Re: [A-List] Re: Labor Nobility/5

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Lee Roberts
5/Labor Nobility

The Negro Question has been observed over a long period of time by generations of Marxist. Each generation has articulated the "Question," or rather could not but articulate the concrete "Question" based on the quantitative boundary that defined their particular phase/stage in the development of the industrial system of production - and, on the basis of the shape of the battle for equality and against terror and violence. The quantitative boundary that defines a particular stage in the development of the mode of production in material life is a question of theory. Policy or approach to the social struggle is informed by theory. 

Why is there an African American National-Colonial Question or "Negro Question" in the first place? What does it mean to combine the word "Negro" with the word "question?" What is the essence of the "question" if not the social position that a historically evolved people occupy in a system of social production and social life? 

One can approach the Negro Question from any number of standpoints or as this question appears to the various classes and strata in American society and history. The theoretical proposition - "glue," that unites the Marxist movement is the standpoint of the mode of production in material life. The mode of production in material life means the instruments, tools, machines and energy source that serve as the grid - infrastructure or platform, for a system of production and how people our organized to utilize - engage, production. How people are organized to engage production is called "social relations of production" and the former is referred to as "productive forces." 

The Negro Question is at all times bound up with a certain stage of development of the productive forces and how a people engage social production. The Negro people - African Americans, evolved from the class of slaves and not on the basis of feudal economic relations. That is to say, the Negro people as a people evolved and consolidated as a new people/class during the historic transition from agriculture to industry and on the basis of the shift from manufacture to industry.  

>From the standpoint of this class of slaves - proletarians in chains, every layer of society outside itself is privileged or bribed. How these privileges in society are dispensed or institutionalized through the bureaucratic order is immaterial to the fact of the existence of privilege and bribery. 

It is true that relative privilege existed within the class of slaves, with the greatest toil poured onto the backs of the cotton pickers as measured by their seven-year life expectancy as plantation workers. However, measuring social position within the slave class as a basis for examining American society past and present is a blind alley. The real question is this: how have this people/class evolved since their emancipation and with every successive stage in the expansion and quantitative completion of the industrial infrastructure? 

Since the Civil War, its aftermath and the defeat of Reconstruction, there has not existed a national democratic question as such on continental America.  For reasons of history American society has run ahead of the curve of world economic, social and political development and this has everything to do with America being colonized as a capitalist country.  What is the National Democratic Revolution? The National Democratic Revolution is the bourgeois revolution that occurs in relationship to feudal economic institutions and feudal landed property relations or what is called the transition from agriculture to industrial relations. This transition is a transition in the mode of production in material life. This battle for democracy meant the overthrow of feudal relations and reorganizing society on the basis of democracy - the right of the individual to freely sell his labor in the market, while defeating the heredity structures and institutions of feudal wealth and authority. 

The October Revolution remains the line of demarcation indicating a shift in the presentation and political resolution of the "National-Question." Let us isolate the first decade of the last century. 

If we were to start at the beginning of the past century, one would have to say that the social and economic position of the African American people in 1900 was almost as it had been under slavery. Disenfranchised, terrorized by pogroms that rivaled the Black Hundreds of Russia, economically at the very bottom of the social ladder, the Negro masses slowly gained consciousness of their collective plight. In this period of identity of interest, the rising Negro bourgeoisie, sharecroppers, intellectuals and proletariat began a struggle for equality. This was spelled out as a fight for seniority on the job, for an anti-lynch law, for a voting right act and for a comprehensive set of laws banning discrimination. The struggle that lay ahead for the Negro people was a cruel one. 

The absolute majority of African Americans not only resided in the South at this time, but also was economically riveted to the former plantation belt. As the result of the Civil War, Wall Street (Yankee Imperialism) now owned these productive forces - the large tracts of land formerly owned by the Slave Oligarchy, and were the source for financing development and production. Being under the economic domination of Wall Street is the meaning of the word colonialism in the era of finance capital and all the peoples of this area, irrespective of color, occupied the social position of colonials in relationship to the peoples of the imperial center. 

As USNA imperialism tightened its murderous grip on the colonies and especially the former plantation area of the South, the material standard of life of the Anglo-American people in the North began to rise. The non-exploiting classes knew instinctively that their material well-being was tied to the exploitation of the non-sovereign peoples. The exploited sections of the Anglo-American population and nation blocked with the imperialist in the rape of the South and the Negro masses. In the former plantation area allowing the whites to form the lynch mob and occupy the straw-boss position ensured that the cotton was still picked and stabilized the political control of this colonial area. 

