew steadily in stature as a leader.
Those were the times that tried men’s souls; the revolutionary war was conducted under extremely discouraging conditions and lasted for seven long years. But Washington never faltered. He “pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor” to the rebel cause, and in the end he led it to victory. That alone was enough to establish his claim to lasting fame and gratitude in the hearts of his countrymen.
But although the first successful revolution laid the foundation for a free and united nation and for the development of the productive forces, its results were not equally satisfactory to all the classes participating and it did not by any means achieve all the democratic changes sought by the masses. The merchants and planters, taking over the reins of government, made considerable gains, but they retained slavery, limitations on the right to vote and many other anti-democratic restrictions. The manufacturers and slaveholders who came to the fore as the new ruling classes were on the whole content, but the working people found it necessary to continue the struggle for freedom and security.
The next major phase of this struggle was conditioned by the rise of a new obstacle to progress – the growing power and domination of the slaveholders, whose interests clashed more and more with those of the other classes. The slaveholders demanded the extension of the slave system, westward as the country expanded, domestic and foreign policies favoring the slave system, further restrictions on the democratic rights of the enemies of slavery, etc. And since they controlled all branches of the federal government, they got much of what they wanted.
Again it was the masses who launched the fight against reaction. The radical farmers and workers, who wanted access to the western lands coveted by the slaveholders, pressed for vigorous action against the slaveholding oligarchy, and where necessary fought them, arms in hand, long before the outbreak of the Civil War. The slaves, who wanted freedom, staged rebellions, ran away, organized underground railways and engaged in other forms of active and passive resistance. The petty bourgeois abolitionist movement carried on militant propaganda and agitation for emancipation. And they were joined later by the Northern capitalists, who could expand production and intensify the exploitation of the national resources only on the basis of wage labor and the overthrow of the slaveholders’ power.
Like Washington, Abraham Lincoln represented the conservative rather than the more radical elements in the revolutionary coalition of his time. Unlike Washington, he was born poor and had to educate himself and make his own way in society. A product of the small-farming system on the frontier seething with democratic ideas, the slave system had no attraction for him. Like many talented youth in that period, he placed himself at the service of the rising capitalist class, becoming a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad.
He entered politics and proved to be a skillful speaker. His humble origins and frontier background enhanced his popularity among the masses; his carefully expressed political views won him a following among the capitalist politicians. He shone most brightly in the task of mediator and arbitrator between the right and left wings of the Republican Party which was formed in 1854 to bring together most of the opponents of the slaveholders.
The Crucial Emancipation Issue
While Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery to the western territories and worked on behalf of the capitalists to take the power out of the hands of the slaveholders’ representatives in Washington, his stanef on slavery was conciliatory to say the least. For one thing, he favored enforcing the fugitive slave law; for another, he preached the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution which permitted slavery. Even after his election to the presidency and the outbreak of the slaveholders’ insurrection, he refused for two years to accede to the demand of the abolitionists that he emancipate the slaves.
His first concern was to maintain (and then regain) the unity of the country and safeguard the newly acquired political power of the capitalist class. He said again and again that he would do this any way he could – by preserving slavery if necessary – or by abolishing it. The long protracted and hard-fought Civil War convinced him that he had no alternative, and from Jan. 1, 1863 he was compelled to take the road of the abolitionists.
That is a tribute to the far-sightedness of the most radical elements in the fight against the slave system. Lincoln’s hesitancy and reluctance to take the step which won him the love and admiration of succeeding generations strike an ironic note today. But they do not and cannot take away from him the credit for carrying through this great act that dealt the death blow to the slave system, nor for his stubborn prosecution of the war that smashed the counter-revolution.
This second revolution cleared the way for the rapid development of capitalism and the growth of our modern industrial civilization with its potentiality for universal abundance. But again most of the benefits were drained off by the ruling class. Establishing themselves as a dictatorship of Big Business, the capitalists began in the interests of private profit to erect their own roadblocks in the path to freedom and security for those who had done the hardest fighting in the second American revolution – the workers, poor farmers and Negroes. And so the masses today are driven by the very conditions of their existence in the direction of a third American revolution.
Nature of the Coming Revolution
This time the goal is on a higher plane than in the past. It is nothing less than the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government preparing the way for a classless society. This will climax and complete the progressive tasks begun in the earlier American revolutions. At the same time it will open a new chapter in world history, for the other nations will not be far behind once the American colossus shows the way.
This coming revolution cannot be prevented by red scares and witch hunts any more than its predecessors were. Indeed, the working are being steeled and mobilized to take their places in this revolution just as the revolutionists were in the past – by the compulsion to fight against oppressive legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act, the proposed peace time conscription program, the drive to institute thought control through “subversive” blacklists, the ruling class’s refusal to grant equality to the Negro people, the preparations for war, militarization and fascism.
Of course the next revolution will differ in important respects those of the past. Previous revolutions, while they made possible certain advances for humanity, also resulted in the establishment of the rule of a new minority. The coming revolution will for the first time bring power to the representatives of the overwhelming majority of the population.
A New Science
Furthermore, while the revolutionists of the past had to improvise and grope their way forward because they were exploring new terrain, the 20th century revolutionists have the advantage of their predecessors’ experience. They have also the benefit of a new science – socialism – which provides them with a guide to action in the present and for the future.
The faults and shortcomings of Washington and Lincoln were due in great part to the fact that they represented classes forming a minority of the population, with interests antagonistic to those of the majority. Instead of them, therefore, the great models of the next revolution will be the Sons of Liberty and John Brown and Negro rebels like Douglass. Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman. But Washington and Lincoln too, will have their place in the hall of fame of the future socialist society. Associated with the father of his country and the great emancipator will be precisely those truths that capitalist propagandists try to gloss over today:
That the upholders of outworn and decaying social systems never voluntarily give up power, but must be driven from the scene by mass action. That revolutionary struggle requires no justification other than the needs of oppressed classes and the requirements of establishing a higher form of society. And that capitalism, which came to power by revolution, can, like other outworn systems, only be replaced by the same process.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2><h2>
</h2><h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Negro History Week</h1>
<h3>(2 February 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_05" target="new">Vol. XII No. 5</a>, 2 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">This year Negro History Week begins Feb. 8. Its purpose is to encourage understanding and study of the history of the Negro people and thus to sweep away the lies and slanders which have the same function as restrictive covenants and Jim Crow cars – to maintain racial oppression and exploitation. In line with that purpose, we will try here to draw some conclusions from those aspects of American Negro history; which seem most significant to us.</p>
<p>What is the real Negro tradition in this country? It is the tradition of long, continuous, never-ending struggle against oppression, waged under the most difficult conditions and carried on with militancy and self-sacrifice. This fight has been going on ever since the first Negro stepped onto American soil; it never stopped during more than two centuries of slavery, and it is still going on after 80 years of “second-citizenship.”</p>
<p>This resistance movement assumed different forms, depending on prevailing conditions – slave insurrections, individual rebellions, escape through the Underground Railway, participation in the abolitionist movement, service in the Northern Army, sabotage and arson in the South, support to the glorious Re-construction effort, creation of Negro organizations, active work and leadership in progressive political and labor movements, picket lines to win jobs, armed defense against lynch mobs, bitter skirmishes against Jim Crow in the armed forces, mass movements to win the right to vote, campaigns for progressive legislation. How many groups in the world have, a finer or richer record of combat against oppression? Not many that we know of.</p>
<p>In some of these struggles the Negro people had powerful allies fighting at their side, in others they had to fight alone. The important thing to note is that when they had to stand alone, and fought just the same, they succeeded in arousing and inspiring and winning over those other enemies of the ruling class who had not previously realized their kinship with the Negro people. To mention only two examples: the slave insurrections at the beginning of the 19th century gave a strong impetus to the birth and growth of abolitionist sentiment in the North; and in our own time the Negro struggle against lynching, the poll tax and job discrimination have awakened the trade union movement to their own responsibility to fight against these things.</p>
<p>There are valuable lessons to be learned from this. Whatever progress the Negro people made in the past was due, in the first place, to their own organized efforts; whatever progress they make in the future will be due to the same. Equality will not be handed to them on a silver platter; they have to fight for it themselves.</p>
<p>The final victory against Jim Crow cannot be won by the Negro people alone. But it cannot be won at all unless the Negro people show the same readiness to fight and die for freedom that their forefathers did. The harder they fight, the sooner they will receive the necessary support and reinforcements from the organized labor movement.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Negro History Week
(2 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 5, 2 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
This year Negro History Week begins Feb. 8. Its purpose is to encourage understanding and study of the history of the Negro people and thus to sweep away the lies and slanders which have the same function as restrictive covenants and Jim Crow cars – to maintain racial oppression and exploitation. In line with that purpose, we will try here to draw some conclusions from those aspects of American Negro history; which seem most significant to us.
What is the real Negro tradition in this country? It is the tradition of long, continuous, never-ending struggle against oppression, waged under the most difficult conditions and carried on with militancy and self-sacrifice. This fight has been going on ever since the first Negro stepped onto American soil; it never stopped during more than two centuries of slavery, and it is still going on after 80 years of “second-citizenship.”
This resistance movement assumed different forms, depending on prevailing conditions – slave insurrections, individual rebellions, escape through the Underground Railway, participation in the abolitionist movement, service in the Northern Army, sabotage and arson in the South, support to the glorious Re-construction effort, creation of Negro organizations, active work and leadership in progressive political and labor movements, picket lines to win jobs, armed defense against lynch mobs, bitter skirmishes against Jim Crow in the armed forces, mass movements to win the right to vote, campaigns for progressive legislation. How many groups in the world have, a finer or richer record of combat against oppression? Not many that we know of.
In some of these struggles the Negro people had powerful allies fighting at their side, in others they had to fight alone. The important thing to note is that when they had to stand alone, and fought just the same, they succeeded in arousing and inspiring and winning over those other enemies of the ruling class who had not previously realized their kinship with the Negro people. To mention only two examples: the slave insurrections at the beginning of the 19th century gave a strong impetus to the birth and growth of abolitionist sentiment in the North; and in our own time the Negro struggle against lynching, the poll tax and job discrimination have awakened the trade union movement to their own responsibility to fight against these things.
There are valuable lessons to be learned from this. Whatever progress the Negro people made in the past was due, in the first place, to their own organized efforts; whatever progress they make in the future will be due to the same. Equality will not be handed to them on a silver platter; they have to fight for it themselves.
The final victory against Jim Crow cannot be won by the Negro people alone. But it cannot be won at all unless the Negro people show the same readiness to fight and die for freedom that their forefathers did. The harder they fight, the sooner they will receive the necessary support and reinforcements from the organized labor movement.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(21 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_51" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 51</a>, 21 December 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>The Hampton Institute Conference</h4>
<p class="fst">Roosevelt blessed the Hampton Institute <em>Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense</em>, because he knew who was conducting it and knew that they were not interested in embarrassing his schemes for the war and its preparations.</p>
<p>In spite of that, such is the logic of the position of the Negro in American life that the resolution on military and naval policy adopted by this group of Negro petty bourgeoisie, teachers, doctors, lawyers and so on <em>who on the whole support the war</em>, is a slap in the face to Roosevelt!</p>
<p>The resolution asks that Negroes be permitted to serve in all branches of the armed forces without restriction; that the exclusion policies barring Negroes from the marine corps and the army nurse corps be abolished; that the War Department be asked to put into effect the law passed some time ago by Congress, providing for training of Negro aviation pilots; that additional Negro officers be trained; that Roosevelt and local congressmen be asked to appoint Negroes to the naval academy at Annapolis, and that they be given equal opportunity if they get there (there are none there now); that Negroes be employed in all branches of the selective service system; that Negro soldiers and officers in the army be in proportion to the Negroes in the total population, etc.</p>
<p>The resolution is weak. It fails to demand an end to the “separate regiment” policy of the Army. It fails to ask that colored officers be permitted to serve in all regiments, and seems satisfied if “colored officers and professionals be assigned to the four colored regular army regiments.” Above all, it fails to indicate how equal rights are to be won by the Negro masses, it doesn’t say what is to be done when Roosevelt and Congress and the War Department are asked for these things and won’t give them.</p>
<p>It will not surprise our readers to learn that the conference did not even consider the position supported by the Socialist Workers Party: that the only why to end Jim Crowism in the armed forces is through a well-organized struggle for trade union control of military training. After all, there wasn’t a single trade unionist present, or even a worker, so far as one could learn from the conference publicity.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Schuyler’s Writing and His Action</h4>
<p class="fst">Before the Hampton Institute Conference was held, many of the Uncle Tom “leaders” were talking things up, pointing to it as the way out, as the instrument of struggle against Jim Crowism in the armed forces. The only person who gave a correct indication of what was going to happen was George S. Schuyler, in his column in the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> of November 30, sent to press before the conference was over. What he said deserves to be quoted and remembered:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is very rarely that anything new or unusual is uttered in any of these addresses, or anything really helpful added to the cause or causes for which the conference is ostensibly held. After the ordeal of speech-making comes the round table discussions, where various egos battle for utterance. Out of all this tonsil and eartorturing usually comes a set of resolutions so general and so platitudinous as to make tragically wasteful the spending of so much carfare, unless the real purpose is to enrich the railroads and gasoline companies.</p>
<p class="quote">“Of the 200 ‘authorities’ assembled at Hampton, it is probable that few had anything worthwhile to offer ‘to solve the question of the Negro’s place in the current National Defense scheme’ or anything else. I have sat through several such conferences and always left with a feeling of dejection.</p>
<p class="quote">“To solve the problems of the Negro in America calls for a social revolution, and social revolutions must be preceded by revolutionary thinking and be led by revolutionary leaders. Solving the Negroes’ problems (if, forsooth, they CAN be solved) is going to be a long, hard and messy job. And the kind of soft-handed, well-groomed, cultured, income-tax-paying, pillars-of-society who foregather at these conferences, after a night in a Pullman drawing room or a dash by airplane, shudder at the thought of anything revolutionary. They are mostly house-broken by government berths or sinecures, institutions owned or controlled by the very people who keep race prejudice alive ...</p>
<p class="quote">“There has been very little consistent, persistent and intelligent action (to solve the Negro’s problems) because, to tel) the simple truth, we have had no real democratically organized, nationwide and ably led organization controlled from below and responsive to the needs and demands of the masses of colored people everywhere</p>
<p class="quote">“If there were such an organization it could go into action on any and all problems faced by Negroes in our American barbarism. And because it financed and backed its elected delegates and agents, they would be free, yes, compelled to represent only the Negro masses, and not be concerned about what anybody else thought.</p>
<p class="quote">“If we had had such an organization, it would have been working on the army and navy discrimination problem through the years, educating the masses of Negroes by consistent and persistent propaganda and action. It would have worked out some technique of fighting other than sending letters and telegrams of protest ... By this time if would have been so powerful that a national conference would have aroused far more than the indulgent smirk which doubtless greeted the Hampton talkfest ...”</p>
<p class="fst"><em>And yet, two days after this excellent article had appeared op the news-stands, Schuyler was down in Washington participating in. another conference on “national defense”, attended, for the most part, by people who had attended the Hampton conference!</em></p>
<p><strong>(Next week: <a href="negros4.htm" target="new">The Courier Conference</a>)</strong>/p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(21 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 51, 21 December 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Hampton Institute Conference
Roosevelt blessed the Hampton Institute Conference on the Participation of the Negro in National Defense, because he knew who was conducting it and knew that they were not interested in embarrassing his schemes for the war and its preparations.
In spite of that, such is the logic of the position of the Negro in American life that the resolution on military and naval policy adopted by this group of Negro petty bourgeoisie, teachers, doctors, lawyers and so on who on the whole support the war, is a slap in the face to Roosevelt!
The resolution asks that Negroes be permitted to serve in all branches of the armed forces without restriction; that the exclusion policies barring Negroes from the marine corps and the army nurse corps be abolished; that the War Department be asked to put into effect the law passed some time ago by Congress, providing for training of Negro aviation pilots; that additional Negro officers be trained; that Roosevelt and local congressmen be asked to appoint Negroes to the naval academy at Annapolis, and that they be given equal opportunity if they get there (there are none there now); that Negroes be employed in all branches of the selective service system; that Negro soldiers and officers in the army be in proportion to the Negroes in the total population, etc.
The resolution is weak. It fails to demand an end to the “separate regiment” policy of the Army. It fails to ask that colored officers be permitted to serve in all regiments, and seems satisfied if “colored officers and professionals be assigned to the four colored regular army regiments.” Above all, it fails to indicate how equal rights are to be won by the Negro masses, it doesn’t say what is to be done when Roosevelt and Congress and the War Department are asked for these things and won’t give them.
It will not surprise our readers to learn that the conference did not even consider the position supported by the Socialist Workers Party: that the only why to end Jim Crowism in the armed forces is through a well-organized struggle for trade union control of military training. After all, there wasn’t a single trade unionist present, or even a worker, so far as one could learn from the conference publicity.
Schuyler’s Writing and His Action
Before the Hampton Institute Conference was held, many of the Uncle Tom “leaders” were talking things up, pointing to it as the way out, as the instrument of struggle against Jim Crowism in the armed forces. The only person who gave a correct indication of what was going to happen was George S. Schuyler, in his column in the Pittsburgh Courier of November 30, sent to press before the conference was over. What he said deserves to be quoted and remembered:
“It is very rarely that anything new or unusual is uttered in any of these addresses, or anything really helpful added to the cause or causes for which the conference is ostensibly held. After the ordeal of speech-making comes the round table discussions, where various egos battle for utterance. Out of all this tonsil and eartorturing usually comes a set of resolutions so general and so platitudinous as to make tragically wasteful the spending of so much carfare, unless the real purpose is to enrich the railroads and gasoline companies.
“Of the 200 ‘authorities’ assembled at Hampton, it is probable that few had anything worthwhile to offer ‘to solve the question of the Negro’s place in the current National Defense scheme’ or anything else. I have sat through several such conferences and always left with a feeling of dejection.
“To solve the problems of the Negro in America calls for a social revolution, and social revolutions must be preceded by revolutionary thinking and be led by revolutionary leaders. Solving the Negroes’ problems (if, forsooth, they CAN be solved) is going to be a long, hard and messy job. And the kind of soft-handed, well-groomed, cultured, income-tax-paying, pillars-of-society who foregather at these conferences, after a night in a Pullman drawing room or a dash by airplane, shudder at the thought of anything revolutionary. They are mostly house-broken by government berths or sinecures, institutions owned or controlled by the very people who keep race prejudice alive ...
“There has been very little consistent, persistent and intelligent action (to solve the Negro’s problems) because, to tel) the simple truth, we have had no real democratically organized, nationwide and ably led organization controlled from below and responsive to the needs and demands of the masses of colored people everywhere
“If there were such an organization it could go into action on any and all problems faced by Negroes in our American barbarism. And because it financed and backed its elected delegates and agents, they would be free, yes, compelled to represent only the Negro masses, and not be concerned about what anybody else thought.
“If we had had such an organization, it would have been working on the army and navy discrimination problem through the years, educating the masses of Negroes by consistent and persistent propaganda and action. It would have worked out some technique of fighting other than sending letters and telegrams of protest ... By this time if would have been so powerful that a national conference would have aroused far more than the indulgent smirk which doubtless greeted the Hampton talkfest ...”
And yet, two days after this excellent article had appeared op the news-stands, Schuyler was down in Washington participating in. another conference on “national defense”, attended, for the most part, by people who had attended the Hampton conference!
(Next week: The Courier Conference)/p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(15 March 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_11" target="new">Vol. V No. 11</a>, 15 March 1941, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Jim Crow Plans of the Bourbons</h4>
<p class="fst">There is an interesting story in Charley Cherokee’s column, <em>National Grapevine</em>, in the March 9 Issue of the <strong>Chicago Defender</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Last week army big shots had a secret and informal session where they admitted concern over the attacks on the army for maintaining Jim Crow. One old colonel demanded peevishly: ‘Why in hell don’t they shoot at the navy and marines for a while?’ It was agreed that the program for the next few months will be to procrastinate and stall the critics by pointing to Brigadier General Davis and the Negro commissioned officers now on active duly ...</p>
<p class="quote">“These big shots are naive. Any Negro high school kid knows that General Davis will retire in a few months and that when the National Guards leave, there will hardly be a commissioned Negro officer in the army.”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">That the conditions described about the Negro in the first world war in the series of articles by Eugene Varlin in <strong>The Militant</strong> hold true for today was corroborated by Duncan Aikman in his series of articles on the “national defense” program currently appearing in the <strong>Washington Post</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I found a widespread inclination throughout the South to look upon the defense crisis as another crisis in labor relations. Southerner after Southerner, in various economic brackets, said to me substantially this:</p>
<p class="quote">“We’re not going to let the colored man come out of this war on top of the heap the way he did in the last one.”</p>
<p class="quote">“That means, and plenty of Southerners state it specifically, no colored officers, this time; no colored skilled labor training and, if avoidable, not even colored combat regiments.”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The Negro worker certainly did not come out on top of the heap in the last war, but what these southern crackers mean was that in the labor shortage of the last war many Negroes left the South for jobs in the industries of the North.</p>
<p>According to a speech at Kentucky State College by Robert Weaver, Negro administrative assistant of the advisory commission to the National Defense Council, the crackers need not worry about a repetition of what happened in the last war.</p>
<p>For the Negro is being kept out in the cold in the present industrial boom, according to Weaver, and from present indications, he will continue to be kept there. What is chiefly required by industry today is skilled and semi-skilled labor. The Negro, by and large, has been and is denied the opportunity to get skilled training.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Discrimination in Military Training</h4>
<p>The <strong>Afro-American</strong> this week showed that Jim Crow treatment of the Negro soldiers is just as well organized in the northern camps as it is in the southern.</p>
<p>It showed that while the 20,000 or more white soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., have been given training with rifles, steel helmets, masks, etc., “and afforded miles of wide open space for sham battles,” “the 381 colored selectees of company E are forced to drill on an acre plot without as much as a broomstick.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“White army officials who were approached (for an explanation) appeared more eager to discuss the musical and entertainment abilities of the men.</p>
<p class="quote">“While none would admit that racial discrimination and segregation is being practiced at the post, all point with pride to the new cantonment area for the 372nd Infantry Regiment which is located beyond Hopkinsville – nearly three miles from the nearest white cantonment, and will be occupied around March 10.</p>
<p class="quote">“The cantonment, which will house 3,000 troops, in view of its isolated location, is definitely a segregated set-up.</p>
<p class="quote">“Because of the objection of the Southern white soldiers to sitting in the theatre with the colored soldiers, a separate theatre has been built the 372nd.</p>
<p class="quote">“Other entertainment features have also been taken care of in order that the colored troops will have no reason to leave their own cantonment. One high army official hinted that the 372nd will have its own maneuver area.”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">“England is not perfect, but she is better than Germany,” said the good Bishop J.K. Humphrey of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in New York last week. “Every Negro who wants to see Germany win ought to be sent to Germany, where he will be castrated.”</p>
<p>By the same logic one could insist that every American Negro who wants to see the victory of the British Empire, which rules over more than 100,000,000 colored people in the same way that Hitler rules over his subjects, himself, should be sent to Africa, where he will be castrated economically, politically and socially.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">2,500 West Indians at a mass meeting in Port Au Spain, Trinidad, passed resolutions last month demanding (1) the outlawing of United States Jim Crow on British bases being leased to the U.S. and (2) payment of the same wages for labor by the U.S. in the British West Indies as in the Virgin Islands and Cuba.</p>
<p>West Indies wages, according to Nancy Cunard, are now:</p>
<ul>
<li>Oil industry: 80¢ to $1.20 for 8–9 hour day.<br>
</li>
<li>Sugar: 30¢ to $1.00 for 12 hour day.<br>
</li>
<li>Cocoa and coffee pickers: men 40–45¢, women, 20–25¢ per day.</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">Pork, she points out, costs 30¢ a pound.</p>
<p>Wages in the Virgin Islands are 17¢ an hour, and in Cuba on “national defense work” $2.24 a day.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(15 March 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 11, 15 March 1941, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Jim Crow Plans of the Bourbons
There is an interesting story in Charley Cherokee’s column, National Grapevine, in the March 9 Issue of the Chicago Defender:
“Last week army big shots had a secret and informal session where they admitted concern over the attacks on the army for maintaining Jim Crow. One old colonel demanded peevishly: ‘Why in hell don’t they shoot at the navy and marines for a while?’ It was agreed that the program for the next few months will be to procrastinate and stall the critics by pointing to Brigadier General Davis and the Negro commissioned officers now on active duly ...
“These big shots are naive. Any Negro high school kid knows that General Davis will retire in a few months and that when the National Guards leave, there will hardly be a commissioned Negro officer in the army.”
* * *
That the conditions described about the Negro in the first world war in the series of articles by Eugene Varlin in The Militant hold true for today was corroborated by Duncan Aikman in his series of articles on the “national defense” program currently appearing in the Washington Post:
“I found a widespread inclination throughout the South to look upon the defense crisis as another crisis in labor relations. Southerner after Southerner, in various economic brackets, said to me substantially this:
“We’re not going to let the colored man come out of this war on top of the heap the way he did in the last one.”
“That means, and plenty of Southerners state it specifically, no colored officers, this time; no colored skilled labor training and, if avoidable, not even colored combat regiments.”
* * *
The Negro worker certainly did not come out on top of the heap in the last war, but what these southern crackers mean was that in the labor shortage of the last war many Negroes left the South for jobs in the industries of the North.
According to a speech at Kentucky State College by Robert Weaver, Negro administrative assistant of the advisory commission to the National Defense Council, the crackers need not worry about a repetition of what happened in the last war.
For the Negro is being kept out in the cold in the present industrial boom, according to Weaver, and from present indications, he will continue to be kept there. What is chiefly required by industry today is skilled and semi-skilled labor. The Negro, by and large, has been and is denied the opportunity to get skilled training.
Discrimination in Military Training
The Afro-American this week showed that Jim Crow treatment of the Negro soldiers is just as well organized in the northern camps as it is in the southern.
It showed that while the 20,000 or more white soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., have been given training with rifles, steel helmets, masks, etc., “and afforded miles of wide open space for sham battles,” “the 381 colored selectees of company E are forced to drill on an acre plot without as much as a broomstick.”
“White army officials who were approached (for an explanation) appeared more eager to discuss the musical and entertainment abilities of the men.
“While none would admit that racial discrimination and segregation is being practiced at the post, all point with pride to the new cantonment area for the 372nd Infantry Regiment which is located beyond Hopkinsville – nearly three miles from the nearest white cantonment, and will be occupied around March 10.
“The cantonment, which will house 3,000 troops, in view of its isolated location, is definitely a segregated set-up.
“Because of the objection of the Southern white soldiers to sitting in the theatre with the colored soldiers, a separate theatre has been built the 372nd.
“Other entertainment features have also been taken care of in order that the colored troops will have no reason to leave their own cantonment. One high army official hinted that the 372nd will have its own maneuver area.”
* * *
“England is not perfect, but she is better than Germany,” said the good Bishop J.K. Humphrey of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in New York last week. “Every Negro who wants to see Germany win ought to be sent to Germany, where he will be castrated.”
By the same logic one could insist that every American Negro who wants to see the victory of the British Empire, which rules over more than 100,000,000 colored people in the same way that Hitler rules over his subjects, himself, should be sent to Africa, where he will be castrated economically, politically and socially.
* * *
2,500 West Indians at a mass meeting in Port Au Spain, Trinidad, passed resolutions last month demanding (1) the outlawing of United States Jim Crow on British bases being leased to the U.S. and (2) payment of the same wages for labor by the U.S. in the British West Indies as in the Virgin Islands and Cuba.
West Indies wages, according to Nancy Cunard, are now:
Oil industry: 80¢ to $1.20 for 8–9 hour day.
Sugar: 30¢ to $1.00 for 12 hour day.
Cocoa and coffee pickers: men 40–45¢, women, 20–25¢ per day.
Pork, she points out, costs 30¢ a pound.
Wages in the Virgin Islands are 17¢ an hour, and in Cuba on “national defense work” $2.24 a day.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Southern Drive</h1>
<h3>(13 December 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_50" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 50</a>, 13 December 1948, p. 4.<br>
ranscribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The CIO convention in Portland took so many reactionary steps that some people have begun to ask themselves if there is any longer any important distinction to be drawn between it and the AFL. Such a question would never have occurred to anyone in the early days of the CIO, when it contrasted favorably and, progressively with the moss-back AFL in every field – in organizing drives among the mass production workers, in economic struggles and in social outlook. But with the sharpened trend toward conservatism, bureaucratization and red-baiting which were manifested at the Portland convention, doubts about the overall progressive character of the CIO as against the AFL are bound to appear and spread.</p>
<p>In our opinion, there still remain many important differences demonstrating the superiority of the CIO. We can illustrate one of these differences by an incident at the Labor Department’s 15th annual conference on labor legislation, which is attended by CIO, AFL and independent union representatives as well as federal and state labor department officials.</p>
<p>A proposal was made at this conference to endorse Truman’s civil rights program. Most of the 143 delegates declined to vote on the question, and it was defeated by a vote of 23 to 21. More significant, than the vote, however, was the way the CIO and AFL people divided over the question, with most of the CIO representatives voting for the resolution and most of the AFL representatives joining the Jim Crow Southern state officials in defeating it.</p>
<p>Why did this happen? Not because the CIO leaders are personally wiser or more moral people than their AFL counterparts. It happened because the AFL’s main base is still the conservative craft unions, in which the Negro plays little part, while the CIO’s main base is mass production industry, which could not remain unionized without the support of Negroes. Despite what goes on in Philip Murray’s mind and despite the resolutions he can push through at CIO conventions, the very composition of the CIO still compels it to play a different and more progressive role in American society.</p>
<p>Both the AFL and CIO launched big organizing drives in the South after the war. In most cases the AFL has adapted itself completely to the Southern Jim Crow system and has not hesitated to use anti-Negro prejudices in order to win contracts. The CIO’s record in the South is much better, but still not 100% clean. It too on occasion has soft-pedaled on the Negro issue or tried to evade it, which is one reason for the lack of progress made in Operation Dixie.</p>
<p>Because the roots of the national Jim Crow system are in the South, the unionization of the South, and particularly of the Negro masses in the South, is of paramount concern to militant Negroes everywhere in the country. Despite the growing conservatism of its leadership, the CIO remains the best instrument for achieving this task. The job of the Negro people then is to make their weight felt in the CIO, both from inside and outside, so that it will really come to grips with this problem. When it does, radical changes will take place both in the status of the Negro and in the position of the labor movement.</p>
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Albert Parker
Southern Drive
(13 December 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 50, 13 December 1948, p. 4.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The CIO convention in Portland took so many reactionary steps that some people have begun to ask themselves if there is any longer any important distinction to be drawn between it and the AFL. Such a question would never have occurred to anyone in the early days of the CIO, when it contrasted favorably and, progressively with the moss-back AFL in every field – in organizing drives among the mass production workers, in economic struggles and in social outlook. But with the sharpened trend toward conservatism, bureaucratization and red-baiting which were manifested at the Portland convention, doubts about the overall progressive character of the CIO as against the AFL are bound to appear and spread.
In our opinion, there still remain many important differences demonstrating the superiority of the CIO. We can illustrate one of these differences by an incident at the Labor Department’s 15th annual conference on labor legislation, which is attended by CIO, AFL and independent union representatives as well as federal and state labor department officials.
A proposal was made at this conference to endorse Truman’s civil rights program. Most of the 143 delegates declined to vote on the question, and it was defeated by a vote of 23 to 21. More significant, than the vote, however, was the way the CIO and AFL people divided over the question, with most of the CIO representatives voting for the resolution and most of the AFL representatives joining the Jim Crow Southern state officials in defeating it.
Why did this happen? Not because the CIO leaders are personally wiser or more moral people than their AFL counterparts. It happened because the AFL’s main base is still the conservative craft unions, in which the Negro plays little part, while the CIO’s main base is mass production industry, which could not remain unionized without the support of Negroes. Despite what goes on in Philip Murray’s mind and despite the resolutions he can push through at CIO conventions, the very composition of the CIO still compels it to play a different and more progressive role in American society.
Both the AFL and CIO launched big organizing drives in the South after the war. In most cases the AFL has adapted itself completely to the Southern Jim Crow system and has not hesitated to use anti-Negro prejudices in order to win contracts. The CIO’s record in the South is much better, but still not 100% clean. It too on occasion has soft-pedaled on the Negro issue or tried to evade it, which is one reason for the lack of progress made in Operation Dixie.
Because the roots of the national Jim Crow system are in the South, the unionization of the South, and particularly of the Negro masses in the South, is of paramount concern to militant Negroes everywhere in the country. Despite the growing conservatism of its leadership, the CIO remains the best instrument for achieving this task. The job of the Negro people then is to make their weight felt in the CIO, both from inside and outside, so that it will really come to grips with this problem. When it does, radical changes will take place both in the status of the Negro and in the position of the labor movement.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>NAM’s Political Theories Peddled<br>
by Labor and Liberal Spokesmen</h1>
<h3>(13 December 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_50" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 50</a>, 13 December 1948, p. 3.<br>
ranscribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Philip Murray, Henry Wallace, Waller White, John L. Lewis, William Green, A. Philip Randolph, Norman Thomas and Leon Henderson have a lot of differences not only among themselves but with such spokesmen of Big Business as Ira Mosher, chairman of the influential finance committee of the NAM. Nevertheless, on certain questions affecting the whole future of the American workers, they all accept ideas advanced by Mosher and help to spread them far and wide. One of the most basic of these questions concerns the nature of the government and its function in society.<br>
</p>
<h4>NAM Convention</h4>
<p class="fst">At the recent NAM convention in New York, Mosher put forward the conception of this question that Big Business wants the people to hold. The function of the Department of Commerce, he said, is to protect the interests of businessmen just as it as the function of the Departments of Agriculture and Labor to protect the interests of farmers and workers. (To strengthen the impression that capitalists hold this view themselves, Mosher even indulged in a little criticism of the Department of Commerce for not doing its duty as well as the other departments mentioned.)</p>
<p><em>The theory of government which Mosher was here trying to advance is all-too-familiar to most Americans. It is the theory of the government as an impartial body, devoted to the “general” welfare, mediating between contending economic and social forces and moderating their clashes in the interests of the “public.” The advocates of this theory do not pretend that the government always acts in accord with this ideal, but they insist that it can, and should.</em></p>
<p>We don’t know if Mosher personally, or any other individual capitalist, really believes in this theory. What we can say with assurance is that the ruling circles of the capitalist class certainly don’t believe it. They know better. Whatever they peddle for public consumption, they proceed on the basis of the knowledge that the government is the executive committee of the ruling class.<br>
</p>
<h4>Capitalist Govt.</h4>
<p class="fst">They know that the government always and everywhere seeks to promote the interests of the ruling class as a whole, even when for tactical political reasons it becomes expedient to don the guise of liberalism and even “anti-capitalist” reformism, <em>à-la</em>-Roosevelt. They know that the Department of Agriculture helps the farm corporations, and not the working farmers. They know that the Department of Labor gives nothing to the workers that they are not able to take by their own organized strength. They know that they have nothing whatever to worry about from the administration as, a whole, no matter how much anti-capitalist demagogy the executive head is compelled to spout in order to get elected.</p>
<p>While the capitalist rulers don’t believe in this fiction about the “impartiality” of the government any more than the Marxists do, they do want the workers to believe it. They want it because the belief produces false political ideas among the workers and strengthens not only the two-party system but the structure of class-collaboration without which the capitalists could not keep their power for long. Alone and by themselves, the capitalists could not maintain this deception of the workers. Unfortunately, they get powerful assistance in its dissemination from those very people to whom the workers look for leadership.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Lie</h4>
<p class="fst">Take the whole lot of them – the leaders of the CIO, AFL, UMW, Progressive Party, Social Democratic Federation, Socialist Party, Liberal Party, ADA, NAACP, AVC, etc. Don’t they all echo the lie that the government is the representative of all classes? <em>Aren’t they all responsible, therefore, for the pernicious effects of this lie, including the practice of class collaboration which always weakens the position of the masses and strengthens the position of the oppressors?</em></p>
<p>To be sure, they all at one time or another engage in criticism of the administration or Congress or even the Supreme Court. But that, they invariably point out, is because the administration or. Congress or the Court don’t measure up to the ideal of their theory about the “true” role of the government. Theirs is at most a criticism of personnel or detail, but never about the fundamental class character of the government as an agent of the ruling class, which they strive to conceal just as zealously as the capitalists.</p>
<p><em>If Ira Mosher came out for higher prices and lower wages and the leaders of the labor and liberal coalition endorsed this view, it would serve as a shocking revelation to the workers and would start them on the search for new leaders. But as the workers have had the occasion to learn during recent years, political problems are as important as economic problems and as a matter of fact cannot really be separated from them. Why should workers who wouldn’t tolerate leaders openly subservient to the economic policies of Big Business continue to tolerate leaders who are openly subservient to the political illusions and policies fostered by Big Business?</em></p>
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George Breitman
NAM’s Political Theories Peddled
by Labor and Liberal Spokesmen
(13 December 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 50, 13 December 1948, p. 3.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Philip Murray, Henry Wallace, Waller White, John L. Lewis, William Green, A. Philip Randolph, Norman Thomas and Leon Henderson have a lot of differences not only among themselves but with such spokesmen of Big Business as Ira Mosher, chairman of the influential finance committee of the NAM. Nevertheless, on certain questions affecting the whole future of the American workers, they all accept ideas advanced by Mosher and help to spread them far and wide. One of the most basic of these questions concerns the nature of the government and its function in society.
NAM Convention
At the recent NAM convention in New York, Mosher put forward the conception of this question that Big Business wants the people to hold. The function of the Department of Commerce, he said, is to protect the interests of businessmen just as it as the function of the Departments of Agriculture and Labor to protect the interests of farmers and workers. (To strengthen the impression that capitalists hold this view themselves, Mosher even indulged in a little criticism of the Department of Commerce for not doing its duty as well as the other departments mentioned.)
The theory of government which Mosher was here trying to advance is all-too-familiar to most Americans. It is the theory of the government as an impartial body, devoted to the “general” welfare, mediating between contending economic and social forces and moderating their clashes in the interests of the “public.” The advocates of this theory do not pretend that the government always acts in accord with this ideal, but they insist that it can, and should.
We don’t know if Mosher personally, or any other individual capitalist, really believes in this theory. What we can say with assurance is that the ruling circles of the capitalist class certainly don’t believe it. They know better. Whatever they peddle for public consumption, they proceed on the basis of the knowledge that the government is the executive committee of the ruling class.
Capitalist Govt.
They know that the government always and everywhere seeks to promote the interests of the ruling class as a whole, even when for tactical political reasons it becomes expedient to don the guise of liberalism and even “anti-capitalist” reformism, à-la-Roosevelt. They know that the Department of Agriculture helps the farm corporations, and not the working farmers. They know that the Department of Labor gives nothing to the workers that they are not able to take by their own organized strength. They know that they have nothing whatever to worry about from the administration as, a whole, no matter how much anti-capitalist demagogy the executive head is compelled to spout in order to get elected.
While the capitalist rulers don’t believe in this fiction about the “impartiality” of the government any more than the Marxists do, they do want the workers to believe it. They want it because the belief produces false political ideas among the workers and strengthens not only the two-party system but the structure of class-collaboration without which the capitalists could not keep their power for long. Alone and by themselves, the capitalists could not maintain this deception of the workers. Unfortunately, they get powerful assistance in its dissemination from those very people to whom the workers look for leadership.
The Lie
Take the whole lot of them – the leaders of the CIO, AFL, UMW, Progressive Party, Social Democratic Federation, Socialist Party, Liberal Party, ADA, NAACP, AVC, etc. Don’t they all echo the lie that the government is the representative of all classes? Aren’t they all responsible, therefore, for the pernicious effects of this lie, including the practice of class collaboration which always weakens the position of the masses and strengthens the position of the oppressors?
To be sure, they all at one time or another engage in criticism of the administration or Congress or even the Supreme Court. But that, they invariably point out, is because the administration or. Congress or the Court don’t measure up to the ideal of their theory about the “true” role of the government. Theirs is at most a criticism of personnel or detail, but never about the fundamental class character of the government as an agent of the ruling class, which they strive to conceal just as zealously as the capitalists.
If Ira Mosher came out for higher prices and lower wages and the leaders of the labor and liberal coalition endorsed this view, it would serve as a shocking revelation to the workers and would start them on the search for new leaders. But as the workers have had the occasion to learn during recent years, political problems are as important as economic problems and as a matter of fact cannot really be separated from them. Why should workers who wouldn’t tolerate leaders openly subservient to the economic policies of Big Business continue to tolerate leaders who are openly subservient to the political illusions and policies fostered by Big Business?
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Fighting Coughlin</h1>
<h3>(June 1939)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><em>Workers’ Forum</em>, <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/index.htm#sa03_38" target="new">Vol. III No. 38</a>, 2 June 1939, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Editor:</p>
<p class="fst">A number of the comrades here in Newark, in an informal discussion of the <strong>Appeal</strong>’s articles on Coughlin, came to the following suggestion:</p>
<p>We don’t think it enough to merely characterize Coughlin as an anti-Semite and a fascist. What is much more important is a series of articles analyzing his program, explaining that Coughlin exploits the sentiments of the masses against their own interests, how their discontent with unemployment, war, fascism and an inadequate standard of living is used by him to answer that to end these things one must kill the Jews. On each major social problem, one should show that Coughlin has no real program. Then, in contrast, our own transitional program should be set forth, showing the difference between Coughlin and a working class party’s program. The way to arouse the most effective agitation, we believe, is by contrasting his program with ours, and calling upon the workers to choose between them.</p>
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<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst">Fraternally,<br>
<em>George Breitman</em><br>
Newark, N.J.</p>
</td>
</tr>
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George Breitman
Fighting Coughlin
(June 1939)
Workers’ Forum, Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 38, 2 June 1939, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Editor:
A number of the comrades here in Newark, in an informal discussion of the Appeal’s articles on Coughlin, came to the following suggestion:
We don’t think it enough to merely characterize Coughlin as an anti-Semite and a fascist. What is much more important is a series of articles analyzing his program, explaining that Coughlin exploits the sentiments of the masses against their own interests, how their discontent with unemployment, war, fascism and an inadequate standard of living is used by him to answer that to end these things one must kill the Jews. On each major social problem, one should show that Coughlin has no real program. Then, in contrast, our own transitional program should be set forth, showing the difference between Coughlin and a working class party’s program. The way to arouse the most effective agitation, we believe, is by contrasting his program with ours, and calling upon the workers to choose between them.
Fraternally,
George Breitman
Newark, N.J.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h4>Workers’ Bookshelf</h4>
<h1>The Good Soldier Schweik</h1>
<h3>(15 June 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_24" target="new">Vol. X No. 24</a>, 15 June 1946, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The Good Soldier Schweik</strong><br>
<em>by Jaroslav Hasek</em><br>
Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1930.</p>
<p class="fst">Everyone who likes a good book should read <strong>The Good Soldier Schweik, </strong>and World War II veterans especially. Written over 20 years ago, it still remains the best all-round satiric novel – and the most biting condemnation – of modern capitalist militarism available in English. And although it is about the Austrian Army in World War I, every American veteran of the more recent war will immediately recognize its incidents and characters, especially the officers.</p>
<p>Schweik was a Czech, drafted into the Austrian Army. Like the Sad Sack, Schweik was always getting into trouble, but unlike the Sad Sack and because he knew what military service was, he always managed somehow to escape the harsh fate meted out to his more careful companions. Schweik had been in the army in peacetime but had been discharged as an imbecile. Every once in a while you get to thinking that he really is an imbecile; but before long you begin to wonder, because one thing is sure – Schweik isn’t as crazy as the army is.</p>
<p>The author follows Schweik from his arrest at the beginning of the war as a suspicious character because of some innocent statements made in a saloon, through prison and an amazing psychiatric examination (one doctor asks: “Is radium heavier than lead?”) up to his induction into the army.</p>
<p>Because he has rheumatism, Schweik is sent to a hospital for malingerers and then detention barracks, reminiscent of the Lichfield guardhouse of more recent fame. Here the sergeant-major complains bitterly about having had to trample on some prisoner for 10 minutes before his ribs began to crack; and another non-com warns Schweik that if he is ever questioned during an inspection, he must stand at attention, salute and answer: “I beg to report, sir, no complaints, and I’m quite satisfied.”</p>
<p>Schweik is released from detention to become the orderly of a generally drunk chaplain fond of commanding, “Any of you who are dead must report themselves to headquarters within three days, so that their corpses can be consecrated.” But the chaplain loses Schweik to a lieutenant in a card game, and Schweik gets his new superior into trouble with their colonel, so both are shipped off to the front. At the end Schweik is captured – by soldiers of his own army.</p>
<p>The author, Hasek, was himself a Czech draftee in the Austrian Army and a prisoner of war of the Russians. There, I was told in Europe, he came under the influence of the Russian Revolution and became a supporter of the Bolsheviks. <strong>The Good Soldier Schweik </strong>was planned for six books; Hasek wrote only four before his death in 1923; a friend completed the other two along lines indicated in his notes. The American edition includes only the first three of Hasek’s books. A publisher who wants to do the public a good turn should print the whole work.</p>
<p>Early this year Penguin Books issued a 25 cent edition of the original American edition, but unfortunately it is abridged. The original edition is available in most public libraries.</p>
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George Breitman
Workers’ Bookshelf
The Good Soldier Schweik
(15 June 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 24, 15 June 1946, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Good Soldier Schweik
by Jaroslav Hasek
Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1930.
Everyone who likes a good book should read The Good Soldier Schweik, and World War II veterans especially. Written over 20 years ago, it still remains the best all-round satiric novel – and the most biting condemnation – of modern capitalist militarism available in English. And although it is about the Austrian Army in World War I, every American veteran of the more recent war will immediately recognize its incidents and characters, especially the officers.
Schweik was a Czech, drafted into the Austrian Army. Like the Sad Sack, Schweik was always getting into trouble, but unlike the Sad Sack and because he knew what military service was, he always managed somehow to escape the harsh fate meted out to his more careful companions. Schweik had been in the army in peacetime but had been discharged as an imbecile. Every once in a while you get to thinking that he really is an imbecile; but before long you begin to wonder, because one thing is sure – Schweik isn’t as crazy as the army is.
The author follows Schweik from his arrest at the beginning of the war as a suspicious character because of some innocent statements made in a saloon, through prison and an amazing psychiatric examination (one doctor asks: “Is radium heavier than lead?”) up to his induction into the army.
Because he has rheumatism, Schweik is sent to a hospital for malingerers and then detention barracks, reminiscent of the Lichfield guardhouse of more recent fame. Here the sergeant-major complains bitterly about having had to trample on some prisoner for 10 minutes before his ribs began to crack; and another non-com warns Schweik that if he is ever questioned during an inspection, he must stand at attention, salute and answer: “I beg to report, sir, no complaints, and I’m quite satisfied.”
Schweik is released from detention to become the orderly of a generally drunk chaplain fond of commanding, “Any of you who are dead must report themselves to headquarters within three days, so that their corpses can be consecrated.” But the chaplain loses Schweik to a lieutenant in a card game, and Schweik gets his new superior into trouble with their colonel, so both are shipped off to the front. At the end Schweik is captured – by soldiers of his own army.
The author, Hasek, was himself a Czech draftee in the Austrian Army and a prisoner of war of the Russians. There, I was told in Europe, he came under the influence of the Russian Revolution and became a supporter of the Bolsheviks. The Good Soldier Schweik was planned for six books; Hasek wrote only four before his death in 1923; a friend completed the other two along lines indicated in his notes. The American edition includes only the first three of Hasek’s books. A publisher who wants to do the public a good turn should print the whole work.
Early this year Penguin Books issued a 25 cent edition of the original American edition, but unfortunately it is abridged. The original edition is available in most public libraries.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2>
<h1>The Military Mind</h1>
<h3>(19 January 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_03" target="new">Vol. XII No. 3</a>, 19 January 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The liberals howled in anguish when President Truman broke his promise to them and refused to reappoint James M. Landis, an early New Dealer, as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Landis, it was announced, would be replaced by a Wall Street investment banker.</p>
<p>Senator Glen Taylor was so upset that he tore up a statement for the press announcing his decision “not to run for vice-president in Wallace’s third party, Max Lerner of <strong>PM</strong> whined that Truman’s dismissal of Landis “because the big airline corporations didn’t like him” was another example of how “Truman still falls down, judged by really exacting standards of a fighting liberalism.” (But evidently not far enough down for <strong>PM</strong> to quit supporting him for re-election.)</p>
<p>The reaction was so unfavorable that Truman decided not to appoint a banker to the job after all. Since all of Truman’s major appointees are either bankers or generals, this left him only one way out. So he appointed a general – Maj. Gen, Laurence S. Kuter.</p>
<p>Henry Wallace was quick to take a crack at this action: “For 15 months I have been pointing out that the president has been handing over control of the administration to Wall Street and military men. It is reported there are now more than 170 former army and navy officers in top civilian posts. It’s hard to keep tally on the investment bankers.” (Of course, the process actually began long before 15 months ago: to be more exact, it began to assume its present huge proportions under Roosevelt).</p>
<p>While it is hard to keep tally on the growing number of generals and bankers taking over in Washington, it’s not hard to see what the effects are. Take the example of General of the Army Marshall, who is hailed as “Man of the Year” by <strong>Time</strong> magazine. Marshall can hardly conceal his contempt for civilians, including the members of Congress whose servant he is supposed to be.</p>
<p>At the Senate committee hearing on the Marshall Plan on Jan. 8, Marshall laid down the law: “Either undertake to meet the requirements of the problems or don’t undertake it at all.” Meaning: You Senators had better do what I say and grant as much money as I demand – or else. It wasn’t until a day later that George of Georgia got up the nerve to take the floor and describe this insolent ultimatum as “a propaganda method,” although, he hastened to add, “General Marshall may not have meant it that way.” Even this feeble protest was regarded as “a verbal bombshell” in the Senate.</p>
<p>If Senator George doesn’t watch out, he’s liable to go down into the brass hats’ blackbook as a “troublemaker.” They don’t like to be questioned too much, or to be contradicted. Things just aren’t done that way in the armed forces, and their conception of the brave new world is a great big barracks, with the people lined up at attention, waiting for orders.</p>
<p>But Tris Coffin, Washington columnist, on Jan. 10 printed an even better illustration of what the prussianization of the government adds up to:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“A group of the (State) Department’s experts were briefing Secretary of State Marshall on some intricate problem. The Secretary was completely absorbed and occasionally broke in to ask sharp, penetrating questions. One such inquiry was a question of policy. There was a respectful silence among the higher-ups around the Secretary. But one of the younger men, an expert in a specialized field, spoke up brashly, ‘Mr. Secretary, I think ...’ That’s as far as he got. Marshall turned a Cold, fishy glare on him and asked, ‘What is your salary?’ ‘Seven thousand dollars a year, sir.’ The Secretary said abruptly, ‘At that salary, you are riot paid to think.’ ”</p>
<p class="fst">By the way, what’s <em>your</em> salary?</p>
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John F. Petrone
The Military Mind
(19 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 3, 19 January 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The liberals howled in anguish when President Truman broke his promise to them and refused to reappoint James M. Landis, an early New Dealer, as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Landis, it was announced, would be replaced by a Wall Street investment banker.
Senator Glen Taylor was so upset that he tore up a statement for the press announcing his decision “not to run for vice-president in Wallace’s third party, Max Lerner of PM whined that Truman’s dismissal of Landis “because the big airline corporations didn’t like him” was another example of how “Truman still falls down, judged by really exacting standards of a fighting liberalism.” (But evidently not far enough down for PM to quit supporting him for re-election.)
The reaction was so unfavorable that Truman decided not to appoint a banker to the job after all. Since all of Truman’s major appointees are either bankers or generals, this left him only one way out. So he appointed a general – Maj. Gen, Laurence S. Kuter.
Henry Wallace was quick to take a crack at this action: “For 15 months I have been pointing out that the president has been handing over control of the administration to Wall Street and military men. It is reported there are now more than 170 former army and navy officers in top civilian posts. It’s hard to keep tally on the investment bankers.” (Of course, the process actually began long before 15 months ago: to be more exact, it began to assume its present huge proportions under Roosevelt).
While it is hard to keep tally on the growing number of generals and bankers taking over in Washington, it’s not hard to see what the effects are. Take the example of General of the Army Marshall, who is hailed as “Man of the Year” by Time magazine. Marshall can hardly conceal his contempt for civilians, including the members of Congress whose servant he is supposed to be.
At the Senate committee hearing on the Marshall Plan on Jan. 8, Marshall laid down the law: “Either undertake to meet the requirements of the problems or don’t undertake it at all.” Meaning: You Senators had better do what I say and grant as much money as I demand – or else. It wasn’t until a day later that George of Georgia got up the nerve to take the floor and describe this insolent ultimatum as “a propaganda method,” although, he hastened to add, “General Marshall may not have meant it that way.” Even this feeble protest was regarded as “a verbal bombshell” in the Senate.
If Senator George doesn’t watch out, he’s liable to go down into the brass hats’ blackbook as a “troublemaker.” They don’t like to be questioned too much, or to be contradicted. Things just aren’t done that way in the armed forces, and their conception of the brave new world is a great big barracks, with the people lined up at attention, waiting for orders.
But Tris Coffin, Washington columnist, on Jan. 10 printed an even better illustration of what the prussianization of the government adds up to:
“A group of the (State) Department’s experts were briefing Secretary of State Marshall on some intricate problem. The Secretary was completely absorbed and occasionally broke in to ask sharp, penetrating questions. One such inquiry was a question of policy. There was a respectful silence among the higher-ups around the Secretary. But one of the younger men, an expert in a specialized field, spoke up brashly, ‘Mr. Secretary, I think ...’ That’s as far as he got. Marshall turned a Cold, fishy glare on him and asked, ‘What is your salary?’ ‘Seven thousand dollars a year, sir.’ The Secretary said abruptly, ‘At that salary, you are riot paid to think.’ ”
By the way, what’s your salary?
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>NAACP Appeals to the UN</h1>
<h3>(November 1947)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Fourth International</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/fi/index2.htm#fi47_11" target="new">Vol.8 No.9</a>, November-December 1947, pp.282-286.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">There are plenty of vital statistics and useful facts about the oppression of the Negro people in the document <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1" target="_blank">[1]</a> presented to the United Nations last October by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.</p>
<p>This document can be of considerable value to those first becoming acquainted with the American Negro question, but it does not take us very far toward solution of that problem. Strong on the presentation of facts, it is weak on explaining and analyzing those facts, and almost worthless when it comes to a consideration of what should be done about them.</p>
<p>These facts constitute a damning indictment of American “democracy.” They show that the Negro people,</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... something less than a tenth of the nation ... form largely a segregated caste, with restricted legal rights, and many illegal disabilities ... [They have] a strong, hereditary cultural unity, born of slavery, of common suffering, prolonged proscription and curtailment of political and civil rights; and especially because of economic and social disabilities ...”</p>
<p class="fst">But why? Nowhere in this document is there a clear answer to this all-important question.</p>
<p>DuBois comes closest to discussing it in the following widely separated remarks, buried away in the midst of discussion of other issues. Slavery, he notes,</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... was a matter of economics, a question of income and labor, rather than a problem of right and wrong, or of the physical differences in men. Once slavery began to be the source of vast income for men and nations, there followed frantic search for moral and racial justifications.”</p>
<p class="fst">After the Reconstruction Era, he declares, Northern industry joined with the Southern landowners “to disfranchise the Negro; keep him from access to free land or to capital, and to build up the present caste system for blacks founded on color discrimination, peonage, intimidation and mob-violence.” The US as a result is “ruled by wealth, monopoly and big business organization to an astounding degree.” And in the South today, DuBois adds in passing, “Industry encourages the culture patterns which make these groups [competing for jobs] hate and fear each other.”</p>
<p>Added together, these statements provide at least a clue to the answer. Why then aren’t they added together and summed up in a forthright declaration on the causes of Jim Crow oppression? Because DuBois and the NAACP leaders and most of the prominent Negro leaders are afraid of the conclusions that would have to be drawn from a consistent analysis of these causes. We have no such fears, however, and neither do the Negro masses. Let us therefore say plainly what DuBois only hints at:</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Like slavery, Jim Crow oppression is rooted in economic life. It is profitable to the capitalist ruling class in both the North and the South, and that’s why they not only encourage, but instigate and maintain this system and bitterly resist any attempt to end it.</em></p>
<p>Furthermore, Jim Crow is a matter of politics. DuBois gives irrefutable proof of this in demonstrating that the dis-franchisement of the Negroes in the South “means greater power for the few who cast the vote.” His analysis of the 1946 elections shows, for example, that the Southern landowner who disfranchises Negro and white workers and sharecroppers has a power at the polls greater than that of six workers and farmers in the North. This explains not only why the South is the most backward section of the country but also why the Southern congressmen elected by this political monopoly form the most reactionary bloc in Washington where the laws for the whole nation are written.</p>
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<h4><a href="../../../../newspape/fi/vol08/no09/perry.html" target="new">Facts About Jim Crow</a><br>
<small>(As Compiled by Leslie S. Perry for the NAACP’s Appeal to the UN)</small></h4>
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<p class="fst">But here too the NAACP document fails to draw the necessary conclusions. True, it cites the obvious need for abolishing Negro disfranchisement. But that is too narrow and limited an answer for the many political problems arising out of Negro oppression, and fails to even touch the crucial point: What measures are necessary to achieve the goal of Negro equality at the polls — itself a political goal? We are again compelled to say explicitly what the NAACP document only half-implies:</p>
<p><em>Jim Crow is not only a source of political power for the ruling class, but the political power of the ruling class is itself a source of Jim Crow. This inevitably raises the question of the government — the executive committee of the ruling class through which its political power is exercised.</em></p>
<p><em>Consequently, the only effective way to fight Jim Crow is by fighting the capitalist system, and the only way to end it for good is by political action to replace the capitalist system with one under which Jim Crow won’t be profitable — that is, a socialist system.</em></p>
<p>By rejecting or evading this approach, whose basis is no confidence whatever in the capitalist class or any of its agencies, the Negro leaders are trapped in one contradiction after another, thus weakening and undermining the Negro struggles. A few examples from the NAACP document will illustrate this.</p>
<p>When the ruling classes of the North and South worked out their “gentleman’s agreement” in 1876 and set out to deprive the Negro of the civil rights he had won during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Supreme Court was one of the chief instruments employed. The Court obligingly ruled that most of the Congressional civil rights statutes were illegal, and that the states rather than the federal government had the responsibility of guaranteeing civil rights. As a result, it is precisely in those places where the Negro most needs legal protection that he gets it least — in the South, where the state governments, far from adopting civil rights laws, legally established the pattern of segregation which is the base of the modern Jim Crow system.</p>
<p>Dickerson does a great deal of historical and legal research on the period leading up to 1914 to disprove what he calls “the fallacy inherent in the argument that the legal rights of American Negroes can be entrusted to the states.” Now a fallacy is a mistaken assumption, an erroneous conclusion or argument, etc. But there was nothing at all “fallacious” about the thinking of the US ruling class when it decided to “entrust” the Negro’s legal rights to the states! On the contrary, it was a carefully thought-out device for achieving exactly what was intended — the legal destruction of the Negro’s rights. Only people who are themselves suffering from the most pernicious fallacies about the nature of the ruling class or its Supreme Court could use such a namby-pamby term to describe a diabolically successful conspiracy against the Negro people.</p>
<p>But the authors of the NAACP document do hot even carry through consistently their own line of reasoning. They refrain from a similar criticism of the idea that the legal rights of the Negroes can be safely entrusted to the federal government and its agencies — a conception spread far and wide by most of the Negro leaders. Is that any less a “fallacy” than the one concerning reliance on the state governments? Not at all. Remember, first of all, that the federal government connived to make “state’s rights” dominant in this field. And now it follows a pattern in its treatment of Negroes (armed forces, government employees, District of Columbia) which essentially duplicates that followed by the Southern states. The “big” difference between the two is that the federal government is the executive committee of the national ruling class while the state governments perform the same repressive role for the local sections of that ruling class.</p>
<p>In another place, Dickerson says that</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... to tell a Negro who has suffered from mob violence because of state inaction that he must look to the state for protection sounds very much like telling a woman who has been seduced that her future protection lies in the hands of the seducer.”</p>
<p class="fst">This is apt and well put, although the crime committed in the case of the Negro is more like rape than seduction. But in that case, telling the Negro to rely on the federal government is like telling the woman to rely on the man who delivered her to the attacker and even held her while the crime was committed. Yet, because of their false theories on the main cause of Jim Crow and on the nature of the capitalist state, that has been the essence of the Negro leaders’ program and demands.</p>
<p>By the above we do not at all wish to belittle or criticize demands for federal legislation against lynching, the poll tax, discriminatory employment practices, and so on. Such demands are obviously necessary and progressive because they facilitate the mobilization of the masses against the Jim Crow system and because their realization would considerably weaken and undermine the Jim Crow status quo. What we are criticizing and warning against here is the impression spread by Negro leaders that such limited demands are the be-all and end-all of the Negro struggle and that their realization would solve the problems of the Negro people. Such a conception is false to the core for it ignores the real roots of Jim Crow — the capitalist system.</p>
<p>Now this very same fallacy appears, even in a more extended form, in the NAACP appeal to the UN for redress. Having obtained no satisfaction from petitions to the stales, then having made little headway as a result of petitions to the federal government, the NAACP leaders feel that it is</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... fitting and proper that the thirteen million American citizens of Negro descent should appeal to the United Nations and ask that organization in the proper way to take cognizance of a situation that deprives this group of their rights as men and citizens.”</p>
<p class="fst">It is, of course, perfectly proper for the Negro people to utilize the UN as a forum in which to present their grievances. Skillfully utilized, such a procedure can serve to expose the fraudulence of the US government’s pretensions about democracy at home and abroad. (The NAACP document, incidentally fails to take proper advantage of this opportunity by bewailing the fact that American prestige is lowered and embarrassed by its oppression of Negroes at home. While this may be important to the American ruling class, which wants to extend its power and domination all over the globe, it is certainly not embarrassing to the Negro masses, and it is certainly not the reason why they want Negro oppression ended.) But what can practically come out of such an appeal to the UN, except some publicity and an advance in the education of the people about the indifference of the UN to genuine democracy and its subservience to Wall Street?</p>
<p>The NAACP leaders do not say anything on the question one way or the other, and perhaps they privately don’t expect much to come of it. But in the absence of any statement to the contrary, their appeal creates illusions among the masses about (1) the nature of the UN and (2) the correct way to fight Jim Crow. Instead of strengthening, it tends to weaken that fight by creating the wrong impression that there is some other way to win equality than by mass struggle against capitalism and its agencies.</p>
<p>Such an appeal, while useful as propaganda, is manifestly worthless as a means of improving conditions in this country because the American imperialist oppressors of the Negro, who dominate the UN, just will not permit it to “intervene.” And even if the US ruling class did not dominate the UN, it wouldn’t make any difference because this association of bandits has no desire or intention to halt oppression anywhere. This has already been amply demonstrated by its attitude toward the colored peoples of Indonesia, Indo-China and South Africa. For the Negro masses to entertain any illusions on this score would be like a Negro slave complaining about the cruelty of his master to the Confederate Government during the Civil War and expecting it to give him redress.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Nationalist Element</h4>
<p class="fst">There are many things that the NAACP leaders see but do not understand. One of the most important is the national element in the Negro struggle. DuBois notes the fact that all Negroes are discriminated against, those with “wealth, training and character” as well as those without. He declared:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... prolonged policies of segregation and discrimination have involuntarily welded the [Negro] mass almost into a nation within a nation with its own schools, churches, hospitals, newspapers and many business enterprises.”</p>
<p class="fst">The results of this growing national (or racial) consciousness, he finds, have been both good and bad. <em>Good</em> in that it inspired the Negroes to “frantic and often successful effort to achieve, to deserve, to show the world their capacity to share modern civilization.” And <em>bad</em> in that it has made the Negroes to a wide extent “provincial, introvertive, self-conscious and narrowly race-loyal.” Coming from the pen of a white liberal or social worker, such an estimate might not seem out of place. But from a Negro leader who has made genuine contributions to the study of Negro history, it is certainly inadequate and negative, especially from the viewpoint of what effects national movements have on the struggle for Negro liberation. Let us consider the Marxist estimate:</p>
<p>The national consciousness of the Negro people, induced by the factors cited by DuBois, does indeed have varying effects. Such attitudes as Negro nationalism, black chauvinism, etc., do carry a danger of being utilized to spread mistrust of all whites, including the whites who are opposed to Jim Crow, and to widen the divisions between Negroes and their natural ally, the labor movement. But essentially this national consciousness is an expression of the Negro’s desire for equality and is therefore progressive (unlike white chauvinism which reflects the desire for continued racial supremacy). J.R. Johnson has correctly called attention to an important consideration in this connection:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Whereas in Europe the national movements have usually aimed at a separation from the oppressing power, in the US the race consciousness and chauvinism of the Negro represent fundamentally a consolidation of his forces for the purpose of integration into American society.”</p>
<p class="fst">That is one side of it, and not all of that is bad by a long shot. On the other side are the power and explosiveness lodged in national movements, which organize the oppressed minorities in struggles whose objective consequence can only be the abolition of capitalism. The American Negro as a minority cannot solve his problems without powerful allies, but even by himself he can direct heavy blows at the system, keep it in a state of instability by his opposition and help set into motion other revolutionary forces which can and will collaborate in the solution of his particular problems because they share the same fundamental interests. DuBois seems oblivious of the dynamite lodged in the Negro’s national consciousness; for him it presents only a “dilemma.” But for those who aim at destroying Jim Crow the racial feelings and nationalist movements of the Negro people present a challenge and an opportunity. Here is a powerful anti-capitalist and anti-Jim Crow force if they know how to direct it into correct channels.</p>
<p>It is one-sided and therefore wrong to stop with the national aspects; the Negro question involves much more than that. It combines the struggle of an oppressed minority for democracy with the struggle of the entire working class for emancipation from capitalism. This second factor is never explicitly stated or recognized in the document, although it contains the figures to prove it.<br>
</p>
<h4>A Class Question</h4>
<p class="fst">Perry cites the following statistics from the 1940 census:</p>
<p>The total number of Negroes gainfully employed in the United States amounted to 4,479,068 men and women (not counting those on public emergency work). Of these, the vast majority, 61%, were unskilled workers. Less than 3% were “skilled and foremen” and only 2.6 were professional persons. The rest were largely semi-skilled workers, farm tenants and the like.</p>
<p>Thus the Negro question is overwhelmingly a working class question, tied up with the fate of the labor movement as a whole and dependent on the fulfillment of the working class’s destiny as the gravedigger of capitalism and the builder of a new society. To ignore this vital fact is to deprive the Negro of the aid of his best and strongest ally. It is not enough merely to pass annual declarations of solidarity with labor and to invite an occasional union bureaucrat to speak at NAACP meetings or add his name to the NAACP Board of Directors. What is needed above all is for the Negro organizations to strengthen the ties of active collaboration with the labor organizations and to try to influence them in a progressive direction. The Negro people will not win their second emancipation until labor has settled accounts with capital. The Negro people have a great part to play in that settlement.</p>
<p>The assumption guiding these Negro leaders — that the Negro people can attain equality under capitalism, even in its “democratic” form — is not consistent with the facts adduced or implied in the NAACP document. It is the theoretical source of all their mistakes, vacillations and betrayals of the Negro struggle.</p>
<p>The authors can admit flatly, as Dickerson does, that</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... by 1914, the eve of the First World War, the legal status of the American Negro had degenerated to the pattern that existed before the Civil War.”</p>
<p class="fst">But do they understand what this statement really means — that at the height of the flowering of democratic capitalism the American ruling class had no more to offer the Negro than in slave days? Do they appreciate what a terrible indictment that is of capitalism in its prime, when it was able to grant some concessions to the masses? Can’t they realize what this means today — and even more for tomorrow — now that the permanent crisis of this decadent system drives the ruling class not to grant new concessions and rights but to withdraw as many of them as they can, as the anti-labor drive now sweeping the country demonstrates?</p>
<p>They can calmly declare, to quote Konvitz, that in addition to “the inequalities that exist despite the law,” there are also many <em>“inequalities that exist because of the law</em>,” These include the right of Negroes “to live where they please, to be free from segregation in schools and universities, to vote without the poll tax restrictions, to ride in intrastate commerce in public conveyances without subjection to Jim Crowism.” In court contests against these inequalities, “the Negro has been unsuccessful, <em>even when, as in recent years, the Supreme Court has consisted of a liberal majority</em>.” Do they actually grasp what they are saying when they admit that so far as the Negro is concerned, the capitalist liberals upon whom they rely for improving the situation, act no better than the other supporters of capitalism?</p>
<p>Or take the conclusion reached by this remark of Ming: “The political and legal system of the United States appears to be unable or unwilling to cope with this hiatus between the theoretical and actual status of the Negro.” But what does it matter whether the capitalist politicians and judges are “unable or unwilling”? Isn’t it plain that a system which either can’t or won’t grant the most elementary democratic rights to the Negroes is rotten to the core and must be replaced by one that can and will?</p>
<p>But while their “theory” is contradicted at every point by the facts, the policy recommended and followed by the Negro leaders is consistent with and flows from their “theory” of refusing to place the responsibility for Jim Crow where it really belongs. Refusing to recognize the core of the problem, they attribute Negro oppression to “fallacies,” “paradoxes,” “enigmas,” “apathy” and even “shortsightedness” of the capitalist class.</p>
<p>True, they put pressure on the capitalist class in order to get recognition and correction of these “fallacies.” But they want to arouse and employ no more than the most limited kind of pressure — the kind that will serve to embarrass and extract a concession or pat on the head from the ruling class, but that will never under any circumstances challenge their power to oppress and exploit and their right to rule. This is shown best of all by the Negro leaders’ approach to politics.</p>
<p>The NAACP program — to end lynching, the poll tax, industrial and military Jim Crow, etc. — is conceived by its leaders as a legislative program. To put it more correctly, it is a political program whose fate will be decided by the political struggle of the masses. As was stated above, the NAACP leaders reject our concept that what is needed is an anti-capitalist political movement aiming to take power away from the Jim Crow capitalist parties and government. What is more, they reject even the concept of organized political action by the Negro masses.</p>
<p>Yes, ludicrous as it may appear and tragic as it is, the largest Negro organization in the world still refuses to use political weapons in a political war and still relies on lobbying methods that have proved their ineffectiveness over and over again during the NAACP’s 37 year history. This puts the NAACP leaders on an even lower political level than the moss-backed AFL bureaucrats, who finally had it drummed into their fat heads by the Taft-Hartley Act that no fight against the employers can be divorced from politics. How many more blows will the NAACP leaders need before they are forced to a like conclusion?</p>
<p>The alibi offered by the NAACP leaders for the abstentionist policy is as pathetic as the policy itself. The NAACP, they say, is a “non-partisan” organization that cannot take sides in politics without offending and alienating its members, friendly politicians and wealthy well-wishers, who have diverse political views. The best it can do is urge its members to register and vote, to inform them of the voting records of the various candidates — and then hope for the best! They do not explain what value to the organization are members and sympathizers who want to be “non-partisan” as between the political foes and the political friends of the Negro people. Nor has it apparently occurred to them that the loss of such followers would be compensated many fold by the recruiting of Negro workers when they saw that the NAACP really meant business about fighting their enemies, including those in high political seats.</p>
<p>Abstentionism from politics is, however, also a kind of politics — the worst kind because it damages above all those who practice it. The NAACP’s “neutrality” is most pleasing to the political practitioners of Jim Crow because it leaves undisturbed the political monoply by which they sustain the Jim Crow system. How the reactionary politicians whose election was left unopposed by the NAACP must laugh when the NAACP comes around lobbying for something like an anti-lynch law! They probably even smiled when the politically self-disarmed NAACP presented its document to the UN, where the politically “safe” appointees of the US capitalist government will see that it comes to naught.</p>
<p>In the middle Thirties, there was a strong movement among the workers in the factories toward the AFL as the only important national labor organization in the field. But these workers were looking for something different and better than the AFL, as was soon shown in the industrial explosion out of which the CIO was born as the labor movement on a higher level — industrial unionism. In the same Way during recent years there has been a strong tide among the Negro masses toward the NAACP as the only important national Negro organization in the field.</p>
<p>This tide has swept into the NAACP tens of thousands of militant young Negroes eager to deal a finish blow to the Jim Crow system. Explosions lie ahead here too. They will either transform the NAACP’s character in accordance with the needs of the times or else replace it with a new organization that can play the role required. It behooves these Negro militants to study the origins as well as the effects of the Jim Crow system and to take measures to prepare themselves and their present organization for the most useful ways to conduct the Negro struggle.<br>
</p>
<h4>New Leaders Needed</h4>
<p class="fst">What is needed now is a new Negro leadership — one that is not afraid to draw radical conclusions and advocate drastic measures when they are justified by the facts. Fighters who will not have any illusions about the hostile character of capitalism and all its agencies and servants, no matter how disguised; who will recognize and strengthen the bonds linking the Negro struggle for equality with the organized labor movement and who stand ready, if that becomes necessary, to mobilize their people for action on their own behalf without waiting for labor to act first. This new leadership will understand the progressive character of Negro national consciousness and will know how to utilize its power in the right direction; it will rearm the Negro movement politically through an independent labor-Negro coalition.</p>
<p>Jim Crow is twined inextricably around the trunk of capitalism like a poisonous vine around a tree; both are nourished by the same soil of class society. It is necessary to cut down this tree at its roots in order to kill the vine, just as it was necessary to abolish slavery root and branch. The more hands that are put on the job, the sooner it will be done. The axe is waiting to be used by that new Negro leadership which is already arising from the ranks and is destined to replace the present half-way leaders who dare neither to think things through to the end — nor to act decisively to destroy Jim Crow.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1" target="_blank">1.</a> <strong>A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress</strong> (edited by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, historian and director of the NAACP Department of Special Research, with contributions by attorney Earl B. Dickerson of Chicago, Milton R. Konvitz of Cornell University, William R. Ming, Jr., of the University of Chicago, Leslie S. Perry of the NAACP Washington Bureau, and Rayford W. Logan of Howard University).</p>
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Albert Parker
NAACP Appeals to the UN
(November 1947)
From Fourth International, Vol.8 No.9, November-December 1947, pp.282-286.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
There are plenty of vital statistics and useful facts about the oppression of the Negro people in the document [1] presented to the United Nations last October by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
This document can be of considerable value to those first becoming acquainted with the American Negro question, but it does not take us very far toward solution of that problem. Strong on the presentation of facts, it is weak on explaining and analyzing those facts, and almost worthless when it comes to a consideration of what should be done about them.
These facts constitute a damning indictment of American “democracy.” They show that the Negro people,
“... something less than a tenth of the nation ... form largely a segregated caste, with restricted legal rights, and many illegal disabilities ... [They have] a strong, hereditary cultural unity, born of slavery, of common suffering, prolonged proscription and curtailment of political and civil rights; and especially because of economic and social disabilities ...”
But why? Nowhere in this document is there a clear answer to this all-important question.
DuBois comes closest to discussing it in the following widely separated remarks, buried away in the midst of discussion of other issues. Slavery, he notes,
“... was a matter of economics, a question of income and labor, rather than a problem of right and wrong, or of the physical differences in men. Once slavery began to be the source of vast income for men and nations, there followed frantic search for moral and racial justifications.”
After the Reconstruction Era, he declares, Northern industry joined with the Southern landowners “to disfranchise the Negro; keep him from access to free land or to capital, and to build up the present caste system for blacks founded on color discrimination, peonage, intimidation and mob-violence.” The US as a result is “ruled by wealth, monopoly and big business organization to an astounding degree.” And in the South today, DuBois adds in passing, “Industry encourages the culture patterns which make these groups [competing for jobs] hate and fear each other.”
Added together, these statements provide at least a clue to the answer. Why then aren’t they added together and summed up in a forthright declaration on the causes of Jim Crow oppression? Because DuBois and the NAACP leaders and most of the prominent Negro leaders are afraid of the conclusions that would have to be drawn from a consistent analysis of these causes. We have no such fears, however, and neither do the Negro masses. Let us therefore say plainly what DuBois only hints at:
Like slavery, Jim Crow oppression is rooted in economic life. It is profitable to the capitalist ruling class in both the North and the South, and that’s why they not only encourage, but instigate and maintain this system and bitterly resist any attempt to end it.
Furthermore, Jim Crow is a matter of politics. DuBois gives irrefutable proof of this in demonstrating that the dis-franchisement of the Negroes in the South “means greater power for the few who cast the vote.” His analysis of the 1946 elections shows, for example, that the Southern landowner who disfranchises Negro and white workers and sharecroppers has a power at the polls greater than that of six workers and farmers in the North. This explains not only why the South is the most backward section of the country but also why the Southern congressmen elected by this political monopoly form the most reactionary bloc in Washington where the laws for the whole nation are written.
Facts About Jim Crow
(As Compiled by Leslie S. Perry for the NAACP’s Appeal to the UN)
But here too the NAACP document fails to draw the necessary conclusions. True, it cites the obvious need for abolishing Negro disfranchisement. But that is too narrow and limited an answer for the many political problems arising out of Negro oppression, and fails to even touch the crucial point: What measures are necessary to achieve the goal of Negro equality at the polls — itself a political goal? We are again compelled to say explicitly what the NAACP document only half-implies:
Jim Crow is not only a source of political power for the ruling class, but the political power of the ruling class is itself a source of Jim Crow. This inevitably raises the question of the government — the executive committee of the ruling class through which its political power is exercised.
Consequently, the only effective way to fight Jim Crow is by fighting the capitalist system, and the only way to end it for good is by political action to replace the capitalist system with one under which Jim Crow won’t be profitable — that is, a socialist system.
By rejecting or evading this approach, whose basis is no confidence whatever in the capitalist class or any of its agencies, the Negro leaders are trapped in one contradiction after another, thus weakening and undermining the Negro struggles. A few examples from the NAACP document will illustrate this.
When the ruling classes of the North and South worked out their “gentleman’s agreement” in 1876 and set out to deprive the Negro of the civil rights he had won during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Supreme Court was one of the chief instruments employed. The Court obligingly ruled that most of the Congressional civil rights statutes were illegal, and that the states rather than the federal government had the responsibility of guaranteeing civil rights. As a result, it is precisely in those places where the Negro most needs legal protection that he gets it least — in the South, where the state governments, far from adopting civil rights laws, legally established the pattern of segregation which is the base of the modern Jim Crow system.
Dickerson does a great deal of historical and legal research on the period leading up to 1914 to disprove what he calls “the fallacy inherent in the argument that the legal rights of American Negroes can be entrusted to the states.” Now a fallacy is a mistaken assumption, an erroneous conclusion or argument, etc. But there was nothing at all “fallacious” about the thinking of the US ruling class when it decided to “entrust” the Negro’s legal rights to the states! On the contrary, it was a carefully thought-out device for achieving exactly what was intended — the legal destruction of the Negro’s rights. Only people who are themselves suffering from the most pernicious fallacies about the nature of the ruling class or its Supreme Court could use such a namby-pamby term to describe a diabolically successful conspiracy against the Negro people.
But the authors of the NAACP document do hot even carry through consistently their own line of reasoning. They refrain from a similar criticism of the idea that the legal rights of the Negroes can be safely entrusted to the federal government and its agencies — a conception spread far and wide by most of the Negro leaders. Is that any less a “fallacy” than the one concerning reliance on the state governments? Not at all. Remember, first of all, that the federal government connived to make “state’s rights” dominant in this field. And now it follows a pattern in its treatment of Negroes (armed forces, government employees, District of Columbia) which essentially duplicates that followed by the Southern states. The “big” difference between the two is that the federal government is the executive committee of the national ruling class while the state governments perform the same repressive role for the local sections of that ruling class.
In another place, Dickerson says that
“... to tell a Negro who has suffered from mob violence because of state inaction that he must look to the state for protection sounds very much like telling a woman who has been seduced that her future protection lies in the hands of the seducer.”
This is apt and well put, although the crime committed in the case of the Negro is more like rape than seduction. But in that case, telling the Negro to rely on the federal government is like telling the woman to rely on the man who delivered her to the attacker and even held her while the crime was committed. Yet, because of their false theories on the main cause of Jim Crow and on the nature of the capitalist state, that has been the essence of the Negro leaders’ program and demands.
By the above we do not at all wish to belittle or criticize demands for federal legislation against lynching, the poll tax, discriminatory employment practices, and so on. Such demands are obviously necessary and progressive because they facilitate the mobilization of the masses against the Jim Crow system and because their realization would considerably weaken and undermine the Jim Crow status quo. What we are criticizing and warning against here is the impression spread by Negro leaders that such limited demands are the be-all and end-all of the Negro struggle and that their realization would solve the problems of the Negro people. Such a conception is false to the core for it ignores the real roots of Jim Crow — the capitalist system.
