Re: Re: American history and Race Theory 4

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

The presentation of the national colonial question in respect to the direct descendants of the slaves that Marx refer to as the Negro race, has been observed over a long period of time by generations of communist. The  presentation of this question is much broader than simply the use of the word race in the ideological sphere. Race as a coherent theory by the section of Marxists, who Comrade Charles claims have a conception of race and a "race and gender" approach to American history, have battled over this question for eighty years. 

Society is formed on the basis of the unity of the productive forces and the production relations. From this materialist approach - not race or gender, it is easier to understand the national colonial question in respect to the African American people. 
 
The African American people are not a nation. The African American people, as a distinct historically evolved people have referred to themselves as Colored in one period of history; Negro in another, Black and Afroâs in still another and today refer to themselves as black, black Americans or simply African Americans. Thus my use of the terms Colored, Negro and African American indicates a quantitative reconfiguration in the production forces or the relations of production during the last two hundred years. Language and word sublates â are transformed to expressed a higher development or understanding that is riveted to the advance of science and production or quantitative and qualitative changes in relations of production. 
  
The African American people are not a nation. This must be repeated over and over because the color psychosis grips the Marxist movement - or rather the "Marxist with an authentic concept of race," and the people of our country. Bourgeois theories of race abound in the ideological realm, although no serious Marxist can lay claim to a division of homo-sapien-sapien into distinct biological-genetic qualitative differences. 
 
Further, the Marxist movement in our country was compelled under the tremendous prestige of Lenin and then Stalin to adopt the outer trappings of Marxism as a revolutionary science in the hands of the proletariat. The Negro National Colonial Question was forced down the resisting throat of the Communist Party USA by way of the 1928 and 1930 Comintern documents on this important question. 
 
The nation or national formation that evolved in the South of the United States of North America, is a historically evolved stable community of Colored people, along with the historically developed Anglo-American people, who lived in the old slave holding area of the South âthe Black Belt, and the economically dependent area of the Southern USNA. 
 
This nation, which evolved from the specifics of slavery, is 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. This is the classical Marxist definition of a nation written by Stalin, edited by Lenin and propagated by the Third Communist International. 
 
In our country there is also the Anglo American nation proper. The general frontiers of the Anglo-American nation are the Canadian frontier to the north to the Atlantic sea coast o the east; proceeding from the Canadian frontier south to the beginnings of the areas associated with the plantation belt in Delaware. The border region then proceeds west along the northern edge of the area associated with the plantation system. This line proceeds generally west and south in an inverted arc into Texas and south into the Gulf of Mexico. The western frontier proceeds south from the Canadian border along the Pacific Coast to the area generally associated with the struggles of the Mexican national minority. The border then proceeds in a northeasterly direction to the north of Denver, connecting to the Gulf of Mexico to the east of San Antonio, Texas. Within this national territory, there are numerous autonomous areas that belong to the Native Bands of peoples, whose economic, territorial and political rights have yet to be restored. 
 
The exact delineation of the frontier must be set by economic and population factors, which cannot be known today. The proletariat in power will address this issue. 
 
The military defeat of the various Native People in the USNA and the Western hemisphere creates a situation where the Americas can be divided into the general categories of Anglo and Hispanic America. These general areas represent a base of Anglo or Hispanic culture for the emergence of national culture that was conditioned by the evolution of history in each specific country.  
 
What complicated a mature Marxist understanding of the national colonial question are the incredible strength, overwhelming presence and determining power of USNA imperialism. The pressure of our imperialist bourgeoisie in the ideological sphere is unprecedented in human history. It is our attempt to unravel the thick ideology of the bourgeoisie and fetishes of all types that push us to Marxism as a standpoint or approach. 
 
In our collective history the Northern states, manufacturing the necessities for the slave states, grew as an appendage top the South. As the U.S grew, the North entered into an economic revolution. From manufacturing to industry. This happened only in the North. In Europe, the shift to industry caused great dislocation and tremendous struggle between the towns (the bourgeoisie) and the countryside (feudalist). A major part of this dislocation was caused by the outflow of serfs into the towns as they were removed from the land. In America, all this was avoided â in the main, by importing the industrial workers from Europe. The native-born American was family farmers and stayed as such for another century. The economic and social revolution in the North proceeded quite smoothly â compared with Europe, and caused not world changing social upheaval. This relatively peaceful transition from pre-industrial to industrial formations has no parallel. 
 
The development of giant industrial enterprises and a new "concentration of money" - indicating an expansion of industrial capitalist relations, did call into question the political dictatorship of the agricultural South. Industry, more productive than manufacture, cause the North to break its economic dependence upon and come into political contradiction with the South. 
 
