First Published: Workers Viewpoint [newspaper], Vol. 2, No. 2, February 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The 400-year historic struggle of the Afro-American people against slavery and all oppression and exploitation is a tremendous chapter in the history of the oppressed peoples of the U.S. and the world. Wave upon wave of Afro-Americans have fought and died in this struggle. As soon as one fell, another stepped in to continue the battle. The thousands of slave rebellions on slave-trade ships and southern plantations, the organization of the Underground Railroad, the Afro-Americans heroic role in the Civil War to smash slavery, the fight against Jim Crow, the defense of the Scottsboro boys, all the way to the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960’s and the fight of African-American industrial workers – all these move us to song and tears.
The peoples of the entire world have drawn inspiration and strength from the tradition, power, and legacy of the Afro-American peoples’ struggle against historic chattel slavery and contemporary wage slavery and national oppression. This is an affirmation of Chairman Mao’s Marxist teaching that “the just struggles of all peoples support each other.”
In particular, the powerful upsurge of the Afro-American movement in the late 1950’s to early 70’s did much to win the respect and support, not only of huge sectors of the U.S. population, but of progressive and revolutionary people the world over. Fighting with resolute determination against police dog attacks, fire hosings, church bombings, lynchings, assassinations, etc., the spirit of resistance of the Afro-American people did much to fire the upsurge of struggles of the entire multinational proletariat, students and other oppressed peoples in the 60’s and early 70’s. This was a continuation of the historic determination and spirit pf resistance against slave-whippings, destruction of family, death, etc., in the struggle against chattel slavery.
The recent Roots TV series, based on the book by Alex Haley, is being trumpeted by the ruling class and by petty bourgeois sham communists as a “true portrayal” of this glorious history, which has caused a “transformation in social relations” in the U.S. Certainly, over 130 million people of all nationalities watched the series, and it touched many to their very heart and soul, stirring their profoundest emotions against chattel-slave and capitalist oppression. Many people cried, many people were inspired to fight their own oppression. But Roots is by far the slickest and most advanced piece of counter-revolutionary bourgeois propaganda to hit the TV screen yet.
Why did Roots evoke so much emotion amongst the masses? Why did so many people tune in and stay with the whole 8-program series? Because Roots, in its attempt to distort and mold Afro-American history to serve its own counter-revolutionary ends, not only was unable to completely ignore and cut out this glorious history, but had to appeal to it to a certain extent. And it was this history of resistance, which the ruling class could not completely cut out, that touched workers and oppressed people everywhere so deeply.
The fact that the bourgeoisie could not completely cut out this history, and even had to try to use it for its own ends, is a direct result of the power and strength of the Afro-American struggle. In no way could the bourgeoisie come forward in 1977 with a “Birth Of A Nation” slander against that struggle, for the Afro-American movement has completely smashed this kind of blatant chauvinist propaganda. It is precisely the strength of the Afro-American movement that has forced the bourgeoisie to resort to this slicker, more deceptive and higher form of counter-revolutionary propaganda.
But the ruling class is only lifting a rock to drop it on its own feet. The single fact that they had to try to appeal to the masses’ revolutionary sentiments is already a victory for us. But even more, communists will lead revolutionary workers and advanced elements among the masses to cut through the bourgeoisie’s attempt to twist our history to serve their ends. We will sift out the revolutionary sentiments and traditions that Roots evoked from its reactionary shell, and turn those kernels of resistance into a further commitment and weapon against the bourgeoisie.
From beginning to end, Roots portrays Afro-American history only to distort it and mislead today’s struggle. From beginning to end, Roots glorifies all the most bankrupt and reactionary trends in the Afro-American movement, drawing them from the 1960’s; Episode after episode, the series unfolded its arsenal: from liberal non-violence and fear of mass rebellion, to “hate whitey” petty bourgeois nationalism and backward-gazing attempts to find solace and quiet moral strength in one’s “roots”.
Non-violence of the slave against the slave owner, love for your enemy, and bourgeois democratic liberalism in general, are one of the series’ most important themes, which is exemplified by all the major characters. For example, after the Civil War, Kunta Kinte’s great-grandson Tom does not rely on and organize his fellow ex-slaves to fight the Klan’s night raids but instead takes his case to the local sheriff who is directly tied to the ex-slaveowners and the Klan! Tom really believes that “the law’s the law” and that blacks will get their fair share if they give it a chance. And when at the end, he has a chance to whip and kill the local Klan leader, but instead drops his whip to the ground – Haley and ABC have gone too far! So the slave must not rout and kill the slaveowner, but must love him to the end! Tom’s saintly non-violence, this “moral superiority of the oppressed”, is in the worst style of Martin Luther King and Andrew Young. Don’t we hear the same Young today, doing everything to kill any and all revolutionary violence by the people of southern Africa against the racist Smith and Vorster regimes?