Now this very same fallacy appears, even in a more extended form, in the NAACP appeal to the UN for redress. Having obtained no satisfaction from petitions to the stales, then having made little headway as a result of petitions to the federal government, the NAACP leaders feel that it is
“... fitting and proper that the thirteen million American citizens of Negro descent should appeal to the United Nations and ask that organization in the proper way to take cognizance of a situation that deprives this group of their rights as men and citizens.”
It is, of course, perfectly proper for the Negro people to utilize the UN as a forum in which to present their grievances. Skillfully utilized, such a procedure can serve to expose the fraudulence of the US government’s pretensions about democracy at home and abroad. (The NAACP document, incidentally fails to take proper advantage of this opportunity by bewailing the fact that American prestige is lowered and embarrassed by its oppression of Negroes at home. While this may be important to the American ruling class, which wants to extend its power and domination all over the globe, it is certainly not embarrassing to the Negro masses, and it is certainly not the reason why they want Negro oppression ended.) But what can practically come out of such an appeal to the UN, except some publicity and an advance in the education of the people about the indifference of the UN to genuine democracy and its subservience to Wall Street?
The NAACP leaders do not say anything on the question one way or the other, and perhaps they privately don’t expect much to come of it. But in the absence of any statement to the contrary, their appeal creates illusions among the masses about (1) the nature of the UN and (2) the correct way to fight Jim Crow. Instead of strengthening, it tends to weaken that fight by creating the wrong impression that there is some other way to win equality than by mass struggle against capitalism and its agencies.
Such an appeal, while useful as propaganda, is manifestly worthless as a means of improving conditions in this country because the American imperialist oppressors of the Negro, who dominate the UN, just will not permit it to “intervene.” And even if the US ruling class did not dominate the UN, it wouldn’t make any difference because this association of bandits has no desire or intention to halt oppression anywhere. This has already been amply demonstrated by its attitude toward the colored peoples of Indonesia, Indo-China and South Africa. For the Negro masses to entertain any illusions on this score would be like a Negro slave complaining about the cruelty of his master to the Confederate Government during the Civil War and expecting it to give him redress.
The Nationalist Element
There are many things that the NAACP leaders see but do not understand. One of the most important is the national element in the Negro struggle. DuBois notes the fact that all Negroes are discriminated against, those with “wealth, training and character” as well as those without. He declared:
“... prolonged policies of segregation and discrimination have involuntarily welded the [Negro] mass almost into a nation within a nation with its own schools, churches, hospitals, newspapers and many business enterprises.”
The results of this growing national (or racial) consciousness, he finds, have been both good and bad. Good in that it inspired the Negroes to “frantic and often successful effort to achieve, to deserve, to show the world their capacity to share modern civilization.” And bad in that it has made the Negroes to a wide extent “provincial, introvertive, self-conscious and narrowly race-loyal.” Coming from the pen of a white liberal or social worker, such an estimate might not seem out of place. But from a Negro leader who has made genuine contributions to the study of Negro history, it is certainly inadequate and negative, especially from the viewpoint of what effects national movements have on the struggle for Negro liberation. Let us consider the Marxist estimate:
The national consciousness of the Negro people, induced by the factors cited by DuBois, does indeed have varying effects. Such attitudes as Negro nationalism, black chauvinism, etc., do carry a danger of being utilized to spread mistrust of all whites, including the whites who are opposed to Jim Crow, and to widen the divisions between Negroes and their natural ally, the labor movement. But essentially this national consciousness is an expression of the Negro’s desire for equality and is therefore progressive (unlike white chauvinism which reflects the desire for continued racial supremacy). J.R. Johnson has correctly called attention to an important consideration in this connection:
“Whereas in Europe the national movements have usually aimed at a separation from the oppressing power, in the US the race consciousness and chauvinism of the Negro represent fundamentally a consolidation of his forces for the purpose of integration into American society.”
That is one side of it, and not all of that is bad by a long shot. On the other side are the power and explosiveness lodged in national movements, which organize the oppressed minorities in struggles whose objective consequence can only be the abolition of capitalism. The American Negro as a minority cannot solve his problems without powerful allies, but even by himself he can direct heavy blows at the system, keep it in a state of instability by his opposition and help set into motion other revolutionary forces which can and will collaborate in the solution of his particular problems because they share the same fundamental interests. DuBois seems oblivious of the dynamite lodged in the Negro’s national consciousness; for him it presents only a “dilemma.” But for those who aim at destroying Jim Crow the racial feelings and nationalist movements of the Negro people present a challenge and an opportunity. Here is a powerful anti-capitalist and anti-Jim Crow force if they know how to direct it into correct channels.
It is one-sided and therefore wrong to stop with the national aspects; the Negro question involves much more than that. It combines the struggle of an oppressed minority for democracy with the struggle of the entire working class for emancipation from capitalism. This second factor is never explicitly stated or recognized in the document, although it contains the figures to prove it.
A Class Question
Perry cites the following statistics from the 1940 census:
The total number of Negroes gainfully employed in the United States amounted to 4,479,068 men and women (not counting those on public emergency work). Of these, the vast majority, 61%, were unskilled workers. Less than 3% were “skilled and foremen” and only 2.6 were professional persons. The rest were largely semi-skilled workers, farm tenants and the like.
Thus the Negro question is overwhelmingly a working class question, tied up with the fate of the labor movement as a whole and dependent on the fulfillment of the working class’s destiny as the gravedigger of capitalism and the builder of a new society. To ignore this vital fact is to deprive the Negro of the aid of his best and strongest ally. It is not enough merely to pass annual declarations of solidarity with labor and to invite an occasional union bureaucrat to speak at NAACP meetings or add his name to the NAACP Board of Directors. What is needed above all is for the Negro organizations to strengthen the ties of active collaboration with the labor organizations and to try to influence them in a progressive direction. The Negro people will not win their second emancipation until labor has settled accounts with capital. The Negro people have a great part to play in that settlement.
The assumption guiding these Negro leaders — that the Negro people can attain equality under capitalism, even in its “democratic” form — is not consistent with the facts adduced or implied in the NAACP document. It is the theoretical source of all their mistakes, vacillations and betrayals of the Negro struggle.
The authors can admit flatly, as Dickerson does, that
“... by 1914, the eve of the First World War, the legal status of the American Negro had degenerated to the pattern that existed before the Civil War.”
But do they understand what this statement really means — that at the height of the flowering of democratic capitalism the American ruling class had no more to offer the Negro than in slave days? Do they appreciate what a terrible indictment that is of capitalism in its prime, when it was able to grant some concessions to the masses? Can’t they realize what this means today — and even more for tomorrow — now that the permanent crisis of this decadent system drives the ruling class not to grant new concessions and rights but to withdraw as many of them as they can, as the anti-labor drive now sweeping the country demonstrates?
They can calmly declare, to quote Konvitz, that in addition to “the inequalities that exist despite the law,” there are also many “inequalities that exist because of the law,” These include the right of Negroes “to live where they please, to be free from segregation in schools and universities, to vote without the poll tax restrictions, to ride in intrastate commerce in public conveyances without subjection to Jim Crowism.” In court contests against these inequalities, “the Negro has been unsuccessful, even when, as in recent years, the Supreme Court has consisted of a liberal majority.” Do they actually grasp what they are saying when they admit that so far as the Negro is concerned, the capitalist liberals upon whom they rely for improving the situation, act no better than the other supporters of capitalism?
Or take the conclusion reached by this remark of Ming: “The political and legal system of the United States appears to be unable or unwilling to cope with this hiatus between the theoretical and actual status of the Negro.” But what does it matter whether the capitalist politicians and judges are “unable or unwilling”? Isn’t it plain that a system which either can’t or won’t grant the most elementary democratic rights to the Negroes is rotten to the core and must be replaced by one that can and will?
But while their “theory” is contradicted at every point by the facts, the policy recommended and followed by the Negro leaders is consistent with and flows from their “theory” of refusing to place the responsibility for Jim Crow where it really belongs. Refusing to recognize the core of the problem, they attribute Negro oppression to “fallacies,” “paradoxes,” “enigmas,” “apathy” and even “shortsightedness” of the capitalist class.
True, they put pressure on the capitalist class in order to get recognition and correction of these “fallacies.” But they want to arouse and employ no more than the most limited kind of pressure — the kind that will serve to embarrass and extract a concession or pat on the head from the ruling class, but that will never under any circumstances challenge their power to oppress and exploit and their right to rule. This is shown best of all by the Negro leaders’ approach to politics.
The NAACP program — to end lynching, the poll tax, industrial and military Jim Crow, etc. — is conceived by its leaders as a legislative program. To put it more correctly, it is a political program whose fate will be decided by the political struggle of the masses. As was stated above, the NAACP leaders reject our concept that what is needed is an anti-capitalist political movement aiming to take power away from the Jim Crow capitalist parties and government. What is more, they reject even the concept of organized political action by the Negro masses.
Yes, ludicrous as it may appear and tragic as it is, the largest Negro organization in the world still refuses to use political weapons in a political war and still relies on lobbying methods that have proved their ineffectiveness over and over again during the NAACP’s 37 year history. This puts the NAACP leaders on an even lower political level than the moss-backed AFL bureaucrats, who finally had it drummed into their fat heads by the Taft-Hartley Act that no fight against the employers can be divorced from politics. How many more blows will the NAACP leaders need before they are forced to a like conclusion?
The alibi offered by the NAACP leaders for the abstentionist policy is as pathetic as the policy itself. The NAACP, they say, is a “non-partisan” organization that cannot take sides in politics without offending and alienating its members, friendly politicians and wealthy well-wishers, who have diverse political views. The best it can do is urge its members to register and vote, to inform them of the voting records of the various candidates — and then hope for the best! They do not explain what value to the organization are members and sympathizers who want to be “non-partisan” as between the political foes and the political friends of the Negro people. Nor has it apparently occurred to them that the loss of such followers would be compensated many fold by the recruiting of Negro workers when they saw that the NAACP really meant business about fighting their enemies, including those in high political seats.
Abstentionism from politics is, however, also a kind of politics — the worst kind because it damages above all those who practice it. The NAACP’s “neutrality” is most pleasing to the political practitioners of Jim Crow because it leaves undisturbed the political monoply by which they sustain the Jim Crow system. How the reactionary politicians whose election was left unopposed by the NAACP must laugh when the NAACP comes around lobbying for something like an anti-lynch law! They probably even smiled when the politically self-disarmed NAACP presented its document to the UN, where the politically “safe” appointees of the US capitalist government will see that it comes to naught.
In the middle Thirties, there was a strong movement among the workers in the factories toward the AFL as the only important national labor organization in the field. But these workers were looking for something different and better than the AFL, as was soon shown in the industrial explosion out of which the CIO was born as the labor movement on a higher level — industrial unionism. In the same Way during recent years there has been a strong tide among the Negro masses toward the NAACP as the only important national Negro organization in the field.
This tide has swept into the NAACP tens of thousands of militant young Negroes eager to deal a finish blow to the Jim Crow system. Explosions lie ahead here too. They will either transform the NAACP’s character in accordance with the needs of the times or else replace it with a new organization that can play the role required. It behooves these Negro militants to study the origins as well as the effects of the Jim Crow system and to take measures to prepare themselves and their present organization for the most useful ways to conduct the Negro struggle.
New Leaders Needed
What is needed now is a new Negro leadership — one that is not afraid to draw radical conclusions and advocate drastic measures when they are justified by the facts. Fighters who will not have any illusions about the hostile character of capitalism and all its agencies and servants, no matter how disguised; who will recognize and strengthen the bonds linking the Negro struggle for equality with the organized labor movement and who stand ready, if that becomes necessary, to mobilize their people for action on their own behalf without waiting for labor to act first. This new leadership will understand the progressive character of Negro national consciousness and will know how to utilize its power in the right direction; it will rearm the Negro movement politically through an independent labor-Negro coalition.
Jim Crow is twined inextricably around the trunk of capitalism like a poisonous vine around a tree; both are nourished by the same soil of class society. It is necessary to cut down this tree at its roots in order to kill the vine, just as it was necessary to abolish slavery root and branch. The more hands that are put on the job, the sooner it will be done. The axe is waiting to be used by that new Negro leadership which is already arising from the ranks and is destined to replace the present half-way leaders who dare neither to think things through to the end — nor to act decisively to destroy Jim Crow.
Footnote
1. A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress (edited by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, historian and director of the NAACP Department of Special Research, with contributions by attorney Earl B. Dickerson of Chicago, Milton R. Konvitz of Cornell University, William R. Ming, Jr., of the University of Chicago, Leslie S. Perry of the NAACP Washington Bureau, and Rayford W. Logan of Howard University).
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
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<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
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<h1>AFL Convention Coming</h1>
<h3>(4 October 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_40" target="new">Vol. V No. 40</a>, 4 October 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The American Federation of Labor will hold another annual convention next week in Seattle. Negro workers will look forward to the occasion with interest, if not much hope of anything important happening there.</p>
<p>They know pretty well what to expect, under present conditions and with the kind of leadership AFL has today. On all union matters, of course, the convention will take its usual conservative position. On the war, it will come out 100% for the Roosevelt war program.</p>
<p>And on the question of Negro rights in the labor movement, the craft union convention will make its usual evasions.</p>
<p>They will permit A. Philip Randolph, Negro leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and a few others to make some speeches demanding an end to Negro discrimination in the AFL, and they will permit the introduction of resolutions advocating steps to provide equal rights for Negro workers – but the Negro will still be Jim Crowed by a large section of the AFL after the convention is over.</p>
<p>They may pass a resolution deploring discrimination in industry, as the recent New York State Federation of Labor convention did, but they themselves won’t take a single step to help Negroes to get into factories or unions where they are now barred.</p>
<p>For the truth is that the fat, well-paid heads of the AFL have no interest in the Negro workers; any more than they have in most unskilled workers. And they will refuse to do anything that would bring a protest from the lily-white leaders of the southern unions – just as Roosevelt refuses to do anything that would bring a protest from the lily-white poll tax politicians who run the Democratic party and everything else in the South.</p>
<p><em>An interesting thing to note about this is that the craft union heads use the same excuses that Roosevelt does in ignoring and fostering Jim Crowism. The poll taxers screech about “local autonomy” and “states rights” in fighting against anti-lynch bills and anti-poll tax legislation. And the white supremacy gang in the AFL also cries out about “local autonomy” and “the rights of the individual internationals in opposing, all resolutions and constitutional proposals to wipe out Jim Crowism in the AFL.</em></p>
<p>These aristocrats of the working class will not change the sections of their constitution providing for equal treatment of all workers regardless of race or color, which have been on the books for decades, but neither they will change anything else to put meaning and life info those words.<br>
</p>
<a name="s1"></a>
<h3>The Latest “Solution”</h3>
<p class="fst">After Private Ned Turman was murdered by a southern white MP at Fort Bragg on August 6, an angry protest arose against the brutal treatment of Negroes in the Army. Action was promised in Washington, especially by the Negro aide to the Secretary of War, Judge William H. Hastie. Last week, the action was finally taken, and announced by Hastie himself in the course of a speech made at the dedication of a new Army recreation camp for Negroes at Anacostia, D.C.</p>
<p><em>From now on, says Hastie, there will be Negro MPs, or to be more accurate, there will be more Negro MPs. Only this and nothing more!</em></p>
<p>By this I do not mean that we, who stand for equality for the Negroes, are opposed to having Negro MPs in the Army. Of course we want to see Negroes have the right to hold any job from which they are barred. We have no use for the Democratic or Republican party which both betray the Negro people every chance they get. But we stand for the right of Negroes within those parties to hold any post or office.</p>
<p>Similarly with Negro MPs. We do not support the boss war nor do we support the boss army. But we insist that every Negro in the army have the same rights as white soldiers.</p>
<p>We do not oppose the appointment of Negroes as MPs, but when anyone comes around and says that the appointment of Negroes as MPs is the solution of the problem of brutal, discriminatory treatment of the Negroes in the Army, then we can only say that he is a liar or a fool. And we would add that such a person is in favor of appointing Negros MPs not because he is interested in getting equal rights for Negroes to serve as MPs just as white soldiers do, but because he is interested in covering up and hiding and excusing the brutal discrimination of Negro soldiers.</p>
<p>In the first place, we will ask, will the Negro soldiers be any better off if they are beaten up and driven around by Negro MPs acting on the instructions and orders of Negro-hating white officers than if they are ill-treated by white MPs?</p>
<p>Will those white MPs who like to mistreat Negro soldiers act any differently toward them just because there are more Negro MPs?</p>
<p>The truth is that the MPs are not the forces primarily responsible for this brutality toward the Negro soldiers. They are only a small part of a big system of Jim Crowism in the armed forces fostered by the war administration.</p>
<p>As long as Roosevelt segregates the Negroes in the Army, backward white soldiers will be encouraged, even where they are not specifically advised, to look down on the Negroes and consider them “inferior.” That is what segregation leads to inevitably.</p>
<p>When you stop to think of it, you can see that Hastie advises the use of Negro MPs for the same reason that he himself is used in the War Department. In this Department, he acts as the “Negro front” and gives a protective coloration to its Jim Crow policies. Now he wants Negro MPs to play the same role for the Army itself.</p>
<p>The answer to Jim Crow brutality is the fight for mixed regiments and an end to all forms of segregation. This means a fight not only against Roosevelt but against Judases like Judge Hastie.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
AFL Convention Coming
(4 October 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 40, 4 October 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The American Federation of Labor will hold another annual convention next week in Seattle. Negro workers will look forward to the occasion with interest, if not much hope of anything important happening there.
They know pretty well what to expect, under present conditions and with the kind of leadership AFL has today. On all union matters, of course, the convention will take its usual conservative position. On the war, it will come out 100% for the Roosevelt war program.
And on the question of Negro rights in the labor movement, the craft union convention will make its usual evasions.
They will permit A. Philip Randolph, Negro leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and a few others to make some speeches demanding an end to Negro discrimination in the AFL, and they will permit the introduction of resolutions advocating steps to provide equal rights for Negro workers – but the Negro will still be Jim Crowed by a large section of the AFL after the convention is over.
They may pass a resolution deploring discrimination in industry, as the recent New York State Federation of Labor convention did, but they themselves won’t take a single step to help Negroes to get into factories or unions where they are now barred.
For the truth is that the fat, well-paid heads of the AFL have no interest in the Negro workers; any more than they have in most unskilled workers. And they will refuse to do anything that would bring a protest from the lily-white leaders of the southern unions – just as Roosevelt refuses to do anything that would bring a protest from the lily-white poll tax politicians who run the Democratic party and everything else in the South.
An interesting thing to note about this is that the craft union heads use the same excuses that Roosevelt does in ignoring and fostering Jim Crowism. The poll taxers screech about “local autonomy” and “states rights” in fighting against anti-lynch bills and anti-poll tax legislation. And the white supremacy gang in the AFL also cries out about “local autonomy” and “the rights of the individual internationals in opposing, all resolutions and constitutional proposals to wipe out Jim Crowism in the AFL.
These aristocrats of the working class will not change the sections of their constitution providing for equal treatment of all workers regardless of race or color, which have been on the books for decades, but neither they will change anything else to put meaning and life info those words.
The Latest “Solution”
After Private Ned Turman was murdered by a southern white MP at Fort Bragg on August 6, an angry protest arose against the brutal treatment of Negroes in the Army. Action was promised in Washington, especially by the Negro aide to the Secretary of War, Judge William H. Hastie. Last week, the action was finally taken, and announced by Hastie himself in the course of a speech made at the dedication of a new Army recreation camp for Negroes at Anacostia, D.C.
From now on, says Hastie, there will be Negro MPs, or to be more accurate, there will be more Negro MPs. Only this and nothing more!
By this I do not mean that we, who stand for equality for the Negroes, are opposed to having Negro MPs in the Army. Of course we want to see Negroes have the right to hold any job from which they are barred. We have no use for the Democratic or Republican party which both betray the Negro people every chance they get. But we stand for the right of Negroes within those parties to hold any post or office.
Similarly with Negro MPs. We do not support the boss war nor do we support the boss army. But we insist that every Negro in the army have the same rights as white soldiers.
We do not oppose the appointment of Negroes as MPs, but when anyone comes around and says that the appointment of Negroes as MPs is the solution of the problem of brutal, discriminatory treatment of the Negroes in the Army, then we can only say that he is a liar or a fool. And we would add that such a person is in favor of appointing Negros MPs not because he is interested in getting equal rights for Negroes to serve as MPs just as white soldiers do, but because he is interested in covering up and hiding and excusing the brutal discrimination of Negro soldiers.
In the first place, we will ask, will the Negro soldiers be any better off if they are beaten up and driven around by Negro MPs acting on the instructions and orders of Negro-hating white officers than if they are ill-treated by white MPs?
Will those white MPs who like to mistreat Negro soldiers act any differently toward them just because there are more Negro MPs?
The truth is that the MPs are not the forces primarily responsible for this brutality toward the Negro soldiers. They are only a small part of a big system of Jim Crowism in the armed forces fostered by the war administration.
As long as Roosevelt segregates the Negroes in the Army, backward white soldiers will be encouraged, even where they are not specifically advised, to look down on the Negroes and consider them “inferior.” That is what segregation leads to inevitably.
When you stop to think of it, you can see that Hastie advises the use of Negro MPs for the same reason that he himself is used in the War Department. In this Department, he acts as the “Negro front” and gives a protective coloration to its Jim Crow policies. Now he wants Negro MPs to play the same role for the Army itself.
The answer to Jim Crow brutality is the fight for mixed regiments and an end to all forms of segregation. This means a fight not only against Roosevelt but against Judases like Judge Hastie.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Martinique:<br>
Two Negro Newspapers’ Views</h1>
<h4>They Differ Only in Their Choice of Slavemasters<br>
for This Negro Colony</h4>
<h3>(28 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_52" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 52</a>, 28 December 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The ruling class of this country is preparing to seize Martinique, the French-“owned” colony with a population of a quarter-million colored people.</p>
<p>The fate of Martinique should be of vital interest to every Negro and white worker, for the question of Negro freedom in the United States is very much connected with what happens to the Negro people everywhere – in Africa, the West Indies, etc.</p>
<p>That was why the Negroes here and everywhere were and are so concerned about the independence of Ethiopia. We knew that the successful defeat of the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia would have been a blow at the bosses, the oppressors of the Negroes of all countries; that’s why we of the Socialist Workers Party supported Ethiopia’s fight for independence.</p>
<p>From this point of view, let us examine the editorials on Martinique which have been recently carried by two of the leading Negro newspapers of this country.</p>
<p>The Baltimore <strong>Afro-American</strong> editorial is entitled, <em>Let’s Take Martinique</em>. When the writer says let <em>us</em>, he means let the United States government take it. The arguments of the editorial are almost the same ones made by the American capitalists, who have had experience “taking” other colonial countries in the past:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“As long as France is tied to Hitler’s apron-strings, it seems to us that the United States ought to step in and take over the island for the duration of the war.</p>
<p class="quote">“France couldn’t object. It lies prostrate under Hitler’s heel. After the war is over, it can have its island back.</p>
<p class="quote">“There is another reason why we should take Martinique. Its 250,000 people are poor and hungry. The British blockade has ruined the trade. “Uncle Sam can do them a favor and get rid of a likely headache if he adopts these few French-speaking colored folks until peace comes.”</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, says the <strong>Afro-American</strong>, Washington should take the island because it would be the best thing for its natives.</p>
<p>They are poor and hungry, says the <strong>Afro-American</strong>. But so are the people of the other countries Washington has “taken.” Just look at Porto Rico! Its people were starved by Spain. Now they’ve been “taken” by the United States for more than 40 years and – the <strong>Afro-American</strong> would scarcely deny it – the people of Porto Rico have been poor and hungry throughout these years, and remain so.</p>
<p>And so far as “adopting” the island “until peace comes” is concerned, that is a childish joke. If that happened, it would be the first time in its history that Washington or London or Paris took over a small country and then willingly let it go. The bosses of this country don’t take over colonies out of good nature or concern for their people’s welfare – they take them to be able to exploit them, and Martinique is a rich prize which they will no more give up after the war than they gave up the Philippines 40 years ago.<br>
</p>
<h4>The <em>Courier</em> Takes a Different Stand</h4>
<p class="fst">The <strong>Pittsburg Courier</strong> editorial takes a different position. After making clear that it has no sympathy for Petain or the Nazis, the editorial says: “We certainly view with alarm the projected grabbing of Martinique by the United States presumably to forestall Hitler ...” It then explains that Martinique happens to be one of these few colonies where the natives do have some rights:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“There are 246,712 inhabitants of Martinique and all but a handful are Negroes or mulattoes. They vote, they have direct representation in the French parliament, they serve without discrimination or restriction in the French Army and Navy where many have risen to high rank. They have freely attended France’s best universities and have good local schools.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“Not a single British colony or American dependency is as free as black Martinique, and we shudder when we contemplate what Negrophobic U.S. naval rule will mean to this little Eden.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“Under American rule, Martinique would have no representation in Congress, its sons and daughters would be barred from a large number of mainland universities, and its sons would be viciously discriminated against in the armed forces and defense industries.”</em></p>
<p class="quote">“So,”, concludes the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>, “for the sake of Martinique’s dark sons and daughters, we hope it will remain under French rule.”</p>
<p class="fst">Let’s pass over, without the refutation it deserves, the <strong>Courier</strong>’s picture of “little Eden.” It’s true that France commits less <em>formal </em>discrimination against Negroes as Negroes; France mistreats all her colonials regardless of color!</p>
<p>Let’s get to the main point. The <strong>Afro-American</strong> wants Martinique ruled by America; the <strong>Courier</strong> wants it ruled by France. The two opinions may seem different; at bottom, however, they are very much alike. They share in common the theory of “the lesser evil:” since you’ve got to be a slave, you might as well pick yourself the “best” and “kindest” master. Both take it for granted that Martinique must “belong” to someone, i.e., someone other than the people of Martinique.</p>
<p>This attitude is not new to either paper. They both employed it quite consistently in the election campaign just concluded. Both had endorsed Roosevelt in 1936, and repudiated the Republican Party. Both became disgusted with Roosevelt this year, and endorsed Willkie. And thus they limit the struggle to being Jim Crowed under one boss party or Jim Crowed under another.</p>
<p>The capitalists and their press say that the colored people in the colonies are not fit to rule themselves; that is why the imperialists must run things for them. This is the same vicious lie that they use in this country to perpetuate segregation and discrimination against the Negro people.</p>
<p>What have the <strong>Courier</strong> and the <strong>Afro</strong> to say about this? Why do they reject this theory for the Negroes in the United States and accept it for the Negroes in the colonies? How can they accept “white supremacy” for the colonies and logically answer the advocates of “white supremacy” in this country? Why did they demand the independence of Ethiopia and why don’t they demand the independence of Martinique? How can they logically demand it for one, and not for the other?</p>
<p>It seems to us that these papers which claim leadership in the fight for equal rights for the Negro people “in all spheres of life” have some explaining to do to their readers.</p>
<p>As for us of the Socialist Workers Party, we take a view entirely different from those of the <strong>Courier</strong> and the <strong>Afro-American</strong> on this question.</p>
<ul>
<li>We are against the “white supremacy” theory everywhere, in this country and in the colonies.<br>
</li>
<li>We are against the “lesser evil” theory, we are against all kinds of slavery and discrimination, in this country and in the colonies.<br>
</li>
<li>We don’t want France to get back “its island,” as the <strong>Afro-American</strong> calls it, because they would keep the people in slavery and oppression.<br>
</li>
<li>We don’t want the Nazis to get it, because they would keep its people in slavery and oppression.<br>
</li>
<li>We don’t want the United States to “take” it, because they would keep its people in slavery and oppression.<br>
</li>
<li>Martinique should belong to the people of Martinique.</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">But, the “practical” editors of the <strong>Courier</strong> and the <strong>Afro-American</strong> may say with a patronizing smile, “how can the people of this small island possible keep from being taken over by one or other of the imperialist countries?”</p>
<p>To these “practical” people, we answer: The people of Martinique may not be able to free themselves at this moment. But that’s no reason for you “spokesmen of the Negro” to endorse one or another slavemaster for Martinique!</p>
<p>The first step on the road to freedom for Martinique – and for the colored people everywhere – is first of all not to praise any slavemaster but to declare oneself against all slavemasters. Do that – and you will find powerful allies: the revolutionary white workers. Tomorrow, hand in hand with these allies, you will find your way to the leadership of all the oppressed everywhere. “We are many, they are few.” On this road – and only on this road – shall we all, black and white, find freedom.</p>
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Albert Parker
Martinique:
Two Negro Newspapers’ Views
They Differ Only in Their Choice of Slavemasters
for This Negro Colony
(28 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 52, 28 December 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The ruling class of this country is preparing to seize Martinique, the French-“owned” colony with a population of a quarter-million colored people.
The fate of Martinique should be of vital interest to every Negro and white worker, for the question of Negro freedom in the United States is very much connected with what happens to the Negro people everywhere – in Africa, the West Indies, etc.
That was why the Negroes here and everywhere were and are so concerned about the independence of Ethiopia. We knew that the successful defeat of the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia would have been a blow at the bosses, the oppressors of the Negroes of all countries; that’s why we of the Socialist Workers Party supported Ethiopia’s fight for independence.
From this point of view, let us examine the editorials on Martinique which have been recently carried by two of the leading Negro newspapers of this country.
The Baltimore Afro-American editorial is entitled, Let’s Take Martinique. When the writer says let us, he means let the United States government take it. The arguments of the editorial are almost the same ones made by the American capitalists, who have had experience “taking” other colonial countries in the past:
“As long as France is tied to Hitler’s apron-strings, it seems to us that the United States ought to step in and take over the island for the duration of the war.
“France couldn’t object. It lies prostrate under Hitler’s heel. After the war is over, it can have its island back.
“There is another reason why we should take Martinique. Its 250,000 people are poor and hungry. The British blockade has ruined the trade. “Uncle Sam can do them a favor and get rid of a likely headache if he adopts these few French-speaking colored folks until peace comes.”
In other words, says the Afro-American, Washington should take the island because it would be the best thing for its natives.
They are poor and hungry, says the Afro-American. But so are the people of the other countries Washington has “taken.” Just look at Porto Rico! Its people were starved by Spain. Now they’ve been “taken” by the United States for more than 40 years and – the Afro-American would scarcely deny it – the people of Porto Rico have been poor and hungry throughout these years, and remain so.
And so far as “adopting” the island “until peace comes” is concerned, that is a childish joke. If that happened, it would be the first time in its history that Washington or London or Paris took over a small country and then willingly let it go. The bosses of this country don’t take over colonies out of good nature or concern for their people’s welfare – they take them to be able to exploit them, and Martinique is a rich prize which they will no more give up after the war than they gave up the Philippines 40 years ago.
The Courier Takes a Different Stand
The Pittsburg Courier editorial takes a different position. After making clear that it has no sympathy for Petain or the Nazis, the editorial says: “We certainly view with alarm the projected grabbing of Martinique by the United States presumably to forestall Hitler ...” It then explains that Martinique happens to be one of these few colonies where the natives do have some rights:
“There are 246,712 inhabitants of Martinique and all but a handful are Negroes or mulattoes. They vote, they have direct representation in the French parliament, they serve without discrimination or restriction in the French Army and Navy where many have risen to high rank. They have freely attended France’s best universities and have good local schools.
“Not a single British colony or American dependency is as free as black Martinique, and we shudder when we contemplate what Negrophobic U.S. naval rule will mean to this little Eden.
“Under American rule, Martinique would have no representation in Congress, its sons and daughters would be barred from a large number of mainland universities, and its sons would be viciously discriminated against in the armed forces and defense industries.”
“So,”, concludes the Pittsburgh Courier, “for the sake of Martinique’s dark sons and daughters, we hope it will remain under French rule.”
Let’s pass over, without the refutation it deserves, the Courier’s picture of “little Eden.” It’s true that France commits less formal discrimination against Negroes as Negroes; France mistreats all her colonials regardless of color!
Let’s get to the main point. The Afro-American wants Martinique ruled by America; the Courier wants it ruled by France. The two opinions may seem different; at bottom, however, they are very much alike. They share in common the theory of “the lesser evil:” since you’ve got to be a slave, you might as well pick yourself the “best” and “kindest” master. Both take it for granted that Martinique must “belong” to someone, i.e., someone other than the people of Martinique.
This attitude is not new to either paper. They both employed it quite consistently in the election campaign just concluded. Both had endorsed Roosevelt in 1936, and repudiated the Republican Party. Both became disgusted with Roosevelt this year, and endorsed Willkie. And thus they limit the struggle to being Jim Crowed under one boss party or Jim Crowed under another.
The capitalists and their press say that the colored people in the colonies are not fit to rule themselves; that is why the imperialists must run things for them. This is the same vicious lie that they use in this country to perpetuate segregation and discrimination against the Negro people.
What have the Courier and the Afro to say about this? Why do they reject this theory for the Negroes in the United States and accept it for the Negroes in the colonies? How can they accept “white supremacy” for the colonies and logically answer the advocates of “white supremacy” in this country? Why did they demand the independence of Ethiopia and why don’t they demand the independence of Martinique? How can they logically demand it for one, and not for the other?
It seems to us that these papers which claim leadership in the fight for equal rights for the Negro people “in all spheres of life” have some explaining to do to their readers.
As for us of the Socialist Workers Party, we take a view entirely different from those of the Courier and the Afro-American on this question.
We are against the “white supremacy” theory everywhere, in this country and in the colonies.
We are against the “lesser evil” theory, we are against all kinds of slavery and discrimination, in this country and in the colonies.
We don’t want France to get back “its island,” as the Afro-American calls it, because they would keep the people in slavery and oppression.
We don’t want the Nazis to get it, because they would keep its people in slavery and oppression.
We don’t want the United States to “take” it, because they would keep its people in slavery and oppression.
Martinique should belong to the people of Martinique.
But, the “practical” editors of the Courier and the Afro-American may say with a patronizing smile, “how can the people of this small island possible keep from being taken over by one or other of the imperialist countries?”
To these “practical” people, we answer: The people of Martinique may not be able to free themselves at this moment. But that’s no reason for you “spokesmen of the Negro” to endorse one or another slavemaster for Martinique!
The first step on the road to freedom for Martinique – and for the colored people everywhere – is first of all not to praise any slavemaster but to declare oneself against all slavemasters. Do that – and you will find powerful allies: the revolutionary white workers. Tomorrow, hand in hand with these allies, you will find your way to the leadership of all the oppressed everywhere. “We are many, they are few.” On this road – and only on this road – shall we all, black and white, find freedom.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Hillman Wins in Jersey CIO Body</h1>
<h4>Chance to Defeat Hillman Is Tossed Away by Lewis Bloc</h4>
<h3>(15 December 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_51" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 51</a>, 21 December 1940, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>PASSAIC, N.J., Dec. 15 – The Lewis wing of the CIO suffered a setback here this week-end as the Hillman forces in the New Jersey CIO convention succeeded in winning a victory which gave it control of the state executive board for the coming year.</strong></p>
<p><em>The margin of votes between the Hillman-Abramson-textile forces and the Lewis-Stalinist bloc was not very great, however, and the tide could easily have been turned the other way had it not been for the bungling and timidity of the state leaders of the Lewis bloc.</em></p>
<p><em>As a result of this poor leadership, therefore, a strong weapon is now in the hands of the group in this state’s CIO which is ready,</em></p>
<p><em>when Hillman gives the word, to capitulate to the government and the craft unionists on the crucial issue of industrial unionism.</em></p>
<p>At the start of the convention Knapik, one of the Hillman leaders, made this clear when he stated that the CIO should immediately reopen “unity” negotiations with the AFL. The lack of applause was a warning to him, and he hastily added that negotiations must not lead to destroying a single one of the CIO international unions.</p>
<p>The Hillman leaders apparently decided that it would be unwise in a closely-contested convention to bring into the open their real position on industrial unionism, so they put it away in the background. The Lewis-Stalinist wing permitted them to do so.<br>
</p>
<h4>Whitewashing Hillman</h4>
<p class="fst">The first fight broke out on an attempt to whitewash the role Hillman is playing in the National Defense Council. If was dramatically announced that Hillman had entered a protest that day against the granting of a government contract to Henry Ford, and the Hlllmanites introduced a resolution to commend Hillman for this action.</p>
<p>A few delegates managed to get the floor in spite, of the bureaucratic chairmanship of Hillmanite Abramson, and to point out that this was a whitewash resolution designed to cover up Hillman’s treacheries. What about his handling of Bethlehem Steel? they asked. What about his handling of strikes? An amendment was made that the CIO oppose the granting of contracts to all violators of the labor laws. Discussion was cut off, and in the voice vote, it seemed, the amendment was carried. Abramson, however, refused a roll call vote and declared the original motion carried. After this, the</p>
<p>Hillmanites were very careful to see that no important issue at all reached the floor, and their opponents unfortunately played into their hands on this.</p>
<p>At a caucus of the anti-Hillman delegates held after adjournment the first day, it was agreed that the major issues of the convention were industrial unionism, opposition to curbing of labor activity, formation of an independent labor party, and control of the state board to advance the fight on these questions. “We will carry the fight to them on, every issue,” said a Stalinist spokesman, “and force a vote to see where things stand.”</p>
<p>However, this was not done. The Lewis-Stalinist leaders the next morning made an agreement with the Hillman leaders for a “test vote” on the constitutional provisions for electing the state board, and thus made this the major question of the convention.</p>
<p>The Hillmanites proposed that they be permitted to continue the practice of having representation on the state board from various sections of the Amalgamated and the textile union, although other unions are not permitted more than one or two representatives from any international. This would mean control of the board by the Hillmanites.</p>
<p>The Stalinists countered this by demanding only one representative from each international. And then, instead of exposing Hillman’s real, aims of, capitulation to the AFL, instead of a programmatic assault which would have won support, the Stalinists confined themselves to such arguments as: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t democratic, the electrical workers could do the same and ask for representation for their different parts of their industry,” etc. In this way, they obscured the main issues and conducted the fight on the plane where the Hillmanites wanted it.</p>
<p>Delegates who wanted to hammer home the principles agreed upon at the caucus the day before were denied the floor as the result of an agreement between the heads of the two blocs which cut discussion short after a few of the leaders had spoken.</p>
<p>The result of the test vote was 305 to 293. Thus the Hillmanites won a close victory where they might well have been routed. Responsible for this was:</p>
<ol>
<li>Lewis from the national office had sent down word urging that both sides avoid controversial “national issues,” thus taking away from his group in the convention their strongest weapon.<br>
</li>
<li>The cowardice and stupidity of the state Lewis-Stalinist leaders who permitted the fight to be fought out on a machine, non-programmatic basis.<br>
</li>
<li>The fact that the Hillmanites spent several thousand dollars prior to the convention getting their locals into good standing, while the Lewis leaders fumbled the job, getting for example a representation of 20 steel delegates when they might easily have had 60.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">Instead of carrying the fight further during the rest of the convention, the Stalinists practically gave up the fight after this first vote. Almost everything else was referred to the incoming state board, which was elected with a majority of Hillmanites.</p>
<p>One interesting exception was the resolution that was adopted condemning fascism, nazism and communism. To this, for the first time, in a CIO convention the Stalinists took exception, demanded the floor, opposed it vigorously and rose against it on a standing vote. The Hillmanites jeeringly replied that what was good enough for the national CIO was good enough for them, referring to the fact that the Stalinists at the national convention had all voted for the same resolution.</p>
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George Breitman
Hillman Wins in Jersey CIO Body
Chance to Defeat Hillman Is Tossed Away by Lewis Bloc
(15 December 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 51, 21 December 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
PASSAIC, N.J., Dec. 15 – The Lewis wing of the CIO suffered a setback here this week-end as the Hillman forces in the New Jersey CIO convention succeeded in winning a victory which gave it control of the state executive board for the coming year.
The margin of votes between the Hillman-Abramson-textile forces and the Lewis-Stalinist bloc was not very great, however, and the tide could easily have been turned the other way had it not been for the bungling and timidity of the state leaders of the Lewis bloc.
As a result of this poor leadership, therefore, a strong weapon is now in the hands of the group in this state’s CIO which is ready,
when Hillman gives the word, to capitulate to the government and the craft unionists on the crucial issue of industrial unionism.
At the start of the convention Knapik, one of the Hillman leaders, made this clear when he stated that the CIO should immediately reopen “unity” negotiations with the AFL. The lack of applause was a warning to him, and he hastily added that negotiations must not lead to destroying a single one of the CIO international unions.
The Hillman leaders apparently decided that it would be unwise in a closely-contested convention to bring into the open their real position on industrial unionism, so they put it away in the background. The Lewis-Stalinist wing permitted them to do so.
Whitewashing Hillman
The first fight broke out on an attempt to whitewash the role Hillman is playing in the National Defense Council. If was dramatically announced that Hillman had entered a protest that day against the granting of a government contract to Henry Ford, and the Hlllmanites introduced a resolution to commend Hillman for this action.
A few delegates managed to get the floor in spite, of the bureaucratic chairmanship of Hillmanite Abramson, and to point out that this was a whitewash resolution designed to cover up Hillman’s treacheries. What about his handling of Bethlehem Steel? they asked. What about his handling of strikes? An amendment was made that the CIO oppose the granting of contracts to all violators of the labor laws. Discussion was cut off, and in the voice vote, it seemed, the amendment was carried. Abramson, however, refused a roll call vote and declared the original motion carried. After this, the
Hillmanites were very careful to see that no important issue at all reached the floor, and their opponents unfortunately played into their hands on this.
At a caucus of the anti-Hillman delegates held after adjournment the first day, it was agreed that the major issues of the convention were industrial unionism, opposition to curbing of labor activity, formation of an independent labor party, and control of the state board to advance the fight on these questions. “We will carry the fight to them on, every issue,” said a Stalinist spokesman, “and force a vote to see where things stand.”
However, this was not done. The Lewis-Stalinist leaders the next morning made an agreement with the Hillman leaders for a “test vote” on the constitutional provisions for electing the state board, and thus made this the major question of the convention.
The Hillmanites proposed that they be permitted to continue the practice of having representation on the state board from various sections of the Amalgamated and the textile union, although other unions are not permitted more than one or two representatives from any international. This would mean control of the board by the Hillmanites.
The Stalinists countered this by demanding only one representative from each international. And then, instead of exposing Hillman’s real, aims of, capitulation to the AFL, instead of a programmatic assault which would have won support, the Stalinists confined themselves to such arguments as: “It isn’t fair, it isn’t democratic, the electrical workers could do the same and ask for representation for their different parts of their industry,” etc. In this way, they obscured the main issues and conducted the fight on the plane where the Hillmanites wanted it.
Delegates who wanted to hammer home the principles agreed upon at the caucus the day before were denied the floor as the result of an agreement between the heads of the two blocs which cut discussion short after a few of the leaders had spoken.
The result of the test vote was 305 to 293. Thus the Hillmanites won a close victory where they might well have been routed. Responsible for this was:
Lewis from the national office had sent down word urging that both sides avoid controversial “national issues,” thus taking away from his group in the convention their strongest weapon.
The cowardice and stupidity of the state Lewis-Stalinist leaders who permitted the fight to be fought out on a machine, non-programmatic basis.
The fact that the Hillmanites spent several thousand dollars prior to the convention getting their locals into good standing, while the Lewis leaders fumbled the job, getting for example a representation of 20 steel delegates when they might easily have had 60.
Instead of carrying the fight further during the rest of the convention, the Stalinists practically gave up the fight after this first vote. Almost everything else was referred to the incoming state board, which was elected with a majority of Hillmanites.
One interesting exception was the resolution that was adopted condemning fascism, nazism and communism. To this, for the first time, in a CIO convention the Stalinists took exception, demanded the floor, opposed it vigorously and rose against it on a standing vote. The Hillmanites jeeringly replied that what was good enough for the national CIO was good enough for them, referring to the fact that the Stalinists at the national convention had all voted for the same resolution.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(5 October 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_40" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 40</a>, 5 October 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="c"><b>(Continued from last week)</b></p>
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Divide and Rule</h4>
<p class="fst">The reason for Jim Crow and Judge Lynch is to be found in the desire of the bosses to protect and increase their profits. They do this by paying their workers as little wages and making them work as long hours as possible. The workers form unions in an attempt to improve their conditions. The bosses spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to prevent formation of unions and to weaken and smash them where they exist.</p>
<p>The best way they know to accomplish this is by keeping the workers divided. Each worker alone is weak, and if he raises his voice, can be kicked out easily. United, all the workers are strong – much stronger than all the bosses put together. This explains the strategy of the bosses: keep the workers divided and fighting among themselves so that they will be unable to fight their real enemy, the bosses. And so the boss pits white worker against colored in the same way that he stirs up Christian against Jew, and “citizen” against “alien”. He doesn’t do this ’because he likes the white worker better, but because he dislikes both.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Unite and Fight</h4>
<p class="fst">Many white workers don’t recognize this because the bosses spread their Jim Crow propaganda skillfully. These backward workers accept these lies about their colored brothers and permit themselves to be used by the bosses in spreading discrimination and segregation. In this way they not only hurt the colored workers, but they also hurt themselves. As a result, colored workers not only have to fight the bosses, but they have to fight against the prejudices of many backward workers and to try to educate them.</p>
<p>Difficult as this job is, still it is what the colored workers have to do with the help of the advanced white workers who understand these things. There is no other way. They cannot turn their backs on the unions, because the only way they can end Jim Crow as well as the evils of capitalism is by fighting side by side with the white workers, their natural allies in the fight against the common enemy. Alone, they can never defeat the bosses.</p>
<p>If they turn away from this hard and often unpleasant task, they will only be helping the bosses keep the workers divided. Into the unions the Negroes must go, and they must be the best fighters against the bosses, so that the backward workers will learn from real life how they have been misled and tricked.</p>
<p>Unite and fight! Unite with the white workers and fight against the bosses and Jim Crow!<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Build a Labor Party</h4>
<p class="fst">The Democrats and Republicans defend and preserve the system of Jim Crow that is used to maintain capitalism. This explains why neither party has done anything in all the years they have been in office to abolish or even weaken Jim Crow. It would be foolish to expect anything different from them this year.</p>
<p>What the Negro workers must do now is turn their backs on both these parties, the same way that these parties have turned their backs on them when it came to the Anti-Lynch Bill and similar measures.</p>
<p>What they must do now, together with the white workers, is build a new party, a Labor Party, controlled and run by the workers in it, presenting an independent program defending the interests of all workers, and running labor candidates, Negro and white, against the candidates of big business.<br>
</p>
<a name="p4"></a>
<h4>The Socialist Workers Party</h4>
<p class="fst">The Socialist Workers Party calls on the Negro workers to join with it in the struggle against the bosses. It calls on them to support its candidates in the elections in those places where they are on the ballot. It calls on them to fight for its program on election day and every other day in the year:</p>
<p><em>Against Jim Crow! For full social, political and economic equality of the Negro people!</em></p>
<p>For the right of Negroes to sit in the movies and restaurants when they want to. For their right to vote, and to run for office. For their right to belong to trade unions and other organizations of their choice. For their equal right to jobs in industry, at equal pay. For an end to the “deportation to the South” laws which deny them relief. For the passage of the Anti-Lynch and Anti-Poll Tax Bills.</p>
<p><em>Against the war! Against the Jim Crow practices in the Army! For military training under control of the trade unions!</em></p>
<p>For the government to appropriate money for a system of military training under control of the trade union movement, to teach the workers the use of arms so that they will be able to protect themselves against their enemies at home and abroad. For the right to the soldier-workers to elect their own officers from out of their own ranks, colored and white. For an end to the discriminatory practices which give Negroes the flunkey jobs in the Army and deny them the right to advance themselves.</p>
<p><em>Against the profit system that breeds Jim Crow! For a workers’ government that will forever end discrimination and segregation.</em></p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(5 October 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 40, 5 October 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
(Continued from last week)
Divide and Rule
The reason for Jim Crow and Judge Lynch is to be found in the desire of the bosses to protect and increase their profits. They do this by paying their workers as little wages and making them work as long hours as possible. The workers form unions in an attempt to improve their conditions. The bosses spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to prevent formation of unions and to weaken and smash them where they exist.
The best way they know to accomplish this is by keeping the workers divided. Each worker alone is weak, and if he raises his voice, can be kicked out easily. United, all the workers are strong – much stronger than all the bosses put together. This explains the strategy of the bosses: keep the workers divided and fighting among themselves so that they will be unable to fight their real enemy, the bosses. And so the boss pits white worker against colored in the same way that he stirs up Christian against Jew, and “citizen” against “alien”. He doesn’t do this ’because he likes the white worker better, but because he dislikes both.
Unite and Fight
Many white workers don’t recognize this because the bosses spread their Jim Crow propaganda skillfully. These backward workers accept these lies about their colored brothers and permit themselves to be used by the bosses in spreading discrimination and segregation. In this way they not only hurt the colored workers, but they also hurt themselves. As a result, colored workers not only have to fight the bosses, but they have to fight against the prejudices of many backward workers and to try to educate them.
Difficult as this job is, still it is what the colored workers have to do with the help of the advanced white workers who understand these things. There is no other way. They cannot turn their backs on the unions, because the only way they can end Jim Crow as well as the evils of capitalism is by fighting side by side with the white workers, their natural allies in the fight against the common enemy. Alone, they can never defeat the bosses.
If they turn away from this hard and often unpleasant task, they will only be helping the bosses keep the workers divided. Into the unions the Negroes must go, and they must be the best fighters against the bosses, so that the backward workers will learn from real life how they have been misled and tricked.
Unite and fight! Unite with the white workers and fight against the bosses and Jim Crow!
Build a Labor Party
The Democrats and Republicans defend and preserve the system of Jim Crow that is used to maintain capitalism. This explains why neither party has done anything in all the years they have been in office to abolish or even weaken Jim Crow. It would be foolish to expect anything different from them this year.
What the Negro workers must do now is turn their backs on both these parties, the same way that these parties have turned their backs on them when it came to the Anti-Lynch Bill and similar measures.
What they must do now, together with the white workers, is build a new party, a Labor Party, controlled and run by the workers in it, presenting an independent program defending the interests of all workers, and running labor candidates, Negro and white, against the candidates of big business.
The Socialist Workers Party
The Socialist Workers Party calls on the Negro workers to join with it in the struggle against the bosses. It calls on them to support its candidates in the elections in those places where they are on the ballot. It calls on them to fight for its program on election day and every other day in the year:
Against Jim Crow! For full social, political and economic equality of the Negro people!
For the right of Negroes to sit in the movies and restaurants when they want to. For their right to vote, and to run for office. For their right to belong to trade unions and other organizations of their choice. For their equal right to jobs in industry, at equal pay. For an end to the “deportation to the South” laws which deny them relief. For the passage of the Anti-Lynch and Anti-Poll Tax Bills.
Against the war! Against the Jim Crow practices in the Army! For military training under control of the trade unions!
For the government to appropriate money for a system of military training under control of the trade union movement, to teach the workers the use of arms so that they will be able to protect themselves against their enemies at home and abroad. For the right to the soldier-workers to elect their own officers from out of their own ranks, colored and white. For an end to the discriminatory practices which give Negroes the flunkey jobs in the Army and deny them the right to advance themselves.
Against the profit system that breeds Jim Crow! For a workers’ government that will forever end discrimination and segregation.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>A Very Important Book</h1>
<h3>(22 March 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_12" target="new">Vol. XII No. 12</a>, 22 March 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">A very important book was published a few weeks ago – <strong>Caste, Class and Race</strong> by Oliver Cromwell Cox, professor of sociology and economics at Tuskegee Institute (Doubleday and Co.). It is a long book, covering a number of vital and complex problems, and some of the points Dr. Cox tries to make are not acceptable to Marxists. In this column, however, we intend to leave aside such disputed questions and to concentrate on the third and largest section of the book, dealing with the field of race relations.</p>
<p>The price of the book is high ($7.50) and that, unfortunately, will limit its circulation. But it is well worth it and it fully merits study by every opponent of the Jim Crow system, as we shall try to show here by referring to one chapter: <em>Race Relations – Its Meaning, Beginning and Progress</em>.</p>
<p>What is the origin of race prejudice? Dr. Cox’s “hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of the worldwide ramifications of capitalism, all racial antagonisms can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the white people of Europe and North America.” And he does a brilliant job in supporting this hypothesis.</p>
<p>First he goes back to the history of the early empires, touching on the Greek and Roman especially, to show that race prejudice was unknown then, even though colored peoples were among those subjugated. Similarly with such later developments as the Crusades.</p>
<p>In the 15th century the Portugese, seeking a route to the trade in the Near East, began to invade Africa and enslave the natives. But “there was as yet no belief in any cultural incapacity of these colored peoples. Their conversion to Christianity was sought with enthusiasm, and this transformation was supposed to make the Africans the human equals of all other Christians.” When converted, the Africans could be and were assimilated.</p>
<p>In other words, it was not until about the time America was discovered and capitalism first began to develop that racial antagonism appeared.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The slave trade was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of America. This trade did not develop because Indians and Negroes were red and black, or because they cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic. If white workers were available in sufficient numbers they would have been substituted.”</p>
<p class="fst">The forerunners of the present capitalist class needed a new ideology or theory to “justify” the degradation produced by the profitable slave trade and slavery, so they invented one – the theory of “white superiority.” But that was not until the middle of the 16th century. The argument that race prejudice is “inherent” in mankind is thoroughly disproved by all the facts of history. It was invented and developed during the last 400 years in order to make profits for the ruling class. As Dr. Cox puts it:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is probable that without capitalism ... the world might never have experienced race prejudice. Indeed, we should expect that under another form of economic organization, say socialism, the relationship between whites and peoples of color would be significantly modified.”</p>
<p class="fst">The above summary gives only the faintest hint of the riches to be found in this book. We shall return again and again to a discussion of it. Our necessarily brief remarks here are intended only to call the attention of our readers to a work that deserves the widest possible circulation.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
A Very Important Book
(22 March 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 12, 22 March 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A very important book was published a few weeks ago – Caste, Class and Race by Oliver Cromwell Cox, professor of sociology and economics at Tuskegee Institute (Doubleday and Co.). It is a long book, covering a number of vital and complex problems, and some of the points Dr. Cox tries to make are not acceptable to Marxists. In this column, however, we intend to leave aside such disputed questions and to concentrate on the third and largest section of the book, dealing with the field of race relations.
The price of the book is high ($7.50) and that, unfortunately, will limit its circulation. But it is well worth it and it fully merits study by every opponent of the Jim Crow system, as we shall try to show here by referring to one chapter: Race Relations – Its Meaning, Beginning and Progress.
What is the origin of race prejudice? Dr. Cox’s “hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of the worldwide ramifications of capitalism, all racial antagonisms can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the white people of Europe and North America.” And he does a brilliant job in supporting this hypothesis.
First he goes back to the history of the early empires, touching on the Greek and Roman especially, to show that race prejudice was unknown then, even though colored peoples were among those subjugated. Similarly with such later developments as the Crusades.
In the 15th century the Portugese, seeking a route to the trade in the Near East, began to invade Africa and enslave the natives. But “there was as yet no belief in any cultural incapacity of these colored peoples. Their conversion to Christianity was sought with enthusiasm, and this transformation was supposed to make the Africans the human equals of all other Christians.” When converted, the Africans could be and were assimilated.
In other words, it was not until about the time America was discovered and capitalism first began to develop that racial antagonism appeared.
“The slave trade was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of America. This trade did not develop because Indians and Negroes were red and black, or because they cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic. If white workers were available in sufficient numbers they would have been substituted.”
The forerunners of the present capitalist class needed a new ideology or theory to “justify” the degradation produced by the profitable slave trade and slavery, so they invented one – the theory of “white superiority.” But that was not until the middle of the 16th century. The argument that race prejudice is “inherent” in mankind is thoroughly disproved by all the facts of history. It was invented and developed during the last 400 years in order to make profits for the ruling class. As Dr. Cox puts it:
“It is probable that without capitalism ... the world might never have experienced race prejudice. Indeed, we should expect that under another form of economic organization, say socialism, the relationship between whites and peoples of color would be significantly modified.”
The above summary gives only the faintest hint of the riches to be found in this book. We shall return again and again to a discussion of it. Our necessarily brief remarks here are intended only to call the attention of our readers to a work that deserves the widest possible circulation.
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<h2 class="western">Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Ford’s Anti-Union Game Is to Divide the Races</h1>
<h3>(15 February 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_07" target="new">Vol. V No. 7</a>, 15 February 1941, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">For a long time it has been a. practice in this country for the bosses to refuse to hire Negro workers in their plants, placing the blame for this on the white workers: thus the bosses stored up a labor force among the Negroes that could be used for union-smashing and strike-breaking when the white workers began to organise. On certain occasions, employers have brazenly referred to this policy of creating resentment between black and white as “strike insurance.”</p>
<p>Henry Ford has played a shrewd variation of this same game. Realizing that the time would come when the unions would begin to make some headway in organizing his Empire; he began to employ Negroes in his plants, to build up the idea that he was a friend and benefactor of the Negro people and deserved their support in his bitter struggles against unionization.</p>
<p>He established a special division of employment of colored personnel and through this began to hire Negroes in large numbers. Today it is estimated that he has 10,000 Negro employees, representing about 10% of his labor force. As part of his plan Ford has also contributed to certain Negro churches, organizations and individuals.<br>
</p>
<h4 class="western">Uncle Tom Banquet</h4>
<p>A highlight in Fords’ anti-union campaign was a recent banquet for 300 people in Detroit by Donald J. Marshall, director of colored personnel for the Ford Motor Company.</p>
<p>In attendance was “nearly every colored minister in the city, who came at special invitation to get the free meal and to listen to Marshall’s harangue against the CIO. Those Negro ministers in Detroit who have expressed sympathy for the CIO were not invited; of them it was said, “The time has come to let our unfaithful leaders know we do not need them.”</p>
<p>“We are appealing to the ministers to try to help us keep our feet on the ground,” said Marshall.</p>
<p>He then launched an attack on the unions in which he blamed them because Negroes are not hired in great numbers in the other auto plants.</p>
<p>For instance, he showed that Knudsen, now head of the National Defense Commission, had refused to let Negroes hold skilled jobs in General Motors. What follows from that, according to Marshall? That the union which Knudsen fought so bitterly is responsible for this situation which existed long before the union was founded.<br>
</p>
<h4 class="western">Ford Threatens Negroes</h4>
<p>He finished this attack by making a not-too-veiled hint that if the Negro workers in Ford’s plants didn’t support him, they would be sorry:</p>
<blockquote>“The open shop of Henry Ford has two Negroes out there to see that the Negroes get at least part of their rights (meaning himself and his assistant). The Negro will regret the day ir he helps to turn the Ford shop over to the CIO.”</blockquote>
<p>By this he meant that if the CIO organizes the Ford plants, Ford will have no further use for Negroes and will try to get rid of them. “It will be a sad day for us if the Ford Company changes its policy,” moaned the Rev. Mr. Bradby, to emphasize the point.<br>
</p>
<h4 class="western">Task of CIO</h4>
<p>Horace R. Cayton, one of the authors of <strong>Black Workers in the New Unions</strong>, has in two articles in recent issues of the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> dealt with the subject in a way that could be of use to the CIO in tackling this problem.</p>
<p>After explaining how Ford by his financial contributions has “given substance to the myth that Ford had a sympathetic interest in the problems of the Negro,” and showing that “many Negro professional men and Negro leaders who lived on the back of these Ford employees, fearful of anything which might disrupt (even momentarily) their sources of income, are violently pro-Ford and anti-union.” Cayton goes on:</p>
<blockquote>“Ford’s policy toward the Negroes, however, is one that had been born of self-interest and has not offered the Negro much except employment. That Ford has hired more Negroes than other companies is a matter of fact. He has done this, however, lo provide himself with ‘strike insurance.’</blockquote>
<blockquote>“It is the testimony of most persons familiar with the Ford plant that Negroes are definitely limited in their ability to be promoted within the Ford plant and are pretty largely confined to the lower wage income brackets.</blockquote>
<blockquote>“Likewise, all workers in the Ford plant, including Negro workers, suffered from the speed up, the possibility of brutal treatment from Ford’s service men, and enjoy a wage which is about ten cents au hour below that of workers in other automobile plants.”<br>
</blockquote>
<h4 class="western"><strong>Why</strong> Negroes Hesitate</h4>
<p>Cayton explains clearly why Negro workers are hesitant about joining the union. First of all, they’re glad they’ve got jobs, and they’re not sure that Ford would keep them on if the union won out. Secondly, the Negro is under terrific pressure from Harry Bennett’s thugs and from Donald Marshall and the other “leaders.” Thirdly, they don’t know whether they can trust the unions, because many of them have had experiences of discrimination, or have heard of discrimination, by white workers even in the union movement.</p>
<p>In this situation, it is imperative that the CIO pay special attention to the Negro workers. True, R.J. Thomas, president of the UAW, has written a letter which has received some publicity, in -which he promises that, there will bo ne discrimination by thee union against Negro Ford workers. He urges that those who are interested should check in the other plants that have been organized and determine for themselves whether the Negro worker has been discriminated against. “They will find upon checking that in the Detroit plants Negroes now receive more money and have better jobs than they had prior to the advent of the union ...”</p>
<p>But when the scoundrels who call themselves leaders are so active in prejudicing the Negroes against the union, it is not enough to suggest that “anyone who is concerned about such rumors, (of discrimination) check in other automobile plants ...” Every one of the 10,000 Negro workers in Ford is very much concerned about these vicious rumors. To tell them to go and check in the other automobile plants is not very helpful. It is up to the UAW lo bring them the proofs that there will be no discrimination, and to spend a lot of time combating these rumors and spreading the truth that, as Cayton puts it, “the CIO has made a desperate effort to break down color barriers and it presents the greatest hope for Negro laborers since the Knights of Labor” and that “certainly Negro workers in the Ford plant will suffer greatly, both as workers and as Negroes, in the long run if they are instrumental in defeating unionism in Ford’s plants.”</p>
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Albert Parker
Ford’s Anti-Union Game Is to Divide the Races
(15 February 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 7, 15 February 1941, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
For a long time it has been a. practice in this country for the bosses to refuse to hire Negro workers in their plants, placing the blame for this on the white workers: thus the bosses stored up a labor force among the Negroes that could be used for union-smashing and strike-breaking when the white workers began to organise. On certain occasions, employers have brazenly referred to this policy of creating resentment between black and white as “strike insurance.”
Henry Ford has played a shrewd variation of this same game. Realizing that the time would come when the unions would begin to make some headway in organizing his Empire; he began to employ Negroes in his plants, to build up the idea that he was a friend and benefactor of the Negro people and deserved their support in his bitter struggles against unionization.
He established a special division of employment of colored personnel and through this began to hire Negroes in large numbers. Today it is estimated that he has 10,000 Negro employees, representing about 10% of his labor force. As part of his plan Ford has also contributed to certain Negro churches, organizations and individuals.
Uncle Tom Banquet
A highlight in Fords’ anti-union campaign was a recent banquet for 300 people in Detroit by Donald J. Marshall, director of colored personnel for the Ford Motor Company.
In attendance was “nearly every colored minister in the city, who came at special invitation to get the free meal and to listen to Marshall’s harangue against the CIO. Those Negro ministers in Detroit who have expressed sympathy for the CIO were not invited; of them it was said, “The time has come to let our unfaithful leaders know we do not need them.”
“We are appealing to the ministers to try to help us keep our feet on the ground,” said Marshall.
He then launched an attack on the unions in which he blamed them because Negroes are not hired in great numbers in the other auto plants.
For instance, he showed that Knudsen, now head of the National Defense Commission, had refused to let Negroes hold skilled jobs in General Motors. What follows from that, according to Marshall? That the union which Knudsen fought so bitterly is responsible for this situation which existed long before the union was founded.
Ford Threatens Negroes
He finished this attack by making a not-too-veiled hint that if the Negro workers in Ford’s plants didn’t support him, they would be sorry:
“The open shop of Henry Ford has two Negroes out there to see that the Negroes get at least part of their rights (meaning himself and his assistant). The Negro will regret the day ir he helps to turn the Ford shop over to the CIO.”
By this he meant that if the CIO organizes the Ford plants, Ford will have no further use for Negroes and will try to get rid of them. “It will be a sad day for us if the Ford Company changes its policy,” moaned the Rev. Mr. Bradby, to emphasize the point.
Task of CIO
Horace R. Cayton, one of the authors of Black Workers in the New Unions, has in two articles in recent issues of the Pittsburgh Courier dealt with the subject in a way that could be of use to the CIO in tackling this problem.
After explaining how Ford by his financial contributions has “given substance to the myth that Ford had a sympathetic interest in the problems of the Negro,” and showing that “many Negro professional men and Negro leaders who lived on the back of these Ford employees, fearful of anything which might disrupt (even momentarily) their sources of income, are violently pro-Ford and anti-union.” Cayton goes on:
“Ford’s policy toward the Negroes, however, is one that had been born of self-interest and has not offered the Negro much except employment. That Ford has hired more Negroes than other companies is a matter of fact. He has done this, however, lo provide himself with ‘strike insurance.’
“It is the testimony of most persons familiar with the Ford plant that Negroes are definitely limited in their ability to be promoted within the Ford plant and are pretty largely confined to the lower wage income brackets.
“Likewise, all workers in the Ford plant, including Negro workers, suffered from the speed up, the possibility of brutal treatment from Ford’s service men, and enjoy a wage which is about ten cents au hour below that of workers in other automobile plants.”
Why Negroes Hesitate
Cayton explains clearly why Negro workers are hesitant about joining the union. First of all, they’re glad they’ve got jobs, and they’re not sure that Ford would keep them on if the union won out. Secondly, the Negro is under terrific pressure from Harry Bennett’s thugs and from Donald Marshall and the other “leaders.” Thirdly, they don’t know whether they can trust the unions, because many of them have had experiences of discrimination, or have heard of discrimination, by white workers even in the union movement.
In this situation, it is imperative that the CIO pay special attention to the Negro workers. True, R.J. Thomas, president of the UAW, has written a letter which has received some publicity, in -which he promises that, there will bo ne discrimination by thee union against Negro Ford workers. He urges that those who are interested should check in the other plants that have been organized and determine for themselves whether the Negro worker has been discriminated against. “They will find upon checking that in the Detroit plants Negroes now receive more money and have better jobs than they had prior to the advent of the union ...”
But when the scoundrels who call themselves leaders are so active in prejudicing the Negroes against the union, it is not enough to suggest that “anyone who is concerned about such rumors, (of discrimination) check in other automobile plants ...” Every one of the 10,000 Negro workers in Ford is very much concerned about these vicious rumors. To tell them to go and check in the other automobile plants is not very helpful. It is up to the UAW lo bring them the proofs that there will be no discrimination, and to spend a lot of time combating these rumors and spreading the truth that, as Cayton puts it, “the CIO has made a desperate effort to break down color barriers and it presents the greatest hope for Negro laborers since the Knights of Labor” and that “certainly Negro workers in the Ford plant will suffer greatly, both as workers and as Negroes, in the long run if they are instrumental in defeating unionism in Ford’s plants.”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(9 August 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_32" target="new">Vol. V No. 32</a>, 9 August 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Bosses Responsible for Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">Every thinking Negro worker who is conscious of the real cause of racial discrimination against Negroes in industry will agree with the recent charges of John T. Jones, director of Labor’s Non-Partisan League and legislative representative of the CIO, who told a congressional sub-committee that “a handful of rich and powerful corporations” were guilty of such discrimination, and that:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The use of one racial group against another, one national group against another, in order to beat down the economic standards of all, is an old story to the labor movement. It is the ancient maxim of divide and rule – divide and exploit.”</p>
<p class="fst">It would of course be foolish for Jones, or any other representative of labor, to deny that some workers too are guilty of discrimination, and of falling into the trap laid by the bosses.</p>
<p>But the important thing is: Who, or what, is responsible for Jim Crowism? The answer to that question gives us the answer to the responsibility for some white workers practising racial prejudice:</p>
<p><em>The answer, as we know, is that the bosses, manufacturers, industrialists through their capitalist system, are responsible for Jim Crow, they are the ones who profit from it. When we wipe out their power to discriminate against Negroes, we will at the same time remove the possibility of white workers succumbing to their propaganda.</em><br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The Bosses’ Flimsy Alibi</h4>
<p class="fst">The same week that Jones spoke on the question, a representative of another organization appeared before another congressional sub-committee, and spoke on the same question.</p>
<p>He was Noel Sargent, secretary of the National Association of Manufacturers.</p>
<p>Sargent spent some time declaring how sorry he and his organization were that discrimination should exist, and claiming that the N.A.M. was doing its share in eliminating discrimination.</p>
<p>To prove this point, Sargent referred to advice given by the N.A.M. to its members that there should be no “arbitrary prejudices in employment,” and declarations by the officers of the N.A.M. that, “manufacturers should employ Negroes wherever, and whenever possible, in keeping with their general ability and their ‘acceptability’ to white fellow-workers.”</p>
<p>What is meant by the dropping of “arbitrary” prejudices? Only this, that the bosses should not practice prejudice without good reason.</p>
<p><em>The N.A.M. is not really opposed to Jim Crowism; all it opposes is overdoing it; what it opposes is making its prejudices too obvious and flagrant: what it opposes are actions which will make it clear to the Negroes that the bosses are responsible; what it opposes are cases of prejudice where the bosses cannot make it appear that the. white workers are responsible for Negroes being denied employment.</em></p>
<p>The N.A.M. continues that “wherever employees themselves have not directly or indirectly put up bars against the hiring of persons because of race, color or creed” manufacturers generally are. ready, to employ them.</p>
<p>In other words, the N.A.M., if you would believe it, is ready to hire Negroes, but it doesn’t because of the white workers who put bars in the way.</p>
<p><em>It is strange that the N.A.M. is not so eager to comply with the wishes of its workers in other respects. For example, recognition of the right of workers to organize, higher wages, shorter hours, etc. When it comes, to these questions, the bosses fight the workers 24 hours a day, and no time off on Sundays. But when it comes to the alleged racial prejudices of the workers, the N.A.M. suddenly becomes very cooperative and gives in to every request and wish, real and fancied, of the workers.</em></p>
<p>It does not take a great thinker to see through the game of the N.A.M., and to understand that the bosses, who profit from Jim Crowism by dividing and ruling, prefer to place the responsibility for their maneuvers on the white workers, most of whom as children went to school alongside of Negro children and never entertained a single Jim Crow thought until it was introduced to them by the white supremacy propaganda of capitalism.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Boss Tells Truth About Roosevelt</h4>
<p class="fst">At the same time that Sargent tried to present the question in an anti-labor light, he could not refrain from taking a crack at the government for its pious statements urging industry to hire Negroes.</p>
<p>Claiming that the government “has sought to concentrate the heat engendered in this issue on industry,” Sargent stated: “The fact is that both the Government as well as organized labor might well put their own houses in order.” He then went on to enumerate the different instances where the government itself was practicing Jim Crowism in the armed forces and governmental departments.</p>
<p>Sargent was paying Roosevelt back for daring to even hint that the employers were responsible. In effect, he said, what right has Roosevelt to preach to us when he doesn’t practice his own preaching?</p>
<p>He made a good arguing point, but of course it wasn’t made in the interests of the Negro people. It was simply made to remind Roosevelt to say in his own place, and not even pretend to interfere with industry’s handling of the problem. He made it to emphasize the ridiculousness of Roosevelt’s hypocritical position, something which Roosevelt has already done for himself in his executive order urging an end to discrimination, but naming no penalty for disregard of his order.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(9 August 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 32, 9 August 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Bosses Responsible for Jim Crow
Every thinking Negro worker who is conscious of the real cause of racial discrimination against Negroes in industry will agree with the recent charges of John T. Jones, director of Labor’s Non-Partisan League and legislative representative of the CIO, who told a congressional sub-committee that “a handful of rich and powerful corporations” were guilty of such discrimination, and that:
“The use of one racial group against another, one national group against another, in order to beat down the economic standards of all, is an old story to the labor movement. It is the ancient maxim of divide and rule – divide and exploit.”
It would of course be foolish for Jones, or any other representative of labor, to deny that some workers too are guilty of discrimination, and of falling into the trap laid by the bosses.
But the important thing is: Who, or what, is responsible for Jim Crowism? The answer to that question gives us the answer to the responsibility for some white workers practising racial prejudice:
The answer, as we know, is that the bosses, manufacturers, industrialists through their capitalist system, are responsible for Jim Crow, they are the ones who profit from it. When we wipe out their power to discriminate against Negroes, we will at the same time remove the possibility of white workers succumbing to their propaganda.
The Bosses’ Flimsy Alibi
The same week that Jones spoke on the question, a representative of another organization appeared before another congressional sub-committee, and spoke on the same question.
He was Noel Sargent, secretary of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Sargent spent some time declaring how sorry he and his organization were that discrimination should exist, and claiming that the N.A.M. was doing its share in eliminating discrimination.
To prove this point, Sargent referred to advice given by the N.A.M. to its members that there should be no “arbitrary prejudices in employment,” and declarations by the officers of the N.A.M. that, “manufacturers should employ Negroes wherever, and whenever possible, in keeping with their general ability and their ‘acceptability’ to white fellow-workers.”
What is meant by the dropping of “arbitrary” prejudices? Only this, that the bosses should not practice prejudice without good reason.
The N.A.M. is not really opposed to Jim Crowism; all it opposes is overdoing it; what it opposes is making its prejudices too obvious and flagrant: what it opposes are actions which will make it clear to the Negroes that the bosses are responsible; what it opposes are cases of prejudice where the bosses cannot make it appear that the. white workers are responsible for Negroes being denied employment.
The N.A.M. continues that “wherever employees themselves have not directly or indirectly put up bars against the hiring of persons because of race, color or creed” manufacturers generally are. ready, to employ them.
In other words, the N.A.M., if you would believe it, is ready to hire Negroes, but it doesn’t because of the white workers who put bars in the way.
It is strange that the N.A.M. is not so eager to comply with the wishes of its workers in other respects. For example, recognition of the right of workers to organize, higher wages, shorter hours, etc. When it comes, to these questions, the bosses fight the workers 24 hours a day, and no time off on Sundays. But when it comes to the alleged racial prejudices of the workers, the N.A.M. suddenly becomes very cooperative and gives in to every request and wish, real and fancied, of the workers.
It does not take a great thinker to see through the game of the N.A.M., and to understand that the bosses, who profit from Jim Crowism by dividing and ruling, prefer to place the responsibility for their maneuvers on the white workers, most of whom as children went to school alongside of Negro children and never entertained a single Jim Crow thought until it was introduced to them by the white supremacy propaganda of capitalism.
Boss Tells Truth About Roosevelt
At the same time that Sargent tried to present the question in an anti-labor light, he could not refrain from taking a crack at the government for its pious statements urging industry to hire Negroes.
Claiming that the government “has sought to concentrate the heat engendered in this issue on industry,” Sargent stated: “The fact is that both the Government as well as organized labor might well put their own houses in order.” He then went on to enumerate the different instances where the government itself was practicing Jim Crowism in the armed forces and governmental departments.
Sargent was paying Roosevelt back for daring to even hint that the employers were responsible. In effect, he said, what right has Roosevelt to preach to us when he doesn’t practice his own preaching?
He made a good arguing point, but of course it wasn’t made in the interests of the Negro people. It was simply made to remind Roosevelt to say in his own place, and not even pretend to interfere with industry’s handling of the problem. He made it to emphasize the ridiculousness of Roosevelt’s hypocritical position, something which Roosevelt has already done for himself in his executive order urging an end to discrimination, but naming no penalty for disregard of his order.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>Political Savvy – Who’s Got It?</h1>
<h3>(23 February 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_08" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 8</a>, 23 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Credit for the scurviest hack job of the week goes to Allan L. Swim, editor of the <strong>CIO News</strong>, for an article on Henry Wallace in that paper’s Feb. 16 issue, <em>Hank May Have Meant Well But – He Caused Trouble</em>.</p>
<p>Swim is one of those bureaucrats who can hardly conceal their low opinion of the union members’ intelligence. Discussing Wallace’s record in three high government jobs, he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In none of these posts did he distinguish himself as a champion of the things for which labor was fighting ... he didn’t roll up his sleeves and get into the fray when the chips were down and the going was tough. CIO officials who called on him for aid learned to regard him as a ‘preaching liberal’ – not as a ‘practicing liberal’.”</p>
<p class="fst">Now, that happens to be the truth. But it will certainly come as news to those CIO members whose estimate of Wallace was formed on the basis of what they read about him in the <strong>CIO News</strong> in the past, arid of what they were told in a thousand speeches by Philip Murray and all the little Murrays.</p>
<p>Do Swim and Murray think that the members of the CIO have forgotten what happened at the Democratic Party convention in 1944, when Murray, Hillman and the other PAC leaders almost busted a gut pleading for the renomination of that “preaching liberal” – Henry Wallace? Do they think the workers are going to follow the CIO leadership’s political counsel today when they see what shameless lies they were told yesterday?</p>
<p>Continuing his attack on Wallace, Swim then makes another very damaging admission:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It should have been obvious to anybody with political savvy that a successful third party would have to stem from the labor movement. There simply is no other group in the country large enough to smash the two-party tradition.”</p>
<p class="fst">That is a completely valid criticism of Wallace and the Stalinists who, instead of trying to build a party based on the unions, are trying to build one that may have the support of union members but will remain under <em>their own</em> control. But doesn’t this criticism apply to the labor leaders too.</p>
<p>For years they have been telling the workers that the unions are “too weak” to form their own Labor Party. Now, just in passing, they blandly admit that labor is “large enough” to smash the two-party swindle. Thanks to the labor leaders, it wasn’t done and the two-party system gave birth to such children as the Taft-Hartley Act.</p>
<p>And today, when that system is hatching even worse anti-labor monsters, these labor bureaucrats, instead of hiding their heads in shame, have the gall, to chatter about “political savvy” and to give lectures about not splitting the so-called “progressive” vote (which, in line with their directives, wasn’t split in 1946 and produced the most reactionary Congress in American history).</p>
<p>If a policy cowardly and stupid as that can be palmed off as political savvy, then I’ll take Mortimer Snerd in preference to 95% of the self-styled labor statesmen any day in the week. Mortimer may not be very bright, but at least his backbone isn’t made of jelly and his tongue is used for other purposes than licking the boots of his enemies.</p>
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John F. Petrone
Political Savvy – Who’s Got It?
(23 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 8, 23 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Credit for the scurviest hack job of the week goes to Allan L. Swim, editor of the CIO News, for an article on Henry Wallace in that paper’s Feb. 16 issue, Hank May Have Meant Well But – He Caused Trouble.
Swim is one of those bureaucrats who can hardly conceal their low opinion of the union members’ intelligence. Discussing Wallace’s record in three high government jobs, he says:
“In none of these posts did he distinguish himself as a champion of the things for which labor was fighting ... he didn’t roll up his sleeves and get into the fray when the chips were down and the going was tough. CIO officials who called on him for aid learned to regard him as a ‘preaching liberal’ – not as a ‘practicing liberal’.”
Now, that happens to be the truth. But it will certainly come as news to those CIO members whose estimate of Wallace was formed on the basis of what they read about him in the CIO News in the past, arid of what they were told in a thousand speeches by Philip Murray and all the little Murrays.
Do Swim and Murray think that the members of the CIO have forgotten what happened at the Democratic Party convention in 1944, when Murray, Hillman and the other PAC leaders almost busted a gut pleading for the renomination of that “preaching liberal” – Henry Wallace? Do they think the workers are going to follow the CIO leadership’s political counsel today when they see what shameless lies they were told yesterday?
Continuing his attack on Wallace, Swim then makes another very damaging admission:
“It should have been obvious to anybody with political savvy that a successful third party would have to stem from the labor movement. There simply is no other group in the country large enough to smash the two-party tradition.”
That is a completely valid criticism of Wallace and the Stalinists who, instead of trying to build a party based on the unions, are trying to build one that may have the support of union members but will remain under their own control. But doesn’t this criticism apply to the labor leaders too.
For years they have been telling the workers that the unions are “too weak” to form their own Labor Party. Now, just in passing, they blandly admit that labor is “large enough” to smash the two-party swindle. Thanks to the labor leaders, it wasn’t done and the two-party system gave birth to such children as the Taft-Hartley Act.
And today, when that system is hatching even worse anti-labor monsters, these labor bureaucrats, instead of hiding their heads in shame, have the gall, to chatter about “political savvy” and to give lectures about not splitting the so-called “progressive” vote (which, in line with their directives, wasn’t split in 1946 and produced the most reactionary Congress in American history).
