The Revolutionary Union has consistently upheld the right of Black people to self determination; but we have also stressed the position that:
The right of an oppressed nation to form an independent state is a democratic demand. While we uphold the right of self-determination, and recognize our responsibility to win support among the white workers for this right, we do not believe that the question of secession–in the ’Black Belt’ or in other parts of the country–is at the heart of the Black liberation struggle today ...
This is why Black insurrections today, south as well as north, are not peasant uprisings, but urban rebellions. This is why the Black and brown peoples’ movements are centered in the urban areas and focus, not around the right to land and a separate state, but around other democratic demands: an end to police occupation terror of their communities; open admissions to colleges and universities; Black and Third World study programs; community control of the schools; the opening of the professions and professionals training to Black and brown people; and the right to register, vote and elect public officials . . .
Exactly because the Black national question is in essence a proletarian question, Marxist-Leninist organizations among the Black people are increasingly playing a leading role in these struggles, directing the main blow clearly against the imperialist enemy and pointing the way to the unity of the entire proletariat. This new fact of Black and brown leadership of the proletarian struggle as a whole is shaking the entire structure of white supremacy which has been a strong prop of the U.S. ruling class in preventing the revolutionary unity of its victims. (Red Papers 2.)
But some so-called “revolutionaries”–mainly a collection of Trotskyite sects–not only deny the right to self-determination for Black people in general, they specifically deny the existence of white supremacy and denounce all struggle against it. Leading the way in this betrayal is the Trotskyite Progressive Labor Party.
Three years ago, in Red Papers 1, we pointed out that the essence of PL’s line–“all nationalism is reactionary”–is itself reactionary. It is fundamentally opposed to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought. At that time, we characterized PL’s line as classically Trotskyite– left” in form, right in essence–and added that PL’s opposition to all national liberation struggles meant that:
If PL could maintain their own declared principles consistently they would be compelled to denounce Mao and the Chinese.... We would prefer to see PLP take an honest position and criticize Mao instead of parading as exponents of Mao.
Within the past year or so, PLP has done just that. Recognizing the fundamental contradiction between its line and the Marxist-Leninist line of Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Communist Party, PLP has come out openly with an attack on China, dredging up in the process almost every worn-out Trotskyite slander (and even a few new variations on the old Trotskyite themes). Much of this attack centers on the national question. (For more background on PLP and classical Trotskyite opportunism, see the article in Red Papers 1, “Against the Brainwash.”)
PL’s line on the national question runs something like this: nationalism is always and everywhere the ideology of the bourgeoisie. It is therefore always and everywhere reactionary; like the bourgeoisie, it has no progressive aspects. Opposed to nationalism is socialism, which is the ideology of the workers. Any so-called ”anti-imperialist liberation struggle” that is not aimed immediately at socialism is a phony–“nationalist”–bourgeois swindle. (For those who think that this sounds like too crude a summation of PL’s line, we recommend the reading of any of PL’s latest documents, especially the “theoretical” document, “Road to Revolution, III.”)
For so-called “Marxists,” the flat statement that the bourgeoisie has no progressive aspects is inexcusable. It is a complete denial of historical materialism. It is directly contradicted by Marx and Engels. For example, in the Communist Manifesto they write that “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.” (Part One, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” p. 33, Foreign Language Press Edition, Peking, 1970.)
Of course, Marx and Engels are referring here to the triumph of capitalist society over feudal society, to the revolutionization of the productive forces brought about by the conquest of power and the rule of the bourgeoisie in its early pre-imperialist stage of development. This is why they point out, later in the Manifesto that the communists “in Germany . . .fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty-bourgeoisie (the small producers and traders in town and country.)” (Marx and Engels, ibid., Part Four: “Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties,” p. 75.) This is also why Marx and Engels personally fought to build the support of the American and European working classes for the U.S. bourgeoisie in the Civil War against the slavocracy.
But isn’t it true that, today, in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the bourgeoisie has been transformed into a completely reactionary force? This is true if we are speaking of the bourgeoisies of the imperialist countries, which retard and distort the development of the productive forces and the social relations both within the imperialist countries and within their colonies and semi-colonies. As the opposite of this, however,, the developing national bourgeoisies within the colonial and semi-colonial countries do not play a thoroughly reactionary role, exactly because their growth is stunted by imperialist domination.
The national bourgeoisie of these countries wants to drive out the foreign capitalists, in order to become the ruling class itself. The national bourgeoisie is, however too weak and deformed to stand up to imperialism over any long period of time; whenever it leads the national liberation struggle, it ends up capitulating to, or is crushed by, imperialism. But under the leadership of the proletariat and its Communist Party, the national bourgeoisie–or at least sections of it–can be united in anti-imperialist struggle.
