IN DEFENSE OF TED ALLEN
A Review of "A House Divided: Labor and White Supremacy"
by Jeff Perry
Urgent Tasks No. 14
A HOUSE DIVIDED: LABOR AND WHITE SUPREMACY
By Roxanne Mitchell and Frank Weiss. Comment by Harry Haywood. New York: United Labor Press, 1981, xiii, 171pp., $3.95.
Sojourner Truth Organization owes a political debt to Ted Allen. A large part of our understanding of U.S. history and the central importance of white supremacy are based on his insights, which were especially manifest in Noel Ignatin's White Blindspot, first published in 1967, and his Learn the Lessons of U.S. History, first published in 1968. For that reason, we are publishing the following piece, which was submitted to us with the title, "A Partial Review," in spite of the fact that we like neither the tone nor content of it. Our main political objection to Perry's article is the absence in it of any treatment of the subject of autonomy, either of the workers' movement in general or of the black movement in particular. Without an appreciation of how the conditions of life under capitalism give rise to certain forms of activity which represent a break with bourgeois patterns of behavior and constitute a challenge to bourgeois hegemony, it is impossible to develop a strategy for overcoming bourgeois white-supremacist domination, which, as Allen writes (Perry cites him in the review), is "the principal aspect of U.S. capitalist society. . . . " Thus, Perry's praiseworthy effort to refute the argument of the Mitchell- Weiss book and defend our common thesis is compromised from the start. For an example of how STO treats this debate, readers are referred to Ignatin's Black Worker, White Worker, published in the collection Workplace Papers.
The editors
IN DEFENSE OF TED ALLEN
by Jeff Perry
A particularly foul aspect of A House Divided: Labor and White Supremacy is that the book utilizes the essential arguments of another author in an attempt to lay claim to theoretical advances and then turns around and distorts and misrepresents the views of the very author from whom so much is borrowed. This partial review will seek to suggest how and why this was done and in the process to provide the reader with certain key excerpts from the writings of the maligned author, Ted Allen. These excerpts, in turn, suggest some of the signal contributions made by Allen to the tasks of understanding and overcoming the "white" problem and to developing a revolutionary strategy and movement in this country.
A House Divided is a 1981 publication of the "Proletarian Unity League [PUL] and other friends" that "was written over five years ago." [pp. xii-xiii, v] Its authorship is attributed to the names Roxanne Mitchell and Frank Weiss. It includes a Preface, seven chapters, an Appendix on superseniority, A Comment by Harry Haywood, Selected Bibliography, and Study Questions. The authors state that their "book attributes the central causal role for a peculiar labor movement to that 'peculiar institution,' U.S. White supremacist national oppression. More than that we never meant to claim." [p. 144]
Chapter one addresses the longstanding question "Why no socialism in the U.S.?" and argues that "opportunism towards the institutions of white supremacist national oppression is not simply one among a number of shortcomings: it constitutes the key political and ideological weakness of the workers' movement in this country." [p. 10] Chapters two through five deal with other competing theories and explanations which the authors describe as the Labor. Aristocracy Thesis, the Super-Profits Thesis and a corollary Southern Branch Super-Profits Thesis, the Bribery Theory, and four variations of "left" economist views.
At their best, these five chapters paraphrase and re-state arguments far better elucidated by Ted Allen, particularly in his published works "Can White Radicals Be Radicalized?" (in the original pamphlet by Noel Ignatin and Ted Allen entitled White Blindspot and Can White Radicals Be Radicalized?, 1969) and White Supremacy in U.S. History (1973), and in his paper, "The Most Vulnerable Point" (1972).
That these authors seek to attack white supremacy and that they seek to do so by utilizing the previous research and writings of Ted Allen are commendable facts. Similar efforts by others should be encouraged. What is of most interest in the book, however, is the fact that after so utilizing Allen's previous work, they seek, in Chapter Six, to disassociate from what they call Allen's and Ignatin's "deviations" [p. 115], after noting, of course, that "none of the criticisms we have of Ted Allen's theoretical or political positions negate the general importance of his historical research" [p. 108]. Chapter Six in particular is very disjointed and runs far and wide with its criticisms and accusations. These criticisms and accusations are at times inaccurate, at times outright falsehoods, and at times strawmen (created by the authors), but most malodorous of all are the instances when the authors use arguments which Allen has developed to counter arguments which they falsely attribute to Allen.
The authors have three broad areas of criticism
of the positions which they attribute to Allen and Ignatin.
The first two areas of criticism are labeled by
the authors "spontaneist subjectivism" and "ultra-left
utopianism"; the third area of criticism I treat under
the heading of criticisms of slogan and strategy.