And if there are Afro-American liberals in Roots, there must also be white liberals, and sure enough there are. The unreal Old George, supposedly a ruined poor white farmer, is actually a picture of the classic, naive petty bourgeois liberal of the 1960’s. Completely up in the clouds, Old George knows nothing about slavery or racism, and Tom and his brother Louis have to teach him how to be a slave overseer. The friendship they develop together is also the classic liberal friendship and love. Nowhere is there the slightest hint of the multi-national unity between slaves and white indentured servants and small farmers, built in common struggle against the slave plantation owners. Yet this kind of multi-national unity in class struggle filled the history of the U.S. masses in the Black Belt South.
Roots repeatedly calls in this liberalism to smother all revolutionary sentiments and actions of the slave against the slaveowner. When the Klan whips Tom half to death, his young son, in tears, tells Old George’s wife that he means to kill those white people someday. By and large, this was not the wrong stand of black against white, but the correct stand of the exploited against the exploiter. But Old George’s wife tells him that he can’t start killing whites just because they’re white, and manages to confuse him enough that he breaks down crying and drops his correct stand against the slaveowners. All the major characters, whether Kunta Kinte, his daughter Kizzy or her son Chicken George, passionately hate their slavemasters at some point in their youth. But as they grow older, each mellows out and becomes “reasonable” and starts holding back the next generation.
Covering for the modern-day monopoly capitalists, Roots never reveals the Afro-American struggle as a struggle against the slave system, but only as one against individual slave-masters. The monopoly capitalists naturally will never reveal the brutal class rule of the slaveowners, for this is part of their own sinister “roots”.
The U.S. bourgeois War of Independence swept away British colonial rule and feudal remnants, opening the road for the development of capitalism. Although the laboring masses were the main force in the Independence War, the big bourgeoisie and big slave plantation owners seized leadership and established their joint dictatorship. The land question of the peasantry had not been completely solved. Moreover, the slave system was maintained in the south. Although the slave plantation had characteristics of capitalism because it was developed by capitalism and used by the capitalists to produce commodities for the international market, it nevertheless was a slave system because it had the basic characteristics of the slave mode of production. This slavery was many times more oppressive for the slaves because it combined the brutal oppression of slavery with the demand for high production of the modern capitalist market.
The development of British and U.S. capitalism had relied much on slavery and the slave trade. The particular climate and farming process in the south were important factors in the production of cotton. The textile mills of New England and England needed cotton, and the backward feudal-slave mode of production in the south developed to abundantly supply this important commodity for the English colonialists and New England merchants. Thus the slave trade and vicious plunder of Africa were component parts of primitive accumulation of capital for colonial England and the rising bourgeoisie in the New England colonies.
The production of cotton in the feudal-slave south required a “stable” labor force. One that was totally dependent on the owners of the means of production. One that was legally “subhuman”. One that was part of and in the path of British colonial expansion (in the trade route between England and its 13 colonies). One, that could be socially marked as “abnormal” and “subhuman” and thus have even more “reasons” for it to work the cotton fields. The African people were forced to serve this purpose. Thus the objective laws of capitalist development and primitive accumulation of capital coupled with the backward feudal mode of production in the south were the basic reasons why historically the African peoples (later to be forged into an oppressed nation in the Black Belt South during Reconstruction) were chained together in the south. Capitalism arose and throve on colonialism and slavery.
The system of slavery was perpetuated by the class alliance of the English colonialists, New England rising bourgeoisie and the southern feudal landowners. The fact that the feudal-slave landowners were supplying the raw material of cotton to the mills of New England – aiding the development of capitalism – was the material basis that set the stage for the Civil War of 1860-65.