If the Wall Street imperialist could not count on the support of the Anglo American workers of this historical period to brutally enforce job discrimination, housing and educational segregation and political disenfranchisement, the imperialist system could not exist. 

The imperialist bribery of the Anglo-American workers made it possible and profitable to brutally murder Negro women and children, to burn their houses and churches and to meet appeals for justice with an indescribably bloody violence. There can be no doubt that history will place a collective responsibility upon the Anglo-American people for the horrors of the lynch rope and burning stake of that period. The Leninist thesis of oppressed peoples and oppressing peoples, oppressed nations and oppressing nations and not simply oppressed and oppressor classes in the epoch of imperialism, was fully proven in life. 

The question of bribery, privilege and the labor aristocracy are not identical in scope and content, but inexplicably fused together as imperial rule. Make no mistake about this matter; the imperial people understand their historic block with their imperialist. Let us advance further in time to understand the social position of the Negro People and how the question of bribery, privilege and the labor aristocracy evolved in our country. 

The Northern Army was victorious on the battlefield and the South really never had a military chance of victory. The gigantic production capacity of the North compared to the South was coupled with the North having greater manpower reserves and political options. The military defeat of the slave oligarchy was never in question; rather it was a question of when. An agricultural society will never score a historic victory over an industrial society because it runs counter to the law of social development. The "less" barbarian always defeats the "more" barbarians, because "less" barbarian implies greater cultural and scientific development - greater industry or productive forces. In a few words, less reliance on human labor as a primary energy and productivity source, which requires oppression and exploitation. 

What dictated the post Civil War period called Reconstruction was the need to politically subdue the former Slave Oligarchy and the Southern elite in the non-military field and the citadels of political power. This scum of the earth, who after their defeat in military contest, showed up in Congress to claim their positions of political power! How would the scum of the earth - the former Slave Oligarchy, be politically defeated? The formula for the political defeat of the former Slave Oligarchy remains with us to this very day as the methods of control of the entire edifice of U.S. imperialism. 

The Northern interest controlled the South by politically controlling the African Americans. There are no hereditary institutions of political authority in America that mirror structures that grew up on the basis of feudal authority. One must run for political office and be elected or run for political office and then buy or steal the election. The only way to break the political control of the Slave Oligarchy and the Southern elite was to give the newly freed slave the vote - a privilege that had been reserved for white peoples of means. Politically controlling the African American people was the basis for breaking the political independence of the Southern elite. As the independence was broken, the elite was forced by economic necessity to unite with their economic masters. Why? Because the basis of their privileges had been shattered in military combat. Freeing the slaves destroyed a significant conduit of capital accumulation. Overnight the primary physical component - the slave, of an economic order that created the symbolic representations of wealth - through exchange of real products, was liquated. Subduing the shattered Slave Oligarchy and the Southern elite was crucial to the carrying out of the revolution. Giving the freeman - the ordinary Joe, the vote was critical and this is what happened. 

This Ordinary Joe is not the "ordinary Joe" of the imperial peoples in this time frame, although history has moved in a way - over 100 years later, to make "ordinary" just plain old ordinary for the multitude. 

At the point of giving the black the vote and politically defeating the Southern ruffians - is my Yankee heritage showing?, the goals of Reconstruction was accomplished and it could be dismantled as a political and military institution. 

But the cotton still had to be picked. We can argue all day about American history but the fact of the matter is that a class - any class, cannot be liberated until a development in the mode of production takes place that replaces them as laborers and a reorganization of society takes place to allow the replaced laborers to be housed, clothed, feed and enjoy the culture of a given society. The inescapable truth of our history is that there is nothing in the make up of the capitalist class that would lead one to a conclusion that they are willing to bestow on the ex-slave and his descendants, privileges and rights not enjoyed by the Anglo-American peoples. 

The unity of Northern and Southern political and economic interests was the foundation for the counterrevolution that drove the African American people back into a near slave-like condition. The labor aristocracy first arose in the North and consolidated itself on the basis of the emergence of American financial and industrial capital. The question of privilege and bribery is a peculiar aspect of our history and fused with capitalist slavery and the subsequent evolution of the descendants of these slaves North and South. 

It should be remembered that we have not yet entered the period of the mechanization of agriculture, the destruction of the closed colonial system worldwide or the era of the Second imperialist World War. Much has changed but to speak of the question of the labor aristocracy outside the questions of the colonies of imperialism is to slap several generations of Marxist in the face. 

Everyone does not have the capacity to turn the other cheek and risk getting another jawbone broke.