The Communist League, from its inception, has recognized the critical importance of the Negro question. A review of the history of revolutionary movements will show that a revolutionary disregards the Negro question at his peril. We now know that the historic facts of the development of the Anglo-American working class militated against a clear comprehension of the Negro question. Today, we have no such excuses.
Until the late 1920’s the working class of the United States of North America was formed primarily from the importation of German, Irish, Italian and Slavic workers. It is only natural that the struggle of these imported workers should be couched in the framework of the struggles within their native lands. There is no Negro question in Germany or Poland, so it is only natural that these immigrants – many of them revolutionaries, would disregard the burning Negro question. And it is only natural that the capitalist class would recognize this abnormal situation and take advantage of it. We Anglo-American revolutionaries have a terrible debt to pay to history. We must begin by clarifying history and taking it out of the hands of the capitalist class and making it into a weapon of the proletariat. This is the basic reason for this document.
Life is hardly the “bowl of cherries” that we have been taught. On the contrary, life is dialectical and therefore difficult to live and understand. We have attempted to make this document an accurate reflection of life – therefore it cannot be read as most of the inaccurate, immature and shallow movement documents. This statement is meant to be studied.
There are certain seemingly insurmountable difficulties that will be encountered. One of these is the contradiction between words, which are static and concepts that are constantly in motion. We try to resolve this contradiction by giving you a rather extensive list of definitions. The limitations of the English language force us to give some words a specific meaning by definition.
As in all circumstances, the Communist League welcomes the comradely criticism of the readers.
This collective effort represents the fundamental position of the Central Committee of the Communist League. It is a reaffirmation of the position of the Communist International and the position of V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin the greatest of all thinkers on the question of oppressed peoples and nations.
This document should also be seen as a polemic against the positions of all “left” social chauvinists and principally against the revisionism of the Communist Party of the USA.