First Published: The Call, Vol. 4, No. 1, October 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The recent Third Congress of the October League unanimously passed a resolution entitled “The Afro-American National Question.” An affirmation of the resolution adopted at the Second O.L. Congress, the new resolution is a reflection of further study and practice of the past two years. As part of a program to publish the major documents of the Congress, summations are appearing in The Call, while full texts of the resolutions will appear in the Class Struggle journal.
Some of the main areas of development in the new resolution are 1) the presentation of a full program, including the demand for regional autonomy, or a form of self-rule for the large Black urban concentrations outside of the South. 2) A concise Marxist-Leninist analysis of Afro-American history. 3) A more developed definition of the right of self-determination and its importance for our movement.
The new resolution traces the history of the Afro-American people and their development as an oppressed nation within the United States. It points out that the slave system was one of the most important foundations of U.S. imperialism “enabling the ruling class to accumulate enormous sums of capital, used to force their way into the mainstream of world capitalism.”
It was in the area where slavery was concentrated, the deep South or Black Belt, that the Afro-American people developed all the characteristics of an emerging nation. It was here, the resolution points out, “that millions of people of African descent became an historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”
Based on the recognition of the Afro-American people as an oppressed nation within the borders of the U.S., the resolution upholds the principle of “the right of self-determination up to and including the fight to secede in the area known historically as, the Black Belt South.”
In demonstrating how upholding the right of self-determination is not the equivalent of advocating separation or secession the document says that “by making the struggle for democracy and self-determination of oppressed nations a component part of the working class program for struggle, each victory of the class as a whole becomes equally a victory of the oppressed nations.” In presenting the importance of the right of self-determination in the struggle for-democracy, it becomes clear how the working class struggle for self-determination eliminates the desire for separation in a practical sense.
The resolution also points out that significant changes have taken place in the past forty years among Afro-American people, “The very nature of imperialism regarding oppressed nations is to continually assault them; culturally, economically and politically.” It points to the large concentrations of Afro-Americans who have migrated to the urban centers in the North and South, and the fact that over 90 percent of Black people are part of the working class.
Outside of the Deep South, these people make up an oppressed national minority, The resolution raises the demand for full democratic rights: “We must show how each instance of national oppression or violation of basic democratic rights is linked to the historic oppression of Afro-American people as a nation.”
The resolution further states, “In the Northern urban areas some form of regional autonomy or self-rule must be implemented.” This program of autonomy, exercised in the context of the overall Socialist state, would apply special programs to eliminate poor housing, health conditions, “gerrymandered” voting districts, etc. to the areas of Black concentration. As the resolution points out, “The workers and oppressed peoples of minority nationality would thus be guaranteed full and adequate representation on legislative and governing bodies under socialism. Rather than encouraging separatism among nationalities, these measures would lay the basis for complete equality and facilitate unity.”
The national oppression of Black people is historically linked with the development of U.S. imperialism, and can only be ended with its overthrow. The resolution states: “The Afro-American people’s struggle, together with that of the millions of other nationally oppressed people in the U.S., constitute a powerful anti-imperialist army of fighters Who have nothing to lose but their chains. In close alliance with the U.S. working class, they form the core of the anti-imperialist united front in this country; meaning the most consistent and revolutionary forces among the American people.”
The proletariat’s strategy for Black liberation is the Black United Front, led by the working class, that can unite the masses of Black people who are opposed to imperialism and its policies of national oppression. Within the Black United Front, a sharp class struggle must be waged for proletarian leadership and a revolutionary outlook and against reformism and narrow nationalism. The resolution contains a class analysis of the different sectors of Black people.
Included in this analysis is a section on Black women which says in part: “ ... Communists must recognize that Black women are an important part of the communist and general workers movement and the Black United Front. Black women within the Black liberation struggle, just as women in the united front against imperialism, hold up half the sky. For this reason, communists must struggle against any manifestations of male chauvinism within the Black United Front. .”
Contained within the resolution is a sharp condemnation of the revisionist CPUSA for its abandonment of the struggle for Black liberation. It shows how the revisionists use misleaders like Henry Winston and Angela Davis to peddle the line of “peaceful transition to socialism” within the Black liberation struggle. The CP’s program for Black liberation consists of a defensive struggle for democratic rights through “reordering of priorities” to get a bigger piece of the pie through more “government spending.” The main thrust of the CP’s program is to call for increased Black representation at all levels of government. The CP views the liberation of Black people as something that can be achieved under capitalism through peaceful appeal for “radical reform“ of the system.
While the revisionist CPUSA is the principal ideological enemy within the Black liberation movement, the resolution points out that the CP’s abandonment of a Marxist-Leninist position on the national question has “opened the door for all kinds of new theories which seek to justify the liquidation of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist position of. the right of oppressed nations to self-determination (the nation has disappeared, nation of a new type, white blindspot, etc.).” Refuting all these “new theories,” the resolution concludes that “it would be a tragic mistake for a new communist party to follow the chauvinist line of the modern revisionists to try and wiggle out of their responsibility by citing ’new conditions’ and ’new historical periods.’ ”
The resolution calls for firm opposition to white chauvinism and its main proponents within the working class movement – the labor aristocracy. It shows how this poisonous ideology has been used to divide the U.S, working class historically. The resolution states: “It is our task today, as representatives of the entire working class, to win the white workers away from the social-chauvinist policies of the trade union bureaucrats and revisionists and to stand side by side with the Black workers, not out of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment, but, as Marx pointed out, ’as the first condition of their own emancipation.’ ” It also points out the need to oppose the secondary danger of narrow nationalism among the minority workers.
The resolution calls for the building of a multinational communist party in the U.S. It rejects the idea of a separate stage in which new communist organizations along national lines must be built and also rejects the “federationlst” approach to party building, i.e., building the party as an association of autonomous, national groupings. It calls for the communist party to give special consideration to the national question in organization, through special organizational forms, such as nationality commissions, and special programs geared for training minority communists.
The national oppression of the Afro-American people is manifested in every sphere of American life. Everywhere in U.S. society, Black people occupy the lowest rungs of the ladder. The root of slavery is found in income distribution, police repression, housing, education, health care, employment and unionization, and in the special oppression of Afro-American women. The inequality of Afro- Americans with whites in all these areas exists with particular severity in the South, but it spreads from there, along with its ideological reflection of white chauvinism, to the whole country. In all these areas, the October League’s resolution demands equality for the Afro-American people. We recognize that this inequality cannot be finally and fully eliminated until the national question is solved under the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S. Reforms in these areas will flow from the revolutionary struggle for these final aims. Build a new multinational communist party! Fight for socialism, right of self-determination and full democratic rights!