Yet heroic slave resistance constantly fought against the brutal system of slavery. Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. Never ceasing, the slaves launched all forms of struggle and organization. From slave rebellions, breaking the tools of the slave master to poisoning the decadent slaveowners, slave resistance persisted. In various instances, entire populations or slaves would run away and establish maroons. Maroons were fortified “towns” of ex-slaves who lived in the deep marsh and rural areas of the south. They were basically self-sufficient. They often carried out planned guerrilla warfare attacks on plantation owners. Another form of struggle was the church songs. Here the slaves would use gospels as codes to carry messages for revolt and escape routes to the north. A most scientific passageway to the north was the Underground Railroad.
The surest and most important exposure of Roots’ liberalism is its attitude towards slave rebellions and the role of the masses in making history. In the short run, the thousands of slave uprisings always ended in defeat, because unlike the modern working class, the slaves were unable to organize themselves and develop the correct revolutionary theory to lead their struggle to final victory. But defeated in the short run, the rebellions always advanced to higher and higher levels, drawing in millions of slaves and throwing the slaveowners into panic. They were a tremendous motive force in the overthrow of the evil slave system, fully proving that the masses alone are the makers of history.
Roots shows only one unsuccessful uprising on the slave trade ship that brings Kunta Kinte to the U.S., and mentions only one slave rebellion in the U.S., the famous rebellion led by Nat Turner in 1831. And to what end? None but to show that the uprisings were hopeless, and led only to defeat, death and more trouble for the other slaves. Roots’ main family takes absolutely no part in the Nat Turner rebellion (not even whispering!) and knows nothing about Nat Turner (of course, during the Civil War later on, they are shown to know all about Abraham Lincoln, and they are eternally grateful to this representative of the capitalist ruling class). The main character in the Turner rebellion episode, Chicken George, just wishes it would all end so the slaveowners would calm down and he could get back to his training of fighting cocks for his “Massa” Moore. Through all this, Roots shows absolutely no mass resistance of the slaves. The only sign of Turner’s rebellion is the body of a dead slave after its defeat. Roots serves up the same high school version of the Civil War: Abraham Lincoln supposedly “freed” the slaves, who received the news by telegram and never lifted a finger for their own liberation!
What is Roots’ alternative to revolutionary mass struggle? The individual striving for freedom of the privileged, “upwardly mobile“ “house Negroes”. Chicken George’s dream is not to serve his slave class and its liberation, but to build his individual fame as a cock handler and to be a partner of his “Massa“ Moore, and buy freedom and a piece of land for his family. He eventually reaches that goal, and it is the climax of the entire series.
Roots also shows many just and sometimes brave acts of resistance, which however always remain isolated, individual acts. Kunta Kinte’s deep desire and repeated attempts to run away, or Kizzy’s spitting into the cup of water she has to get for Miss Reynolds, her one-time slaveowning “friend”, and Tom’s murder of a white man who tried to rape his wife, all show some of the spirit of resistance that always burned among the slaves. But none of these could ever threaten and shatter the slave system as the Underground Railroad, the mass uprisings and rebellions alone did.
Besides this rampant liberalism; with its disdain for revolutionary mass struggle, its individualism and escapism, Roots’ second main theme is its reactionary “hate whitey” nationalism. Roots repeatedly shows slaves trusting whites, and whites repeatedly betraying the slaves. Kizzy trusts “Missy” Reynolds who betrays her friendship, Chicken George is betrayed by Moore and Tom by the sheriff. The lesson is that blacks can’t trust white folks.
On the other side, the “unity” and “friendship” that Roots does show between the slaves and Old George is completely unreal. Showing no real multi-national unity forged in class struggle, Roots’ only lesson here is that the only whites who ever will unite with Afro-Americans are bleeding-heart liberals like Old George. This can only raise cynicism among white workers who watched Roots and who can see through or sense this liberal sop.
The one point Roots really drives home is the cynicism, distrust and antagonism between nationalities, on both sides. As Tom’s brother Louis put it: “Like sticks with like.”
So how does all of this add up? Since the Afro-Americans can’t trust the whites, and since only unreal, bleeding-heart liberal whites can unite with the Afro-Americans, the problem must be a “race problem” – two societies, one Black and one white. This is nothing but U.S. imperialist trash designed to whip up national antagonisms and promote the reactionary race theory that white workers are the enemies of the Afro-American people. A most sinister attempt to cover over the national oppression of the Afro-American people which has its material basis in the oppression of the Afro-American nation in the Black Belt South, which was oppressed and exploited only by the U.S. ruling class and which has its solution in the overthrow of the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class. A most sinister attempt to let the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie off the hook by dividing the multinational proletariat, a part of the bourgeoisie’s ideological propaganda to prepare for fascism by splitting the working class.