A look at the criticisms reveals the following:
SPONTANEIST SUBJECTIVISM
The first critique of Allen and Ignatin offered by the authors is described under the heading "spontaneist subjectivism," where they allege that Allen in his treatment of the subjective factor "nowhere relates it to the strategic discussion," to the "conscious element or party principle." [pp. 115,108]
The charge that Allen "nowhere relates it to the strategic discussion" appears to reveal either total blindness or dishonesty on the part of the authors. From his first writings on the subject, Allen has focused above all on the strategic centrality of the fight against white supremacy to the making of revolution in this country. To quote from the very first page of the pamphlet which the authors purport to critique: Ignatin writes, "In the fall of 1966, after some conversations with Ted Allen and Esther Kusick (who has just died and whose loss is felt deeply by those who knew her) I became convinced of the correctness of their position-that the white-skin privilege has been the achilles' heel of the labor movement in the U.S., and that the fight against white supremacy (beginning, among white workers, with the repudiation of the white-skin privilege) is the key to strategy for revolution in this country." [White Blindspot, inside front cover] Allen writes, in the same pamphlet, that he and Esther Kusick "have, until now, been alone in this view ["the attack against white supremacy as the key to strategy"] (at least as far as we know)" and that "nobody else has even posed the problem of strategy." [ibid., p. 9]
In the 1971 "Introduction to White Blindspot (1967) and Can White Radicals Be Radicalized? (1969)" Allen and Ignatin most cogently addressed the relation of strategy to party in a passage which deserves to be quoted at length:
The first criticism/accusation of the authors is patently false. authors of A House Divided is but the tip of an iceberg. The very quote which they attack Allen for is almost rephrased by these authors 13 pages later when they write: facing up to the material base of white chauvinism in national oppression and the corresponding system of privileges for whites simply establishes a starting the authors' charges are a bit demagogic The next criticism offered by the authors is that Allen's and Ignatin's "subjectivism manifests itself in an attitude verging on indifference in regard to tactics and program." [p. 108] The authors then go on to cite as an example the following quote from Allen, a quote which Allen describes not as a strategy but "as two general rules of attack" [White Blind-spot, p. 18]. First, face the problem of the necessity to repudiate the white-skin privilege. Second, act: repudiate the privilege by violating the white "gentleman's agreement" as completely as you can at every opportunity. Once radicals adopt such an approach to radicalizing the white masses, the implications for particular areas of activity will not be hard to find. If in doubt at first, just make a list of the privileges and start violating them. [Allen, "Can White Radicals Be Radicalized?", cited by the authors on p. 108] It should first be noted that the authors' charges are a bit demagogic, since nowhere in A House Divided do they themselves elaborate on "tactics and program." Rather, they offer such statements as, "At what point and in what circumstances the challenge [against the system of favoritism for whites] becomes decisive will depend on a variety of conjunctural factors concerning the development of the revolutionary movement about which it would be useless to speculate now." [p. 113] Further, regarding tactics, Allen certainly did indicate some areas for work in the original White Blindspot areas such as seniority, layoffs, urban removal, racist craft unions, prisons, higher education, civil service ratings, and apprenticeship programs. [White Blindspot, pp. 17-18] Since that article Allen has again taken up the subject, most notably in a 29-page letter to Ignatin at a time that Allen perceived a significant change in strategy in Ignatin's organization; at that time Allen added to his previous areas for work such things as South Africa and southern Africa, affirmative action, police brutality, frame-up and harassment, housing, and the white-supremacist aspects of the "tax revolt." [Allen to Ignatin, 7/11/78, p. 17, reprinted in Sojourner Truth Organization, Internal Bulletin Number 4] More importantly, however, this criticism by the point from which Marxists and other revolutionaryminded people should proceed. . . . Every shop floor, community, prison or high school leader, every class-conscious worker, every activist has to search out in concrete circumstances the actual forms taken by white-supremacist national oppression . Through investigation of white supremacist national oppression and the spontaneous struggle against it, Marxists and other class-conscious workers can develop the propaganda, agitation, and programs of struggle which will convince the working class. . .that its actual immediate and long-term interests lie in making the fight against favoritism for whites "part and parcel" of every struggle, [p. 122] The essential difference between this passage and Allen's is that where Allen sees the need for "whites" to act to repudiate white-skin privileges, the authors of A House Divided do not put forth such a call for action. Instead, they argue that "the slogan 'fight white-skin privileges' or its corollary, 'repudiate white-skin privileges,' has never been more than a propaganda slogan aimed at winning people to a Marxist approach." [p. 115] [italics mine JP] Perhaps the slogan was such for them, but thereby hangs a tale. For Allen the crucial test is the actual leading of a mass base in practice in the fight against white supremacy and white-skin privileges. In the absence of this, there is no talk from Allen about being in