Re: [A-List] The national question

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 9/25/03 3:00:10 PM Pacific Daylight Time, mstainsby@xxxxxx 
writes:



At 08:37 AM 9/25/2003, Michael K wrote:

>Revisiting the national question might be a good place to start anyway.
>*snip*
>howsaboutit? Does anyone want to start a serious study of the national
>question, rather than merely trade slogans?
>
>Michael



The national and colonial question is complex in America. There is no such 
things as the "national question" any longer because the various non-sovereign 
people are colonized by imperialism - lock, stock and barrel. In America there 
are various national and colonial questions. One has to look at the 
multinational state structure of the American Union and who resides within it. There is 
the entire region of the Southwest taken from Mexico in war. There remains 
direct colonies like Puerto Rico and the plantation areas of the old South. There 
is even the Philippines that has a more or less shame state structure. 

There are of course the various bands of the Native peoples. There is the 
Alaskan Eskimo, the Aleutians and Hawaiian peoples. There are the peoples of 
Samoa, Canton and Enderbury Islands, Guam, Pacific Islands under US administration 
- 60 Islands. Howland, Baker, Jarvis and Wake Islands, the Corn Islands, the 
Swan Islands, the Virgin Islands - long ago raped by imperialism and the 
people of Appalachia - the white "mountain peoples" of the South. 

These peoples are not Anglo American. The theory problem is that the white 
people of North and South are Anglo-American but not the same and so is the 
dominate group in Canada - Anglo-American. There is the question of various 
peoples being at somewhat different phases of national development. For instance I 
would call the various Native Bands in the USNA "advanced national groups" - 
not to minimize there peculairties between them but to describe a distinct 
historical formation. 

Other than myself and a handful of communist in America no one understand 
such concepts and think that the word nation means race. The Native Bands are not 
a race but a historically evolved peoples. However they choose to define 
themselves is all right with me, but I am writing from the standpoint of how the 
communist proletariat in the North would approach the question. Their 
unconditional rights to organize their life activity as they see fit is without 
question. 

There is of course the African American people, who began development as a 
people prior to the consolidation of the internal unity of what is called the 
old South and the secessionist movement leading to the Civil War in America. In 
respects to the African American people, the national and colonial question is 
a flat out question of capital and the overthrown of bourgeois property. The 
African American people - as a people, are basically proletariat, but so is 
the Anglo American people. The difference is that the latter are the oppressors 
of the former. 

I was invited to partiscipate in a 40th Anniversary of Malcolm X "Message to 
the Grass Roots" to be held in Detroit in November and asked to write the tone 
of the meeting. Below is the first gew paragraphs of what is a 13 page 
booklet. 


"âMESSAGE TO THE GRASS ROOTSâ 
The Malcolm X We Knew!!
 
 
Never - have so few, done so much harm - to so many, as the Bush Jr. 
administration. As the military budget tops $400 billion dollars a year, what would 
Malcolm's message to the grass roots say today? The Malcolm we knew would 
probably point out that one-fourth of the military budget - $100 Billion, a year 
could end hunger and poverty on earth and fix a heck of a lot of potholes.  
Another $100 Billion a year could turn the hell on earth Bush Jr. is creating, into 
a paradise, with enough change left over to solve the crisis in our schools; 
most of the health care problems and end âbad hair daysâ for most people on 
earth. 
 
The Malcolm we knew would speak â without question, of the social position of 
the African American people and the reason we remain at the bottom of the 
social ladder and working class in America. Where do we come from and where are 
we going? 
 
First as slaves - always as second-class citizens, poverty, and segregation 
has been our lot in American history. In the past, the heavy violent hand of 
âJim Crowâ made life unbearable behind the "CottonCurtain" and the police 
controlled industrial slums of the North.  The focus of the Freedom Movement has 
been always against murder, violence and terror, and to live as equal members in 
American society. Even when we disagree over tactics â separation or 
togetherness, no one disagrees about the goal of freedom. 
 
Freedom really means a government âof the people protectsâ that protects the 
economic and social well being of all its citizens. Freedom means to live 
without violence and terror, without the fear of little or no money or inadequate 
social services. Being forced â because of ones birth mark, to live in 
crime-infested neighborhoods that become dumping grounds for criminals in high and 
low places, is contempt for humanity - the citizens of ones own country. 
 
What made Malcolm X the man he was in November 1963?  What economic, social 
and political environment was Malcolm confronting that captured the desires and 
imagination of the masses and militants in industrial centers like Detroit? 
Why was Malcolm a beacon of light for millions? What voices from "the 
grassroots" - the streets traveled by our working class, did Malcolm hear that made him 
deliver his "Message To The Grass Roots"; - right here in Detroit, 40 years 
ago? (End)

Here is how communist speak to that section of the working class in motion, 
that happens to be concentration in an African American community. You address 
them as a class of workers, that express the form of oppression they face in 
the flesh. The CPUSA/Trotskyite cabal speak of a working class and a 
nationality movement. How on earth can people who are several generations industrial 
proletariat not know they are workers? 


Melvin P.