Racism was the ruling class ideology of the slave-owning classes which had its material basis in the slave mode of production. The necessity to have an entire race of people as the main labor force in the plantation slavery in the south gave rise to an entire judicial, legal, moral, etc. and ideological superstructure to serve the economic base of feudal slave society. The degrading slave ideology of racism arose. It did not just passively reflect the economic base. On the contrary, it reacted upon and further justified the maintenance of the slave economic system. The feudal slave economic base engendered the racist superstructure which reacted on and further developed the economic base.
The victory of the North in the Civil War led to the nationwide dictatorship of the industrial bourgeoisie and created conditions for the speedy development of capitalism in the U.S. In the South, although the slave system was abolished, the land question of the ex-slaves and poor peasantry was not solved; old bondages were transformed into new forms; the no less oppressive sharecropping system, semi-feudal with remnants of slavery, and racism were still rampant.
Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. The revolutionary tide of resistance of the Afro-American “freedmen” and poor white peasants was mounting, the elements of Afro-American nationhood were developing – it was under such material conditions of intense oppression and resistance that the reactionary bourgeoisie continued to call on racism to suppress the rising Afro-American national movement and development of the Afro-American nation, to enforce the Super-exploitation of the Afro-Americans as share-croppers and “free” laborers, to stunt the development of a Black national bourgeoisie, as well as the reactionary tactics of divide and rule, by using racist propaganda and appeals to split the developing unity of the Afro-American and white sharecroppers and small farmers forged in struggle against the bourgeoisie.
With the Civil War sweeping away old fetters, capitalism in the U.S. developed rapidly, especially in industry, then into monopoly capital, i.e., imperialism. Super-exploitation of Afro-Americans and other immigrant workers at home and imperialist plunder of colonial and semi- colonial countries abroad-were two major factors upon which U.S. imperialism was built. The U.S. bourgeoisie again continued to call on the perpetuation of racism for their interests, transforming racism into a most brutal, reactionary imperialist ideology.
Today, the Afro-American people suffer national oppression and national chauvinism, which have a material basis in the historic oppression of the Afro-American national in the Black Belt South by the U.S. ruling class. The Afro-American people are not oppressed because of race, but as a national grouping whose liberation can only be achieved by decisive struggle against the monopoly capitalist ruling class. But besides national (white) chauvinism, the ruling class calls into service the racist ideology of the slave-owning classes, because it helps to maintain their own reactionary rule and creates illusions that the problem is a “race problem” – thereby dividing the multinational proletariat. Only the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie oppresses and exploits the Afro-American nation in the Black Belt South and the Afro-American national minority outside the Black Belt nation.
Alex Haley’s book reflects the outlook of the petty bourgeoisie – a dying class – on the one hand being crushed by capitalism and on the other, afraid of losing its privileges in the proletarian revolution. An unstable class that vacillates back and forth between the bourgeoisie and proletariat; on the one hand hoping to become the big bourgeoisie, and on the other having to unite with the proletariat because of its contradictions with the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie has no future. This objective class position gives rise to a pessimistic world outlook, vacillating between despair and idealist hope. Only the proletariat, the class of the future, is consistently optimistic and confident in its bright future. The petty bourgeoisie always looks back to the “good old days” when capitalism was in its competitive stage of development, while the proletariat always looks forward to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the elimination of all exploiting classes.
This is the outlook in Roots – looking backwards to find solace in your roots, in the face of the intensifying contradictions of capitalism. This petty bourgeois class tendency is nothing new in the Afro-American movement and in fact is a line and tendency that has been defeated amongst the advanced elements. Haley’s book is an attempt to resurrect this line. It is no accident that the identification with Africa is and has been a strong sentiment and tendency within the Afro-American movement. Because of the bourgeoisie’s historical attempt to vilify and degrade the Afro-American people by distorting the history of the Afro-American and African peoples, recurrent efforts and struggle in the Afro-American movement have taken the form of a struggle to identify with the African people. This form of spontaneous proletarian internationalism has promoted the identification and unity of Afro-Americans with the struggle of the oppressed peoples the world over.