From the point of view of Marxist philosophy, dialectical and historical materialism, PL’s bald statement that the bourgeoisie has no progressive aspects, that “you can’t do business with bosses, any bosses, any place, any time” (Challenge, May 21, 1971), is not only simple-minded nonsense, it is counter-revolutionary poison.
But what about the statement that nationalism as an ideology is bourgeois, fundamentally opposed to the ideology of the proletariat? It is true that you can find in Lenin’s writings, especially before the October Revolution, statements that sound like they support this view. For example, Lenin wrote in 1913:
Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the ’most, just,’ ’purest,’ most refined and civilized brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism.. ..
Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism–these are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great j class camps throughout the capitalist world, and express the two policies (nay, the two world outlooks) in the national question. (Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” Vol. 20, pp. 34, 26.)
Note that Lenin opposes proletarian internationalism to bourgeois nationalism, as the two fundamentally antagonistic world outlooks. At this time, the national question was still “confined to a narrow circle of questions, concerning primarily ’civilized’ nationalities” (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, “The National Question,” p. 70). This was the first stage of the national question, when it was politically a bourgeois question–the right of the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation to control its own market, to set up a separate state.
But even at this stage, Lenin insisted on the distinction between the nationalism of the oppressor nation (”Black Hundred” nationalism in Russia) and the nationalism of the oppressed nation. He made it very clear that:
Whoever does not recognize and champion the equality of nations and languages and does not fight against all national oppression or inequality, is not a Marxist, he is not even a democrat. (Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” Vol. 20, p. 28.)
And Lenin already drew the distinction–which was to become even more crucial with the further development of the national question–between the nationalism of the bourgeoisie and the aspirations of the working class of the same nation for national equality and for proletarian internationalism:
There are two nations in every modern (capitalist–RU) nation–we say to all nationalist-socialists. There are two national cultures in every national culture. (Lenin, ibid., p. 32.)
It was exactly because of their correct policy on the national question during this period-upholding the right of nations to self-determination while fighting for the unity of the proletariat of all nationalities–that the Bolsheviks received the support not only of the vast majority of the Great-Russian workers and peasants, but also of the masses of people among the oppressed nations. In ”The October Revolution and the National Question,” Stalin describes the harvest reaped from this correct policy:
The October Revolution only served to strengthen the alliance between the workers and peasants of the border regions and the workers and peasants of Russia, and inspired them with faith in the triumph of socialism. And the war of the ’national governments’ (bourgeois forces within the oppressed nations–RU) against Soviet power brought their conflict with these ’Governments’ to the point of a complete rupture, to open rebellion against them.
Thus was formed a socialist alliance of the workers and peasants of all Russia against the counter-revolutionary alliance of the national bourgeois ’governments’ of the border regions of Russia... .
Only now did it become obvious to all that the national bourgeoisie was striving not for the liberation of ’its own people’ from national oppression, but for liberty to squeeze profits out of them, for liberty to retain its privileges and capital.
Only now did it become clear that the emancipation of the oppressed nationalities was inconceivable without a rupture with imperialism, without the overthrow of the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nationalities, without the transfer of power to the labouring masses of these nationalities. (Stalin, “The October Revolution and the National Question,” Vol. 4, pp. 164, 166.)
This was within Russia itself. But remember that the imperialist war and the October Revolution transformed the national question on an international scale. The national question entered its second stage.
In the first stage–when the national question was an “internal state problem” of the capitalist countries, when, politically, it was a bourgeois-democratic question, part of the bourgeois revolution–the duty of communists in the oppressor nation was to uphold the right of self-determination (including secession) for the oppressed nation.
The duty of communists in the oppressed nation was generally, to oppose separation, to fight instead for the amalgamation of all nationalities and the direct unity (including organizational unity in the same trade unions and political parties) of the workers of both the oppressed nations and the oppressor nation.
In the second, international, stage of the national question, when it has become fully a colonial question, the direct organizational unity of the proletariat of the imperialist country and the colonial or semi-colonial country is impossible. It is no longer a question of the same, simultaneous revolution, but of separate, unevenly developing revolutionary movements in the imperialist countries and in the colonies and semi-colonies.
These movements are united against the same enemy: imperialism. So the strategy for linking them up is the alliance of the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries with the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. ”The victory of the working class in the developed countries and the liberation of the oppressed peoples from the yoke of imperialism are impossible without the formation and the consolidation of a common revolutionary front.” (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, “The National Question,” p. 76.)