If a policy cowardly and stupid as that can be palmed off as political savvy, then I’ll take Mortimer Snerd in preference to 95% of the self-styled labor statesmen any day in the week. Mortimer may not be very bright, but at least his backbone isn’t made of jelly and his tongue is used for other purposes than licking the boots of his enemies.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(11 January 1941)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa05_02" target="new">Vol. 5 No. 2</a>, 11 January 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>The Struggle Against Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">Two of the most important questions facing the masses of Negroes today are:</p>
<ol>
<li>winning equal rights in the armed forces of the nation, where they are being Jim Crowed by the government, and<br>
</li>
<li>getting jobs in the rapidly expanding war industries, from which they have been generally excluded by the bosses.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">The first is as important as the second, if only because what is involved here is governmental endorsement of the principles of Jim Crow-ism, which can then be pointed to by the advocates of “white supremacy” as a pattern for all spheres of American life. But in an immediate sense, immediate sense, the second is more important in that today this question is agitating more of the Negro people.</p>
<p>And after all, look at what is going on, The whole economy of the nation is being shifted to a war basis. Production of all the great and important industries is being reorganized and expanded. The factories and machinery which the bosses kept idle for over ten years when people were starving are now being opened and put to use to produce the instruments of war. The bosses and their corporations are rolling in profits. The cost of living is going up for everyone, but so far most of the unions have managed to boost wages along accordingly, so that the standard of living of many of the white workers is no worse than it was before.</p>
<p>But where are the Negroes in this busy picture?</p>
<p>One industry after another bars them altogether from jobs that pay even a half-decent wage. They occupy only two kinds of jobs in the vast majority of the war industries that do hire them: in the menial, non-productive positions, or at the hardest and worst-paid laboring jobs. The cost of living is going up for them as well as others, but because they are excluded from the better-paying jobs in the strategic industries, their income isn’t able to keep up with it. The hullabaloo about the “end of unemployment” is being used as a good pretext in each state to slash the relief budget and the relief rolls far more sharply than ever before. Negroes who want to work and can’t get jobs suffer from this more than white workers, because at least some of the white workers are able to escape from the need of getting relief for the time being.</p>
<p>In short, the Negroes are being left out in the cold. The old saying about “the last to be hired” is still true.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>A Correct Understanding Necessary</h4>
<p class="fst">There are many obstacles that must be faced and overcome if this situation is to be corrected and the doors of the war industries thrown open to the Negro workers.</p>
<p>First of all, there is the opposition of the bosses, of the ruling class that owns and controls industry, who want to keep the workers divided along racial lines: “divide and rule.” Included as part of this is the government; acting in the interests of the bosses, it does nothing to interfere with their exclusion of Negroes from the important industries, but endorses it by its own treatment of the Negroes in the armed forces and civil service.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is the antagonism on the part of <em>some,</em> some, not all, white workers, who have been badly miseducated and have fallen for the propaganda of the bosses, and have thus permitted themselves to be used to weaken the strength of labor as a whole, including themselves.</p>
<p>And thirdly, there is the misunderstanding among many Negro workers themselves, expressed in an incorrect attitude toward the trade unions. We intend, in coming issues, to devote ourselves to a discussion of the entire problem. But here we want to touch briefly on one aspect of the third question, about which we have been asked to comment by some comrades who have run into in the course of their distribution of the <strong>Appeal</strong> to Negro workers.</p>
<p>Especially in the smaller industrial cities, some Negroes have come to feel a hostility toward the entire labor movement. We say to them:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The unions belong to the working class, they belong to you; true, they must be reformed, and the scissorbill leadership of some of the unions must give way to a truly representative, progressive, rank-and-file leadership – but the unions belong to the workers and they themselves must make these changes.”</p>
<p class="fst">But these Negroes reply as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We don’t see how the trade unions are <em>our </em>organizations. They ignore us and in some cases they even kick us out of our jobs. Why should we even try to reform something that is so harmful to us? What reason have we to believe any good can come out of them for us?”</p>
<p class="fst">It is very difficult to convince these workers that they must be in the union movement, and must even fight to get into it. As Horace Cayton, the prominent Negro labor expert said recently, it is hard for a Negro worker to assume the role of a “lily white angel,” “making sacrifices for a principle which allows him nothing but unemployment and starvation.”</p>
<p>Before these Negroes can be convinced, they must be shown <em>in action and through experience</em> that they need unions to improve their conditions. Abstract arguments are not enough.</p>
<p>Already there exists some literature on the events of recent years showing the gains made by Negro labor on all fronts: their improved working conditions, the improved relations inside the unions between white and colored workers. Outstanding among these is the book dealing with the CIO, <strong>Black Workers In The New Unions</strong> by Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell. We recommend its study and use by our distributors of the <strong>Appeal</strong> who reach workers interested in this question./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(11 January 1941)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 2, 11 January 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Struggle Against Jim Crow
Two of the most important questions facing the masses of Negroes today are:
winning equal rights in the armed forces of the nation, where they are being Jim Crowed by the government, and
getting jobs in the rapidly expanding war industries, from which they have been generally excluded by the bosses.
The first is as important as the second, if only because what is involved here is governmental endorsement of the principles of Jim Crow-ism, which can then be pointed to by the advocates of “white supremacy” as a pattern for all spheres of American life. But in an immediate sense, immediate sense, the second is more important in that today this question is agitating more of the Negro people.
And after all, look at what is going on, The whole economy of the nation is being shifted to a war basis. Production of all the great and important industries is being reorganized and expanded. The factories and machinery which the bosses kept idle for over ten years when people were starving are now being opened and put to use to produce the instruments of war. The bosses and their corporations are rolling in profits. The cost of living is going up for everyone, but so far most of the unions have managed to boost wages along accordingly, so that the standard of living of many of the white workers is no worse than it was before.
But where are the Negroes in this busy picture?
One industry after another bars them altogether from jobs that pay even a half-decent wage. They occupy only two kinds of jobs in the vast majority of the war industries that do hire them: in the menial, non-productive positions, or at the hardest and worst-paid laboring jobs. The cost of living is going up for them as well as others, but because they are excluded from the better-paying jobs in the strategic industries, their income isn’t able to keep up with it. The hullabaloo about the “end of unemployment” is being used as a good pretext in each state to slash the relief budget and the relief rolls far more sharply than ever before. Negroes who want to work and can’t get jobs suffer from this more than white workers, because at least some of the white workers are able to escape from the need of getting relief for the time being.
In short, the Negroes are being left out in the cold. The old saying about “the last to be hired” is still true.
A Correct Understanding Necessary
There are many obstacles that must be faced and overcome if this situation is to be corrected and the doors of the war industries thrown open to the Negro workers.
First of all, there is the opposition of the bosses, of the ruling class that owns and controls industry, who want to keep the workers divided along racial lines: “divide and rule.” Included as part of this is the government; acting in the interests of the bosses, it does nothing to interfere with their exclusion of Negroes from the important industries, but endorses it by its own treatment of the Negroes in the armed forces and civil service.
Secondly, there is the antagonism on the part of some, some, not all, white workers, who have been badly miseducated and have fallen for the propaganda of the bosses, and have thus permitted themselves to be used to weaken the strength of labor as a whole, including themselves.
And thirdly, there is the misunderstanding among many Negro workers themselves, expressed in an incorrect attitude toward the trade unions. We intend, in coming issues, to devote ourselves to a discussion of the entire problem. But here we want to touch briefly on one aspect of the third question, about which we have been asked to comment by some comrades who have run into in the course of their distribution of the Appeal to Negro workers.
Especially in the smaller industrial cities, some Negroes have come to feel a hostility toward the entire labor movement. We say to them:
“The unions belong to the working class, they belong to you; true, they must be reformed, and the scissorbill leadership of some of the unions must give way to a truly representative, progressive, rank-and-file leadership – but the unions belong to the workers and they themselves must make these changes.”
But these Negroes reply as follows:
“We don’t see how the trade unions are our organizations. They ignore us and in some cases they even kick us out of our jobs. Why should we even try to reform something that is so harmful to us? What reason have we to believe any good can come out of them for us?”
It is very difficult to convince these workers that they must be in the union movement, and must even fight to get into it. As Horace Cayton, the prominent Negro labor expert said recently, it is hard for a Negro worker to assume the role of a “lily white angel,” “making sacrifices for a principle which allows him nothing but unemployment and starvation.”
Before these Negroes can be convinced, they must be shown in action and through experience that they need unions to improve their conditions. Abstract arguments are not enough.
Already there exists some literature on the events of recent years showing the gains made by Negro labor on all fronts: their improved working conditions, the improved relations inside the unions between white and colored workers. Outstanding among these is the book dealing with the CIO, Black Workers In The New Unions by Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell. We recommend its study and use by our distributors of the Appeal who reach workers interested in this question./p>
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Meaning of the Moves<br>
for CIO-AFL Unification</h1>
<h3>(27 September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_39" target="new">Vol. V No. 39</a>, 27 September 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The coming annual conventions of the AFL (Seattle, October 6) and the CIO (Detroit, November 17) will again bring to the forefront the question of trade union unity.</p>
<p>Militant trade unionists, who want to work out an answer to the problem of unity not on the basis of an abstract formula or ideal but on the basis of the concrete interests of the working class, will profit from a study of the positions taken by the different groups today advocating CIO-AFL unity.</p>
<p>Such an analysis will demonstrate that the slogan of unity as such is not progressive today, and that it is being used as the cover for extremely reactionary and conservative forces operating against the best interests of the labor movement.<br>
</p>
<h4>Roosevelt’s Aims</h4>
<p class="fst">Why, for example, is the Roosevelt administration so concerned about unification of the two union groups? Certainly not to enable the unions to better fight for improvement of labor’s conditions and protection of labor’s rights, because more than ever that fight in these days has to be directed against the efforts of the government as well as the bosses.</p>
<p>Roosevelt’s main interest in the unions, both craft and industrial, is to tie them to the war program, to get them in the interests of “national defense” to “make sacrifices,” to persuade them to give up many of their hard-won rights for the sake of “national unity.” A divided labor movement, entailing competition and a struggle for hegemony that leads to increased organizational activity, makes Roosevelt’s task more difficult. Roosevelt wants “peace” between the two labor federations as a prelude to “peace” between labor and the capitalists.</p>
<p>It is not hard to see that unity on the basis of Roosevelt’s program will reduce, not increase, labor’s strength.<br>
</p>
<h4>The AFL Conditions</h4>
<p class="fst">By and large, the bureaucrats of the AFL Council hold the same position today as they held a year ago when they expressed their willingness for “unity.” But the unity they want is the kind that will give craft unionism the domination of the unified movement and leave the industrial unions at the mercy of those who opposed their creation.</p>
<p>Such a unification as the AFL Council wants would be a blow to all of labor, for it would not only weaken the strongest unions in the labor movement, but it would encourage the bosses to go after the remainder, craft or industrial. One of the progressive consequences of the AFL-CIO split was that, in the wake of the pro-union spirit engendered by the organizational gains of the CIO union’s, the AFL was also able to add many new members. The dismemberment of the unions in the mass industries by the craft union leaders of the AFL might easily lead to the destruction by the bosses of the craft unions built near and around them.<br>
</p>
<h4>What the Hillmanites Want</h4>
<p class="fst">The Hillmanites in the CIO also support moves toward unification. They are not interested in seeing that the craft unionists become the dominant force – for they would prefer themselves in the dominant role, of course – but they are not worried about the prospect either. They feel that they could easily come to terms with the Greens and Wolls. Like Roosevelt, their main concern is in tying the unions in with the government.</p>
<p>At last year’s CIO convention the Hillmanites were the chief advocates of “resuming unity negotiations.” Although Hillman’s proposal was decisively rejected by the Lewis forces at the convention, and although Hillman himself was the object of an invitation to get out of the CIO and go back to the AFL by himself, he has chosen to keep his followers in the ClO. The reason for this was twofold. First of all, his use to the administration and the war machine rests on the idea that he “represents” the dynamic section of the union movement, the CIO. If he returned to the AFL, he would quickly sink to the status of another Dubinsky, a captive of the AFL Executive Council.</p>
<p>Secondly, Hillman has kept his forces in the CIO because it is there that he can be of most service to the administration in its drive to unify the unions on the basis of support of the war.</p>
<p>In the year since the Atlantic City convention, the Hillmanites have been “boring from within” the CIO, and it is unquestionable that they have made considerable headway since November 1940.<br>
</p>
<h4>Role of the Stalinists</h4>
<p class="fst">Last year the Stalinists fully backed the Lewis position against any unity proposals that would hot guarantee the victory of industrial unionism.</p>
<p>This year, however, they loudly proclaim, “conditions have changed.” Now they give unqualified support to the Roosevelt war program. Instead of collaborating with John L. Lewis against Hillmanites in the unions, the Stalinists have declared war against Lewis, although he is pursuing more or less the same union policies today as a year ago.</p>
<p>Criticism of Green and Hillman has entirely disappeared from the <strong>Daily Worker</strong>. The Stalinists have adopted the AFL Executive Council’s formula on “strikes and national defense,” namely, that unions must retain their right to strike but they must not utilize that right. (<strong>Daily Worker</strong>, Sept. 20)</p>
<p>The Stalinists are all-out for labor unification today. But unification on the basis of their program will be n different and no better than unification around the Roosevelt, Green and Hillman proposals.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lewis’ Stand on Unification</h4>
<p class="fst">The Lewis group is the only major force that shows any signs of resisting a unification that will put the craft unions in the saddle and make the labor movement wholly subservient to the war program.</p>
<p>Events of the last year have shown how correct was the decision of the CIO last November in voting down Hillman’s proposal. How many of labor’s gains in 1941 – the organization of Ford, Bethlehem, etc. – won through militant action, would have been achieved if the iron hand of the AFL bureaucracy were dominant in a unified labor movement? Wouldn’t much of the anti-labor legislation defeated by the CIO this year have become law by this time if the Hillman-Green tendency led the whole labor movement?<br>
</p>
<h4>The Job for Militants</h4>
<p class="fst">Of course, continuation of the split in the labor movement has its negative as well as its positive features, and a unification of the labor movement oft the proper basis is desirable. But class-conscious workers must never lose sight of the fact that a unification on the basis of the Roosevelt-AFL-Hillman-Stalinist terms can prove more harmful than no unification at all under present conditions.</p>
<p>To the demagogic and reactionaary plans of the Roosevelt war bloc in the unions, the workers must counterpose the struggle for unification of the labor movement on the basis of undisputed recognition of the victory of industrial unionism.</p>
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George Breitman
Meaning of the Moves
for CIO-AFL Unification
(27 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 39, 27 September 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The coming annual conventions of the AFL (Seattle, October 6) and the CIO (Detroit, November 17) will again bring to the forefront the question of trade union unity.
Militant trade unionists, who want to work out an answer to the problem of unity not on the basis of an abstract formula or ideal but on the basis of the concrete interests of the working class, will profit from a study of the positions taken by the different groups today advocating CIO-AFL unity.
Such an analysis will demonstrate that the slogan of unity as such is not progressive today, and that it is being used as the cover for extremely reactionary and conservative forces operating against the best interests of the labor movement.
Roosevelt’s Aims
Why, for example, is the Roosevelt administration so concerned about unification of the two union groups? Certainly not to enable the unions to better fight for improvement of labor’s conditions and protection of labor’s rights, because more than ever that fight in these days has to be directed against the efforts of the government as well as the bosses.
Roosevelt’s main interest in the unions, both craft and industrial, is to tie them to the war program, to get them in the interests of “national defense” to “make sacrifices,” to persuade them to give up many of their hard-won rights for the sake of “national unity.” A divided labor movement, entailing competition and a struggle for hegemony that leads to increased organizational activity, makes Roosevelt’s task more difficult. Roosevelt wants “peace” between the two labor federations as a prelude to “peace” between labor and the capitalists.
It is not hard to see that unity on the basis of Roosevelt’s program will reduce, not increase, labor’s strength.
The AFL Conditions
By and large, the bureaucrats of the AFL Council hold the same position today as they held a year ago when they expressed their willingness for “unity.” But the unity they want is the kind that will give craft unionism the domination of the unified movement and leave the industrial unions at the mercy of those who opposed their creation.
Such a unification as the AFL Council wants would be a blow to all of labor, for it would not only weaken the strongest unions in the labor movement, but it would encourage the bosses to go after the remainder, craft or industrial. One of the progressive consequences of the AFL-CIO split was that, in the wake of the pro-union spirit engendered by the organizational gains of the CIO union’s, the AFL was also able to add many new members. The dismemberment of the unions in the mass industries by the craft union leaders of the AFL might easily lead to the destruction by the bosses of the craft unions built near and around them.
What the Hillmanites Want
The Hillmanites in the CIO also support moves toward unification. They are not interested in seeing that the craft unionists become the dominant force – for they would prefer themselves in the dominant role, of course – but they are not worried about the prospect either. They feel that they could easily come to terms with the Greens and Wolls. Like Roosevelt, their main concern is in tying the unions in with the government.
At last year’s CIO convention the Hillmanites were the chief advocates of “resuming unity negotiations.” Although Hillman’s proposal was decisively rejected by the Lewis forces at the convention, and although Hillman himself was the object of an invitation to get out of the CIO and go back to the AFL by himself, he has chosen to keep his followers in the ClO. The reason for this was twofold. First of all, his use to the administration and the war machine rests on the idea that he “represents” the dynamic section of the union movement, the CIO. If he returned to the AFL, he would quickly sink to the status of another Dubinsky, a captive of the AFL Executive Council.
Secondly, Hillman has kept his forces in the CIO because it is there that he can be of most service to the administration in its drive to unify the unions on the basis of support of the war.
In the year since the Atlantic City convention, the Hillmanites have been “boring from within” the CIO, and it is unquestionable that they have made considerable headway since November 1940.
Role of the Stalinists
Last year the Stalinists fully backed the Lewis position against any unity proposals that would hot guarantee the victory of industrial unionism.
This year, however, they loudly proclaim, “conditions have changed.” Now they give unqualified support to the Roosevelt war program. Instead of collaborating with John L. Lewis against Hillmanites in the unions, the Stalinists have declared war against Lewis, although he is pursuing more or less the same union policies today as a year ago.
Criticism of Green and Hillman has entirely disappeared from the Daily Worker. The Stalinists have adopted the AFL Executive Council’s formula on “strikes and national defense,” namely, that unions must retain their right to strike but they must not utilize that right. (Daily Worker, Sept. 20)
The Stalinists are all-out for labor unification today. But unification on the basis of their program will be n different and no better than unification around the Roosevelt, Green and Hillman proposals.
Lewis’ Stand on Unification
The Lewis group is the only major force that shows any signs of resisting a unification that will put the craft unions in the saddle and make the labor movement wholly subservient to the war program.
Events of the last year have shown how correct was the decision of the CIO last November in voting down Hillman’s proposal. How many of labor’s gains in 1941 – the organization of Ford, Bethlehem, etc. – won through militant action, would have been achieved if the iron hand of the AFL bureaucracy were dominant in a unified labor movement? Wouldn’t much of the anti-labor legislation defeated by the CIO this year have become law by this time if the Hillman-Green tendency led the whole labor movement?
The Job for Militants
Of course, continuation of the split in the labor movement has its negative as well as its positive features, and a unification of the labor movement oft the proper basis is desirable. But class-conscious workers must never lose sight of the fact that a unification on the basis of the Roosevelt-AFL-Hillman-Stalinist terms can prove more harmful than no unification at all under present conditions.
To the demagogic and reactionaary plans of the Roosevelt war bloc in the unions, the workers must counterpose the struggle for unification of the labor movement on the basis of undisputed recognition of the victory of industrial unionism.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1> Deutscher Worthless as Guide to Action</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1954)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../newspape/themilitant/1954/v18n15-apr-12-1954-mil.pdf" target="new">Vol. 18 No. 15</a>, 12 April 1954.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Fahlgren for the <strong> Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) in 2012</strong><br>
<strong>Copyleft:</strong> Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the <a href="../../../../../admin/legal/cc/by-sa.htm">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0</a> .</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">In the fall of 1917 the Bolsheviks began to discuss whether or not to organize an uprising to turn all power over to the Soviets. Lenin and Trotsky favored the uprising and pushed for it Zinoviev and Kamenev, frightened and doubtful, drew back and opposed it.</p>
<p class="quoteb">”Regardless of its immediate conclusion, history has perhaps not said the last word” on this historic argument, says Isaac Deutscher in his biography of Trotsky: <i>The Prophet Armed</i>. “After the event, it is easy and natural to say that the advocates, of the insurrection were right, and its opponents wrong. In truth; each side presented its case in such a way that the rights were strangely blended with the wrongs and the realistic assessment of historical prospects was offset by momentous errors.”</p>
<p class="fst">Lenin and Trotsky, he judges, were right in estimating that the insurrection would be easily accomplished, and Zinoviev and Kamenev were wrong in foreseeing a disastrous adventure. But on the other hand, among the chief motivations of Lenin and Trotsky was their belief in the imminence of the European revolution, which they predicted and expected and looked to for support in their own revolution. Zinoviev and Kamenev, Deutscher pays, correctly scoffed at this contention as a harmful exaggeration.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">”It may be wondered”</p>
<p class="fst">As any fool knows, the European revolution did not take place during or after World War 1. And Deutscher, who knows it too, sums up the situation this way:</p>
<p class="quoteb">”Thus those who were supreme realists When summing up the Russian situation (Lenin and Trotsky) became illusionists when they turned towards the broader international scene, and those who saw Russia only dimly through a mist of timid skepticism (Zinoviev and Kamenev) became then the realists ... it may be wondered whether Lenin and Trotsky would have acted as they did, or whether they would have acted with the same determination, if they had taken a soberer view of international revolution and foreseen that in the course of decades their example would not be imitated in, any other country.”</p>
<p class="fst">Deutscher, at any rate, is still wondering about it. Being “sober” himself, and not an “illusionist” like Lenin and Trotsky, isn’t it fairly safe to conclude that if the decision had been up to him, the Russian revolution would not have taken place?</p>
<p>We mention this because it illustrates, the difference between the “objective” bystander commentator and the active revolutionary fighter. To Deutscher the Bolshevik attitude toward European revolution in 1917 and later was “the great illusion,” “a veil of dreams and fantasy” whose “frustration was subsequently to break and crush” Trotsky, etc. Hindsight makes Deutscher look awfully smart.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">Didn’t merely predict </p>
<p class="fst">But for Lenin and Trotsky, European revolution was neither an academic question nor the theme of a few pages in a book. For them it was an aim. They didn’t merely predict a European revolution &8211; they worked for it, conducted all their diplomacy to facilitate it, used all their resources to promote it. Zinoviev and the other skeptics, including the Russian Deutschers, could do nothing to speed the European revolution they did not believe could happen; Lenin and Trotsky did everything that was possible.</p>
<p>Was the prospect of a European revolution a fantasy in 1917? The capitalist rulers of Europe did not consider it fantastic a year or two later; the armies of counter-revolutionary intervention they sent to Soviet Russia were intended to crush the revolution before it would spread to other countries, as they “soberly” expected it to do. Was the German revolution of 1918 a fantasy? Or the revolutionary situations in Germany in 1919, in 1921, in 1923, to say nothing of the postwar collapse of capitalist governments in other European countries?<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">How they viewed it</p>
<p class="fst">In addition to expecting the European revolution, Lenin and Trotsky viewed the question as one that settled in action, in the class struggle. That’s what actually happened. The revolutionary situation they forsaw in Europe broke out at the end of the war, and they tried by their example, and whatever aid they could extend, to help transform those revolutionary situations into successful revolutions.</p>
<p>It is true that these revolutions which threatened, and some of which began, were defeated. But guarantees of victory are seldom available on the eve of revolutionary struggles; and even when proffered should not be accepted as final; such questions are settled only in the struggle. The revolutionary optimism of Lenin and Trotsky and, even more, their revolutionary activity were, from the viewpoint of socialism and the working class, a thousand times more correct, productive and realistic than the doubts and abstentionism of their faint-hearted critics.</p>
<p>Their policy destroyed capitalism in Russia, shook European capitalism so badly that counterrevolutionary intervention against Soviet Russia after World War I was paralyzed, and created conditions which led to the abolition of capitalism in other countries during and after World War II. The policy of their opponents, in which Deutscher is still looking for merits in 1954, would have been disastrous to everyone but the capitalists.<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">On the Comintern</p>
<p class="fst">If Deutscher is still wondering about the 1917 uprising in. Russia, he has no such doubts about the formation of the revolutionary Communist International in 1919. The whole business was an egregious error to him.</p>
<p>The error, as he sees it, flows again from the Bolsheviks’ simple-minded misreading of the European situation at the end of the war. They just couldn’t get it into their thick heads that there wasn’t going to be a successful revolution outside of Russia. Anyhow, Lenin called an international conference in Moscow in 1919, “either to proclaim the Third International or to make preliminary arrangements for this.”</p>
<p>The Bolsheviks, according to Deutscher, wanted to set up the International at once but awaited the opinions of the other delegates before making a decision. The German delegates said it was too soon to form an. International &8211; they were still too weak. But an Austrian delegate, who arrived in the middle of the debate, “gave a startling description of Europe seething with revolution.” That settled it:</p>
<p class="quoteb">”Thus, fathered by wish, mothered by confusion, and assisted by accident, the great institution came into being.”<br>
</p>
<p class="sub">”It is doubtful”</p>
<p class="fst">Deutscher’s sympathies are clearly with the German delegates who wanted to wait:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is doubtful whether Lenin and Trotsky would have founded the International at this stage if they had had a clearer perception of the condition of Europe.” (But there is nothing doubtful about the outcome if Deutscher had cast the deciding ballot.)</p>
<p class="quote">”Nothing,” he assures us, “had been further from (their) thoughts than the intention of giving an assortment of small political sects the high-sounding label of the International.” (Deutscher, who prides himself on his unique ability to count although he neglects to indicate exactly how big an organization must be before he will consent to dignify it with the label of International, here telegraphs the attitude that he is going to express in his next book toward the formation of the Fourth International by Trotsky in 1938.)</p>
<p class="fst">And yet, one page later, Deutscher tells us calmly: “Even their expectations were not altogether groundless; within a year the new International did, in fact, gain a formidable hold on the European labor movement.”</p>
<p>How it could have Alone so without having been formed year before, Deutscher does not explain.</p>
<p>Strangely enough, the “confusion” of the Bolsheviks is demonstrated in real life to be the best and most effective kind of revolutionary realism, and the “objective” Deutscher, for all his hindsight, is shown to be a rather worthless guide to any reader interested in participating in revolutionary politics.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>(More next week)</strong></p>
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George Breitman
Deutscher Worthless as Guide to Action
(Spring 1954)
From The Militant, Vol. 18 No. 15, 12 April 1954.
Transcribed & marked up by Martin Fahlgren for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) in 2012
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 .
In the fall of 1917 the Bolsheviks began to discuss whether or not to organize an uprising to turn all power over to the Soviets. Lenin and Trotsky favored the uprising and pushed for it Zinoviev and Kamenev, frightened and doubtful, drew back and opposed it.
”Regardless of its immediate conclusion, history has perhaps not said the last word” on this historic argument, says Isaac Deutscher in his biography of Trotsky: The Prophet Armed. “After the event, it is easy and natural to say that the advocates, of the insurrection were right, and its opponents wrong. In truth; each side presented its case in such a way that the rights were strangely blended with the wrongs and the realistic assessment of historical prospects was offset by momentous errors.”
Lenin and Trotsky, he judges, were right in estimating that the insurrection would be easily accomplished, and Zinoviev and Kamenev were wrong in foreseeing a disastrous adventure. But on the other hand, among the chief motivations of Lenin and Trotsky was their belief in the imminence of the European revolution, which they predicted and expected and looked to for support in their own revolution. Zinoviev and Kamenev, Deutscher pays, correctly scoffed at this contention as a harmful exaggeration.
”It may be wondered”
As any fool knows, the European revolution did not take place during or after World War 1. And Deutscher, who knows it too, sums up the situation this way:
”Thus those who were supreme realists When summing up the Russian situation (Lenin and Trotsky) became illusionists when they turned towards the broader international scene, and those who saw Russia only dimly through a mist of timid skepticism (Zinoviev and Kamenev) became then the realists ... it may be wondered whether Lenin and Trotsky would have acted as they did, or whether they would have acted with the same determination, if they had taken a soberer view of international revolution and foreseen that in the course of decades their example would not be imitated in, any other country.”
Deutscher, at any rate, is still wondering about it. Being “sober” himself, and not an “illusionist” like Lenin and Trotsky, isn’t it fairly safe to conclude that if the decision had been up to him, the Russian revolution would not have taken place?
We mention this because it illustrates, the difference between the “objective” bystander commentator and the active revolutionary fighter. To Deutscher the Bolshevik attitude toward European revolution in 1917 and later was “the great illusion,” “a veil of dreams and fantasy” whose “frustration was subsequently to break and crush” Trotsky, etc. Hindsight makes Deutscher look awfully smart.
Didn’t merely predict
But for Lenin and Trotsky, European revolution was neither an academic question nor the theme of a few pages in a book. For them it was an aim. They didn’t merely predict a European revolution &8211; they worked for it, conducted all their diplomacy to facilitate it, used all their resources to promote it. Zinoviev and the other skeptics, including the Russian Deutschers, could do nothing to speed the European revolution they did not believe could happen; Lenin and Trotsky did everything that was possible.
Was the prospect of a European revolution a fantasy in 1917? The capitalist rulers of Europe did not consider it fantastic a year or two later; the armies of counter-revolutionary intervention they sent to Soviet Russia were intended to crush the revolution before it would spread to other countries, as they “soberly” expected it to do. Was the German revolution of 1918 a fantasy? Or the revolutionary situations in Germany in 1919, in 1921, in 1923, to say nothing of the postwar collapse of capitalist governments in other European countries?
How they viewed it
In addition to expecting the European revolution, Lenin and Trotsky viewed the question as one that settled in action, in the class struggle. That’s what actually happened. The revolutionary situation they forsaw in Europe broke out at the end of the war, and they tried by their example, and whatever aid they could extend, to help transform those revolutionary situations into successful revolutions.
It is true that these revolutions which threatened, and some of which began, were defeated. But guarantees of victory are seldom available on the eve of revolutionary struggles; and even when proffered should not be accepted as final; such questions are settled only in the struggle. The revolutionary optimism of Lenin and Trotsky and, even more, their revolutionary activity were, from the viewpoint of socialism and the working class, a thousand times more correct, productive and realistic than the doubts and abstentionism of their faint-hearted critics.
Their policy destroyed capitalism in Russia, shook European capitalism so badly that counterrevolutionary intervention against Soviet Russia after World War I was paralyzed, and created conditions which led to the abolition of capitalism in other countries during and after World War II. The policy of their opponents, in which Deutscher is still looking for merits in 1954, would have been disastrous to everyone but the capitalists.
On the Comintern
If Deutscher is still wondering about the 1917 uprising in. Russia, he has no such doubts about the formation of the revolutionary Communist International in 1919. The whole business was an egregious error to him.
The error, as he sees it, flows again from the Bolsheviks’ simple-minded misreading of the European situation at the end of the war. They just couldn’t get it into their thick heads that there wasn’t going to be a successful revolution outside of Russia. Anyhow, Lenin called an international conference in Moscow in 1919, “either to proclaim the Third International or to make preliminary arrangements for this.”
The Bolsheviks, according to Deutscher, wanted to set up the International at once but awaited the opinions of the other delegates before making a decision. The German delegates said it was too soon to form an. International &8211; they were still too weak. But an Austrian delegate, who arrived in the middle of the debate, “gave a startling description of Europe seething with revolution.” That settled it:
”Thus, fathered by wish, mothered by confusion, and assisted by accident, the great institution came into being.”
”It is doubtful”
Deutscher’s sympathies are clearly with the German delegates who wanted to wait:
“It is doubtful whether Lenin and Trotsky would have founded the International at this stage if they had had a clearer perception of the condition of Europe.” (But there is nothing doubtful about the outcome if Deutscher had cast the deciding ballot.)
”Nothing,” he assures us, “had been further from (their) thoughts than the intention of giving an assortment of small political sects the high-sounding label of the International.” (Deutscher, who prides himself on his unique ability to count although he neglects to indicate exactly how big an organization must be before he will consent to dignify it with the label of International, here telegraphs the attitude that he is going to express in his next book toward the formation of the Fourth International by Trotsky in 1938.)
And yet, one page later, Deutscher tells us calmly: “Even their expectations were not altogether groundless; within a year the new International did, in fact, gain a formidable hold on the European labor movement.”
How it could have Alone so without having been formed year before, Deutscher does not explain.
Strangely enough, the “confusion” of the Bolsheviks is demonstrated in real life to be the best and most effective kind of revolutionary realism, and the “objective” Deutscher, for all his hindsight, is shown to be a rather worthless guide to any reader interested in participating in revolutionary politics.
(More next week)
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(29 September 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_39" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 39</a>, 29 September 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="c"><b>(Continued from last week)</b></p>
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Generous – When It Costs Nothing</h4>
<p class="fst">Will a vote for Willkie and the Republicans be any better than a vote for Roosevelt and the Democrats? The facts say no.</p>
<p>The record of the Republicans on Negro legislation is every bit as bad as the Democrats. From 1920 on the Republicans sat in power, in the White House and in most states. From them the Negroes got nothing. That was why no colored worker spent much time weeping in 1932 when they were swept out of office and became a minority in Congress.</p>
<p>Then overnight, they became “the Negro’s friend and champion”! In a magical way Republicans appeared on the floors of Congress with Anti-Lynch Bills and Anti-Poll Tax Bills. “The Republican Party,” they said, “has been the friend of the Negro people since the days of Abraham Lincoln, and still is. Don’t you see what we’re trying to do for you in Congress?”</p>
<p>What generous people! During the years when they had the power to pass such bills, they were nowhere to be found. The Anti-Lynch Bills which came up in Congress when they had a majority, were always shelved and forgotten by them in the same way the Democrats do it now. And now, when they are sure that the Democratic majority will defeat such legislation, they very boldly propose it!</p>
<p>There are two reasons for this hypocrisy. First, it is a cheap way to build themselves up as “friends of the Negro.” Secondly, it embarrasses the Democrats who have to take the responsibility for laws that neither party really wants passed. Only simple people will fall for this kind of fraud.</p>
<p>Take Wendell Willkie, the utility boss who was picked by that small section of the race that alone is responsible for and benefits from Jim Crow, the bankers and big businessmen.</p>
<p>Because he is an “out” now, and wants to get “in”, he chooses his words about the colored people very carefully. He remembers the eleven states where the colored vote will be decisive on November 5. But every once in a while he makes a slip, and gives the game away, showing that all his fine talk about “equal opportunity” is nothing more than the hot dog and glass of beer that ward-heelers give away “free” before elections.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Willkie Likes a Jim Crow Book</h4>
<p class="fst">Recently the <b>New Jersey Herald News</b>, a Negro paper, addressed an open letter to him. In it they questioned his enthusiastic, praise of the book, <b>Capitalism The Creator</b>, by Carl Snyder. The author of this contemptible book writes in defense of “the greatly misunderstood and abused millionaires.” He vigorously defends the right of plutocrats to keep robbing and exploiting the great mass of the people. He asks that taxation Pf the wealthy be stopped. His reason? They deserve everything they have! He thinks it is terrible for the unions to try to get higher Wages for the workers. That will “block the road to recovery,” he says.</p>
<p>Naturally, such an enemy of the working class is an enemy of the most oppressed section of the working class, the Negro workers, and a friend of Jim Crow. “We must realize that certain races are naturally inferior,” says this ardent champion of the rich. By this he means they shouldn’t have equal opportunities and rights, they should be seen and not heard, they shouldn’t have the same schooliryja they shouldn’t be allowed to sit in the same theaters and restaurants, they should do the dirty work, cleaning the toilets, acting as janitors and washwomen, while their “superiors,” the rich, do more important things such as going to the dog show.</p>
<p>Public endorsement of this book by Willkie means that if he is elected, he can be expected to carry out the ideas in it! And those colored workers who fell for Willkie’s promises before elections will be given the privilege of shining his shoes as reward for their support.</p>
<p>Between the two boss parties the Negro has no choice. Neither will help him, each will betray him, both are his mortal enemies.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Trouble – And Double Trouble</h4>
<p class="fst">The life we live in 1940 is a strange thing.</p>
<p>The workers produce everything, and they live in misery. The bosses produce nothing, and they live in comfort and luxury. Because of the profit system, the bosses make the workers live in unhealthy tenements. Often they shut down the factories and throw the workers into the streets to starve or live on miserable relief allowances. When the workers dare to ask for a little more from life, the strength of the whole system is thrown against them: the laws, the police, the newspapers, the courts. When this decaying profit system faces a crisis, the bosses of the different countries put guns in the workers’ hands and send them out to kill each other to decide which bosses shall get the gravy.</p>
<p>As workers, the Negroes suffer all this. But that isn’t all. Because they are Negroes, they are treated even worse. The Republicans and the Democrats defend this way of life, but they won’t do anything to let the colored workers have at least the same rotten conditions and opportunities that the white workers have. The colored workers are herded into the worst of the bad houses. They are given the dirtiest and worst paying jobs. They are hired last and fired first. They aren’t even permitted to join their bosses’ Army. Many of them are terrorized and lynched when they try to vote like other workers, even for Republicans and Democrats. Insult is always added to the injuries they suffer under capitalism.</p>
<p>Why is this? Why must colored workers carry a double burden?</p>
<p class="c"><b>(Next week: What Causes Jim Crow?)</b></p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(29 September 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 39, 29 September 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
(Continued from last week)
Generous – When It Costs Nothing
Will a vote for Willkie and the Republicans be any better than a vote for Roosevelt and the Democrats? The facts say no.
The record of the Republicans on Negro legislation is every bit as bad as the Democrats. From 1920 on the Republicans sat in power, in the White House and in most states. From them the Negroes got nothing. That was why no colored worker spent much time weeping in 1932 when they were swept out of office and became a minority in Congress.
Then overnight, they became “the Negro’s friend and champion”! In a magical way Republicans appeared on the floors of Congress with Anti-Lynch Bills and Anti-Poll Tax Bills. “The Republican Party,” they said, “has been the friend of the Negro people since the days of Abraham Lincoln, and still is. Don’t you see what we’re trying to do for you in Congress?”
What generous people! During the years when they had the power to pass such bills, they were nowhere to be found. The Anti-Lynch Bills which came up in Congress when they had a majority, were always shelved and forgotten by them in the same way the Democrats do it now. And now, when they are sure that the Democratic majority will defeat such legislation, they very boldly propose it!
There are two reasons for this hypocrisy. First, it is a cheap way to build themselves up as “friends of the Negro.” Secondly, it embarrasses the Democrats who have to take the responsibility for laws that neither party really wants passed. Only simple people will fall for this kind of fraud.
Take Wendell Willkie, the utility boss who was picked by that small section of the race that alone is responsible for and benefits from Jim Crow, the bankers and big businessmen.
Because he is an “out” now, and wants to get “in”, he chooses his words about the colored people very carefully. He remembers the eleven states where the colored vote will be decisive on November 5. But every once in a while he makes a slip, and gives the game away, showing that all his fine talk about “equal opportunity” is nothing more than the hot dog and glass of beer that ward-heelers give away “free” before elections.
Willkie Likes a Jim Crow Book
Recently the New Jersey Herald News, a Negro paper, addressed an open letter to him. In it they questioned his enthusiastic, praise of the book, Capitalism The Creator, by Carl Snyder. The author of this contemptible book writes in defense of “the greatly misunderstood and abused millionaires.” He vigorously defends the right of plutocrats to keep robbing and exploiting the great mass of the people. He asks that taxation Pf the wealthy be stopped. His reason? They deserve everything they have! He thinks it is terrible for the unions to try to get higher Wages for the workers. That will “block the road to recovery,” he says.
Naturally, such an enemy of the working class is an enemy of the most oppressed section of the working class, the Negro workers, and a friend of Jim Crow. “We must realize that certain races are naturally inferior,” says this ardent champion of the rich. By this he means they shouldn’t have equal opportunities and rights, they should be seen and not heard, they shouldn’t have the same schooliryja they shouldn’t be allowed to sit in the same theaters and restaurants, they should do the dirty work, cleaning the toilets, acting as janitors and washwomen, while their “superiors,” the rich, do more important things such as going to the dog show.
Public endorsement of this book by Willkie means that if he is elected, he can be expected to carry out the ideas in it! And those colored workers who fell for Willkie’s promises before elections will be given the privilege of shining his shoes as reward for their support.
Between the two boss parties the Negro has no choice. Neither will help him, each will betray him, both are his mortal enemies.
Trouble – And Double Trouble
The life we live in 1940 is a strange thing.
The workers produce everything, and they live in misery. The bosses produce nothing, and they live in comfort and luxury. Because of the profit system, the bosses make the workers live in unhealthy tenements. Often they shut down the factories and throw the workers into the streets to starve or live on miserable relief allowances. When the workers dare to ask for a little more from life, the strength of the whole system is thrown against them: the laws, the police, the newspapers, the courts. When this decaying profit system faces a crisis, the bosses of the different countries put guns in the workers’ hands and send them out to kill each other to decide which bosses shall get the gravy.
As workers, the Negroes suffer all this. But that isn’t all. Because they are Negroes, they are treated even worse. The Republicans and the Democrats defend this way of life, but they won’t do anything to let the colored workers have at least the same rotten conditions and opportunities that the white workers have. The colored workers are herded into the worst of the bad houses. They are given the dirtiest and worst paying jobs. They are hired last and fired first. They aren’t even permitted to join their bosses’ Army. Many of them are terrorized and lynched when they try to vote like other workers, even for Republicans and Democrats. Insult is always added to the injuries they suffer under capitalism.
Why is this? Why must colored workers carry a double burden?
(Next week: What Causes Jim Crow?)
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Court OK’s Covenants</h1>
<h3>(10 May 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_19" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 19</a>, 10 May 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">If you look only at the newspaper headlines about the Supreme Court decision on restrictive housing covenants, you would have a hard time finding out what it really means. <em>Supreme Court Removes Realty Bars Against Jews, Negroes</em>, said <strong>PM</strong>. <em>Highest Court Rejects Jim Crow Realty Ban</em>, said the <strong>N.Y. Daily News</strong>. <em>Supreme Court Avoids Restrictive Covenants</em>, said the <strong>Daily Worker</strong>. All these statements are false.</p>
<p>Instead of voiding restrictive covenants, the Supreme Court specifically approved them. That is the most important aspect of the decision, and nobody should be permitted to cover up that fact by exaggerating minor aspects. The Supreme Court remains what it was before – a judicial stooge for the enemies of Negroes and other minorities.</p>
<p>Here is an example of what the Supreme Court decision means: Let us take a certain neighborhood, where 100 real estate owners have gotten together and signed a covenant not to permit the sale or rental of any homes or stores in the neighborhood to Negroes, Chinese, Indians, Jews, etc. The Supreme Court says that is perfectly legal.</p>
<p>Now let us suppose that one of the real estate owners in the neighborhood decides that he can make more money by renting his property to a Negro, and he does that, even though he had signed a covenant promising not to. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled, the other signers of the covenant cannot use the courts in order to stop him. And that is all there is to this so-called historic decision. The other 99 property owners can go on discriminating against minority groups and they can even go on exerting pressure against the lone owner who wants to rent his property to minorities, but they can’t stop him through the courts.</p>
<p>If you look carefully at the decisions of the Supreme Court, you can observe a certain sinister pattern to most of them. Every time they seem to be granting a minor concession to the Negro people with one hand, their other hand is engaged in actually tightening the chains of Jim Crow. They rule that it’s illegal to give inferior accommodations to Negroes in inter-state transportation facilities; but in the very same breath they say it’s legal to segregate Negroes in transportation. They say it’s against the law to deny Negroes the right to a college education; but in the same ruling they put their stamp of approval on educational Jim Crow laws in the South. And now in the same decision saying courts can’t be used to uphold restrictive covenants, they extend their blessings on those same restrictive covenants.</p>
<p>Every time the Supreme Court hands down one of these double-edged decisions, some people go rushing into print praising this body and hailing its decisions as proof of what a wonderfully democratic government we are living under. Such people don’t know better, or else they are trying to kid the public. The decision upholding covenants actually proves that the Supreme Court is as much an enemy of the Negro people as the other sections of the capitalist government. It knows how to throw a crumb to the oppressed to maintain the fiction of its impartiality and disinterestedness, but it defends and upholds the <em>status quo</em>.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Court OK’s Covenants
(10 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 19, 10 May 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
If you look only at the newspaper headlines about the Supreme Court decision on restrictive housing covenants, you would have a hard time finding out what it really means. Supreme Court Removes Realty Bars Against Jews, Negroes, said PM. Highest Court Rejects Jim Crow Realty Ban, said the N.Y. Daily News. Supreme Court Avoids Restrictive Covenants, said the Daily Worker. All these statements are false.
Instead of voiding restrictive covenants, the Supreme Court specifically approved them. That is the most important aspect of the decision, and nobody should be permitted to cover up that fact by exaggerating minor aspects. The Supreme Court remains what it was before – a judicial stooge for the enemies of Negroes and other minorities.
Here is an example of what the Supreme Court decision means: Let us take a certain neighborhood, where 100 real estate owners have gotten together and signed a covenant not to permit the sale or rental of any homes or stores in the neighborhood to Negroes, Chinese, Indians, Jews, etc. The Supreme Court says that is perfectly legal.
Now let us suppose that one of the real estate owners in the neighborhood decides that he can make more money by renting his property to a Negro, and he does that, even though he had signed a covenant promising not to. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled, the other signers of the covenant cannot use the courts in order to stop him. And that is all there is to this so-called historic decision. The other 99 property owners can go on discriminating against minority groups and they can even go on exerting pressure against the lone owner who wants to rent his property to minorities, but they can’t stop him through the courts.
If you look carefully at the decisions of the Supreme Court, you can observe a certain sinister pattern to most of them. Every time they seem to be granting a minor concession to the Negro people with one hand, their other hand is engaged in actually tightening the chains of Jim Crow. They rule that it’s illegal to give inferior accommodations to Negroes in inter-state transportation facilities; but in the very same breath they say it’s legal to segregate Negroes in transportation. They say it’s against the law to deny Negroes the right to a college education; but in the same ruling they put their stamp of approval on educational Jim Crow laws in the South. And now in the same decision saying courts can’t be used to uphold restrictive covenants, they extend their blessings on those same restrictive covenants.
Every time the Supreme Court hands down one of these double-edged decisions, some people go rushing into print praising this body and hailing its decisions as proof of what a wonderfully democratic government we are living under. Such people don’t know better, or else they are trying to kid the public. The decision upholding covenants actually proves that the Supreme Court is as much an enemy of the Negro people as the other sections of the capitalist government. It knows how to throw a crumb to the oppressed to maintain the fiction of its impartiality and disinterestedness, but it defends and upholds the status quo.
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Letter from George Breitman to Ernest Mandel, January 15, 1954
<strong><em>Documents 1 through 9 and 11 originally published in
Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the
International Committee</em></strong><br>
<hr>
<p>Dear Ernest:</p>
<p>Your letter of December 9 was painful to read. I had hoped that a
meeting of minds was possible. Instead, you have so far chosen to
misunderstand, employ debaters’ tricks and ignore most of what I wrote
you. You evidently feel you must defend ‘the International’ against us,
and this has led you to indefensible statements. I asked why you had
signed your name to the November 15 IS Bureau letter containing
numerous gross slanders against us, applied to our past as well as
present course, when in your letter to me you said you did not consider
our past course ever to have been unprincipled. In the December issue
of the French Pabloite paper, which I had not seen when I wrote you,
you claimed among other things that our minority represented ‘more than
a third of the members’ and that they committed ‘no public act of
indiscipline.’ Do you know how ridiculous this makes you appear here,
where everyone knows they represented only 18 percent? Do you see why
no one can give the slightest credence to your equally inflated figures
about the British Pabloites? And don’t you feel silly, writing there
was ‘no public act of indiscipline’ at the very same time that Cochran,
weeping on Shachtman’s shoulder, publicly refutes you by explaining
that his faction deliberately organized the boycott of our 25th
Anniversary celebration? By the way, what do you think of this boycott?
Why do you evade all mention of it? Are you, like the real Pabloites,
an enemy of our 25 year struggle and all that it represents? If you had
been in New York, would you have joined the boycott?</p>
<p>Your answer to the question I asked you last time is, ‘I’m not going
to squabble about words with my comrades who defend my organization.’
Does this mean that you will sign or write anything, no matter how far
from the truth, just so long as it is conceived as a defense of the IS?
What kind of defense is it, and what is being defended, that requires
lies? How can I have confidence in what you write when you tell me in
advance that you will not ‘squabble about words’ with slanderers
because they are on your side, or because you are on theirs? How can I
tell what part of what you write is actually your opinion of the facts,
and what part is concession to your slanderous allies?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I want to try again to reach through to you’for
your sake, for ours, for the sake of the International.</p>
<p>You make a joke of my letter when you ask if I think the present
situation is the result of ‘nothing but a tragi-comedy of errors and
misunderstandings.’ No, what my letter tried to do in good faith was
answer the charge that our course was unprincipled by reciting the
events and the evolution of our thinking under their impact. What we
reached was not a misunderstanding, but an understanding. An
understanding (1) of the profound political differences that separate
us from the Pablo faction, which are set forth in our Letter and to
which I shall return. An understanding (2) of the new slogan, ‘Junk the
old Trotskyism,’ not as an expression of a desire to bring our program
up to date, correct our errors and adjust our tactics to new needs
(although that is how it was represented), but as an expression of a
desire to junk Trotskyism itself as outmoded and to replace it with an
opportunist orientation to Stalinism as the channel through which the
revolution will pass everywhere in the world. And an understanding (3)
of the necessity to determine who the real Trotskyists in this
International are.</p>
<p>You condemn us for openly publishing our Letter in which we broke
politically with the Pablo faction, an act which you claim represents
’a break with the International.’ The reasons why we published the
Letter have already been stated by Cannon in the December 28 paper.
What do you mean when you accuse us of ‘a break with the International’
by publishing a defense of orthodox Trotskyism against deliberate
public attacks on it? Didn’t Clarke publicly violate our program by
forecasting the possible self-reform of the Soviet bureaucracy in the
magazine behind the backs of its editorial board? Haven’t the new
Pabloite conceptions about Soviet development, to which we object, been
published? Didn’t the French Pabloites publicly defend the Stalinists
against the criticism of the French Trotskyists of the Majority in a
public leaflet? Is it ‘loyalty’ to the International to defile its
program and tradition in public, but ‘a break with the International’
to defend this program and this tradition in public? The members of the
SWP don’t think so, and no pontifical pronouncements, factional
expulsions, excommunications or ‘removals’ will change our opinion. I
agree that, as a general rule, internal disputes in our movement would
perhaps better be discussed internally, although a public discussion is
nothing new. We conducted a limited public discussion before the 1940
split in the SWP, and Trotsky did not hesitate to attack in the public
press the capitulationist position of Roman Well and others in the
German section in 1932. Trotsky’s polemic against Urbahns, in the
formative stage of the International Left Opposition, was also
published in <em>The Militant.</em> In any case, we will never agree
to a one-sided rule whereby revisionists enjoy the right to attack the
program in public and the orthodox have no right to defend it in public.</p>
<p>And I urge you: Please don’t pretend that the publication of the
Letter marked a qualitative change in the relations between the IS and
us. Because on November 1 5, <em>before you had even heard of the
existence of our Letter,</em> the IS Bureau, writing to the leaderships
of all sections, had already excommunicated us (and without even
waiting to hear of the circumstances under which we had disciplined the
organizers of the boycott, had already pledged to ‘never permit the
expulsions effected by Cannon’).</p>
<p>Elaborating on ‘the main and only fundamental difference which I see
at the present stage of the fight: the overthrow of the principle of
one World Party,’ you write many things about international discipline
and democratic centralism that we would never quarrel with. But many of
these things are also beside the point. I said we want to know who the
Trotskyists in this International are. With Trotskyists we always have
found and always will find agreement on organizational procedure. With
Trotskyists we are willing and eager to discuss. But we want to be sure
that they are Trotskyists, and not something else. Stalinists and
apologists for Stalinism we will fight as enemies, not engage in
discussion on the basis of democratic centralism. This is not a
difference of nuance; it is the first condition of democratic
centralism. (The American Pabloites understood this and that was why
they refused to be bound by democratic centralism.) The selection is
now taking place in the International. Far from having contempt for the
majority of the International, as you charge, we have the greatest
confidence that a decisive majority will understand the real issues and
show themselves to be Trotskyists.</p>
<p>I would make a second condition. When someone talks to us about
democratic centralism, we want to make sure we are talking about the
same thing. Tell me, do you think democratic centralism is possible
internationally where an international leadership does not recognize
and defend democratic centralism on a national scale? I don’t believe
it is, and I think this question is most pertinent to our discussion.</p>
<p>Here we were in the SWP, contending with a minority that blatantly
violated discipline in the name of a ‘higher allegiance.’ The Pabloite
faction in England were doing the same thing at the same time. This,
you will recall, was what happened first, <em>before</em> there was
any disciplinary action against them, <em>before</em> there was any
Letter. What, in your opinion, were we supposed to do’grit our
teeth, smile and console ourselves with the merits of democratic
centralism’as applied internationally? Oh, you tell us, ‘some
organizational compromise could have easily been found at the eve of
your last Plenum.’ Really? Such as what? Without anyone else’s help, we
found the means for a truce at the May plenum. But it wasn’t worth the
paper it was written on as soon as the minority saw it could not
survive a truce. Why should we have your faith in ‘some organizational
compromise’ when we could see that the minority was driven by
fundamental political pressure that made them feel we were
incompatible? Does your conception of international democratic
centralism require the leadership of a national party to permit it to
be wrecked as the price of international democratic centralism? It’s
not our conception anyhow.</p>
<p>As I say, the minority violated democratic centralism. Here then was
an excellent opportunity for the IS to show how devoted it was to this
principle. Did it do it? On the contrary, Pablo directiy instigated and
encouraged the deliberate violations. (You may not know the whole
American story, but you certainly know that this was what happened in
Britain.) Is that how you expect to create devotion to this principle
on the international field? Instead of joining us in our defense of
democratic centralism in our party, the Pabloite IS attacked us for
bureaucratism and brutality and degeneracy and pledged that it would
‘never’ permit the violators of democratic centralism to be
disciplined. And after that you expect this IS to be taken seriously
when it preaches the necessity of democratic centralism on an
international scale?</p>
<p>I am not sure, because I don’t know all your ideas on the subject,
but I have the feeling that your views on the International suffer from
a tendency to regard it as a sort of collective substitute for national
parties. I know that is the real Pabloite conception; that is why the
Pablo faction is so eager to break up the solid national cadres who
assert independence of judgment. Without the International, in our
view, there can be no national parties worthy of the name of
Trotskyist. But that doesn’t mean that the International can substitute
for them, for their organic development, for their selection of a
leadership that really represents them, for the experiences they must
pass through if they are to be fit for their historic role. Against
these truths, which must be accepted as the necessary basis for a
healthy relationship between parties and International leadership, we
are offered a caricature of Cannon’s remarks, according to which the
International must be a ‘letter-box,’ exercising no discipline, having
no common line. Will it really surprise you to learn that we reject
this caricature. Don’t you know, or have you forgotten, that we got
along with the International for 25 years? At the same time we flatly
reject the genuinely bureaucratic’to speak plainly, the Stalinist --
conceptions and practices of Pablo, which enabled him to dispose of a
critical majority in France by disposing of the majority of the party,
and which supplied him with the gall to issue his ultimatum that we’d
better abandon our revolutionary anti-Stalinist line on Germany and the
Soviet Union because they didn’t conform to his private line, or else!
We reject the caricature of Cannon s views and the tested reality of
Pablo’s views, and demand a healthy relationship between parties and
International leadership, which will permit the parties to grow, and
the International leadership, expressing the positions of the majority,
to guide, co-ordinate and where necessary discipline’all this, of
course, being possible only on the basis of a common general (that is,
Trotskyist) line.</p>
<p>On the basic point in your letter: You emphasize ‘loyalty to the
International...as an established organization, with its established
leadership and statutes, while our main emphasis is on loyalty to
Trotskyism, that is, the program, the body of doctrine and the
tradition that the International had up to and through the 3 world
Congress. Where we see fundamental political differences between
ourselves and the Pablo faction, you see only differences of a
’tactical nature,’ none of which ‘put a question mark on any of the
basic principles of our estimation of Stalinism and the USSR.’ That, in
our opinion, is where you make the biggest mistake of all. You will end
in a blind alley, totally unable to influence the development of this
struggle in a revolutionary fashion, unless you probe the already
visible differences to the bottom and take your stand on the basis of
the political lines that are tearing the International apart, rather
than on the basis of an organizational loyalty, and an essentially
abstract organizational loyalty at that.</p>
<p>I won’t repeat what has already been written about these differences
in our Letter, resolution and press. But I am forced to return to the
German question when you say, ‘I myself have failed to grasp till today
the differences in approach to the Eastern German question’, but that
amazes me all the more. Why don’t you ask Pablo? He grasped it
sufficiently to use the authority of his post’without any protest
from other IS members’to try to bludgeon us into substituting his
approach for our own. Instead of accusing us of ‘inventing’
differences, why don’t you find out from Pablo why he regarded our
differences on this issue so important that he felt he had to resort to
the heavy hand to try to stifle our views?</p>
<p>I don’t know what Pablo would tell you, but here is what we think:
There was a fundamental difference between him and us on the omission
from the IS manifesto of our demand for the withdrawal of the Soviet
troops from East Germany in June. I know what you wrote me on November
15’that it was omitted ‘only because we wanted at that time to
concentrate on the slogans the fighters in Berlin had used themselves
(where no one had used that slogan and for good reasons! Did the people
come out on the street in the February revolution with the slogan:
Withdrawal of the Cossacks. When you are busy making a revolution, and
not only writing about it, the winning of the troops wherever it is
possible becomes task nr. 1, not the deliberate provocation of these
troops into hostile actions.</p>
<p>Fundamentally this explanation strikes me as a lawyer’s argument.
(1) As I told you before, the evidence we have collected was that the
demand for the withdrawal of the troops was raised; but let that go --
I will agree that it probably was not raised as widely as other
demands. (2) But must the raising of such a demand necessarily
constitute a provocation of the troops into hostile actions? Not
necessarily; in fact, such a demand, linked with appeals and acts of
fraternization, etc., could have just the opposite effect and win the
troops to friendly actions’it all depends on the way it’s done. (3)
Let’s distinguish a little. There well might be situations in which the
masses in the street could not raise such a demand, no matter how much
they wanted to. But the IS statement was not written in the street. If
it is true that the masses didn’t raise this demand because they
couldn’t, then it all the more became the duty of the Trotskyist IS to
express the demand for them, to voice it in their behalf, to use the
occasion to drive home the lesson that the withdrawal of the occupation
troops is an indispensable necessity for the successful completion of
the revolution they had begun (I don’t think your comparison of
invading, occupying troops with Cossacks is a helpful one in this
situation). (4) Don’t say that the IS wanted to concentrate on the
demands that the Berlin fighters had used themselves’say why it
wanted to do only that. Since when are we constrained to limit
ourselves only to those demands already raised by the masses’isn’t
that called tail-ending? (5) And finally, in support of my opinion that
you have given us a lawyer’s argument, I want to remind you that the IS
statement was dated June 25’more than a week after the Soviet troops
had already engaged in hostile actions, that is, had saved the regime
from almost certain overthrow by shooting down and jailing
revolutionary workers. How could the omission of the demand in the IS
statement on June 25 have had any effect in warding off the
counter-revolutionary actions of the Soviet troops?</p>
<p>’But,’ you can say, ‘even if this was a mistake, couldn’t it be a
mistake in tactics?’ It could, and that was why we were slow to draw
conclusions, and why I wrote to ask you about it last summer. But when
we began to hear the arguments of the American Pabloites, we saw that
it went far beyond tactical differences. For their basic point in
support of the IS’s omission was that to demand withdrawal of the
Soviet troops from East Germany while imperialist troops remained in
West Germany would be to play into the hands of imperialism. Ask
yourself: Is that an expression of a mere tactical difference? Since
the Soviet troops are the chief obstacle to the political revolution in
East Germany, doesn’t such a line of reasoning itself become an
obstacle to that revolution? Doesn’t it raise at least a question mark
over our attitude to Stalinism, particularly to our traditional
positions that the way to defend the Soviet Union is by extending the
revolution and that the defense of the Soviet Union is subordinate to
the extension of the world revolution. Those who refuse to recognize
such a line as a danger signal pointing to the growth of sentiments
conciliatory to Stalinism will probably never recognize as a danger
signal anything short of a proposal to dissolve the International.</p>
<p>Now the rotten thing and the infuriating thing is that those who
hold these ideas refuse to express them openly, confining them for the
present to verbal discussion and private correspondence while they
build a faction around them. And when we see what is really at the
bottom of their ‘tactical’ proposals and how much damage it is causing
in terms of morale and when we want to bring the thing out into the
open, we are met with evasion and duplicity and denial’and you
reproach us as users of the smear tactic for wanting to discuss what
people ‘don’t write.’ The procedure they follow is the infallible
hallmark of revisionists: unable to present their full position at the
start because then they could make no headway, they nibble away at
things, putting out a feeler here and a feeler there, retreating when
they have gone too far and exposed their real hand, refusing to discuss
the real orientation behind their tactical proposals, furiously denying
any intention of abandoning principles, and vilifying those who want to
come to grips with them as sectarian, ossified, helpless in the face of
changing reality, etc.</p>
<p>You are wrong if you think the troops-withdrawal issue is the only
important one involved in the dispute over Germany; the conception in
the IS statement that the bureaucracy can’t stop half-way on the road
to concessions is a wide open bridge to the theory of Deutscher. You
are wrong when you say there is only ‘one wrong sentence’ in Clarke’s
article on Stalin’s death. The only thing exceptional about that
sentence, which mislabels the harmonious sharing of power between a
section of the bureaucracy and the workers as ‘political revolution,’
is that there Clarke slipped and let too much out of the bag. But the
entire article is drenched with Deutscherism and could easily have been
written by Deutscher if he were a member of our party and under
compulsion of unfolding his revision of Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism
cautiously and step by step. I really am surprised that you didn’t see
that, and I urge you to reread it, noting among other things the new
terminology: Stalin, you see, may have been ‘anti-revolutionary,’ but
never, God forbid, must we say that he was counter-revolutionary
because all the time he was an unwitting and blind instrument of the
revolution, etc. And because we dared to differ from his article, Pablo
condemned us as not expressing the International’s line. There was a
time not too long ago when Pablo and Clarke both considered Deutscher
the most adroit apologist for Stalinism; but that time is past, and
they fight us because we don’t want any concealed Deutscherism in our
press or in the International. And it isn’t Deutscher who has changed,
I assure you.</p>
<p>But, you say, you’ll dissociate yourselves from any sharing of power
ideas, you’ll put back the sentence on the Soviet revolution dropped
from the Transitional Program, you’ll reaffirm that you really wanted
the troops withdrawn from Germany’in short, you’ll clear up all the
’misunderstandings’ on these and other questions we have raised. Again,
I don’t question your sincerity. You want to do these things, and they
may even be done. The Pablo faction is now up against the wall; they
need all the help they can get from people with prestige as orthodox
Trotskyists who are foolish enough to give it to them; tactically, it
may serve their factional interests to retreat until the present crisis
is eased for them; they may not only permit you to add or alter these
sentences, they may even ask you to do so.</p>
<p>But it won’t solve anything because it will be at the expense of
blurring actual differences, of covering up their real orientation. The
Pabloites won’t mind such a thing happening if it will help them to
maintain their control over the International apparatus, because with
that control they will be able to interpret as they see fit whatever
resolutions are passed. But you would regret contributing to such an
evasion as long as you lived. To lend yourself to such an operation
would be shameful because it would obscure differences which you know
exist even if you think them tactical’and when has the revolutionary
movement ever been helped by the suppression of differences! That was
the role played by Shachtman in 1939-40. Burnham was breaking with
Marxism but Shachtman covered up for him, softened his sentences,
helped him to conceal his departure in the interest of their factional
alignment at least until the factional fight was over in our party; and
that was the beginning of Shachtman’s ruin as a revolutionist. We
called Shachtman Burnham’s advocate. I hope you won’t serve as Pablo’s
advocate.</p>
<p>On a few others matters handled in your letter:</p>
<p>I asked why you think the SWP leadership, whose principled conduct
in the past you voluntarily affirmed, has now become unprincipled. The
IS Bureau letter in the French Pabloite paper of December, which I
presume you endorsed, talks about our ‘complete degeneration,’
resulting from our ‘prolonged isolation from the masses and from the
terrible pressure exerted on all social milieux in the United States by
American imperialism preparing its counterrevolutionary war’ and says
our leaders are ‘really adapting themselves to the atmosphere
prevailing in the citadel of imperialism and camouflaging under
"extreme left" language their own buckling under this reactionary
pressure.’ You yourself, in the same paper, write that our leadership
’has lost its principles under the pressure of the reactionary
atmosphere imperialism imposes on its country.’ (In your letter to me,
in slightly more restrained fashion, you say that ‘objectively this is
a result of alien class pressure, without saying that your party has
already succumbed to that pressure.’)</p>
<p>As I said last time, you must do more than make statements, you must
support them concretely. The only concrete attempt you make goes like
this: The SWP has ‘broken with the International’ (to use your words)
-- ipso facto, it is and must be buckling to the reactionary pressure
of imperialism. But I repeat: We have not broken with the
International, we have no intention of letting anyone drive us away
from the International; we are fighting its anti-Trotskyist faction
precisely because we don’t want to break with the International.</p>
<p>There is a terrible pressure exerted on the revolutionary party in
this country, and its results are extremely harmful. But you don’t
understand its results because you don’t see how they manifest
themselves; you have the thing upside down. How is the pressure
manifested concretely? By a desire, an instinct, a hysterical drive to
get out of the line of fire. That is, by a movement to get out of our
party, which is branded subversive, hounded, persecuted, threatened
with legal prosecution. Those who are buckling under the pressure feel
uncomfortable in our party. They want the party to stop resisting the
pressure’to discontinue activities that can result in casualties (in
Michigan the Pabloites were bitter about our elections campaign in 1952
because, according to their reasoning, ‘they might not have gone after
us under the Trucks Act if we had not been running an election campaign
that forced us to their attention’). The last thing in the world they
wanted was the line of the Third World Congress that in this country we
should act as an independent revolutionary party. And when they see
that they can’t persuade our party to try to escape persecution by
playing dead (that’s their concept of ‘propaganda activity’), then they
want to get out of the party. Leaving our party also has certain
attractions for opportunist elements in the unions: It is dangerous for
party members to run for union office today because if elected they run
the risk of being indicted and jailed for perjury under the
Taft-Hartley Act, which requires an oath that you do not belong to any
’subversive’ organizations. Those who leave the party and thus can
swear that they don’t belong to any group on the ‘subversive’ list can
run freely for union office, regain a position of respectability in the
eyes of the union bureaucracy, etc.</p>
<p>In other words, the way in which buckling under the pressure
manifests itself is by a tendency to find pretexts to get out of this
party, membership in which entails serious risks. But what about the
International? Since we are not formally affiliated to it anyhow,our
relation to the International does not and cannot play the same kind of
role in this process I have described. Whether or not we actually do
break with the International (and not merely with the Pablo faction)
does not affect the status of the SWP on the ‘subversive’ list because
the SWP remains on it and the International does not. That is why I say
your easy little formula stands everything on its head. It is the
Pabloites here who have buckled under the pressure and are driven by a
desire to duck, not we. Your abstract explanation about us applies to
them perfectly in the concrete. If you really believe what you have
written, you must think it over again in the light of the Pabloites’
uncontrollable frenzy to get out of our party as soon as possible and
under any pretext. Surely their sigh of relief as they left us must
have been audible over the Atlantic.</p>
<p>Determined to shut your eyes to the political differences that
motivate our conduct, you seek another explanation. Only one has
suggested itself to you, and you recur to it at least nine times in
your letter. Here is how I would summarize your explanation: We never
would recognize any discipline in the International when we happened to
be in a minority; we denied the IS the right to reach its own
conclusions on matters concerning the SWP; what we wanted was a clique
in the IS that would obediently raise its hands whenever Cannon gave
the signal. These are hypotheses, and nothing else; you know very well
that nothing ever happened in the past 25 years to give them the
slightest shred of confirmation. Now, however, you contend that they
are supported and even proved by one thing: We resolved to put through
a brutal and bureaucratic expulsion of the minority and demanded that
the IS passively accept it, and when we saw that that was not
forthcoming, we decided to ‘break with the FI,’ wrote the Letter in
order to ‘justify’ the break politically, etc.</p>
<p>According to this conception, everything would have remained
harmonious if only the IS had acquiesced in the alleged bureaucratic
expulsion. But first we must ask: Why should the SWP leadership want to
expel the minority, bureaucratically or otherwise? What reason could
they have? Merely because the minority expressed differences? But that
had never happened before in our party. It didn’t happen now with the
Marcy group, who also had differences and also expressed them. How
could the leaders justify a bureaucratic expulsion to the members, who
you admit have not been trained in such a school? What would the
leaders have to gain from such an expulsion when everyone understood
that the 18% minority could not hope to win the party leadership for a
long long time, if ever?</p>
<p>Your entire explanation, you see, rests on one assumption’that a
bureaucratic expulsion, or an expulsion of any kind, was wanted and
needed by the leadership so badly that everything else must be
subordinated to it. But this assumption had no validity.</p>
<p>The SWP leadership had neither the need nor the desire to expel the
minority’it had contained them, contained them so successfully that
the minority began to disintegrate right after the May plenum and would
have disintegrated further if the minority leaders had not resumed
all-out factional warfare in order to whip up and hold together their
followers. You say the May truce could not work; your proof’that
Burns ‘already had information to the contrary from Cannon.’ This is
not true. He had no such information, and neither did anyone else. We
regarded the May truce as workable, and expected it to work if the
minority wanted it to work and if Pablo did plot encourage it to wreck
the truce. We told the party we expected it to work. We wrote it in the
press. Do you think the members of our party are so blind that such a
double game can be played on them?</p>
<p>No, you’ve got it all wrong, as I explained at some length in my
last letter. We didn’t want to expel them, we did everything we could
to keep them in the party on the basis of democratic centralism. If
they had wanted to remain in the party, nothing could have removed
them. They wanted to get out and away, and there was nothing we could
do to prevent them from going except to make an unconditional surrender
and a shambles of our party. So your simple explanation falls to the
ground. It explains nothing because it evades the question of why the
minority left our party, of what pressure was driving them. It
substitutes psychological speculation for political and organizational
analysis. It answers no questions and raises many. Either your previous
estimate of our party was completely wrong, or your present one.</p>
<p>The truth is that we were not interested in expelling the minority,
but in keeping them in the party, if possible. That this was not
possible. That we were not greatly concerned about what the IS thought
about the minority split because we knew that no one claiming to speak
in behalf of democratic centralism could possibly get away with a
defense of their provocations. That our opposition to the Pablo line,
expressed in the Letter and resolution, had crystallized before the
minority’s boycott action and <em>before</em> our decision to take
disciplinary steps against them. That we were determined to break with
Pablo and go to the International with our appeal for his removal even
if the minority had remained in the party.</p>
<p>Believe this or not, as you please. But don’t deceive yourself into
thinking that your explanation rests on anything but thin air. It has
no, more foundation in reality than the American minority’s charge that
the SWP leadership has suddenly become ‘mad,’ ‘irrational’ and
’senile,’ which they offered in our fight to explain so many otherwise
unexplainable things. But the charges against Pablo that I outlined to
you last time are based on solid fact: He <em>did</em> prepare and was
on the verge of expelling you and others before the Third World
Congress because you dared to resist the orientation that was evidently
at the bottom of his proposals for that Congress. He <em>did</em>
succeed in bureaucratically getting rid of the over-whelming majority
of the French party. He <em>did</em> foment a split in the British
party by directing his faction to ignore its discipline and by trying
to oust the majority leadership without having even the feeble pretext
that is employed against us. He <em>did</em> encourage and support the
American minority in their violations of discipline that could only end
in split. These are not hypotheses, conjectures or ‘misunderstandings’
-- they are facts, facts with the most sinister implications for the
future of the International. How much longer are you going to refuse to
look them in the face? How much longer are you going to tell yourself
that such acts are motivated by merely tactical differences?</p>
<p>You have made some dire predictions about what is going to happen to
us. I want to touch on only one of the points you raise’our attitude
to the French and Chinese parties. For over two years the Pabloites
here (and I imagine elsewhere) have made them the whipping boys, the
bogeymen and the horrible examples of what we would become if we didn’t
follow Pablo’s course without deviation. The French were denounced as
incorrigible Stalinophobes, capitulators to imperialism and hopeless
sectarians who refused to participate in the real mass movement. The
Chinese were condemned and ridiculed as ‘refugees from a revolution,’
including, I presume, those who were murdered at their posts inside
China. Whenever anyone would say anything about the need for an
independent party, the answer hurled at him was: ‘Look at China. Wasn’t
the revolution made there without our party? Keep on talking that
nonsense about the independence of the party and you will end up the
way the Chinese did, unable and unwilling to see the revolution before
your eyes, blinded by old schema, running away from the revolution.’
When someone would question the correctness of a major orientation to
American Stalinism, he would get hit over the head with the French
example of ‘Stalinophobia,’ etc. At first we didn’t know what to make
of all this. But we began to catch on. Real Life helped us.</p>
<p>We watched the French closely for evidences of Stalinophobia as our
own internal fight developed. We never found any. The policies followed
by the two groups in the French general strike clinched the matter for
us. In that test the majority unquestionably acted as revolutionists,
which is more than could be said for the Pabloites. Whether or not they
actually have shown traces of sectarianism, which is harder to detect
from afar than Stalinophobia, two things are sure: this is a matter on
which we will no longer be content to take Pablo’s word; and the French
majority has shown themselves to be Trotskyists, and therefore people
with whom we can discuss and work. Similarly with the Chinese. That
they made errors during the revolution we know; these were errors that
were at the time shared to one degree or another by everyone else in
the International, including those who now try to make them scapegoats
for our common errors. But we also know now that the claim that they
have refused to recognize the Chinese reality or learn from past errors
is a lie. Their letter of last January, which we never saw until a few
months ago because Pablo suppressed it’and this was not the least
scandalous of his bureaucratic crimes’convincingly refutes this lie.
They have recognized and adjusted themselves to reality, they have
adopted a generally correct attitude to the government and the CP. We
can work with them too, and not on the basis of any wrong position on
the Chinese question, which they have corrected and are correcting. So
we are no longer impressed by horror tales slanderously directed
against the French and Chinese comrades, or predictions that
collaboration with them will inevitably drive us to fall into errors
that they have already corrected or never actually committed in the
first place. And we’re not going to tolerate any longer the Pabloite
campaign to discredit, isolate and excommunicate them.</p>
<p>While we’re on the subject of predictions, maybe you’d better devote
some thought to the future of the Pablo faction and your relations to
it. First of course there will be a period, during which the undecided
will be wooed, when the Pabloites may find it imperative to blur the
distinctions, protest their orthodoxy and screen the course they are
contemplating. But that will be only an interim period. When the dust
has settled and all the anti-Pabloites have been expelled,what will
there be to restrain them? They will be indisputable masters in
what-ever is left of the Pabloite house; their need for you will be
diminished; freed of the restraints imposed by the presence of the
orthodox wing of the International, there will be nothing to stop them
from proceeding at a greatly accelerated pace along their opportunist,
impressionist road toward Stalinism. You know Ceylon: if you want an
image of the future of the Pablo faction, look at what happened to both
the groups that broke with the Ceylon party after they were released
from the pressure of the real Trotskyists. And make no mistake’at
best you will be a captive, and sooner or later an unwelcome one,
because these people will want nothing to do with those who are
unwilling to accompany them all the way down the road of the junking of
Trotskyism.</p>
<p>At the end of your letter, you ask some questions about our
readiness to accept ‘an organizational compromise for reestablishing
the unity of the world movement,’ which, if I understand it correctly,
is aimed at ending or restricting the <em>public</em> struggle that is
going on between the two factions in the International. It seems to me,
however, that such proposals should be addressed first of all not to
us, but to those who started the public struggle. If you are serious
about these proposals, are you willing to and will you:</p>
<p>1. Demand that the Pablo faction discontinue all <em>public
announcements</em> of political positions not authorized by orthodox
doctrine and previous congresses, and submit their revisions of such
positions for <em>discussion</em> in the internal bulletin?</p>
<p>2. Demand that they cancel all summary expulsions and ‘removals’ of
elected leaders of the national sections?</p>
<p>Don’t you recognize that these are necessary conditions for the
consideration of your proposals, especially since it was the Pablo
faction that started the ‘expulsion’ game? without these conditions
your proposals cannot fail to have the appearance of an unworthy
maneuver.</p>
<p>You have made important contributions to the movement, which we all
have valued greatly. But now you are at a crossroads’or rather, you
have already taken a first step down a road that will be fatal for you
as a revolutionist. I urge you: Reconsider what has happened.
Subordinate all subjective considerations. Rid yourself of all
fetishistic conceptions about the International. Restudy the political
differences, and where they lead. Recognize that a historic selection,
overriding all secondary issues, is now taking place in the
International. I earnestly hope that you will take your place on the
side of those who want it to remain a Trotskyist International, and
against those whose political and theoretical disorientation is driving
them inexorably to conciliation with Stalinism and other alien forces.
If you do, we will be ready to discuss a common line of action with
you. Organizational accommodations are not now, and never have been, a
primary consideration for us. What we are concerned with, first of all
and above all, is political agreement.</p>
<p>Comradely,</p>
<p>George Breitman</p>
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Letter from George Breitman to Ernest Mandel, January 15, 1954
Documents 1 through 9 and 11 originally published in
Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the
International Committee
Dear Ernest:
Your letter of December 9 was painful to read. I had hoped that a
meeting of minds was possible. Instead, you have so far chosen to
misunderstand, employ debaters’ tricks and ignore most of what I wrote
you. You evidently feel you must defend ‘the International’ against us,
and this has led you to indefensible statements. I asked why you had
signed your name to the November 15 IS Bureau letter containing
numerous gross slanders against us, applied to our past as well as
present course, when in your letter to me you said you did not consider
our past course ever to have been unprincipled. In the December issue
of the French Pabloite paper, which I had not seen when I wrote you,
you claimed among other things that our minority represented ‘more than
a third of the members’ and that they committed ‘no public act of
indiscipline.’ Do you know how ridiculous this makes you appear here,
where everyone knows they represented only 18 percent? Do you see why
no one can give the slightest credence to your equally inflated figures
about the British Pabloites? And don’t you feel silly, writing there
was ‘no public act of indiscipline’ at the very same time that Cochran,
weeping on Shachtman’s shoulder, publicly refutes you by explaining
that his faction deliberately organized the boycott of our 25th
Anniversary celebration? By the way, what do you think of this boycott?
Why do you evade all mention of it? Are you, like the real Pabloites,
an enemy of our 25 year struggle and all that it represents? If you had
been in New York, would you have joined the boycott?
Your answer to the question I asked you last time is, ‘I’m not going
to squabble about words with my comrades who defend my organization.’
Does this mean that you will sign or write anything, no matter how far
from the truth, just so long as it is conceived as a defense of the IS?
What kind of defense is it, and what is being defended, that requires
lies? How can I have confidence in what you write when you tell me in
advance that you will not ‘squabble about words’ with slanderers
because they are on your side, or because you are on theirs? How can I
tell what part of what you write is actually your opinion of the facts,
and what part is concession to your slanderous allies?
Nevertheless, I want to try again to reach through to you’for
your sake, for ours, for the sake of the International.
You make a joke of my letter when you ask if I think the present
situation is the result of ‘nothing but a tragi-comedy of errors and
misunderstandings.’ No, what my letter tried to do in good faith was
answer the charge that our course was unprincipled by reciting the
events and the evolution of our thinking under their impact. What we
reached was not a misunderstanding, but an understanding. An
understanding (1) of the profound political differences that separate
us from the Pablo faction, which are set forth in our Letter and to
which I shall return. An understanding (2) of the new slogan, ‘Junk the
old Trotskyism,’ not as an expression of a desire to bring our program
up to date, correct our errors and adjust our tactics to new needs
(although that is how it was represented), but as an expression of a
desire to junk Trotskyism itself as outmoded and to replace it with an
opportunist orientation to Stalinism as the channel through which the
revolution will pass everywhere in the world. And an understanding (3)
of the necessity to determine who the real Trotskyists in this
International are.
You condemn us for openly publishing our Letter in which we broke
politically with the Pablo faction, an act which you claim represents
’a break with the International.’ The reasons why we published the
Letter have already been stated by Cannon in the December 28 paper.
What do you mean when you accuse us of ‘a break with the International’
by publishing a defense of orthodox Trotskyism against deliberate
public attacks on it? Didn’t Clarke publicly violate our program by
forecasting the possible self-reform of the Soviet bureaucracy in the
magazine behind the backs of its editorial board? Haven’t the new
Pabloite conceptions about Soviet development, to which we object, been
published? Didn’t the French Pabloites publicly defend the Stalinists
against the criticism of the French Trotskyists of the Majority in a
public leaflet? Is it ‘loyalty’ to the International to defile its
program and tradition in public, but ‘a break with the International’
to defend this program and this tradition in public? The members of the
SWP don’t think so, and no pontifical pronouncements, factional
expulsions, excommunications or ‘removals’ will change our opinion. I
agree that, as a general rule, internal disputes in our movement would
perhaps better be discussed internally, although a public discussion is
nothing new. We conducted a limited public discussion before the 1940
split in the SWP, and Trotsky did not hesitate to attack in the public
press the capitulationist position of Roman Well and others in the
German section in 1932. Trotsky’s polemic against Urbahns, in the
formative stage of the International Left Opposition, was also
published in The Militant. In any case, we will never agree
to a one-sided rule whereby revisionists enjoy the right to attack the
program in public and the orthodox have no right to defend it in public.