For example, during the late 60’s and early 70’s, one of the chief slogans in the Afro-American movement was the slogan “We Are An African People”. This slogan was an expression of the attempt by advanced elements coming out of the Afro-American movement to scientifically grasp the development of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, the African s lave trade, and its relation to the development of the Afro-American people in the US. But there were two tendencies in this development. One followed the principle of “making the past serve the present”. That is to draw upon the rich history of struggle of the African and Afro-American people in order to draw strength to continue the struggle against the US bourgeoisie and the criminal system of capitalism. This was the tendency in the Pan Africanist movement that in the course of struggle took up the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought, which occurred only in the course of fierce struggle against the other tendency, the petty bourgeois nationalist elements that attempted to utilize the slogan to cover their compromising stand with the US multinational proletariat and the task of overthrowing the US bourgeoisie.
For these elements, the slogan was a cover for looking backward, finding solace in their roots, not in order to move forward, but to find an elitist and comfortable nest in the fact that they were African. This tendency degenerated into the Carmichael line, that of opposing that the task of Afro-American revolutionaries is to unite with the multi-national proletariat and overthrow the US bourgeoisie, itself an act of proletarian internationalism and concrete support for the struggle of the African and revolutionary peoples the world over, while at the same time giving other forms of concrete support to revolutionary movements. Instead, Carmichael called on African American revolutionaries to see their principal struggle not in the US, but in Africa. An even more narrow and backward tendency has resulted in numerous sects whose disdain and elitism toward the Afro-American masses became so strong that they carry out no mass work, are completely isolated, and find solace in conducting feudal rituals under the guise of recapturing their African tradition.
This elitist tendency, this petty bourgeois disdain for the masses, also comes out in Haley’s picture, as only the slaves who remember their Mandinca roots, have the determination to struggle, to run, or to escape, while the slaves who were born in the US and have forgotten this aspect of their history are pictured as different, and only concerned about survival in the slave system. Kizzy maintains aristocratic disdain for the carriage driver because he is not clear on his “roots”, as opposed to patient and consistent struggle to win him over and unite. This is no different from the modern “African” aristocrats who in fact show nothing but petty-bourgeois disdain for the Afro-American masses.
This is nothing but a sinister attempt to promote division and antagonism among the Afro-American people. An attempt to resurrect petty-bourgeois elitist tendency, comfortable in their “Africaness” while being contemptuous toward the masses. In fact, the stealing of slaves from Africa brought many different tribes together and the slave system itself began to forge the many peoples into one people. Through a common historical background, common oppression and exploitation in chains and common resistance, the African slaves developed into one people, and during Reconstruction were forged into a nation.
The line of demarcation comes to be whether or not one recognizes their “Africaness”, not whether or not one consistently opposed the criminal rule of the slave master then or the US bourgeoisie today, and what is the relationship between grasping one’s roots to the struggle to overthrow the reactionary bourgeoisie. The dialectics of this petty bourgeois tendency, looking backward to find solace in your roots, is inevitably reformist in looking forward. Looking backward, to escape the task of overthrowing the US bourgeoisie and ending the national oppression of the Afro-American people (which demands the unity of the multinational proletariat, the merger of the workers and national movements and the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought) is an act of national capitulation. And as Chairman Mao has taught us, “national capitulation leads to class capitulation”. This is why Haley and other strains of petty bourgeois nationalism so easily merge with reformism and promote reformist illusions in the Afro-American movement, from Black capitalist schemes to developing “independent“ African institutions (schools, stores, etc.) that do not fundamentally challenge the class rule of the US monopoly capitalists.
Roots is an attempt to resurrect the backward trend in the movement to grasp one’s roots in the Afro-American national movement. It definitely is not an attempt to make the past serve the present, but appeals to finding quiet strength and solace in your roots, while the bourgeoisie continue to exploit and oppress the Afro-American masses. This counter-revolutionary line will not find any acceptance among advanced elements!
Because the petty bourgeois reformists, independent of their will, objectively serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, their literature and art, class outlook, are readily appropriated and promoted by the bourgeoisie; to spread ideological confusion in the working class and national movements. Independent of their will, they become better, defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. This is the “saga” of Alex Haley and why ABC so readily took up and promoted his book. It was the triumph of the bourgeoisie, again making one of the petty bourgeois reformists serve their class interests and attempt to consolidate their class rule.
The proletariat looks back in history to sum up the lessons, to draw strength and inspiration from past struggles to serve future struggles, moving irresistibly forward to the inevitable victory of socialist revolution and the final goal of communism. In contrast to the petty bourgeoisie, the proletariat does not long for the past, for they grasp that “to find men truly great and noble-hearted, we must look here in the present”.