With the October Revolution came the break in the imperialist chain of world economic and political domination. This, together with the fact that the colonies had been dragged into the First World War, roused the colonial peoples to anti-imperialist struggle. The national liberation movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries became a part of socialist world revolution, rather than the bourgeois revolution. So, as Mao Tsetung wrote in 1938:
Can a communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be ... in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism. (Mao, “Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War,” Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 196.)
Mao Tsetung developed the correct strategy not only for the Chinese Revolution, but generally for the revolutionary movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. What is this strategy? It is the New Democratic Revolution. The New Democratic Revolution proceeds through two distinct but directly related stages–the national-democratic stage and the socialist stage. During the first stage, the principal enemy is imperialism and its domestic agents, feudalism and bureaucrat (state-finance) capitalism. They must be swept aside in order to liberate the productive forces–especially the most important productive force, the people–in order to lay the material and ideological basis for the socialist transformation of society.
So long as semi-feudal exploitation, and the primitive methods of farming that characterize it, are maintained in the countryside, agriculture cannot provide the material basis for socialist industrialization, and the peasants cannot be mobilized to work collectively. So long as the foreign monopolies and the domestic state-capitalists distort industrial development to the needs of foreign capital, industry cannot be developed all-sidedly, it cannot become the leading factor in the transformation of the whole economy, and the working class cannot lead the) peasants and the people generally in building socialism.
This transformation can be carried through, in both industry and agriculture, only under the direction and control of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, led by the proletariat and its Communist Party. In essence, the People’s Democratic Dictatorship is a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even in Russia, Lenin characterized the dictatorship of the proletariat as “a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the working people, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of working people (the petty-bourgeoisie, the small-proprietors, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.) or the majority of these.” (Vol. 24, p. 311, Russian edition. Cited by Stalin in “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists,” Vol. 6, p. 380.)
In China during the first stage of revolution–against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism–this special form of class alliance was broader, including not only the peasants and urban petty-bourgeoisie, but also sections of the national bourgeoisie (capitalists who were not tied in with foreign capital). After the brief period of limited capitalist development following the seizure of nationwide power (capitalist development that was controlled and restricted under the domination of the state, headed by the proletariat and its Communist Party), the immediate task became the socialization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture. The proletariat bends every effort to win the national bourgeoisie and the well-to-do peasants to cooperating in this task; but where they resist the proletariat and its basic ally, the poor peasants, must exercise dictatorship over these essentially bourgeois forces. The revolution proceeds fully to the second, the socialist stage.
The theory of New Democratic Revolution–together with the theory of People’s War–developed by Mao Tsetung is now being applied in Vietnam and all of Indochina in the struggle against imperialism and its domestic agents. The struggle in the southern half of Vietnam, and in Laos and Cambodia, is still in the first stage, the stage of national-democratic revolution. It cannot reach the second stage–socialist revolution–until the imperialists and their puppets have been defeated.
But Progressive Labor Party demands that the immediate program of the struggle must be socialism. If PL’s line were put into practice, the proletariat would be deprived of invaluable allies in the struggle against imperialism, and, in fact, the struggle could never advance through the defeat of imperialism and its agents to the socialist .stage. Once again, PL’s line is classically Trotskyite–“left” in form, but right in essence. It is objectively in unity with the imperialists, who desperately try to destroy the united front of the Indochinese peoples. And because the Indochinese peoples refuse to offer themselves up for slaughter by adopting PL’s counter-revolutionary line, PL brands them, one and all, “revisionists” and “traitors.” We think it is very clear who are the real traitors.
In fact, the line that PL tries to use as a club to beat down the struggles of the people was defeated long ago in the Chinese (and the Russian) Revolution. After the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China, and the Chinese Communist Party entered into a united front with Chiang Kai-Shek to wage a war of national resistance, some so-called “super-revolutionaries” attacked the Chinese Communist Party as “traitors.” In his “Refutation of ’Left’ Phrase-Mongering,” Mao explained that:
Without a doubt, the present revolution is the first step, which will develop into the second step, that of socialism, at a later date. And China will attain true happiness only when she enters the socialist era. But today is not yet the time to introduce socialism ... the Chinese revolution cannot avoid taking the two steps, first of New Democracy and then of socialism. Moreover, the first step will need quite a long time and cannot be accomplished overnight. We are not Utopians and cannot divorce ourselves from the actual conditions confronting us.
Certain malicious propagandists, deliberately confusing these two distinct revolutionary stages, advocate the so-called theory of a single revolution . . . utilizing this ’theory’ they frantically oppose communism and the Communist Party... . Their real purpose is to root out revolution, to oppose a thoroughgoing bourgeois-democratic revolution and thoroughgoing resistance to Japan and to prepare public opinion for their capitulation to the Japanese aggressors. (Mao, “On New Democracy,” Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 358.)