The South had a strangle hold on political power in the country. It became known as âthe slave powerâ through the constitutional provision that slaves counted as 3/5 of a person â the biological theory of race, for appropriating representation in Congress. The North, more populous in free, voting age males, was constantly out-voted by the slave power and its Northern supporters. The Southern dominated Senate, Supreme Court and Presidency refused to pass harbor legislation, railroad, and canal and tariff appropriations. Such legislation was necessary to the growth of industry in the North, but not in the interest of the slave owning agricultural South. The new industrial productive forces in the North came into conflict with the productive relations of slavery in the South. 
 
Such historic contradictions of economic forces cannot be fought out in e economic base of society. They are fought out in the social superstructure as ideological and political struggle. Changes in the productive forces set the stage for the inevitable conflict that became the Civil War. The North wanted to complete its economic expansion and development â national development, on the basis of industry and the South goal was to reorganize the entire hemisphere on the basis of slavery, due to soil erosion, crop rotation,etc. 
 
The North could not defeat the South so long as the South had the vast manpower reserve of slaves. In theory every physically capable Southern white could become a front-line soldier since the support work â the rear, was primarily done by slave labor. Many people in the North were unwilling to fight for the Union with slavery; they advocated letting the South secede. For the North to win the war, slavery had to be abolished. 
 
The industrial empire of the North was based on the cotton of the South. It was not in the interest of the industrial-financial oligarchy of the North to abolish slavery. Their aim was to abolish the political supremacy of the slave power. Yet, the war could not be won without the abolition of slavery. 
 
This is the economic and political condition under which the Colored masses in slavery caught a âbreak.â The point is that two distinct national formations went to war and the defeated national formation became a colony of the victory. 
 
What on earth has a theory of race got to do with this unraveling of the class factors of our history, which any worker in any country can understand and be armed in the class struggle. 
 
The standpoint of the proletarian Marxist is different from that of the Marxist theorist of an authentic concept of race. Where the Marxist speak of classes and class contradiction the petty bourgeois ideologist speak of multiracial organizations, repudiate the national-colonial question altogether and adopt outright metaphysics - subjective idealist standpoint, as the approach to the class struggle and history.  Allow me to âjump through historyâ using summations that are part of the generation inheritance of Marxism - "my brand," in our country.  
 
Society is formed on the basis of the unity of the productive forces and the production relations. Repeating this formula is not dogmatism or "workerism" because Comrades are blind by "racial theory" and forget. From this materialist approach it is easier to understand the national colonial question in respect to the African American people. 
 
The mechanization of Southern agriculture â we are prohibited from âseeingâ color as primary in our analysis and approach to the working class as communist/Marxist, resulted in a massive migration of Negroes from the Black Belt. Millions of Southern whites also fled the sharecropping system but this fact is always overlooked by the Marxist of an authentic concept of race. This coincided with the outbreak of the Second Imperialist War, in which Japan took the lead in 1934 â if memory serves me correct. The migration reduced the huge majority of blacks relative to whites in the South, but it did not affect the colonial position of the area. 
 
Right now today â as this is written, this area of the historic slave oligarchy still has the worst schools, the poorest health care, the greatest unemployment, the lowest standard of living, the least unionization and a huge concentration of military bases. It is still the foundation of national political reaction. It is still owned and exploited by Northern financial interest. It is still a colony. 
 
The African American people are not a nation or race, but evolved as a people in the context of slavery and come from the nation defeated in the Civil War and colonized by Wall Streetâ New York not Atlanta Georgia, Imperialism. 
  
Comrade Charles and I express the polarity within American Marxism on the national colonial question and his conception is race theory or an authentic Marxist conception of race versus the standpoint of "my brand" of Marxism, which at least attempts to dispel the ideological forms with ultra clear class concepts fused with the color factor in history. 

Marxist should at least try and unravel the concepts of the bourgeoisie in the ideological realm that justify imperial exploitation and oppression. The idea of "one Nation Under God with liberty and justice for all" is the calling card of the bourgeoisie in the ideological realm. In the hands of the petty bourgeois intellectual this stinking bourgeois ideology is transformed into "One nation with racial minorities."  The US multinational state houses nations and "autonomous regions" and advanced national groups like the Alaskan Eskimos. 

Speaking of "autonomus regions," I don't quite get what the hell the state of Texas is, and still love the flavor of Louisiana, although I have no intention of visiting Huntsville or Anglo penitentiary.  

The color factor in our history is exactly that, a factor of identification and not a theory of race. In Marx hand the Negro race meant a class. Your "hand" is very different from the hand of Marx. 
 
 
Melvin P.