Why have the capitalists come up with Roots at just this time? Because the U.S. contention with Soviet Social-imperialism is driving them both towards another world war, because U.S. capitalism is crumbling at its foundations, and because to smash the threat of proletarian revolution the ruling class must do everything possible to split the workers from the national movements and split the masses from their emerging vanguard, the genuine communist party. For this, the ruling class needs fascism.
Like all the other movements of the 1960’s, the most fundamental question the Afro-American movement faced was: which road? The proletarian or bourgeois? From the mid-60’s, the movement’s best leaders, including Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, led the Afro-American masses closer and closer to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, towards merger with the U.S. working class, towards the only path that can put away U.S. monopoly capitalism and bring the U.S. people to liberation and socialism. But Haley and others like him took the bourgeois road, the road of looking back to find solace in one’s “roots,” the road abandoning revolutionary mass struggle and leading to certain defeat at the hands of the monopoly capitalists.
The revolutionary leaders in the 1960’s scored a resounding victory .over reformism, educating millions of people to the need for revolutionary mass struggle and violent revolution, dispelling illusions in non-violent resistance and capitalist reformism to the winds. Today the WVO is inheriting the best and most advanced lessons from that period, uniting the best elements which came out of those movements, and working to gain leadership in the African Liberation Support Committee and the whole Afro-American movement. This represents a new stage in the fight for Marxist leadership in the national movements, and its fusion with the proletarian movement.
At the same time, the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists are contending more fiercely than ever before for hegemony in the world, and as their actions in the Middle East, Cyprus, Angola and Europe all show, the two superpowers are driving towards a new world war. World capitalism also faces the beginning of the deepest crisis in its history, a crisis that, in the U.S. is already shaking capitalism from top to bottom and opening up millions of people to socialism. The two roads that opened up in the 60’s are becoming clearer and clearer to people because of this crisis, and this growing revolutionary consciousness among the masses is what the ruling class fears most. It makes them tremble in their boots. It is socialist revolution and the impending doom of their class rule.
To fight an imperialist war with the Soviet Union and break up the growing proletarian revolution at home, the U.S. rulers need fascism. They are making all-round preparations for this: ideological, political, military, etc. The no-strike laws like the ENA to keep production and profits up and to “discipline” the labor force, the Boston forced busing plan and Equal Rights Amendment to split the workers’ movement, the centralization of the CIA and FBI, the sensationalizing of Nazis and other fascists and the mysticism and pornography we see and hear on the airwaves, all aim at one thing: to strengthen the capitalist state and break and demoralize the masses.
Fascism in the U.S. will attempt to ride in on a wave of racist propaganda and national (white) chauvinism, in order to split the U.S. multinational working class. Roots was a slick, deceptive attempt at promoting ideological refuse. Just as Carter (an advanced representative of the bourgeoisie) puts forward a liberal appearance with a fascist essence, Roots is also a “liberal” tactic to portray the history of Afro-Americans “the way it really was,” while in essence promoting all the ideological trash necessary to pave the ground for fascism and world war.
The ruling class tries to appeal to the vast majority of the masses who will not fall for outright and blatant sensationalizing, racism, pornography and so on, by digging up all the discredited but seemingly progressive and revolutionary thinking from the 1960’s. Roots’ themes of nonviolence, “quiet , moral superiority of the oppressed,” Pan-Africanism, “hate whitey” nationalism, liberalism, and the striving for individual, American-dream freedom, designed to promote cynicism and white chauvinism, etc., are all bankrupt and abandoned thinking from the last decade. The ruling class, who knows full well that the history of oppression of the Afro-American people stirs the profoundest emotions among the U.S. people and moves us to song and tears, is trying to pump some life back into its bankrupt reactionary themes by spinning them into a story, about Afro-American slavery. Their sole purpose is to put us on the wrong road, to divert us from Marxism.
Anything but Marxism! That is the bourgeoisie’s slogan in Roots as in everything else, which in today’s situation can only mean: preparation for world war and fascism.
