Re: [A-List] National Factor . . . certain aspects .../ Chin Up

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>>Robert Williams return to America can serve as a general line of
demarcation in the evolution of the National Factor in the American Union . . . or the
Chicano Moratorium or even the Asian American political Alliance . . . because
all these political events are tied together in history. The definitive
political juncture used by the group of communists workers I was a part of is the
Watts Rebellion of 1965 and the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 because these
expressed an internal political rupture within the African American Peoples Movement
North and South. In the South the political rupture manifested itself in
Birmingham 1963.<<

Comment

The American Indian Movement (AIM) should have been included as part of the
era above because it was formed in 1968 and also the various Puerto-Rican
organizations in New York. From the standpoint of the advance sector of the
proletariat in the North (its Marxists core) . . . the internal political rupture
within the African American Liberation Movement and its maturing as a cutting
edge is what defines the specific alignment of political forces we face today.

Los Angeles 1992 crystallized the new features of the American revolution and
reveals the absolute evening up of the revolutionary process in the American
Union.

However over the past twenty years the most important political contributions
to the working class within the multinational state of America has come from
Puerto-Ricans and Mexicans. The direct colonial status of Puerto Rico places
the Puerto Rican immigrant in a different social relations and make them the
direct link between the revolutionary class here and the revolutionary masses of
South America and the Caribbean.

As in all aspects of America's political life color is going to play a big
role. The form of US imperialists domination of the Western hemisphere means
language becomes a salient feature of the social struggle that cannot be
discounted. As has happen with most immigrants, there was a real effort to turn the
Puerto Ricans against the blacks. This was somewhat successful years ago when
the bulk of Puerto Ricans immigrants were very light skinned. They like the
Irish and Italian immigrants before they felt the best way NOT to be treated as
"Negro" was to join the whites in the social oppression.

Well, . . . opening up all the doors for massive immigration from Puerto Rico
brought this sad state of affairs to an end as each successive wave of
immigrants became darker and darker and an intimate part of the Anglo-American
proletariat or the working class of the North. The working class of the North . . .
called the Anglo American proletariat consists of everyone in the North
without regard to color. It is called the Anglo American working class and not the
white working class because there is no separate black working class or rather
it base of formation was European immigrants.

This is not the case of the South and its core or the southwest of the
American Union.

The darker and poor Puerto Rican immigrants facing "dark," "foreign" and
"language barriers" threw their lot in with the blacks in New York and Chicago.
Their passionate struggle against white chauvinism helped transform America.

Since Mexico is a large country with a unique political history and
revolutionary tradition, their immigration has played a different role in shaping the
history and political life of the American UNION. In an unprovoked aggression
the US . . . slave oligarchy . . . took Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California
and Nevada from Mexico's territory. Without this territory the US would have
face Europe and probably fell under its domination and control. There is an
unspoken agreement from the Peace Treaty - 1847, that the US would maintain more
than less open borders forever.

The history of the Southwest is extremely complex and I for one have no
desire whatsoever to try and recount this history on the basis of a dozen or so
books. Nor is it my job or responsibility. Rather, the issue is the attitude of
the advanced Marxist core of the working class of the North in regard to the
Southwest.

The problem is that the left chauvinists conceive of the American Union as
"their country" and call the color factor the "National Question" in respects to
the African American and a color and language question in respects to the
Southwest. From the standpoint of the Anglo American proletariat of the North and
the evolution of the communist movement itself, most of the revolutionaries
of the North presented the question of the Southwest as not a question of the
Southwest but rather Mexican immigration or what is called the Mexican National
Minority workers and agricultural laborers. But what of the Mexicans that
have a continuous lived history in the Southwest running back hundreds if not a
thousand or more years of history or those who appear as Mexican Nationals . .
. not a minority . . . to the proletariat in the North?

When revolutionaries call for international unity and world revolution it is
best that they engage the revolutionary process right here at home. There is
no other way to express an understanding of the National Factor. Quoting Lenin
means nothing and one should consider consulting a generation of Mexican and
Chicano Marxist on this question.

Here are some of the questions that emerged on the basis of the Chicano
Moratorium. In respects to the Southwest, what is very clear from the standpoint of
the North is that Mexican workers unite with the workers here, then those
first in Mexico and then in Central America. Only these workers . . . not us in
the North of the American Union, can politically and physically unite us with
the on going Central and South American revolution.

The role of the Mexican worker and the Chicano is very complex and critical.
In their relentless quest for work the Mexican has forever altered the
composition of the working class of the North.

Marxism has never faired well in the American Union and Marxism and the
National Question has faired even worse. History itself blocked an understanding of
the National Question because the Communist/Marxist movement and all the
various political organizations arose on the basis of successive waves of European
immigrant and picked up steam on the basis of the forward movement of a
section of the industrial proletariat in the North. There was no Indian Question,
Mexican Question or Negro Question in Europe and our communist movement was
founded on the basis of federated groups using various European language press.

In history the most advance thinkers and revolutionaries in the North,
especially the blacks are eternally glad that the Third International compelled the
communists in America to abolish the language press and write in English. For
reasons not at all hard to understand a section of the proletariat in the
Southwest has never shared this enthusiasm. The Chicano Moratorium changed this
history forever. The Chicano Moratorium is to the Southwest what Watts 1965 and
Detroit 1967 is to the North of the American Union.

What is indisputable is that the Mexcian/Chicano are a historically evolved
stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory,
economic life and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture, that
continues to alter the social life of the American Union.

The Division

The polarization within the Marxists movement concerning the presentation of
the National Question is not a matter semantics or definition. One has to ask
why the absolute majority of communists and Marxists of the oppressed peoples
and most poverty stricken sectors of the proletariat in the North, South and
Southwest . . . as a block . . . divide on this question and generally side
with Stalin's theory precepts?