And I urge you: Please don’t pretend that the publication of the
Letter marked a qualitative change in the relations between the IS and
us. Because on November 1 5, before you had even heard of the
existence of our Letter, the IS Bureau, writing to the leaderships
of all sections, had already excommunicated us (and without even
waiting to hear of the circumstances under which we had disciplined the
organizers of the boycott, had already pledged to ‘never permit the
expulsions effected by Cannon’).
Elaborating on ‘the main and only fundamental difference which I see
at the present stage of the fight: the overthrow of the principle of
one World Party,’ you write many things about international discipline
and democratic centralism that we would never quarrel with. But many of
these things are also beside the point. I said we want to know who the
Trotskyists in this International are. With Trotskyists we always have
found and always will find agreement on organizational procedure. With
Trotskyists we are willing and eager to discuss. But we want to be sure
that they are Trotskyists, and not something else. Stalinists and
apologists for Stalinism we will fight as enemies, not engage in
discussion on the basis of democratic centralism. This is not a
difference of nuance; it is the first condition of democratic
centralism. (The American Pabloites understood this and that was why
they refused to be bound by democratic centralism.) The selection is
now taking place in the International. Far from having contempt for the
majority of the International, as you charge, we have the greatest
confidence that a decisive majority will understand the real issues and
show themselves to be Trotskyists.
I would make a second condition. When someone talks to us about
democratic centralism, we want to make sure we are talking about the
same thing. Tell me, do you think democratic centralism is possible
internationally where an international leadership does not recognize
and defend democratic centralism on a national scale? I don’t believe
it is, and I think this question is most pertinent to our discussion.
Here we were in the SWP, contending with a minority that blatantly
violated discipline in the name of a ‘higher allegiance.’ The Pabloite
faction in England were doing the same thing at the same time. This,
you will recall, was what happened first, before there was
any disciplinary action against them, before there was any
Letter. What, in your opinion, were we supposed to do’grit our
teeth, smile and console ourselves with the merits of democratic
centralism’as applied internationally? Oh, you tell us, ‘some
organizational compromise could have easily been found at the eve of
your last Plenum.’ Really? Such as what? Without anyone else’s help, we
found the means for a truce at the May plenum. But it wasn’t worth the
paper it was written on as soon as the minority saw it could not
survive a truce. Why should we have your faith in ‘some organizational
compromise’ when we could see that the minority was driven by
fundamental political pressure that made them feel we were
incompatible? Does your conception of international democratic
centralism require the leadership of a national party to permit it to
be wrecked as the price of international democratic centralism? It’s
not our conception anyhow.
As I say, the minority violated democratic centralism. Here then was
an excellent opportunity for the IS to show how devoted it was to this
principle. Did it do it? On the contrary, Pablo directiy instigated and
encouraged the deliberate violations. (You may not know the whole
American story, but you certainly know that this was what happened in
Britain.) Is that how you expect to create devotion to this principle
on the international field? Instead of joining us in our defense of
democratic centralism in our party, the Pabloite IS attacked us for
bureaucratism and brutality and degeneracy and pledged that it would
‘never’ permit the violators of democratic centralism to be
disciplined. And after that you expect this IS to be taken seriously
when it preaches the necessity of democratic centralism on an
international scale?
I am not sure, because I don’t know all your ideas on the subject,
but I have the feeling that your views on the International suffer from
a tendency to regard it as a sort of collective substitute for national
parties. I know that is the real Pabloite conception; that is why the
Pablo faction is so eager to break up the solid national cadres who
assert independence of judgment. Without the International, in our
view, there can be no national parties worthy of the name of
Trotskyist. But that doesn’t mean that the International can substitute
for them, for their organic development, for their selection of a
leadership that really represents them, for the experiences they must
pass through if they are to be fit for their historic role. Against
these truths, which must be accepted as the necessary basis for a
healthy relationship between parties and International leadership, we
are offered a caricature of Cannon’s remarks, according to which the
International must be a ‘letter-box,’ exercising no discipline, having
no common line. Will it really surprise you to learn that we reject
this caricature. Don’t you know, or have you forgotten, that we got
along with the International for 25 years? At the same time we flatly
reject the genuinely bureaucratic’to speak plainly, the Stalinist --
conceptions and practices of Pablo, which enabled him to dispose of a
critical majority in France by disposing of the majority of the party,
and which supplied him with the gall to issue his ultimatum that we’d
better abandon our revolutionary anti-Stalinist line on Germany and the
Soviet Union because they didn’t conform to his private line, or else!
We reject the caricature of Cannon s views and the tested reality of
Pablo’s views, and demand a healthy relationship between parties and
International leadership, which will permit the parties to grow, and
the International leadership, expressing the positions of the majority,
to guide, co-ordinate and where necessary discipline’all this, of
course, being possible only on the basis of a common general (that is,
Trotskyist) line.
On the basic point in your letter: You emphasize ‘loyalty to the
International...as an established organization, with its established
leadership and statutes, while our main emphasis is on loyalty to
Trotskyism, that is, the program, the body of doctrine and the
tradition that the International had up to and through the 3 world
Congress. Where we see fundamental political differences between
ourselves and the Pablo faction, you see only differences of a
’tactical nature,’ none of which ‘put a question mark on any of the
basic principles of our estimation of Stalinism and the USSR.’ That, in
our opinion, is where you make the biggest mistake of all. You will end
in a blind alley, totally unable to influence the development of this
struggle in a revolutionary fashion, unless you probe the already
visible differences to the bottom and take your stand on the basis of
the political lines that are tearing the International apart, rather
than on the basis of an organizational loyalty, and an essentially
abstract organizational loyalty at that.
I won’t repeat what has already been written about these differences
in our Letter, resolution and press. But I am forced to return to the
German question when you say, ‘I myself have failed to grasp till today
the differences in approach to the Eastern German question’, but that
amazes me all the more. Why don’t you ask Pablo? He grasped it
sufficiently to use the authority of his post’without any protest
from other IS members’to try to bludgeon us into substituting his
approach for our own. Instead of accusing us of ‘inventing’
differences, why don’t you find out from Pablo why he regarded our
differences on this issue so important that he felt he had to resort to
the heavy hand to try to stifle our views?
I don’t know what Pablo would tell you, but here is what we think:
There was a fundamental difference between him and us on the omission
from the IS manifesto of our demand for the withdrawal of the Soviet
troops from East Germany in June. I know what you wrote me on November
15’that it was omitted ‘only because we wanted at that time to
concentrate on the slogans the fighters in Berlin had used themselves
(where no one had used that slogan and for good reasons! Did the people
come out on the street in the February revolution with the slogan:
Withdrawal of the Cossacks. When you are busy making a revolution, and
not only writing about it, the winning of the troops wherever it is
possible becomes task nr. 1, not the deliberate provocation of these
troops into hostile actions.
Fundamentally this explanation strikes me as a lawyer’s argument.
(1) As I told you before, the evidence we have collected was that the
demand for the withdrawal of the troops was raised; but let that go --
I will agree that it probably was not raised as widely as other
demands. (2) But must the raising of such a demand necessarily
constitute a provocation of the troops into hostile actions? Not
necessarily; in fact, such a demand, linked with appeals and acts of
fraternization, etc., could have just the opposite effect and win the
troops to friendly actions’it all depends on the way it’s done. (3)
Let’s distinguish a little. There well might be situations in which the
masses in the street could not raise such a demand, no matter how much
they wanted to. But the IS statement was not written in the street. If
it is true that the masses didn’t raise this demand because they
couldn’t, then it all the more became the duty of the Trotskyist IS to
express the demand for them, to voice it in their behalf, to use the
occasion to drive home the lesson that the withdrawal of the occupation
troops is an indispensable necessity for the successful completion of
the revolution they had begun (I don’t think your comparison of
invading, occupying troops with Cossacks is a helpful one in this
situation). (4) Don’t say that the IS wanted to concentrate on the
demands that the Berlin fighters had used themselves’say why it
wanted to do only that. Since when are we constrained to limit
ourselves only to those demands already raised by the masses’isn’t
that called tail-ending? (5) And finally, in support of my opinion that
you have given us a lawyer’s argument, I want to remind you that the IS
statement was dated June 25’more than a week after the Soviet troops
had already engaged in hostile actions, that is, had saved the regime
from almost certain overthrow by shooting down and jailing
revolutionary workers. How could the omission of the demand in the IS
statement on June 25 have had any effect in warding off the
counter-revolutionary actions of the Soviet troops?
’But,’ you can say, ‘even if this was a mistake, couldn’t it be a
mistake in tactics?’ It could, and that was why we were slow to draw
conclusions, and why I wrote to ask you about it last summer. But when
we began to hear the arguments of the American Pabloites, we saw that
it went far beyond tactical differences. For their basic point in
support of the IS’s omission was that to demand withdrawal of the
Soviet troops from East Germany while imperialist troops remained in
West Germany would be to play into the hands of imperialism. Ask
yourself: Is that an expression of a mere tactical difference? Since
the Soviet troops are the chief obstacle to the political revolution in
East Germany, doesn’t such a line of reasoning itself become an
obstacle to that revolution? Doesn’t it raise at least a question mark
over our attitude to Stalinism, particularly to our traditional
positions that the way to defend the Soviet Union is by extending the
revolution and that the defense of the Soviet Union is subordinate to
the extension of the world revolution. Those who refuse to recognize
such a line as a danger signal pointing to the growth of sentiments
conciliatory to Stalinism will probably never recognize as a danger
signal anything short of a proposal to dissolve the International.
Now the rotten thing and the infuriating thing is that those who
hold these ideas refuse to express them openly, confining them for the
present to verbal discussion and private correspondence while they
build a faction around them. And when we see what is really at the
bottom of their ‘tactical’ proposals and how much damage it is causing
in terms of morale and when we want to bring the thing out into the
open, we are met with evasion and duplicity and denial’and you
reproach us as users of the smear tactic for wanting to discuss what
people ‘don’t write.’ The procedure they follow is the infallible
hallmark of revisionists: unable to present their full position at the
start because then they could make no headway, they nibble away at
things, putting out a feeler here and a feeler there, retreating when
they have gone too far and exposed their real hand, refusing to discuss
the real orientation behind their tactical proposals, furiously denying
any intention of abandoning principles, and vilifying those who want to
come to grips with them as sectarian, ossified, helpless in the face of
changing reality, etc.
You are wrong if you think the troops-withdrawal issue is the only
important one involved in the dispute over Germany; the conception in
the IS statement that the bureaucracy can’t stop half-way on the road
to concessions is a wide open bridge to the theory of Deutscher. You
are wrong when you say there is only ‘one wrong sentence’ in Clarke’s
article on Stalin’s death. The only thing exceptional about that
sentence, which mislabels the harmonious sharing of power between a
section of the bureaucracy and the workers as ‘political revolution,’
is that there Clarke slipped and let too much out of the bag. But the
entire article is drenched with Deutscherism and could easily have been
written by Deutscher if he were a member of our party and under
compulsion of unfolding his revision of Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism
cautiously and step by step. I really am surprised that you didn’t see
that, and I urge you to reread it, noting among other things the new
terminology: Stalin, you see, may have been ‘anti-revolutionary,’ but
never, God forbid, must we say that he was counter-revolutionary
because all the time he was an unwitting and blind instrument of the
revolution, etc. And because we dared to differ from his article, Pablo
condemned us as not expressing the International’s line. There was a
time not too long ago when Pablo and Clarke both considered Deutscher
the most adroit apologist for Stalinism; but that time is past, and
they fight us because we don’t want any concealed Deutscherism in our
press or in the International. And it isn’t Deutscher who has changed,
I assure you.
But, you say, you’ll dissociate yourselves from any sharing of power
ideas, you’ll put back the sentence on the Soviet revolution dropped
from the Transitional Program, you’ll reaffirm that you really wanted
the troops withdrawn from Germany’in short, you’ll clear up all the
’misunderstandings’ on these and other questions we have raised. Again,
I don’t question your sincerity. You want to do these things, and they
may even be done. The Pablo faction is now up against the wall; they
need all the help they can get from people with prestige as orthodox
Trotskyists who are foolish enough to give it to them; tactically, it
may serve their factional interests to retreat until the present crisis
is eased for them; they may not only permit you to add or alter these
sentences, they may even ask you to do so.
But it won’t solve anything because it will be at the expense of
blurring actual differences, of covering up their real orientation. The
Pabloites won’t mind such a thing happening if it will help them to
maintain their control over the International apparatus, because with
that control they will be able to interpret as they see fit whatever
resolutions are passed. But you would regret contributing to such an
evasion as long as you lived. To lend yourself to such an operation
would be shameful because it would obscure differences which you know
exist even if you think them tactical’and when has the revolutionary
movement ever been helped by the suppression of differences! That was
the role played by Shachtman in 1939-40. Burnham was breaking with
Marxism but Shachtman covered up for him, softened his sentences,
helped him to conceal his departure in the interest of their factional
alignment at least until the factional fight was over in our party; and
that was the beginning of Shachtman’s ruin as a revolutionist. We
called Shachtman Burnham’s advocate. I hope you won’t serve as Pablo’s
advocate.
On a few others matters handled in your letter:
I asked why you think the SWP leadership, whose principled conduct
in the past you voluntarily affirmed, has now become unprincipled. The
IS Bureau letter in the French Pabloite paper of December, which I
presume you endorsed, talks about our ‘complete degeneration,’
resulting from our ‘prolonged isolation from the masses and from the
terrible pressure exerted on all social milieux in the United States by
American imperialism preparing its counterrevolutionary war’ and says
our leaders are ‘really adapting themselves to the atmosphere
prevailing in the citadel of imperialism and camouflaging under
"extreme left" language their own buckling under this reactionary
pressure.’ You yourself, in the same paper, write that our leadership
’has lost its principles under the pressure of the reactionary
atmosphere imperialism imposes on its country.’ (In your letter to me,
in slightly more restrained fashion, you say that ‘objectively this is
a result of alien class pressure, without saying that your party has
already succumbed to that pressure.’)
As I said last time, you must do more than make statements, you must
support them concretely. The only concrete attempt you make goes like
this: The SWP has ‘broken with the International’ (to use your words)
-- ipso facto, it is and must be buckling to the reactionary pressure
of imperialism. But I repeat: We have not broken with the
International, we have no intention of letting anyone drive us away
from the International; we are fighting its anti-Trotskyist faction
precisely because we don’t want to break with the International.
There is a terrible pressure exerted on the revolutionary party in
this country, and its results are extremely harmful. But you don’t
understand its results because you don’t see how they manifest
themselves; you have the thing upside down. How is the pressure
manifested concretely? By a desire, an instinct, a hysterical drive to
get out of the line of fire. That is, by a movement to get out of our
party, which is branded subversive, hounded, persecuted, threatened
with legal prosecution. Those who are buckling under the pressure feel
uncomfortable in our party. They want the party to stop resisting the
pressure’to discontinue activities that can result in casualties (in
Michigan the Pabloites were bitter about our elections campaign in 1952
because, according to their reasoning, ‘they might not have gone after
us under the Trucks Act if we had not been running an election campaign
that forced us to their attention’). The last thing in the world they
wanted was the line of the Third World Congress that in this country we
should act as an independent revolutionary party. And when they see
that they can’t persuade our party to try to escape persecution by
playing dead (that’s their concept of ‘propaganda activity’), then they
want to get out of the party. Leaving our party also has certain
attractions for opportunist elements in the unions: It is dangerous for
party members to run for union office today because if elected they run
the risk of being indicted and jailed for perjury under the
Taft-Hartley Act, which requires an oath that you do not belong to any
’subversive’ organizations. Those who leave the party and thus can
swear that they don’t belong to any group on the ‘subversive’ list can
run freely for union office, regain a position of respectability in the
eyes of the union bureaucracy, etc.
In other words, the way in which buckling under the pressure
manifests itself is by a tendency to find pretexts to get out of this
party, membership in which entails serious risks. But what about the
International? Since we are not formally affiliated to it anyhow,our
relation to the International does not and cannot play the same kind of
role in this process I have described. Whether or not we actually do
break with the International (and not merely with the Pablo faction)
does not affect the status of the SWP on the ‘subversive’ list because
the SWP remains on it and the International does not. That is why I say
your easy little formula stands everything on its head. It is the
Pabloites here who have buckled under the pressure and are driven by a
desire to duck, not we. Your abstract explanation about us applies to
them perfectly in the concrete. If you really believe what you have
written, you must think it over again in the light of the Pabloites’
uncontrollable frenzy to get out of our party as soon as possible and
under any pretext. Surely their sigh of relief as they left us must
have been audible over the Atlantic.
Determined to shut your eyes to the political differences that
motivate our conduct, you seek another explanation. Only one has
suggested itself to you, and you recur to it at least nine times in
your letter. Here is how I would summarize your explanation: We never
would recognize any discipline in the International when we happened to
be in a minority; we denied the IS the right to reach its own
conclusions on matters concerning the SWP; what we wanted was a clique
in the IS that would obediently raise its hands whenever Cannon gave
the signal. These are hypotheses, and nothing else; you know very well
that nothing ever happened in the past 25 years to give them the
slightest shred of confirmation. Now, however, you contend that they
are supported and even proved by one thing: We resolved to put through
a brutal and bureaucratic expulsion of the minority and demanded that
the IS passively accept it, and when we saw that that was not
forthcoming, we decided to ‘break with the FI,’ wrote the Letter in
order to ‘justify’ the break politically, etc.
According to this conception, everything would have remained
harmonious if only the IS had acquiesced in the alleged bureaucratic
expulsion. But first we must ask: Why should the SWP leadership want to
expel the minority, bureaucratically or otherwise? What reason could
they have? Merely because the minority expressed differences? But that
had never happened before in our party. It didn’t happen now with the
Marcy group, who also had differences and also expressed them. How
could the leaders justify a bureaucratic expulsion to the members, who
you admit have not been trained in such a school? What would the
leaders have to gain from such an expulsion when everyone understood
that the 18% minority could not hope to win the party leadership for a
long long time, if ever?
Your entire explanation, you see, rests on one assumption’that a
bureaucratic expulsion, or an expulsion of any kind, was wanted and
needed by the leadership so badly that everything else must be
subordinated to it. But this assumption had no validity.
The SWP leadership had neither the need nor the desire to expel the
minority’it had contained them, contained them so successfully that
the minority began to disintegrate right after the May plenum and would
have disintegrated further if the minority leaders had not resumed
all-out factional warfare in order to whip up and hold together their
followers. You say the May truce could not work; your proof’that
Burns ‘already had information to the contrary from Cannon.’ This is
not true. He had no such information, and neither did anyone else. We
regarded the May truce as workable, and expected it to work if the
minority wanted it to work and if Pablo did plot encourage it to wreck
the truce. We told the party we expected it to work. We wrote it in the
press. Do you think the members of our party are so blind that such a
double game can be played on them?
No, you’ve got it all wrong, as I explained at some length in my
last letter. We didn’t want to expel them, we did everything we could
to keep them in the party on the basis of democratic centralism. If
they had wanted to remain in the party, nothing could have removed
them. They wanted to get out and away, and there was nothing we could
do to prevent them from going except to make an unconditional surrender
and a shambles of our party. So your simple explanation falls to the
ground. It explains nothing because it evades the question of why the
minority left our party, of what pressure was driving them. It
substitutes psychological speculation for political and organizational
analysis. It answers no questions and raises many. Either your previous
estimate of our party was completely wrong, or your present one.
The truth is that we were not interested in expelling the minority,
but in keeping them in the party, if possible. That this was not
possible. That we were not greatly concerned about what the IS thought
about the minority split because we knew that no one claiming to speak
in behalf of democratic centralism could possibly get away with a
defense of their provocations. That our opposition to the Pablo line,
expressed in the Letter and resolution, had crystallized before the
minority’s boycott action and before our decision to take
disciplinary steps against them. That we were determined to break with
Pablo and go to the International with our appeal for his removal even
if the minority had remained in the party.
Believe this or not, as you please. But don’t deceive yourself into
thinking that your explanation rests on anything but thin air. It has
no, more foundation in reality than the American minority’s charge that
the SWP leadership has suddenly become ‘mad,’ ‘irrational’ and
’senile,’ which they offered in our fight to explain so many otherwise
unexplainable things. But the charges against Pablo that I outlined to
you last time are based on solid fact: He did prepare and was
on the verge of expelling you and others before the Third World
Congress because you dared to resist the orientation that was evidently
at the bottom of his proposals for that Congress. He did
succeed in bureaucratically getting rid of the over-whelming majority
of the French party. He did foment a split in the British
party by directing his faction to ignore its discipline and by trying
to oust the majority leadership without having even the feeble pretext
that is employed against us. He did encourage and support the
American minority in their violations of discipline that could only end
in split. These are not hypotheses, conjectures or ‘misunderstandings’
-- they are facts, facts with the most sinister implications for the
future of the International. How much longer are you going to refuse to
look them in the face? How much longer are you going to tell yourself
that such acts are motivated by merely tactical differences?
You have made some dire predictions about what is going to happen to
us. I want to touch on only one of the points you raise’our attitude
to the French and Chinese parties. For over two years the Pabloites
here (and I imagine elsewhere) have made them the whipping boys, the
bogeymen and the horrible examples of what we would become if we didn’t
follow Pablo’s course without deviation. The French were denounced as
incorrigible Stalinophobes, capitulators to imperialism and hopeless
sectarians who refused to participate in the real mass movement. The
Chinese were condemned and ridiculed as ‘refugees from a revolution,’
including, I presume, those who were murdered at their posts inside
China. Whenever anyone would say anything about the need for an
independent party, the answer hurled at him was: ‘Look at China. Wasn’t
the revolution made there without our party? Keep on talking that
nonsense about the independence of the party and you will end up the
way the Chinese did, unable and unwilling to see the revolution before
your eyes, blinded by old schema, running away from the revolution.’
When someone would question the correctness of a major orientation to
American Stalinism, he would get hit over the head with the French
example of ‘Stalinophobia,’ etc. At first we didn’t know what to make
of all this. But we began to catch on. Real Life helped us.
We watched the French closely for evidences of Stalinophobia as our
own internal fight developed. We never found any. The policies followed
by the two groups in the French general strike clinched the matter for
us. In that test the majority unquestionably acted as revolutionists,
which is more than could be said for the Pabloites. Whether or not they
actually have shown traces of sectarianism, which is harder to detect
from afar than Stalinophobia, two things are sure: this is a matter on
which we will no longer be content to take Pablo’s word; and the French
majority has shown themselves to be Trotskyists, and therefore people
with whom we can discuss and work. Similarly with the Chinese. That
they made errors during the revolution we know; these were errors that
were at the time shared to one degree or another by everyone else in
the International, including those who now try to make them scapegoats
for our common errors. But we also know now that the claim that they
have refused to recognize the Chinese reality or learn from past errors
is a lie. Their letter of last January, which we never saw until a few
months ago because Pablo suppressed it’and this was not the least
scandalous of his bureaucratic crimes’convincingly refutes this lie.
They have recognized and adjusted themselves to reality, they have
adopted a generally correct attitude to the government and the CP. We
can work with them too, and not on the basis of any wrong position on
the Chinese question, which they have corrected and are correcting. So
we are no longer impressed by horror tales slanderously directed
against the French and Chinese comrades, or predictions that
collaboration with them will inevitably drive us to fall into errors
that they have already corrected or never actually committed in the
first place. And we’re not going to tolerate any longer the Pabloite
campaign to discredit, isolate and excommunicate them.
While we’re on the subject of predictions, maybe you’d better devote
some thought to the future of the Pablo faction and your relations to
it. First of course there will be a period, during which the undecided
will be wooed, when the Pabloites may find it imperative to blur the
distinctions, protest their orthodoxy and screen the course they are
contemplating. But that will be only an interim period. When the dust
has settled and all the anti-Pabloites have been expelled,what will
there be to restrain them? They will be indisputable masters in
what-ever is left of the Pabloite house; their need for you will be
diminished; freed of the restraints imposed by the presence of the
orthodox wing of the International, there will be nothing to stop them
from proceeding at a greatly accelerated pace along their opportunist,
impressionist road toward Stalinism. You know Ceylon: if you want an
image of the future of the Pablo faction, look at what happened to both
the groups that broke with the Ceylon party after they were released
from the pressure of the real Trotskyists. And make no mistake’at
best you will be a captive, and sooner or later an unwelcome one,
because these people will want nothing to do with those who are
unwilling to accompany them all the way down the road of the junking of
Trotskyism.
At the end of your letter, you ask some questions about our
readiness to accept ‘an organizational compromise for reestablishing
the unity of the world movement,’ which, if I understand it correctly,
is aimed at ending or restricting the public struggle that is
going on between the two factions in the International. It seems to me,
however, that such proposals should be addressed first of all not to
us, but to those who started the public struggle. If you are serious
about these proposals, are you willing to and will you:
1. Demand that the Pablo faction discontinue all public
announcements of political positions not authorized by orthodox
doctrine and previous congresses, and submit their revisions of such
positions for discussion in the internal bulletin?
2. Demand that they cancel all summary expulsions and ‘removals’ of
elected leaders of the national sections?
Don’t you recognize that these are necessary conditions for the
consideration of your proposals, especially since it was the Pablo
faction that started the ‘expulsion’ game? without these conditions
your proposals cannot fail to have the appearance of an unworthy
maneuver.
You have made important contributions to the movement, which we all
have valued greatly. But now you are at a crossroads’or rather, you
have already taken a first step down a road that will be fatal for you
as a revolutionist. I urge you: Reconsider what has happened.
Subordinate all subjective considerations. Rid yourself of all
fetishistic conceptions about the International. Restudy the political
differences, and where they lead. Recognize that a historic selection,
overriding all secondary issues, is now taking place in the
International. I earnestly hope that you will take your place on the
side of those who want it to remain a Trotskyist International, and
against those whose political and theoretical disorientation is driving
them inexorably to conciliation with Stalinism and other alien forces.
If you do, we will be ready to discuss a common line of action with
you. Organizational accommodations are not now, and never have been, a
primary consideration for us. What we are concerned with, first of all
and above all, is political agreement.
Comradely,
George Breitman
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Newark Negro “Leaders”<br>
Drop Colored Candidate</h1>
<h4>No Longer Backing Any Colored Man<br>
for City Commission Race; Back Machines</h4>
<h3>(19 April 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_16" target="new">Vol. V No. 16</a>, 19 April 1941, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Every colored worker acquainted with what goes on in Newark’s City Hall knows that he has no friends there. That is why every time elections come around, there is a rumbling among the masses, and the beginning of organization to oppose the City Hall machines and to elect an independent colored candidate as Commissioner.</p>
<p>It is always at this point that the so-called colored “leaders” jump into the picture and try to head off or break up an independent colored political movement.</p>
<p>Early in this campaign several Negroes announced their candidacy. The different colored organizations began to stress the necessity of fighting for the election of a colored Commissioner. Talk began to spread about uniting the different groups behind one candidate by holding a city-wide conference representative of the organizations.</p>
<p>Then the lawyers and doctors and wardheelers stepped in.</p>
<p>Holding one or two conferences representative only of themselves, and supported by the colored press they decided to push the candidacy of Rev. William P. Hayes, a safe and sane conservative whose only role in political life has been to oppose the $21,000,000 relief referendum of 1929 at a time when defeat of the measure would have meant starvation for thousands.</p>
<p>Hayes, said these leaders, would antagonize no one, and so everyone would get behind him. None of the City Hall factions would oppose him (because he wouldn’t oppose them). So all the colored ward heelers could support him at the same time they supported their individual factions. The fact that Hayes did not stand for any particular program, they said, was in his favor.</p>
<p>And so all the other colored candidates, and all the working class candidates were ignored and their campaigns played down, while Hayes was built up by the colored press.</p>
<p>This went on until about two weeks ago when Hayes left them holding the bag by declaring that he was too busy in the church (he felt he couldn’t win anyway, so why run?).</p>
<p>Immediately, these “leaders” scattered to the wind, dropping the idea of a campaign for an independent colored candidate like a hot stone and scurried off to offer their services to the various boss political machines.</p>
<p>And so we see the strange picture of the so-called leaders of the colored race deserting the movement to place a colored man on the Commission and flocking to the aid of the politicians who have kicked the Negroes around for so many years.</p>
<p>And we see the strange picture of the colored press, which claims to be the voice of the colored race and which a month ago printed long editorials on the need of securing colored representation on the Commission, now filling its columns with article after article on the lily-white politicians and printing virtually nothing on the colored candidates, even when something significant occurs on their campaign.</p>
<p>The two outstanding colored candidates are William E. Bohannan and Dr. Andrew V. Morris.</p>
<p>Bohannan is a trade unionist and member of the CIO, endorsed by some unions and running on the working class slogan of “Make Newark a 100% Union Town.” His campaign is important because it illustrates that a colored candidate <em>can</em> get support of white workers if he presents a platform in their interests as well as in the interests of the colored workers.<br>
</p>
<h4>CIO Endorses His Bills</h4>
<p class="fst">As an example of this, one an point not only to endorsement of Bohannan by unions of white and colored workers, but also to the action by the Greater Newark Industrial Union Council, central CIO body, just last week when this powerful body of white and colored workers voted to endorse the two “Bohannan Equal Rights Bills” to punish discrimination against Negroes in employment by companies dealing with the city and by proprietors of public places.</p>
<p>A few examples from the press will illustrate the hopelessness of expecting any independent leader ship from them in this campaign:</p>
<ul>
<li>In February, Editor Clark of the <strong>Guardian</strong> assailed Vincent Murphy, at present Commissioner, for not doing anything for the colored people who had supported him as “labor’s choice” four years ago, and warning him he need not expect their support in this campaign, even if he had just hired a second colored employee. In March, Murphy bought some space in the <strong>Guardian</strong>. Early in April there was an account of a meeting on behalf of Murphy and listed among the speakers was none other than Editor Clark!<br>
</li>
<li>The <strong>Herald News</strong> fully supported the move to draft Hayes because of the terrible conditions among the Negroes these last four years. Yet it supports the candidacy of Ellenstein, Franklin and Murphy who constituted a majority of the Commission in office these last four years!<br>
</li>
<li>The <strong>Afro-American</strong> has long demanded the admission of colored doctors and nurses to the City Hospital. Yet it today supports the candidacy of Franklin, head of the department which bars them.</li>
</ul>
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George Breitman
Newark Negro “Leaders”
Drop Colored Candidate
No Longer Backing Any Colored Man
for City Commission Race; Back Machines
(19 April 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 16, 19 April 1941, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Every colored worker acquainted with what goes on in Newark’s City Hall knows that he has no friends there. That is why every time elections come around, there is a rumbling among the masses, and the beginning of organization to oppose the City Hall machines and to elect an independent colored candidate as Commissioner.
It is always at this point that the so-called colored “leaders” jump into the picture and try to head off or break up an independent colored political movement.
Early in this campaign several Negroes announced their candidacy. The different colored organizations began to stress the necessity of fighting for the election of a colored Commissioner. Talk began to spread about uniting the different groups behind one candidate by holding a city-wide conference representative of the organizations.
Then the lawyers and doctors and wardheelers stepped in.
Holding one or two conferences representative only of themselves, and supported by the colored press they decided to push the candidacy of Rev. William P. Hayes, a safe and sane conservative whose only role in political life has been to oppose the $21,000,000 relief referendum of 1929 at a time when defeat of the measure would have meant starvation for thousands.
Hayes, said these leaders, would antagonize no one, and so everyone would get behind him. None of the City Hall factions would oppose him (because he wouldn’t oppose them). So all the colored ward heelers could support him at the same time they supported their individual factions. The fact that Hayes did not stand for any particular program, they said, was in his favor.
And so all the other colored candidates, and all the working class candidates were ignored and their campaigns played down, while Hayes was built up by the colored press.
This went on until about two weeks ago when Hayes left them holding the bag by declaring that he was too busy in the church (he felt he couldn’t win anyway, so why run?).
Immediately, these “leaders” scattered to the wind, dropping the idea of a campaign for an independent colored candidate like a hot stone and scurried off to offer their services to the various boss political machines.
And so we see the strange picture of the so-called leaders of the colored race deserting the movement to place a colored man on the Commission and flocking to the aid of the politicians who have kicked the Negroes around for so many years.
And we see the strange picture of the colored press, which claims to be the voice of the colored race and which a month ago printed long editorials on the need of securing colored representation on the Commission, now filling its columns with article after article on the lily-white politicians and printing virtually nothing on the colored candidates, even when something significant occurs on their campaign.
The two outstanding colored candidates are William E. Bohannan and Dr. Andrew V. Morris.
Bohannan is a trade unionist and member of the CIO, endorsed by some unions and running on the working class slogan of “Make Newark a 100% Union Town.” His campaign is important because it illustrates that a colored candidate can get support of white workers if he presents a platform in their interests as well as in the interests of the colored workers.
CIO Endorses His Bills
As an example of this, one an point not only to endorsement of Bohannan by unions of white and colored workers, but also to the action by the Greater Newark Industrial Union Council, central CIO body, just last week when this powerful body of white and colored workers voted to endorse the two “Bohannan Equal Rights Bills” to punish discrimination against Negroes in employment by companies dealing with the city and by proprietors of public places.
A few examples from the press will illustrate the hopelessness of expecting any independent leader ship from them in this campaign:
In February, Editor Clark of the Guardian assailed Vincent Murphy, at present Commissioner, for not doing anything for the colored people who had supported him as “labor’s choice” four years ago, and warning him he need not expect their support in this campaign, even if he had just hired a second colored employee. In March, Murphy bought some space in the Guardian. Early in April there was an account of a meeting on behalf of Murphy and listed among the speakers was none other than Editor Clark!
The Herald News fully supported the move to draft Hayes because of the terrible conditions among the Negroes these last four years. Yet it supports the candidacy of Ellenstein, Franklin and Murphy who constituted a majority of the Commission in office these last four years!
The Afro-American has long demanded the admission of colored doctors and nurses to the City Hospital. Yet it today supports the candidacy of Franklin, head of the department which bars them.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(2 November 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_44" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 44</a>, 2 November 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>Roosevelt “Promotes” Davis</h4>
<p class="fst">Two weeks ago in this column we drew attention to the failure of President Roosevelt to promote Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Negro officer, to the rank of brigadier-general, as he did with scores of white colonels at the same time.</p>
<p>In it we declared what everyone acquainted with the situation knew: that the Army is a Jim Crow institution, that it does everything it can to prevent Negroes from becoming officers, and that it sees to it that they don’t rise higher than the post of colonel.</p>
<p>Now, however, Roosevelt has promoted Davis to be a brigadier-general, the first such colored officer in the Army’s history.</p>
<p>Does this mean that there has been any change in the Army’s Jim Crow policies? Does this mean that now there will be equal rights for colored soldiers, that discrimination against them will end, that they will receive a proportionate number of officers’ posts?</p>
<p>Look at the facts, and you’ll have to answer: No.</p>
<p>In the first place, whatever happened to Davis, the recent ruling of Commander-in-Chief Roosevelt that there shall be Jim Crow regiments still remains in effect. That means that Negro soldiers will not get equal rights, that they will still be used for laborers or suicide squads, suffering all the insults of the Negro-hating officer caste that runs the Army and will continue to run the Army even if Davis is a brigadier-general.</p>
<p>Every anti-Semitic firm, every big business outfit that refuses to hire Jews, usually has one Jew on its office staff, to be pointed to as an example of their unprejudiced hiring policies. This one Jewish employee is used as window-dressing to cover up the rotten general policy.</p>
<p>Davis is going to be used as the window-dressing of the U.S. Army, for a time, to cover up the vicious anti-Negro policies of its general staff.</p>
<p>But even more important than this reason is the fact that election day is almost here.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>A Vote-Catching Move</h4>
<p class="fst">In the last month Roosevelt has lost considerable votes as the result of his statement on Jim Crow regiments. He has taken a heavy walloping from most of the Negro press on it, and from the N.A.A.C.P. for his attempt to make it seem they had approved this policy.</p>
<p>In many states the colored vote may prove decisive. Consequently, Roosevelt has attempted, by promoting Davis, to repair some of the fences he broke himself.</p>
<p>As proof, we point to the date of the announcement of his promotion: October 25th. This is just in time for the last issue of the Negro weekly papers that will appear on the news-stands before November 5. It thus gives him the final punch in the campaign, in even the papers that oppose him and support Willkie.</p>
<p>The general staff of the Army won’t like it, even though they recognize it as a necessary political maneuver that won’t change anything fundamentally. But they won’t worry too much. For Davis is 63 years old, and will reach his retirement age July 1. So Roosevelt will get his votes when Davis gets his promotion, and a few months later when Davis gets his walking papers, the general staff will get the pleasure of being 100% lily-white again.</p>
<p>Although the appointment of Davis is partially a concession to mass protest, it is primarily a vote-catcher. It is no reason for relaxing the fight, Jim Crowism must still be fought by workers, colored and white, in the armed forces, as well as in civilian life.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h4>Judas-Goat Dunjee</h4>
<p class="fst">A “Judas goat” is one of those old, hardened, well-trained animals used in the stockyards to lead the sheep up the incline. When the goat gets to the top, he steps aside, but the sheep keep right on marching until they run into the butchers’ knives. Then the goat comes down again, and is used over and over again to lead more unsuspecting sheep to their end.</p>
<p>Roscoe Dunjee, about whom we had a few things to say last week, is the editor of <strong>The Black Dispatch</strong> in Oklahoma. Last week he wrote an article asking that all Negro newspapermen be exempted from conscription. Why? Because they had been very valuable, he said, in getting the Negro people to accept the draft. And if these very valuable newspapermen are drafted, he feels, the newspapers will be weakened, and may not be able to do such a good job in the future.</p>
<p>Roscoe Dunjee is a Judas goat who has led his followers up the incline of the Jim Crow draft. But he doesn’t want the same fate as the sheep. He wants to be excused so that he will be safely on band to lead mors sheep to the butchers’ knives.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt4"></a>
<h4>Forty Dollars a Head</h4>
<p class="fst">When a colored man is even suspected of killing a white person down South, all resources of the state are used to capture him. Rewards of thousands of dollars are offered, blood-hounds and posses called out, and the victim is given short shrift when he is caught.</p>
<p>But it is different when the victim is a colored man.</p>
<p>In Washington, D.C., capital of the nation and frontier of Jim Crow land, seven Negroes have been fired on by a mysterious white maniac during the past few months. Five were killed and two injured.</p>
<p>Little effort has been made by the police to capture the maniac, who picks only colored victims. A total reward of $200 has been posted for his capture. That comes to $40 a head, or, one-twentieth of what a slave was worth 80 years ago./p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(2 November 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 44, 2 November 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Roosevelt “Promotes” Davis
Two weeks ago in this column we drew attention to the failure of President Roosevelt to promote Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Negro officer, to the rank of brigadier-general, as he did with scores of white colonels at the same time.
In it we declared what everyone acquainted with the situation knew: that the Army is a Jim Crow institution, that it does everything it can to prevent Negroes from becoming officers, and that it sees to it that they don’t rise higher than the post of colonel.
Now, however, Roosevelt has promoted Davis to be a brigadier-general, the first such colored officer in the Army’s history.
Does this mean that there has been any change in the Army’s Jim Crow policies? Does this mean that now there will be equal rights for colored soldiers, that discrimination against them will end, that they will receive a proportionate number of officers’ posts?
Look at the facts, and you’ll have to answer: No.
In the first place, whatever happened to Davis, the recent ruling of Commander-in-Chief Roosevelt that there shall be Jim Crow regiments still remains in effect. That means that Negro soldiers will not get equal rights, that they will still be used for laborers or suicide squads, suffering all the insults of the Negro-hating officer caste that runs the Army and will continue to run the Army even if Davis is a brigadier-general.
Every anti-Semitic firm, every big business outfit that refuses to hire Jews, usually has one Jew on its office staff, to be pointed to as an example of their unprejudiced hiring policies. This one Jewish employee is used as window-dressing to cover up the rotten general policy.
Davis is going to be used as the window-dressing of the U.S. Army, for a time, to cover up the vicious anti-Negro policies of its general staff.
But even more important than this reason is the fact that election day is almost here.
A Vote-Catching Move
In the last month Roosevelt has lost considerable votes as the result of his statement on Jim Crow regiments. He has taken a heavy walloping from most of the Negro press on it, and from the N.A.A.C.P. for his attempt to make it seem they had approved this policy.
In many states the colored vote may prove decisive. Consequently, Roosevelt has attempted, by promoting Davis, to repair some of the fences he broke himself.
As proof, we point to the date of the announcement of his promotion: October 25th. This is just in time for the last issue of the Negro weekly papers that will appear on the news-stands before November 5. It thus gives him the final punch in the campaign, in even the papers that oppose him and support Willkie.
The general staff of the Army won’t like it, even though they recognize it as a necessary political maneuver that won’t change anything fundamentally. But they won’t worry too much. For Davis is 63 years old, and will reach his retirement age July 1. So Roosevelt will get his votes when Davis gets his promotion, and a few months later when Davis gets his walking papers, the general staff will get the pleasure of being 100% lily-white again.
Although the appointment of Davis is partially a concession to mass protest, it is primarily a vote-catcher. It is no reason for relaxing the fight, Jim Crowism must still be fought by workers, colored and white, in the armed forces, as well as in civilian life.
Judas-Goat Dunjee
A “Judas goat” is one of those old, hardened, well-trained animals used in the stockyards to lead the sheep up the incline. When the goat gets to the top, he steps aside, but the sheep keep right on marching until they run into the butchers’ knives. Then the goat comes down again, and is used over and over again to lead more unsuspecting sheep to their end.
Roscoe Dunjee, about whom we had a few things to say last week, is the editor of The Black Dispatch in Oklahoma. Last week he wrote an article asking that all Negro newspapermen be exempted from conscription. Why? Because they had been very valuable, he said, in getting the Negro people to accept the draft. And if these very valuable newspapermen are drafted, he feels, the newspapers will be weakened, and may not be able to do such a good job in the future.
Roscoe Dunjee is a Judas goat who has led his followers up the incline of the Jim Crow draft. But he doesn’t want the same fate as the sheep. He wants to be excused so that he will be safely on band to lead mors sheep to the butchers’ knives.
Forty Dollars a Head
When a colored man is even suspected of killing a white person down South, all resources of the state are used to capture him. Rewards of thousands of dollars are offered, blood-hounds and posses called out, and the victim is given short shrift when he is caught.
But it is different when the victim is a colored man.
In Washington, D.C., capital of the nation and frontier of Jim Crow land, seven Negroes have been fired on by a mysterious white maniac during the past few months. Five were killed and two injured.
Little effort has been made by the police to capture the maniac, who picks only colored victims. A total reward of $200 has been posted for his capture. That comes to $40 a head, or, one-twentieth of what a slave was worth 80 years ago./p>
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>New Boards to Control Seas and<br>
Shipping Now – and After War</h1>
<h3>(28 February 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_09" target="new">Vol. VI No. 9</a>, 28 February 1942, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Woodrow Wilson promised that the first world war would be followed by the establishment of a world order of economic opportunity and co-operation between all nations which, by doing away with the economic causes of modern war, would usher in a period of lasting peace.</p>
<p>This promise was incorporated in his “Fourteen Points”; one of these points guaranteed “absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas” and another promised the removal “so far as possible” of “all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace.”</p>
<p>Everyone knows today that these promises, designed to win the support of the war-hating masses for the war, were not kept, and that instead of the period of peace promised by Wilson there was ushered in a period of intensified economic warfare that was bound sooner or lifter to erupt into a new world war.</p>
<p><em>“Absolute freedom of navigation” was shown to mean absolute control of navigation; “freedom of the seas” was translated to mean freedom to rule the seas. Although the German people “consented” to the peace, by overthrowing their monarch and his regime, the German merchant marine as well as the navy was taken away, and German sea power destroyed by the victorious allies.</em></p>
<p>“Economic barriers” were extended instead of removed; tariff walls were raised everywhere in Europe and the United States; raw materials were seized and withheld from other nations.<br>
</p>
<h4>Same Promises Again</h4>
<p class="fst">The second world war version of Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” was the eightpoint “Atlantic Charter” adopted by Roosevelt and Churchill last August, and since endorsed by the others of the “United Nations”. Like it predecessor, the “Atlantic Charter” promises “freedom of the seas” and “trade equality” qualified with respect to the “present obligations” of the signatories.</p>
<p>The Marxists of the first world war predicted the outcome of Wilson’s promises, but it was not until the war was over that their "predictions were proved to be true. The exact outcome of the Roosevelt-Churchill promises will likewise not be revealed in full until after the war, for their outcome depends to a certain degree on the outcome of the war. But already, although this country has been in the war as a full-fighting participant for such a short time and has not even fully organized its war machinery, it is possible to see the trends of the future in the very organization of that war machinery.</p>
<p>James B. Reston, <b>New York Times</b> reporter, reports some interesting developments along this line in the Feb. 8 issue of that paper.</p>
<p>When Churchill came to Washington two months ago, he and Roosevelt had extensive talks about the unification of British and United States resources for the conduct of the war.<br>
</p>
<h4>Two Boards Set Up</h4>
<p class="fst">One of the results of this conference was the establishment of a Combined Materials Board to “plan the best speediest development, expansion and use of the raw material resources, under the jurisdiction or control of the two governments.” This committee, says Reston, “has authority to plan what is to be done for the duration of the war with approximately seven-eighths of all the strategic raw materials in the world.”</p>
<p>Also established was a Combined Shipping Adjustment Board to determine the use of the shipping of the “United Nations” for the duration of the war.</p>
<p>There is nothing unusual in the establishment of such boards for the conduct of the war; the difference between, these boards and similar boards established in the first world war, lies in the use contemplated for them after the war.</p>
<p>Churchill, according to Reston, was reluctant to discuss this aspect of the question. In fact, he “was a little cantankerous about doing anything about the post-war world, which he dismissed as ‘that unattractive jungle’.”</p>
<p>Roosevelt, however, felt that these boards have an important “future, not only in war but in the peace after the war.”</p>
<p><em>Reston, obviously expressing the views of the Administration, declares that</em></p>
<p class="quoteb">“... it may be that the post-war operations of the raw materials and shipping committees will prove to be more important in the long run than their operations during the course of the conflict itself.</p>
<p class="quote">“The Atlantic Charter ... clearly indicates that the anti-Axis coalition, if victorious, intends to control the distribution of raw materials so that only those nations who are prepared to cooperate in establishing and maintaining some kind of sensible new world order shall have access to the essential raw materials of the world.<br>
</p>
<h4>To Control Shipping Too</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“Similarly, high officials here who have been dealing with the post-war problem have made it clear that in their opinion it will be necessary for a considerable time after the war to control not only the raw materials but the shipping of the world for the good of those nations – and those nations alone – who are prepared in keeping the peace.</p>
<p class="quote"><em>“Mr. Churchill has thus cooperated with Mr. Roosevelt in setting up machinery to control most of the strategic raw materials and shipping of the world, not only for the duration of the war but for the days after the war.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Reston concludes his article by saying this plan for “Anglo-American cooperation” after the war has not been wholly and completely worked out, but that “the higher one goes in the ranks of the Administration the more talk one finds of this war-time machinery’s forming the basis of some kind of solid, practical, economic collaboration for peace.”</p>
<p>In short, it is already obvious that the promises of the Atlantic Charter are following the same path as the promises of the “Fourteen Points”, only perhaps at a more accelerated pace.</p>
<p>When Churchill spoke to Congress, he said that five or six years ago it might still have been possible to avoid the war if the United States and Britain had insisted on disarmament and if they had made available to Germany “those materials, those raw materials, which we declared in the Atlantic Charter should not be denied to any nation, victor or vanquished.”</p>
<p><em>But if the struggle over raw materials (and shipping to transport those raw materials) led to the second world war, is it not clear that the course now proposed for the “United Nations” will lead in the future along the path of renewed economic warfare that is certain to result in a third world war?</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Why Churchill Is “Cantankerous”</h4>
<p class="fst">It should not be assumed that Churchill was reluctant to discuss the post-war problem because he had a different program than Roosevelt’s. He was “cantankerous”, actually, because he realizes that Great Britain is fated to play a secondary role after the war, that United States capitalism will hold the upper hand in the event of a victory by the “United Nations”; he prefers to “wait and see” before committing himself.</p>
<p>Ray Tucker, a Washington columnist, gave a partial indication, in his Jan. 25 article printed in the <b>Flint Journal</b> and other papers, of why Britain hesitates to commit itself on post-war questions:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“The Mikado’s unforeseen eruption Dec. 7 spoiled the smartest game of international poker Uncle Sam ever hoped to play: The emperor’s subsequent successes may also have robbed us of chips we had planned to use at the peace table.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">“The inside story”, as he calls it, “reads like fiction”:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“William Yandell Elliott, an economic adviser at Office of Production Management, had framed the blue-prints for formation of an Anglo-American cartel dominated by the United States. The Elliott corporation would have obtained control of many key resources of the British, Dutch and Free French empires as well as those produced in this country – our claim to majority ownership, according to the Harvard professor’s formula, to depend on the billions of lend-lease funds we are advancing to our friends. Some return was forecast for our vast investment. Our post-war supervision over this pooling of the world’s gold, food, rubber, tin, oils, fats, sugar, petroleum, etc., would have provided us with some ace cards in any final dickering with the Allied victors and Axis vanquished.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">That this proposal was not an individual and isolated idea is shown in Tucker’s statement that “it tickled the fancy of materialistic and starry-eyed fellows as close to the White House as paper on the wall.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Seed of Future Wars</h4>
<p class="fst">Tucker concludes, “Now the deal is off because Messrs. Hirohito and Tojo occupy the lands to ‘which we hoped to stake a claim. And the ‘scorched earth’ retreat from that area may make them a liability rather than an asset after the war.” If the only reason that “the deal is off” is because Japan temporarily controls some of these areas, and because of a “scorched earth” policy which notoriously has scorched very little earth, then probably the deal is not off after all, and certainly not permanently.</p>
<p>But whatever the outcome of this particular “deal”, it is obvious from the way the war is being run, and from the conflicts between the “United Nations” themselves, that as long as capitalist policies and rivalries rule the world, the seed of future wars is present and will be nourished.</p>
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Albert Parker
New Boards to Control Seas and
Shipping Now – and After War
(28 February 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 9, 28 February 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Woodrow Wilson promised that the first world war would be followed by the establishment of a world order of economic opportunity and co-operation between all nations which, by doing away with the economic causes of modern war, would usher in a period of lasting peace.
This promise was incorporated in his “Fourteen Points”; one of these points guaranteed “absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas” and another promised the removal “so far as possible” of “all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace.”
Everyone knows today that these promises, designed to win the support of the war-hating masses for the war, were not kept, and that instead of the period of peace promised by Wilson there was ushered in a period of intensified economic warfare that was bound sooner or lifter to erupt into a new world war.
“Absolute freedom of navigation” was shown to mean absolute control of navigation; “freedom of the seas” was translated to mean freedom to rule the seas. Although the German people “consented” to the peace, by overthrowing their monarch and his regime, the German merchant marine as well as the navy was taken away, and German sea power destroyed by the victorious allies.
“Economic barriers” were extended instead of removed; tariff walls were raised everywhere in Europe and the United States; raw materials were seized and withheld from other nations.
Same Promises Again
The second world war version of Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” was the eightpoint “Atlantic Charter” adopted by Roosevelt and Churchill last August, and since endorsed by the others of the “United Nations”. Like it predecessor, the “Atlantic Charter” promises “freedom of the seas” and “trade equality” qualified with respect to the “present obligations” of the signatories.
The Marxists of the first world war predicted the outcome of Wilson’s promises, but it was not until the war was over that their "predictions were proved to be true. The exact outcome of the Roosevelt-Churchill promises will likewise not be revealed in full until after the war, for their outcome depends to a certain degree on the outcome of the war. But already, although this country has been in the war as a full-fighting participant for such a short time and has not even fully organized its war machinery, it is possible to see the trends of the future in the very organization of that war machinery.
James B. Reston, New York Times reporter, reports some interesting developments along this line in the Feb. 8 issue of that paper.
When Churchill came to Washington two months ago, he and Roosevelt had extensive talks about the unification of British and United States resources for the conduct of the war.
Two Boards Set Up
One of the results of this conference was the establishment of a Combined Materials Board to “plan the best speediest development, expansion and use of the raw material resources, under the jurisdiction or control of the two governments.” This committee, says Reston, “has authority to plan what is to be done for the duration of the war with approximately seven-eighths of all the strategic raw materials in the world.”
Also established was a Combined Shipping Adjustment Board to determine the use of the shipping of the “United Nations” for the duration of the war.
There is nothing unusual in the establishment of such boards for the conduct of the war; the difference between, these boards and similar boards established in the first world war, lies in the use contemplated for them after the war.
Churchill, according to Reston, was reluctant to discuss this aspect of the question. In fact, he “was a little cantankerous about doing anything about the post-war world, which he dismissed as ‘that unattractive jungle’.”
Roosevelt, however, felt that these boards have an important “future, not only in war but in the peace after the war.”
Reston, obviously expressing the views of the Administration, declares that
“... it may be that the post-war operations of the raw materials and shipping committees will prove to be more important in the long run than their operations during the course of the conflict itself.
“The Atlantic Charter ... clearly indicates that the anti-Axis coalition, if victorious, intends to control the distribution of raw materials so that only those nations who are prepared to cooperate in establishing and maintaining some kind of sensible new world order shall have access to the essential raw materials of the world.
To Control Shipping Too
“Similarly, high officials here who have been dealing with the post-war problem have made it clear that in their opinion it will be necessary for a considerable time after the war to control not only the raw materials but the shipping of the world for the good of those nations – and those nations alone – who are prepared in keeping the peace.
“Mr. Churchill has thus cooperated with Mr. Roosevelt in setting up machinery to control most of the strategic raw materials and shipping of the world, not only for the duration of the war but for the days after the war.”
Reston concludes his article by saying this plan for “Anglo-American cooperation” after the war has not been wholly and completely worked out, but that “the higher one goes in the ranks of the Administration the more talk one finds of this war-time machinery’s forming the basis of some kind of solid, practical, economic collaboration for peace.”
In short, it is already obvious that the promises of the Atlantic Charter are following the same path as the promises of the “Fourteen Points”, only perhaps at a more accelerated pace.
When Churchill spoke to Congress, he said that five or six years ago it might still have been possible to avoid the war if the United States and Britain had insisted on disarmament and if they had made available to Germany “those materials, those raw materials, which we declared in the Atlantic Charter should not be denied to any nation, victor or vanquished.”
But if the struggle over raw materials (and shipping to transport those raw materials) led to the second world war, is it not clear that the course now proposed for the “United Nations” will lead in the future along the path of renewed economic warfare that is certain to result in a third world war?
Why Churchill Is “Cantankerous”
It should not be assumed that Churchill was reluctant to discuss the post-war problem because he had a different program than Roosevelt’s. He was “cantankerous”, actually, because he realizes that Great Britain is fated to play a secondary role after the war, that United States capitalism will hold the upper hand in the event of a victory by the “United Nations”; he prefers to “wait and see” before committing himself.
Ray Tucker, a Washington columnist, gave a partial indication, in his Jan. 25 article printed in the Flint Journal and other papers, of why Britain hesitates to commit itself on post-war questions:
“The Mikado’s unforeseen eruption Dec. 7 spoiled the smartest game of international poker Uncle Sam ever hoped to play: The emperor’s subsequent successes may also have robbed us of chips we had planned to use at the peace table.”
“The inside story”, as he calls it, “reads like fiction”:
“William Yandell Elliott, an economic adviser at Office of Production Management, had framed the blue-prints for formation of an Anglo-American cartel dominated by the United States. The Elliott corporation would have obtained control of many key resources of the British, Dutch and Free French empires as well as those produced in this country – our claim to majority ownership, according to the Harvard professor’s formula, to depend on the billions of lend-lease funds we are advancing to our friends. Some return was forecast for our vast investment. Our post-war supervision over this pooling of the world’s gold, food, rubber, tin, oils, fats, sugar, petroleum, etc., would have provided us with some ace cards in any final dickering with the Allied victors and Axis vanquished.”
That this proposal was not an individual and isolated idea is shown in Tucker’s statement that “it tickled the fancy of materialistic and starry-eyed fellows as close to the White House as paper on the wall.”
Seed of Future Wars
Tucker concludes, “Now the deal is off because Messrs. Hirohito and Tojo occupy the lands to ‘which we hoped to stake a claim. And the ‘scorched earth’ retreat from that area may make them a liability rather than an asset after the war.” If the only reason that “the deal is off” is because Japan temporarily controls some of these areas, and because of a “scorched earth” policy which notoriously has scorched very little earth, then probably the deal is not off after all, and certainly not permanently.
But whatever the outcome of this particular “deal”, it is obvious from the way the war is being run, and from the conflicts between the “United Nations” themselves, that as long as capitalist policies and rivalries rule the world, the seed of future wars is present and will be nourished.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Democrats and Republicans<br>
Combine to Save Filibuster</h1>
<h3>(7 February 1949)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_06" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 6</a>, 7 February 1949, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Filibustering must be outlawed in the U.S. Senate if civil rights legislation is to be passed, but both capitalist parties are united in opposing any change in rules that would really bar filibusters. That is the sum and: substance of the hearings by the Senate Rules Committee, which were closed Feb. 1.</p>
<p>The Senate is often described as the “last wholly free forum” in the world, the “greatest legislative body” in history, and so on. <em>But the truth is that in this “chamber of democracy” the majority of the members generally cannot even vote on a measure without the consent of the minority.</em></p>
<p>Thus the Southern minority, usually abetted by non-Southerners of both parties, has for decades blocked a vote on legislation to punish lynching, end the poll tax, etc., by talking or threatening to talk indefinitely until the majority agreed riot to consider the legislation. <em>The most elementary concept of democracy – that which the majority should rule – gives way to unbrindled minority rule, masquerading under the name of “freedom of speech.”</em></p>
<p>The indignation of the people, repeatedly frustrated by this travesty of democracy from securing the legislation they want, has compelled the 81st Congress to at least make some gestures in the direction of correcting the situation. But that’s all they have been – gestures.</p>
<p>According to the present rules, it is possible to get closure (close of debate) in the Senate by a two-thirds vote. But this has been interpreted in practice to apply only to close of debate on a pending “measure” and not on a motion to bring up a measure. Thus if someone makes a motion to bring up an FEPC bill, a filibuster cannot be stopped even by two-thirds vote. Under those circumstances the Senate could never get to consideration of the FEPC bill itself (where a two-thirds vote could bring about closure).</p>
<p>The Senate Rules Committee held an open hearing on the problem, at which only Senators could testify. The proposal to amend the rules so that a majority could end debate on any matter, motion as well as measure, was never even discussed seriously. <em>Most non-Southern Senators don’t favor such a “radical” move because they feel that some day they too might be in a position where they wouldn’t want the majority to rule.</em></p>
<p>Aside from this consideration, most Republicans are leery of the idea of closure by majority vote because they are hoping sooner or later in the present session to cement an alliance with the Southern Democrats and don’t want to offend them too much at this point.</p>
<p>As for the Democrats, NAACP Secretary Walter White, an ardent Trumanite, was compelled to send Truman and Barkley telegrams last week complaining about <em>“the strange apathy and silence of Democrats during hearings on amendment of Senate rules ... Not one Democrat has as yet fought for or even spoken out to end filibusters.”</em></p>
<p>The Southern Democrats, acting as though the Dixiecrats had’ won the election, were arrogant as ever, making threats to tie up all business if they did not have their way. Stennis of Mississippi had the effrontery to make two proposals in the guise of “concessions” – first, to permit closure by majority vote on measures having to do with foreign policy only; and second, to permit closure at any time, on any issue, if 86 of the 96 Senators favored it. The surprising thing is that some non-Southern Senators seemed to give favorable attention to these as “compromises!”</p>
<p>The Senate committee is preparing the following proposition: To permit closure at any point when two-thirds of the Senate approves. The alibi will be: “That’s the best we can get under the present circumstances.”</p>
<p>But the Senate’s best is not good enough. Since it will riot prevent filibusters by the Southern Senators, minority rule will continue to obstruct action on civil rights legislation. On the whole, despite blustering, the Southern Democrats will, accept such a “compromise” because it won’t hamper their power.</p>
<p>And that’s why the workers and Negroes cannot and should riot accept this proposition either. To prevent filibustering in general, the Senate will have to face, meet and defeat a filibuster to prevent the abolition of filibustering. The sooner this is done, the better. The sooner it is begun, the sooner it will be finished. If the Senate is serious, it can smash such a filibuster and amend the rules to make them impossible in the future.</p>
<p>The Southern Democrats would rally all their energy and forces for such a fight, but that would only make their defeat all the more conclusive. And their defeat would be certain because the dramatic tie-up of all business in the Senate would result in such an outcry from the masses – in the South as well as the North – that even the Bourbons would have to give heed and to back track.</p>
<p><em>Filibustering can be smashed but only if its opponents in the Senate really want to do it. Neither capitalist party wants to. That’s why, side by side with the struggle for democratic rule in the Senate and for civil rights throughout the nation, must go the struggle for the formation of an independent Labor Party.</em></p>
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Albert Parker
Democrats and Republicans
Combine to Save Filibuster
(7 February 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 6, 7 February 1949, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Filibustering must be outlawed in the U.S. Senate if civil rights legislation is to be passed, but both capitalist parties are united in opposing any change in rules that would really bar filibusters. That is the sum and: substance of the hearings by the Senate Rules Committee, which were closed Feb. 1.
The Senate is often described as the “last wholly free forum” in the world, the “greatest legislative body” in history, and so on. But the truth is that in this “chamber of democracy” the majority of the members generally cannot even vote on a measure without the consent of the minority.
Thus the Southern minority, usually abetted by non-Southerners of both parties, has for decades blocked a vote on legislation to punish lynching, end the poll tax, etc., by talking or threatening to talk indefinitely until the majority agreed riot to consider the legislation. The most elementary concept of democracy – that which the majority should rule – gives way to unbrindled minority rule, masquerading under the name of “freedom of speech.”
The indignation of the people, repeatedly frustrated by this travesty of democracy from securing the legislation they want, has compelled the 81st Congress to at least make some gestures in the direction of correcting the situation. But that’s all they have been – gestures.
According to the present rules, it is possible to get closure (close of debate) in the Senate by a two-thirds vote. But this has been interpreted in practice to apply only to close of debate on a pending “measure” and not on a motion to bring up a measure. Thus if someone makes a motion to bring up an FEPC bill, a filibuster cannot be stopped even by two-thirds vote. Under those circumstances the Senate could never get to consideration of the FEPC bill itself (where a two-thirds vote could bring about closure).
The Senate Rules Committee held an open hearing on the problem, at which only Senators could testify. The proposal to amend the rules so that a majority could end debate on any matter, motion as well as measure, was never even discussed seriously. Most non-Southern Senators don’t favor such a “radical” move because they feel that some day they too might be in a position where they wouldn’t want the majority to rule.
Aside from this consideration, most Republicans are leery of the idea of closure by majority vote because they are hoping sooner or later in the present session to cement an alliance with the Southern Democrats and don’t want to offend them too much at this point.
As for the Democrats, NAACP Secretary Walter White, an ardent Trumanite, was compelled to send Truman and Barkley telegrams last week complaining about “the strange apathy and silence of Democrats during hearings on amendment of Senate rules ... Not one Democrat has as yet fought for or even spoken out to end filibusters.”
The Southern Democrats, acting as though the Dixiecrats had’ won the election, were arrogant as ever, making threats to tie up all business if they did not have their way. Stennis of Mississippi had the effrontery to make two proposals in the guise of “concessions” – first, to permit closure by majority vote on measures having to do with foreign policy only; and second, to permit closure at any time, on any issue, if 86 of the 96 Senators favored it. The surprising thing is that some non-Southern Senators seemed to give favorable attention to these as “compromises!”
The Senate committee is preparing the following proposition: To permit closure at any point when two-thirds of the Senate approves. The alibi will be: “That’s the best we can get under the present circumstances.”
But the Senate’s best is not good enough. Since it will riot prevent filibusters by the Southern Senators, minority rule will continue to obstruct action on civil rights legislation. On the whole, despite blustering, the Southern Democrats will, accept such a “compromise” because it won’t hamper their power.
And that’s why the workers and Negroes cannot and should riot accept this proposition either. To prevent filibustering in general, the Senate will have to face, meet and defeat a filibuster to prevent the abolition of filibustering. The sooner this is done, the better. The sooner it is begun, the sooner it will be finished. If the Senate is serious, it can smash such a filibuster and amend the rules to make them impossible in the future.
The Southern Democrats would rally all their energy and forces for such a fight, but that would only make their defeat all the more conclusive. And their defeat would be certain because the dramatic tie-up of all business in the Senate would result in such an outcry from the masses – in the South as well as the North – that even the Bourbons would have to give heed and to back track.
Filibustering can be smashed but only if its opponents in the Senate really want to do it. Neither capitalist party wants to. That’s why, side by side with the struggle for democratic rule in the Senate and for civil rights throughout the nation, must go the struggle for the formation of an independent Labor Party.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Wallace and the Roosevelt Record</h1>
<h3>(12 January 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_02" target="new">Vol. XII No. 2</a>, 12 January 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">In last week’s column we showed there was a suspicious contrast between Henry Wallace’s fine-sounding speeches against Jim Crow nowadays, when he is running for office, and his failure to take action against Jim Crow when he was a high government official. We did it because we knew that his followers would try to cover up the truth about his record.</p>
<p>And sure enough, that is exactly what Benjamin J. Davis, Stalinist New York City Councilman, attempts to do in an article hailing Wallace’s candidacy in the Jan. 4 <strong>Worker.</strong> Here is what he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“For 85 years since the Civil War, the Negro people have seen their hopes for enforcement of their constitutional rights dashed by successive Republican and Democratic Administrations, <em>except for the all-too-brief Roosevelt era</em>.”</p>
<p class="fst">It may be too early in the year for predictions, but our guess is that there won’t be a bigger lie than that in all: of 1948. The curious thing about it is that Everybody old enough to read lived through the Roosevelt era, and should know from experience that it is a lie.</p>
<p>What happened in the Roosevelt era (for which Wallace bears as much responsibility as Roosevelt)? Did the administration carry on any kind of campaign to stop lynching? Or the poll tax? Or discrimination in employment? Or segregation in the armed forces? Or restrictive covenants?</p>
<p>The Roosevelt era may have seemed “all-too-brief” for Davis, but for the Negro people it was 13 long years of misery and bitter struggle during which Roosevelt, Wallace and their Jim Crow Southern Democrat pals ganged up to kill every piece of progressive legislation affecting Negro rights.</p>
<p>It is not accidental that Davis begins his Wallace-for-President propaganda by trying to paint up the Roosevelt era in glowing and deceptive colors. After all, Wallace is only trying to repeat the Roosevelt role – which was long on promises and short on performance. Wallace, not being in office, may make even better promises than Roosevelt, but what reason have the Negro people for believing that he will keep them?</p>
<p>When the Stalinists and other Wallaceites come around asking for your support, ask them these questions. Let them, along with the Democrats and Republicans, know that from now on the Negro people will no longer be fooled by the honeyed words of political hypocrites.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">After last week’s column on Wallace had been printed, we were shown a column on the same subject in the <strong>Amsterdam News</strong> by Lester Granger of the National Urban League, and were asked if there are any differences in our viewpoints. There certainly are. We call attention to the same facts, but for entirely different reasons.</p>
<p>Granger does it because he wants the Negro people to support Truman. We do it because we want the Negro people to join with the union movement in establishing an independent Labor Party which will run labor and Negro candidates in opposition to all the capitalist parties. Our differences with Granger and his fellow Trumanites are just as great as our differences with Wallace or the Stalinists. This will be brought out more clearly as we discuss the Wallace question further.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Wallace and the Roosevelt Record
(12 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 2, 12 January 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In last week’s column we showed there was a suspicious contrast between Henry Wallace’s fine-sounding speeches against Jim Crow nowadays, when he is running for office, and his failure to take action against Jim Crow when he was a high government official. We did it because we knew that his followers would try to cover up the truth about his record.
And sure enough, that is exactly what Benjamin J. Davis, Stalinist New York City Councilman, attempts to do in an article hailing Wallace’s candidacy in the Jan. 4 Worker. Here is what he says:
“For 85 years since the Civil War, the Negro people have seen their hopes for enforcement of their constitutional rights dashed by successive Republican and Democratic Administrations, except for the all-too-brief Roosevelt era.”
It may be too early in the year for predictions, but our guess is that there won’t be a bigger lie than that in all: of 1948. The curious thing about it is that Everybody old enough to read lived through the Roosevelt era, and should know from experience that it is a lie.
What happened in the Roosevelt era (for which Wallace bears as much responsibility as Roosevelt)? Did the administration carry on any kind of campaign to stop lynching? Or the poll tax? Or discrimination in employment? Or segregation in the armed forces? Or restrictive covenants?
The Roosevelt era may have seemed “all-too-brief” for Davis, but for the Negro people it was 13 long years of misery and bitter struggle during which Roosevelt, Wallace and their Jim Crow Southern Democrat pals ganged up to kill every piece of progressive legislation affecting Negro rights.
It is not accidental that Davis begins his Wallace-for-President propaganda by trying to paint up the Roosevelt era in glowing and deceptive colors. After all, Wallace is only trying to repeat the Roosevelt role – which was long on promises and short on performance. Wallace, not being in office, may make even better promises than Roosevelt, but what reason have the Negro people for believing that he will keep them?
When the Stalinists and other Wallaceites come around asking for your support, ask them these questions. Let them, along with the Democrats and Republicans, know that from now on the Negro people will no longer be fooled by the honeyed words of political hypocrites.
* * *
After last week’s column on Wallace had been printed, we were shown a column on the same subject in the Amsterdam News by Lester Granger of the National Urban League, and were asked if there are any differences in our viewpoints. There certainly are. We call attention to the same facts, but for entirely different reasons.
Granger does it because he wants the Negro people to support Truman. We do it because we want the Negro people to join with the union movement in establishing an independent Labor Party which will run labor and Negro candidates in opposition to all the capitalist parties. Our differences with Granger and his fellow Trumanites are just as great as our differences with Wallace or the Stalinists. This will be brought out more clearly as we discuss the Wallace question further.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Weinstock Letters Show CP<br>
Sabotaged Fight on Smith Act</h1>
<h3>(3 January 1949)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_01" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 1</a>, 3 January 1949, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">On the eve of the trial of 12 Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act, <strong>The Militant</strong> has come into possession of a file of correspondence that clearly proves: 1. That the indictment of the Stalinists under this reactionary law is due in great part of their sabotage of the labor movement’s fight against this law during the war. 2. And that the Stalinists, who now are advocating, labor solidarity against the coining trial, themselves were the grossest violators of this fundamental principle, materially contributing by their example to the workers’ present lack of response to the appeals for united protest against the government’s persecution of the CP.</p>
<p>This file of correspondence consists of letters from and to Louis Weinstock in the months of May and June, 1944. They were written by him in his capacity as secretary-treasurer of New York District Council 9 of the AFL Brotherhood of Painters. At the same time Weinstock was a member of the National Board of the Communist Party, which means that he was carrying out the Stalinist line.</p>
<p>At the beginning of 1944, the 18 leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and Minneapolis Teamsters Union Local 544-CIO were imprisoned because they exercised free speech in opposing the 2nd world war and fought for democracy inside the union movement. The indictment against them was based on the Smith “Gag” Act – the first time this witch-hunt legislation was used. The U.S. Supreme Court three times refused to review the case.<br>
</p>
<h4>The CRDC Campaign</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>The Minneapolis case was the most flagrant attack on American political liberties in World War II. and as such aroused a storm of protest from most sections of lhe labor and liberal movements. The Civil Rights Defense Committee, which was organized to aid the defendants, carried on an aggressive campaign for the pardon of the defendants and against the Sniith Act. In the course of time it asked the Painters District Council 9 for formal support of its objectives.</em></p>
<p>A number of delegates to the Council from locals which had already endorsed the CRDC’s campaign urged the Council to do likewise. The Stalinists, who then controlled the Council, opposed this action and set up a committee to “investigate” the matter. Weinstock took the lead in securing the “evidence” on the case.</p>
<p>On May 11, 1944 he sent off three letters, copies of which <strong>The Militant</strong> now has.<br>
</p>
<h4>Scabby Letters</h4>
<p class="fst">The first was to Daniel J. Tobin, czar of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, at whose request Roosevelt had instructed the Department of Justice to prepare the indictment of the Trotskyists. In this letter Weinstock complains about some of the Council delegates who “<em>were almost ready to give these people a helping hand”</em> and urges Tobin to send him “a brief history of the case” that could be used to prevent aid to the CRDC.</p>
<p>The second letter was to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, falsely charging the CRDC with using the name of the PAC and asking for a prompt reply that would accuse the CRDC of misrepresenting facts.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I know that this is not the case,” wrote Weinstock, “but a lot of other people are misled by this subterfuge. We know that the Political Action Committee of the CIO is doing everything for the re-election of President Roosevelt. We also know that these eighteen (18) Trotskyites convicted in Minneapolis were everything but supporters of our President ...”</p>
<p class="fst"><em>It is true that the Trotskyists had serious political differences with those elements in the labor movement who were supporting Roosevelt. But Weinstock’s point was that since such differences existed, the pro-Roosevclt unionists should not give any support to the Trotskyists in their resistance to persecution. It is precisely this approach which many labor leaders today use in opposing support to the Stalinist victims of the witch-hunt!</em></p>
<p>There is no evidence in the file to show that Hillman ever answered this letter. He knew that although the PAC had never acted on the Minneapolis case, most of the important CIO leaders had expressed support for the 18 defendants. Hillman’s own paper, <strong>The Advance</strong>, did the same.<br>
</p>
<h4>Ironical Aspects</h4>
<p class="fst">The third of Weinstock’s letters dated May 11 was addressed to Attorney General Francis Biddle, whose department had engineered the trial and conviction of the 18. Weinstock told Biddle he was anxious to get information demonstrating that the 18 were convicted for “sedition” rather than “activities in behalf of the labor movement.”</p>
<p>The first reply Weinstock got to these letters was from Biddle’s office on May 17. “You may be assured,” it said, “that the basis of the prosecution in this case had nothing to do with activities on behalf of the labor movement.”</p>
<p><em>An ironical aspect to this letter was that it was written for Biddle and signed by an assistant attorney general – Tom C. Clark, who is now attorney general and spearheading the persecution of the Stalinists under the same Smith Act.</em></p>
<p><em>Equally ironical is the fact that Weinstock himself would now be among the 12 CP National Board members under indictment except for the fact that in 1946 the painters revolted against Stalinist domination and kicked him out of office, which led to his demotion from the National Board.</em></p>
<p>On June 2 Weinstock got his answer from Tobin, who offered “information” that he hoped would be helpful to Weinstock, including a letter Tobin had solicited from Victor E. Anderson, prosecuting attorney in the Minneapolis trial. <em>In this letter, dated. May 21, Anderson tried to justify the persecution of the 18 by asserting that the Supreme Court while refusing to review the case had found the Smith Act was “not unconstitutional.”</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Govt. Interpretation</h4>
<p class="fst">Anderson’s letter to Tobin interested Weinstock so much that he entered into direct correspondence with Anderson. In a letter dated June 5, he praised Tobin for supplying him with “a proper and satisfactory explanation concerning these defendants” and asked Anderson for additional help to “satisfy some of these doubting Thomases whom we have around here.”</p>
<p><em>On June 7 Anderson replied with an offer to supply any additional information “if it is within our power to do so.” Again he referred to the Supreme Court’s refusal to act on the defendants’ appeal because “the law under which the prosecution was had was not unconstitutional in violating free speech or for being indefinite.”</em></p>
<p>With this “evidence” the Stalinist majority in the District Council voted down the motion to support the 18. Weinstock, on June 12 then issued a press statement denouncing the Trotskyists as “fascist minded disrupters ... who are trying to break up the unity that exists today in the American nation.” <em>In substantiation, he reprinted in full Anderson’s remarks on the constitutionality of the Smith Act.</em></p>
<p>An examination of the press at that time demonstrates that Weinstock’s frenzied activity against support to the Trotskyists was not at all an isolated phenomenon. All the other Stalinists in leading union positions did the same, and issue after issue of the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> read like a summons to the workers to lynch the. Trotskyists and other of tneir political opponents who did anything that might in any way interfere with “national unity.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Undermined Solidarity</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>Thus the campaign to mobilize the labor movement to smash the Smith Act was undermined in part by the Stalinists in collaboration with reactionary union bureaucrats like Tobin and Department of Justice officials like Biddle and Clark. Although the CRDC won the support of organizations representing millions of people, it was unsuccessful in its challenge to this gag law, and it remained on the books where the Department of Justice last year picked it up again, this time for use against the Stalinists.</em></p>
<p>It used to be a recognized principle in the labor movement that all sections must unite in defense of any individual or section within its ranks that was subjected to reactionary attack by the employers or government. The Stalinists, by their behavior in the Minneapolis case as in many others, did more than any other group to disrupt and destroy the practice of labor solidarity.</p>
<p><em>By withholding support from victims of reactionary persecution merely because they had political differences with these victims, the Stalinists helped to create a new approach to the problem and a precedent which the labor leaders are today employing with full force against the Stalinists themselves.</em></p>
<p class="c"><em>(See Page 3 for editorial on The Stalinists and the Smith Act.)</em></p>
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George Breitman
Weinstock Letters Show CP
Sabotaged Fight on Smith Act
(3 January 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 1, 3 January 1949, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On the eve of the trial of 12 Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act, The Militant has come into possession of a file of correspondence that clearly proves: 1. That the indictment of the Stalinists under this reactionary law is due in great part of their sabotage of the labor movement’s fight against this law during the war. 2. And that the Stalinists, who now are advocating, labor solidarity against the coining trial, themselves were the grossest violators of this fundamental principle, materially contributing by their example to the workers’ present lack of response to the appeals for united protest against the government’s persecution of the CP.
This file of correspondence consists of letters from and to Louis Weinstock in the months of May and June, 1944. They were written by him in his capacity as secretary-treasurer of New York District Council 9 of the AFL Brotherhood of Painters. At the same time Weinstock was a member of the National Board of the Communist Party, which means that he was carrying out the Stalinist line.
At the beginning of 1944, the 18 leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and Minneapolis Teamsters Union Local 544-CIO were imprisoned because they exercised free speech in opposing the 2nd world war and fought for democracy inside the union movement. The indictment against them was based on the Smith “Gag” Act – the first time this witch-hunt legislation was used. The U.S. Supreme Court three times refused to review the case.
The CRDC Campaign
The Minneapolis case was the most flagrant attack on American political liberties in World War II. and as such aroused a storm of protest from most sections of lhe labor and liberal movements. The Civil Rights Defense Committee, which was organized to aid the defendants, carried on an aggressive campaign for the pardon of the defendants and against the Sniith Act. In the course of time it asked the Painters District Council 9 for formal support of its objectives.
A number of delegates to the Council from locals which had already endorsed the CRDC’s campaign urged the Council to do likewise. The Stalinists, who then controlled the Council, opposed this action and set up a committee to “investigate” the matter. Weinstock took the lead in securing the “evidence” on the case.
On May 11, 1944 he sent off three letters, copies of which The Militant now has.
Scabby Letters
The first was to Daniel J. Tobin, czar of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, at whose request Roosevelt had instructed the Department of Justice to prepare the indictment of the Trotskyists. In this letter Weinstock complains about some of the Council delegates who “were almost ready to give these people a helping hand” and urges Tobin to send him “a brief history of the case” that could be used to prevent aid to the CRDC.
The second letter was to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee, falsely charging the CRDC with using the name of the PAC and asking for a prompt reply that would accuse the CRDC of misrepresenting facts.
“I know that this is not the case,” wrote Weinstock, “but a lot of other people are misled by this subterfuge. We know that the Political Action Committee of the CIO is doing everything for the re-election of President Roosevelt. We also know that these eighteen (18) Trotskyites convicted in Minneapolis were everything but supporters of our President ...”
It is true that the Trotskyists had serious political differences with those elements in the labor movement who were supporting Roosevelt. But Weinstock’s point was that since such differences existed, the pro-Roosevclt unionists should not give any support to the Trotskyists in their resistance to persecution. It is precisely this approach which many labor leaders today use in opposing support to the Stalinist victims of the witch-hunt!
There is no evidence in the file to show that Hillman ever answered this letter. He knew that although the PAC had never acted on the Minneapolis case, most of the important CIO leaders had expressed support for the 18 defendants. Hillman’s own paper, The Advance, did the same.
Ironical Aspects
The third of Weinstock’s letters dated May 11 was addressed to Attorney General Francis Biddle, whose department had engineered the trial and conviction of the 18. Weinstock told Biddle he was anxious to get information demonstrating that the 18 were convicted for “sedition” rather than “activities in behalf of the labor movement.”