The bourgeoisie at every step has attempted to distort and promote all kinds of reactionary chauvinist and imperialist interpretations of the history of resistance of the Afro-American people’s struggle. This spirit and resistance is a clarion call to the entire US multinational proletariat, and the merger of these two movements will surely spell the doom of the reactionary US monopoly capitalist ruling class. From the chauvinist, imperialist mythology that Afro-Americans were happy as slaves in the “peculiar institution” of slavery, to the Kerner Commission Report which promoted the bourgeois “race theory” that the urban rebellions and resistance of the Afro-American people in the 60’s were due to two societies, “one Black and one White”, the monopoly capitalists have tried to cover up their vicious class rule in an attempt to point to white workers as the enemies of the Afro-American people, and not the bourgeoisie themselves. But could it be any other way?
All art and culture is part of the struggle between the two classes, Every class uses art and culture to serve its class interests, to glorify itself, to propagate its ideology, and to consolidate its rule. Exploiting classes have always used literature and art to oppress the masses. This is the stand and viewpoint from which we must look at Roots. The proletariat criticizes the bourgeoisie and all exploiting classes and systems in order to destroy them completely. Bourgeois and petty bourgeois literature and art sometimes criticize capitalism and slavery, but dare not reveal the class essence of their rule, the dictatorship of the capitalists and slave-owners, because that would open the whole can of worms and show the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat to destroy all exploitation. On the contrary, they “criticize” only to attempt to consolidate the dictatorship of the exploiting classes by prescribing band-aid measures for the incurable capitalist system. This is why Chairman Mao said, “In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.” We must not pay tribute to bourgeois literature and art.
The thoroughly chauvinist Revolutionary Communist Party has never understood the national question in general and the Afro-American national question in particular. This is reflected in the numerous political positions of the RCP. Take, for instance, their position on the Boston Busing Plan in which the RCP liquidated the special demands of the Afro-American national minority because the RCP saw them as divisive and splitting the multinational proletariat, not as demands necessary to uphold and fight for in order to build the iron unity of the multinational proletariat. Or the RCP’s previous position that the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) was a thoroughly reactionary-bourgeois nationalist formation which stemmed from RCP’s line that “all nationalism is nationalism”. This line, which RCP put forward in struggle with Black Workers Congress’ deviation on this question, was a slick way of liquidating the revolutionary potential of the national movements, and was a more deceptive version of Progressive Labor Party’s line that “all nationalism is reactionary”. To the RCP, the truth that the national movements in the final analysis are class struggle means that the national movements have no particularity. The RCP denies they are a specific form of class struggle. The RCP cannot grasp the difference between the appearance and form (national) and the content and essence (class struggle), which leads them to liquidate the national movements. This has led to the RCP’s failure to neither give leadership nor develop any influence in the Afro-American national movement.
In this recent period, with the RCP’s historically incorrect lines on the leading role of theory, and on the national movements, having caught up with them and left them “dried, beached fish” (see Workers Viewpoint newspaper, Vol. 2, No.1, Jan. 1977 – RCP Discovers “Theory in its own Right“) “ the RCP has taken to the October League’s trick of feinting in an attempt to gain new life.
In the recent New York-New Jersey Worker (Feb. 1977, Vol.2, No.5), the RCP in an attempt to feint away from its former liquidationist chauvinist line on the national movements, completely flips to trumpeting Roots to the sky. They out-and-out trumpet bourgeois literature and art in the vain hope that it will increase their influence in the Afro-American national movement. But all it does is show that the R“C”P’s old line and new feint are made of the same stuff. It reveals that they understand absolutely nothing about the character and content of the national movement; and is a downright insulting, liberal chauvinist, opportunist feint.
In statements reminiscent of the October League’s praise to the sky of the CBS program, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”, the NY-NJ Worker says, “ ... Alex Haley, in searching back for his family origins, put into motion a powerful force in fighting against some long-standing myths about slavery, ... There is a real source of strength in Roots. Its great contribution is that in documenting the history of one family it creates a stirring picture of the oppression of a whole people and their resistance to this oppression ... it refutes the ’modern’, ’scientific’ myths of the Black family and Black people (like the Moynihan report, written by the NY senator, which portrays Blacks as having no family feelings or ties.) ... ”
True to the RCP’s thoroughly opportunist approach to all questions, the NY-NJ Worker never once asks the question, “what did the advanced, intermediate, and lower stratum of the workers and elements from the Afro-American national movement think about Roots?” The platitudes that the NY-NJ Worker sings toward Roots are the songs that the lower stratum and petty bourgeois liberals are singing. As Lenin said, a certain stratum will temporarily be taken in hook, line and sinker by the bourgeois trash – the lower stratum. The advanced and even intermediate workers and elements from the Afro-American movement were never taken in by Moynihan’s trash. For the RCP who apparently was taken in by the Moynihan report, yes; but not for the advanced workers and Afro-Americans was Roots to be praised as a smashing refutation of the Moynihan report. The advanced workers and elements from the Afro-American national movement, on the other hand, saw clean through Roots (see From Our Readers in this issue} as a counter-revolutionary attempt by the bourgeoisie to create fascist public opinion under the thin disguise of “liberalism”.