the lead in the formation of a Marxist vanguard party. For the PUL, however, the situation is quite different. For some time now they have sought a liaison with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (split-off from the Revolutionary Communist Party, formerly Revolutionary Union) and the Communist Party (M-L) (formerly October League, now recently splintered) in attempts at what PUL originally saw as "the construction of a revolutionary proletarian party, guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought" which PUL declared to be "the primary objective of all revolutionaries in this period." [See On the October League's Call For a New Communist Party: A Response, by the PUL, p. 13.] (The Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought has now been downplayed in line with recent developments in the 30 People's Republic of China.) Related to this they claim that "the main form of activity in the present period is propaganda" [see Two, Three, Many Parties of A New Type?: Against the Ultra-Left Line, by the PUL, 1977, p. 29] and that "the forces representing the long-term interests of the communist movement must aim the main blow at 'left' sectarianism." [ibid., p. 30] In accordance with this, they became self-critical of themselves and their earlier formulation (circa the time the chapters in A House Divided were first written) that ". . . white opportunism in political line constitutes the fundamental threat to the construction of a revolutionary party." [ibid., p. 59] Thus the difference is clear for Allen the main task is to actively aim the strategic main blow at white supremacy and the white-skin privileges in practice and, based on this, to seek to aggroup those that actually lead in this effort. The PUL people, on the other hand, are in the party-building business and seek to aim the main blow at "left" sectarianism.. Accordingly, the PUL readily seeks to build a Party with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters-Revolutionary Union types (types long criticized on the left for white supremacy) on a basis not of their leadership in the fight against white supremacy but rather on their self-proclaimed "communist movement" standing and on a basis of fighting "left" errors. The question then arises, why, if this is the PUL's strategy, do they come out in 1981 with a book on white supremacy in the workers' movement, based on writings which are over five years old? The question also might be asked, why did the authors make no attempt, according to Allen, to discuss their critique of his material with Allen himself? The answer, it seems, is that they clearly are in the party-building business for a while they were even in negotiations with those who had the China "franchise" (Communist Party [M-L]). When groups like the RCP and the CP(M-L) were at their respective "peaks," they would have nothing to do with PUL's talk of "white-skin privileges," so PUL put talk of the fight against white supremacy on the back burner and focused instead on "left" sectarianism. Now, however, with both of the former groups in total disarray, and with many of their former cherished positions in tatters, the opporimmediate gain and then bringing it out when it has a possible market value is an old business trick and one that might be expected from those in the partybuilding business. But Harry Haywood has been around a long time, and he wasn't fooled a lick by it. Haywood, whose works have long been circulated by the October League/Communist Party (M-L) comments that there "is a distinct tendency for the authors to see things from the vision of the 60's radical. Thus some of the main theoretical underpinnings of the 'Blindspot' line are not fully broken with." [p. 142] Clearly, the authors can't have it both ways the Blindspot line and the OL/CP(M-L) line don't mix. Pulling aspects of the Blindspot line out after five years' running with a different line just doesn't cut it. Ultra-Left Utopianism The authors' second category of criticism of Allen and Ignatin is for what they call "ultra-left utopianism, which they describe as "a demand for the abolition of white supremacy not founded in an analysis of the historical limits of U.S. bourgeois rule." [p. 115] They quote Allen from "The Most Vulnerable Point" that "the indispensable condition of the participation of the white workers in revolutionary struggle is the repudiation of the white-skin privileges, privileges which are ruinous to the short-range and long-range interests of the entire proletariat, of whites no less than Blacks and other proletarian victims of national oppression. (Page 2)." [p. 113] The authors, however, then go on to create a strawman argument, speaking of "the connotation of the term 'repudiation' as a complete act" [p. 113] and then argue against this strawman "we disagree with any formulation that implies that 'repudiation' is a single act which, once completed, ushers in a period of struggle." [p. 114] They then argue, "far from being a prelude to revolutionary struggle around other issues, as Ted Allen's statement might suggest, fighting white favoritism has to become a central, and often the central revolutionary feature of those struggles." [ibid., italics mine JP] shelving a product and then bringing it out when it has a possible market value tunity seems to have arisen in which a sound theory on white supremacy (such as that based on Ted Allen's writings) becomes a valuable thing, and the proponents of such a sound theory can become much more marketable individuals amongst those in such a business. Shelving a product when it provides no apparent Incredible, truly incredible. The authors create a phony strawman argument repudiation as a single complete act which they then attribute to Allen. To counter it they use one of Allen's own arguments, which finally they alter so as to liquidate the centrality of the fight against white supremacy. Such argu mentation is pure demagoguery. 