The first reply Weinstock got to these letters was from Biddle’s office on May 17. “You may be assured,” it said, “that the basis of the prosecution in this case had nothing to do with activities on behalf of the labor movement.”
An ironical aspect to this letter was that it was written for Biddle and signed by an assistant attorney general – Tom C. Clark, who is now attorney general and spearheading the persecution of the Stalinists under the same Smith Act.
Equally ironical is the fact that Weinstock himself would now be among the 12 CP National Board members under indictment except for the fact that in 1946 the painters revolted against Stalinist domination and kicked him out of office, which led to his demotion from the National Board.
On June 2 Weinstock got his answer from Tobin, who offered “information” that he hoped would be helpful to Weinstock, including a letter Tobin had solicited from Victor E. Anderson, prosecuting attorney in the Minneapolis trial. In this letter, dated. May 21, Anderson tried to justify the persecution of the 18 by asserting that the Supreme Court while refusing to review the case had found the Smith Act was “not unconstitutional.”
Govt. Interpretation
Anderson’s letter to Tobin interested Weinstock so much that he entered into direct correspondence with Anderson. In a letter dated June 5, he praised Tobin for supplying him with “a proper and satisfactory explanation concerning these defendants” and asked Anderson for additional help to “satisfy some of these doubting Thomases whom we have around here.”
On June 7 Anderson replied with an offer to supply any additional information “if it is within our power to do so.” Again he referred to the Supreme Court’s refusal to act on the defendants’ appeal because “the law under which the prosecution was had was not unconstitutional in violating free speech or for being indefinite.”
With this “evidence” the Stalinist majority in the District Council voted down the motion to support the 18. Weinstock, on June 12 then issued a press statement denouncing the Trotskyists as “fascist minded disrupters ... who are trying to break up the unity that exists today in the American nation.” In substantiation, he reprinted in full Anderson’s remarks on the constitutionality of the Smith Act.
An examination of the press at that time demonstrates that Weinstock’s frenzied activity against support to the Trotskyists was not at all an isolated phenomenon. All the other Stalinists in leading union positions did the same, and issue after issue of the Daily Worker read like a summons to the workers to lynch the. Trotskyists and other of tneir political opponents who did anything that might in any way interfere with “national unity.”
Undermined Solidarity
Thus the campaign to mobilize the labor movement to smash the Smith Act was undermined in part by the Stalinists in collaboration with reactionary union bureaucrats like Tobin and Department of Justice officials like Biddle and Clark. Although the CRDC won the support of organizations representing millions of people, it was unsuccessful in its challenge to this gag law, and it remained on the books where the Department of Justice last year picked it up again, this time for use against the Stalinists.
It used to be a recognized principle in the labor movement that all sections must unite in defense of any individual or section within its ranks that was subjected to reactionary attack by the employers or government. The Stalinists, by their behavior in the Minneapolis case as in many others, did more than any other group to disrupt and destroy the practice of labor solidarity.
By withholding support from victims of reactionary persecution merely because they had political differences with these victims, the Stalinists helped to create a new approach to the problem and a precedent which the labor leaders are today employing with full force against the Stalinists themselves.
(See Page 3 for editorial on The Stalinists and the Smith Act.)
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Why Stalinists Slander Us</h1>
<h3>(5 April 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_14" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 14</a>, 5 April 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">If readers of the Communist Party ‘s <strong>Worker</strong> of Mar. 28 were confused after they finished reading Benjamin E. Davis’ column, then they were in just the state the author tried to get them. The article is a denunciation of Almena Davis, editor of the Negro weekly, <strong>Los Angeles Tribune</strong>, because she attacked Claudia Jones, Stalinist leader who is threatened with deportation to the West Indies, and cynically expressed “indifference” to her fate.</p>
<p>Then, suddenly, Benjamin Davis switches over into an attack on Trotskyism,, making the fantastic (and familiar) charge that it “is a synonym for corruption, political degeneracy and service to reaction and fascism,” and inventing a new lie – that the <strong>“Tribune</strong> is a net of Trotskyism” and that Almena Davis is a Trotskyist!</p>
<p>Readers of <strong>The Militant</strong> know that we Trotskyists, despite our opposition to the Stalinists, have strongly protested the deportation campaign against Claudia Jones, and her associates and have called on labor to put an end to the government’s witch-hunt campaigns. And readers of the <strong>Los Angeles Tribune</strong> know that it has nothing in common with the Trotskyists; for example, the <strong>Tribune</strong> supported the recent imperialist war (as the Stalinists did) while we opposed it from beginning to end.</p>
<p>Why do Benjamin Davis and the other Stalinists resort to such monstrous (and easily disproved) slanders against the Trotskyists? Because that’s the only kind of “answer” they can give to our political arguments and program. Because they are afraid to let the Negro people know that the Socialist Workers Party program is the only way to end capitalist wars, fascism and race prejudice.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">A reader says: “After reading your laudatory remarks about <strong>Caste, Class and Race</strong> by Oliver C. Cox, I naturally wondered what your criticism of it was. You say that ‘some of the points Dr. Cox tries to make are not acceptable to Marxists.’ Why didn’t you indicate what they are?”</p>
<p>We are concentrating for the time being on calling attention to the virtues of this book, in order to help it get the kind of audience it deserves. But we obviously did not seek to hide the fact that it has shortcomings and weaknesses.</p>
<p>On the political field, for example, the author’s attempt to “simplify” Marxism leads him to numerous serious errors in discussing recent political developments, especially in his treatment of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Dr. Cox is by no means a Stalinist, but his apparent lack of acquaintance with political labor problems and strategy causes him to accept many of their estimates which are in direct conflict with Marxism.</p>
<p>We repeat, however, that the book’s positive qualities and contributions to an understanding of race prejudice far outweigh these and other faults.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Why Stalinists Slander Us
(5 April 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 14, 5 April 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
If readers of the Communist Party ‘s Worker of Mar. 28 were confused after they finished reading Benjamin E. Davis’ column, then they were in just the state the author tried to get them. The article is a denunciation of Almena Davis, editor of the Negro weekly, Los Angeles Tribune, because she attacked Claudia Jones, Stalinist leader who is threatened with deportation to the West Indies, and cynically expressed “indifference” to her fate.
Then, suddenly, Benjamin Davis switches over into an attack on Trotskyism,, making the fantastic (and familiar) charge that it “is a synonym for corruption, political degeneracy and service to reaction and fascism,” and inventing a new lie – that the “Tribune is a net of Trotskyism” and that Almena Davis is a Trotskyist!
Readers of The Militant know that we Trotskyists, despite our opposition to the Stalinists, have strongly protested the deportation campaign against Claudia Jones, and her associates and have called on labor to put an end to the government’s witch-hunt campaigns. And readers of the Los Angeles Tribune know that it has nothing in common with the Trotskyists; for example, the Tribune supported the recent imperialist war (as the Stalinists did) while we opposed it from beginning to end.
Why do Benjamin Davis and the other Stalinists resort to such monstrous (and easily disproved) slanders against the Trotskyists? Because that’s the only kind of “answer” they can give to our political arguments and program. Because they are afraid to let the Negro people know that the Socialist Workers Party program is the only way to end capitalist wars, fascism and race prejudice.
* * *
A reader says: “After reading your laudatory remarks about Caste, Class and Race by Oliver C. Cox, I naturally wondered what your criticism of it was. You say that ‘some of the points Dr. Cox tries to make are not acceptable to Marxists.’ Why didn’t you indicate what they are?”
We are concentrating for the time being on calling attention to the virtues of this book, in order to help it get the kind of audience it deserves. But we obviously did not seek to hide the fact that it has shortcomings and weaknesses.
On the political field, for example, the author’s attempt to “simplify” Marxism leads him to numerous serious errors in discussing recent political developments, especially in his treatment of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Dr. Cox is by no means a Stalinist, but his apparent lack of acquaintance with political labor problems and strategy causes him to accept many of their estimates which are in direct conflict with Marxism.
We repeat, however, that the book’s positive qualities and contributions to an understanding of race prejudice far outweigh these and other faults.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>A Typical “Officer and Gentleman”</h1>
<h3>(1 June 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_22" target="new">Vol. X No. 22</a>, 1 June 1946, p. 7.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">During the last few months there has been considerable discussion in the press about the officer caste system. In an effort to attract recruits, the army has even set up a board which will soon make recommendations for eliminating some of the more glaringly outrageous aspects of the caste system. This inevitably reminds me of Captain Flick, our commanding officer overseas – the most typical, the most officer-like of all I encountered.</p>
<p>Captain Flick had been in the Officer Reserve Corps in peacetime; had signed up while at school, got a smattering of military training, and in due course took his place with the other officers and gentlemen by act of Congress. We came overseas and joined his outfit in England about a week before D-Day. Ours was a battalion headquarters; he was commander of the headquarters detachment, battalion adjutant, summary court officer, etc. We didn’t pay much attention to him at first because everything was so strange to us and because we were supposed to go to France on D-Day plus five.<br>
</p>
<h4>Situation Normal</h4>
<p class="fst">The invasion situation was normal, and we got across the channel only three days later than we were supposed to. When we got within landing distance early in the afternoon, there was no landing craft available and no one seemed to know where we should go, so we stayed on the ship all night. That proved unwise because when it got dark some German planes began dropping bombs on the ships in that area.</p>
<p>At the height of this activity, when we were beginning to appreciate the thoughts of a sitting duck, Captain Flick appeared among us, looking for something, and shining a flashlight in such a way as to inspire gratitude in the German bombardiers. We frankly told him what to do and where to go. After that, we watched him a little more closely.</p>
<p>When we got off at Omaha Beach the next day. Captain Flick was given the job of taking us to our bivouac area. With what we later recognized to be unerring inaccuracy he led us to the east instead of the west, so that it was night by the time we got to the area, and we had to dig ourselves in in the dark.</p>
<p>The situation remained normal and nobody knew what to do with our outfit for a couple of days after we got there. So we began to dig ourselves bigger and better foxholes. Such activity was unbecoming the dignity of a gentleman. Captain Flick ordered one of our medics to do his digging, and, not having anything else to do himself, stood by and gave directions while taking a sun-bath. Someone with a camera came by, taking human interest pictures. The captain ordered the medic to halt, took the shovel from him, assumed a position in the hole and had his picture taken. Then he got out and ordered the medic to resume work.</p>
<p>Some months later Captain Flick was interviewed by a radio broadcaster he knew back home and his remarks, suitably vague, made it seem he was one of the chief reasons why the invasion had been successful. Actually, Captain Flick’s chief activity during the crucial weeks of the Normandy campaign was court-martialing soldiers for firing their carbines at night without visibly good reason.</p>
<p>In private Captain Flick demurred weakly to the battalion commander that you couldn’t court-martial men and fine them for firing their weapons in a combat area, but the colonel didn’t see it that way. And so Captain Flick, “like a good soldier,” obediently carried out the summary courts-martial and made several hundreds of dollars for his government.</p>
<p>An enlisted man with charges against him by an officer never had a chance with Captain Flick. He was all for “upholding discipline.” He even court-martialed one of the members of our own detachment, a young medic who had got drunk for the first time in his life, Captain Flick threw the book at him – discipline must be maintained at all costs. But when later one of our officers, heavily drunk, broke a chair over the head of an enlisted man in a quarrel over a French girl, there was no court martial. A month later the offending officer was just transferred to another outfit and a better job.</p>
<p>Captain Flick was frank about some things. He called the enlisted men “the hired help” and treated them accordingly. He used to say: “You know the hired help is supposed to do all the work around here. Us officers – we’re just supposed to tell you what to do.”</p>
<p>His social outlook was not very broad. He never read anything but picture magazines and comic books. He used to go out of his way to embarrass one of the Catholic enlisted men, who was very devout, with questions which must have seemed amusing among the Ku Klux Klan. Behind their backs he was always making cracks about the Jews. He had been born in the South and had the traditional cracker attitude toward the Negro soldiers. As for the French people – they were dirty foreigners who spoke a repulsive and incomprehensible language and who were responsible for everything that had happened to them and no good for anything but sexual intercourse anyhow.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stood on Rank</h4>
<p class="fst">Toward enlisted men Captain Flick was often rude. Even with his junior officers he often stood on his rank. One of these contradicted him about some minor matter once and Captain Flick’s face got red. He drew himself up and said: “You want to remember that you’re talking to a captain of the United States Army.” “Yes, sir.” “And I’m due the respect of such.” “Yes, sir ”</p>
<p>But toward his senior officers he was generally obsequious and timid. One time a general was supposed to come to inspect our quarters and there weren’t many enlisted men around to clean the place up. That was the only time in 18 months I saw Captain Flick do a lick of work.</p>
<p>Somehow or other Captain Flick had got a college diploma. But his education wasn’t such as to inspire confidence in his judgment. One time we went in a convoy from Normandy to Le Mans, by way of the ruins of St. Lo. Captain Flick was at the head of the convoy, directing it. We went off a main road and considerably out of our way. Finally we got lost, although it seemed a difficult thing to do.</p>
<p>We asked Captain Flick why he hadn’t continued to follow the signs pointing to St. Lo. “Because I didn’t see any,” he answered. But, we said, every one else had seen them, and we turned back and showed him where they had been. “Why, I saw those signs,” he admitted, “but I always thought Lo was spelled L-o-w.”</p>
<p>Captain Flick fascinated me. He seemed to personify most of the officers I came across. I used to promise myself that some day I would write a semi-fictional story about an officer like him, finishing it off ironically with an account of his promotion to the rank of major. But toward the end of the war Captain Flick was promoted to major. That took the taste out of the project for me.</p>
<p>He went home around Thanksgiving, 1945, and we heard that he had reenlisted for another year. Where else but in the army can a man of his qualities get a job that automatically commands not only good pay – but “respect” as well?</p>
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George Breitman
A Typical “Officer and Gentleman”
(1 June 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 22, 1 June 1946, p. 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
During the last few months there has been considerable discussion in the press about the officer caste system. In an effort to attract recruits, the army has even set up a board which will soon make recommendations for eliminating some of the more glaringly outrageous aspects of the caste system. This inevitably reminds me of Captain Flick, our commanding officer overseas – the most typical, the most officer-like of all I encountered.
Captain Flick had been in the Officer Reserve Corps in peacetime; had signed up while at school, got a smattering of military training, and in due course took his place with the other officers and gentlemen by act of Congress. We came overseas and joined his outfit in England about a week before D-Day. Ours was a battalion headquarters; he was commander of the headquarters detachment, battalion adjutant, summary court officer, etc. We didn’t pay much attention to him at first because everything was so strange to us and because we were supposed to go to France on D-Day plus five.
Situation Normal
The invasion situation was normal, and we got across the channel only three days later than we were supposed to. When we got within landing distance early in the afternoon, there was no landing craft available and no one seemed to know where we should go, so we stayed on the ship all night. That proved unwise because when it got dark some German planes began dropping bombs on the ships in that area.
At the height of this activity, when we were beginning to appreciate the thoughts of a sitting duck, Captain Flick appeared among us, looking for something, and shining a flashlight in such a way as to inspire gratitude in the German bombardiers. We frankly told him what to do and where to go. After that, we watched him a little more closely.
When we got off at Omaha Beach the next day. Captain Flick was given the job of taking us to our bivouac area. With what we later recognized to be unerring inaccuracy he led us to the east instead of the west, so that it was night by the time we got to the area, and we had to dig ourselves in in the dark.
The situation remained normal and nobody knew what to do with our outfit for a couple of days after we got there. So we began to dig ourselves bigger and better foxholes. Such activity was unbecoming the dignity of a gentleman. Captain Flick ordered one of our medics to do his digging, and, not having anything else to do himself, stood by and gave directions while taking a sun-bath. Someone with a camera came by, taking human interest pictures. The captain ordered the medic to halt, took the shovel from him, assumed a position in the hole and had his picture taken. Then he got out and ordered the medic to resume work.
Some months later Captain Flick was interviewed by a radio broadcaster he knew back home and his remarks, suitably vague, made it seem he was one of the chief reasons why the invasion had been successful. Actually, Captain Flick’s chief activity during the crucial weeks of the Normandy campaign was court-martialing soldiers for firing their carbines at night without visibly good reason.
In private Captain Flick demurred weakly to the battalion commander that you couldn’t court-martial men and fine them for firing their weapons in a combat area, but the colonel didn’t see it that way. And so Captain Flick, “like a good soldier,” obediently carried out the summary courts-martial and made several hundreds of dollars for his government.
An enlisted man with charges against him by an officer never had a chance with Captain Flick. He was all for “upholding discipline.” He even court-martialed one of the members of our own detachment, a young medic who had got drunk for the first time in his life, Captain Flick threw the book at him – discipline must be maintained at all costs. But when later one of our officers, heavily drunk, broke a chair over the head of an enlisted man in a quarrel over a French girl, there was no court martial. A month later the offending officer was just transferred to another outfit and a better job.
Captain Flick was frank about some things. He called the enlisted men “the hired help” and treated them accordingly. He used to say: “You know the hired help is supposed to do all the work around here. Us officers – we’re just supposed to tell you what to do.”
His social outlook was not very broad. He never read anything but picture magazines and comic books. He used to go out of his way to embarrass one of the Catholic enlisted men, who was very devout, with questions which must have seemed amusing among the Ku Klux Klan. Behind their backs he was always making cracks about the Jews. He had been born in the South and had the traditional cracker attitude toward the Negro soldiers. As for the French people – they were dirty foreigners who spoke a repulsive and incomprehensible language and who were responsible for everything that had happened to them and no good for anything but sexual intercourse anyhow.
Stood on Rank
Toward enlisted men Captain Flick was often rude. Even with his junior officers he often stood on his rank. One of these contradicted him about some minor matter once and Captain Flick’s face got red. He drew himself up and said: “You want to remember that you’re talking to a captain of the United States Army.” “Yes, sir.” “And I’m due the respect of such.” “Yes, sir ”
But toward his senior officers he was generally obsequious and timid. One time a general was supposed to come to inspect our quarters and there weren’t many enlisted men around to clean the place up. That was the only time in 18 months I saw Captain Flick do a lick of work.
Somehow or other Captain Flick had got a college diploma. But his education wasn’t such as to inspire confidence in his judgment. One time we went in a convoy from Normandy to Le Mans, by way of the ruins of St. Lo. Captain Flick was at the head of the convoy, directing it. We went off a main road and considerably out of our way. Finally we got lost, although it seemed a difficult thing to do.
We asked Captain Flick why he hadn’t continued to follow the signs pointing to St. Lo. “Because I didn’t see any,” he answered. But, we said, every one else had seen them, and we turned back and showed him where they had been. “Why, I saw those signs,” he admitted, “but I always thought Lo was spelled L-o-w.”
Captain Flick fascinated me. He seemed to personify most of the officers I came across. I used to promise myself that some day I would write a semi-fictional story about an officer like him, finishing it off ironically with an account of his promotion to the rank of major. But toward the end of the war Captain Flick was promoted to major. That took the taste out of the project for me.
He went home around Thanksgiving, 1945, and we heard that he had reenlisted for another year. Where else but in the army can a man of his qualities get a job that automatically commands not only good pay – but “respect” as well?
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(12 April 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_15" target="new">Vol. V No. 15</a>, 12 April 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Pickens Gets the Booby Prize</h4>
<p class="fst">The most disgusting article of the month by any Negro was the one by William Pickens in his column for <strong>A.N.P.</strong> <em>Views of the News</em>.</p>
<p>In it Pickens complains that during a recent speech someone in the audience asked a question, trying to discover how he explained the fact that the most outspoken enemies of the Negro people, the Southern Congressmen in Washington, were like himself violently in favor of the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill.</p>
<p>Pickens attempts to dodge the question by poking names and jibes at the person who asked the question. This is easy to do, for it is true, as Pickens says, that because your enemy stands for one thing, you do not <em>necessarily</em> and <em>automatically</em> stand for the opposite.</p>
<p>But still, when your enemy says the same thing as you about something that concerns your fate, it is necessary to stop and think about it and figure out why. Maybe he is wrong in taking that position – and on the other hand, maybe you are.</p>
<p>But Pickens does not do this. Instead, in order to justify his stand, he launches into a defense of the Jim-Crow, poll-tax, lynch-mob lovers who sit in Congress as representatives of the South! He says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Without the almost solid South behind our defense movements, the President would never have been able to make any progress with that movement. The southerners are Americans, and it happens to be thai they are American next to the Negro American himself. The rest of the country is largely European and of other more recent foreign origins ... The southerner is a much older American, on the whole, than are the whites of the rest of the land.</p>
<p class="quote">“When it comes to an international problem, the southern whites and the blacks, if they use their heads instead of their gall bladders, are most apt to agree together. In defense of America the Negro, when he thinks, will be second to nobody, and the whites of Texas and South Carolina will be second to no white people. There is no great room for differences; the southern whites want to keep their national freedom and their rights – even their rights to keep trying to keep the Negro down. And the Negro wants to keep his American rights – his rights to fight like the devil against being kept down. Under Hitler or any foreigner, both of these Americans would lose their good American rights – for the foreigner would keep BOTH of us down – white and black. “</p>
<p class="fst">What does all this blather of Pickens mean? This garbage about the Southern Negro haters being the best Americans? This bosses’ argument about the Northern and Western workers, who hate war, being of “more recent foreign origins, “ being aliens and so on? This fear that the Southern ruling class that oppresses the Negro people may lose its rights to oppress them? This false posing of the problem that if you are opposed to helping England win the war to control the 450,000,000 colored people now under its heel, you are automatically in favor of having Hitler win it?</p>
<p>It means that Pickens is so bankrupt in his politics and his defense of the war plans of the Roosevelt government that he has to throw overboard everything he has been saying for the last 25 years. There is no other way to account for his defense of the Southern Bourbons and his veiled attacks on the progressive workers in the North. And there is no better example of our contention, that you cannot at the same time logically be for the war and against the institutions which the war is intended to preserve. Only those who oppose the war can effectively fight for full equality for the colored people.</p>
<p>In the last six months Pickens has written far more words in defense of the war plans of the government than he has written against the Jim Crow system the government upholds, he has written far more against Hitler than he has written against Bilbo.</p>
<p>And he is the man whom so many people, just a few months ago, were pushing forward to receive the Spingarn medal for having contributed more than any other for the advancement of the Negro people!</p>
<p>In his article, Pickens attempts to, deride the person who asked him the question by telling the story that</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Booker T. Washington used to tell about the old colored man’s politics in ‘Reconstruction’ days: The old man would go down to the town square, before election times, and lean against the telegraph poles and listen slyly to the talk of the white people, to hear how they intended to vote, and when asked about that interest, he explained it thusly: ‘Well, you see, I’m tryin’ to find out how I must vote, and when I learn how the white folks is goin’ to vote, I know that I must vote agin’ it.’ “</p>
<p class="fst">Pickens tells ‘the story, not only to sneer at his questioner, but also to sneer at the old man in the story, who doesn’t have his education and his standing as a “leader. “</p>
<p>But the old man, in my opinion, had a better grasp of politics, instinctive as it was, in his left foot than Pickens had in his whole body.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(12 April 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 15, 12 April 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Pickens Gets the Booby Prize
The most disgusting article of the month by any Negro was the one by William Pickens in his column for A.N.P. Views of the News.
In it Pickens complains that during a recent speech someone in the audience asked a question, trying to discover how he explained the fact that the most outspoken enemies of the Negro people, the Southern Congressmen in Washington, were like himself violently in favor of the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill.
Pickens attempts to dodge the question by poking names and jibes at the person who asked the question. This is easy to do, for it is true, as Pickens says, that because your enemy stands for one thing, you do not necessarily and automatically stand for the opposite.
But still, when your enemy says the same thing as you about something that concerns your fate, it is necessary to stop and think about it and figure out why. Maybe he is wrong in taking that position – and on the other hand, maybe you are.
But Pickens does not do this. Instead, in order to justify his stand, he launches into a defense of the Jim-Crow, poll-tax, lynch-mob lovers who sit in Congress as representatives of the South! He says:
“Without the almost solid South behind our defense movements, the President would never have been able to make any progress with that movement. The southerners are Americans, and it happens to be thai they are American next to the Negro American himself. The rest of the country is largely European and of other more recent foreign origins ... The southerner is a much older American, on the whole, than are the whites of the rest of the land.
“When it comes to an international problem, the southern whites and the blacks, if they use their heads instead of their gall bladders, are most apt to agree together. In defense of America the Negro, when he thinks, will be second to nobody, and the whites of Texas and South Carolina will be second to no white people. There is no great room for differences; the southern whites want to keep their national freedom and their rights – even their rights to keep trying to keep the Negro down. And the Negro wants to keep his American rights – his rights to fight like the devil against being kept down. Under Hitler or any foreigner, both of these Americans would lose their good American rights – for the foreigner would keep BOTH of us down – white and black. “
What does all this blather of Pickens mean? This garbage about the Southern Negro haters being the best Americans? This bosses’ argument about the Northern and Western workers, who hate war, being of “more recent foreign origins, “ being aliens and so on? This fear that the Southern ruling class that oppresses the Negro people may lose its rights to oppress them? This false posing of the problem that if you are opposed to helping England win the war to control the 450,000,000 colored people now under its heel, you are automatically in favor of having Hitler win it?
It means that Pickens is so bankrupt in his politics and his defense of the war plans of the Roosevelt government that he has to throw overboard everything he has been saying for the last 25 years. There is no other way to account for his defense of the Southern Bourbons and his veiled attacks on the progressive workers in the North. And there is no better example of our contention, that you cannot at the same time logically be for the war and against the institutions which the war is intended to preserve. Only those who oppose the war can effectively fight for full equality for the colored people.
In the last six months Pickens has written far more words in defense of the war plans of the government than he has written against the Jim Crow system the government upholds, he has written far more against Hitler than he has written against Bilbo.
And he is the man whom so many people, just a few months ago, were pushing forward to receive the Spingarn medal for having contributed more than any other for the advancement of the Negro people!
In his article, Pickens attempts to, deride the person who asked him the question by telling the story that
“Booker T. Washington used to tell about the old colored man’s politics in ‘Reconstruction’ days: The old man would go down to the town square, before election times, and lean against the telegraph poles and listen slyly to the talk of the white people, to hear how they intended to vote, and when asked about that interest, he explained it thusly: ‘Well, you see, I’m tryin’ to find out how I must vote, and when I learn how the white folks is goin’ to vote, I know that I must vote agin’ it.’ “
Pickens tells ‘the story, not only to sneer at his questioner, but also to sneer at the old man in the story, who doesn’t have his education and his standing as a “leader. “
But the old man, in my opinion, had a better grasp of politics, instinctive as it was, in his left foot than Pickens had in his whole body.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>FDR Tries to Prevent Negro March on Capital</h1>
<h4>Administration Men Exerting All Possible Pressure to Get March Leaders<br>
to Abandon the March Even at This Late Date</h4>
<h3>(28 June 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_26" target="new">Vol. V No. 26</a>, 28 June 1941, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">As the day of the July 1st Negro March on Washington draws closer, numerous attempts are being made to exert pressure, on the organizers of the march to call it off.</p>
<p>These attempts include “advice” and hardly-veiled threats from so-called friends, government officials and Negro misleaders.</p>
<p>The coming March on Washington has the government worried. It will be a strong and telling condemnation of the hypocritical talk about saving the world for democracy. The refusal to grant the just and simple demands of the marchers will be a real eye-opener to hundreds of thousands of Negroes as to the true character of the Roosevelt administration and the war it is preparing.</p>
<p>The main gun in this drive to stifle the March was fired by Roosevelt himself, in his memorandum to the OPM on Negro employment.</p>
<p>Roosevelt hoped that this memorandum would satisfy the leaders of the March and persuade them to call off the march.</p>
<p>But the leaders of the March just could not do this, when so little had actually been offered by Roosevelt.<br>
</p>
<h4>Answers to Roosevelt</h4>
<p class="fst">A. Philip Randolph declared:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The statement of the President is one which was expected 10 months ago. It has no teeth in it and its not a proclamation or executive order which would give assurance of discontinuance of discrimination. Therefore the mobilization effort for the march on Washington is being redoubled.”</p>
<p class="fst">Walter White of the NAACP stated that “the president’s statement is about six months late. What Negroes want now is action, not words.”</p>
<p>Later in the week, unfortunately, both Randolph and White began to give in a little under the pressure of Washington but both still asserted that the march would go through as planned. Randolph said: “It is not only the president who must be impressed with the gravity of the Negro situation ...” White said: “The president’s memorandum, sound and democratic in principle, is too little when one considers the areas it leaves untouched, and comes too late to convince the Committee that a mass demonstration isn’t needed to dramatize race discrimination in the nation’s life.” After all, Randolph and White were also under pressure from the Negro people who want the march.<br>
</p>
<h4>Masses for March</h4>
<p class="fst">An example of how the masses responded to the cry that the Roosevelt memorandum was a victory was shown in the statement by one of the rank-and-file members of the Harlem March committee who said: “Even if this is a victory, that’s no reason why we can’t hold a victory demonstration in Washington!”</p>
<p class="c"><strong>(On Page 5 of this issue is an analysis of the President’s memorandum.)</strong><br>
</p>
<h4>Eleanor Intervenes</h4>
<p class="fst">The administration did not content itself with utilizing the services of the male half of the family. After all, while Roosevelt has kept quiet on all these questions for years, his wife has built herself quite a reputation as a “friend of the Negroes.” So she too. went into action.</p>
<p>First she wrote a letter to Randolph:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I have talked over your letter with the President and I feel very strongly that your group is making a very grave mistake at the present time to allow this march to take place. I am afraid it will set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least, towards better opportunities and less segregation.</p>
<p class="quote">“I feel that if any incident occurs as a result of this, it may engender so much bitterness that it will create in Congress even more solid opposition from certain groups than we have had in the past ...”</p>
<p class="fst">This was followed by a surprise visit by Mrs. Roosevelt to New York, where, in LaGuardia’s office she and the Little Flower at tempted to persuade Randolph and White in person.</p>
<p>Randolph and White were not convinced, they said afterwards, but they certainly did not help the march any when they issued Mrs. Roosevelt’s letter a little later with the brief statement that the march would produce beneficial results, but presenting her letter as the expression of “an important point of view from not only an influential person in American affairs but a strong and definite friend of the Negro. There is no question that can rise in the minds of the Negroes about the fact that she is a real and genuine friend of the race.”</p>
<p>By not answering point for point what she had said, and by characterizing her as a “friend of the race,” Randolph and White weaken the fight.<br>
</p>
<h4>Eleanor’s “Friendly” Threat</h4>
<p class="fst">Eleanor Roosevelt’s letter is not that of “a friend,” but that of an enemy disguising herself as a friend. For what is her letter but a half-threat? A half-threat that the march will “set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least” (what progress?). What is this talk of hers about “an incident”? Who will create the incident? Not the marchers. If any “incident” occurs, it will be brought about by the administration or its underlings. All Roosevelt need do to prevent any “incidents” when the marchers arrive in Washington, is grant their demands. It is significant that when Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to her husband, she evidently did not try to persuade him that he should do this, and thus avoid “incidents.”</p>
<p>It is just because she has the reputation of being a “friend” that Randolph and White should have taken extra steps to expose her letter and her attitude, and to explain that if she were a friend of the Negroes she would spend more time trying to convince her husband to grant the demands of the Negroes and less trying to convince the Negroes to withdraw their demands.<br>
</p>
<h4>Uncle Tom Whines</h4>
<p class="fst">Congressman Arthur Mitchell, only Negro member of Congress, chimed in and attacked the march too. The effects of this, of course, will be little, inasmuch as Mitchell has completely discredited himself before the Negroes by his endorsement of Roosevelt’s appointment of Negro-hating Senator Byrnes to the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>The official cabinet members and their “family” followed up with telegrams to Randolph, urging him to come to Washington to meet with Stimson and Knox. The <strong>Chicago Defender</strong> states:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Though the purposes of the conferences were not mentioned in the invitations, it was expected that both secretaries would offer to correct some of the abuses which have angered Negroes if the parade plans are abandoned.”<br>
</p>
<h4>March Already Justified</h4>
<p class="fst">Thus, better than anything the March-On-Washington Committee might have said or done, the true significance of the March is being revealed in the frantic efforts of the Roosevelt administration to stifle it.</p>
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Albert Parker
FDR Tries to Prevent Negro March on Capital
Administration Men Exerting All Possible Pressure to Get March Leaders
to Abandon the March Even at This Late Date
(28 June 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 26, 28 June 1941, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
As the day of the July 1st Negro March on Washington draws closer, numerous attempts are being made to exert pressure, on the organizers of the march to call it off.
These attempts include “advice” and hardly-veiled threats from so-called friends, government officials and Negro misleaders.
The coming March on Washington has the government worried. It will be a strong and telling condemnation of the hypocritical talk about saving the world for democracy. The refusal to grant the just and simple demands of the marchers will be a real eye-opener to hundreds of thousands of Negroes as to the true character of the Roosevelt administration and the war it is preparing.
The main gun in this drive to stifle the March was fired by Roosevelt himself, in his memorandum to the OPM on Negro employment.
Roosevelt hoped that this memorandum would satisfy the leaders of the March and persuade them to call off the march.
But the leaders of the March just could not do this, when so little had actually been offered by Roosevelt.
Answers to Roosevelt
A. Philip Randolph declared:
“The statement of the President is one which was expected 10 months ago. It has no teeth in it and its not a proclamation or executive order which would give assurance of discontinuance of discrimination. Therefore the mobilization effort for the march on Washington is being redoubled.”
Walter White of the NAACP stated that “the president’s statement is about six months late. What Negroes want now is action, not words.”
Later in the week, unfortunately, both Randolph and White began to give in a little under the pressure of Washington but both still asserted that the march would go through as planned. Randolph said: “It is not only the president who must be impressed with the gravity of the Negro situation ...” White said: “The president’s memorandum, sound and democratic in principle, is too little when one considers the areas it leaves untouched, and comes too late to convince the Committee that a mass demonstration isn’t needed to dramatize race discrimination in the nation’s life.” After all, Randolph and White were also under pressure from the Negro people who want the march.
Masses for March
An example of how the masses responded to the cry that the Roosevelt memorandum was a victory was shown in the statement by one of the rank-and-file members of the Harlem March committee who said: “Even if this is a victory, that’s no reason why we can’t hold a victory demonstration in Washington!”
(On Page 5 of this issue is an analysis of the President’s memorandum.)
Eleanor Intervenes
The administration did not content itself with utilizing the services of the male half of the family. After all, while Roosevelt has kept quiet on all these questions for years, his wife has built herself quite a reputation as a “friend of the Negroes.” So she too. went into action.
First she wrote a letter to Randolph:
“I have talked over your letter with the President and I feel very strongly that your group is making a very grave mistake at the present time to allow this march to take place. I am afraid it will set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least, towards better opportunities and less segregation.
“I feel that if any incident occurs as a result of this, it may engender so much bitterness that it will create in Congress even more solid opposition from certain groups than we have had in the past ...”
This was followed by a surprise visit by Mrs. Roosevelt to New York, where, in LaGuardia’s office she and the Little Flower at tempted to persuade Randolph and White in person.
Randolph and White were not convinced, they said afterwards, but they certainly did not help the march any when they issued Mrs. Roosevelt’s letter a little later with the brief statement that the march would produce beneficial results, but presenting her letter as the expression of “an important point of view from not only an influential person in American affairs but a strong and definite friend of the Negro. There is no question that can rise in the minds of the Negroes about the fact that she is a real and genuine friend of the race.”
By not answering point for point what she had said, and by characterizing her as a “friend of the race,” Randolph and White weaken the fight.
Eleanor’s “Friendly” Threat
Eleanor Roosevelt’s letter is not that of “a friend,” but that of an enemy disguising herself as a friend. For what is her letter but a half-threat? A half-threat that the march will “set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least” (what progress?). What is this talk of hers about “an incident”? Who will create the incident? Not the marchers. If any “incident” occurs, it will be brought about by the administration or its underlings. All Roosevelt need do to prevent any “incidents” when the marchers arrive in Washington, is grant their demands. It is significant that when Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to her husband, she evidently did not try to persuade him that he should do this, and thus avoid “incidents.”
It is just because she has the reputation of being a “friend” that Randolph and White should have taken extra steps to expose her letter and her attitude, and to explain that if she were a friend of the Negroes she would spend more time trying to convince her husband to grant the demands of the Negroes and less trying to convince the Negroes to withdraw their demands.
Uncle Tom Whines
Congressman Arthur Mitchell, only Negro member of Congress, chimed in and attacked the march too. The effects of this, of course, will be little, inasmuch as Mitchell has completely discredited himself before the Negroes by his endorsement of Roosevelt’s appointment of Negro-hating Senator Byrnes to the Supreme Court.
The official cabinet members and their “family” followed up with telegrams to Randolph, urging him to come to Washington to meet with Stimson and Knox. The Chicago Defender states:
“Though the purposes of the conferences were not mentioned in the invitations, it was expected that both secretaries would offer to correct some of the abuses which have angered Negroes if the parade plans are abandoned.”
March Already Justified
Thus, better than anything the March-On-Washington Committee might have said or done, the true significance of the March is being revealed in the frantic efforts of the Roosevelt administration to stifle it.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(5 July 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_27" target="new">Vol. V No. 27</a>, 5 July 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Negroes and the Soviet Union</h4>
<p class="fst">Class conscious American Negroes must defend the Soviet Union against its imperialist enemies as part of their own struggle to abolish the system that starves, lynches, disfranchises and Jim Crows them in this country.</p>
<p>We do not pretend that the Soviet Union is an ideal country, where all problems have been solved, where socialism has been reached. Not at all. But it is a Workers’ State, where power has been taken out of the hands of the employers and the landlords, where capitalist bosses no longer run the factories for their own profit, where the foundations for a better life have been laid.</p>
<p>It is true that political power in the Soviet Union is in the hands of a group of bureaucrats who attempt to use that power for themselves, instead of on behalf of the interests of the international working class. Things have changed since the days when Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian workers, and they have not changed for the better. But the Soviet Union is still a Workers’ State, even though it is a weakened and distorted and degenerated one.</p>
<p>And as long as it is a Workers’ State, as long as bosses do not have power there, it must be defended in its struggles against the capitalist world. For it to be defeated would mean an immense strengthening of the world capitalist system. Because then the capitalists would be able through their exploitation of the labor and resources of the Soviet Union to hold onto their power in Europe, the United States and the colonies for many years longer.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the workers of the world keep the capitalists out of the Soviet Union and thus prevent them from getting the “breathing spell” the capitalists desire, it will be that much easier for the workers and exploited peoples of the world, to make their own revolutions and set up their own Workers and Farmers Governments.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Like A Great Trade Union</h4>
<p class="fst">The Soviet Union is like a large trade union, a workers’ organization, which has fallen under the control of a group of reactionary bureaucrats who are concerned about the welfare/ not of the union, but of themselves. These bureaucrats often make deals with the bosses behind the backs of the workers; they don’t permit the workers to determine the policies of the union; they don’t fight properly to raise wages and better conditions of the rank-and-file; they expel and even beat up militant workers who take the floor to oppose their policies. In such a situation it is the job of advanced workers to seek the support of the majority of the members of the union to replace the conservative leadership of the union with a militant leadership that will restore democracy in the union and lead it in struggles against the bosses. The bosses attack the union, and the bureaucrats, who will have no job if there is no union, are forced in self-defense to declare a strike against the bosses. What should be the attitude of all the members of that union, and of all other unions?</p>
<p>Their attitude must be to defend the union against the bosses, in spite of their sharp differences with the union bureaucrats. The main enemy is the bosses. If the bosses win, there will be no union and there will be no chance for the rank-and-file to improve their union and their conditions. If the bosses win, not only will the bureaucrats be kicked out, but the union, and the whole labor movement, will be weakened.</p>
<p>In the same sense, advanced workers, Negro and white, must call for the defense of the Soviet Union. If the imperialist powers win, they will carve up the Soviet Union in the same way the bosses would break up a union. It would then be a hundred times as hard later on for the advanced workers in the Soviet Union to replace the Stalinist bureaucracy with a revolutionary leadership that would fight for the workers’ interests. It would make much more difficult the job of moving forward in the Soviet Union toward better conditions, toward socialism. We must hot forget the crimes of Stalin, we must get rid of him if we want the struggle to be waged as it should be waged, but we must remember that the main enemy is the imperialist powers who keep the rest of the world in subjection.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>The Fundamental Principle</h4>
<p class="fst">We must never forget this principle: wherever a workers’ organization comes into conflict with a capitalist state, wherever a workers’ organization comes into conflict with the bosses, wherever an oppressed people come into conflict with their oppressors, we must support and defend the workers’ state, the workers’ organization, the oppressed people.</p>
<p>It was more or less along the lines of this principle that advanced workers supported and defended the recently called-off Negro March On Washington against its enemies and critics. We did not trust the leaders of the March, the Randolphs and Walter Whites, and we warned the masses that they would not conduct the March in the militant, independent manner required. We pointed out the weaknesses in their program and the bureaucratic way they had organized the March.</p>
<p>But nevertheless we supported the March and called on all workers to do the same. For essentially, in spite of its leadership, the March was a struggle between the Negro people with their labor allies on the one side, and the capitalist government protecting and sponsoring Jim Crowism on the other. If we hadn’t supported the March, or if we had been “neutral” and indifferent, we would only have played into the hands of Jim Crow.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(5 July 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 27, 5 July 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Negroes and the Soviet Union
Class conscious American Negroes must defend the Soviet Union against its imperialist enemies as part of their own struggle to abolish the system that starves, lynches, disfranchises and Jim Crows them in this country.
We do not pretend that the Soviet Union is an ideal country, where all problems have been solved, where socialism has been reached. Not at all. But it is a Workers’ State, where power has been taken out of the hands of the employers and the landlords, where capitalist bosses no longer run the factories for their own profit, where the foundations for a better life have been laid.
It is true that political power in the Soviet Union is in the hands of a group of bureaucrats who attempt to use that power for themselves, instead of on behalf of the interests of the international working class. Things have changed since the days when Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian workers, and they have not changed for the better. But the Soviet Union is still a Workers’ State, even though it is a weakened and distorted and degenerated one.
And as long as it is a Workers’ State, as long as bosses do not have power there, it must be defended in its struggles against the capitalist world. For it to be defeated would mean an immense strengthening of the world capitalist system. Because then the capitalists would be able through their exploitation of the labor and resources of the Soviet Union to hold onto their power in Europe, the United States and the colonies for many years longer.
On the other hand, if the workers of the world keep the capitalists out of the Soviet Union and thus prevent them from getting the “breathing spell” the capitalists desire, it will be that much easier for the workers and exploited peoples of the world, to make their own revolutions and set up their own Workers and Farmers Governments.
Like A Great Trade Union
The Soviet Union is like a large trade union, a workers’ organization, which has fallen under the control of a group of reactionary bureaucrats who are concerned about the welfare/ not of the union, but of themselves. These bureaucrats often make deals with the bosses behind the backs of the workers; they don’t permit the workers to determine the policies of the union; they don’t fight properly to raise wages and better conditions of the rank-and-file; they expel and even beat up militant workers who take the floor to oppose their policies. In such a situation it is the job of advanced workers to seek the support of the majority of the members of the union to replace the conservative leadership of the union with a militant leadership that will restore democracy in the union and lead it in struggles against the bosses. The bosses attack the union, and the bureaucrats, who will have no job if there is no union, are forced in self-defense to declare a strike against the bosses. What should be the attitude of all the members of that union, and of all other unions?
Their attitude must be to defend the union against the bosses, in spite of their sharp differences with the union bureaucrats. The main enemy is the bosses. If the bosses win, there will be no union and there will be no chance for the rank-and-file to improve their union and their conditions. If the bosses win, not only will the bureaucrats be kicked out, but the union, and the whole labor movement, will be weakened.
In the same sense, advanced workers, Negro and white, must call for the defense of the Soviet Union. If the imperialist powers win, they will carve up the Soviet Union in the same way the bosses would break up a union. It would then be a hundred times as hard later on for the advanced workers in the Soviet Union to replace the Stalinist bureaucracy with a revolutionary leadership that would fight for the workers’ interests. It would make much more difficult the job of moving forward in the Soviet Union toward better conditions, toward socialism. We must hot forget the crimes of Stalin, we must get rid of him if we want the struggle to be waged as it should be waged, but we must remember that the main enemy is the imperialist powers who keep the rest of the world in subjection.
The Fundamental Principle
We must never forget this principle: wherever a workers’ organization comes into conflict with a capitalist state, wherever a workers’ organization comes into conflict with the bosses, wherever an oppressed people come into conflict with their oppressors, we must support and defend the workers’ state, the workers’ organization, the oppressed people.
It was more or less along the lines of this principle that advanced workers supported and defended the recently called-off Negro March On Washington against its enemies and critics. We did not trust the leaders of the March, the Randolphs and Walter Whites, and we warned the masses that they would not conduct the March in the militant, independent manner required. We pointed out the weaknesses in their program and the bureaucratic way they had organized the March.
But nevertheless we supported the March and called on all workers to do the same. For essentially, in spite of its leadership, the March was a struggle between the Negro people with their labor allies on the one side, and the capitalist government protecting and sponsoring Jim Crowism on the other. If we hadn’t supported the March, or if we had been “neutral” and indifferent, we would only have played into the hands of Jim Crow.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(26 October 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_43" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 43</a>, 26 October 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Recently, Roscoe Dunjee, editor of <b>The Black Dispatch</b>, made the keynote address before the National Colored Democratic Association, in the course of which he said tire following:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I want to insist here and now that as American citizens we demand the right to be integrated into every branch of the American Army. Recently I appeared before the resolutions committee of the Oklahoma Democratic State Convention ...</p>
<p class="quote">“When I did get an opportunity to talk I told that committee about the obvious discrimination in the American Army. I told them how Pat Hurely, from my state, when Secretary of War under Herbert Hoover, had practically demobilized all of the Negro combat troops of the Army. I told them that at Fort Sill, in my state, and at Fort Riley in Kansas, Negroes were nothing more than manure handlers. I told them that if Hitler was going to come over here, Negroes wanted to be armed with something else other than a mop and a broom.</p>
<p class="quote">“The Republican Party under Herbert Hoover struck at the Negro’s right to fight for this country and we want to ask our party convention this year to put a gun in the black man’s hands. We want the right to fight in the Army, Navy, the air, and the National Guard ...”</p>
<p class="fst">Dunjee correctly puts part of the blame for the Jim Crow conditions in the armed forces on the Republicans, who today are promising the Negroes everything they can think of ... that may possibly win them a vote.</p>
<p>But how he prostitutes himself when he pretends that the Democrats are any better in this respect! Assume for a minute that the Republicans were solely responsible for these conditions. The Democrats have had eight years now to correct them, haven’t they?</p>
<p>Talking about that reminds us about the committee of Frank Crosswaith, William Pickens and Alfred Baker Lewis, who signed that rotten article, <i>Colored Americans Have a Stake in the War</i>, issued as war propaganda by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.</p>
<p>We’ll discuss that article again in future weeks. Here we’ll limit ourselves to George Schuyler’s comment on it in the <b>Pittsburgh Courier</b> of Oct. 12: “They speak of the Hitler menace to freedom of speech, press and assemblage, forgetting all about Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama. They say the NAACP would be illegal under Hitler, forgetting how dangerous is membership therein in the Deep South outside of a few cities, one member having recently been lynched outside of Brownsville, Tenn.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Ironically enough, in proof of the fact that British imperialism ‘is softening’, they boast that in Jamaica, Bustamente, a prominent Negro trade unionist and radical, has had freedom to organize and agitate even under British imperialism ... In Germany or Italy, Bustamente would have been put in a concentration camp or perhaps executed ...’</p>
<p class="quote">“<i>Here’s the laugh on that ... Last week several Negro newspapers announced that Bustament HAS been thrown into a concentration camp.”</i></p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(26 October 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 43, 26 October 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Recently, Roscoe Dunjee, editor of The Black Dispatch, made the keynote address before the National Colored Democratic Association, in the course of which he said tire following:
“I want to insist here and now that as American citizens we demand the right to be integrated into every branch of the American Army. Recently I appeared before the resolutions committee of the Oklahoma Democratic State Convention ...
“When I did get an opportunity to talk I told that committee about the obvious discrimination in the American Army. I told them how Pat Hurely, from my state, when Secretary of War under Herbert Hoover, had practically demobilized all of the Negro combat troops of the Army. I told them that at Fort Sill, in my state, and at Fort Riley in Kansas, Negroes were nothing more than manure handlers. I told them that if Hitler was going to come over here, Negroes wanted to be armed with something else other than a mop and a broom.
“The Republican Party under Herbert Hoover struck at the Negro’s right to fight for this country and we want to ask our party convention this year to put a gun in the black man’s hands. We want the right to fight in the Army, Navy, the air, and the National Guard ...”
Dunjee correctly puts part of the blame for the Jim Crow conditions in the armed forces on the Republicans, who today are promising the Negroes everything they can think of ... that may possibly win them a vote.
But how he prostitutes himself when he pretends that the Democrats are any better in this respect! Assume for a minute that the Republicans were solely responsible for these conditions. The Democrats have had eight years now to correct them, haven’t they?
Talking about that reminds us about the committee of Frank Crosswaith, William Pickens and Alfred Baker Lewis, who signed that rotten article, Colored Americans Have a Stake in the War, issued as war propaganda by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
We’ll discuss that article again in future weeks. Here we’ll limit ourselves to George Schuyler’s comment on it in the Pittsburgh Courier of Oct. 12: “They speak of the Hitler menace to freedom of speech, press and assemblage, forgetting all about Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama. They say the NAACP would be illegal under Hitler, forgetting how dangerous is membership therein in the Deep South outside of a few cities, one member having recently been lynched outside of Brownsville, Tenn.
“Ironically enough, in proof of the fact that British imperialism ‘is softening’, they boast that in Jamaica, Bustamente, a prominent Negro trade unionist and radical, has had freedom to organize and agitate even under British imperialism ... In Germany or Italy, Bustamente would have been put in a concentration camp or perhaps executed ...’
“Here’s the laugh on that ... Last week several Negro newspapers announced that Bustament HAS been thrown into a concentration camp.”
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h4>On The 27th Anniversary of August 4, 1914</h4>
<h1>The “Socialist” Warmongers</h1>
<h4>Stalinists of 1941 Continue<br>
Treacherous Traditions of 1914 ‘Socialists’</h4>
<h3>(2 August 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_31" target="new">Vol. V No. 31</a>, 2 August 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">August 4th is the 27th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. It is also the 27th anniversary of another dreadful event – the vote of the German Social Democratic Party’s deputies in the Reichstag in favor of the war, followed by similar pro-war votes by the French Socialist Party, the British Labor Party, the Social-Democratic Party of Austro-Hungary, the pro-war Mensheviks of Russia.</p>
<p>The reformist and class-collaboration policies carried out by the leaders of these parties in peace-time thus produced a policy of supporting the war of “their” capitalists.</p>
<p>The “socialist” warmongers, by providing “good” reasons for workers to support the imperialist war, were helpful servants of the capitalists in World War I.</p>
<p>With the change of only a few words in their slogans, they or their sons and younger brothers are performing the same Judas functions for the imperialists today, in World War II.</p>
<p>In 1914 it was the parties of the Second International – socialists in words in peace time, recruiting sergeants in action for the imperialists in war time, who played the main role in rounding up the workers for the slaughter.</p>
<p>In 1941 the Second International repeats its inglorious traditions of 1914–18 but the parties of the Third International are challenging it for supremacy in the field of war-mongering.</p>
<p>Today capitalism has even less to offer the workers than in 1914. The decay of the system which can produce only war, fascism and unemployment has reached the stage where all can see and feel its degeneration.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Socialist” War Slogans Haven’t Improved with Time</h4>
<p class="fst">If the times have changed for the worse, so have the slogans and pretexts. As World War II is the extension of World War I on a wider and bloodier scale, so the arguments of the “socialist” warmongers of today are the extension of their arguments of 1914 on a lower and dirtier scale. In 1914 the “socialist” leaders on each side of the imperialist war supported their “own” capitalists. Their organizations had grown big, they had many members and newspapers and jobs. In the course of the years leading up to 1914 they had become opportunists.</p>
<p>The capitalists were willing to tolerate them as long as they would remain only a party of opposition – opposition, that is. within the framework of private property and profit. But in time of war, the capitalists need more than friendly opposition, they need “national unity,” that is, the assurance that the working class will unprotestingly play its role of providing the munitions of war in the factories and the cannon fodder on the battlefields.</p>
<p><em>Any party that tries to convince the workers that they have nothing to gain from imperialist wars and organizes the workers to put an end to the war and the system that creates the war, will meet the full fury of boss persecution, frameup and suppression. The “socialist” leaders, grown soft, did not want, by opposing the war, to jeopardize the gains they had made for themselves.</em> Therefore they would not go before the workers and say the truth:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“This is an imperialist war. It is a war for the benefit of the employers and the monopolies. They are asking us to go to war to gain or protect foreign markets and colonies and sources of raw materials for them to exploit.” If the labor lead had [<em>text missing</em>] the workers would have answered “Very well, we must fight against this war, and you, our leaders, must lead us in this fight.”</p>
<p class="fst">The “socialist” warmongers cooked up slogans to justify their position.</p>
<p>In France, Russia and the allied countries they said, “This is a war against Kaiserism, which represents everything reactionary and anti-labor. Kaiserism must be destroyed before the workers of the world can go ahead to socialism.”</p>
<p>In Germany and Austria they said: “This is a war against Czarism, which represents everything reactionary and anti-labor. Czarism must be destroyed before the workers of the world can go ahead to socialism.”</p>
<p>The bosses, whom the worker had to fight every day for an extra crust of bread, would have had great difficulty in selling this line to the workers. Only the “socialist” leaders could do this for the bosses. In the name of a war for democracy, the “socialist” leaders drove the workers out onto the battlefield to die by the millions.<br>
</p>
<h4>The War-Mongers Didn’t Destroy Czar And Kaiser</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>Both Kaiserism and Czarism were finally destroyed – but not by the imperialists, and not by the “socialist” war-mongers. They were overthrown by the workers, when they began to understand that the slogan of a war for democracy conducted by the imperialists was a fraud, when they turned away from the “socialist” leaders who had led them into the war. It was not the Allied armies that overthrew Kaiserism, but the workers of Germany; not the German armies which overthrew Czarism, but the workers and peasants of Russia.</em> And when the Czar and Kaiser were overthrown by the independent action of the workers, the “socialist” misleaders who had told them to postpone their struggle for socialism until their own imperialists had won the war now told them to postpone it again.</p>
<p>In Russia, the “socialist” warmongers not only told the workers and peasants to postpone the establishment of a workers’ government that would put an end to the war, but also fought side by side with the capitalists to prevent or overthrow the workers’ government of Lenin and Trotsky In Germany they did the same.</p>
<p>The difference was that in Russia there existed a Marxist workers party, the Bolsheviks, which had grown up in struggle against the opportunism and warmongering of the “socialists,” and in Germany there was no such strong, experienced party. As a result, the socialists, Noske and Scheidemann, were able to help put down the German revolution while the Mensheviks were unable to hold back the Russian Revolution, which proceeded at once to stop the war.</p>
<p>When we look back now at the slogans of the first World War, we can see what dangerous lies they were. For the “war for democracy” led straight to fascism. The suspension of the class struggle by the German “socialist” leaders brought in at home a regime as reactionary and anti-labor as Czarism had ever been. In the name of democracy, the German “socialist” betrayers had first urged postponement of the fight for socialism, then they fought against the socialist revolution and murdered its leaders and thus they saved the capitalist system which was to destroy all democracy in Germany.</p>
<p><em>So in the end these “socialists” whose opportunist support of the war had been based on their desire to preserve their institutions, newspapers, labor banks and buildings, lived to see them all taken away, not by a foreign invader, but by that same capitalist class whose war they had supported and whose system they had saved.</em></p>
<p><em>Just as in 1914, the parties of the Second International are today supporting the imperialists on both sides of the war.</em></p>
<p><em>On the Nazi side are the Finnish, Norwegian, French, and Belgian “socialist” leaders, fighting now against “plutocracy” and for “a new order.”</em> On the other side are the “socialist” leaders who were driven out of Germany and Austria, a small minority of the French “socialists,” the British Labor Party and the Social Democratic Federation of America.</p>
<p>Now they no longer merely postpone the struggle for socialism to a future date as they did in 1914: most of them have written it off the books for all time. All they want, they say, is democracy. If they could only get that back, and their little jobs and trade union posts and newspapers, how happy they would be. That kind of democracy would be socialism enough for them.</p>
<p>If the “socialist” warmongers are not as helpful to the imperialists as they were in 1914, it’s not their fault that they’re not. They try their best, they have tried to renovate their slogans and make them a little more attractive. If they are not as successful as in 1914, it is only because they have even less to offer the workers than they had then, and because the workers have learned a few lessons from the experiences of World War I.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalinists Are Now Most Useful War-Mongers</h4>
<p class="fst">Although, the Stalinists are shouting many of the same slogans as the “socialists” at this particular stage of the war, their warmongering cannot be explained in the same manner as that of their brothers of the Second International.</p>
<p>They too were whooping it up for the war in Britain and the United States, and they too are rendering service to the imperialists in these countries. But their allegiance to the imperialist cause is for the benefit of the Stalinist bureaucracy.</p>
<p>In this way alone can one understand the shifts in Stalinist slogans. Two months ago their main emphasis in the democratic capitalist countries was <em>against the war</em>; that is, silence about fascism, and a policy of isolationism. Today the total emphasis is on the slogan <em>against fascism</em>: that is, support of the war and a policy of intervention. In Germany they made a shift too but in the opposite direction. In each case the slogans raised were calculated to help Stalin and his foreign policy.</p>
<p>For obvious tactical reasons the Stalinists present their slogans as dictated by the American national interests. Yesterday, for example, they said “Defend American democracy by keeping out of the war.” Today they say, “Defend America by aiding the Soviet Union and Britain.” In each case they really mean to defend Stalin’s interests by whatever policy they think will help him at the moment.<br>
</p>
<h4>Supporting Imperialists Doesn’t Aid the Soviet Union</h4>
<p class="fst">The Stalinists justify their warmongering by pointing to the need for defending the Soviet Union, a factor which did not exist in World War I. And certainly the Soviet Union, still a workers’ state despite its degeneration under Stalinism and therefore still a threat and challenge to the capitalist world, must be defended. The question is how.</p>
<p>Created by a proletarian revolution, the Soviet Union was able to withstand the combined civil war and imperialist interventions of 1918–21 by carrying on a revolutionary war and seeking to extend the October revolution. This was Lenin’s and Trotsky’s method of defending the Soviet Union!</p>
<p>Stalin, on the other hand, has pursued a policy of winning alliances and the “good will” of various imperialist powers. The price he pays for these alliances is nothing less than the chaining of the working class in the capitalist countries to the imperialist war machines. This is Stalinist method of defending the Soviet Union!</p>
<p>The Stalinists, by following this policy, not only don’t defend the Soviet Union, but contribute to its weakness and isolation. By subordinating the interests of the world working class to the defense of the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy, they betray not only the world revolution but the defense of the Soviet Union as well.</p>
<p>Thus, though their motivations may superficially appear more revolutionary than that of the “socialist” warmongers, the Stalinists serve the interests of world imperialism.</p>
<p>As long as capitalism remains in power, the warmongers of the Second and Third International will continue to enjoy a certain amount of influence. But once the workers’ anti-war sentiments turn them in the direction of wiping out the system that creates war the “socialist” and Stalinist warmongers will be “swept away with all the other chaff, rubbish and treachery that constitute the by-products of capitalism.</p>
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George Breitman
On The 27th Anniversary of August 4, 1914
The “Socialist” Warmongers
Stalinists of 1941 Continue
Treacherous Traditions of 1914 ‘Socialists’
(2 August 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 31, 2 August 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
August 4th is the 27th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. It is also the 27th anniversary of another dreadful event – the vote of the German Social Democratic Party’s deputies in the Reichstag in favor of the war, followed by similar pro-war votes by the French Socialist Party, the British Labor Party, the Social-Democratic Party of Austro-Hungary, the pro-war Mensheviks of Russia.
The reformist and class-collaboration policies carried out by the leaders of these parties in peace-time thus produced a policy of supporting the war of “their” capitalists.
The “socialist” warmongers, by providing “good” reasons for workers to support the imperialist war, were helpful servants of the capitalists in World War I.
With the change of only a few words in their slogans, they or their sons and younger brothers are performing the same Judas functions for the imperialists today, in World War II.
In 1914 it was the parties of the Second International – socialists in words in peace time, recruiting sergeants in action for the imperialists in war time, who played the main role in rounding up the workers for the slaughter.
In 1941 the Second International repeats its inglorious traditions of 1914–18 but the parties of the Third International are challenging it for supremacy in the field of war-mongering.
Today capitalism has even less to offer the workers than in 1914. The decay of the system which can produce only war, fascism and unemployment has reached the stage where all can see and feel its degeneration.
“Socialist” War Slogans Haven’t Improved with Time
If the times have changed for the worse, so have the slogans and pretexts. As World War II is the extension of World War I on a wider and bloodier scale, so the arguments of the “socialist” warmongers of today are the extension of their arguments of 1914 on a lower and dirtier scale. In 1914 the “socialist” leaders on each side of the imperialist war supported their “own” capitalists. Their organizations had grown big, they had many members and newspapers and jobs. In the course of the years leading up to 1914 they had become opportunists.
The capitalists were willing to tolerate them as long as they would remain only a party of opposition – opposition, that is. within the framework of private property and profit. But in time of war, the capitalists need more than friendly opposition, they need “national unity,” that is, the assurance that the working class will unprotestingly play its role of providing the munitions of war in the factories and the cannon fodder on the battlefields.
Any party that tries to convince the workers that they have nothing to gain from imperialist wars and organizes the workers to put an end to the war and the system that creates the war, will meet the full fury of boss persecution, frameup and suppression. The “socialist” leaders, grown soft, did not want, by opposing the war, to jeopardize the gains they had made for themselves. Therefore they would not go before the workers and say the truth:
“This is an imperialist war. It is a war for the benefit of the employers and the monopolies. They are asking us to go to war to gain or protect foreign markets and colonies and sources of raw materials for them to exploit.” If the labor lead had [text missing] the workers would have answered “Very well, we must fight against this war, and you, our leaders, must lead us in this fight.”
The “socialist” warmongers cooked up slogans to justify their position.
In France, Russia and the allied countries they said, “This is a war against Kaiserism, which represents everything reactionary and anti-labor. Kaiserism must be destroyed before the workers of the world can go ahead to socialism.”
In Germany and Austria they said: “This is a war against Czarism, which represents everything reactionary and anti-labor. Czarism must be destroyed before the workers of the world can go ahead to socialism.”
The bosses, whom the worker had to fight every day for an extra crust of bread, would have had great difficulty in selling this line to the workers. Only the “socialist” leaders could do this for the bosses. In the name of a war for democracy, the “socialist” leaders drove the workers out onto the battlefield to die by the millions.
The War-Mongers Didn’t Destroy Czar And Kaiser
Both Kaiserism and Czarism were finally destroyed – but not by the imperialists, and not by the “socialist” war-mongers. They were overthrown by the workers, when they began to understand that the slogan of a war for democracy conducted by the imperialists was a fraud, when they turned away from the “socialist” leaders who had led them into the war. It was not the Allied armies that overthrew Kaiserism, but the workers of Germany; not the German armies which overthrew Czarism, but the workers and peasants of Russia. And when the Czar and Kaiser were overthrown by the independent action of the workers, the “socialist” misleaders who had told them to postpone their struggle for socialism until their own imperialists had won the war now told them to postpone it again.
In Russia, the “socialist” warmongers not only told the workers and peasants to postpone the establishment of a workers’ government that would put an end to the war, but also fought side by side with the capitalists to prevent or overthrow the workers’ government of Lenin and Trotsky In Germany they did the same.
The difference was that in Russia there existed a Marxist workers party, the Bolsheviks, which had grown up in struggle against the opportunism and warmongering of the “socialists,” and in Germany there was no such strong, experienced party. As a result, the socialists, Noske and Scheidemann, were able to help put down the German revolution while the Mensheviks were unable to hold back the Russian Revolution, which proceeded at once to stop the war.
When we look back now at the slogans of the first World War, we can see what dangerous lies they were. For the “war for democracy” led straight to fascism. The suspension of the class struggle by the German “socialist” leaders brought in at home a regime as reactionary and anti-labor as Czarism had ever been. In the name of democracy, the German “socialist” betrayers had first urged postponement of the fight for socialism, then they fought against the socialist revolution and murdered its leaders and thus they saved the capitalist system which was to destroy all democracy in Germany.
So in the end these “socialists” whose opportunist support of the war had been based on their desire to preserve their institutions, newspapers, labor banks and buildings, lived to see them all taken away, not by a foreign invader, but by that same capitalist class whose war they had supported and whose system they had saved.
Just as in 1914, the parties of the Second International are today supporting the imperialists on both sides of the war.
On the Nazi side are the Finnish, Norwegian, French, and Belgian “socialist” leaders, fighting now against “plutocracy” and for “a new order.” On the other side are the “socialist” leaders who were driven out of Germany and Austria, a small minority of the French “socialists,” the British Labor Party and the Social Democratic Federation of America.
Now they no longer merely postpone the struggle for socialism to a future date as they did in 1914: most of them have written it off the books for all time. All they want, they say, is democracy. If they could only get that back, and their little jobs and trade union posts and newspapers, how happy they would be. That kind of democracy would be socialism enough for them.
If the “socialist” warmongers are not as helpful to the imperialists as they were in 1914, it’s not their fault that they’re not. They try their best, they have tried to renovate their slogans and make them a little more attractive. If they are not as successful as in 1914, it is only because they have even less to offer the workers than they had then, and because the workers have learned a few lessons from the experiences of World War I.
Stalinists Are Now Most Useful War-Mongers
Although, the Stalinists are shouting many of the same slogans as the “socialists” at this particular stage of the war, their warmongering cannot be explained in the same manner as that of their brothers of the Second International.
They too were whooping it up for the war in Britain and the United States, and they too are rendering service to the imperialists in these countries. But their allegiance to the imperialist cause is for the benefit of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
In this way alone can one understand the shifts in Stalinist slogans. Two months ago their main emphasis in the democratic capitalist countries was against the war; that is, silence about fascism, and a policy of isolationism. Today the total emphasis is on the slogan against fascism: that is, support of the war and a policy of intervention. In Germany they made a shift too but in the opposite direction. In each case the slogans raised were calculated to help Stalin and his foreign policy.
For obvious tactical reasons the Stalinists present their slogans as dictated by the American national interests. Yesterday, for example, they said “Defend American democracy by keeping out of the war.” Today they say, “Defend America by aiding the Soviet Union and Britain.” In each case they really mean to defend Stalin’s interests by whatever policy they think will help him at the moment.
Supporting Imperialists Doesn’t Aid the Soviet Union
The Stalinists justify their warmongering by pointing to the need for defending the Soviet Union, a factor which did not exist in World War I. And certainly the Soviet Union, still a workers’ state despite its degeneration under Stalinism and therefore still a threat and challenge to the capitalist world, must be defended. The question is how.
Created by a proletarian revolution, the Soviet Union was able to withstand the combined civil war and imperialist interventions of 1918–21 by carrying on a revolutionary war and seeking to extend the October revolution. This was Lenin’s and Trotsky’s method of defending the Soviet Union!
Stalin, on the other hand, has pursued a policy of winning alliances and the “good will” of various imperialist powers. The price he pays for these alliances is nothing less than the chaining of the working class in the capitalist countries to the imperialist war machines. This is Stalinist method of defending the Soviet Union!
The Stalinists, by following this policy, not only don’t defend the Soviet Union, but contribute to its weakness and isolation. By subordinating the interests of the world working class to the defense of the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy, they betray not only the world revolution but the defense of the Soviet Union as well.
Thus, though their motivations may superficially appear more revolutionary than that of the “socialist” warmongers, the Stalinists serve the interests of world imperialism.
As long as capitalism remains in power, the warmongers of the Second and Third International will continue to enjoy a certain amount of influence. But once the workers’ anti-war sentiments turn them in the direction of wiping out the system that creates war the “socialist” and Stalinist warmongers will be “swept away with all the other chaff, rubbish and treachery that constitute the by-products of capitalism.
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<h2>Anthony Massini</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>Stalin and Eden Reach<br>
Agreement on War Policy</h1>
<h3>(10 January 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_01" target="new">Vol 6 No. 1</a>, 10 January 1942, pp. 1 & 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The most important developments of the Soviet-German war last week did not take place on the front. It took place in the Kremlin where Stalin and Anthony Eden concluded an agreement between the Soviet and British governments on the conduct of the war and the kind of peace to be established by them after the war.</p>
<p>The effects of this agreement on the war will be far-reaching. Instead of strengthening the Soviet Union, Stalin has placed a powerful weapon in the hands of Hitler and Goebbels. For the conference dealt not only with military and political problems relating to the conduct of the war, but also with the “post-war organization of the peace land security of Europe.”</p>
<p>According to first London reports on the conference, printed in the <b>New York Times</b>, Dec. 28, Stalin and Eden came to an agreement on a policy for “postwar reconstruction along the general lines laid down by the Atlantic Charter declaration of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in their conference at sea last summer.”</p>
<p>But while the eight points of Roosevelt and Churchill were vague on the all-important question of revolution in Europe, Stalin and Eden were quite specific.<br>
</p>
<h4>Allaying Fears of Reactionaries</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“It was also emphasized,” says the London report, “that the negotiators had produced a unity of British and Russian views concerning postwar Europe – a development expected to be of special importance in view of feats in some circles that an attempt might be made to spread bolshevism in the future Europe ...</p>
<p class="quote">“It was suggested that there might be something like a ‘Continental Charter’ for Europe that would answer any fears that defeat of the Axis would result in a Russian attempt to spread communism in Europe.”</p>
<p class="fst">This amounts to a warning by the Kremlin to the masses of Europe and particularly Germany that not only will Stalin go along with the Allies in the imposition of a second Versailles Treaty and the formation of a second League of Nations, but that he will also join them in the suppression of all social revolutionary movements.</p>
<p>Thus Stalin, in return for whatever material aid he has been promised from the Allies for the war against Hitler, is doing everything in his power to discourage the independent revolutionary struggle of the masses of Europe, which alone in the final analysis can save the USSR.</p>
<p>The German workers who hate fascism and are awaiting a favorable opportunity to overthrow Hitler’s regime, the workers who always looked to the Soviet Union as a workers state which would aid them when a revolutionary situation arose in Germany, will feel that they are alone and have little chance of securing aid from outside of Germany for a revolutionary struggle against Hitler.</p>
<p>To the extent that Stalin’s new agreement discourages revolutionary action or disorients the masses, to that same extent does Hitler feel all the more confident about the stability of his regime and the chances for success in the war against the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>In this way Stalin, in the name of defending the Soviet Union, repels the kind of action which will really save the workers state.</p>
<p>The Soviet Union has been afforded tremendous advantages by the victories of the last month, which will enable it to offer powerful resistance when the next German big push starts. But it would be foolish to believe that as a result of these victories the relationship of forces has changed decisively.</p>
<p>The Soviet Union is still in grave danger. Stalin’s policies, of dependence on aid from the Allies, serve only to intensify that danger. The workers who want to defend the Soviet Union must do everything they can to assist the development of that independent revolutionary movement of the masses which will forever destroy imperialism and permit the Soviet Union to go ahead, together with the workers of the rest of the world, to world socialism and lasting peace.</p>
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Anthony Massini
Stalin and Eden Reach
Agreement on War Policy
(10 January 1942)
From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 1, 10 January 1942, pp. 1 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The most important developments of the Soviet-German war last week did not take place on the front. It took place in the Kremlin where Stalin and Anthony Eden concluded an agreement between the Soviet and British governments on the conduct of the war and the kind of peace to be established by them after the war.
The effects of this agreement on the war will be far-reaching. Instead of strengthening the Soviet Union, Stalin has placed a powerful weapon in the hands of Hitler and Goebbels. For the conference dealt not only with military and political problems relating to the conduct of the war, but also with the “post-war organization of the peace land security of Europe.”
According to first London reports on the conference, printed in the New York Times, Dec. 28, Stalin and Eden came to an agreement on a policy for “postwar reconstruction along the general lines laid down by the Atlantic Charter declaration of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in their conference at sea last summer.”
But while the eight points of Roosevelt and Churchill were vague on the all-important question of revolution in Europe, Stalin and Eden were quite specific.
Allaying Fears of Reactionaries
“It was also emphasized,” says the London report, “that the negotiators had produced a unity of British and Russian views concerning postwar Europe – a development expected to be of special importance in view of feats in some circles that an attempt might be made to spread bolshevism in the future Europe ...
“It was suggested that there might be something like a ‘Continental Charter’ for Europe that would answer any fears that defeat of the Axis would result in a Russian attempt to spread communism in Europe.”
This amounts to a warning by the Kremlin to the masses of Europe and particularly Germany that not only will Stalin go along with the Allies in the imposition of a second Versailles Treaty and the formation of a second League of Nations, but that he will also join them in the suppression of all social revolutionary movements.
Thus Stalin, in return for whatever material aid he has been promised from the Allies for the war against Hitler, is doing everything in his power to discourage the independent revolutionary struggle of the masses of Europe, which alone in the final analysis can save the USSR.
The German workers who hate fascism and are awaiting a favorable opportunity to overthrow Hitler’s regime, the workers who always looked to the Soviet Union as a workers state which would aid them when a revolutionary situation arose in Germany, will feel that they are alone and have little chance of securing aid from outside of Germany for a revolutionary struggle against Hitler.
To the extent that Stalin’s new agreement discourages revolutionary action or disorients the masses, to that same extent does Hitler feel all the more confident about the stability of his regime and the chances for success in the war against the Soviet Union.
In this way Stalin, in the name of defending the Soviet Union, repels the kind of action which will really save the workers state.
The Soviet Union has been afforded tremendous advantages by the victories of the last month, which will enable it to offer powerful resistance when the next German big push starts. But it would be foolish to believe that as a result of these victories the relationship of forces has changed decisively.
The Soviet Union is still in grave danger. Stalin’s policies, of dependence on aid from the Allies, serve only to intensify that danger. The workers who want to defend the Soviet Union must do everything they can to assist the development of that independent revolutionary movement of the masses which will forever destroy imperialism and permit the Soviet Union to go ahead, together with the workers of the rest of the world, to world socialism and lasting peace.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Senate Filibuster Debate<br>
Was a Sham Battle</h1>
<h3>(21 March 1949)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_48" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 12</a>, 21 March 1949, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The Southern Democrats have won a clear-cut victory in the Senate debate over the filibuster, placing themselves in an even stronger position than before to prevent a vote on civil rights legislation. For this they can thank not only the majority of the Republican Party, who voted with them, but also the Truman Democrats who put on a show of “opposition” to the filibuster.</strong></p>
<p>Previously, a two-thirds vote of the Senators present was required to close debate and permit a vote on a bill. But this closure rule was interpreted to apply only to a vote on a bill, and not to a “motion” to take up a bill.</p>
<p>Under the so-called “compromise” being considered as we go to press, closure will apply on any issue – “motion” or bill. But now it would be made operative only by two-thirds of the entire Senate membership, and would not apply under any conditions to debate oyer suggested changes in the closure rule in the future.</p>
<p><em>This means: 1. Passage of civil rights bills opposed by the Southern Democrats will require the support of 64 out of the Senate’s 96 votes. 2. It will be virtually impossible to repair this violation of majority rule by parliamentary methods alone.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Fraudulent Claim</h4>
<p class="fst">The Truman Democrats, expressing great indignation about this “compromise,” are now presenting themselves as advocates of closure by a majority vote – which is the only position in accord with elementary democratic procedure. But this claim is a fraud. All they waged in the Senate was a sham battle.</p>
<p>To begin with, they did not even introduce an amendment to achieve closure by majority vote in the Senate Rules Committee. Instead, they voted in this committee only to extend closure by two-thirds vote so that it would apply to “motions” as well as bills, <em>which would by no means deprive the Southern Democrats of their filibuster powers.</em></p>
<p>And this was the level at which the Trumanites conducted the debate until the very end – that is, on the basis of continued rejection of closure by majority vote, which they now pretend to support. Even at this level their role was thoroughly hypocritical. For example:</p>
<p>On the eve of the filibuster debate, Truman spoke to the nation from the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, but he avoided saying a single word on the filibuster issue. <em>Why?</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Shadow Boxing</h4>
<p class="fst">He made no use at all of. his powerful weapon of patronage to whip recalcitrant Democrats into line even for the weak Rules Committee amendment to extend the closure by two-thirds rule. In the past he has always used this weapon effectively when he really wanted to put over a measure. <em>Why didn’t he use it on this occasion?</em></p>
<p>He could have gone to the people directly in an effort to arouse popular pressure on behalf of his position, as he did when he announced the “anti-communist” Truman Doctrine. But he did not do so. <em>Why didn’t he?</em></p>
<p>Instead, he stated in an offhand manner at a press conference that he personally favors closure by majority vote, and conveniently departed for a Florida vacation, leaving his Senatorial supporters to maneuver around a bit for the record. <em>No wonder the Southern Democrats were so arrogant and sure of themselves! They could see for themselves that the Trumanites were only shadow-boxing.</em></p>
<p>Truman’s hypocrisy should not be viewed in purely personal terms; it has a deep political basis. To lead a real fight to democratize Senate procedure and enact the “Fair Deal” program, Truman would have to break with his Southern wing – that is, risk the split of his own party. He has no intention of doing that, because the Southern Democrats support what to Truman is the most important part of his program – the drive toward war.<br>
</p>
<h4>An Important Stage</h4>
<p class="fst">Truman is aided in this duplicity by the labor and Negro leaders who, instead of arousing mass pressure to compel him to carry out his promises, are toeing the line obediently, singing Truman’s praises to the masses and doing everything they can to keep their members tied to the Democratic Party.</p>
<p><em>How long this situation can continue is another matter. In any case, the Southern victory on the filibuster marks an important stage in the short history of the “Fair Deal” because it will surely renew mass discontent with the Democratic Party and strengthen the tendencies toward independent political action.</em></p>
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Albert Parker
Senate Filibuster Debate
Was a Sham Battle
(21 March 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 12, 21 March 1949, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Southern Democrats have won a clear-cut victory in the Senate debate over the filibuster, placing themselves in an even stronger position than before to prevent a vote on civil rights legislation. For this they can thank not only the majority of the Republican Party, who voted with them, but also the Truman Democrats who put on a show of “opposition” to the filibuster.
Previously, a two-thirds vote of the Senators present was required to close debate and permit a vote on a bill. But this closure rule was interpreted to apply only to a vote on a bill, and not to a “motion” to take up a bill.
Under the so-called “compromise” being considered as we go to press, closure will apply on any issue – “motion” or bill. But now it would be made operative only by two-thirds of the entire Senate membership, and would not apply under any conditions to debate oyer suggested changes in the closure rule in the future.
This means: 1. Passage of civil rights bills opposed by the Southern Democrats will require the support of 64 out of the Senate’s 96 votes. 2. It will be virtually impossible to repair this violation of majority rule by parliamentary methods alone.
Fraudulent Claim
The Truman Democrats, expressing great indignation about this “compromise,” are now presenting themselves as advocates of closure by a majority vote – which is the only position in accord with elementary democratic procedure. But this claim is a fraud. All they waged in the Senate was a sham battle.
To begin with, they did not even introduce an amendment to achieve closure by majority vote in the Senate Rules Committee. Instead, they voted in this committee only to extend closure by two-thirds vote so that it would apply to “motions” as well as bills, which would by no means deprive the Southern Democrats of their filibuster powers.
And this was the level at which the Trumanites conducted the debate until the very end – that is, on the basis of continued rejection of closure by majority vote, which they now pretend to support. Even at this level their role was thoroughly hypocritical. For example:
On the eve of the filibuster debate, Truman spoke to the nation from the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, but he avoided saying a single word on the filibuster issue. Why?
Shadow Boxing
He made no use at all of. his powerful weapon of patronage to whip recalcitrant Democrats into line even for the weak Rules Committee amendment to extend the closure by two-thirds rule. In the past he has always used this weapon effectively when he really wanted to put over a measure. Why didn’t he use it on this occasion?
He could have gone to the people directly in an effort to arouse popular pressure on behalf of his position, as he did when he announced the “anti-communist” Truman Doctrine. But he did not do so. Why didn’t he?
Instead, he stated in an offhand manner at a press conference that he personally favors closure by majority vote, and conveniently departed for a Florida vacation, leaving his Senatorial supporters to maneuver around a bit for the record. No wonder the Southern Democrats were so arrogant and sure of themselves! They could see for themselves that the Trumanites were only shadow-boxing.
Truman’s hypocrisy should not be viewed in purely personal terms; it has a deep political basis. To lead a real fight to democratize Senate procedure and enact the “Fair Deal” program, Truman would have to break with his Southern wing – that is, risk the split of his own party. He has no intention of doing that, because the Southern Democrats support what to Truman is the most important part of his program – the drive toward war.