When the NY-NJ Worker trumpets Roots for discrediting the imperialist myth of slavery as essentially that of good-hearted masters and contented happy darkies, they act as if there has not been in general, centuries of heroic struggle by the Afro-American masses that long ago smashed that mythology to pieces, and in particular a powerful national movement from the late 50’s to the early 70’s that was so earth-shaking that it crushed completely all stereotypes of Afro-Americans as contented and happy with their lot since slavery. This movement was so powerful that only the most backward Afro-Americans and chauvinist of workers could still hold onto this imperialist mythology. Only the bourgeois NY Times, in an attempt to deny the effects of the Afro-American mass movement of the 60’s and 70’s, would trumpet Roots for having accomplished this “revolution in social relations”. So the RCP, along with the NY Times is putting forward a theory that goes against the view that the masses make history, and is acting as an accomplice in promoting this most sinister bourgeois theory. The Roots TV series has accomplished what the heroic struggle of the masses could never do! Hail Roots!
This desperate feint of the RCP’s reflects a most insulting, patronizing and thoroughly pragmatist attempt to remedy their previous incorrect lines, and continue its competition for the base of the Guardian and the OL. The advanced workers and Afro-Americans will certainly reject this attempt, and see through the feint.
Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, where class struggle in literature and art is a main sphere in which the bourgeoisie contends with the proletariat in its attempt to restore capitalism, in the life and death struggle between the two classes, the two roads and the two world outlooks, following the leadership of Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line in literature and art, our Chinese comrades have put forward the view that “To Trumpet Bourgeois Literature and Art is to Restore Capitalism.” Under the conditions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for the RCP to trumpet bourgeois literature and art, means to act as an accomplice of the bourgeoisie in l t s vain attempt to prevent its inevitable downfall and the seizure of power by the revolutionary proletariat.
The OL on the front page of the Call, (Feb. 14, 1977) in trying hard to be “orthodox Marxists” poses the question, “Roots TV series, which class does it serve?“ Who would believe that this is the same OL, who just a short while ago praised a less sophisticated “Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” to the sky? But, the OL fools no one. Just as their “left” feint (“everything is liberal”) is a superficial cover for their thick right opportunism, designed to kick dust in the eyes of the masses, their analysis of Roots is just as superficial.
After appearing to pose a staunch front of asking, “which class does it serve?” the OL proceeds to really show its equivocating position on Roots. Vacillating on how it gave us a “glimpse into the long history of Black slavery”, how it “to some degree” has “helped awaken pride and awareness”, and how it even gave “Black actors and actresses in the media a chance to play something other than the usual pimp and hooker”, the OL in essence reveals that it really dug Roots. This is the same attempt to stand between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie that has historically characterized the OL’s petty bourgeois stand, viewpoint and method.
But after extolling Roots the OL then proceeds to pose a number of questions concerning the class interest that Roots serves and the lessons that it offers its viewers. The OL’s inability to go beyond the surface of any of the questions that it poses, proves that it is only feinting at being “orthodox”, and makes us ask the same questions about the OL’s article – “which class does it serve?, what does it include and what does it skip over?, what are the lessons it offers its viewers (readers), etc.?”
Because the OL does not understand the class outlook of Haley (the petty bourgeoisie) nor the dialectics of bourgeois-democratic “liberalism” and fascism, it can only resort to refuting the historical inaccuracies of Roots, the more blatant aspects of Haley’s outlook, but cannot go into the class effects of Roots and why it has come forth in this period. Like the R“C”P, the OL abstracts Roots out of the entire crisis of US monopoly capitalism, a mortal sin and gross deviation in the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method. Consequently the OL cannot go beyond the point of view of revisionist and liberal historians of the Herbert Aptheker type, who currently are all over the radio and TV debating the “historical inaccuracies of Roots”. This is because the OL is the representative of this revisionist and petty bourgeois liberal trend.