Re: [Marxism] RE: African American Liberation and Social Revolution 5

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

The reactionary ideologists of the bourgeoisie understand very well that the 
cultural arena is the front line in the struggle to isolate and continue to 
oppress and exploit the African American. This front line is the means by which 
to isolate the communist class. With the death of Jim Crow there is no way the 
bourgeois state can attack the African American people as a people. This 
would engage thirty five million people and set them in motion. This would in 
turn 
excite the Mexican national minority, Chicano and increasingly large section 
of whites, who increasingly live together. 
 
It becomes difficult to speak of African American Liberation and social 
revolution in the language of the past. My âBlack History Monthâ book for 
2004 was 
rereading the âChicano Manifestoâ by Armando B. Rendon, a gift given to be 
before relocating to Texas. The Chicano women who presented this gift was 
recently elected President of her local union.  
 
âThe reason all Chicanoâs never make it out of High School in Texas is 
because they all fail Texas history.â 
 
We laughed.
 
Historically evolved cultural specificity manifest national character. During 
the 1930s the vast majority of American whites (especially in the new nation 
that arose in the North of the American Union), knew nothing about the blacks 
except what they saw from Al Jolson and absorbed from the ideological sphere. 
This was the era of the Comintern and their 1928 and 1930 documents on the 
Negro Question. Compared to the documents written by American communist the 
Comintern position was breath taking. Sides were quickly taken, with a large 
section of communist facing expulsion for non acceptance. 
 
âThe Comintern does not have the right to force a political proposition on us.
â
 
This was not true because the grouping that affiliated with the Third 
Communist International agreed to accept its general line. Even Trotsky lashed 
out at 
the ignorance of the American communist concerning the national question in 
their own back yard. The Comintern position on the Negro Question did not 
express and was never written to express the will of the African American 
people, 
but rather the attitude of the Anglo-American proletariat in the North in 
respects to the plantation south, where the majority of blacks resided. 
 
Marxism and the National Question arose as the politics and theory of the 
advanced thinkers in the imperial centers towards the non sovereign peoples and 
not the other way around. The voice of the black elite and African American 
communists was isolated and contained within the prison of Jim Crow. 
 
The Comintern was correct. This was a period of enormous violence against 
blacks and the Red Summers were fresh memories. The âredâ was not communism 
but 
the blood of the blacks. The Gravey Movement had arisen and in opposition to 
this violence. During this period there can be no talk of the political 
separation of the petty bourgeois producers, with the proletariat and the black 
bourgeoisie. Jim Crow made such separation impossible. 
 
It would be decades for the whites to slowly unravel their view and contempt 
for the black masses. This perception was basically the image of the happy go 
lucky darky, not unlike that of the English worker towards the Irish. Here was 
a man tap dancing his ass off and dancing down the street with no job, no 
money, clothes tattered and torn, but happier than a mutherfucker. This strikes 
me as funny today but in the 1920 and 30s it was no laughing matter. 
 
Everyone knows that what made the South southern was the black slaves and 
what made the North Northern were waves of European immigrants. From the 
standpoint of the Northern masses the South and âthose peopleâ â black 
and white, 
were country. Not simply rural because there were large rural areas in the 
North. 
 
The slow nationalization of that which was historically specific to the 
South, as it was riveted to the slave and his descendent, .took place in 
relationship to the successive waves of European immigrants in the North. It 
took 
perhaps two to three generations for the European immigrant to become 
Anglo-American 
and leave the body of traditions learned in the old country. The national 
character of the Anglo-American people of the North has always been different 
than that of the Anglo-American people of the plantation South. This barrier is 
being shattered on the basis of the nationalization of âNegroâ culture. 
Here 
is the meaning of the term âblack Angloâ used by many of our Chicano 
comrades. 
 
This evolving process contains its own dialectical logic that cannot be 
explained away. As the European immigrant became increasingly Anglo-American, 
the 
black masses in the South became increasingly African American, evolving on the 
basis of their reproducing and not waves of immigration. The absence of â
black immigrationâ and the pressure of whites â Jim Crow, formed the 
national 
character of the African American people, and it is this national character 
that 
has become the riveting factor of culture in the American Union, with healthy 
doses from the Mexican (âSpanishâ) and Indian peoples. That, which is 
Anglo-American â not simply Anglo-European, is the real basis of the American 
melting 
pot in the Anglo American nation â the North of the American Union. 
 
Here is how this was described over thirty years ago. 
 