An Important Stage
Truman is aided in this duplicity by the labor and Negro leaders who, instead of arousing mass pressure to compel him to carry out his promises, are toeing the line obediently, singing Truman’s praises to the masses and doing everything they can to keep their members tied to the Democratic Party.
How long this situation can continue is another matter. In any case, the Southern victory on the filibuster marks an important stage in the short history of the “Fair Deal” because it will surely renew mass discontent with the Democratic Party and strengthen the tendencies toward independent political action.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(30 August 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_35" target="new">Vol. V No. 35</a>, 30 August 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Is This the Negroes’ War?</h4>
<p class="fst">No one will dispute the right of the Communist Party to say of the bosses’ war which the United States is about to enter that it is their war too. In fact, they can say so with the greatest justice, for they are subordinating everything else to support of the imperialist war.</p>
<p>But when they presume to speak for the Negro people too, and to say for them, “This is our war,” then they are taking just a little too much upon themselves and have to be brought to order – above all, of course, by the masses of Negroes themselves.</p>
<p>Last Wednesday in Chicago, William Patterson, old time Stalinist Negro leader who has successfully weathered a half dozen changes in the Communist Party line without blinking an eye, attempted to identify the sentiments of the American Negro people with the views of Stalinism.</p>
<p>According to the <strong>Daily Worker</strong>, Patterson, who was speaking at a rally with William Foster to whoop it up for Roosevelt’s war plans, “pointed out that the Negro people were behind the war because it was a war against slavery just as much as the war of 1861.”</p>
<p><em>He said, “This is our war. Black America will play its part today just as it did in 1776 and again in 1861.”</em></p>
<p>We do not care at this point to enter into a discussion of why Patterson and James Ford say such things today and why they are trying to round up the Negro people for support of the war. Everybody who keeps up with them knows that three months ago they were calling Walter White and William Pickens and A. Philip Randolph all kinds of names because they were trying to get the Negroes to support the war. And that they would still be doing this except that the Soviet Union was attacked by Hitler, and the Stalinists, instead of continuing the struggle against the ruling class here, are now currying favor with them, and dropping all opposition to the capitalists and their treatment of Negroes.</p>
<p>Even less room do we have to devote to the preposterous idea that the masses of Negroes are supporters of the war plans of the government. Anyone who is not blind or dishonest admits that of all groups the Negroes are the least enthusiastic about this war that will be fought with Jim Crow airplanes arid a Jim Crow armed force. Only among people like Pickens, a paid stooge of the government, and now the Stalinists, does one hear the phrase, “This is our war.”</p>
<p>What we do want to discuss is not whether the Negroes now think this is their war – an idea which they may accept in the future as a result of the pressure and propaganda of the Uncle Toms and Stalinists – but whether they should think so.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>What the War Will Mean</h4>
<p class="fst">What is the war about? Is it a war for democracy? The capitalist governments that claim it is do not seem very much worried about democracy in their colonies or at home. The politicians who are beating the war drums the loudest in this country, the southern poll taxers, have never been known to seek any democracy for the Negroes and poor white workers. The British imperialists who oppress, shoot and arrest the colored people in the colonies, are not much interested in democracy in those countries either.</p>
<p><em>No, it is simply a war for profits, for colonies, for markets to sell goods. Britain and the United States have control of these markets and colonies today, while the Nazis want to get them to exploit themselves.</em></p>
<p>Who will gain from the war? The bosses in the countries that win will be able to exploit the masses of the world. They will try to disarm the other bandits so that they continue this exploitation for as long as possible. That will be the kind of “peace” they will give us. One thing is sure: under neither imperialist rule will the colonial people of Africa, India, etc., be given freedom or security.</p>
<p>What will the war bring the Negroes? Temporarily it may bring a few jobs that will be vacated by white workers getting into the expanding war industries. It will bring insult and segregation and death to large numbers of young Negroes. It will bring increased prices and a lowered standard of living for 95% of the Negroes. And then when the war is over, it will bring the biggest depression in history, in which as usual the Negroes will suffer the greatest hardships. After that there will be only the prospect of World War III.</p>
<p><em>All we need do is state the problem as simply as that, and the answer is obvious: the Negro people, least of all, have any reason to say, “This is our war.”</em></p>
<p>We are not claiming that this answer solves all the problems of the Negroes. It is clear that it doesn’t. It can tell the Negroes what they shouldn’t do willingly, but that isn’t enough. Wars can’t be prevented just because the workers don’t want them, because as long as the capitalists hold economic and political power, they can force the workers into their wars even against their will.</p>
<p>But nevertheless the Negro must hold fast to his position: this is not his war, it is a war for the bosses who Jim Crow him. He may be forced to fight in it, but unwillingly and with the understanding that it is not in his interests. Only if he understands this, can he really fight in his own interests by supporting a different kind of war.</p>
<p>Next week we will discuss the kind of war the Negro people should support, as well as the reference by Patterson to the Negro’s role in the wars of 1776 and 1861.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(30 August 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 35, 30 August 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Is This the Negroes’ War?
No one will dispute the right of the Communist Party to say of the bosses’ war which the United States is about to enter that it is their war too. In fact, they can say so with the greatest justice, for they are subordinating everything else to support of the imperialist war.
But when they presume to speak for the Negro people too, and to say for them, “This is our war,” then they are taking just a little too much upon themselves and have to be brought to order – above all, of course, by the masses of Negroes themselves.
Last Wednesday in Chicago, William Patterson, old time Stalinist Negro leader who has successfully weathered a half dozen changes in the Communist Party line without blinking an eye, attempted to identify the sentiments of the American Negro people with the views of Stalinism.
According to the Daily Worker, Patterson, who was speaking at a rally with William Foster to whoop it up for Roosevelt’s war plans, “pointed out that the Negro people were behind the war because it was a war against slavery just as much as the war of 1861.”
He said, “This is our war. Black America will play its part today just as it did in 1776 and again in 1861.”
We do not care at this point to enter into a discussion of why Patterson and James Ford say such things today and why they are trying to round up the Negro people for support of the war. Everybody who keeps up with them knows that three months ago they were calling Walter White and William Pickens and A. Philip Randolph all kinds of names because they were trying to get the Negroes to support the war. And that they would still be doing this except that the Soviet Union was attacked by Hitler, and the Stalinists, instead of continuing the struggle against the ruling class here, are now currying favor with them, and dropping all opposition to the capitalists and their treatment of Negroes.
Even less room do we have to devote to the preposterous idea that the masses of Negroes are supporters of the war plans of the government. Anyone who is not blind or dishonest admits that of all groups the Negroes are the least enthusiastic about this war that will be fought with Jim Crow airplanes arid a Jim Crow armed force. Only among people like Pickens, a paid stooge of the government, and now the Stalinists, does one hear the phrase, “This is our war.”
What we do want to discuss is not whether the Negroes now think this is their war – an idea which they may accept in the future as a result of the pressure and propaganda of the Uncle Toms and Stalinists – but whether they should think so.
What the War Will Mean
What is the war about? Is it a war for democracy? The capitalist governments that claim it is do not seem very much worried about democracy in their colonies or at home. The politicians who are beating the war drums the loudest in this country, the southern poll taxers, have never been known to seek any democracy for the Negroes and poor white workers. The British imperialists who oppress, shoot and arrest the colored people in the colonies, are not much interested in democracy in those countries either.
No, it is simply a war for profits, for colonies, for markets to sell goods. Britain and the United States have control of these markets and colonies today, while the Nazis want to get them to exploit themselves.
Who will gain from the war? The bosses in the countries that win will be able to exploit the masses of the world. They will try to disarm the other bandits so that they continue this exploitation for as long as possible. That will be the kind of “peace” they will give us. One thing is sure: under neither imperialist rule will the colonial people of Africa, India, etc., be given freedom or security.
What will the war bring the Negroes? Temporarily it may bring a few jobs that will be vacated by white workers getting into the expanding war industries. It will bring insult and segregation and death to large numbers of young Negroes. It will bring increased prices and a lowered standard of living for 95% of the Negroes. And then when the war is over, it will bring the biggest depression in history, in which as usual the Negroes will suffer the greatest hardships. After that there will be only the prospect of World War III.
All we need do is state the problem as simply as that, and the answer is obvious: the Negro people, least of all, have any reason to say, “This is our war.”
We are not claiming that this answer solves all the problems of the Negroes. It is clear that it doesn’t. It can tell the Negroes what they shouldn’t do willingly, but that isn’t enough. Wars can’t be prevented just because the workers don’t want them, because as long as the capitalists hold economic and political power, they can force the workers into their wars even against their will.
But nevertheless the Negro must hold fast to his position: this is not his war, it is a war for the bosses who Jim Crow him. He may be forced to fight in it, but unwillingly and with the understanding that it is not in his interests. Only if he understands this, can he really fight in his own interests by supporting a different kind of war.
Next week we will discuss the kind of war the Negro people should support, as well as the reference by Patterson to the Negro’s role in the wars of 1776 and 1861.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Senate OKs Peacetime Draft,<br>
But Bars War-Profits Ceiling</h1>
<h4>Bi-Partisan Gang Kills Civil Rights Amendments</h4>
<h3>(16 June 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_25" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 25</a>, 21 June 1948, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>JUNE 16 – For the second time in American history the U.S. Senate has voted to establish a conscription system in peacetime. This happened first in 1940, when Washington was making active preparations to enter World War II. The 1948 conscription system is a similar proposition: a step toward war and the further militarization of the country.</strong></p>
<p>Under the terms of the bill adopted by the Senate, all men between the ages of 18 and 25 will have to register for the draft, with the 18 year olds having the “privilege” of volunteering for one year’s service, and the others subject to a two year draft. For this, the young men and their families can thank both the Republican and Democratic servants of Wall Street, who passed the bill by a vote of 78 to 10.</p>
<p>This bi-partisan coalition 19 ready to use the youth as cannon-fodder, but they take an entirely different attitude to the employers.</p>
<p><em>When William Langer (R.-N.D.) proposed the payment of “fair and just compensation, but not to exceed 10% on invested capital” for articles, materials, plants and other facilities received or used by the armed forces, he was overwhelmingly defeated on a voice vote.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>“Abnormal” Profits</h4>
<p class="fst">The second amendment, offered by W. Lee O’Daniel (D-Tex.), proposed the suspension of the draft until Congress passed a law putting a 100% tax on “abnormal” profits from contracts between employers and the armed services. This was beaten down by a vote of 81 to 8. Big profits never seem abnormal to Big Business and its political hired help.</p>
<p>The over-all reactionary nature of the bill was underlined by a number of other actions taken by the Senate:</p>
<p class="fst">It defeated by a standing vote a proposal to put the general management of the draft into the hands of civilians, rather than the brass hats. One section of the bill provides for setting up an American Foreign Legion, to be composed of 25,000 aliens enlisted here and abroad, for occupational and other services abroad. The use of mercenaries in legions of this kind has long been a hallmark of imperialist policy.</p>
<p>The defeat of the Langer civil rights amendments (except the relatively harmless one against the payment of poll taxes by servicemen) was a demonstrative stub in the back to the Negro struggle for equality in the armed forces. Spokesmen of both parties claimed that these amendments should be considered separately from the draft bill itself. But such claims dripped with hypocrisy because neither party made any effort to consider such proposals separately, or any other way.</p>
<p>The House of Representatives is now considering a conscription bill similar to the one passed by the Senate, although it has tentatively reduced the draft period to one year. Its passage in the House would increase the armed forces from about ½ million to 2 million persons, and the organized reserves from about 1 million to 1½ million.</p>
<p>The duration of the draft measure, as set in the Senate bill, is two years. <em>But actually, it is intended as the beginning of a permanent conscription system, and will surely be extended at the end of the two years if the capitalist parties remain in control.</em> That has always happened in all countries resorting to peacetime conscription.</p>
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George Breitman
Senate OKs Peacetime Draft,
But Bars War-Profits Ceiling
Bi-Partisan Gang Kills Civil Rights Amendments
(16 June 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 25, 21 June 1948, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
JUNE 16 – For the second time in American history the U.S. Senate has voted to establish a conscription system in peacetime. This happened first in 1940, when Washington was making active preparations to enter World War II. The 1948 conscription system is a similar proposition: a step toward war and the further militarization of the country.
Under the terms of the bill adopted by the Senate, all men between the ages of 18 and 25 will have to register for the draft, with the 18 year olds having the “privilege” of volunteering for one year’s service, and the others subject to a two year draft. For this, the young men and their families can thank both the Republican and Democratic servants of Wall Street, who passed the bill by a vote of 78 to 10.
This bi-partisan coalition 19 ready to use the youth as cannon-fodder, but they take an entirely different attitude to the employers.
When William Langer (R.-N.D.) proposed the payment of “fair and just compensation, but not to exceed 10% on invested capital” for articles, materials, plants and other facilities received or used by the armed forces, he was overwhelmingly defeated on a voice vote.
“Abnormal” Profits
The second amendment, offered by W. Lee O’Daniel (D-Tex.), proposed the suspension of the draft until Congress passed a law putting a 100% tax on “abnormal” profits from contracts between employers and the armed services. This was beaten down by a vote of 81 to 8. Big profits never seem abnormal to Big Business and its political hired help.
The over-all reactionary nature of the bill was underlined by a number of other actions taken by the Senate:
It defeated by a standing vote a proposal to put the general management of the draft into the hands of civilians, rather than the brass hats. One section of the bill provides for setting up an American Foreign Legion, to be composed of 25,000 aliens enlisted here and abroad, for occupational and other services abroad. The use of mercenaries in legions of this kind has long been a hallmark of imperialist policy.
The defeat of the Langer civil rights amendments (except the relatively harmless one against the payment of poll taxes by servicemen) was a demonstrative stub in the back to the Negro struggle for equality in the armed forces. Spokesmen of both parties claimed that these amendments should be considered separately from the draft bill itself. But such claims dripped with hypocrisy because neither party made any effort to consider such proposals separately, or any other way.
The House of Representatives is now considering a conscription bill similar to the one passed by the Senate, although it has tentatively reduced the draft period to one year. Its passage in the House would increase the armed forces from about ½ million to 2 million persons, and the organized reserves from about 1 million to 1½ million.
The duration of the draft measure, as set in the Senate bill, is two years. But actually, it is intended as the beginning of a permanent conscription system, and will surely be extended at the end of the two years if the capitalist parties remain in control. That has always happened in all countries resorting to peacetime conscription.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Stalin Interview Shows<br>
Real Situation in USSR</h1>
<h4>Stalin Shows He Is Incapable of Adopting<br>
a Revolutionary Program of Victory</h4>
<h3>(8 November 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_45" target="new">Vol. V No. 45</a>, 8 November 1941, pp. 1 & 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Reports from the Moscow front tell of fierce fighting raging around all the approaches to the capital. A radio broadcast from Moscow on November 3 declared that the German assault on the city had “entered a most serious phase”, with the Germans throwing in fresh reserves of planes, tanks, guns and men. A decisive battle was being fought at the munitions center, Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow; and losses were increasing tremendously on both sides in the battle for Kalinin, 95 miles northwest of Moscow.</p>
<p>Late dispatches also tell of serious defeats for the Soviet forces in the Crimea, where they are reported to have been cut in two and driven back to the coast. Loss of the Crimea will give the Germans not only control of the Black Sea, but places them in a position to outflank Rostov, and the Don basin and threaten the Caucusus and its oil fields.</p>
<p>No one disputes the high fighting calibre, the spirit of sacrifice, the splendid morale of the Red Army soldiers. If the advances of the German armies have been slowed up thus far, it is due primarily to these qualities of the Red Army.</p>
<p>But wars are not won by heroism alone. Modern armies require the proper strategy, the taking into account of all the factors, military, geographical, political, the co-ordination and the effective use of resources at hand, the selection of the weak points in the enemy’s front.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin’s Interview with Ingersoll</h4>
<p class="fst">Stalin’s “strategy” in the war was authoritatively revealed last week in a series of articles written by Ralph Ingersoll for the newspaper PM. Ingersoll has just returned from three weeks in the USSR where he discussed the war with many of the Soviet officials, and was granted an interview with Stalin himself.</p>
<p>On October 31, without quoting Stalin directly, but using the information Stalin gave him during the interview, Ingersoll gave Stalin’s views on the war under the title, <em>What the Soviet Government Thinks About the War</em>.</p>
<p>Stalin’s views, both by what he says and what he leaves unsaid, do more than explain the defeats; they reveal that Stalin intends to continue those policies which resulted in the defeats.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin Explains the Initial Defeats</h4>
<p class="fst">How did Stalin explain the initial and the recent defeats to Ingersoll? <em>By admitting that he did not expect the war with Germany when it came, and was unprepared for it!</em></p>
<p>The German army struck quickly.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“When the German bombers came over, anti-aircraft crews did not open fire at once. They telephoned to headquarters to ask instructions on what most of them thought was simply a breach of treaty. Before they had time to think twice, their planes were destroyed and their hangars were on fire. The initial German drive on land, after smashing down outlying strong points, went into Russian territory, at 30 to 40 miles an hour.”</p>
<p class="fst">In Moscow “the Government thought that such an obvious threat of invasion was simply the prelude to a demand for further treaty concessions.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“By the time the German panzer divisions had run the limit of their gas supply, Soviet armies on the frontier were encircled and instead of fighting to hold back the German advance, all their energy and ammunition went to get themselves out of the hole they were in and to reforming into a coherent line. Enormous supplies of equipment were lost in this retreat and from then on the Soviet Government knew that its armies would not be able immediately to stem the German advance – even at the old Soviet frontier, which was better fortified than the new.”</p>
<p class="fst"><em>In short, the ease of the initial German victories was due primarily to the stupidity of the Kremlin and its belief that Hitler would continue to bargain indefinitely for more “concessions.”</em></p>
<p>The Germans made rapid advances in the first weeks of the war because Stalin had not prepared the Red Army politically or strategically for what came. Just as. today he places his hopes on some kind of understanding with the “democratic” imperialists, so he placed his hopes before June 22 on the continuation of some kind of understanding with Hitler.<br>
</p>
<h4>Can USSR Defeat Hitler Alone?</h4>
<p class="fst">Can the Soviet Union defeat Hitler without outside aid, as the Stalinists boasted it could before and even after the beginning of the war?</p>
<p>The Kremlin claims it can no longer. According to what Stalin told Ingersoll, “The Soviet Government knows its armies are now outnumbered in planes and tanks.” It does not even have as its objective the defeat of Hitler’s armies:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Therefore its optimum objective, in a military sense, is to keep its armies together and to continue its unbroken line of resistance and to go on exacting casualties as it retreats.</p>
<p class="quote">“This has been the Soviet strategy since the breakthrough of the first week of the war.”</p>
<p class="fst">What a refutation of the lies and boasts spread by the Stalinists early in the war to cover up the lack of a unified strategic plan of victory and to hide Stalin’s responsibility for the defeats! Typical of these boasts was the one advanced by the Stalinists in the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> of July 5:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Hitler mechanized army is meeting with tanks and planes more powerful than his own and with military generalship more skilled and more brilliant than his own staff.”</p>
<p class="fst">Stalin no longer makes such boasts. Indeed, as Ingersoll puts it for him:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Soviet Government admits that the Germans still have the equipment and the organization to take any given local objective, unless it be one of the big cities which the citizens can turn into a fortress and which can only be taken by complete encirclement and starving-out. <em>Thus it is resigned to the fact that, alone, its armies cannot administer a severe defeat to the Germans in the field.</em> (Emphasis by Ingersoll)”<br>
</p>
<h4>Dangers in Stalin’s Strategy</h4>
<p class="fst">What can this strategy of “exacting casualties as it retreats” lead to? This process of exacting casualties on the enemy means simultaneous casualties for the Army. And the further the Soviet forces retreat, the more territory embracing the means of vital industrial production falls into the hands of the enemy and all the harder it becomes to hold them at the next stage.</p>
<p><em>In addition, such a process at a certain point is certain to affect the morale of the Red Army soldiers; a continuous process of defeats is bound to produce doubts and a feeling of futility and impotence; the soldiers will begin to believe, in the face of all these defeats and retreats, that they are fighting in vain.</em></p>
<p>One of the reasons that Stalin was forced to adopt a “strategy” of retreat was that the Red Army lacked a competent, trained leadership able to work out a strategy that could bring victory. This situation existed because, in the interests of eliminating all criticism and opposition in the armed forces to his bureaucratic regime, Stalin destroyed the flower of the Red Army command in the purges of 1937–38 and appointed in their place nonentities with neither the ability nor experience to lead the Red Army to victory against a powerful foe.</p>
<p>All the facts show that Stalin’s misconduct of the war is not something accidental or the result of misunderstanding on his part of what the situation requires, but is directly linked with and flows from all of his past policies. To fully understand his policies in this war, it is necessary to study and become acquainted with the past policies and history of Stalinism, beginning with the theory of “socialism in one country.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin’s Proposal for Defeating Hitler</h4>
<p class="fst">Now, 17 years after he promulgated this theory of “socialism in one country” Stalin is forced to admit that the Soviet Union under his leadership will be defeated unless aid comes from the outside.</p>
<p>With the Red Army outnumbered, with the military leadership able to execute only a “strategy” of retreat, the fate of the Soviet Union depends on what happens to the German armies from the rear or within. The question is: How can the German drive be halted, disintegrated from the rear? What is the policy Stalin proposes? Here it is, as given by Ingersoll:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Based on information from its own agents in Germany and information obtained from captives, the Soviet Government does not believe that collapse of the German State is in order. It has heard talk about an imminent collapse – from its allies – but it believes this is wishful thinking. It thinks German morale is high and that nothing will unseat Hitler except a decisive military defeat.”</p>
<p class="fst">But Stalin is resigned to the fact that the Red Army alone cannot defeat the Germans. Since Stalin feels the Red Army cannot defeat Hitler, and since he believes that “nothing but a decisive military defeat” will accomplish this, Stalin declares that some other force will have to do the job of cracking German morale and overthrowing Hitler. Ingersoll continues:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“For the purpose of upsetting the Nazi regime it (the Stalinist regime) does not believe that this defeat need necessarily be administered to his principal armies. It believes the decisive defeat of one of Hitler’s allies could turn the trick.”</p>
<p class="fst">But no one could seriously contend that the military defeat of one of Hitler’s allies would seriously interfere with the advance of the German armies in Russia. Ingersoll explains that Stalin looks at it this way:<br>
</p>
<h4>“Principle” Behind the “Western Front”</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Many of those who have joined forces with Hitler – the Rumanians, the Hungarians, the Finns, etc., etc., have done so as the lesser of two evils. It must be demonstrated to at least one of them that their alliance is not the lesser but the far, far greater of the two evils. For this purpose it will not be enough simply to defeat an army allied to Germany in the field; it will be necessary utterly to annihilate the forces of some ally, wholly to destroy its government. To rub its nose in it. To make defeat and collapse so obvious that the news of it will spread over the world, censorship or controlled press or no.</em> (Emphasis by Ingersoll).</p>
<p class="quote">“This is the principle behind the Soviet request to Britain for a ‘diversion front’.”</p>
<p class="fst">This is the policy on which Stalin now depends to save the Soviet Union in the darkest hour in its history – the policy of a crushing imperialist defeat of one of Hitler’s allies, the complete annihilation of its forces and destruction of its government. This, lie declares, is the only salvation of the Soviet Union, this is the only way to overthrow the Nazi regime!<br>
</p>
<h4>Would This Policy Weaken Hitler?</h4>
<p class="fst">But if the fate of the Soviet Union really depended upon such a policy, then it would be doomed. The carrying out of such a “western front” will not in the last analysis weaken Hitler’s war, but, on the contrary, in a real sense, it will strengthen it!</p>
<p><em>Because Hitler will be able to point to his defeated ally, and tell the German people and his other allies: You see what will happen to you if England wins this war? You will be crushed and annihilated, wholly destroyed. To prevent this, to prevent the imposition of another and worse Versailles Treaty which will bring untold suffering and depression to our country and yours, you must exert yourselves even more to insure the defeat of the enemy.</em></p>
<p>In short, such a policy will only give Hitler another weapon to add to those which he now uses to secure support for his war against the Soviet Union. Its mere advocacy has no doubt been greeted eagerly by Goebbels.</p>
<p>No, the very lesson of the rise of Hitler is that large sections of the masses of Europe are looking for some alternative to the rule of “democratic” imperialism and are temporarily willing to endure all kinds of hardships under Hitlerism in the hope that it may bring them a satisfactory alternative. Hitler’s source of strength lies precisely in his promise that German imperialist victory in the war will bring a “new order”.<br>
</p>
<h4>Still Not Too Late to Save the USSR!</h4>
<p class="fst">The bankruptcy of Stalinism and the military gains of Hitler so far do not mean that it is too late to save the Soviet Union, even at this late hour.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that imperialism threatened the very existence of the workers state. In 1918-20 the Soviet Union was able to hold off and defeat not only the imperialist intervention but to crush the counter-revolutionary White Guard Russians. The policy of revolutionary war and appealing to the international working class that saved the Soviet Union after World War I can again save it in World War II.</p>
<p>This policy – today embodied in the Trotskyist program for Soviet victory – requires a revolutionary appeal to the masses of Europe and above all Germany. They must be assured that the Soviet Union will fight side by side with them against any new Versailles Treaty, that the Soviet Union will oppose any imperialist peace settlement that will place new burdens on the backs of the exploited masses. The masses can be aroused to revolutionary action and initiative, not by the example of a lesser evil which is really not “lesser” at all, but by a fighting program for the solution of their own problems. The masses of Europe must be shown that there is a real alternative to capitalism, that the solution of their problems lies in the struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe and the world.<br>
</p>
<h4>Strengthen the Front to Defeat Hitler</h4>
<p class="fst">The program for Soviet victory further requires measures to strengthen the front against Hitler in the Soviet Union at the same time that revolutionary agitation is being used to undermine Hitler’s rear. The release of the brave and able pro-Soviet workers and soldiers, many of whom were leaders in the Civil War, and who are now kept in Stalin’s concentration tamps and prisons only because they opposed the ruinous policies of Stalinism, will provide new leadership at the front. The reconstitution of the democratically - elected Soviets, the legalization of pro-Soviet political parties, will arouse the initiative and enthusiasm of the Soviet workers, soldiers and peasants for they will feel once again that they have something to say about the policies of the workers state.</p>
<p>It is in the light of Stalin’s program for saving the Soviet Union that his “strategy” of retreats assumes a particularly ominous character. Sometimes retreats cannot be avoided, sometimes they are justified. Even the most correct revolutionary strategy can not always guarantee victories, for there are other factors that can be decisive in particular battles and campaigns. But there are retreats and retreats.</p>
<p>The Bolsheviks in the Civil War Days of 1918-20, even though they followed a bold, revolutionary policy, which brought victory in the end, often had to retreat. But when they retreated, it was for the purpose of obtaining a breathing space, with the perspective of revolutionary developments in the rear of the enemy and throughout Europe coming to their aid. But Stalin has no such perspective.</p>
<p>Stalinism has shown by its betrayal of the Bolshevik program of Soviet victory that it is the greatest internal obstacle to the successful defense of the Soviet Union. As its responsibility for the defeats becomes more apparent, as the reasons for its failure to conduct a revolutionary war become more widely understood, the Soviet masses, choosing the proper time, without endangering the front against imperialism, must rid themselves of the Stalinist bureaucracy and march forward with the workers of the world to victory for the Soviet Union and world socialism.</p>
<p>The fight to save the Soviet Union is not the fight of the Soviet masses alone. The workers of the world have a stake in preventing the destruction of the remaining conquests of the October revolution.</p>
<p>The Soviet masses require the assistance of the workers of the world. The task for advanced workers everywhere throughout the capitalist world is to explain the cause of the defeats in the USSR, to show how victory can still be achieved, to help the workers avoid the pitfalls of giving up opposition to the aims of their own ruling class, to strengthen the forces of the world revolution which alone can save the USSR.</p>
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George Breitman
Stalin Interview Shows
Real Situation in USSR
Stalin Shows He Is Incapable of Adopting
a Revolutionary Program of Victory
(8 November 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 45, 8 November 1941, pp. 1 & 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Reports from the Moscow front tell of fierce fighting raging around all the approaches to the capital. A radio broadcast from Moscow on November 3 declared that the German assault on the city had “entered a most serious phase”, with the Germans throwing in fresh reserves of planes, tanks, guns and men. A decisive battle was being fought at the munitions center, Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow; and losses were increasing tremendously on both sides in the battle for Kalinin, 95 miles northwest of Moscow.
Late dispatches also tell of serious defeats for the Soviet forces in the Crimea, where they are reported to have been cut in two and driven back to the coast. Loss of the Crimea will give the Germans not only control of the Black Sea, but places them in a position to outflank Rostov, and the Don basin and threaten the Caucusus and its oil fields.
No one disputes the high fighting calibre, the spirit of sacrifice, the splendid morale of the Red Army soldiers. If the advances of the German armies have been slowed up thus far, it is due primarily to these qualities of the Red Army.
But wars are not won by heroism alone. Modern armies require the proper strategy, the taking into account of all the factors, military, geographical, political, the co-ordination and the effective use of resources at hand, the selection of the weak points in the enemy’s front.
Stalin’s Interview with Ingersoll
Stalin’s “strategy” in the war was authoritatively revealed last week in a series of articles written by Ralph Ingersoll for the newspaper PM. Ingersoll has just returned from three weeks in the USSR where he discussed the war with many of the Soviet officials, and was granted an interview with Stalin himself.
On October 31, without quoting Stalin directly, but using the information Stalin gave him during the interview, Ingersoll gave Stalin’s views on the war under the title, What the Soviet Government Thinks About the War.
Stalin’s views, both by what he says and what he leaves unsaid, do more than explain the defeats; they reveal that Stalin intends to continue those policies which resulted in the defeats.
Stalin Explains the Initial Defeats
How did Stalin explain the initial and the recent defeats to Ingersoll? By admitting that he did not expect the war with Germany when it came, and was unprepared for it!
The German army struck quickly.
“When the German bombers came over, anti-aircraft crews did not open fire at once. They telephoned to headquarters to ask instructions on what most of them thought was simply a breach of treaty. Before they had time to think twice, their planes were destroyed and their hangars were on fire. The initial German drive on land, after smashing down outlying strong points, went into Russian territory, at 30 to 40 miles an hour.”
In Moscow “the Government thought that such an obvious threat of invasion was simply the prelude to a demand for further treaty concessions.”
“By the time the German panzer divisions had run the limit of their gas supply, Soviet armies on the frontier were encircled and instead of fighting to hold back the German advance, all their energy and ammunition went to get themselves out of the hole they were in and to reforming into a coherent line. Enormous supplies of equipment were lost in this retreat and from then on the Soviet Government knew that its armies would not be able immediately to stem the German advance – even at the old Soviet frontier, which was better fortified than the new.”
In short, the ease of the initial German victories was due primarily to the stupidity of the Kremlin and its belief that Hitler would continue to bargain indefinitely for more “concessions.”
The Germans made rapid advances in the first weeks of the war because Stalin had not prepared the Red Army politically or strategically for what came. Just as. today he places his hopes on some kind of understanding with the “democratic” imperialists, so he placed his hopes before June 22 on the continuation of some kind of understanding with Hitler.
Can USSR Defeat Hitler Alone?
Can the Soviet Union defeat Hitler without outside aid, as the Stalinists boasted it could before and even after the beginning of the war?
The Kremlin claims it can no longer. According to what Stalin told Ingersoll, “The Soviet Government knows its armies are now outnumbered in planes and tanks.” It does not even have as its objective the defeat of Hitler’s armies:
“Therefore its optimum objective, in a military sense, is to keep its armies together and to continue its unbroken line of resistance and to go on exacting casualties as it retreats.
“This has been the Soviet strategy since the breakthrough of the first week of the war.”
What a refutation of the lies and boasts spread by the Stalinists early in the war to cover up the lack of a unified strategic plan of victory and to hide Stalin’s responsibility for the defeats! Typical of these boasts was the one advanced by the Stalinists in the Daily Worker of July 5:
“The Hitler mechanized army is meeting with tanks and planes more powerful than his own and with military generalship more skilled and more brilliant than his own staff.”
Stalin no longer makes such boasts. Indeed, as Ingersoll puts it for him:
“The Soviet Government admits that the Germans still have the equipment and the organization to take any given local objective, unless it be one of the big cities which the citizens can turn into a fortress and which can only be taken by complete encirclement and starving-out. Thus it is resigned to the fact that, alone, its armies cannot administer a severe defeat to the Germans in the field. (Emphasis by Ingersoll)”
Dangers in Stalin’s Strategy
What can this strategy of “exacting casualties as it retreats” lead to? This process of exacting casualties on the enemy means simultaneous casualties for the Army. And the further the Soviet forces retreat, the more territory embracing the means of vital industrial production falls into the hands of the enemy and all the harder it becomes to hold them at the next stage.
In addition, such a process at a certain point is certain to affect the morale of the Red Army soldiers; a continuous process of defeats is bound to produce doubts and a feeling of futility and impotence; the soldiers will begin to believe, in the face of all these defeats and retreats, that they are fighting in vain.
One of the reasons that Stalin was forced to adopt a “strategy” of retreat was that the Red Army lacked a competent, trained leadership able to work out a strategy that could bring victory. This situation existed because, in the interests of eliminating all criticism and opposition in the armed forces to his bureaucratic regime, Stalin destroyed the flower of the Red Army command in the purges of 1937–38 and appointed in their place nonentities with neither the ability nor experience to lead the Red Army to victory against a powerful foe.
All the facts show that Stalin’s misconduct of the war is not something accidental or the result of misunderstanding on his part of what the situation requires, but is directly linked with and flows from all of his past policies. To fully understand his policies in this war, it is necessary to study and become acquainted with the past policies and history of Stalinism, beginning with the theory of “socialism in one country.”
Stalin’s Proposal for Defeating Hitler
Now, 17 years after he promulgated this theory of “socialism in one country” Stalin is forced to admit that the Soviet Union under his leadership will be defeated unless aid comes from the outside.
With the Red Army outnumbered, with the military leadership able to execute only a “strategy” of retreat, the fate of the Soviet Union depends on what happens to the German armies from the rear or within. The question is: How can the German drive be halted, disintegrated from the rear? What is the policy Stalin proposes? Here it is, as given by Ingersoll:
“Based on information from its own agents in Germany and information obtained from captives, the Soviet Government does not believe that collapse of the German State is in order. It has heard talk about an imminent collapse – from its allies – but it believes this is wishful thinking. It thinks German morale is high and that nothing will unseat Hitler except a decisive military defeat.”
But Stalin is resigned to the fact that the Red Army alone cannot defeat the Germans. Since Stalin feels the Red Army cannot defeat Hitler, and since he believes that “nothing but a decisive military defeat” will accomplish this, Stalin declares that some other force will have to do the job of cracking German morale and overthrowing Hitler. Ingersoll continues:
“For the purpose of upsetting the Nazi regime it (the Stalinist regime) does not believe that this defeat need necessarily be administered to his principal armies. It believes the decisive defeat of one of Hitler’s allies could turn the trick.”
But no one could seriously contend that the military defeat of one of Hitler’s allies would seriously interfere with the advance of the German armies in Russia. Ingersoll explains that Stalin looks at it this way:
“Principle” Behind the “Western Front”
“Many of those who have joined forces with Hitler – the Rumanians, the Hungarians, the Finns, etc., etc., have done so as the lesser of two evils. It must be demonstrated to at least one of them that their alliance is not the lesser but the far, far greater of the two evils. For this purpose it will not be enough simply to defeat an army allied to Germany in the field; it will be necessary utterly to annihilate the forces of some ally, wholly to destroy its government. To rub its nose in it. To make defeat and collapse so obvious that the news of it will spread over the world, censorship or controlled press or no. (Emphasis by Ingersoll).
“This is the principle behind the Soviet request to Britain for a ‘diversion front’.”
This is the policy on which Stalin now depends to save the Soviet Union in the darkest hour in its history – the policy of a crushing imperialist defeat of one of Hitler’s allies, the complete annihilation of its forces and destruction of its government. This, lie declares, is the only salvation of the Soviet Union, this is the only way to overthrow the Nazi regime!
Would This Policy Weaken Hitler?
But if the fate of the Soviet Union really depended upon such a policy, then it would be doomed. The carrying out of such a “western front” will not in the last analysis weaken Hitler’s war, but, on the contrary, in a real sense, it will strengthen it!
Because Hitler will be able to point to his defeated ally, and tell the German people and his other allies: You see what will happen to you if England wins this war? You will be crushed and annihilated, wholly destroyed. To prevent this, to prevent the imposition of another and worse Versailles Treaty which will bring untold suffering and depression to our country and yours, you must exert yourselves even more to insure the defeat of the enemy.
In short, such a policy will only give Hitler another weapon to add to those which he now uses to secure support for his war against the Soviet Union. Its mere advocacy has no doubt been greeted eagerly by Goebbels.
No, the very lesson of the rise of Hitler is that large sections of the masses of Europe are looking for some alternative to the rule of “democratic” imperialism and are temporarily willing to endure all kinds of hardships under Hitlerism in the hope that it may bring them a satisfactory alternative. Hitler’s source of strength lies precisely in his promise that German imperialist victory in the war will bring a “new order”.
Still Not Too Late to Save the USSR!
The bankruptcy of Stalinism and the military gains of Hitler so far do not mean that it is too late to save the Soviet Union, even at this late hour.
This is not the first time that imperialism threatened the very existence of the workers state. In 1918-20 the Soviet Union was able to hold off and defeat not only the imperialist intervention but to crush the counter-revolutionary White Guard Russians. The policy of revolutionary war and appealing to the international working class that saved the Soviet Union after World War I can again save it in World War II.
This policy – today embodied in the Trotskyist program for Soviet victory – requires a revolutionary appeal to the masses of Europe and above all Germany. They must be assured that the Soviet Union will fight side by side with them against any new Versailles Treaty, that the Soviet Union will oppose any imperialist peace settlement that will place new burdens on the backs of the exploited masses. The masses can be aroused to revolutionary action and initiative, not by the example of a lesser evil which is really not “lesser” at all, but by a fighting program for the solution of their own problems. The masses of Europe must be shown that there is a real alternative to capitalism, that the solution of their problems lies in the struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe and the world.
Strengthen the Front to Defeat Hitler
The program for Soviet victory further requires measures to strengthen the front against Hitler in the Soviet Union at the same time that revolutionary agitation is being used to undermine Hitler’s rear. The release of the brave and able pro-Soviet workers and soldiers, many of whom were leaders in the Civil War, and who are now kept in Stalin’s concentration tamps and prisons only because they opposed the ruinous policies of Stalinism, will provide new leadership at the front. The reconstitution of the democratically - elected Soviets, the legalization of pro-Soviet political parties, will arouse the initiative and enthusiasm of the Soviet workers, soldiers and peasants for they will feel once again that they have something to say about the policies of the workers state.
It is in the light of Stalin’s program for saving the Soviet Union that his “strategy” of retreats assumes a particularly ominous character. Sometimes retreats cannot be avoided, sometimes they are justified. Even the most correct revolutionary strategy can not always guarantee victories, for there are other factors that can be decisive in particular battles and campaigns. But there are retreats and retreats.
The Bolsheviks in the Civil War Days of 1918-20, even though they followed a bold, revolutionary policy, which brought victory in the end, often had to retreat. But when they retreated, it was for the purpose of obtaining a breathing space, with the perspective of revolutionary developments in the rear of the enemy and throughout Europe coming to their aid. But Stalin has no such perspective.
Stalinism has shown by its betrayal of the Bolshevik program of Soviet victory that it is the greatest internal obstacle to the successful defense of the Soviet Union. As its responsibility for the defeats becomes more apparent, as the reasons for its failure to conduct a revolutionary war become more widely understood, the Soviet masses, choosing the proper time, without endangering the front against imperialism, must rid themselves of the Stalinist bureaucracy and march forward with the workers of the world to victory for the Soviet Union and world socialism.
The fight to save the Soviet Union is not the fight of the Soviet masses alone. The workers of the world have a stake in preventing the destruction of the remaining conquests of the October revolution.
The Soviet masses require the assistance of the workers of the world. The task for advanced workers everywhere throughout the capitalist world is to explain the cause of the defeats in the USSR, to show how victory can still be achieved, to help the workers avoid the pitfalls of giving up opposition to the aims of their own ruling class, to strengthen the forces of the world revolution which alone can save the USSR.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>How A Minority Can Change Society</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1964)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialist Review</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/isr/index.htm#isr64spr" target="new">Vol.25 No.2</a>, Spring 1964, pp.34-41.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="c"><em>This article comprises the text of a speech
delivered at a midwest educational conference of the Young Socialist
Alliance in Chicago, January 1964 by George Breitman, frequent
contributor to <strong>The Militant</strong> and author of a number of
pamphlets written for the Socialist Workers Party.</em></p>
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<p class="fst">THE year 1963 was the most eventful in the history of
the American Negro struggle. As it ended, people all over the country
were stopping to assess what had happened, to think over what was done
and what was not done, what was accomplished and not accomplished.
Clifton DeBerry, the Socialist Workers party candidate for President
this year, had an opportunity at the end of 1963 to make a
coast-to-coast tour of most big northern cities and to learn something
about the current thinking of Negro militants. He told me one of the
things he had observed was the difficulty in getting across the idea
about how much the Negro people can do even though they are in a
minority, about how much they can do on their own, alone and unaided if
necessary. He noticed this difficulty in speaking with Negro trade
unionists, but not only them. He felt a lot more attention has to be
paid to ways of explaining, in a logical, convincing manner, how much a
minority is capable of accomplishing. He felt that misunderstanding on
this point is one of the reasons why the idea of an all-black political
party has not yet caught on with more Negroes.</p>
<p>Why is it so hard for many Negroes, even militant Negroes, to grasp
the full potential of determined minority action? I would say there are
three reasons:</p>
<p>First, the teaching, the influence, the propaganda of the whole
capitalist system from cradle to grave are aimed at brainwashing the
people; at convincing them, among other things, that minorities can
plead and beg, but cannot do anything significant, cannot accomplish
any big changes, until they have the consent of the majority. Above all
is this idea burned into the minds and souls of Negroes, whose history
is distorted or denied, and who are made to feel not only that they are
a minority, but an insignificant minority, who have never amounted to
much by themselves and who, without the stern supervision or benign
direction of the great white fathers, would hardly know how to flush a
toilet. In other words, for Negroes to comprehend how much a minority
can do they must buck everything drilled into them from the beginning
of childhood; they virtually have to make a revolution in their
thinking.</p>
<p>There is a certain irony in these things taught by the capitalists
because the capitalists are a minority themselves — in fact, a much
smaller minority than the Negro people. Yet this capitalist minority
controls the whole country, lock, stock and barrel — its wealth, its
means of production, its political structure — and therefore is a
living refutation of what it tells us about the limits on what a
minority can accomplish.</p>
<p>The second reason why it is hard to see the truth about what a
minority can do is that the present Negro leadership, almost in its
entirety, is enslaved by the ideas promulgated by the capitalist class,
repeats and spreads those ideas, and does everything in its power to
discourage the mass of the Negro people from taking steps genuinely
independent of the white majority.</p>
<p>A third reason is that the radical movement, virtually the whole
radical movement with the exception of the Socialist Workers party,
although it approaches questions from a different standpoint than that
of the ruling capitalist class, has failed to comprehend the essence of
this question, and instead of promoting and encouraging both
theoretically and practically an understanding of the dynamics and
potential of minority action, in some ways even discourages it. An
example is their attitude toward the Freedom Now Party. I do not know
of a single organization in this country claiming to be Marxist or
socialist or communist that supports the Freedom Now Party, except the
Socialist Workers Party. The Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the
Socialist Labor Party, the Progressive Labor Movement — all are either
flatly opposed to, or feel very uneasy, about the development of an
all-black political party independent of the power structure and of the
two major parties. And if you trace back the causes, you will find them
to be most unMarxist, unsocialist and uncommunist failures to grasp the
revolutionary implications of the independent struggles of the Negro
minority.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">I WANT now to examine some typical arguments by the
present Negro leaders against such independent action. When the Freedom
Now Party was organized in Michigan a few months ago, the press was
very much concerned about it. And every “big name” Negro who came to
Detroit for several weeks thereafter was immediately buttonholed by the
press and invited to make some statement on, or rather against, the
Freedom Now Party.</p>
<p>One of these was Rev. Martin Luther King, who obliged with the
following statement:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I am opposed to anything or any party that teaches
separation of the races because I am for integration. If the party is
designed to get more Negroes interested in politics, fine; otherwise I
can see no good that can come from an all-black party. One-tenth of the
population will never be able to dominate nine-tenths.”</p>
<p class="fst">In this statement I think Rev. King is guilty of
counterposing “separation of the races” and “integration” in a
completely false and unwarranted way. The Freedom Now Party does not
“teach the separation of the races.” It recognizes that this is a
society where the races are separated in fact, and attempts to utilize
the separation that has been imposed by capitalism in order to change
society and do away with the discrimination made possible by this
imposed separation. King is well aware of this. He is a preacher, the
head of a church which happens to be all-black. He does not reject or
oppose this church because it is all-black. He knows that there is
nothing racist about this church being all-black. It is the result of
living in a racist society. And he works through this all-black church
and tries to build it, at the same time that he advocates integration
and seeks to utilize this all-black organization to promote integration.</p>
<p>Now why can’t an all-black party do the same thing that an all-black
church does, that is, take advantage of the separation created by this
racist society in order to weld together the black victims of racism so
that they can work to end racism altogether? Why not? Why is it
permissible in King’s eyes for Negroes to pray together, but not
permissible for them to join together in political action in the way
they find most effective for ending their oppression? Shouldn’t King,
if he is logical and consistent, propose that Negroes give up their
all-black churches too because they are not integrated? Posed this way,
King could reply, “But we have an all-black church because it’s the
only kind available to us.” And the answer of the Freedom Now Party
could be, “Yes, and an all-black political party is the only kind
available to us that we think has any chance of solving our problems.”
So King is confusing rather than clarifying the real relation between
“separation” and “integration,” which are not necessarily opposites at
all, since the formation of all-black organizations and institutions
may actually be a means of achieving the goal of “integration” instead
of being in contradiction to that goal.</p>
<p>King’s other remark was even more revealing: “One-tenth of the
population will never be able to dominate nine-tenths.” Maybe not,
although I’ve already pointed out that the capitalists, a minority of
less than one per cent, dominate the other 99 per cent of us. Anyhow,
that’s not the issue posed by the Freedom Now Party. It is not the
Freedom Now Party’s goal for the Negro one-tenth to dominate the white
nine-tenths. Just the opposite — its goal is to keep the white
nine-tenths from dominating and oppressing the black one-tenth. <em>How</em>
to do this — that’s the real difference between King and the Freedom
Now Party. Must the minority adapt itself in its methods and tempo to
the prejudiced majority, just because it is a majority, and not do
certain things because the majority will not like it? Or, can the
minority end the domination of the majority by acting with complete
independence from the majority ideologically, organizationally,
politically — and <em>only</em> by acting independently? King prefers
not to discuss this real difference. That’s why he misrepresents his
opponents’ position with irrelevant talk about the inability of
one-tenth to dominate nine-tenths.<br>
</p>
<h4>Randolph’s Position</h4>
<p class="fst">Another noted figure who came to Detroit at the time
was. A. Philip Randolph, Vice-President of the AFL-CIO and President of
the Negro American Labor Council. He too dutifully came forward with a
statement against the Freedom Now Party, from which I’ll read just the
first two sentences:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Racial isolation in any form cannot register any
influence on American political events. It is completely foreign to the
political thoughts and actions of America.”</p>
<p class="fst">It could be pointed out that what Randolph calls “racial
isolation,” in the form of all-white organizations like the Ku Klux
Klan and the White Citizens Council, has registered plenty of influence
on American politics. But I think it may be more useful to stress that
in his eagerness to damn the Freedom Now Party, Randolph here is really
damning himself. By “racial isolation” he means all-black organization
for the purpose of ending the isolation foisted on Negroes by a racist
society. Randolph is so blinded factionally that he has forgotten his
own role, the thing for which he will probably be best remembered; for
it so happens that next to Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad, Randolph
is the American Negro leader who did the most in this century for what
he now calls “racial isolation,” that is, all-black organization.</p>
<p>The first March on Washington Movement, which Randolph organized in
1941, was all-black, and Randolph was foremost in insisting that it be
all-black. Even though it did not materialize in a march, because
Randolph yielded to Roosevelt and called it off at the last minute,
that first call for a March on Washington in 1941 nevertheless
accomplished more than the interracial march that took place last
August, because it forced Roosevelt to issue the first FEPC order,
which is more than the 1963 march accomplished. Instead of “isolating”
the Negro struggle, I think it can be said that that all-black
organization, small and imperfect though it was, did more to influence
American life than any interracial movement has done since.</p>
<p class="c">* * *</p>
<p>HOW do you influence the course of events anyway? Is it done by
strict adherence to the procedures and forms approved by the forces in
power, or by following the rules they lay down? All experience,
American as well as “foreign,” testifies to the contrary. As long as
you abide by their rules, either in the way you organize or the way you
fight, they know they have little to fear from you and pay you little
attention. The only valid test for all-black organization is this: does
it at this time and under these circumstances help or hinder in
mobilizing the masses for uncompromising struggle? It doesn’t matter if
whites, liberal or conservative, don’t like it and call it all kinds of
names. What counts is what the black masses think about it. If they
think it is good, if it enables them more effectively to organize for
struggle, then it can have a shattering impact on present-day American
society and politics. Influence can be wielded in more ways than one,
and that which helps the masses to organize is most “influential” in
the long run.</p>
<p>I will cite only one more example of the kind of reasoning employed
by Negro opponents of independent minority action. Also attacking the
Freedom Now Party was Alex Fuller, Vice-President of the Detroit
AFL-CIO Council. He said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We can continue to make gains only by working with
people of good will. It is a serious mistake when minority groups, now
on the threshold of making tremendous gains for Negroes ... separate
themselves from others who are working for the same objectives ... We
cannot afford to separate or isolate ourselves ... We stand on the side
of all democratic-thinking people who believe and advocate first-class
citizenship for everyone. We cannot do it alone.”</p>
<p class="fst">Translated, what Alex Fuller means is this: Negroes
can’t get anywhere, Negroes can’t get anything, unless they remain in
the Democratic party; therefore they must wait until the Democrats are
ready. But the truth is somewhat different. Negroes will never get
first-class citizenship in a thousand years so long as their political
power remains tucked away in the vest pocket of the Democratic party.
If they have to depend on and wait for the Democrats or the
Republicans, and similar “people of good will,” their children and
their children’s children will never know the taste of freedom.</p>
<p>Nobody in his right mind wants to separate “from others who are
working for the same objectives,” but it is a lie to pretend that the
Democratic party, any more than the Republican Party, has the “same
objectives” as the Negro people. If that were the case the present
massive Negro revolt would have no purpose or meaning. The objective of
the major parties is to quiet the Negroes with a few token concessions,
while the objective of the Negro people is freedom.</p>
<p>Surely there’s a difference here, and it is just this big difference
that separates Negroes from Fuller’s “democratic-thinking people.”
Negroes want freedom now, and “democratic-thinking people” want them to
have it later. The only way Negroes can prevent “separation” from the
liberals on this issue is to give in to them and let them decide when
and where and how much freedom Negroes shall have. That’s what Alex
Fuller and the other Negro leaders have done and what they want the
Negro people to do or keep on doing. But the tendency favoring the
Freedom Now party has decided that a hundred years of political
dependence on these democratic-thinking people of good will is enough,
because such dependence, far from bringing them to “the threshold of
tremendous gains,” will lead only to another hundred years of the same.
They have made their declaration of political independence, and now
they are striking out on their own, determined to use their political
power for themselves first, last, and all the time.<br>
</p>
<h4>Characteristics of Negro Minority</h4>
<p class="fst">Before proceeding to our examination from a Marxist
point of view of how much and not how little a minority can do, I
should make clear that I am not talking about just any minority, but
about a minority with certain characteristics, certain features, and a
certain history. And also, yes, I am talking about a minority of a
certain size. Let me get the size question out of the way first.</p>
<p>Obviously, not every minority is big enough to do the things I am
talking about. Size is important too. If there were only two or three
million Negroes in this country, which is approaching a population of
200 million, they could not accomplish what a minority of 20 million
can. But 20 million is a big force, big enough to tear things up, big
enough and weighty enough to appreciably affect the course of events.
After all, how many countries in the world, not only the new ones in
Africa and Asia but also the old ones in Europe and the Americas, have
a population of 20 million? Out of more than 100 countries, not more
than 25 at the most, so that around three-quarters of the countries in
the world are smaller in population than the Negro people of the United
States.</p>
<p>Size and relative weight are not the only important factors to be
considered. A minority of even 40 million cannot do much if satisfied
with its conditions or indifferent and apathetic about them. As
important as size, or more important, in deciding what a minority can
do are social, economic, political, historical, and psychological
factors.</p>
<p>What I am trying to say is that what a minority can do depends on
whether or not it is oppressed and exploited because of some minority
trait or feature, is separated out by society for special inferior
status, is denied equal treatment, opportunity and rights; whether or
not it is at the bottom of the social ladder so that when it rises it
shakes the whole structure; whether or not it is a part of the most
productive and potentially most powerful force in the modern world, the
working class, and yet at the same time is denied the full benefits of
membership in that class; whether or not the oppressive and
exploitative society in which it exists is stable or in crisis,
challenged on all sides and therefore no longer able to maintain the <em>status
quo</em>; whether or not this minority believes that it can take
advantage of the crisis of society; whether or not it is affected by
and responds to the great tides of change and revolution sweeping the
globe and has a sense of kinship and solidarity with the masses rising
up and changing the rest of the world; whether or not its oppression
tends to knit it together for common action and goals; whether or not
it is compact and so situated geographically that it can act with
maximum cohesive-ness and impact; whether or not it has learned to see
through the brainwashing which the ruling class uses to keep this
minority in subjugation; whether or not it has lost patience as well as
respect for the majority; whether or not it sees any further reason to
continue believing in promises or in gradualism; whether or not it has
the capacity to free itself from the influence of conservative leaders
who have always held it back and to replace them with more militant and
revolutionary leaders; whether or not it realizes it never has made any
gains except by fighting for them; whether or not it has the capacity
to defend itself against terror and violence; whether or not it is
developing a militant and radical consciousness, ideology, philosophy
and methodology of its own that can motivate and spark sustained,
audacious and independent struggle.</p>
<p>In short, I am talking about characteristics that fit the American
Negro people or which they are in the process of acquiring at an
extremely rapid rate. Of the many things such a minority can do, I
shall now list some, not necessarily in the order of their importance:<br>
</p>
<h4>What a Minority Can Do</h4>
<p class="fst">1. It can force serious concessions from the ruling
class. Anyone who expects the capitalist class to grant full and
genuine equality to the Negro people is going to be sadly disappointed,
because equality is simply not compatible with, or possible under, a
social system of the type that we have in the United States today. But
that is no reason for Negroes to stop trying to get whatever they can
squeeze out of the ruling class until the time comes when it can be
deposed. Militant struggle can force the present ruling class to lift
some of the existing racial restrictions and barriers in the form of
more rights more jobs, better jobs, better schools, better housing,
less police brutality, and a greater measure of formal equality before
the law. Negroes will not settle for such partial gains and
concessions, but they would be fools not to fight for them and take
them and utilize them to press for other and more fundamental changes.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">2. A minority, properly oriented and led, can go much
farther than it has thus far gone to make the present system unworkable
and intolerable. Bayard Rustin calls this “social dislocation” (and
warns against its “limitations”). Rev. Albert Cleage, chairman of the
Freedom Now Party in Michigan, calls it “a strategy of chaos” (and
urges its application be expanded). Others give it the name of “mass
civil disobedience.” Whatever you call it, it has barely been utilized
in America up to now. It consists of making the system so inconvenient
and expensive that white people will be forced to ask themselves
whether continued discrimination is worthwhile and whether in their own
interest they should not help to do away with it altogether.</p>
<p>It means lying down, interposing your bodies on the airport runways,
on the expressways, at the plant gate, at the school entrance, at the
bank, at the points of production, and the points of distribution, and
the points of transportation, and throwing a monkey wrench into the
wheels of the system, attempting to paralyze it, to bring it to a stop.
It means saying:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If we Negroes can’t have decent and equal schools,
then let’s not have any schools. If we can’t have jobs and job
equality, then let no one be able to work. If we can’t vote, then let
no one be able to vote. If we can’t belong to the unions as equals,
then we don’t care what happens to the unions.”</p>
<p class="fst">It means carrying the principle of the sit-down strike,
which stops production, much farther and into entirely new areas of
social life.</p>
<p>I say that this has hardly been exercised as a full-scale weapon of
the Negro minority, but I have no doubt that it will be. Already some
members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, headed by
Diane Nash Bevel, have proposed such action and have had it rejected by
moderate leaders like Rev. King, who talks about civil disobedience but
is mortally afraid of really unleashing it without restriction on a
mass scale. The sit-ins, the lie-ins, the wade-ins, etc., were just a
small, faint, preliminary version of what is still to come in a giant
size and to the accomplishment of deep social convulsions and
conflicts. To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that what I am talking
about here is not pacifism but an all out struggle, which will be the
equivalent of a general strike when it reaches full flower. And a
general strike usually tends to pose questions about who shall have
power in the land.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">3. A minority can, merely by carrying through its fight
for democratic rights without compromise, help to educate and
radicalize the American people, especially the youth in whose hands the
future lies. In fact, it is already doing so. You in this audience of
young socialists and young radicals know better than anyone else how
profoundly your thinking about the whole world has been influenced by
the Negro struggle; how their fight for equality enabled you to see
through the official myths about “democracy” and “the free world,” to
understand the brute reality of the capitalist power structure, to
reach new conclusions about capitalism and socialism. Not only the
Cuban revolution, not only the danger of atomic war, but something much
closer to home, the Negro revolt, has helped to educate or re-educate
you, to shed the blinders of liberalism, and to persuade you to
dedicate your lives to the fight for a better world. In this respect
you are not so much unique as early, because the deepening struggle of
the Negro minority will have similarly healthy effects on other young
people and on some of the not completely hopeless older people as well.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">4. A minority not only can educate other forces but can
set them into motion too. It can stimulate them to fight for their own
needs and interests through the power of example as well as the power
of pressure. You heard one illustration of the power of example this
morning — the report about the rent strike which began among Negroes in
Harlem and is now spreading to some white sections of the population in
other parts of New York City. Another small but striking example
occurred in Detroit last summer. A militant Negro demonstration in
front of police headquarters, to protest the police shooting of a young
Negro woman in the back, came to the very brink of a physical clash.
That was a Saturday, and it was followed two days later, on Monday, by
another demonstration at another police station, near which cops had
shot a young white man in the back. This second demonstration,
involving mainly young whites, <em>raised the same slogans as the first</em>
and culminated in a pitched battle with the cops after the youths had
thrown rocks and bottles at them. Not long ago I noticed a small
newspaper item about some airline strike pickets who had been picketing
up and down outside the Newark terminal for a long time, with little
public attention paid to their grievances. One day they suddenly
decided to go inside the terminal and demonstrate there, which was
prohibited by an injunction. Quickly arrested, they were asked what had
got into them. Their explanation was that they had seen that Negroes
were able to get action by sit-ins and by going places where they
weren’t supposed to, so they thought it was a good idea to do the same.</p>
<p>These are all small-scale illustrations, but bigger and better ones
are in the offing. The rulers of this country are well aware of the
stimulation-and-contagion effects of militant Negro struggle. That is
one reason why they want to stop it before it goes too far and explains
the hasty turnabout that induced the previously indifferent Kennedy
administration to suddenly introduce civil rights legislation last year.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">5. A determined minority can also divide the majority,
can actually split it up at decisive moments and junctures. This, of
course, is one of the best ways of reducing the disadvantages of being
a numerical minority, because it drastically changes the odds against
the minority. The Socialist Workers party’s 1963 convention resolution <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1" target="_blank">[1]</a> showed how this process has
operated historically. If our analysis and theory are correct, this
isn’t a matter of history only, but of the present and the future. Let
me refer briefly to the Civil War as an example of the process which
can split the majority.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">THE Civil War was not just a conflict between abstract
and impersonal forces, between Northern capitalism and Southern
slavery; it was a struggle between classes and living people. No one
played a greater role in stimulating and progressively resolving that
conflict than the slaves and ex-slaves. Again and again in the three
decades before the Civil War the rulers of the North and the South
decided to avoid a final showdown by compromising over the slave
question. Great hopes were raised and brilliant reputations were made
overnight by these eminently “reasonable” negotiations and agreements
reached over the bargaining table in Congress and then enacted into
law. But the slaves were not consulted about these great compromises.
They would not have consented to them anyway, because they left the
condition of the slave unchanged, that is, intolerable. So the slaves
continued their own independent efforts to become free, just as if
these great compromise agreements had never existed.</p>
<p>They continued, just as before, or more so, to run away by the
thousands and tens of thousands, to commit sabotage and arson, and to
engage in various forms of civil disobedience, self-defense and
insurrection. These independent actions of the slaves helped to prevent
the compromises from working and to stimulate the birth and growth of
abolitionism among whites, who threw their weight onto the scales
against further compromise. Thus the slaves reopened and widened the
gap between the South and the North every time the great compromise
statesmen tried to close it.</p>
<p>By acting in every way they could to defend and liberate themselves,
the slaves drove a wedge between the slaveholders and those who wanted
to compromise with the slaveholders. By acting in self-interest, and
alone when they had to, the slaves divided the whites politically and
morally and deepened the divisions to the breaking point. That, above
everything else, is what made the struggle irrepressible, constantly
widened the breach and deepened the division among the whites, and led
inexorably to civil warfare. And then, at the crucial moment, after the
outbreak of the war the rulers on both sides had tried so hard to
avert, the Negroes pressured the northern government into accepting a
revolutionary emancipation policy and completed the process by
providing what the reluctant Lincoln later admitted was the military
balance of power in the war itself. All this happened without a
conscious plan, you might say instinctively. Imagine what will happen
when the Negro militants absorb this lesson from history and then
consciously work out a strategy to fully utilize this process that is
set in motion by the elemental desire of the masses to be free!</p>
<p>We can expect, we can be certain, that the deepening of the Negro
struggle for equality will have similarly divisive effects on the white
majority in our own time. The majority is not homogeneous anyway; it is
strained and torn and in conflict over a thousand questions of policy
and class interest. A skillful leadership of the Negro minority will
know how to pick the right place to drive new wedges, to deepen already
existing and potential differences among the whites, to sharpen their
conflicts, to set them fighting each other, and, in the process, as the
SWP 1963 convention resolution also says, to find mutually beneficial
alliances with those classes and forces whose interests are closer to
those of the Negroes against those forces that are most hostile to the
Negroes.</p>
<p>Under certain conditions, therefore, a minority, just by fighting
for its own rights, can divide the majority into two or more minorities
locked in combat with each other. This in turn can result in bringing
to power a different kind of majority, not based on color, in which the
original minority can take a leading part.</p>
<p>Those who confine themselves to scratching the surface can see only
the limitations of being a minority, which leads to lamentation,
pessimism, and self-induced paralysis or subservience. But when we
examine the situation in all of its complex and contradictory reality,
probing it deeper and from all sides; when we study majority-minority
relations in motion as well as when they are standing still; when we
perceive that the majority has problems too, and weaknesses, and many
points at which it is vulnerable and susceptible to successful attack,
and that these majority problems and weaknesses are becoming more acute
than ever before, then we find, not just limitations for the minority,
but also infinitely varied and promising openings and opportunities for
transforming, transcending, and overcoming limitations.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">6. The Negro minority is also in a position to upset the
whole political structure of this country — just by “going it alone” in
politics, just by the decisions Negroes make about how to use their own
votes and their own minority political strength. Our 1963 convention
resolution explored this question too, before the present Freedom Now
party was started, but it bears restatement because it is such an
effective refutation of black liberals who contend the Negro is
politically impotent and “destined to fail” if he acts on his own in
politics.</p>
<p>Negroes can form their own party. Negroes can run their own
candidates against the Democrats and Republicans. Negroes, because they
are already a majority in many districts, thanks to the segregated
housing system that jams them tightly together in the big city ghettos,
can, right now or any time they form their own party, elect dozens of
black candidates to Congress from these districts and hundreds of state
and local representatives. In this way they can get representatives in
public office who will be responsible and accountable to the Negro
community instead of to the corrupt major party machines. And since
this bloc of black representatives will not be small, it will enable
them to hold and wield a certain legislative balance of power and to
compel bigger concessions from the power structure than the tokens and
crumbs they are now thrown; all of this, you notice, without any
drastic change yet in political relations — just by taking advantage of
the political and electoral conditions created by segregation, by
refusing to vote Democratic or Republican, by voting black. This would
mark a real advance at least in the number and quality of Negro
representatives in office, but that would be only a part of the result
of independent political action.</p>
<p>By forming their own party, Negroes can paralyze the Democratic
party and rock the whole political structure to its foundations.
Without Negro votes, the bell will toll the doom of the Democratic
party. Without Negro votes, the Democratic coalition with the labor
movement will be undermined and destroyed. Without Negro votes for that
coalition, the unions will be forced to reconsider their political
orientation, and this will encourage and strengthen the union forces
who will eventually form an independent labor party. Without Negro
votes, the present two-party system will pass from the scene and be
replaced by something different, out of which Negroes may be able to
acquire new and more reliable allies than up to now. And all of this
can be accomplished by the simple device of forming a Negro party and
running independent Negro candidates. Really, when you think about the
potential, you can almost pity the ignorance of those Negro leaders who
preach that Negroes are incapable of any political role other than
tagging along behind the liberals.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">7. The last on my partial list of things the Negro
minority can do should be of special interest to another and smaller
minority — socialists, white and Negro. I am convinced that if militant
Negroes, not yet socialist, are not so concerned with this point now,
they will be later, as their continuing political experience draws it
to their attention. At any rate, my point is that the Negro people,
although a minority, can, with consistently revolutionary leadership,
lead the American working class in the revolution that will abolish
capitalism.</p>
<p>We have long held the view that while the Negro struggle is the
struggle of an oppressed minority for democratic rights, for equality,
it tends, because the masters of this country are both unwilling and
unable to grant equality, to become part of the general movement of the
exploited and oppressed to abolish capitalism and proceed toward
socialism. In this tendency to pass over from democratic to socialist
goals, to pass beyond the capitalist framework that now envelops it,
the Negro struggle is similar to the colonial struggles, which also
take off from democratic aims, such as independence and
self-government, but find themselves unable to attain those democratic
aims until they wrench the imperialist boot from off their neck. The
Chinese call this process the “uninterrupted revolution,” and Leon
Trotsky called it “the permanent revolution.” But that is not what I am
discussing here. What I am talking about now is something else — the
capacity of the Negro people to lead the working-class revolution to
replace capitalism with socialism.</p>
<p>To grasp this idea we must rid our minds of the conception that any
social revolution in general or any working-class revolution in
particular has to be <em>led</em> by a majority. I will try to
illustrate this by going back to the first victorious workers’
revolution, the Russian revolution of 1917. It was victorious because
it had the <em>support</em> of a majority of the Russian people. But
it was not led by any class, or by any vanguard of a class, that
comprised the majority of the population. It was a revolution <em>supported
by the majority</em>, and it could not have succeeded without that
majority support, but it was <em>led by a party that represented a
class that was a minority of the country</em>.</p>
<p>We call it, and it was, a working-class revolution. But out of 150
million people in Russia in 1917 the workers were a small minority.
There were probably no more than 10 million workers, and that included
agricultural workers, some of whom were workers only part of the time.
Counting their families, they made up about 15 or 16 per cent of the
total population. Yet this class, with a proper leadership in the form
of Lenin’s Bolshevik party, was able to lead a revolution that
abolished capitalism in Russia.</p>
<p>This is one of the things that befuddled and ruined the Mensheviks,
the Social Democrats, and other white liberals of that day. As they
understood Marx’s analysis of the conditions needed for social
revolution, it could not take place and should not even be attempted
until the country was industrialized to the point where the working
class was a majority of the population, as in England then or in the
United States today. And if it was attempted before the workers were a
majority of the population, it was, according to these people, bound to
fail. And they were so sure the Russian revolution was not according to
either Hoyle or Marx that most of them pitched in and did their utmost
to make it fail.</p>
<p>But they misunderstood Marx and Marxism, as fortunately Lenin,
Trotsky, and others did not. A socialist revolution can be led by the
working class even when the working class is a minority, provided that
working-class minority can get an alliance with, and support from,
other non-capitalist forces and classes in the country. In Russia this
meant an alliance with the peasants, who constituted around
seventy-five per cent of the country. The working-class minority was
able to lead the Russian revolution and lead it to victory, not only
because it took advantage of the crisis of the capitalist class in the
war, not only because it had a qualified leadership, but also because
it worked out an effective alliance with the most oppressed sections of
the peasants. This alliance was designed to meet the most pressing
demands of the peasants, but it did not make any concessions to them
about the need to throw the capitalists out of power; and it was based,
first of all, on the needs and interests of the working class minority,
because the workers were the backbone of the revolution, the most
revolutionary force in the country, and represented the historic march
of social progress.</p>
<p>Now why, in discussing the American revolution of the 1960’s and
1970’s, have I gone all the way back to 1917 and far-off Russia? I did
so because I thought it would throw light on the distinction between
the <em>making</em> of a revolution and the <em>leading</em> of a
revolution, on the leading role that a minority can play, on how dogma
can blind one to the leading role of a minority, and on how the
successful leadership of a working-class revolution by a minority class
depends partly on its ability to make alliances with other exploited
classes and groups. I know I am not proving anything about America by
this reference to Russia, but perhaps it can help us to look at the
role of revolutionary minorities in a fresh way.</p>
<p>The working-class revolution has to be led by workers through their
independent party, or parties, or councils. That’s one of the things
Marx taught us. But Marx never said anything about the revolution
having to be led by white workers. He only said by workers — by the
most revolutionary workers. The Negroes in this country are a racial
minority, but that is only one of their aspects. It would be truly
fatal to forget their other primary aspect, namely, that in their
overwhelming majority they are proletarian in composition. In fact,
Negroes are more proletarian than whites in this country. Negroes are
an important section of the working class as well as a racial minority.
Unless we are blind, we must see that they are at present and will
probably remain the most radicalized section of the working class, the
section of the working class that has the most to gain and nothing to
lose from social revolution. If this is true, then why should it be so
hard, when we are discussing what a radical minority of the working
class can do, to conceive of the possibility that it may lead the rest
of the working class and its allies in the revolution that will abolish
capitalism?</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, that is just what Leon Trotsky, who did so much
to rescue authentic Marxism for my generation and yours, was trying to
teach us twenty-five years ago when we set out to reach a correct and
revolutionary analysis of the Negro struggle. Things were different in
1933, before the CIO, and in 1939, long before the current
radicalization of the Negro people. But let me read you some things
Trotsky told us in the 1930’s <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2" target="_blank">[2]</a>
and see if they do not apply with even greater validity and relevance
to the changed conditions of the 1960’s. My first quotation is from a
discussion in Turkey between Trotsky and an American, thirty-one years
ago, at the depth of the depression and before the CIO was formed.
English was not Trotsky’s native tongue, and his English was not too
good, but his ideas were. He was talking, in 1933, about what would
happen when a mass radicalization began in America, and he said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I believe that by the unheard-of political and
theoretical backwardness and the unheard-of economic advance the
awakening of the working class will proceed quite rapidly. The old
ideological covering will burst, all questions will emerge at once and
since the country is so economically mature the adaptation of the
political and theoretical to the economic level will be achieved very
rapidly. It is then possible that the Negroes will become the most
advanced section. We have already a similar example in Russia. The
Russians were the European Negroes. It is very possible that the
Negroes also through the self-determination will proceed to the
proletarian dictatorship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead of the
great bloc of white workers. They will then furnish the vanguard. I am
absolutely sure that they will in any case fight better than the white
workers. That, however, can happen only if the communist party carries
on an uncompromising merciless struggle not against the supposed
national prepossessions of the Negroes but against the colossal
prejudices of the white workers and gives it no concession whatever.”</p>
<p class="fst">That was 1933. Six years later, in 1939, Trotsky
discussed the Negro struggle with another delegation from the United
States, and, touching on the conditions that make workers conservative
or radical, he said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If the workers’ aristocracy is the basis of
opportunism, one of the sources of adaptation to capitalist society,
then the most oppressed and discriminated against are the most dynamic
milieu of the working class. We must say to the conscious elements of
the Negroes that they are convoked by the historic development to
become a vanguard of the working class. What serves as a brake on the
higher strata? It is the privileges, the comforts that hinder them from
becoming revolutionists. It does not exist for the Negroes. What can
transform a certain stratum, make it more capable of courage and
sacrifice? It is concentrated in the Negroes. If it happens that we in
the SWP are not able to find a road to this stratum, then we are not
worthy at all. The permanent revolution and all the rest would be only
a lie.”<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">LET me repeat just three of those statements now: It is
“possible that <em>the Negroes will become the most advanced section</em>.”
It is possible that the Negroes “<em>will proceed to the proletarian
dictatorship</em> ... <em>ahead of the great bloc of white workers.”
“The Negroes are convoked by the historic development to become a
vanguard of the working class</em>.” What Trotsky was trying to get us
to understand twenty-five and thirty years ago, it is plain, was the
possibility that the Negroes could lead the working-class revolution.
Our party tried to understand this and to express it in the very first
resolution on the Negro struggle it ever adopted, which made it the
first party ever to put this idea forward. Let me read the first two
sentences of that resolution, which is reprinted in full in <strong>Documents
on the Negro Struggle</strong>, and which was adopted by the Socialist
Workers party convention in 1939:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The American Negroes, for centuries the most
oppressed section of American society and the most discriminated
against, are potentially the most revolutionary element of the
population. They are designated by their whole historical past to be,
under adequate leadership, the very vanguard of the proletarian
revolution.”</p>
<p class="fst">So what I have been trying to say, in stating that the
black minority can lead the white majority of the working class in the
coming social revolution, is not really new, because the Socialist
Workers party explicitly stated that concept in a formal convention
resolution in 1939, before most of the people in this hall were born.</p>
<p>Then why does it seem new to many of us? Because, I am sorry to say,
there can be a big gap between accepting or even repeating an idea in a
general way as logically correct, and grasping in all of its
concreteness a profound truth that flies in the face of all prevailing
opinion and prejudice, absorbing it and making it a part of you, a
central part of your thought and your action. There is also a
considerable difference between accepting a general proposition that
may turn out to be correct at some indefinite future time and accepting
it as a possibility, or even a probability, that can have the most
far-reaching consequences for you right now or in the near future.</p>
<p>Although in 1939 we accepted the idea that the Negro minority can
lead the working-class revolution and readily adopted that as the
official position of the Socialist Workers party, the truth is that it
was only a surface acceptance and adoption. We were not yet ready,
despite what we put in our resolution, to fully understand what Trotsky
was trying to get us to see. And six or seven weeks after our 1939
convention adopted this resolution, J.R. Johnson, the chairman of our
party’s committee on Negro work at that time, who had been under
Trotsky’s influence the chief author of the resolution, wrote in our
paper an article referring to the resolution. Johnson said that while
the idea in the resolution was correct, and while “the place of the
Negro is in the very front,” nevertheless the formulation in the
resolution was an “overstatement.” Instead of saying that the Negroes
are destined to be “the very vanguard,” he wrote, it would have been
more correct to say that they are destined to be “in the very
vanguard.” This was a real weakening of the idea Trotsky had tried to
persuade us of. Although it left the Socialist Workers party with the
most advanced position on the Negro struggle, it was a definite step
backward.</p>
<p>But now, with Trotsky long dead, I think we are able to return to
that original unweakened idea and see it in an entirely different light
— not as an overstatement, but as a cold, hard, factually correct
appraisal of a vital possibility that can crucially affect the future
of all Americans. Because what Trotsky could not teach us completely we
have now been able to learn from the actual development of the Negro
struggle itself right before our own eyes these last two or three
years. What we were not advanced enough in the 1930’s to accept as
theory, we are now able to apprehend as concrete current event. Because
the fact is that the Negroes are already a vanguard. They are already
out in front of most white workers. They are more radicalized than the
white workers. They are more ready to fight and sacrifice and die in
order to change this system.</p>
<p>And so today many of us, I am sure, will be able to grasp and act on
the concept of Negroes as leaders of the workers’ revolution not just
as a possibility but as a probability. I shall not try, because that is
a job for the whole movement, to work out or complete everything that
flows from this concept, except to say that much does, and that all of
it seems to me a cause for optimism. Nor shall I try here to discuss
the kind of alliance I think the Negro vanguard of the working-class
revolution will have to effect with the advanced section of the white
workers if the revolution is to be led to success, except to say that I
do not think it can be an alliance that will make concessions in
principle to the white allies of the Negroes, any more than the
revolutionary vanguard in Russia sacrificed any principles in their
alliance with the peasants. Instead, I shall conclude, with much left
hanging, by saying that if the ideas in this talk are correct, if the
concepts about what a minority can do will be of practical and
theoretical benefit in advancing the Negro struggle for freedom, then
what they demonstrate is the validity and even the indispensability of
Marxism to Negro revolutionists, whether or not they belong to the
Socialist Workers Party.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1" target="_blank">1.</a> <strong>Freedom
Now: The New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation</strong>,
Pioneer Publishers, 25c.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2" target="_blank">2.</a> <strong>Documents
of the Negro Struggle (1933-1950)</strong>, Pioneer Publishers, 65c.</p>
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George Breitman
How A Minority Can Change Society
(Spring 1964)
From International Socialist Review, Vol.25 No.2, Spring 1964, pp.34-41.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
This article comprises the text of a speech
delivered at a midwest educational conference of the Young Socialist
Alliance in Chicago, January 1964 by George Breitman, frequent
contributor to The Militant and author of a number of
pamphlets written for the Socialist Workers Party.
THE year 1963 was the most eventful in the history of
the American Negro struggle. As it ended, people all over the country
were stopping to assess what had happened, to think over what was done
and what was not done, what was accomplished and not accomplished.
Clifton DeBerry, the Socialist Workers party candidate for President
this year, had an opportunity at the end of 1963 to make a
coast-to-coast tour of most big northern cities and to learn something
about the current thinking of Negro militants. He told me one of the
things he had observed was the difficulty in getting across the idea
about how much the Negro people can do even though they are in a
minority, about how much they can do on their own, alone and unaided if
necessary. He noticed this difficulty in speaking with Negro trade
unionists, but not only them. He felt a lot more attention has to be
paid to ways of explaining, in a logical, convincing manner, how much a
minority is capable of accomplishing. He felt that misunderstanding on
this point is one of the reasons why the idea of an all-black political
party has not yet caught on with more Negroes.
Why is it so hard for many Negroes, even militant Negroes, to grasp
the full potential of determined minority action? I would say there are
three reasons:
First, the teaching, the influence, the propaganda of the whole
capitalist system from cradle to grave are aimed at brainwashing the
people; at convincing them, among other things, that minorities can
plead and beg, but cannot do anything significant, cannot accomplish
any big changes, until they have the consent of the majority. Above all
is this idea burned into the minds and souls of Negroes, whose history
is distorted or denied, and who are made to feel not only that they are
a minority, but an insignificant minority, who have never amounted to
much by themselves and who, without the stern supervision or benign
direction of the great white fathers, would hardly know how to flush a
toilet. In other words, for Negroes to comprehend how much a minority
can do they must buck everything drilled into them from the beginning
of childhood; they virtually have to make a revolution in their
thinking.
There is a certain irony in these things taught by the capitalists
because the capitalists are a minority themselves — in fact, a much
smaller minority than the Negro people. Yet this capitalist minority
controls the whole country, lock, stock and barrel — its wealth, its
means of production, its political structure — and therefore is a
living refutation of what it tells us about the limits on what a
minority can accomplish.
The second reason why it is hard to see the truth about what a
minority can do is that the present Negro leadership, almost in its
entirety, is enslaved by the ideas promulgated by the capitalist class,
repeats and spreads those ideas, and does everything in its power to
discourage the mass of the Negro people from taking steps genuinely
independent of the white majority.
A third reason is that the radical movement, virtually the whole
radical movement with the exception of the Socialist Workers party,
although it approaches questions from a different standpoint than that
of the ruling capitalist class, has failed to comprehend the essence of
this question, and instead of promoting and encouraging both
theoretically and practically an understanding of the dynamics and
potential of minority action, in some ways even discourages it. An
example is their attitude toward the Freedom Now Party. I do not know
of a single organization in this country claiming to be Marxist or
socialist or communist that supports the Freedom Now Party, except the
Socialist Workers Party. The Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the
Socialist Labor Party, the Progressive Labor Movement — all are either
flatly opposed to, or feel very uneasy, about the development of an
all-black political party independent of the power structure and of the
two major parties. And if you trace back the causes, you will find them
to be most unMarxist, unsocialist and uncommunist failures to grasp the
revolutionary implications of the independent struggles of the Negro
minority.