One has to ask why the absolute majority of communists and Marxists of the
oppressed peoples and most poverty stricken sectors of the proletariat in the
North, South and Southwest . . . as a block . . . divide on this question and
generally display a very different attitude towards China and her continuing
revolutionary process?

Max Elbaum in his "Revolution in the Air" . . . a book worth owning . . .
describes this as Third World Marxism in trying to unravel the decade of the late
1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His web site offers a very useful chronicle of events
from 1954 - 1992.
http://www.revolutionintheair.com/

The Trotskyite left calls what Elbaum calls Third World Marxism "Maoism" and
rejects in total how the revolutionaries of the last period formulate the
national and colonial question. As a general rule this Trotskyite left was
composed of Anglo American (white) students during the period under discussion and
point to their involvement in support groups of the colonial movements as their
legitimacy.

This fact of history is a historical question which expressed what sections
of the working class was in motion. During the 1920s and 1930s when the Slavic
workers galvanized the working class as a whole, this was the basis for the
further development and evolution of Marxism in America.

The shift of the 1960s and 1970s within Marxism in America took place under
the impact of the polarity that developed between the Communist Party of China
and the Soviet Union. Most of the political formation discussed in "Revolution
in the Air" was formed outside the old polarity that was Stalin/Trotsky or
the CPUSA and the SWP. What emerged was a radically different conception of the
social process than that of the CPUSA and the SWP.

>From the standpoint of the thousands of peoples involved in the social
movement of this period, who went over to Marxism, the issue of China is first of
all one of a colonial revolt led by ideological communists. Second . . .
defining oneself in the context of the actual polemics between the CPC and the CPSU
and lastly unconditional support of revolution and conditional support of
states.

>From the standpoint of practical politics the issue is always never going
beyond the actual ebbs and flows of the social movement and never demanding a
resolution of a social question in front of the people actually doing the
fighting. For instance it does not good to demand that the black masses break with
their bourgeoisie before it is politically possible.

Lets try and present this question as it is spoke about in history. The left
wing ideologue insists that social revolution and the overthrow of capital was
possible on a world scale during and after World War 1 . . . especially in
the American Union . . . and what stopped the over throw of the American
bourgeoisie was basically Stalinism. In my estimate Stalin or Lenin for that matter
had absolutely nothing to do with the inability of communists and the workers
to overthrow capital during this period.

The point is that the left wing ideologue looks at the surge of the Slavic
workers during this period and conveniently leaves out the actual social
movement in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada. That is to say that
the American bourgeoisie cannot be overthrown or rather the power of capital
overthrown on the basis of a section of the white workers and this is obvious at
this late date.

To demand that something happens that cannot happen because of a material
class alignment is dangerous. It serves no purpose to speak of China or our own
working class as an abstraction waiting to happen. It serves no purpose to
speak of the National Factor in the terms that Lenin framed the question because
that is not how it presents itself in American history.

The question of the Southwest is not a question of self determination of
nations as posed by Lenin. The question of the African American peoples and
Liberation Movement is not a question of self determination of nations as posed by
Lenin. The question of the various Indian nations is not an issue of self
determination of nations as posed by Lenin. In respects to the American Union and
Canada the Indian Factor cuts across all notions of state boundaries and
national frontiers.

In respects to the Southwest and African American Liberation we are not
dealing with a petty bourgeois mass at the front of the curve of industrial
development. In respects to the Black Belt we are not dealing with a mass of
sharecroppers as when the question was initially formulated under the heavy hand of
the Comintern.

The National Question is not an issue of word formulation but orientation of
political groups and an eye of real history and knowing where the front of
struggle reside.

One can of course speak of the role of the over seas Chinese and their impact
on American history. The concept "over seas Chinese" is not properly a
National Factor but rather a question of imperial world colonialism. I am no expert
on this question but in America anyone that has looked at the issue can see
that the political impact of the over sea Chinese in America became manifest in
a series of discriminatory laws in the 1880s and 1890s outlawing first opium
and closing off Chinese immigration and culminating in the 1914 Harrison Act.

Although there has been an unbroken wave of violence against the Chinese in
America . . . with an incident in Louisiana penetrating the national press . .
. the ice was broken in Detroit in what became called "Chin Up" . . . almost
one hundred years after the halting of Chinese immigration and the drug laws.
(Interesting Coca Cola was not initially outlawed with the first wave of
assault on the over sea Chinese.)

Detroit is at last . . . once against a cutting edge and not because it is
Black . . . but because of its industrial historical development.

The murder of Vincent Chin by hooligans is most disgraceful and galvanized
Chinese throughout America. The class configuration of the over sea Chinese in
the American Union is undergoing rapid change and the mergence of a proletarian
sector is imminent. Vincent Chin was murdered by two autoworkers who blamed
Japanese imports for the extreme downturns in the American automotive industry.
On a drunken big . . . these two maniacs thought Mr. Chin was Japanese,
chased him through the streets of Detroit in the early hours and beat him to death
with a baseball bat.

These precepts and understanding of history is called "Third World Marxism"
or "Maoism" and this is OK.

Now the group of communist I come from have been writing about these events
for 30 years and today there has matured an intellectual corp. that has won its
place in academic and is posed to recast American history as it occurred.

I ain't an academic historian and all ways forgive . . . and I forget which
allows me to forgive.

The political questions and issues in the American Union for the past 30
years has never been Stalin. This is the bogey man raised by the left wing front
men and ideological white chauvinists.

Chin Up!


Melvin P.