âThe primary basis of culture in the Anglo-American Nation is English. In the 
development of the history of the nation successive waves of non-English, 
European people populated the USNA. On a primary level these non-English 
peoples 
were compelled to adopt the Anglo culture. In this process, the melting pot 
concept emerged. The various European peoples injected certain aspects of their 
national culture in the process of assimilating the Anglo. Specific aspects of 
the Anglo American culture evolved, chemically as well as mechanically mixing 
the aspects of the European, African and the Indian cultures.  
 
âThe other aspect of the development of Anglo-America was the concrete 
specific conditions that faced these English and Europeans upon their arrival 
in 
North America. They came from relatively developed nations, especially the 
English, but they were met in North America with a relatively low level of the 
productive forces and vast open land. In their struggle of conquest against the 
Indian peoples and in the harshness and isolation of frontier life, a specific 
national culture was developed on the Anglo-European base; thus it became not 
merely Anglo-European, but Anglo-American.â 
 
This description from 30 years ago remains sound and is based understood by 
comparing it with all the literature in the Marxist movement in the time frame 
in which it was written. The evolution of the national character of the 
Anglo-American nation is the real issue, because white people are not just 
white in 
this modern day and age. 
 
This development and evolution is different from that of the Black Belt 
Nation. Here is how the black belt nation â the Negro Nation, was described 
30 
years ago.
 
âThe Negro Nation is that historically evolved stable community of Negro 
people, along with the historically developed Anglo-American minority, who live 
in 
the black belt and the economically dependent area of the Southern USNA. This 
nation, which evolved from the species of slavery, is a historically evolved 
stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, 
territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common 
culture. 
 
The nation is referred to as the Negro Nation because the base of that nation 
is the Negro people who evolved as a people prior to the evolution of the 
Negro Nation.â 
 
This was written over 30 years ago and no where does it state that black 
people every where in the American Union constitute a nation. At any rate the 
base 
of culture in the North was not the slave class. Compare this to everything 
written in America â 30 years ago, in respects to Marxism and the National 
Question. 
 
Marxism and the National Question is wonderful and written as a political pole
mic against the ideologist of the Second International. The methodology 
contained in Stalinâs writings was applied to America â not some dry 
lifeless 
formulation. The evolution of the Anglo-American nation in the North is of 
course 
more complex in respects to the African American Question. It is my Marxists 
and communist duty to resolve this question another step. I am deeply aware of 
why the Chicano has embraced the term âblack Angloâ and I like it because 
it 
is who I am. 
 
In the process of the formation of the Anglo-American nation, roughly 30,000 
black slaves were freed in 1790 when the market crashed. Slavery in the North 
was not profitable. The North was still evolving as an appendage to the South. 
What became of this group of 30,000 human beings? They of course did not go 
South into slavery, although the conditions of some individuals were such that 
they sold themselves into slavery. Nor could this group of people be 
classified as a national minority in the Marxist meaning of the word. The time 
frame 
has to be remembered along with the curve of development of the industrial 
system. 
 
During slavery a steady trickled of blacks escaped to the North along the 
underground railway. Some went to Canada and began another evolution. The 
situation becomes complex because the people of Canada are also Anglo-American 
but 
Canadian. After Emancipation hoards of the former slaves moved North and the 
logic of Jim Crow compelled them to seek refuge in the back alleyâs and lofts 
of 
the areas inhabited by the descendants of this colored mass. This colored mass 
evolved into a national minority as each wave of immigration from South to 
North intensified. 
 
The description of the African American in the North as a national minority 
is not a measure of ones oppression but a description of a journey from the 
plantation areas of the South to the industrial slums of the north. It is this 
Negro National minority proletariat of the North that has always constituted 
the 
bridge between the Anglo-American proletariat and the fighting colonial 
masses. The bridge could not take shape on the basis of the Chicano because of 
the 
economic and social development of the North. The Chicano is the important 
bridge into the Western hemisphere and rivets the social revolution in this 
hemisphere. 
 
The South did in fact develop in front of the north and the new nation that 
arose was in the North â after the extermination and isolation of the Indian. 
The question of the Southwest presents another story, that the Marxist of my 
generation grappled with and fundamentally resolved on the level of theory and 
politics. This is not my task today, although there is nothing complicated 
about it. The relentless pursuit of work by the Mexican national minority and 
Chicano has altered the landscape of America forever. The bronzing of America 
is 
fact. 
 
Rather my task is to write the final chapter in the pages of a âNegro Workers 
Notebook.â  That this chapter is written by a âblack Angloâ shows the 
evolution of the national factor in American history. The only notebook 
available to 
us to day is that of the proletariat. History itself has liquidated the last 
period. 
 
 
Melvin P. 
 
âA door step where death never comes.
Spread across time, till my time never done.
And Iâm never done,
Walk, tall, why. Ever run. 
When they moveth I ever come.â 
 
 
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