I WANT now to examine some typical arguments by the
present Negro leaders against such independent action. When the Freedom
Now Party was organized in Michigan a few months ago, the press was
very much concerned about it. And every “big name” Negro who came to
Detroit for several weeks thereafter was immediately buttonholed by the
press and invited to make some statement on, or rather against, the
Freedom Now Party.
One of these was Rev. Martin Luther King, who obliged with the
following statement:
“I am opposed to anything or any party that teaches
separation of the races because I am for integration. If the party is
designed to get more Negroes interested in politics, fine; otherwise I
can see no good that can come from an all-black party. One-tenth of the
population will never be able to dominate nine-tenths.”
In this statement I think Rev. King is guilty of
counterposing “separation of the races” and “integration” in a
completely false and unwarranted way. The Freedom Now Party does not
“teach the separation of the races.” It recognizes that this is a
society where the races are separated in fact, and attempts to utilize
the separation that has been imposed by capitalism in order to change
society and do away with the discrimination made possible by this
imposed separation. King is well aware of this. He is a preacher, the
head of a church which happens to be all-black. He does not reject or
oppose this church because it is all-black. He knows that there is
nothing racist about this church being all-black. It is the result of
living in a racist society. And he works through this all-black church
and tries to build it, at the same time that he advocates integration
and seeks to utilize this all-black organization to promote integration.
Now why can’t an all-black party do the same thing that an all-black
church does, that is, take advantage of the separation created by this
racist society in order to weld together the black victims of racism so
that they can work to end racism altogether? Why not? Why is it
permissible in King’s eyes for Negroes to pray together, but not
permissible for them to join together in political action in the way
they find most effective for ending their oppression? Shouldn’t King,
if he is logical and consistent, propose that Negroes give up their
all-black churches too because they are not integrated? Posed this way,
King could reply, “But we have an all-black church because it’s the
only kind available to us.” And the answer of the Freedom Now Party
could be, “Yes, and an all-black political party is the only kind
available to us that we think has any chance of solving our problems.”
So King is confusing rather than clarifying the real relation between
“separation” and “integration,” which are not necessarily opposites at
all, since the formation of all-black organizations and institutions
may actually be a means of achieving the goal of “integration” instead
of being in contradiction to that goal.
King’s other remark was even more revealing: “One-tenth of the
population will never be able to dominate nine-tenths.” Maybe not,
although I’ve already pointed out that the capitalists, a minority of
less than one per cent, dominate the other 99 per cent of us. Anyhow,
that’s not the issue posed by the Freedom Now Party. It is not the
Freedom Now Party’s goal for the Negro one-tenth to dominate the white
nine-tenths. Just the opposite — its goal is to keep the white
nine-tenths from dominating and oppressing the black one-tenth. How
to do this — that’s the real difference between King and the Freedom
Now Party. Must the minority adapt itself in its methods and tempo to
the prejudiced majority, just because it is a majority, and not do
certain things because the majority will not like it? Or, can the
minority end the domination of the majority by acting with complete
independence from the majority ideologically, organizationally,
politically — and only by acting independently? King prefers
not to discuss this real difference. That’s why he misrepresents his
opponents’ position with irrelevant talk about the inability of
one-tenth to dominate nine-tenths.
Randolph’s Position
Another noted figure who came to Detroit at the time
was. A. Philip Randolph, Vice-President of the AFL-CIO and President of
the Negro American Labor Council. He too dutifully came forward with a
statement against the Freedom Now Party, from which I’ll read just the
first two sentences:
“Racial isolation in any form cannot register any
influence on American political events. It is completely foreign to the
political thoughts and actions of America.”
It could be pointed out that what Randolph calls “racial
isolation,” in the form of all-white organizations like the Ku Klux
Klan and the White Citizens Council, has registered plenty of influence
on American politics. But I think it may be more useful to stress that
in his eagerness to damn the Freedom Now Party, Randolph here is really
damning himself. By “racial isolation” he means all-black organization
for the purpose of ending the isolation foisted on Negroes by a racist
society. Randolph is so blinded factionally that he has forgotten his
own role, the thing for which he will probably be best remembered; for
it so happens that next to Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad, Randolph
is the American Negro leader who did the most in this century for what
he now calls “racial isolation,” that is, all-black organization.
The first March on Washington Movement, which Randolph organized in
1941, was all-black, and Randolph was foremost in insisting that it be
all-black. Even though it did not materialize in a march, because
Randolph yielded to Roosevelt and called it off at the last minute,
that first call for a March on Washington in 1941 nevertheless
accomplished more than the interracial march that took place last
August, because it forced Roosevelt to issue the first FEPC order,
which is more than the 1963 march accomplished. Instead of “isolating”
the Negro struggle, I think it can be said that that all-black
organization, small and imperfect though it was, did more to influence
American life than any interracial movement has done since.
* * *
HOW do you influence the course of events anyway? Is it done by
strict adherence to the procedures and forms approved by the forces in
power, or by following the rules they lay down? All experience,
American as well as “foreign,” testifies to the contrary. As long as
you abide by their rules, either in the way you organize or the way you
fight, they know they have little to fear from you and pay you little
attention. The only valid test for all-black organization is this: does
it at this time and under these circumstances help or hinder in
mobilizing the masses for uncompromising struggle? It doesn’t matter if
whites, liberal or conservative, don’t like it and call it all kinds of
names. What counts is what the black masses think about it. If they
think it is good, if it enables them more effectively to organize for
struggle, then it can have a shattering impact on present-day American
society and politics. Influence can be wielded in more ways than one,
and that which helps the masses to organize is most “influential” in
the long run.
I will cite only one more example of the kind of reasoning employed
by Negro opponents of independent minority action. Also attacking the
Freedom Now Party was Alex Fuller, Vice-President of the Detroit
AFL-CIO Council. He said:
“We can continue to make gains only by working with
people of good will. It is a serious mistake when minority groups, now
on the threshold of making tremendous gains for Negroes ... separate
themselves from others who are working for the same objectives ... We
cannot afford to separate or isolate ourselves ... We stand on the side
of all democratic-thinking people who believe and advocate first-class
citizenship for everyone. We cannot do it alone.”
Translated, what Alex Fuller means is this: Negroes
can’t get anywhere, Negroes can’t get anything, unless they remain in
the Democratic party; therefore they must wait until the Democrats are
ready. But the truth is somewhat different. Negroes will never get
first-class citizenship in a thousand years so long as their political
power remains tucked away in the vest pocket of the Democratic party.
If they have to depend on and wait for the Democrats or the
Republicans, and similar “people of good will,” their children and
their children’s children will never know the taste of freedom.
Nobody in his right mind wants to separate “from others who are
working for the same objectives,” but it is a lie to pretend that the
Democratic party, any more than the Republican Party, has the “same
objectives” as the Negro people. If that were the case the present
massive Negro revolt would have no purpose or meaning. The objective of
the major parties is to quiet the Negroes with a few token concessions,
while the objective of the Negro people is freedom.
Surely there’s a difference here, and it is just this big difference
that separates Negroes from Fuller’s “democratic-thinking people.”
Negroes want freedom now, and “democratic-thinking people” want them to
have it later. The only way Negroes can prevent “separation” from the
liberals on this issue is to give in to them and let them decide when
and where and how much freedom Negroes shall have. That’s what Alex
Fuller and the other Negro leaders have done and what they want the
Negro people to do or keep on doing. But the tendency favoring the
Freedom Now party has decided that a hundred years of political
dependence on these democratic-thinking people of good will is enough,
because such dependence, far from bringing them to “the threshold of
tremendous gains,” will lead only to another hundred years of the same.
They have made their declaration of political independence, and now
they are striking out on their own, determined to use their political
power for themselves first, last, and all the time.
Characteristics of Negro Minority
Before proceeding to our examination from a Marxist
point of view of how much and not how little a minority can do, I
should make clear that I am not talking about just any minority, but
about a minority with certain characteristics, certain features, and a
certain history. And also, yes, I am talking about a minority of a
certain size. Let me get the size question out of the way first.
Obviously, not every minority is big enough to do the things I am
talking about. Size is important too. If there were only two or three
million Negroes in this country, which is approaching a population of
200 million, they could not accomplish what a minority of 20 million
can. But 20 million is a big force, big enough to tear things up, big
enough and weighty enough to appreciably affect the course of events.
After all, how many countries in the world, not only the new ones in
Africa and Asia but also the old ones in Europe and the Americas, have
a population of 20 million? Out of more than 100 countries, not more
than 25 at the most, so that around three-quarters of the countries in
the world are smaller in population than the Negro people of the United
States.
Size and relative weight are not the only important factors to be
considered. A minority of even 40 million cannot do much if satisfied
with its conditions or indifferent and apathetic about them. As
important as size, or more important, in deciding what a minority can
do are social, economic, political, historical, and psychological
factors.
What I am trying to say is that what a minority can do depends on
whether or not it is oppressed and exploited because of some minority
trait or feature, is separated out by society for special inferior
status, is denied equal treatment, opportunity and rights; whether or
not it is at the bottom of the social ladder so that when it rises it
shakes the whole structure; whether or not it is a part of the most
productive and potentially most powerful force in the modern world, the
working class, and yet at the same time is denied the full benefits of
membership in that class; whether or not the oppressive and
exploitative society in which it exists is stable or in crisis,
challenged on all sides and therefore no longer able to maintain the status
quo; whether or not this minority believes that it can take
advantage of the crisis of society; whether or not it is affected by
and responds to the great tides of change and revolution sweeping the
globe and has a sense of kinship and solidarity with the masses rising
up and changing the rest of the world; whether or not its oppression
tends to knit it together for common action and goals; whether or not
it is compact and so situated geographically that it can act with
maximum cohesive-ness and impact; whether or not it has learned to see
through the brainwashing which the ruling class uses to keep this
minority in subjugation; whether or not it has lost patience as well as
respect for the majority; whether or not it sees any further reason to
continue believing in promises or in gradualism; whether or not it has
the capacity to free itself from the influence of conservative leaders
who have always held it back and to replace them with more militant and
revolutionary leaders; whether or not it realizes it never has made any
gains except by fighting for them; whether or not it has the capacity
to defend itself against terror and violence; whether or not it is
developing a militant and radical consciousness, ideology, philosophy
and methodology of its own that can motivate and spark sustained,
audacious and independent struggle.
In short, I am talking about characteristics that fit the American
Negro people or which they are in the process of acquiring at an
extremely rapid rate. Of the many things such a minority can do, I
shall now list some, not necessarily in the order of their importance:
What a Minority Can Do
1. It can force serious concessions from the ruling
class. Anyone who expects the capitalist class to grant full and
genuine equality to the Negro people is going to be sadly disappointed,
because equality is simply not compatible with, or possible under, a
social system of the type that we have in the United States today. But
that is no reason for Negroes to stop trying to get whatever they can
squeeze out of the ruling class until the time comes when it can be
deposed. Militant struggle can force the present ruling class to lift
some of the existing racial restrictions and barriers in the form of
more rights more jobs, better jobs, better schools, better housing,
less police brutality, and a greater measure of formal equality before
the law. Negroes will not settle for such partial gains and
concessions, but they would be fools not to fight for them and take
them and utilize them to press for other and more fundamental changes.
2. A minority, properly oriented and led, can go much
farther than it has thus far gone to make the present system unworkable
and intolerable. Bayard Rustin calls this “social dislocation” (and
warns against its “limitations”). Rev. Albert Cleage, chairman of the
Freedom Now Party in Michigan, calls it “a strategy of chaos” (and
urges its application be expanded). Others give it the name of “mass
civil disobedience.” Whatever you call it, it has barely been utilized
in America up to now. It consists of making the system so inconvenient
and expensive that white people will be forced to ask themselves
whether continued discrimination is worthwhile and whether in their own
interest they should not help to do away with it altogether.
It means lying down, interposing your bodies on the airport runways,
on the expressways, at the plant gate, at the school entrance, at the
bank, at the points of production, and the points of distribution, and
the points of transportation, and throwing a monkey wrench into the
wheels of the system, attempting to paralyze it, to bring it to a stop.
It means saying:
“If we Negroes can’t have decent and equal schools,
then let’s not have any schools. If we can’t have jobs and job
equality, then let no one be able to work. If we can’t vote, then let
no one be able to vote. If we can’t belong to the unions as equals,
then we don’t care what happens to the unions.”
It means carrying the principle of the sit-down strike,
which stops production, much farther and into entirely new areas of
social life.
I say that this has hardly been exercised as a full-scale weapon of
the Negro minority, but I have no doubt that it will be. Already some
members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, headed by
Diane Nash Bevel, have proposed such action and have had it rejected by
moderate leaders like Rev. King, who talks about civil disobedience but
is mortally afraid of really unleashing it without restriction on a
mass scale. The sit-ins, the lie-ins, the wade-ins, etc., were just a
small, faint, preliminary version of what is still to come in a giant
size and to the accomplishment of deep social convulsions and
conflicts. To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that what I am talking
about here is not pacifism but an all out struggle, which will be the
equivalent of a general strike when it reaches full flower. And a
general strike usually tends to pose questions about who shall have
power in the land.
3. A minority can, merely by carrying through its fight
for democratic rights without compromise, help to educate and
radicalize the American people, especially the youth in whose hands the
future lies. In fact, it is already doing so. You in this audience of
young socialists and young radicals know better than anyone else how
profoundly your thinking about the whole world has been influenced by
the Negro struggle; how their fight for equality enabled you to see
through the official myths about “democracy” and “the free world,” to
understand the brute reality of the capitalist power structure, to
reach new conclusions about capitalism and socialism. Not only the
Cuban revolution, not only the danger of atomic war, but something much
closer to home, the Negro revolt, has helped to educate or re-educate
you, to shed the blinders of liberalism, and to persuade you to
dedicate your lives to the fight for a better world. In this respect
you are not so much unique as early, because the deepening struggle of
the Negro minority will have similarly healthy effects on other young
people and on some of the not completely hopeless older people as well.
4. A minority not only can educate other forces but can
set them into motion too. It can stimulate them to fight for their own
needs and interests through the power of example as well as the power
of pressure. You heard one illustration of the power of example this
morning — the report about the rent strike which began among Negroes in
Harlem and is now spreading to some white sections of the population in
other parts of New York City. Another small but striking example
occurred in Detroit last summer. A militant Negro demonstration in
front of police headquarters, to protest the police shooting of a young
Negro woman in the back, came to the very brink of a physical clash.
That was a Saturday, and it was followed two days later, on Monday, by
another demonstration at another police station, near which cops had
shot a young white man in the back. This second demonstration,
involving mainly young whites, raised the same slogans as the first
and culminated in a pitched battle with the cops after the youths had
thrown rocks and bottles at them. Not long ago I noticed a small
newspaper item about some airline strike pickets who had been picketing
up and down outside the Newark terminal for a long time, with little
public attention paid to their grievances. One day they suddenly
decided to go inside the terminal and demonstrate there, which was
prohibited by an injunction. Quickly arrested, they were asked what had
got into them. Their explanation was that they had seen that Negroes
were able to get action by sit-ins and by going places where they
weren’t supposed to, so they thought it was a good idea to do the same.
These are all small-scale illustrations, but bigger and better ones
are in the offing. The rulers of this country are well aware of the
stimulation-and-contagion effects of militant Negro struggle. That is
one reason why they want to stop it before it goes too far and explains
the hasty turnabout that induced the previously indifferent Kennedy
administration to suddenly introduce civil rights legislation last year.
5. A determined minority can also divide the majority,
can actually split it up at decisive moments and junctures. This, of
course, is one of the best ways of reducing the disadvantages of being
a numerical minority, because it drastically changes the odds against
the minority. The Socialist Workers party’s 1963 convention resolution [1] showed how this process has
operated historically. If our analysis and theory are correct, this
isn’t a matter of history only, but of the present and the future. Let
me refer briefly to the Civil War as an example of the process which
can split the majority.
THE Civil War was not just a conflict between abstract
and impersonal forces, between Northern capitalism and Southern
slavery; it was a struggle between classes and living people. No one
played a greater role in stimulating and progressively resolving that
conflict than the slaves and ex-slaves. Again and again in the three
decades before the Civil War the rulers of the North and the South
decided to avoid a final showdown by compromising over the slave
question. Great hopes were raised and brilliant reputations were made
overnight by these eminently “reasonable” negotiations and agreements
reached over the bargaining table in Congress and then enacted into
law. But the slaves were not consulted about these great compromises.
They would not have consented to them anyway, because they left the
condition of the slave unchanged, that is, intolerable. So the slaves
continued their own independent efforts to become free, just as if
these great compromise agreements had never existed.
They continued, just as before, or more so, to run away by the
thousands and tens of thousands, to commit sabotage and arson, and to
engage in various forms of civil disobedience, self-defense and
insurrection. These independent actions of the slaves helped to prevent
the compromises from working and to stimulate the birth and growth of
abolitionism among whites, who threw their weight onto the scales
against further compromise. Thus the slaves reopened and widened the
gap between the South and the North every time the great compromise
statesmen tried to close it.
By acting in every way they could to defend and liberate themselves,
the slaves drove a wedge between the slaveholders and those who wanted
to compromise with the slaveholders. By acting in self-interest, and
alone when they had to, the slaves divided the whites politically and
morally and deepened the divisions to the breaking point. That, above
everything else, is what made the struggle irrepressible, constantly
widened the breach and deepened the division among the whites, and led
inexorably to civil warfare. And then, at the crucial moment, after the
outbreak of the war the rulers on both sides had tried so hard to
avert, the Negroes pressured the northern government into accepting a
revolutionary emancipation policy and completed the process by
providing what the reluctant Lincoln later admitted was the military
balance of power in the war itself. All this happened without a
conscious plan, you might say instinctively. Imagine what will happen
when the Negro militants absorb this lesson from history and then
consciously work out a strategy to fully utilize this process that is
set in motion by the elemental desire of the masses to be free!
We can expect, we can be certain, that the deepening of the Negro
struggle for equality will have similarly divisive effects on the white
majority in our own time. The majority is not homogeneous anyway; it is
strained and torn and in conflict over a thousand questions of policy
and class interest. A skillful leadership of the Negro minority will
know how to pick the right place to drive new wedges, to deepen already
existing and potential differences among the whites, to sharpen their
conflicts, to set them fighting each other, and, in the process, as the
SWP 1963 convention resolution also says, to find mutually beneficial
alliances with those classes and forces whose interests are closer to
those of the Negroes against those forces that are most hostile to the
Negroes.
Under certain conditions, therefore, a minority, just by fighting
for its own rights, can divide the majority into two or more minorities
locked in combat with each other. This in turn can result in bringing
to power a different kind of majority, not based on color, in which the
original minority can take a leading part.
Those who confine themselves to scratching the surface can see only
the limitations of being a minority, which leads to lamentation,
pessimism, and self-induced paralysis or subservience. But when we
examine the situation in all of its complex and contradictory reality,
probing it deeper and from all sides; when we study majority-minority
relations in motion as well as when they are standing still; when we
perceive that the majority has problems too, and weaknesses, and many
points at which it is vulnerable and susceptible to successful attack,
and that these majority problems and weaknesses are becoming more acute
than ever before, then we find, not just limitations for the minority,
but also infinitely varied and promising openings and opportunities for
transforming, transcending, and overcoming limitations.
6. The Negro minority is also in a position to upset the
whole political structure of this country — just by “going it alone” in
politics, just by the decisions Negroes make about how to use their own
votes and their own minority political strength. Our 1963 convention
resolution explored this question too, before the present Freedom Now
party was started, but it bears restatement because it is such an
effective refutation of black liberals who contend the Negro is
politically impotent and “destined to fail” if he acts on his own in
politics.
Negroes can form their own party. Negroes can run their own
candidates against the Democrats and Republicans. Negroes, because they
are already a majority in many districts, thanks to the segregated
housing system that jams them tightly together in the big city ghettos,
can, right now or any time they form their own party, elect dozens of
black candidates to Congress from these districts and hundreds of state
and local representatives. In this way they can get representatives in
public office who will be responsible and accountable to the Negro
community instead of to the corrupt major party machines. And since
this bloc of black representatives will not be small, it will enable
them to hold and wield a certain legislative balance of power and to
compel bigger concessions from the power structure than the tokens and
crumbs they are now thrown; all of this, you notice, without any
drastic change yet in political relations — just by taking advantage of
the political and electoral conditions created by segregation, by
refusing to vote Democratic or Republican, by voting black. This would
mark a real advance at least in the number and quality of Negro
representatives in office, but that would be only a part of the result
of independent political action.
By forming their own party, Negroes can paralyze the Democratic
party and rock the whole political structure to its foundations.
Without Negro votes, the bell will toll the doom of the Democratic
party. Without Negro votes, the Democratic coalition with the labor
movement will be undermined and destroyed. Without Negro votes for that
coalition, the unions will be forced to reconsider their political
orientation, and this will encourage and strengthen the union forces
who will eventually form an independent labor party. Without Negro
votes, the present two-party system will pass from the scene and be
replaced by something different, out of which Negroes may be able to
acquire new and more reliable allies than up to now. And all of this
can be accomplished by the simple device of forming a Negro party and
running independent Negro candidates. Really, when you think about the
potential, you can almost pity the ignorance of those Negro leaders who
preach that Negroes are incapable of any political role other than
tagging along behind the liberals.
7. The last on my partial list of things the Negro
minority can do should be of special interest to another and smaller
minority — socialists, white and Negro. I am convinced that if militant
Negroes, not yet socialist, are not so concerned with this point now,
they will be later, as their continuing political experience draws it
to their attention. At any rate, my point is that the Negro people,
although a minority, can, with consistently revolutionary leadership,
lead the American working class in the revolution that will abolish
capitalism.
We have long held the view that while the Negro struggle is the
struggle of an oppressed minority for democratic rights, for equality,
it tends, because the masters of this country are both unwilling and
unable to grant equality, to become part of the general movement of the
exploited and oppressed to abolish capitalism and proceed toward
socialism. In this tendency to pass over from democratic to socialist
goals, to pass beyond the capitalist framework that now envelops it,
the Negro struggle is similar to the colonial struggles, which also
take off from democratic aims, such as independence and
self-government, but find themselves unable to attain those democratic
aims until they wrench the imperialist boot from off their neck. The
Chinese call this process the “uninterrupted revolution,” and Leon
Trotsky called it “the permanent revolution.” But that is not what I am
discussing here. What I am talking about now is something else — the
capacity of the Negro people to lead the working-class revolution to
replace capitalism with socialism.
To grasp this idea we must rid our minds of the conception that any
social revolution in general or any working-class revolution in
particular has to be led by a majority. I will try to
illustrate this by going back to the first victorious workers’
revolution, the Russian revolution of 1917. It was victorious because
it had the support of a majority of the Russian people. But
it was not led by any class, or by any vanguard of a class, that
comprised the majority of the population. It was a revolution supported
by the majority, and it could not have succeeded without that
majority support, but it was led by a party that represented a
class that was a minority of the country.
We call it, and it was, a working-class revolution. But out of 150
million people in Russia in 1917 the workers were a small minority.
There were probably no more than 10 million workers, and that included
agricultural workers, some of whom were workers only part of the time.
Counting their families, they made up about 15 or 16 per cent of the
total population. Yet this class, with a proper leadership in the form
of Lenin’s Bolshevik party, was able to lead a revolution that
abolished capitalism in Russia.
This is one of the things that befuddled and ruined the Mensheviks,
the Social Democrats, and other white liberals of that day. As they
understood Marx’s analysis of the conditions needed for social
revolution, it could not take place and should not even be attempted
until the country was industrialized to the point where the working
class was a majority of the population, as in England then or in the
United States today. And if it was attempted before the workers were a
majority of the population, it was, according to these people, bound to
fail. And they were so sure the Russian revolution was not according to
either Hoyle or Marx that most of them pitched in and did their utmost
to make it fail.
But they misunderstood Marx and Marxism, as fortunately Lenin,
Trotsky, and others did not. A socialist revolution can be led by the
working class even when the working class is a minority, provided that
working-class minority can get an alliance with, and support from,
other non-capitalist forces and classes in the country. In Russia this
meant an alliance with the peasants, who constituted around
seventy-five per cent of the country. The working-class minority was
able to lead the Russian revolution and lead it to victory, not only
because it took advantage of the crisis of the capitalist class in the
war, not only because it had a qualified leadership, but also because
it worked out an effective alliance with the most oppressed sections of
the peasants. This alliance was designed to meet the most pressing
demands of the peasants, but it did not make any concessions to them
about the need to throw the capitalists out of power; and it was based,
first of all, on the needs and interests of the working class minority,
because the workers were the backbone of the revolution, the most
revolutionary force in the country, and represented the historic march
of social progress.
Now why, in discussing the American revolution of the 1960’s and
1970’s, have I gone all the way back to 1917 and far-off Russia? I did
so because I thought it would throw light on the distinction between
the making of a revolution and the leading of a
revolution, on the leading role that a minority can play, on how dogma
can blind one to the leading role of a minority, and on how the
successful leadership of a working-class revolution by a minority class
depends partly on its ability to make alliances with other exploited
classes and groups. I know I am not proving anything about America by
this reference to Russia, but perhaps it can help us to look at the
role of revolutionary minorities in a fresh way.
The working-class revolution has to be led by workers through their
independent party, or parties, or councils. That’s one of the things
Marx taught us. But Marx never said anything about the revolution
having to be led by white workers. He only said by workers — by the
most revolutionary workers. The Negroes in this country are a racial
minority, but that is only one of their aspects. It would be truly
fatal to forget their other primary aspect, namely, that in their
overwhelming majority they are proletarian in composition. In fact,
Negroes are more proletarian than whites in this country. Negroes are
an important section of the working class as well as a racial minority.
Unless we are blind, we must see that they are at present and will
probably remain the most radicalized section of the working class, the
section of the working class that has the most to gain and nothing to
lose from social revolution. If this is true, then why should it be so
hard, when we are discussing what a radical minority of the working
class can do, to conceive of the possibility that it may lead the rest
of the working class and its allies in the revolution that will abolish
capitalism?
As a matter of fact, that is just what Leon Trotsky, who did so much
to rescue authentic Marxism for my generation and yours, was trying to
teach us twenty-five years ago when we set out to reach a correct and
revolutionary analysis of the Negro struggle. Things were different in
1933, before the CIO, and in 1939, long before the current
radicalization of the Negro people. But let me read you some things
Trotsky told us in the 1930’s [2]
and see if they do not apply with even greater validity and relevance
to the changed conditions of the 1960’s. My first quotation is from a
discussion in Turkey between Trotsky and an American, thirty-one years
ago, at the depth of the depression and before the CIO was formed.
English was not Trotsky’s native tongue, and his English was not too
good, but his ideas were. He was talking, in 1933, about what would
happen when a mass radicalization began in America, and he said:
“I believe that by the unheard-of political and
theoretical backwardness and the unheard-of economic advance the
awakening of the working class will proceed quite rapidly. The old
ideological covering will burst, all questions will emerge at once and
since the country is so economically mature the adaptation of the
political and theoretical to the economic level will be achieved very
rapidly. It is then possible that the Negroes will become the most
advanced section. We have already a similar example in Russia. The
Russians were the European Negroes. It is very possible that the
Negroes also through the self-determination will proceed to the
proletarian dictatorship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead of the
great bloc of white workers. They will then furnish the vanguard. I am
absolutely sure that they will in any case fight better than the white
workers. That, however, can happen only if the communist party carries
on an uncompromising merciless struggle not against the supposed
national prepossessions of the Negroes but against the colossal
prejudices of the white workers and gives it no concession whatever.”
That was 1933. Six years later, in 1939, Trotsky
discussed the Negro struggle with another delegation from the United
States, and, touching on the conditions that make workers conservative
or radical, he said:
“If the workers’ aristocracy is the basis of
opportunism, one of the sources of adaptation to capitalist society,
then the most oppressed and discriminated against are the most dynamic
milieu of the working class. We must say to the conscious elements of
the Negroes that they are convoked by the historic development to
become a vanguard of the working class. What serves as a brake on the
higher strata? It is the privileges, the comforts that hinder them from
becoming revolutionists. It does not exist for the Negroes. What can
transform a certain stratum, make it more capable of courage and
sacrifice? It is concentrated in the Negroes. If it happens that we in
the SWP are not able to find a road to this stratum, then we are not
worthy at all. The permanent revolution and all the rest would be only
a lie.”
LET me repeat just three of those statements now: It is
“possible that the Negroes will become the most advanced section.”
It is possible that the Negroes “will proceed to the proletarian
dictatorship ... ahead of the great bloc of white workers.”
“The Negroes are convoked by the historic development to become a
vanguard of the working class.” What Trotsky was trying to get us
to understand twenty-five and thirty years ago, it is plain, was the
possibility that the Negroes could lead the working-class revolution.
Our party tried to understand this and to express it in the very first
resolution on the Negro struggle it ever adopted, which made it the
first party ever to put this idea forward. Let me read the first two
sentences of that resolution, which is reprinted in full in Documents
on the Negro Struggle, and which was adopted by the Socialist
Workers party convention in 1939:
“The American Negroes, for centuries the most
oppressed section of American society and the most discriminated
against, are potentially the most revolutionary element of the
population. They are designated by their whole historical past to be,
under adequate leadership, the very vanguard of the proletarian
revolution.”
So what I have been trying to say, in stating that the
black minority can lead the white majority of the working class in the
coming social revolution, is not really new, because the Socialist
Workers party explicitly stated that concept in a formal convention
resolution in 1939, before most of the people in this hall were born.
Then why does it seem new to many of us? Because, I am sorry to say,
there can be a big gap between accepting or even repeating an idea in a
general way as logically correct, and grasping in all of its
concreteness a profound truth that flies in the face of all prevailing
opinion and prejudice, absorbing it and making it a part of you, a
central part of your thought and your action. There is also a
considerable difference between accepting a general proposition that
may turn out to be correct at some indefinite future time and accepting
it as a possibility, or even a probability, that can have the most
far-reaching consequences for you right now or in the near future.
Although in 1939 we accepted the idea that the Negro minority can
lead the working-class revolution and readily adopted that as the
official position of the Socialist Workers party, the truth is that it
was only a surface acceptance and adoption. We were not yet ready,
despite what we put in our resolution, to fully understand what Trotsky
was trying to get us to see. And six or seven weeks after our 1939
convention adopted this resolution, J.R. Johnson, the chairman of our
party’s committee on Negro work at that time, who had been under
Trotsky’s influence the chief author of the resolution, wrote in our
paper an article referring to the resolution. Johnson said that while
the idea in the resolution was correct, and while “the place of the
Negro is in the very front,” nevertheless the formulation in the
resolution was an “overstatement.” Instead of saying that the Negroes
are destined to be “the very vanguard,” he wrote, it would have been
more correct to say that they are destined to be “in the very
vanguard.” This was a real weakening of the idea Trotsky had tried to
persuade us of. Although it left the Socialist Workers party with the
most advanced position on the Negro struggle, it was a definite step
backward.
But now, with Trotsky long dead, I think we are able to return to
that original unweakened idea and see it in an entirely different light
— not as an overstatement, but as a cold, hard, factually correct
appraisal of a vital possibility that can crucially affect the future
of all Americans. Because what Trotsky could not teach us completely we
have now been able to learn from the actual development of the Negro
struggle itself right before our own eyes these last two or three
years. What we were not advanced enough in the 1930’s to accept as
theory, we are now able to apprehend as concrete current event. Because
the fact is that the Negroes are already a vanguard. They are already
out in front of most white workers. They are more radicalized than the
white workers. They are more ready to fight and sacrifice and die in
order to change this system.
And so today many of us, I am sure, will be able to grasp and act on
the concept of Negroes as leaders of the workers’ revolution not just
as a possibility but as a probability. I shall not try, because that is
a job for the whole movement, to work out or complete everything that
flows from this concept, except to say that much does, and that all of
it seems to me a cause for optimism. Nor shall I try here to discuss
the kind of alliance I think the Negro vanguard of the working-class
revolution will have to effect with the advanced section of the white
workers if the revolution is to be led to success, except to say that I
do not think it can be an alliance that will make concessions in
principle to the white allies of the Negroes, any more than the
revolutionary vanguard in Russia sacrificed any principles in their
alliance with the peasants. Instead, I shall conclude, with much left
hanging, by saying that if the ideas in this talk are correct, if the
concepts about what a minority can do will be of practical and
theoretical benefit in advancing the Negro struggle for freedom, then
what they demonstrate is the validity and even the indispensability of
Marxism to Negro revolutionists, whether or not they belong to the
Socialist Workers Party.
Footnotes
1. Freedom
Now: The New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation,
Pioneer Publishers, 25c.
2. Documents
of the Negro Struggle (1933-1950), Pioneer Publishers, 65c.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Negro March on Capital Upheld Against Critics</h1>
<h4>Albert Parker Answers the <em>Pittsburgh Courier</em>’s Editorial;<br>
Stalinists Change Their Line, Now Concede March’s Value</h4>
<h3>(21 June 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_25" target="new">Vol. V No. 25</a>, 21 June 1941, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The July 1 March on Washington to demand the abolition of discrimination against the Negro people in employment and, the armed forces is a project worthy of the support of every Negro and white worker. It is worthy of support in spite of the fact that its organizers (A. Philip Randolph and his friends) have not done too well a job of arousing and mobilizing the Negro masses behind it, and in spite of the fact that its demands are not formulated very well.</p>
<p>The March is worthy of support because essentially it is an ACTION against the system of Jim Crowism that segregates and discriminates against Negroes wherever they go.</p>
<p>The Negro masses themselves have had no difficulty in seeing this. Everywhere, the local March-on-Washington Committees, report the workers, whenever they have been reached, have dug into their pockets and donated and volunteered for the march – and the questions they have asked have not been: “Should we support the March?” but “How can we make this March more successful?”<br>
</p>
<h4><em>Courier</em> Opposes March</h4>
<p class="fst">But while the Negro masses have grasped the need for the March immediately, some sections of the Negro intellectuals have been unable to do the same. A typical example is the editorial writer of the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> this week, who says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Nothing is going to be accomplished by the crackpot proposal of A. Philip Randolph and his associates to stage a march on Washington in protest against color discrimination in national defense.</p>
<p class="quote">“Marches on Washington have always failed of their purpose because Congress has regarded them merely as nuisances organized by publicity hounds, job-hunters and addle-pates, and consisting of the mob-minded and misguided ...”<br>
</p>
<h4>The <em>Courier</em>’s Alibi</h4>
<p class="fst">In order to justify this language, which is an exact language that will be used by the Negro-hating poll tax Democratic legislators in Washington on July 1, the <strong>Courier</strong> editorial writer continues:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Led by the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>, which has spent thousands of dollars during, the past four years in enlightening public opinion about color discrimination in national defense, colored people have so flooded their Congressmen, Senators and the President with protests that not a single official in Washington is unaware of the evil.</p>
<p class="quote">“Can a parade tell them anything they do not already know?</p>
<p class="quote">“Randolph’s group is loudly claiming that they will have between 50,000 and 100,000 Negroes parading in Washington on July 1, 1941.</p>
<p class="quote">“This will be a great boon to the railroad companies and to the oil and gas stations in Washington and vicinity, but it will certainly be a hardship on the marchers.</p>
<p class="quote">“The most effective way of influencing Congress and the Administration is by personal letters and telegrams from individuals, societies, church congregations, clubs and fraternities; by memorials and resolutions sent to both Houses and by intelligent personal representations.”</p>
<p class="fst">And the rest of the editorial is devoted to the fact that even 1,000 Negroes would swamp the eating and housing facilities in Washington, and to the prophecy that because of the heat and other difficulties, “there will be far less than the heralded 50,000 Negroes present on that date.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Answering the <em>Courier</em></h4>
<p class="fst">A parade will not tell the Washington Administration anything they do not already know about the evil effects of Jim Crowism on the Negro people. If all the parade were intended for was to make the Congressmen “aware of the evil,” it would indeed be a waste of time. But this line of argument, as the <strong>Courier</strong> editors know well enough, doesn’t really touch the point of the March.</p>
<p><em>A successful and gigantic demonstration in Washington that presented a militant set of demands on the administration, a demonstration that showed that the Negro people are ready to do more than send telegrams, that showed they are ready to fight Jim Crow – that would certainly tell Washington something it doesn’t already know!</em></p>
<p>The <strong>Courier</strong> editorial writer describes “the most effective way of influencing Congress, and the Administration.” What has come of this, “most effective way”?</p>
<p><em>What good have all the resolutions, letters, telegrams, memorials and “intelligent personal representations” done so far? Has it gotten any jobs in the war industries? Has it diminished by one inch the segregation in the armed forces? If that is really “the most effective way,” then there isn’t much hope.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>The Masses Know Better</h4>
<p class="fst">But the masses know that isn’t the most effective way at all. They know from their own daily experiences that you don’t get anything unless you’re ready to put up a fight for it, that you don’t get higher wages by writing a letter hut by organizing your fellow-workers and putting up a united, militant struggle, against your exploiters. Those who exaggerate the difficulties of a fight usually are not around when it takes place.</p>
<p>And this <strong>Courier</strong> editorial writer certainly has a nerve saying: that the march “will be a great boon to the railroad companies and to the oil and gas stations.” Using this kind of logic, one could; easily condemn the <strong>Courier</strong> and its methods of fighting Jim Crow as a great boon to the telegraph companies, the post office and the ink manufacturers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Where We Stand</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>The Socialist Workers Party rejects the defeatist, non-struggle policies of the <strong>Courier</strong>’s editorial writer, and calls on all workers to join and to build the March on Washington into a powerful manifestation of the Negroes’ intention in fight to the death against all forms of Jim Crow</em>.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The same day that the <strong>Courier</strong> broke its silence: on the March to come out against it, the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> and the Communist Party broke their silence to come out in critical support of the March.<br>
</p>
<h4>Why Stalinists Changed</h4>
<p class="fst">The long silence of the Stalinists on the question indicated that they would have been glad to duck it altogether. That this was so was shown by the hands-off attitude of the local Stalinists wherever the March was being organized.</p>
<p><em>However, their failure to find a reason to justify non-support of the march, and the pressure they must have felt from those Negro workers with whom they are in contact, must have driven them at the last moment to a declaration of qualified support. Just what else they will do besides this remains yet to be seen.</em></p>
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Albert Parker
Negro March on Capital Upheld Against Critics
Albert Parker Answers the Pittsburgh Courier’s Editorial;
Stalinists Change Their Line, Now Concede March’s Value
(21 June 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 25, 21 June 1941, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The July 1 March on Washington to demand the abolition of discrimination against the Negro people in employment and, the armed forces is a project worthy of the support of every Negro and white worker. It is worthy of support in spite of the fact that its organizers (A. Philip Randolph and his friends) have not done too well a job of arousing and mobilizing the Negro masses behind it, and in spite of the fact that its demands are not formulated very well.
The March is worthy of support because essentially it is an ACTION against the system of Jim Crowism that segregates and discriminates against Negroes wherever they go.
The Negro masses themselves have had no difficulty in seeing this. Everywhere, the local March-on-Washington Committees, report the workers, whenever they have been reached, have dug into their pockets and donated and volunteered for the march – and the questions they have asked have not been: “Should we support the March?” but “How can we make this March more successful?”
Courier Opposes March
But while the Negro masses have grasped the need for the March immediately, some sections of the Negro intellectuals have been unable to do the same. A typical example is the editorial writer of the Pittsburgh Courier this week, who says:
“Nothing is going to be accomplished by the crackpot proposal of A. Philip Randolph and his associates to stage a march on Washington in protest against color discrimination in national defense.
“Marches on Washington have always failed of their purpose because Congress has regarded them merely as nuisances organized by publicity hounds, job-hunters and addle-pates, and consisting of the mob-minded and misguided ...”
The Courier’s Alibi
In order to justify this language, which is an exact language that will be used by the Negro-hating poll tax Democratic legislators in Washington on July 1, the Courier editorial writer continues:
“Led by the Pittsburgh Courier, which has spent thousands of dollars during, the past four years in enlightening public opinion about color discrimination in national defense, colored people have so flooded their Congressmen, Senators and the President with protests that not a single official in Washington is unaware of the evil.
“Can a parade tell them anything they do not already know?
“Randolph’s group is loudly claiming that they will have between 50,000 and 100,000 Negroes parading in Washington on July 1, 1941.
“This will be a great boon to the railroad companies and to the oil and gas stations in Washington and vicinity, but it will certainly be a hardship on the marchers.
“The most effective way of influencing Congress and the Administration is by personal letters and telegrams from individuals, societies, church congregations, clubs and fraternities; by memorials and resolutions sent to both Houses and by intelligent personal representations.”
And the rest of the editorial is devoted to the fact that even 1,000 Negroes would swamp the eating and housing facilities in Washington, and to the prophecy that because of the heat and other difficulties, “there will be far less than the heralded 50,000 Negroes present on that date.”
Answering the Courier
A parade will not tell the Washington Administration anything they do not already know about the evil effects of Jim Crowism on the Negro people. If all the parade were intended for was to make the Congressmen “aware of the evil,” it would indeed be a waste of time. But this line of argument, as the Courier editors know well enough, doesn’t really touch the point of the March.
A successful and gigantic demonstration in Washington that presented a militant set of demands on the administration, a demonstration that showed that the Negro people are ready to do more than send telegrams, that showed they are ready to fight Jim Crow – that would certainly tell Washington something it doesn’t already know!
The Courier editorial writer describes “the most effective way of influencing Congress, and the Administration.” What has come of this, “most effective way”?
What good have all the resolutions, letters, telegrams, memorials and “intelligent personal representations” done so far? Has it gotten any jobs in the war industries? Has it diminished by one inch the segregation in the armed forces? If that is really “the most effective way,” then there isn’t much hope.
The Masses Know Better
But the masses know that isn’t the most effective way at all. They know from their own daily experiences that you don’t get anything unless you’re ready to put up a fight for it, that you don’t get higher wages by writing a letter hut by organizing your fellow-workers and putting up a united, militant struggle, against your exploiters. Those who exaggerate the difficulties of a fight usually are not around when it takes place.
And this Courier editorial writer certainly has a nerve saying: that the march “will be a great boon to the railroad companies and to the oil and gas stations.” Using this kind of logic, one could; easily condemn the Courier and its methods of fighting Jim Crow as a great boon to the telegraph companies, the post office and the ink manufacturers.
Where We Stand
The Socialist Workers Party rejects the defeatist, non-struggle policies of the Courier’s editorial writer, and calls on all workers to join and to build the March on Washington into a powerful manifestation of the Negroes’ intention in fight to the death against all forms of Jim Crow.
* * *
The same day that the Courier broke its silence: on the March to come out against it, the Daily Worker and the Communist Party broke their silence to come out in critical support of the March.
Why Stalinists Changed
The long silence of the Stalinists on the question indicated that they would have been glad to duck it altogether. That this was so was shown by the hands-off attitude of the local Stalinists wherever the March was being organized.
However, their failure to find a reason to justify non-support of the march, and the pressure they must have felt from those Negro workers with whom they are in contact, must have driven them at the last moment to a declaration of qualified support. Just what else they will do besides this remains yet to be seen.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(18 January 1941)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa05_03" target="new">Vol. 5 No. 3</a>, 18 January 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h4>[Double Thanks]</h4>
<p class="fst">The aircraft workers at Vultee (organized into Local 683 of the United Auto Workers Union, CIO) deserve double thanks from the workers of this country.</p>
<p>First of all they struck a blow which showed that it is not only desirable but possible to win higher wages and better working conditions in the war industries, even under a heavy barrage of attacks from the employers, their stooges and the government.</p>
<p>Secondly, they have taken another action which will be greeted with enthusiasm by the workers, especially those Negro workers who are almost 100% barred from many important industries such as aircraft.</p>
<p>Here is how it happened. At the dance celebrating the victorious strike, two Negro members were asked to leave by people acting as floor managers and making the request on their own initiative.</p>
<p>When the members of the union learned about it, there was a discussion of this action on the floor of a regular local meeting, resulting in the adoption of the following resolution:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“WHEREAS: At a public dance given by the Vultee unit of Local 683, two Negro union brothers and their guests were asked to leave, and</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>WHEREAS: This action is in direct contradiction to the national CIO policy of no discrimination because of race, color, creed, nationality or political affiliation, and</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>WHEREAS: The success of our drive to organize the aircraft industry depends upon the broadest possible public support, and</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>WHEREAS: The Negro people, who helped on our picket line with donations of food and money in our recent successful strike, are part of that public, and</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>WHEREAS: We recognize that discrimination of any kind is the weapon used by the employer and his organizations to split and divide us in our struggle for a higher standard of living, therefore be it</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>RESOLVED: That we apologize to the Negro people for this action, and that we give our complete assurance that this action will not be repeated, and be it further</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>RESOLVED: That this Local 683 of the United Auto Workers, CIO, do all in its power to break down the anti-labor, racial discrimination policy in the aircraft and national defense industries, recognizing that our national defense must rest on the maintenance of our democratic principles, foremost among which is the right of every citizen to an opportunity to earn his livelihood without discrimination.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Another instance of gains in the field of labor against racial suspicion and division is to be seen in what happened in another CIO union, Local 486, of the Midland Steel plant in Cleveland.</p>
<p>Here in a union where 90% of the membership are white workers, Joseph Jackson, a Negro and former vice president, has been elected president. As one commentator in the area, Ted Cox, put it:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“They (the members) wanted the best leadership available in the shop. So, when President Mack Cheek resigned, they looked around. They didn’t give a damn what color or what religious or political opinions that leadership might have. They wanted ability.</p>
<p class="quote">“It happened that Joe Jackson, who is colored, had that ability. So now Joe is president of one of the biggest, most militant and most successful local unions in the Cleveland CIO.”</p>
<p class="fst">Here, therefore, are two good example of how trade unions, militant and democratically controlled by the rank-and-file, are educating white workers to the necessity for complete equality.<br>
</p>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h4>Much Still to Be Done</h4>
<p class="fst">The editorial page of the latest issue of <strong>The Chicago Defender</strong> features a cartoon by Jay Jackson, entitled <em>Back Of It All</em>. It shows a factory entitled “National Defense Work,” bearing a sign “Help Wanted.” In front of it stands a Negro worker in overalls, labelled “Negro Labor,” and he is held up, prevented from entering it, by a huge hand extended in front of him, barring his entrance. This hand is labelled “A.F.L.”</p>
<p>The point of the cartoon is quite evidently that Negro labor could get jobs in the war industries if it were not for the AFL, which is “back of it all.”</p>
<p>Does such a cartoon help the struggle to open the doors of industry to colored workers? We think not.</p>
<p>Who owns and controls and runs the factories? The unions – or the bosses? To ask the question is to answer it. It is the bosses of course, and it is they and their managers who do the hiring. Who benefits from division of the races, who really profits from it, the unions or the bosses? The bosses, of course, because they can play one race against the other.</p>
<p>Plenty of factories in the war industries are not organized at all. How many of these hire Negroes any more than the factories that are organized?</p>
<p>It is incorrect and misleading to say that the main responsibility for discrimination in hiring in the war industries lies at the door of the AFL. To do so serves only to whitewash the role of bosses who are really responsible.</p>
<p>We do not seek in any way to minimize or excuse or cover up the stupid, reactionary and vicious part played by some union leaders in the AFL. We denounce them and we carry on a fight against their harmful policies.</p>
<p>After all, what is “back of it all” even in the case of AFL officials guilty of Jim Crow practices? Isn’t it the training they received from the capitalist system? Isn’t it the prejudices they inherited from the “respectable” captains of industry whom so many of them try to imitate?/p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(18 January 1941)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 3, 18 January 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
[Double Thanks]
The aircraft workers at Vultee (organized into Local 683 of the United Auto Workers Union, CIO) deserve double thanks from the workers of this country.
First of all they struck a blow which showed that it is not only desirable but possible to win higher wages and better working conditions in the war industries, even under a heavy barrage of attacks from the employers, their stooges and the government.
Secondly, they have taken another action which will be greeted with enthusiasm by the workers, especially those Negro workers who are almost 100% barred from many important industries such as aircraft.
Here is how it happened. At the dance celebrating the victorious strike, two Negro members were asked to leave by people acting as floor managers and making the request on their own initiative.
When the members of the union learned about it, there was a discussion of this action on the floor of a regular local meeting, resulting in the adoption of the following resolution:
“WHEREAS: At a public dance given by the Vultee unit of Local 683, two Negro union brothers and their guests were asked to leave, and
WHEREAS: This action is in direct contradiction to the national CIO policy of no discrimination because of race, color, creed, nationality or political affiliation, and
WHEREAS: The success of our drive to organize the aircraft industry depends upon the broadest possible public support, and
WHEREAS: The Negro people, who helped on our picket line with donations of food and money in our recent successful strike, are part of that public, and
WHEREAS: We recognize that discrimination of any kind is the weapon used by the employer and his organizations to split and divide us in our struggle for a higher standard of living, therefore be it
RESOLVED: That we apologize to the Negro people for this action, and that we give our complete assurance that this action will not be repeated, and be it further
RESOLVED: That this Local 683 of the United Auto Workers, CIO, do all in its power to break down the anti-labor, racial discrimination policy in the aircraft and national defense industries, recognizing that our national defense must rest on the maintenance of our democratic principles, foremost among which is the right of every citizen to an opportunity to earn his livelihood without discrimination.”
Another instance of gains in the field of labor against racial suspicion and division is to be seen in what happened in another CIO union, Local 486, of the Midland Steel plant in Cleveland.
Here in a union where 90% of the membership are white workers, Joseph Jackson, a Negro and former vice president, has been elected president. As one commentator in the area, Ted Cox, put it:
“They (the members) wanted the best leadership available in the shop. So, when President Mack Cheek resigned, they looked around. They didn’t give a damn what color or what religious or political opinions that leadership might have. They wanted ability.
“It happened that Joe Jackson, who is colored, had that ability. So now Joe is president of one of the biggest, most militant and most successful local unions in the Cleveland CIO.”
Here, therefore, are two good example of how trade unions, militant and democratically controlled by the rank-and-file, are educating white workers to the necessity for complete equality.
Much Still to Be Done
The editorial page of the latest issue of The Chicago Defender features a cartoon by Jay Jackson, entitled Back Of It All. It shows a factory entitled “National Defense Work,” bearing a sign “Help Wanted.” In front of it stands a Negro worker in overalls, labelled “Negro Labor,” and he is held up, prevented from entering it, by a huge hand extended in front of him, barring his entrance. This hand is labelled “A.F.L.”
The point of the cartoon is quite evidently that Negro labor could get jobs in the war industries if it were not for the AFL, which is “back of it all.”
Does such a cartoon help the struggle to open the doors of industry to colored workers? We think not.
Who owns and controls and runs the factories? The unions – or the bosses? To ask the question is to answer it. It is the bosses of course, and it is they and their managers who do the hiring. Who benefits from division of the races, who really profits from it, the unions or the bosses? The bosses, of course, because they can play one race against the other.
Plenty of factories in the war industries are not organized at all. How many of these hire Negroes any more than the factories that are organized?
It is incorrect and misleading to say that the main responsibility for discrimination in hiring in the war industries lies at the door of the AFL. To do so serves only to whitewash the role of bosses who are really responsible.
We do not seek in any way to minimize or excuse or cover up the stupid, reactionary and vicious part played by some union leaders in the AFL. We denounce them and we carry on a fight against their harmful policies.
After all, what is “back of it all” even in the case of AFL officials guilty of Jim Crow practices? Isn’t it the training they received from the capitalist system? Isn’t it the prejudices they inherited from the “respectable” captains of industry whom so many of them try to imitate?/p>
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2>
<h1>Senator Taylor – Liberal, First Class</h1>
<h3>(15 March 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_11" target="new">Vol. XII No. 11</a>, 15 March 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">A note of uneasiness mixed with crankiness was evident in the Communist Party press after Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor issued their statements on this recent Stalinist coup in Czechoslovakia. <em>Wallace and Taylor Didn’t Think It Through</em>, complains Joseph Starobin in the March 1 <strong>Daily Worker</strong>, chiding Taylor because he said. “I imagine it was the result of pressure by the Russians.” Wallace said the Czech events were “unfortunate” and could have been prevented by a different U.S. foreign policy. Milton Howard, in the March 7 <strong>Worker</strong>, keeps asking him how was it unfortunate, doesn’t he realize it was the best possible thing that could have happened under the circumstances?</p>
<p>The Stalinists are of course still whooping it up for Wallace and Taylor, because after all they did try to condone the Stalinist coup. But even this little incident relating to foreign policy indicates that the CP attachment for its beloved “progressive standard bearers” is not going to be a wholly idyllic love affair, and that it is not likely to be any more permanent than their previous entanglements with Roosevelt and Truman.</p>
<p>This incident dealt with foreign policy, where the Stalinists felt they had to demur publicly. But there was another incident around the same time, relating more to domestic policy, and although I searched the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> very carefully for several days thereafter, they never had a word to say on it. It’s worth discussing.</p>
<p>On Feb. 29 Taylor spoke over the radio in New York City and said: “I’m against Communists occupying positions in government where they might possibly turn secret information over to the Russians after what happened in Canada.”. But, he added, “it is a different thing to kick them out of the Labor Department. They can be as good public servants there as anybody.”</p>
<p>That certainly throws a new light on the whole question of the “red purge” which the administration has been carrying on for more than a year. Moreover, it shows what a tremendous distinction there is between a reactionary like Truman and a “shining young knight” from the West like Taylor.</p>
<p>Truman, you see, wants to drive the Stalinists out of any and every government job there is. That makes him a witch hunter. Taylor thinks Truman is going too. far. He thinks it’s OK to purge them out of some government jobs – say, in the State Department. But he thinks it would be smart to employ them in less important jobs, such as in the Labor Department, where they could be useful in compiling statistics and in persuading unions not to go on strike. That makes Taylor a liberal, first class.</p>
<p>Do you see the fundamental difference? If you do, maybe you’ll want to join with the members of the Communist Party in supporting the Wallace-Taylor ticket, ring doorbells for them, get petitions signed for them, donate money so that they can spread more such “progressive propagandas” etc. If you do, here are a couple of slogans you may find useful: “Vote for Wallace and Taylor – They Stand For Only a 50% Purge.” “Civil Liberties Must Be Maintained – In the Labor Department.”</p>
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John F. Petrone
Senator Taylor – Liberal, First Class
(15 March 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 11, 15 March 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A note of uneasiness mixed with crankiness was evident in the Communist Party press after Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor issued their statements on this recent Stalinist coup in Czechoslovakia. Wallace and Taylor Didn’t Think It Through, complains Joseph Starobin in the March 1 Daily Worker, chiding Taylor because he said. “I imagine it was the result of pressure by the Russians.” Wallace said the Czech events were “unfortunate” and could have been prevented by a different U.S. foreign policy. Milton Howard, in the March 7 Worker, keeps asking him how was it unfortunate, doesn’t he realize it was the best possible thing that could have happened under the circumstances?
The Stalinists are of course still whooping it up for Wallace and Taylor, because after all they did try to condone the Stalinist coup. But even this little incident relating to foreign policy indicates that the CP attachment for its beloved “progressive standard bearers” is not going to be a wholly idyllic love affair, and that it is not likely to be any more permanent than their previous entanglements with Roosevelt and Truman.
This incident dealt with foreign policy, where the Stalinists felt they had to demur publicly. But there was another incident around the same time, relating more to domestic policy, and although I searched the Daily Worker very carefully for several days thereafter, they never had a word to say on it. It’s worth discussing.
On Feb. 29 Taylor spoke over the radio in New York City and said: “I’m against Communists occupying positions in government where they might possibly turn secret information over to the Russians after what happened in Canada.”. But, he added, “it is a different thing to kick them out of the Labor Department. They can be as good public servants there as anybody.”
That certainly throws a new light on the whole question of the “red purge” which the administration has been carrying on for more than a year. Moreover, it shows what a tremendous distinction there is between a reactionary like Truman and a “shining young knight” from the West like Taylor.
Truman, you see, wants to drive the Stalinists out of any and every government job there is. That makes him a witch hunter. Taylor thinks Truman is going too. far. He thinks it’s OK to purge them out of some government jobs – say, in the State Department. But he thinks it would be smart to employ them in less important jobs, such as in the Labor Department, where they could be useful in compiling statistics and in persuading unions not to go on strike. That makes Taylor a liberal, first class.
Do you see the fundamental difference? If you do, maybe you’ll want to join with the members of the Communist Party in supporting the Wallace-Taylor ticket, ring doorbells for them, get petitions signed for them, donate money so that they can spread more such “progressive propagandas” etc. If you do, here are a couple of slogans you may find useful: “Vote for Wallace and Taylor – They Stand For Only a 50% Purge.” “Civil Liberties Must Be Maintained – In the Labor Department.”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(19 April 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_16" target="new">Vol. V No. 16</a>, 19 April 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>[Ford Failure]</h4>
<p class="fst">The biggest thing about the Ford strike was the miserable failure of Ford, Bennett and Marshall to preserve the open shop by provoking a race riot between the Negro and white workers. The fact stands out, big and proud, that the overwhelming majority of the 12,000 Negro workers in the plant, in spite of a barrage of anti-union, pro-Ford threats and promises, went with their class.</p>
<p>Ford found that, he could not use the Negro workers to break the strike, for a good 80% or more of them saw through his trick, resisted the pressure of many of their “leaders” and went out with the union.</p>
<p>In order to preserve the remnants of this vicious plan, that would have put back the cause of the Negro workers for many years, Ford and his assistants had to depend on a <em>comparatively small number of Negroes who were brought into the plant during the last month from the South</em>. These Negroes, not at all acquainted with what was going on, never having had the opportunity to hear the arguments of the union, in no way familiar with Ford’s anti-union, anti-Negro scheme, were all he had to depend on when the strike actually began.</p>
<p><em>The other Negroes, the workers who have suffered under the Ford speed-up, spy system and low wage rate for many years – the real Ford Negro workers – knew where their best interests lay: with the union.</em></p>
<p>So although Ford did have a small group of Negroes to use for his scheme, and he certainly did use them in every way he could, he could not break the strike, nor arouse a spirit of white chauvinism in the union members. Everyone involved in the situation could see that the great bulk of the Negro workers were fighting with the union, not against it.</p>
<p>Incidentally, those Negroes who fell for and helped to spread the pro-Ford propaganda before the strike, must have felt pretty cheap to see how Ford and the boss press consciously directed so much of their publicity toward making it appear that the strike was a race conflict, rather than a struggle of workers of all races for improved working conditions.</p>
<p>The Negro Ford workers did their full share in saving the day for the union at Ford’s. It is up to the white workers in the labor movement now to recognize that they need the full support of the Negroes in the coming struggles and to raise high on their banners the demand for full equality for their colored brothers.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The Crummiest Speech</h4>
<p class="fst">The distinction of having made the worst speech of the year this far belongs to the president of Tuskegee Institute, F.D. Patterson, who declared before the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We are asking for a lot of things that are not of immediate importance though they aim at noteworthy ideals. One that is of apparent import to a lot of people is that we should be integrated in companies and regiments with white soldiers, claiming that the discrimination of the nation’s soldiers on the grounds of color and race is a breach of democratic procedure.</p>
<p class="quote">“All that is admirable, but what we should be concerned with at the moment is an opportunity to serve in any capacity ...</p>
<p class="quote">“We should stop fretting too much about discrimination, and focus our attention on getting an opportunity on a basis of equality.”</p>
<p class="fst">He isn’t aroused about the Negro soldiers being placed in separate regiments where they can be more easily used as suicide squads and as labor battalions.</p>
<p>That’s what he’s doing – serving “in any capacity.” Nothing too low or foul for Patterson.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Discrimination Legislation</h4>
<p class="fst">Recently two bills pertaining to discrimination against Negroes in employment were passed. One, in New York, amends the civil rights law and penal law to “make it unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation engaged to any extent whatsoever in the production, manufacture or distribution of military or naval material, equipment or supplies for the state of New York or for the federal government to refuse to employ any person in any capacity on account of the race, color or creed of such persons.” This measure is now awaiting the signature of the governor ...</p>
<p>The other bill, already signed by the governor and now a law, was passed by the Kansas Legislature. It prohibits any labor union in the state from being certified as a bargaining agency if it “discriminates against, bars or excludes from its membership any person because of race or color.”</p>
<p>It is not hard to make predictions about these bills. The New York bill will be signed and made a law too. But it won’t mean a thing so far as getting jobs for the Negroes. The employers will just stop saying they refuse to hire Negroes; they will just not hire them. And the Negro people will still have to continue their struggle to force open the doors oof industry.</p>
<p>The Kansas law also will not help the Negroes. It will not change the attitude of those reactionary AFL union leaders who now bar them from admission to unions. All it will do is enable the employers, who are really responsible for the lily-white ideas of their labor agents, to divert attention from their refusal to hire Negroes. And it will offer a handle to employers to attack and break up unions.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(19 April 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 16, 19 April 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
[Ford Failure]
The biggest thing about the Ford strike was the miserable failure of Ford, Bennett and Marshall to preserve the open shop by provoking a race riot between the Negro and white workers. The fact stands out, big and proud, that the overwhelming majority of the 12,000 Negro workers in the plant, in spite of a barrage of anti-union, pro-Ford threats and promises, went with their class.
Ford found that, he could not use the Negro workers to break the strike, for a good 80% or more of them saw through his trick, resisted the pressure of many of their “leaders” and went out with the union.
In order to preserve the remnants of this vicious plan, that would have put back the cause of the Negro workers for many years, Ford and his assistants had to depend on a comparatively small number of Negroes who were brought into the plant during the last month from the South. These Negroes, not at all acquainted with what was going on, never having had the opportunity to hear the arguments of the union, in no way familiar with Ford’s anti-union, anti-Negro scheme, were all he had to depend on when the strike actually began.
The other Negroes, the workers who have suffered under the Ford speed-up, spy system and low wage rate for many years – the real Ford Negro workers – knew where their best interests lay: with the union.
So although Ford did have a small group of Negroes to use for his scheme, and he certainly did use them in every way he could, he could not break the strike, nor arouse a spirit of white chauvinism in the union members. Everyone involved in the situation could see that the great bulk of the Negro workers were fighting with the union, not against it.
Incidentally, those Negroes who fell for and helped to spread the pro-Ford propaganda before the strike, must have felt pretty cheap to see how Ford and the boss press consciously directed so much of their publicity toward making it appear that the strike was a race conflict, rather than a struggle of workers of all races for improved working conditions.
The Negro Ford workers did their full share in saving the day for the union at Ford’s. It is up to the white workers in the labor movement now to recognize that they need the full support of the Negroes in the coming struggles and to raise high on their banners the demand for full equality for their colored brothers.
The Crummiest Speech
The distinction of having made the worst speech of the year this far belongs to the president of Tuskegee Institute, F.D. Patterson, who declared before the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers:
“We are asking for a lot of things that are not of immediate importance though they aim at noteworthy ideals. One that is of apparent import to a lot of people is that we should be integrated in companies and regiments with white soldiers, claiming that the discrimination of the nation’s soldiers on the grounds of color and race is a breach of democratic procedure.
“All that is admirable, but what we should be concerned with at the moment is an opportunity to serve in any capacity ...
“We should stop fretting too much about discrimination, and focus our attention on getting an opportunity on a basis of equality.”
He isn’t aroused about the Negro soldiers being placed in separate regiments where they can be more easily used as suicide squads and as labor battalions.
That’s what he’s doing – serving “in any capacity.” Nothing too low or foul for Patterson.
Discrimination Legislation
Recently two bills pertaining to discrimination against Negroes in employment were passed. One, in New York, amends the civil rights law and penal law to “make it unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation engaged to any extent whatsoever in the production, manufacture or distribution of military or naval material, equipment or supplies for the state of New York or for the federal government to refuse to employ any person in any capacity on account of the race, color or creed of such persons.” This measure is now awaiting the signature of the governor ...
The other bill, already signed by the governor and now a law, was passed by the Kansas Legislature. It prohibits any labor union in the state from being certified as a bargaining agency if it “discriminates against, bars or excludes from its membership any person because of race or color.”
It is not hard to make predictions about these bills. The New York bill will be signed and made a law too. But it won’t mean a thing so far as getting jobs for the Negroes. The employers will just stop saying they refuse to hire Negroes; they will just not hire them. And the Negro people will still have to continue their struggle to force open the doors oof industry.
The Kansas law also will not help the Negroes. It will not change the attitude of those reactionary AFL union leaders who now bar them from admission to unions. All it will do is enable the employers, who are really responsible for the lily-white ideas of their labor agents, to divert attention from their refusal to hire Negroes. And it will offer a handle to employers to attack and break up unions.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2><h2>
</h2><h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Jim Crow and “National Defense”</h1>
<h3>(16 February 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_07" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 7</a>, 16 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Jim Crow segregation of Negro soldiers is “in the interest of national defense.” That’s what Secretary of the Army Royall said last week, and he wasn’t speaking for himself alone. That is the view of all the brass hats and of both capitalist parties and of the Truman administration, just as it was of the Roosevelt administration during the last war.</p>
<p>They feel so strongly about it that Royall, while grudgingly granting the New Jersey National Guard permission to enlist members on a non-segregated basis “for the present,” in effect warned the other 47 states that they would be denied funds and equipment for their National Guards if they tried to do the same. You can see how vital this question is to the brass hats who, while howling for more military appropriations and peacetime conscription, are willing to disrupt and paralyze a section of their armed forces reserves rather than permit any interference with the reign of Jim Crow.</p>
<p>This question is equally vital to the Negro people and the organized labor movement. To understand how vital, just stop and ask yourself: What kind of “national defense” is it that requires the degrading separation of white and Negro troops? What is actually being defended under conditions where soldiers are driven into military ghettos solely on the basis of the color of their skins?</p>
<p>Democracy and the four freedoms? That is what the capitalist rulers and their servile propagandists say, but it is an obscene lie. With their mouths they spout beautiful phrases, but their hands wield the whip of “white supremacy” even in the armed forces.</p>
<p>When they talk about “national defense,” they are not talking about democratic practices, which they violate a thousand times each day. They are talking about defense of the capitalist system – of profits to be coined out of the exploitation of labor at home and abroad. What they want to defend is the “American way of life” that enables them to suck these profits out of the toll of the working people.</p>
<p>Racial discrimination and oppression are basic parts of that “way of life” because they divide the workers and thus make it easier for them to be exploited. In that sense the capitalists are wholly correct in contending that military Jim Crow is “in the interest of national defense.”</p>
<p>But such “national defense” is not in the interest of the workers. The result of “national defense” in World War II was monstrous profits for the employers, the Taft-Hartley Act for the unions, raging inflation for the consumers, and attempts to perpetuate the second-class citizenship status of the Negro people in all spheres of life. What reason is there to think that “national defense” in World War III will have any different or better outcome?</p>
<p>What the workers need to defend and extend are their democratic rights. To do that they must unite, regardless of color, and fight relentlessly against the reactionary defenders of exploitation, oppression and Jim Crow. “National defense” will have real meaning for the working people only after they have taken the nation out of the grip of the capitalist enemies of democracy and begun to run it on a truly democratic basis.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Jim Crow and “National Defense”
(16 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 7, 16 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Jim Crow segregation of Negro soldiers is “in the interest of national defense.” That’s what Secretary of the Army Royall said last week, and he wasn’t speaking for himself alone. That is the view of all the brass hats and of both capitalist parties and of the Truman administration, just as it was of the Roosevelt administration during the last war.
They feel so strongly about it that Royall, while grudgingly granting the New Jersey National Guard permission to enlist members on a non-segregated basis “for the present,” in effect warned the other 47 states that they would be denied funds and equipment for their National Guards if they tried to do the same. You can see how vital this question is to the brass hats who, while howling for more military appropriations and peacetime conscription, are willing to disrupt and paralyze a section of their armed forces reserves rather than permit any interference with the reign of Jim Crow.
This question is equally vital to the Negro people and the organized labor movement. To understand how vital, just stop and ask yourself: What kind of “national defense” is it that requires the degrading separation of white and Negro troops? What is actually being defended under conditions where soldiers are driven into military ghettos solely on the basis of the color of their skins?
Democracy and the four freedoms? That is what the capitalist rulers and their servile propagandists say, but it is an obscene lie. With their mouths they spout beautiful phrases, but their hands wield the whip of “white supremacy” even in the armed forces.
When they talk about “national defense,” they are not talking about democratic practices, which they violate a thousand times each day. They are talking about defense of the capitalist system – of profits to be coined out of the exploitation of labor at home and abroad. What they want to defend is the “American way of life” that enables them to suck these profits out of the toll of the working people.
Racial discrimination and oppression are basic parts of that “way of life” because they divide the workers and thus make it easier for them to be exploited. In that sense the capitalists are wholly correct in contending that military Jim Crow is “in the interest of national defense.”
But such “national defense” is not in the interest of the workers. The result of “national defense” in World War II was monstrous profits for the employers, the Taft-Hartley Act for the unions, raging inflation for the consumers, and attempts to perpetuate the second-class citizenship status of the Negro people in all spheres of life. What reason is there to think that “national defense” in World War III will have any different or better outcome?
What the workers need to defend and extend are their democratic rights. To do that they must unite, regardless of color, and fight relentlessly against the reactionary defenders of exploitation, oppression and Jim Crow. “National defense” will have real meaning for the working people only after they have taken the nation out of the grip of the capitalist enemies of democracy and begun to run it on a truly democratic basis.
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<h1>Why the Political Resolution Should Be Amended on the FI and Castroism</h1>
<h3>by George Breitman</h3>
<p>At the April NC plenum I voted in favor of the general line of the political resolution adopted there but against Sections 5-11, on Cuba and the FI, which I criticized at the plenum. The edited draft of the resolution (in DB, Vol. 37, No. 1, April 1981) was, in my opinion, an improvement over the draft presented to the plenum, but not enough to satisfy my objections. I also was dissatisfied with Comrade Barry Sheppard's plenum summary (DB, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 1981) although a large part of it was devoted to discussing or seeming to discuss questions and criticisms I raised in the discussion. So I have drafted amendments that I think should be made to the resolution before it is adopted by the national convention and will try to motivate them in what follows. [See amendments at the conclusion of this article.]</p>
<h4>1. The FI</h4>
<p>I begin with the amendments relating to the FI (Section 10) because I think SWP-FI relations are the most urgent question before the convention. I think that since 1979, the year of our last convention and the year of the last world congress, the SWP leadership has been modifying its attitude to these relations simultaneously with the modification of its attitude to the Castro tendency. Another way of putting this is that their identification with the FI has been declining in direct proportion to the rise of their growing identification with the “new revolutionary current” headed by Castro.</p>
<p>As I told the NC plenum in April, I felt deeply concerned by signs since 1979 that the SWP leadership was pulling back from its previous wholehearted participation in the work of the FI. I recalled that a new note had been introduced at our January 1980 plenum by Comrade Peter Camejo, who used the differences over Nicaragua at the world congress to castigate the sectarians and dogmatists leading the FI in Europe and to imply that we would be better off on our own, without them. I also recalled that Comrade Jack Barnes had told the January 1980 plenum that such remarks did not represent the thinking of the SWP leadership, which would present its views in the International's coming discussion and debate over Cuba and other disputed questions. I was reassured by that statement but now (April 1981), after reading the political resolution's approach to the FI, my apprehensions were aroused that the SWP leadership was moving in the direction of a pullback from the FI even though the long promised International discussion had not yet taken place.</p>
<p>I shall not dwell on Comrade Sheppard's “reply” on this point in his summary, which ranged from irrelevancies (about Leonard Boudin, etc.) to surrealist delusions (“the whole idea that we may be politically withdrawing from the Fourth International implies that we are some foreign body in the International. No, politically we are the Fourth International; the Fourth International is us”). More significant was the fact that Comrade Sheppard denied any pullback, and that the published draft of the resolution added a few phrases implying a greater identification of the SWP with the FI than the earlier draft had done.</p>
<p>Nevertheless I think it is necessary to amend Section 10 in order to clarify the SWP's attitude to the FI. I think that is necessary not only because of what the resolution says and fails to say about the FI but also because of the informal discussions that have been going on during the last year or two where leading members, even NC members, ask, “What did the FI ever accomplish?” You can't find this in writing, but its effects are real (and devastating) just the same.</p>
<p>It reminds me of the Cochranites thirty years ago, except that their question was, “What did the SWP ever accomplish?” That was the form that liquidationism in our movement began with in the early 1950s. The Cochranites did not deny that the “old Trotskyism” had played an essential role in the past, with an excellent program, etc. But now, they said, it was necessary to move forward, applying the program in different places and in new ways.</p>
<p>At the April plenum I took exception to Comrade Sheppard's remark in his report that we don't want to be in a world party of socialist resolutions, we want to be in a world party of socialist revolutions. This sentence was revised in the published version of the report, making it perhaps a little less offensive: “Our line and orientation, therefore, has got to be to realize that we are moving out of the period where we were restricted to being, by and large, the world party of socialist resolutions, to our objective, to help build the World Party of Socialist Revolution” (pp. 7-8).</p>
<p>Less offensive, perhaps, but still disturbing, because if Comrade Sheppard understood what he was saying he would have deleted the remark altogether. Because what it does, essentially, is to counterpose political analysis and theory (writing and debating resolutions) to building the international revolutionary party. That's a hell of a thing for leaders of the SWP or the FI to be teaching their members. Such stuff can only miseducate and disorient cadres and therefore can only obstruct the building of the party. Doesn't Comrade Sheppard realize that the Third International, the model of the mass Leninist international we all advocate, was also restricted by and large to being a world party of socialist resolutions? It certainly never led any revolutions or had any affiliated parties that led successful revolutions in Lenin's time. Does he think that therefore we ought to make invidious comparisons between the Third International and the still-to-be-born Leninist international of the future?</p>
<p>The two amendments to Section 10 do not introduce any new concepts. They only repeat ideas and judgments we have expressed many times in the last half century. If there are comrades and tendencies in the party that no longer accept them, then let them say that clearly so that we can have a clear discussion before the convention and a clear decision on this point at the convention.</p>
<h4>2. Cuba and Castroism</h4>
<p>In his summary at the April plenum Comrade Sheppard protested that the positions on Cuba in the political resolution “are not new.” He cited a number of statements from the past—1963, 1967, etc.,— to “prove” that basically nothing new is being proposed today. But these citations are not used in such a way as to deepen our understanding; they serve to confuse us the way sleight of hand confuses us. The truth is that however superficially similar to current positions such citations may seem, their meaning and function were different in 1963 and 1967 than today. In no case did anyone who said or wrote those statements at that time use those statements or want them to be used to justify minimizing or ignoring the real differences between us and the Castro tendency or turning our backs on the FI.</p>
<p>Is the majority position basically new (that is, different from our past position in any fundamental ways)? The only possible answer is yes. You cannot come to any other conclusion if you compare the positions adopted almost unanimously at our 1979 convention with the positions being advocated now. Comrade Steven Ashby's article “Castroism: Revolutionists of Action” (in DB, Vol. 37, No. 5, May 1981) presents some of the evidence about the magnitude and scope of the changes being proposed, and it doesn't exhaust all the evidence either. If there are any comrades who have doubts on this score, I urge them to read or reread the Education for Socialists bulletin <em>Revolutionary Cuba Today,</em> published in 1980 and containing some of the documents adopted or presented in 1978 and 1979. The majority supporters feel embarrassed about these 1979 documents now because they were written in a critical spirit, that is, in our traditional way of analyzing political tendencies, including those that come closest to us.</p>
<p>Another obstacle to clarity in the present discussion is the majority's shifting use of terminology. “Revolutionary Marxist” is an outstanding example. Two years ago, our discussions of Cuba included a debate over whether to call Castroism “revolutionary” or “centrist.” The convention decided that while “revolutionary” might not be the perfect term it was more fitting than any other proposed. But as used in this context “revolutionary” did not imply that Castroism was “revolutionary Marxist”—in fact, the advocates of “revolutionary” explicitly stated that Castroism was not revolutionary Marxist.</p>
<p>A year later the leaders of the majority changed their minds and began, in speeches at the 1980 educational conference and in articles in the press, to publicly designate Castroism as revolutionary Marxist. After a few months this was discontinued. When the first draft of the political resolution was distributed for our April plenum I read it carefully and noted that it did not designate Castroism as revolutionary Marxist. (Comrade Ashby is wrong when he says that it does.) I told the NC I was glad that “revolutionary Marxist” had been dropped as an appellation of Castroism, but pointed out that other terms used in the resolution could be interpreted as possible equivalent-substitutes for “revolutionary Marxist,” and urged that if the authors <em>meant</em> to say or imply “revolutionary Marxist,” it would be better to use this term openly in the resolution so that we could discuss it properly. A couple of comrades at the plenum stated during the discussion that they think the Castroists are revolutionary Marxists, but they did not explain why the resolution did not say so, or why they did not offer an amendment to put this in the resolution. In his summary Comrade Sheppard did not mention the point at all.</p>
<p>When the edited resolution was published after the plenum, a couple of the possible equivalent-substitute terms had been omitted while others were retained (revolutionary proletarian leadership, revolutionary internationalists). But the resolution itself does not call the Castroists revolutionary Marxists. I thought at least that was clear until last week when the preconvention discussion on Cuba was opened in the New York City branches and supporters of the majority position took the floor to argue that Castroism is revolutionary Marxism, and that we had all been sectarian for not having realized that before. How can we have a responsible discussion on the basis of hide-and-seek games?</p>
<p>At the April plenum I gave my interpretation of what has been happening and how that has led to the present differences. My interpretation does not involve any accusations of capitulation to Castroism. I don't know of any Castroists in the SWP and I don't know anyone in it who is advocating Castroism. But I do think there is a tendency in the SWP, developing since the last convention, which is overadapting to Castroism. There is an important distinction between “overadapting” and “capitulating,” just as there is between “adapting” and “overadapting.” In my opinion there is nothing wrong in “adapting” to a group or tendency that we think is promising and want to influence. We do that all the time—in unions, Black and women's groups, community organizations. We try to speak their language, to understand their particular needs and history, to avoid or reduce unnecessary or unimportant points of contention, to find common ground to talk, work, and fight on. We even had to do that when we joined the Socialist Party to win over its left wing in 1936. So I've never seen anything reprehensible in “adapting” to Castroism or any other tendency we've decided to make special efforts to influence. And I was in favor of doing that as early as anyone in this party. I can only say good luck to comrades seeking to win Castroists to our politics when they present our ideas to them through quotations from Marx rather than through quotations from Trotsky (whom the Castroists have been conditioned to dislike and reject).</p>
<p>But most good things, when carried too far, become bad things. That is what has been happening as “adaptation” has been transformed into overadaptation: when we begin to forget basic criticisms, blur differences, try to throw the best possible light on positions that are indefensible, educate new members so that they can't perceive differences between our tendency and Castro's, or express our criticisms in tones so muted that hardly anyone can notice them.</p>
<p>The cause of this transformation is that the SWP leaders, after undertaking the kind of “adaptation” discussed above, found that it was not having much effect. The differences between us and Castroism are not fewer or smaller than they were in the past or than they were two years ago when our convention adopted the positions we have had since then. I do not say that the differences between us and Castroism are bigger than they were in 1979—on balance I think they are about the same. Instead of recognizing the lesson of this experience, which is the limits of “adaptation,” the SWP leaders began to look at Castroism in a different light. This led them to the conclusion that the differences between it and us are not and usually have not been crucial, and often were the result not of the shortcomings of Castroism but of our own shortcomings, and especially of our alleged proclivity to sectarianism, about which there have been quite a lot of unfounded and lightminded assertions inside the party in recent years.</p>
<p>Comrade Sheppard's summary at the plenum misrepresented my point about the dangers of overadaptation. The charge would be valid, he said, only “if we began adopting wrong political positions because they were the positions of the Cubans,” and we haven't done that, on Poland or any other issue. But taking wrong positions because the Cubans had done so would not be overadaptation, it would be something else—capitulation. That's different and more serious, and not a charge I had made. So why does he distort the problem I did raise? Merely because it's easier to answer his own invention than to answer questions that trouble a great many comrades?</p>
<p>Poland is actually a good example of how the majority overadapts to Castroism, not because it adopts the Castro tendency's terrible position on Poland but because its efforts to explain the Castroist position have produced a wrong focus and a wrong emphasis on the political revolution taking place in Poland. The facts are quite clear. Castro and the Cuban CP oppose the Polish revolution and defend the forces of counterrevolution that want to contain the revolution before it extends to other workers' states or to crush it if it can't be contained and curbed. Such a position can only be characterized as counterrevolutionary, I said at the plenum. And it is not an isolated thing, because the Castroists supported the counterrevolutionary invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in precisely the same way, although their rhetoric was more radical then, and because the logic of their position on Poland will lead to support of similar counterrevolutionary intervention in other workers' states. A strange position for revolutionary proletarians, proletarian internationalists, or revolutionary Marxists!</p>
<p>“It is too simplistic,” Comrade Sheppard rejoined, “to say that the Cuban leadership has a counterrevolutionary position on Poland, and that's that.” (Who said “and that's that”?) “That is not accurate. The resolution is more accurate; it describes in a more complete way the Cuban leadership's position on Poland and other workers' states, and the evolution of its stance.” But if the resolution is more accurate and more complete, why does it lack a direct statement of what the Castroist position favors—military action by the Warsaw Pact powers to put down the Polish revolution? Why can't the authors of the more accurate and more complete resolution bring themselves to mention that fact, among other things, instead of confining themselves to euphemisms about cutting across class solidarity, miseducating people who look to the Cubans for leadership, etc.?</p>
<p>One result of overadaptation is a growing inability of the majority leaders to read and hear things correctly if they pertain to Castroism and run counter to wishful thinking on that subject. The Australian comrades have documented a bad case of our leadership's misreading of the Cuban position on the Kremlin's intervention in Afghanistan (“Afghanistan—Where the New Line of the American Socialist Workers Party Goes Wrong,” by the Political Committee of the Australian SWP). Comrade J.P. Beauvais has written a long criticism of Comrade Fred Feldman's long <em>IP [Intercontinental Press]</em> article about the Cuban CP's second congress, showing that Comrade Feldman quotes and paraphrases from Cuban texts in an unacceptable way (“Cuban Society in the Light of the Second Congress of the CCP,” in <em>Inprecor</em>, No. 98, March 30, 1981; an English translation will no doubt be published eventually). Comrades ought to read these things as part of the present preconvention discussion.</p>
<p>I can offer my own example of the failure of some comrades to hear things about Cuba right. In Comrade Sheppard's summary at the plenum there is a relatively long section under the title “Has There Been a Degeneration?” This is the section that Comrade Roland Sheppard objects to as a distortion of Comrade Nat Weinstein's position on Cuba (DB, Vol. 37, No. 8, June 1981). Actually it was aimed at me, not at Comrade Weinstein, although that is not obvious to the reader since I am unnamed in the summary. It was aimed at me despite the fact that I had said nothing about a degeneration in Cuba and don't believe there has been one.</p>
<p>What I did say at the plenum was: “Revolutionary defense of Cuba requires an unceasing struggle to reform the workers' state with bureaucratic deformations such as the Left Opposition conducted in Russia from 1923 to 1933. This means fighting for a workers' council or soviet-type system, which does not exist in any form in Cuba today, through which the workers could rule politically. And not only must we be for reform of the Cuban workers' state but we must not be bashful about saying so openly and whenever appropriate.”</p>
<p>A <em>struggle to reform the workers' state with bureaucratic deformations.</em> That was the principled position of Lenin and Trotsky in Russia before Stalinism came to power, and it was the principled position of the Left Opposition thereafter and until 1933 (when our movement stopped trying to reform the Soviet state). This should also be our principled position on the Cuban workers' state. That is what I said, without any reference to the tactics that have to be pursued, which obviously are different in Cuba today from those required in the USSR in the 1920s. Comrade Sheppard is so hypnotized by tactical questions (without knowing quite what to do about them) that he cannot recognize a principled position when one is raised in his presence and he disposes of it in effect by attributing to me the view that “we should politically approach the Cuban leadership like the Left Opposition approached the Stalinists in the period from 1923 to 1933.” But I wasn't discussing how to politically approach the Cuban leadership, which is a secondary question, subordinate to our principled and strategic positions. Muddling the two levels will only undermine our basic concepts without contributing anything worthwhile to a correct political approach to Castroism.</p>
<p>My amendments on Cuba and Castroism would delete all of Sections 5-9 in the political resolution. I agree with many of the statements in those sections but it would be hard to amend it sentence by sentence without becoming cumbersome. So I think it's better to delete Sections 5-9 for the sake of clarity and leave it to an editing committee to restore things we all agree on in the final version to be printed after the convention.</p>
<p>The first paragraph of the amendments on Cuba presents our principled position on reform and our bedrock objectives on the road of reform, which we will work and fight for no matter what other tendencies do.</p>
<p>The second paragraph lists major positive (revolutionary) and negative (nonrevolutionary) features of Castroism, which is a highly contradictory tendency.</p>
<p>The third paragraph points to the non-Leninist character of the Cuban CP and to the conflicting tendencies joined together in that party under the leadership of Castro.</p>
<p>The fourth paragraph indicates what our political approach to the Castro tendency should be—continuation of united front collaboration wherever possible and of our efforts to win the revolutionary supporters of Castroism to the Fourth International and its work to construct a mass Leninist international.</p>
<h4>3. Where and How to Work</h4>
<p>The main purpose of the amendments to Section 11 is to delete the prescription that if we work in the Cuban CP, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement it must be only as “loyal builders.” It would be better to discuss these three organizations separately since they are quite different structurally and historically. The Cuban CP is patterned on the Stalinist party structures in the USSR and Eastern Europe and it is the only legal party in Cuba, thanks to an undemocratic constitution. The main reason that people holding our ideas probably should work inside the Cuban CP is that no other party is permitted in Cuba. <em>How</em> we work there will have to depend on the evolution of that party and its response to the wishes, needs, and democratic rights of its members to express opinions, form tendencies, etc. The FSLN and New Jewel Movement seem to be more democratic than the Cuban CP, in which case the possibility of functioning in them as loyal builders is greater; but even there I think it better not to make abstract recommendations on matters that have to be decided and changed in accord with changing concrete circumstances.</p>
<p>Similarly, it seems advisable to delete the categorization of these three organizations as our “fellow revolutionary parties.” When we used this term in the past, it referred to other parties and sympathizing sections of the FI. Now the resolution confers that label on three non-FI parties but does not use it for the FI parties and sympathizing sections. Whatever that signifies, the categorization should be at least postponed until it is thought through and better motivated.</p>
<p>At the end of the preconvention discussion in the branches I would like to have the members vote on the general line of my amendments.</p>
<p>June 18, 1981</p>
<h3>Amendments to the Political Resolution</h3>
<h4>Amendments to Section 10 (“The Fourth International”)</h4>
<p>Paragraph 3, after the sentence “The Fourth International is a Marxist nucleus, organized as a world party, with the conscious aim of rebuilding such a mass proletarian international,” add the following sentences:</p>
<p>“It is the only tendency in the world today that has this aim, which it has been advancing since its inception. Politically and organizationally, it is and has been the principal continuator and defender of the theories and practices of Leninist internationalism since the degeneration of the Third International.”</p>
<p>Paragraph 9, after the sentence “The rise of world revolution creates greater opportunities than ever before for the Fourth International to grow, increase our political influence in the mass workers movement, and become proletarian in composition as well as program,” insert to the third sentence the words “the Fourth International will measure up to these responsibilities and that” so that the third sentence will read as follows:</p>
<p>“We are confident that the Fourth International will measure up to these responsibilities and that the revolutionists of action who emerge out of all three sectors of the international class struggle will increasingly identify with the necessary line of march of the working class.”</p>
<h4>Amendments to Sections 5-9 (“The Revolutionary Course of the Cuban Leadership”)</h4>
<p>Delete all of Sections 5-9 and substitute the following:</p>
<p>Cuba is a workers' state, which we have always defended against imperialist attack and capitalist counterrevolution. It is not a deformed workers' state (the name given by our movement to workers' states that require political revolution to rid them of Stalinist domination). It is a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations (the name Lenin used to describe the Soviet Union in 1920, the name applied to Cuba by the SWP at its 1979 convention). We advocate and support reform of the Cuban workers' state as part of our unconditional defense of this state against all its enemies. Among the principal reforms we work for are the introduction of workers' councils (soviets), which the workers need in order to rule politically and to advance the transition to socialism, and recognition of the right to form oppositional tendencies, factions, or parties, which is denied today by law and in practice.</p>
<p>Castroism (the Castro tendency) evolved through combat from a petty-bourgeois grouping into the leadership of the Cuban social revolution, which it led to the victorious establishment of a workers' state and which, under the banner of Marxism and internationalism, it continues to lead in struggle against imperialist violence, pressures, and blockade. To its credit are many revolutionary accomplishments at home (nationalization of industry and planned economy, agrarian reform, free education, socialized medicine, uprooting racism, challenging sexism, etc.) and abroad (active solidarity and sacrifice to aid revolutionary struggles in other countries and to extend their own revolution), which have earned it the respect of revolutionaries everywhere and have given it the possibility of making major contributions to the solution of the leadership crisis that plagues the working class internationally. At the same time Castroism always has taken a number of non-Marxist and nonrevolutionary positions (maintenance of the political monopoly the top Castro leadership has exercised since the start of the Cuban workers' state, rejection of Leninist norms of party building at both national and international levels, political support of “friendly” bourgeois regimes, etc.) and has acquired other nonrevolutionary positions since its inception (opposition to political revolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe, acceptance of Stalinist ideology in the education of Cuban youth, etc.).</p>
<p>The Cuban CP is not and never has been a Leninist party, even though it has revolutionary forces in its leadership and membership. It did not lead the Cuban revolution, being organized six years after that event as a fusion of the Castroist, Stalinist, and other elements. It is patterned after the bureaucratic party structures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union whose principal function is to keep the ruling stratum in power. It is the only legal party in Cuba today. It includes at least two tendencies—the Castroist, which exercises hegemony, and the Stalinist—whose differences are never openly discussed before the membership. The education of the members is much more influenced by Stalinist ideology than it was in the first years after the revolution. The Cuban CP as a whole should not be confused with its different wings, left or right.</p>
<p>Despite our serious differences with the Castro tendency, we recognize it to be close to ours and have always sought to collaborate with it for common revolutionary objectives. The chief obstacles have been our political differences. To overcome these, there are no substitutes for united front activities and patient political discussion to win the Castroists to Fourth Internationalist perspectives, even in countries where we may find ourselves in the same party with them.</p>
<h4>Amendments to Section 11 (“Toward a Mass Leninist International”)</h4>
<p>Paragraph 5, change the first sentence “In Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada, the place for those who share our ideas is as loyal builders of the Cuban Communist Party, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement” so that it will read as follows:</p>
<p>“In Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada, the place for those who share our ideas about Leninist internationalism is in the Cuban Communist Party, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement.”</p>
<p>Paragraph 5, change the second sentence “These parties, which we consider to be fellow revolutionary parties, have shown in action that they are the leaders of the working people of their countries” so that it will read as follows:</p>
<p>“These parties, which have the potential to become revolutionary parties in a Leninist sense, have shown in action that they are the leaders of the working people of their countries.”</p>
<p>June 18, 1981</p>
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Why the Political Resolution Should Be Amended on the FI and Castroism
by George Breitman
At the April NC plenum I voted in favor of the general line of the political resolution adopted there but against Sections 5-11, on Cuba and the FI, which I criticized at the plenum. The edited draft of the resolution (in DB, Vol. 37, No. 1, April 1981) was, in my opinion, an improvement over the draft presented to the plenum, but not enough to satisfy my objections. I also was dissatisfied with Comrade Barry Sheppard's plenum summary (DB, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 1981) although a large part of it was devoted to discussing or seeming to discuss questions and criticisms I raised in the discussion. So I have drafted amendments that I think should be made to the resolution before it is adopted by the national convention and will try to motivate them in what follows. [See amendments at the conclusion of this article.]