And Mao pulled no punches in pointing out the source of these disruptions:
. . . some conscienceless capitalists forget all moral principles . . . having determined on their policy, they have lost no time in hiring some ’metaphysicsmongers’ plus a few Trotskyites who, brandishing their pens like lances, are tilting in all directions and creating bedlam. (Mao, ibid., p. 359.)
Now comes PL to revive the old discredited theories and create confusion for the same purpose–to “frantically oppose communism ... their real purpose is to root out revolution.”
PL will, of course, claim that they are the only “true” revolutionaries, that they alone are carrying forward the ”fight for socialism.” But by opposing socialism to national liberation, instead of grasping the dialectical relationship between the two, they are in fact fighting to maintain the rule of the imperialist bourgeoisie. In answering some philistines who opposed the 1916 Irish rebellion against British imperialism and called it a “putsch,” Lenin seems to be addressing himself directly to Progressive Labor:
To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies, and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty-bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landlord, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.–to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, ’We are for socialism,’ and another, somewhere else, and says, ’We are for imperialism,’ and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a ’putsch.’ Whoever expects a ’pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is. (Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up,” Vol. 22, pp. 355-56, emphasis in original.)
Paying lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is–that is the, kindest thing that can be said of PL. But, then, we don’t expect PL to be moved by the writings of Lenin (or Stalin), since PL has not only repudiated the Chinese Revolution, but the first successful socialist revolution, in Russia, led by Lenin and Stalin. In fact, PL has openly repudiated the entire history of the world communist movement. We do, however, believe that the writings of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, as well as Marx and Engels, will help honest revolutionaries to understand what revolution is–and what counter-revolution in the disguise of “super-revolution” is, as well.
How does PL’s counter-revolutionary line on the national question make itself felt within the U.S. revolutionary movement?
PL once claimed to support the struggles of the oppressed nationalities within the U.S., struggles which, according to PL, were “national in form, class in content”–such as the fight for Black studies programs, open admissions to colleges, community control, etc. Over the past few years, PL has repudiated all these struggles and has criticized its early “concessions to nationalism,” which were, in fact, “concessions” to Marxism-Leninism.
PL has managed to time its repudiation of these struggles so as to do the most damage. For example, at a crucial point near the end of the 1968-69 struggle for open admissions, Black studies and other demands of Third World students at San Francisco State College, PL suddenly reversed its earlier position of support, and denounced the whole struggle as a fraud, led by “nationalist” mis-leaders. This, at a time when the school administration, with the full force of the state apparatus behind it, was moving to crush the strike.
In fact, the San Francisco State strike, led by Black, Latin and Asian revolutionaries, was the longest struggle in the history of the student movement, involved thousands of people in militant anti-imperialist struggle, rallied broad community support and built a strong united front against the oppression of Third World people, and provided a splendid education for thousands of people about the nature of the imperialist state and the strength of the people in fighting it. Were there bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influences in this struggle? Were mistakes made, even by honest people? Of course. But this doesn’t change the fact that it was a tremendous advance for the mass anti-imperialist movement, and it certainly doesn’t justify PL’s cowardly betrayal.
PL has also claimed to support preferential hiring and upgrading for Black and other Third World workers,’ but in practice PL has tried to sabotage the work of organizations that represent the strongest force among Black workers in fighting for these demands. PL attacks all Black and Third World organizations as “nationalist” and therefore reactionary. PL whines that “nationalism” divides the working class, and that it is almost as bad as racism among white workers.
This is the same old “reverse racism” smokescreen of the ruling class in opposing every genuine struggle of the Black people. In taking this line within the working class (to the extent that PL has any contact with workers), PL finds itself in the same company as reactionary trade union chiefs who have never done anything to fight white supremacy in the plants, and in the unions themselves, and who opportunistically attack Black workers who take up this fight. “You are dividing the working class,” screams PL, in chorus with the heads of the U.A.W.
Both PL and the trade union traitors are interested only in the lowest level of unity among the workers, a false “unity” which cannot even effectively carry forward the economic struggle of the workers for survival, which certainly cannot disrupt the pattern of white supremacy which the bourgeoisie has carefully constructed, and cannot, therefore, seriously challenge the bourgeoisie.
In opposition to PL’s line that “all nationalism is reactionary,” and that the organization of Black and Third World workers is disrupting the unity of the working class, we say that the growing organization of Black and Third World workers to fight against national oppression, and against the oppression and exploitation of all workers, is a driving force that can push the class struggle forward and lay the basis for the revolutionary unity of the proletariat in the struggle against U.S. monopoly capitalism.