1. The FI
I begin with the amendments relating to the FI (Section 10) because I think SWP-FI relations are the most urgent question before the convention. I think that since 1979, the year of our last convention and the year of the last world congress, the SWP leadership has been modifying its attitude to these relations simultaneously with the modification of its attitude to the Castro tendency. Another way of putting this is that their identification with the FI has been declining in direct proportion to the rise of their growing identification with the “new revolutionary current” headed by Castro.
As I told the NC plenum in April, I felt deeply concerned by signs since 1979 that the SWP leadership was pulling back from its previous wholehearted participation in the work of the FI. I recalled that a new note had been introduced at our January 1980 plenum by Comrade Peter Camejo, who used the differences over Nicaragua at the world congress to castigate the sectarians and dogmatists leading the FI in Europe and to imply that we would be better off on our own, without them. I also recalled that Comrade Jack Barnes had told the January 1980 plenum that such remarks did not represent the thinking of the SWP leadership, which would present its views in the International's coming discussion and debate over Cuba and other disputed questions. I was reassured by that statement but now (April 1981), after reading the political resolution's approach to the FI, my apprehensions were aroused that the SWP leadership was moving in the direction of a pullback from the FI even though the long promised International discussion had not yet taken place.
I shall not dwell on Comrade Sheppard's “reply” on this point in his summary, which ranged from irrelevancies (about Leonard Boudin, etc.) to surrealist delusions (“the whole idea that we may be politically withdrawing from the Fourth International implies that we are some foreign body in the International. No, politically we are the Fourth International; the Fourth International is us”). More significant was the fact that Comrade Sheppard denied any pullback, and that the published draft of the resolution added a few phrases implying a greater identification of the SWP with the FI than the earlier draft had done.
Nevertheless I think it is necessary to amend Section 10 in order to clarify the SWP's attitude to the FI. I think that is necessary not only because of what the resolution says and fails to say about the FI but also because of the informal discussions that have been going on during the last year or two where leading members, even NC members, ask, “What did the FI ever accomplish?” You can't find this in writing, but its effects are real (and devastating) just the same.
It reminds me of the Cochranites thirty years ago, except that their question was, “What did the SWP ever accomplish?” That was the form that liquidationism in our movement began with in the early 1950s. The Cochranites did not deny that the “old Trotskyism” had played an essential role in the past, with an excellent program, etc. But now, they said, it was necessary to move forward, applying the program in different places and in new ways.
At the April plenum I took exception to Comrade Sheppard's remark in his report that we don't want to be in a world party of socialist resolutions, we want to be in a world party of socialist revolutions. This sentence was revised in the published version of the report, making it perhaps a little less offensive: “Our line and orientation, therefore, has got to be to realize that we are moving out of the period where we were restricted to being, by and large, the world party of socialist resolutions, to our objective, to help build the World Party of Socialist Revolution” (pp. 7-8).
Less offensive, perhaps, but still disturbing, because if Comrade Sheppard understood what he was saying he would have deleted the remark altogether. Because what it does, essentially, is to counterpose political analysis and theory (writing and debating resolutions) to building the international revolutionary party. That's a hell of a thing for leaders of the SWP or the FI to be teaching their members. Such stuff can only miseducate and disorient cadres and therefore can only obstruct the building of the party. Doesn't Comrade Sheppard realize that the Third International, the model of the mass Leninist international we all advocate, was also restricted by and large to being a world party of socialist resolutions? It certainly never led any revolutions or had any affiliated parties that led successful revolutions in Lenin's time. Does he think that therefore we ought to make invidious comparisons between the Third International and the still-to-be-born Leninist international of the future?
The two amendments to Section 10 do not introduce any new concepts. They only repeat ideas and judgments we have expressed many times in the last half century. If there are comrades and tendencies in the party that no longer accept them, then let them say that clearly so that we can have a clear discussion before the convention and a clear decision on this point at the convention.
2. Cuba and Castroism
In his summary at the April plenum Comrade Sheppard protested that the positions on Cuba in the political resolution “are not new.” He cited a number of statements from the past—1963, 1967, etc.,— to “prove” that basically nothing new is being proposed today. But these citations are not used in such a way as to deepen our understanding; they serve to confuse us the way sleight of hand confuses us. The truth is that however superficially similar to current positions such citations may seem, their meaning and function were different in 1963 and 1967 than today. In no case did anyone who said or wrote those statements at that time use those statements or want them to be used to justify minimizing or ignoring the real differences between us and the Castro tendency or turning our backs on the FI.
Is the majority position basically new (that is, different from our past position in any fundamental ways)? The only possible answer is yes. You cannot come to any other conclusion if you compare the positions adopted almost unanimously at our 1979 convention with the positions being advocated now. Comrade Steven Ashby's article “Castroism: Revolutionists of Action” (in DB, Vol. 37, No. 5, May 1981) presents some of the evidence about the magnitude and scope of the changes being proposed, and it doesn't exhaust all the evidence either. If there are any comrades who have doubts on this score, I urge them to read or reread the Education for Socialists bulletin Revolutionary Cuba Today, published in 1980 and containing some of the documents adopted or presented in 1978 and 1979. The majority supporters feel embarrassed about these 1979 documents now because they were written in a critical spirit, that is, in our traditional way of analyzing political tendencies, including those that come closest to us.
Another obstacle to clarity in the present discussion is the majority's shifting use of terminology. “Revolutionary Marxist” is an outstanding example. Two years ago, our discussions of Cuba included a debate over whether to call Castroism “revolutionary” or “centrist.” The convention decided that while “revolutionary” might not be the perfect term it was more fitting than any other proposed. But as used in this context “revolutionary” did not imply that Castroism was “revolutionary Marxist”—in fact, the advocates of “revolutionary” explicitly stated that Castroism was not revolutionary Marxist.
A year later the leaders of the majority changed their minds and began, in speeches at the 1980 educational conference and in articles in the press, to publicly designate Castroism as revolutionary Marxist. After a few months this was discontinued. When the first draft of the political resolution was distributed for our April plenum I read it carefully and noted that it did not designate Castroism as revolutionary Marxist. (Comrade Ashby is wrong when he says that it does.) I told the NC I was glad that “revolutionary Marxist” had been dropped as an appellation of Castroism, but pointed out that other terms used in the resolution could be interpreted as possible equivalent-substitutes for “revolutionary Marxist,” and urged that if the authors meant to say or imply “revolutionary Marxist,” it would be better to use this term openly in the resolution so that we could discuss it properly. A couple of comrades at the plenum stated during the discussion that they think the Castroists are revolutionary Marxists, but they did not explain why the resolution did not say so, or why they did not offer an amendment to put this in the resolution. In his summary Comrade Sheppard did not mention the point at all.
When the edited resolution was published after the plenum, a couple of the possible equivalent-substitute terms had been omitted while others were retained (revolutionary proletarian leadership, revolutionary internationalists). But the resolution itself does not call the Castroists revolutionary Marxists. I thought at least that was clear until last week when the preconvention discussion on Cuba was opened in the New York City branches and supporters of the majority position took the floor to argue that Castroism is revolutionary Marxism, and that we had all been sectarian for not having realized that before. How can we have a responsible discussion on the basis of hide-and-seek games?
At the April plenum I gave my interpretation of what has been happening and how that has led to the present differences. My interpretation does not involve any accusations of capitulation to Castroism. I don't know of any Castroists in the SWP and I don't know anyone in it who is advocating Castroism. But I do think there is a tendency in the SWP, developing since the last convention, which is overadapting to Castroism. There is an important distinction between “overadapting” and “capitulating,” just as there is between “adapting” and “overadapting.” In my opinion there is nothing wrong in “adapting” to a group or tendency that we think is promising and want to influence. We do that all the time—in unions, Black and women's groups, community organizations. We try to speak their language, to understand their particular needs and history, to avoid or reduce unnecessary or unimportant points of contention, to find common ground to talk, work, and fight on. We even had to do that when we joined the Socialist Party to win over its left wing in 1936. So I've never seen anything reprehensible in “adapting” to Castroism or any other tendency we've decided to make special efforts to influence. And I was in favor of doing that as early as anyone in this party. I can only say good luck to comrades seeking to win Castroists to our politics when they present our ideas to them through quotations from Marx rather than through quotations from Trotsky (whom the Castroists have been conditioned to dislike and reject).
But most good things, when carried too far, become bad things. That is what has been happening as “adaptation” has been transformed into overadaptation: when we begin to forget basic criticisms, blur differences, try to throw the best possible light on positions that are indefensible, educate new members so that they can't perceive differences between our tendency and Castro's, or express our criticisms in tones so muted that hardly anyone can notice them.
The cause of this transformation is that the SWP leaders, after undertaking the kind of “adaptation” discussed above, found that it was not having much effect. The differences between us and Castroism are not fewer or smaller than they were in the past or than they were two years ago when our convention adopted the positions we have had since then. I do not say that the differences between us and Castroism are bigger than they were in 1979—on balance I think they are about the same. Instead of recognizing the lesson of this experience, which is the limits of “adaptation,” the SWP leaders began to look at Castroism in a different light. This led them to the conclusion that the differences between it and us are not and usually have not been crucial, and often were the result not of the shortcomings of Castroism but of our own shortcomings, and especially of our alleged proclivity to sectarianism, about which there have been quite a lot of unfounded and lightminded assertions inside the party in recent years.
Comrade Sheppard's summary at the plenum misrepresented my point about the dangers of overadaptation. The charge would be valid, he said, only “if we began adopting wrong political positions because they were the positions of the Cubans,” and we haven't done that, on Poland or any other issue. But taking wrong positions because the Cubans had done so would not be overadaptation, it would be something else—capitulation. That's different and more serious, and not a charge I had made. So why does he distort the problem I did raise? Merely because it's easier to answer his own invention than to answer questions that trouble a great many comrades?
Poland is actually a good example of how the majority overadapts to Castroism, not because it adopts the Castro tendency's terrible position on Poland but because its efforts to explain the Castroist position have produced a wrong focus and a wrong emphasis on the political revolution taking place in Poland. The facts are quite clear. Castro and the Cuban CP oppose the Polish revolution and defend the forces of counterrevolution that want to contain the revolution before it extends to other workers' states or to crush it if it can't be contained and curbed. Such a position can only be characterized as counterrevolutionary, I said at the plenum. And it is not an isolated thing, because the Castroists supported the counterrevolutionary invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in precisely the same way, although their rhetoric was more radical then, and because the logic of their position on Poland will lead to support of similar counterrevolutionary intervention in other workers' states. A strange position for revolutionary proletarians, proletarian internationalists, or revolutionary Marxists!
“It is too simplistic,” Comrade Sheppard rejoined, “to say that the Cuban leadership has a counterrevolutionary position on Poland, and that's that.” (Who said “and that's that”?) “That is not accurate. The resolution is more accurate; it describes in a more complete way the Cuban leadership's position on Poland and other workers' states, and the evolution of its stance.” But if the resolution is more accurate and more complete, why does it lack a direct statement of what the Castroist position favors—military action by the Warsaw Pact powers to put down the Polish revolution? Why can't the authors of the more accurate and more complete resolution bring themselves to mention that fact, among other things, instead of confining themselves to euphemisms about cutting across class solidarity, miseducating people who look to the Cubans for leadership, etc.?
One result of overadaptation is a growing inability of the majority leaders to read and hear things correctly if they pertain to Castroism and run counter to wishful thinking on that subject. The Australian comrades have documented a bad case of our leadership's misreading of the Cuban position on the Kremlin's intervention in Afghanistan (“Afghanistan—Where the New Line of the American Socialist Workers Party Goes Wrong,” by the Political Committee of the Australian SWP). Comrade J.P. Beauvais has written a long criticism of Comrade Fred Feldman's long IP [Intercontinental Press] article about the Cuban CP's second congress, showing that Comrade Feldman quotes and paraphrases from Cuban texts in an unacceptable way (“Cuban Society in the Light of the Second Congress of the CCP,” in Inprecor, No. 98, March 30, 1981; an English translation will no doubt be published eventually). Comrades ought to read these things as part of the present preconvention discussion.
I can offer my own example of the failure of some comrades to hear things about Cuba right. In Comrade Sheppard's summary at the plenum there is a relatively long section under the title “Has There Been a Degeneration?” This is the section that Comrade Roland Sheppard objects to as a distortion of Comrade Nat Weinstein's position on Cuba (DB, Vol. 37, No. 8, June 1981). Actually it was aimed at me, not at Comrade Weinstein, although that is not obvious to the reader since I am unnamed in the summary. It was aimed at me despite the fact that I had said nothing about a degeneration in Cuba and don't believe there has been one.
What I did say at the plenum was: “Revolutionary defense of Cuba requires an unceasing struggle to reform the workers' state with bureaucratic deformations such as the Left Opposition conducted in Russia from 1923 to 1933. This means fighting for a workers' council or soviet-type system, which does not exist in any form in Cuba today, through which the workers could rule politically. And not only must we be for reform of the Cuban workers' state but we must not be bashful about saying so openly and whenever appropriate.”
A struggle to reform the workers' state with bureaucratic deformations. That was the principled position of Lenin and Trotsky in Russia before Stalinism came to power, and it was the principled position of the Left Opposition thereafter and until 1933 (when our movement stopped trying to reform the Soviet state). This should also be our principled position on the Cuban workers' state. That is what I said, without any reference to the tactics that have to be pursued, which obviously are different in Cuba today from those required in the USSR in the 1920s. Comrade Sheppard is so hypnotized by tactical questions (without knowing quite what to do about them) that he cannot recognize a principled position when one is raised in his presence and he disposes of it in effect by attributing to me the view that “we should politically approach the Cuban leadership like the Left Opposition approached the Stalinists in the period from 1923 to 1933.” But I wasn't discussing how to politically approach the Cuban leadership, which is a secondary question, subordinate to our principled and strategic positions. Muddling the two levels will only undermine our basic concepts without contributing anything worthwhile to a correct political approach to Castroism.
My amendments on Cuba and Castroism would delete all of Sections 5-9 in the political resolution. I agree with many of the statements in those sections but it would be hard to amend it sentence by sentence without becoming cumbersome. So I think it's better to delete Sections 5-9 for the sake of clarity and leave it to an editing committee to restore things we all agree on in the final version to be printed after the convention.
The first paragraph of the amendments on Cuba presents our principled position on reform and our bedrock objectives on the road of reform, which we will work and fight for no matter what other tendencies do.
The second paragraph lists major positive (revolutionary) and negative (nonrevolutionary) features of Castroism, which is a highly contradictory tendency.
The third paragraph points to the non-Leninist character of the Cuban CP and to the conflicting tendencies joined together in that party under the leadership of Castro.
The fourth paragraph indicates what our political approach to the Castro tendency should be—continuation of united front collaboration wherever possible and of our efforts to win the revolutionary supporters of Castroism to the Fourth International and its work to construct a mass Leninist international.
3. Where and How to Work
The main purpose of the amendments to Section 11 is to delete the prescription that if we work in the Cuban CP, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement it must be only as “loyal builders.” It would be better to discuss these three organizations separately since they are quite different structurally and historically. The Cuban CP is patterned on the Stalinist party structures in the USSR and Eastern Europe and it is the only legal party in Cuba, thanks to an undemocratic constitution. The main reason that people holding our ideas probably should work inside the Cuban CP is that no other party is permitted in Cuba. How we work there will have to depend on the evolution of that party and its response to the wishes, needs, and democratic rights of its members to express opinions, form tendencies, etc. The FSLN and New Jewel Movement seem to be more democratic than the Cuban CP, in which case the possibility of functioning in them as loyal builders is greater; but even there I think it better not to make abstract recommendations on matters that have to be decided and changed in accord with changing concrete circumstances.
Similarly, it seems advisable to delete the categorization of these three organizations as our “fellow revolutionary parties.” When we used this term in the past, it referred to other parties and sympathizing sections of the FI. Now the resolution confers that label on three non-FI parties but does not use it for the FI parties and sympathizing sections. Whatever that signifies, the categorization should be at least postponed until it is thought through and better motivated.
At the end of the preconvention discussion in the branches I would like to have the members vote on the general line of my amendments.
June 18, 1981
Amendments to the Political Resolution
Amendments to Section 10 (“The Fourth International”)
Paragraph 3, after the sentence “The Fourth International is a Marxist nucleus, organized as a world party, with the conscious aim of rebuilding such a mass proletarian international,” add the following sentences:
“It is the only tendency in the world today that has this aim, which it has been advancing since its inception. Politically and organizationally, it is and has been the principal continuator and defender of the theories and practices of Leninist internationalism since the degeneration of the Third International.”
Paragraph 9, after the sentence “The rise of world revolution creates greater opportunities than ever before for the Fourth International to grow, increase our political influence in the mass workers movement, and become proletarian in composition as well as program,” insert to the third sentence the words “the Fourth International will measure up to these responsibilities and that” so that the third sentence will read as follows:
“We are confident that the Fourth International will measure up to these responsibilities and that the revolutionists of action who emerge out of all three sectors of the international class struggle will increasingly identify with the necessary line of march of the working class.”
Amendments to Sections 5-9 (“The Revolutionary Course of the Cuban Leadership”)
Delete all of Sections 5-9 and substitute the following:
Cuba is a workers' state, which we have always defended against imperialist attack and capitalist counterrevolution. It is not a deformed workers' state (the name given by our movement to workers' states that require political revolution to rid them of Stalinist domination). It is a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations (the name Lenin used to describe the Soviet Union in 1920, the name applied to Cuba by the SWP at its 1979 convention). We advocate and support reform of the Cuban workers' state as part of our unconditional defense of this state against all its enemies. Among the principal reforms we work for are the introduction of workers' councils (soviets), which the workers need in order to rule politically and to advance the transition to socialism, and recognition of the right to form oppositional tendencies, factions, or parties, which is denied today by law and in practice.
Castroism (the Castro tendency) evolved through combat from a petty-bourgeois grouping into the leadership of the Cuban social revolution, which it led to the victorious establishment of a workers' state and which, under the banner of Marxism and internationalism, it continues to lead in struggle against imperialist violence, pressures, and blockade. To its credit are many revolutionary accomplishments at home (nationalization of industry and planned economy, agrarian reform, free education, socialized medicine, uprooting racism, challenging sexism, etc.) and abroad (active solidarity and sacrifice to aid revolutionary struggles in other countries and to extend their own revolution), which have earned it the respect of revolutionaries everywhere and have given it the possibility of making major contributions to the solution of the leadership crisis that plagues the working class internationally. At the same time Castroism always has taken a number of non-Marxist and nonrevolutionary positions (maintenance of the political monopoly the top Castro leadership has exercised since the start of the Cuban workers' state, rejection of Leninist norms of party building at both national and international levels, political support of “friendly” bourgeois regimes, etc.) and has acquired other nonrevolutionary positions since its inception (opposition to political revolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe, acceptance of Stalinist ideology in the education of Cuban youth, etc.).
The Cuban CP is not and never has been a Leninist party, even though it has revolutionary forces in its leadership and membership. It did not lead the Cuban revolution, being organized six years after that event as a fusion of the Castroist, Stalinist, and other elements. It is patterned after the bureaucratic party structures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union whose principal function is to keep the ruling stratum in power. It is the only legal party in Cuba today. It includes at least two tendencies—the Castroist, which exercises hegemony, and the Stalinist—whose differences are never openly discussed before the membership. The education of the members is much more influenced by Stalinist ideology than it was in the first years after the revolution. The Cuban CP as a whole should not be confused with its different wings, left or right.
Despite our serious differences with the Castro tendency, we recognize it to be close to ours and have always sought to collaborate with it for common revolutionary objectives. The chief obstacles have been our political differences. To overcome these, there are no substitutes for united front activities and patient political discussion to win the Castroists to Fourth Internationalist perspectives, even in countries where we may find ourselves in the same party with them.
Amendments to Section 11 (“Toward a Mass Leninist International”)
Paragraph 5, change the first sentence “In Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada, the place for those who share our ideas is as loyal builders of the Cuban Communist Party, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement” so that it will read as follows:
“In Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada, the place for those who share our ideas about Leninist internationalism is in the Cuban Communist Party, FSLN, and New Jewel Movement.”
Paragraph 5, change the second sentence “These parties, which we consider to be fellow revolutionary parties, have shown in action that they are the leaders of the working people of their countries” so that it will read as follows:
“These parties, which have the potential to become revolutionary parties in a Leninist sense, have shown in action that they are the leaders of the working people of their countries.”
June 18, 1981
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
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<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
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<h1>Negroes and the Unions</h1>
<h3>(15 November 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_46" target="new">Vol. V No. 46</a>, 15 November 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">One of the great achievements of the CIO, among many others, was that it opened its doors wide to Negro workers, and especially the great bulk of them in the mass industries. This resulted not only in a more effective organization of the basic industries, but it also did much to build up a feeling of solidarity among the white and Negro workers and to greatly increase the pro-union sentiment among the Negro people generally.</p>
<p>Since the organization of the CIO, the Negro workers have been integrated into hundreds of local unions. They have attended their meetings in “peace time” as well as done their full share on the picket lines in time of strike. They have been elected as officers and shop stewards and committeemen and responsible leaders in many shops, even where the Negro workers form only a small part of the membership. More and more Negroes have been selected as national organizers and representatives of their union and sent in to organize new fields. On the whole, the Negro workers in the CIO feel that it is their home, and they belong in it.</p>
<p>But it would not be painting a true picture to let it go at that and say that complete and full equality for the Negro people exists in all the shops that have been unionized, even by the CIO.</p>
<p>By this I do not mean to say that it is the policy of the CIO or its affiliated unions to practice discrimination or segregation against its Negro members. Far from it. If in isolated instances in the CIO such Jim Crow practices are discovered, they are the exception to the rule, and should be reported and exposed and fought against, and undoubtedly the CIO national office would aid in such a fight.</p>
<p>But while there are no, or practically no cases of such open discrimination in the CIO, that does not mean that there are no special problems for the Negro members in many situations. For even if the CIO does not discriminate, the employers and their managers still consider the Negro workers as “inferior” and do not hesitate to go out of their way in giving Negroes the dirtiest and lowest paid jobs and in preventing them from advancing to better and skilled positions.</p>
<p>And often the local leaders of the unions just do not see the problem or its importance. They may mean well and might be the first to protest and propose action to correct this situation – but meanwhile, they are so concerned about other problems, they are so busy that they just don’t see this important problem.</p>
<p>Thus, as many Negro workers who have observed this will understand, although the CIO does not practice Jim Crowism, there are special Jim Crow problems which exist which the CIO is not in all cases taking the necessary steps to wipe out.</p>
<p>What is to be done in this situation? It is serious, for as long as it exists, many Negro workers will continue to feel that their white brothers are only paying lip-service to the idea of equality for the Negro workers, and in the end the employers may be able to turn them against the unions.<br>
</p>
<a name="s1"></a>
<h3>The Answer to the Problem</h3>
<p class="fst">The answer is that the Negro workers in the unions – AFL as well as CIO – must get together as an organized force within the unions to bring these problems before the other workers and propose steps to correct them. They must organize Negro Labor Councils, or any other name you want to give it, which will concern themselves with the solution of the special problems facing Negro workers.</p>
<p>Does this mean separate unions? No! Does this mean separate Negro locals? No! Does this mean a body set up to fight against the regularly constituted locals in the various shops? No!</p>
<p>It simply means that the Negro workers will get together in their unions and in their cities to discuss how to best protect the interests of the Negro workers in the unions, how to bring unorganized Negroes into the unions, how to develop a more favorable attitude toward the unions among the non-unionized Negroes, and all other measures which will help to build the unions. They will not function separately from the unions, but as a matter of fact will try to get the unions to endorse their work and assist them in it.</p>
<p>Won’t such a step antagonize many white workers? Not at all. As a matter of fact, the white workers will respect the Negroes all the more when they see that they are determined to build the unions and protect their own interests at the same time.</p>
<p>Is this a new idea? There is nothing new about it. For many years such a body of Jewish workers in New York did a very good job in helping to organize Jewish-speaking workers into the unions. There have been various such groups in the history of the American labor movement. Many prominent Negroes have for a long time been advocating the formation of such Councils – not to fight unionism, but to help it.</p>
<p>At the present time such bodies already exist in various parts of the country. Just recently there was organized a Mid-West Negro Labor Council in Chicago, with representation from CIO and AFL unions. (Next week we’ll tell more about it.) In many different local unions such bodies already exist and have done some good work.</p>
<p>What is necessary now is to spread and extend the formation of such Councils everywhere. Negro delegates to the CIO convention in Detroit this week should discuss the matter and bring it before the convention for its approval. Such approval would be a real impetus to formation of these Councils.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
Negroes and the Unions
(15 November 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 46, 15 November 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
One of the great achievements of the CIO, among many others, was that it opened its doors wide to Negro workers, and especially the great bulk of them in the mass industries. This resulted not only in a more effective organization of the basic industries, but it also did much to build up a feeling of solidarity among the white and Negro workers and to greatly increase the pro-union sentiment among the Negro people generally.
Since the organization of the CIO, the Negro workers have been integrated into hundreds of local unions. They have attended their meetings in “peace time” as well as done their full share on the picket lines in time of strike. They have been elected as officers and shop stewards and committeemen and responsible leaders in many shops, even where the Negro workers form only a small part of the membership. More and more Negroes have been selected as national organizers and representatives of their union and sent in to organize new fields. On the whole, the Negro workers in the CIO feel that it is their home, and they belong in it.
But it would not be painting a true picture to let it go at that and say that complete and full equality for the Negro people exists in all the shops that have been unionized, even by the CIO.
By this I do not mean to say that it is the policy of the CIO or its affiliated unions to practice discrimination or segregation against its Negro members. Far from it. If in isolated instances in the CIO such Jim Crow practices are discovered, they are the exception to the rule, and should be reported and exposed and fought against, and undoubtedly the CIO national office would aid in such a fight.
But while there are no, or practically no cases of such open discrimination in the CIO, that does not mean that there are no special problems for the Negro members in many situations. For even if the CIO does not discriminate, the employers and their managers still consider the Negro workers as “inferior” and do not hesitate to go out of their way in giving Negroes the dirtiest and lowest paid jobs and in preventing them from advancing to better and skilled positions.
And often the local leaders of the unions just do not see the problem or its importance. They may mean well and might be the first to protest and propose action to correct this situation – but meanwhile, they are so concerned about other problems, they are so busy that they just don’t see this important problem.
Thus, as many Negro workers who have observed this will understand, although the CIO does not practice Jim Crowism, there are special Jim Crow problems which exist which the CIO is not in all cases taking the necessary steps to wipe out.
What is to be done in this situation? It is serious, for as long as it exists, many Negro workers will continue to feel that their white brothers are only paying lip-service to the idea of equality for the Negro workers, and in the end the employers may be able to turn them against the unions.
The Answer to the Problem
The answer is that the Negro workers in the unions – AFL as well as CIO – must get together as an organized force within the unions to bring these problems before the other workers and propose steps to correct them. They must organize Negro Labor Councils, or any other name you want to give it, which will concern themselves with the solution of the special problems facing Negro workers.
Does this mean separate unions? No! Does this mean separate Negro locals? No! Does this mean a body set up to fight against the regularly constituted locals in the various shops? No!
It simply means that the Negro workers will get together in their unions and in their cities to discuss how to best protect the interests of the Negro workers in the unions, how to bring unorganized Negroes into the unions, how to develop a more favorable attitude toward the unions among the non-unionized Negroes, and all other measures which will help to build the unions. They will not function separately from the unions, but as a matter of fact will try to get the unions to endorse their work and assist them in it.
Won’t such a step antagonize many white workers? Not at all. As a matter of fact, the white workers will respect the Negroes all the more when they see that they are determined to build the unions and protect their own interests at the same time.
Is this a new idea? There is nothing new about it. For many years such a body of Jewish workers in New York did a very good job in helping to organize Jewish-speaking workers into the unions. There have been various such groups in the history of the American labor movement. Many prominent Negroes have for a long time been advocating the formation of such Councils – not to fight unionism, but to help it.
At the present time such bodies already exist in various parts of the country. Just recently there was organized a Mid-West Negro Labor Council in Chicago, with representation from CIO and AFL unions. (Next week we’ll tell more about it.) In many different local unions such bodies already exist and have done some good work.
What is necessary now is to spread and extend the formation of such Councils everywhere. Negro delegates to the CIO convention in Detroit this week should discuss the matter and bring it before the convention for its approval. Such approval would be a real impetus to formation of these Councils.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Renegades Peddle Old Poison</h1>
<h3>(24 May 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_21" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 21</a>, 24 May 1948, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">In previous articles we have demonstrated the spuriousness and shallowness of the arguments presented by Jean Vannier in the March <strong>Partisan Review</strong> to justify his flight from Marxism. To complete the account it is necessary only to add a few remarks about the history of the small group associated with Vannier which left the Socialist Workers Party.</p>
<p>Vannier’s evolution into an open enemy of Marxism is a culmination of the revisionist fight which his friends, Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, launched in the SWP five years ago. It is worth recalling that this evolution was predicted, from the very beginning of the fight, by the defenders of Marxism in the party, long before the revisionists themselves understood what they were doing and where they were going and while they were still protesting indignantly that they had no fundamental differences with the Trotskyist program.<br>
</p>
<h4>Revisionist Path</h4>
<p class="fst">Vannier and his friends began – as all petty-bourgeois revisionists do; as their most immediate predecessors, the faction led by James Burnham and Max Shachtman, did in 1939 – by succumbing to the powerful pressure of capitalist ideology, which is always most quickly and deeply felt by intellectuals isolated from the life and struggles of the working class. They had become infected with a disease – one might call it the occupational disease – of intellectuals in the labor movement: A tendency to overestimate the power of decaying capitalism and to despair over the ability of the working class to fulfill its socialist mission.</p>
<p>This defeatist mood was accompanied by a violent barrage of charges against the SWP leadership’s “dogmatism,” “bureaucratism,” “bad morals,” etc., by which was meant the leadership’s determination not to yield an inch to the revisionist onslaughts. Then the revisionists began to denounce the “sheep-like” docility and lack of “independent thought” among the membership of the party, who had been steeled by their experience with the Burnham-Shachtman school of revisionism to give a cool reception to all other varieties.</p>
<p>Consequently, long before the Revisionist program had fully unfolded, the Vannier-Morrow-Goldman faction was confined to a small handful of skeptics, who realized their views had no future in the SWP. One section therefore split away before the 1946 SWP convention even had a chance to pass judgment on them. Headed by Goldman, they entered the halfway house of despair, apprehension and “honest pessimism,” the Shachtmanite Workers Party, from which some of them have already departed for the purpose of supporting American imperialism. The other section, influenced by Vannier and Morrow, drew back at the last minute from the futile prospect of wasting their time in the WP and, still avowing their allegiance to Marxism, decided to go it on their own.<br>
</p>
<h4>Fundamental Conflict</h4>
<p class="fst">Now, Vannier’s <strong>Partisan Review</strong> article dots the i’s and crosses the t’s. The real dispute, it shows, was not over isolated formulations or even the nature of party organization, but over fundamental concepts of Marxism. His spiteful reference to “the degeneration of the Trotskyite Fourth International” is merely an admission of the-revisionists’ failure to substitute their program of prostration before capitalism for the Marxist program of the Trotskyists. Like most renegades, Vannier departs behind a shower of pretentious phrases about his devotion to – socialism! But we can see what they are worth when we examine the “positive” proposal he advances after rejecting Marxism:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Only by a rational and methodical scrutiny of the lessons of the past and of the present possibilities will we be enabled to work effectively toward preparing a future. Whoever is content at this late date to go on repeating the basic hypothesis [of Marxism] without advancing some new and decisive argument in its favor scarcely merits a hearing. Proposed solutions may well be widely divergent; only mutual criticism will make possible an intelligent choice. But in such an endeavor nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Now there’s a real program of action for you, and one that’s bound to strike a sympathetic note among a considerable body of tired radicals and disillusioned intellectuals – a perpetual discussion society. A discussion society, where everybody can get together and chew the fat interminably; where nobody will have to do anything more difficult than talk to his heart’s content and maybe listen to some other fellow’s foolish ideas; in fact, where nobody will have to do anything at all – while the world goes to bell on wheels. Meanwhile, what about the struggle against war and militarization and capitalist barbarism? It is too much to expect that the capitalists will call a truce in their offensive against labor while the discussion continues. But that doesn’t bother Vannier because according to his view what goes on in the class struggle doesn’t matter anyhow; the only thing that really counts in “preparing for a future” is to have a debate.<br>
</p>
<h4>Ultimate Logic</h4>
<p class="fst">The ultimate logic of the Vanniers is this: If the workers cannot take and hold power, obviously it is foolish for them to try. Not only is it foolish, but it is harmful; in general, nothing is more harmful than to attempt some great task, involving many sacrifices and the risk of many casualties, if it is certain to fail. Renegades sharing Vannier’s concepts therefore can be expected to advise the workers not to make such a foolhardy attempt as to aim at power; and in essence that is what Vannier is doing now. But that is only a part of the picture.</p>
<p>History has shown that the class struggle continues, and that under modern conditions it inevitably moves in the direction of a working class attempt to take power, no matter how many intellectuals desert the struggle and no matter what kind of advice they give the workers. At that point, the next step of the Vanniers develops into an attempt to persuade the workers not to revolt by means other than words. In short, the logical outcome of the belief that the workers cannot take power is the attempt to stop them from trying – that is, support of the counter-revolution.</p>
<p><em>Let no one say this is factional exaggeration. History proves that every group in the labor movement that started out with skepticism about the political capacity of the working class, ended by becoming the mortal enemy of the socialist revolution. Take the Social Democrats. – what is the basis of their policy of class collaboration with the capitalists? The very same concept being spread by the Vanniers, that the workers don’t have what it takes to achieve progress through their own forces. Or examine the treachery of the Stalinists. What was the root of the beginning of the Stalinist degeneration in Russia if not the idea that the workers outside of Russia could not be depended on to overthrow their oppressors, and therefore “socialism in one country” and international class collaboration were necessary in order to defend the workers’ state?</em></p>
<p>Neither the Stalinist nor Social Democratic disbelievers in the workers’ capacities started out with full-fledged counter-revolutionary practices. No, they worked their way up to them gradually. First they abandoned the Marxist method of analyzing capitalism and the development of the struggle between the workers and capitalists; then they succumbed to skepticism; and finally they tried to fortify this skepticism by counter-revolutionary violence against the workers who had not become infected with this disease. And the Vanniers are travelling the same road.<br>
</p>
<h4>Nothing New</h4>
<p class="fst">Thus there is nothing new in Vannier’s “fundamental hypothesis” about the workers’ incapacity to establish socialism. It is a by-product of capitalist propaganda and pressure, reeking of ancient betrayals. Its infiltration, through weaklings and traitors, into the workers’ ranks serves only to demoralize the workers and strengthen the position of their exploiters. Marx and Engels had to contend with it in their day, and Lenin and Trotsky had to overcome its influence before they could lead the workers to the first successful proletarian revolution. We too must be on the alert to recognize and combat its deadly effects, wherever and whenever it arises.</p>
<p>The science of Marxism furnishes us with the only realistic appreciation of class struggles, forces and developments – the basis of our unshakable confidence in the ability of the workers to rescue the world from the abyss to which capitalism is driving it. <em>Let us use the weapons placed at our disposal by Marxism not only to expose the reactionary and capitalist-inspired concepts of the renegades but to prepare the conditions for the socialist revolution which, in passing, will definitively settle iii action all questions about the political capacity of the working class.</em></p>
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George Breitman
Renegades Peddle Old Poison
(24 May 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 21, 24 May 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In previous articles we have demonstrated the spuriousness and shallowness of the arguments presented by Jean Vannier in the March Partisan Review to justify his flight from Marxism. To complete the account it is necessary only to add a few remarks about the history of the small group associated with Vannier which left the Socialist Workers Party.
Vannier’s evolution into an open enemy of Marxism is a culmination of the revisionist fight which his friends, Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, launched in the SWP five years ago. It is worth recalling that this evolution was predicted, from the very beginning of the fight, by the defenders of Marxism in the party, long before the revisionists themselves understood what they were doing and where they were going and while they were still protesting indignantly that they had no fundamental differences with the Trotskyist program.
Revisionist Path
Vannier and his friends began – as all petty-bourgeois revisionists do; as their most immediate predecessors, the faction led by James Burnham and Max Shachtman, did in 1939 – by succumbing to the powerful pressure of capitalist ideology, which is always most quickly and deeply felt by intellectuals isolated from the life and struggles of the working class. They had become infected with a disease – one might call it the occupational disease – of intellectuals in the labor movement: A tendency to overestimate the power of decaying capitalism and to despair over the ability of the working class to fulfill its socialist mission.
This defeatist mood was accompanied by a violent barrage of charges against the SWP leadership’s “dogmatism,” “bureaucratism,” “bad morals,” etc., by which was meant the leadership’s determination not to yield an inch to the revisionist onslaughts. Then the revisionists began to denounce the “sheep-like” docility and lack of “independent thought” among the membership of the party, who had been steeled by their experience with the Burnham-Shachtman school of revisionism to give a cool reception to all other varieties.
Consequently, long before the Revisionist program had fully unfolded, the Vannier-Morrow-Goldman faction was confined to a small handful of skeptics, who realized their views had no future in the SWP. One section therefore split away before the 1946 SWP convention even had a chance to pass judgment on them. Headed by Goldman, they entered the halfway house of despair, apprehension and “honest pessimism,” the Shachtmanite Workers Party, from which some of them have already departed for the purpose of supporting American imperialism. The other section, influenced by Vannier and Morrow, drew back at the last minute from the futile prospect of wasting their time in the WP and, still avowing their allegiance to Marxism, decided to go it on their own.
Fundamental Conflict
Now, Vannier’s Partisan Review article dots the i’s and crosses the t’s. The real dispute, it shows, was not over isolated formulations or even the nature of party organization, but over fundamental concepts of Marxism. His spiteful reference to “the degeneration of the Trotskyite Fourth International” is merely an admission of the-revisionists’ failure to substitute their program of prostration before capitalism for the Marxist program of the Trotskyists. Like most renegades, Vannier departs behind a shower of pretentious phrases about his devotion to – socialism! But we can see what they are worth when we examine the “positive” proposal he advances after rejecting Marxism:
“Only by a rational and methodical scrutiny of the lessons of the past and of the present possibilities will we be enabled to work effectively toward preparing a future. Whoever is content at this late date to go on repeating the basic hypothesis [of Marxism] without advancing some new and decisive argument in its favor scarcely merits a hearing. Proposed solutions may well be widely divergent; only mutual criticism will make possible an intelligent choice. But in such an endeavor nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action.”
Now there’s a real program of action for you, and one that’s bound to strike a sympathetic note among a considerable body of tired radicals and disillusioned intellectuals – a perpetual discussion society. A discussion society, where everybody can get together and chew the fat interminably; where nobody will have to do anything more difficult than talk to his heart’s content and maybe listen to some other fellow’s foolish ideas; in fact, where nobody will have to do anything at all – while the world goes to bell on wheels. Meanwhile, what about the struggle against war and militarization and capitalist barbarism? It is too much to expect that the capitalists will call a truce in their offensive against labor while the discussion continues. But that doesn’t bother Vannier because according to his view what goes on in the class struggle doesn’t matter anyhow; the only thing that really counts in “preparing for a future” is to have a debate.
Ultimate Logic
The ultimate logic of the Vanniers is this: If the workers cannot take and hold power, obviously it is foolish for them to try. Not only is it foolish, but it is harmful; in general, nothing is more harmful than to attempt some great task, involving many sacrifices and the risk of many casualties, if it is certain to fail. Renegades sharing Vannier’s concepts therefore can be expected to advise the workers not to make such a foolhardy attempt as to aim at power; and in essence that is what Vannier is doing now. But that is only a part of the picture.
History has shown that the class struggle continues, and that under modern conditions it inevitably moves in the direction of a working class attempt to take power, no matter how many intellectuals desert the struggle and no matter what kind of advice they give the workers. At that point, the next step of the Vanniers develops into an attempt to persuade the workers not to revolt by means other than words. In short, the logical outcome of the belief that the workers cannot take power is the attempt to stop them from trying – that is, support of the counter-revolution.
Let no one say this is factional exaggeration. History proves that every group in the labor movement that started out with skepticism about the political capacity of the working class, ended by becoming the mortal enemy of the socialist revolution. Take the Social Democrats. – what is the basis of their policy of class collaboration with the capitalists? The very same concept being spread by the Vanniers, that the workers don’t have what it takes to achieve progress through their own forces. Or examine the treachery of the Stalinists. What was the root of the beginning of the Stalinist degeneration in Russia if not the idea that the workers outside of Russia could not be depended on to overthrow their oppressors, and therefore “socialism in one country” and international class collaboration were necessary in order to defend the workers’ state?
Neither the Stalinist nor Social Democratic disbelievers in the workers’ capacities started out with full-fledged counter-revolutionary practices. No, they worked their way up to them gradually. First they abandoned the Marxist method of analyzing capitalism and the development of the struggle between the workers and capitalists; then they succumbed to skepticism; and finally they tried to fortify this skepticism by counter-revolutionary violence against the workers who had not become infected with this disease. And the Vanniers are travelling the same road.
Nothing New
Thus there is nothing new in Vannier’s “fundamental hypothesis” about the workers’ incapacity to establish socialism. It is a by-product of capitalist propaganda and pressure, reeking of ancient betrayals. Its infiltration, through weaklings and traitors, into the workers’ ranks serves only to demoralize the workers and strengthen the position of their exploiters. Marx and Engels had to contend with it in their day, and Lenin and Trotsky had to overcome its influence before they could lead the workers to the first successful proletarian revolution. We too must be on the alert to recognize and combat its deadly effects, wherever and whenever it arises.
The science of Marxism furnishes us with the only realistic appreciation of class struggles, forces and developments – the basis of our unshakable confidence in the ability of the workers to rescue the world from the abyss to which capitalism is driving it. Let us use the weapons placed at our disposal by Marxism not only to expose the reactionary and capitalist-inspired concepts of the renegades but to prepare the conditions for the socialist revolution which, in passing, will definitively settle iii action all questions about the political capacity of the working class.
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<h2>Anthony Massini</h2>
<h1>How a German Worker Might Answer<br>
Manifesto of German-Soviet Committee</h1>
<h3>(21 February 1942)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_08" target="new">Vol. VI No. 8</a>, 21 February 1942, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee is reported in the <em>Daily Worker</em>, Feb. 10, to have made public a manifesto to the “workers of all the countries enslaved by Hitler Germany to aid the struggle against the Nazi war machine by all means at their disposal to bring nearer the day of their liberation.” The manifesto was signed by N.M. Shvernik, secretary of the All-Union Central Council of the USSR, and Sir Walter Citrine, general secretary of the British Trades Union Congress.</strong></p>
</td>
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<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst">The following is a letter which an advanced worker in Germany might write in reply to the manifesto of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee:</p>
<p class="fst">Dear Sirs:</p>
<p class="fst">It is not necessary for you to remind the German masses cf “all the crimes, animal cruelty and conscious destruction and devastation committed by Hitlerism”. The German people, and particularly the German working class, know better than anyone else what it means to here to live under the Nazi regime.</p>
<p>They have known what it means for more than nine years now, ever since Hitler was able to take power with the permission and connivance of the German capitalists and the aid of British capitalism.</p>
<p>Nor is any real purpose served by your calling on the German masses to “struggle against Hitlerism”. In the first place, the revolutionary workers of Germany have all along fought against Hitlerism as best as they could, and they are trying to take advantage of the war to intensify this struggle and bring wide sections of the masses into it.</p>
<p>They did this before Hitler took power, when he was preparing to take power and when the German Shverniks were disorienting them with their treacherous theory that the reformist Socialist Party and the trade union leaders were the immediate enemy, and when the German Citrines were telling them that the only way to fight Hitler was by supporting the same Hindenburg who later appointed Hitler as Chancellor.</p>
<p><em>They did this after Hitler came to power, when many of their leaders ran away to other countries and left them to live under the Nazi terror and they did this during the period of the Stalin- Hitler Pact too when the Stalinists ceased all opposition to Hitler and placed the sole responsibility for the war on British and French capitalism.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>What Do You Want Them to Fight For?</h4>
<p class="fst">In the second place, your appeals to the German workers to fight against Hitlerism are ineffective not only because they remember where your advice led them in the past but also because of what you want them to fight for now.</p>
<p>They still remember what happened after the last war when the Treaty of Versailles was imposed on them by the victorious Allies. They remember the starving children and unemployment and bankruptcy and inflation that resulted from it. And there are many who understand that it was this Versailles Treaty and its results which laid the ground for the rise of fascism and made possible the victory of the Nazis.</p>
<p>Do you really believe that you can get broad masses of the German people to struggle against Hitlerism only so that another Versailles and the rise of another Hitler will follow?</p>
<p>The German people are seeking a way of overthrowing Hitler, but they will listen only to people and parties who tell them how to do it so that they will not again have to go through the experiences of 1918-1942. What do you tell them, you gentlemen who have proclaimed your adherence to the Atlantic Charter, the shrivelled caricature of Wilson’s 14-Points?</p>
<p><em>“The hour is approaching,” you write in this manifesto, “when the armed forces of all the Allies will come to your aid to overthrow the yoke of Hitlerism.” But what will you substitute for this yoke? The trade union bureaucrats have not answered this question anywhere – but the spokesmen of the “senior partners of the United Nations” have already made abundantly clear what they intend, and none of you have voiced any objections.</em><br>
</p>
<h4>Perspectives of the “United Nations”</h4>
<p class="fst">Germany is to be disarmed after the war and “kept disarmed” this time. The United States and Britain intend to “police” the world for the next hundred years. Do you think that you are going to get the German workers to fight Hitlerism so that this will be the outcome? Perhaps you do, but the German workers do not feel that they are criminals who have to be policed.</p>
<p>And what perspectives do the masters of the United Nations hold out for Germany itself? Your Anthony Eden told the world on Jan. 4 – and he was repeating an idea put forth by Stalin in his speech of Nov. 7 – that “the trouble with Hitler was not that he was a Nazi at home. The trouble with him was that he would not stay at home.” Again you did not object. But the German workers do not believe that Hitler was all right as long as he stayed “at home” and oppressed them.</p>
<p>What can they expect will happen inside of Germany if it is left up to Eden and Stalin whose chief complaint is that “you can’t do business with Hitler abroad.” What reason have they for expecting that Hitler will not be replaced by a Quisling who may for some time be content to remain at home and oppress the masses?</p>
<p>We revolutionary opponents of German capitalist reaction and war are doing everything we can to successfully conclude the “struggle against Hitlerism” of which you speak. But our task is made all the more difficult by you and your kind.</p>
<p>For when the German masses see the perspectives you hold out to them in the name of a struggle against Hitlerism, it becomes easier for Hitler and Goebbels to convince or frighten them with their propaganda that a defeat for Germany inevitably means another Versailles.<br>
</p>
<h4>You Make the Job Harder</h4>
<p class="fst">When we tell the German workers to organize for the workers revolution against their oppressors, they want to know what about the British workers, will they help them or will they join with the British capitalists to put down the German revolution ?</p>
<p><em>We tell them that the British masses will support such a revolution, and that it would inspire them to renew the struggle against their own oppressors – but how hard it is to convince them when the official spokesmen of the British working class endorse the perspectives of the Atlantic Charter!</em></p>
<p>You tell the German masses in your manifesto that “the liberation of all freedom-loving peoples will come with the utter defeat of Hitlerite Germany.”</p>
<p><em>But how can they believe it when they see with their own eyes and ears that the British government refuses to grant freedom to the “freedom-loving peoples of India and Africa, and that the British preferred to lose vast sections of their empire in the Far East to even granting the colonial peoples in those countries the right to arm and defend themselves?</em></p>
<p>Whatever your intentions are, gentlemen, your manifesto is of no help whatever to the struggle of the German masses against their capitalist oppressors. If it will help anyone, it will help Hitler who is desperately trying to convince the people that the only outcome of the war can be either his victory or the victory of another Versailles.<br>
</p>
<h4>Distinction Between Britain and USSR</h4>
<p class="fst">But let me make one thing clear about my criticism of Stalinist policies. We German revolutionists who bitteily oppose Hitlerism see a great difference between the war of Great Britain and the war of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Britain is fighting a war to maintain its empire and the right of the British capitalists to exploit that empire. It is a reactionary war, just as the war of the German capitalists to seize parts of that empire and exploit it themselves is a reactionary war.</p>
<p>But the war of the Soviet Union is a just war, a progressive war, a war worthy of the support of the workers of the world. The USSR is still a workers state, cruelly degenerated under the Stalinist bureaucracy, but still a state where the means of production have been and remain nationalized, and where no capitalists are able to exploit the masses or conduct a war for their own profit. Despite Stalin and against Stalin, we defend the So viet Union and the conquests of the October Revolution, and we try to get the German masses to understand that they too must come to the defense of the work ers state.</p>
<p><em>This task is difficult enough as it is because of the rule of Stalinism, which repels the masses. But it becomes ten times as difficult when Stalin and his Shverniks themselves try to identify the war of the Soviet Union with the war of Great Britain, when Stalin too endorses the Atlantic Charter and the war aims of Churchill and Eden.</em></p>
<p>And when in your manifesto you say that the war of Great Britain as well as the Soviet Union is “a just war”, you help to confuse the German worker.’ still further. Instead of awakening and organizing sympathy for the Soviet Union, you succeed in repelling the sympathies of those German workers who would gladly fight for a workers state but would never support a war of British capitalism.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Kind Of Manifesto That Is Needed</h4>
<p class="fst">Your manifesto declares; “On behalf of the 30,000,000 workers organized in Soviet and British trade unions our Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee calls upon you to intensify the struggle and exert your efforts to hasten the overthrow of Hitlerism.”</p>
<p>I have told you why it is useless and ineffective and how it is harmful. The only kind of manifesto that will arouse and inspire the German masses will be one that does not play with talk about “the overthrow of Hitlerism” but shows the German masses that the workers outside of Germany are ready to help them replace Hitlerism with socialism. Such a manifesto would say:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“German workers and soldiers! We extend our solidarity to the first victims of German fascism.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“We repudiate the Atlantic Charter and all treaties and agreements aimed at penalising the German people for the crimes of the German ruling class.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“We are fighting for the establishment of Workers’ and Farmers’ Governments throughout the world.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“We intend to forever abolish war by the creation of a World Socialist Federation of free nations collaborating with each other economically and politically against poverty and for the security of all peoples.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“We call upon the German workers to join us in this struggle and promise all our aid to the German people in their revolution against capitalist war and reaction.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“We will not permit anyone to aid the German capitalists against such a revolution or to deprive the German masses of the benefits of such a revolution.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">We German revolutionists are waiting for a manifesto of this kind to come from the spokesmen of the workers outside of Germany. Meanwhile we are continuing our efforts to arouse the German masses against Hitlerism. But we have no illusions that the manifesto we want will be forthcoming from the Citrines and Shverniks or that the revolution against Hitlerism will be achieved with their assistance.</p>
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Anthony Massini
How a German Worker Might Answer
Manifesto of German-Soviet Committee
(21 February 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 8, 21 February 1942, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee is reported in the Daily Worker, Feb. 10, to have made public a manifesto to the “workers of all the countries enslaved by Hitler Germany to aid the struggle against the Nazi war machine by all means at their disposal to bring nearer the day of their liberation.” The manifesto was signed by N.M. Shvernik, secretary of the All-Union Central Council of the USSR, and Sir Walter Citrine, general secretary of the British Trades Union Congress.
*
The following is a letter which an advanced worker in Germany might write in reply to the manifesto of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee:
Dear Sirs:
It is not necessary for you to remind the German masses cf “all the crimes, animal cruelty and conscious destruction and devastation committed by Hitlerism”. The German people, and particularly the German working class, know better than anyone else what it means to here to live under the Nazi regime.
They have known what it means for more than nine years now, ever since Hitler was able to take power with the permission and connivance of the German capitalists and the aid of British capitalism.
Nor is any real purpose served by your calling on the German masses to “struggle against Hitlerism”. In the first place, the revolutionary workers of Germany have all along fought against Hitlerism as best as they could, and they are trying to take advantage of the war to intensify this struggle and bring wide sections of the masses into it.
They did this before Hitler took power, when he was preparing to take power and when the German Shverniks were disorienting them with their treacherous theory that the reformist Socialist Party and the trade union leaders were the immediate enemy, and when the German Citrines were telling them that the only way to fight Hitler was by supporting the same Hindenburg who later appointed Hitler as Chancellor.
They did this after Hitler came to power, when many of their leaders ran away to other countries and left them to live under the Nazi terror and they did this during the period of the Stalin- Hitler Pact too when the Stalinists ceased all opposition to Hitler and placed the sole responsibility for the war on British and French capitalism.
What Do You Want Them to Fight For?
In the second place, your appeals to the German workers to fight against Hitlerism are ineffective not only because they remember where your advice led them in the past but also because of what you want them to fight for now.
They still remember what happened after the last war when the Treaty of Versailles was imposed on them by the victorious Allies. They remember the starving children and unemployment and bankruptcy and inflation that resulted from it. And there are many who understand that it was this Versailles Treaty and its results which laid the ground for the rise of fascism and made possible the victory of the Nazis.
Do you really believe that you can get broad masses of the German people to struggle against Hitlerism only so that another Versailles and the rise of another Hitler will follow?
The German people are seeking a way of overthrowing Hitler, but they will listen only to people and parties who tell them how to do it so that they will not again have to go through the experiences of 1918-1942. What do you tell them, you gentlemen who have proclaimed your adherence to the Atlantic Charter, the shrivelled caricature of Wilson’s 14-Points?
“The hour is approaching,” you write in this manifesto, “when the armed forces of all the Allies will come to your aid to overthrow the yoke of Hitlerism.” But what will you substitute for this yoke? The trade union bureaucrats have not answered this question anywhere – but the spokesmen of the “senior partners of the United Nations” have already made abundantly clear what they intend, and none of you have voiced any objections.
Perspectives of the “United Nations”
Germany is to be disarmed after the war and “kept disarmed” this time. The United States and Britain intend to “police” the world for the next hundred years. Do you think that you are going to get the German workers to fight Hitlerism so that this will be the outcome? Perhaps you do, but the German workers do not feel that they are criminals who have to be policed.
And what perspectives do the masters of the United Nations hold out for Germany itself? Your Anthony Eden told the world on Jan. 4 – and he was repeating an idea put forth by Stalin in his speech of Nov. 7 – that “the trouble with Hitler was not that he was a Nazi at home. The trouble with him was that he would not stay at home.” Again you did not object. But the German workers do not believe that Hitler was all right as long as he stayed “at home” and oppressed them.
What can they expect will happen inside of Germany if it is left up to Eden and Stalin whose chief complaint is that “you can’t do business with Hitler abroad.” What reason have they for expecting that Hitler will not be replaced by a Quisling who may for some time be content to remain at home and oppress the masses?
We revolutionary opponents of German capitalist reaction and war are doing everything we can to successfully conclude the “struggle against Hitlerism” of which you speak. But our task is made all the more difficult by you and your kind.
For when the German masses see the perspectives you hold out to them in the name of a struggle against Hitlerism, it becomes easier for Hitler and Goebbels to convince or frighten them with their propaganda that a defeat for Germany inevitably means another Versailles.
You Make the Job Harder
When we tell the German workers to organize for the workers revolution against their oppressors, they want to know what about the British workers, will they help them or will they join with the British capitalists to put down the German revolution ?
We tell them that the British masses will support such a revolution, and that it would inspire them to renew the struggle against their own oppressors – but how hard it is to convince them when the official spokesmen of the British working class endorse the perspectives of the Atlantic Charter!
You tell the German masses in your manifesto that “the liberation of all freedom-loving peoples will come with the utter defeat of Hitlerite Germany.”
But how can they believe it when they see with their own eyes and ears that the British government refuses to grant freedom to the “freedom-loving peoples of India and Africa, and that the British preferred to lose vast sections of their empire in the Far East to even granting the colonial peoples in those countries the right to arm and defend themselves?
Whatever your intentions are, gentlemen, your manifesto is of no help whatever to the struggle of the German masses against their capitalist oppressors. If it will help anyone, it will help Hitler who is desperately trying to convince the people that the only outcome of the war can be either his victory or the victory of another Versailles.
Distinction Between Britain and USSR
But let me make one thing clear about my criticism of Stalinist policies. We German revolutionists who bitteily oppose Hitlerism see a great difference between the war of Great Britain and the war of the Soviet Union.
Britain is fighting a war to maintain its empire and the right of the British capitalists to exploit that empire. It is a reactionary war, just as the war of the German capitalists to seize parts of that empire and exploit it themselves is a reactionary war.
But the war of the Soviet Union is a just war, a progressive war, a war worthy of the support of the workers of the world. The USSR is still a workers state, cruelly degenerated under the Stalinist bureaucracy, but still a state where the means of production have been and remain nationalized, and where no capitalists are able to exploit the masses or conduct a war for their own profit. Despite Stalin and against Stalin, we defend the So viet Union and the conquests of the October Revolution, and we try to get the German masses to understand that they too must come to the defense of the work ers state.
This task is difficult enough as it is because of the rule of Stalinism, which repels the masses. But it becomes ten times as difficult when Stalin and his Shverniks themselves try to identify the war of the Soviet Union with the war of Great Britain, when Stalin too endorses the Atlantic Charter and the war aims of Churchill and Eden.
And when in your manifesto you say that the war of Great Britain as well as the Soviet Union is “a just war”, you help to confuse the German worker.’ still further. Instead of awakening and organizing sympathy for the Soviet Union, you succeed in repelling the sympathies of those German workers who would gladly fight for a workers state but would never support a war of British capitalism.
The Kind Of Manifesto That Is Needed
Your manifesto declares; “On behalf of the 30,000,000 workers organized in Soviet and British trade unions our Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee calls upon you to intensify the struggle and exert your efforts to hasten the overthrow of Hitlerism.”
I have told you why it is useless and ineffective and how it is harmful. The only kind of manifesto that will arouse and inspire the German masses will be one that does not play with talk about “the overthrow of Hitlerism” but shows the German masses that the workers outside of Germany are ready to help them replace Hitlerism with socialism. Such a manifesto would say:
“German workers and soldiers! We extend our solidarity to the first victims of German fascism.
“We repudiate the Atlantic Charter and all treaties and agreements aimed at penalising the German people for the crimes of the German ruling class.
“We are fighting for the establishment of Workers’ and Farmers’ Governments throughout the world.
“We intend to forever abolish war by the creation of a World Socialist Federation of free nations collaborating with each other economically and politically against poverty and for the security of all peoples.
“We call upon the German workers to join us in this struggle and promise all our aid to the German people in their revolution against capitalist war and reaction.
“We will not permit anyone to aid the German capitalists against such a revolution or to deprive the German masses of the benefits of such a revolution.”
We German revolutionists are waiting for a manifesto of this kind to come from the spokesmen of the workers outside of Germany. Meanwhile we are continuing our efforts to arouse the German masses against Hitlerism. But we have no illusions that the manifesto we want will be forthcoming from the Citrines and Shverniks or that the revolution against Hitlerism will be achieved with their assistance.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>Balconies, Bathtubs and Change</h1>
<h3>(2 February 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_05" target="new">Vol. XII No. 5</a>, 2 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The Militant</strong> is on the ball when it comes to covering. Truman’s strikebreaking, encouragement of high prices, responsibility for witch hunts, fomenting of war, etc. But it seems to me to have fallen down on the job of reporting a story that has many people yelling bloody murder – the celebrated case of Truman and his balcony. In the interests of keeping the record straight and enabling our readers to take a position on this question, let’s review the main issues involved.</p>
<p>First, there is the question of Truman’s whole method. To quote Harold L. Ickes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“With all the ‘hush-hush’ of the Pendergast Gang getting ready to steal an election in St. Louis, President Truman, an honored and dues-paying member, has suddenly announced that a contract has been let for mutilating the south facade of the White House by building thereon a scabrous balcony. President Truman has not asked the people what they think about his proposed liberty with their White House. He simply tells them what he proposes to do.”</p>
<p class="fst">He did consult the Commission of Fine Arts, but when its members unanimously voted against it, Truman stubbornly went ahead just the same.</p>
<p>Second, there is the question of the balcony’s cost, which will run to $15,000. An angry suburbanite matron explodes: “The inconsistency of using money for unnecessary government expenditures while sending, Congress a message dwelling on the dangers of inflation!”</p>
<p>Third, where is the $15,000 coming from? Frederick Muhlenberg (R., Pa.) took the floor in the House of Representatives and pointed out:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The president has indicated that he will use maintenance and repair funds for a capital improvement. It is just as illegal for him to do this as it would be for any one else to switch funds from the specific purpose for which they were authorized to another purpose.”</p>
<p class="fst">Fourth, and most frequently heard, is the complaint that Truman’s procedure in this matter constitutes a violation of “good taste, propriety and historical feeling” because no temporary tenant of the White House has the right to change the structural appearance of this “national shrine.”</p>
<p>Truman apparently can endure charges of secret maneuvering, arrogance, promotion of inflation, misuse of funds, etc. But the charge that he doesn’t have an “historical feeling” got under his skin, and he heatedly defended himself against it at a press conference. As a matter of fact, he said, historic precedent is on his side. Those who are condemning him are the same kind of people who wanted to lynch the wife of President Fillmore when she installed the first bathtub in the White House way back in the 1850’s. With that argument Truman felt he had neatly floored his critics. After all, who is going to take a stand against bathtubs?</p>
<p>Well, there you have the facts and you are free to draw your own. conclusions. Personally, I think we can all agree with one aspect of Truman’s argument: It’s about time some changes were made in the White House. And I am not talking about architecture.</p>
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John F. Petrone
Balconies, Bathtubs and Change
(2 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 5, 2 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Militant is on the ball when it comes to covering. Truman’s strikebreaking, encouragement of high prices, responsibility for witch hunts, fomenting of war, etc. But it seems to me to have fallen down on the job of reporting a story that has many people yelling bloody murder – the celebrated case of Truman and his balcony. In the interests of keeping the record straight and enabling our readers to take a position on this question, let’s review the main issues involved.
First, there is the question of Truman’s whole method. To quote Harold L. Ickes:
“With all the ‘hush-hush’ of the Pendergast Gang getting ready to steal an election in St. Louis, President Truman, an honored and dues-paying member, has suddenly announced that a contract has been let for mutilating the south facade of the White House by building thereon a scabrous balcony. President Truman has not asked the people what they think about his proposed liberty with their White House. He simply tells them what he proposes to do.”
He did consult the Commission of Fine Arts, but when its members unanimously voted against it, Truman stubbornly went ahead just the same.
Second, there is the question of the balcony’s cost, which will run to $15,000. An angry suburbanite matron explodes: “The inconsistency of using money for unnecessary government expenditures while sending, Congress a message dwelling on the dangers of inflation!”
Third, where is the $15,000 coming from? Frederick Muhlenberg (R., Pa.) took the floor in the House of Representatives and pointed out:
“The president has indicated that he will use maintenance and repair funds for a capital improvement. It is just as illegal for him to do this as it would be for any one else to switch funds from the specific purpose for which they were authorized to another purpose.”
Fourth, and most frequently heard, is the complaint that Truman’s procedure in this matter constitutes a violation of “good taste, propriety and historical feeling” because no temporary tenant of the White House has the right to change the structural appearance of this “national shrine.”
Truman apparently can endure charges of secret maneuvering, arrogance, promotion of inflation, misuse of funds, etc. But the charge that he doesn’t have an “historical feeling” got under his skin, and he heatedly defended himself against it at a press conference. As a matter of fact, he said, historic precedent is on his side. Those who are condemning him are the same kind of people who wanted to lynch the wife of President Fillmore when she installed the first bathtub in the White House way back in the 1850’s. With that argument Truman felt he had neatly floored his critics. After all, who is going to take a stand against bathtubs?
Well, there you have the facts and you are free to draw your own. conclusions. Personally, I think we can all agree with one aspect of Truman’s argument: It’s about time some changes were made in the White House. And I am not talking about architecture.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2>
<h1>Potential Fellow-Draftees!</h1>
<h3>(28 February 1949)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_09" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 9</a>, 28 February 1949, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Bill Mauldin anticipated my complaint with one of the cartoons included at the end of his latest book, <b>Back Home</b>. It shows a feeble, evil-eyed old man, sitting in a well-padded easy chair at his club, brandishing his cane and quavering in his loudest tones: “I say it’s war, Throckmorton, and I say let’s fight.” It’s one of my favorite Mauldin cartoons, but it never draws a chuckle out of me.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to substitute an old-age theory of war for the tried and tested Marxist analysis of the capitalist causes of war. And I am not proposing a panacea that would abolish war without abolishing its capitalist causes. All I am doing is calling attention to a certain relationship that gripes me to the point of fury.</p>
<p>My blood began to boil faster when I read in the Feb. 19 <b>N.Y. Times</b> of a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on further Marshall Plan appropriations. Charles A. Eaton, Republican congressman from New Jersey, was quoted as saying: “Why don’t we send our soldiers into Greece and clean up the guerrillas?” He was also quoted as saying that “we might save ourselves some money” if American troops accompanied dollars to Greece, and that “sooner or later we’re going to have to do something there.”</p>
<p>It didn’t make me feel any better to learn from the same story that the administration spokesman to whom these remarks were directed evaded giving a straight answer, and that after the hearing Eaton told reporters “his question was not meant to be an outright recommendation that American troops take the field against the guerrillas. He contended, however, that it was a question that should undergo debate, and that he had posed it for that reason.”</p>
<p>Running to the nearest <b>Who’s Who</b>, I soon found my worst suspicions confirmed. Eaton, it disclosed, was born Mar. 29, 1868 – less than three years after the end of the Civil War. During the Spanish-American War, when he was 30, he didn’t get a taste of that well-known character-building Army life because he was employed as a Baptist minister. When the First World War came, he was 49 and still earning his keep by preaching. Some ministers went into the Army as chaplains, but Eaton did his bit in New York as head of the national service section of the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation from Nov. 1917–1919. This experience must have broadened his horizons because he gave up preaching and became head of the “industrial relations department” of National Lamp Works, General Electric, and describes himself in <b>Who’s Who</b> as an “expert in industrial relations,” among other things. In 1925 he was rewarded with a seat in Congress, was present at the age of 73 to vote “aye” on U.S. entry into the Second World War, and today, on the eve of his 83rd birthday, hopes to be around to do the same on World War III.</p>
<p>I respect old age as much as the next man and I don’t want to pit one age group against another, but it seems to me incidents of this kind ought to infuriate other young men as much as it does me. Potential fellow-draftees! I say that sooner or later we’re going to have to do something here so that we won’t have to “save ourselves some money” by a trip to Greece. Unfortunately, I have not yet worked out a suitable plan. At first I thought of forming a League to Counteract Belligerent Dotards, except that Attorney General Clark would quickly stick it on his “subversive” list. Does anybody else have a plan?</p>
<p>And please don’t tell me that young capitalist politicians also preach war and follow policies designed to bring it about – I know it as well as you do. But with them I at least have the small satisfaction of hoping a few may not be able to escape the draft and a taste of their own medicine. While the worst that can happen to the Eatons, if they live long enough to see what they so fervently desire, is a quick end from an atomic bomb. And I say that’s too good for them.</p>
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John F. Petrone
Potential Fellow-Draftees!
(28 February 1949)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 9, 28 February 1949, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Bill Mauldin anticipated my complaint with one of the cartoons included at the end of his latest book, Back Home. It shows a feeble, evil-eyed old man, sitting in a well-padded easy chair at his club, brandishing his cane and quavering in his loudest tones: “I say it’s war, Throckmorton, and I say let’s fight.” It’s one of my favorite Mauldin cartoons, but it never draws a chuckle out of me.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to substitute an old-age theory of war for the tried and tested Marxist analysis of the capitalist causes of war. And I am not proposing a panacea that would abolish war without abolishing its capitalist causes. All I am doing is calling attention to a certain relationship that gripes me to the point of fury.
My blood began to boil faster when I read in the Feb. 19 N.Y. Times of a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on further Marshall Plan appropriations. Charles A. Eaton, Republican congressman from New Jersey, was quoted as saying: “Why don’t we send our soldiers into Greece and clean up the guerrillas?” He was also quoted as saying that “we might save ourselves some money” if American troops accompanied dollars to Greece, and that “sooner or later we’re going to have to do something there.”
It didn’t make me feel any better to learn from the same story that the administration spokesman to whom these remarks were directed evaded giving a straight answer, and that after the hearing Eaton told reporters “his question was not meant to be an outright recommendation that American troops take the field against the guerrillas. He contended, however, that it was a question that should undergo debate, and that he had posed it for that reason.”
Running to the nearest Who’s Who, I soon found my worst suspicions confirmed. Eaton, it disclosed, was born Mar. 29, 1868 – less than three years after the end of the Civil War. During the Spanish-American War, when he was 30, he didn’t get a taste of that well-known character-building Army life because he was employed as a Baptist minister. When the First World War came, he was 49 and still earning his keep by preaching. Some ministers went into the Army as chaplains, but Eaton did his bit in New York as head of the national service section of the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation from Nov. 1917–1919. This experience must have broadened his horizons because he gave up preaching and became head of the “industrial relations department” of National Lamp Works, General Electric, and describes himself in Who’s Who as an “expert in industrial relations,” among other things. In 1925 he was rewarded with a seat in Congress, was present at the age of 73 to vote “aye” on U.S. entry into the Second World War, and today, on the eve of his 83rd birthday, hopes to be around to do the same on World War III.
I respect old age as much as the next man and I don’t want to pit one age group against another, but it seems to me incidents of this kind ought to infuriate other young men as much as it does me. Potential fellow-draftees! I say that sooner or later we’re going to have to do something here so that we won’t have to “save ourselves some money” by a trip to Greece. Unfortunately, I have not yet worked out a suitable plan. At first I thought of forming a League to Counteract Belligerent Dotards, except that Attorney General Clark would quickly stick it on his “subversive” list. Does anybody else have a plan?
And please don’t tell me that young capitalist politicians also preach war and follow policies designed to bring it about – I know it as well as you do. But with them I at least have the small satisfaction of hoping a few may not be able to escape the draft and a taste of their own medicine. While the worst that can happen to the Eatons, if they live long enough to see what they so fervently desire, is a quick end from an atomic bomb. And I say that’s too good for them.
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