31 Specifically, in thousands of pages of writing, Allen has never once argued that repudiation is a single complete act. Never! In a letter to [a member] of the Sojourner Truth Organization, dated March 1979, Allen comes out four-square for participation "in the actual struggles which continually occur against white racial oppression." [p. 10] More to the point, in the very work which the authors purport to critique (White Blindspot), Allen argues against "those 'vanguard' elements [like the PUL JP] who worry about the self difficulty of 'selling' the rank and file on the idea of repudiation of the white-skin privileges" and says they "should begin their charity at home: they should first 'search their hearts' and ask if they, themselves, are sold on the idea of repudiating the white-skin privileges, and if they maintain a 24- hour-a-day vigilance in that effort." [White Blindspot, p. 10] Hardly the words of one who sees repudiation of a white-skin privilege (singular) as a once and forever act. Further, it is Allen who argues that, "The principal aspect of U.S. capitalist society is not merely bourgeois domination, but bourgeois white-supremacist domination." ["Introduction to White Blindspot, p. 1] In a society whose principal aspect is bourgeois white-supremacist domination, there is no issue in which the fight against white supremacy will not be central. As opposed to those "Marxists" who offer a purified class-against-class analysis of U.S. society, Allen is emphatic in his position that there is no issue, be it male supremacy, housing, unemployment, education, etc., in this society which is not shaped in a white-supremacist fashion and which does not therefore require anti-white-supremacist proletarian struggle. Allen is explicit in White Blindspot when he states that "the fight against white supremacy and the white-skin privileges is the key." [p. 10] It is a paraphrase of Allen's own writing which the authors of A House Divided have attempted to use to beat down the argument they falsely attribute to Allen. But building efforts have not found the struggle against white supremacy to be the central task. Rather, the struggle against "'left' sectarianism" in the search for "proletarian unity" in the "Communist movement" is their priority. The Question of the White Race In some ways even more startling is the authors' charge that Allen's and Ignatin's emphasis on the "demand for the abolition of white supremacy is not founded in an analysis of the historical limits of U.S. bourgeois rule." [p. 115] For fifteen years, Allen has been writing constantly on just this question. There is hardly an argument against the historical role of white supremacy in the U.S. which the authors use which wasn't said earlier and better by Allen. The authors themselves pay homage to Allen's historical efforts speaking of "the general importance of his historical research." [p. 108] Allen's historical research covers virtually the entire span of U.S. history. His current writings are on the origin of racial slavery and the invention of the "white" race as a bourgeois-social-control formation based on a system of white-skin privileges in the seventeenth century. His earlier works treat the historic reconstituting of these privileges, which were so threatened and undermined in the Civil War- Reconstruction period, and puts particular emphasis on the ways in which the bourgeoisie accomplished this in the principal areas of industrial employment, land, and immigration. His writings then go on to discuss how the existence of the white-skin privilege system enabled the bourgeoisie to turn to white supremacy to beat back attacks when threatened during Reconstruction, Populism, and the Depression 1930s. Based on this historical analysis and an appraisal of current situations, Allen then puts forth the strategy of the fight against white supremacy and the white-skin privilege system as the key to proletarian revoluin their party building efforts they have not found the struggle against white supremacy to be the central task that is not all. They have changed Allen's argument in such a way as to alter its entire meaning. What is for Allen "the key" becomes for the authors "a central, and often the central revolutionary feature of those struggles." The real telltale for the authors is the facility with which they find situations in which the struggle against white supremacy is not "the central revolutionary feature of those struggles." Most specifically, the PUL people in their partytion in the U.S. The authors of A House Divided, however, seem to have grasped little from all this, other than what they could use in their party-building polemics. An important example is when they describe Allen's Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race pamphlet (1975) [HEP, P. O. Box M-71, Hoboken, NJ 07030] (Note: the authors significantly omit the second half of the title.) as an analysis of "the origin of African slavery 32 as a form of social control in early colonial America, with a focus on Bacon's Rebellion of 1676." [p. 147] Such a description clearly misses the significance of Allen's work. For Allen it is not African slavery but the "white" race bourgeois-social-control formation which was the key to social control. Allen's writings focus not on African slavery but rather on the peculiar system of racial slavery that developed in what is now the United States. In detailing and analyzing the system of racial slavery, he explains how it did not exist from the beginning in Virginia, how its particular racist shaping was not something innate in the nature of capitalism, and how racism is not something "innate" in European-Americans the term "white" was not even in use as a description of European-Americans for most of the 17th century. Allen explains the development of this system of racial slavery as a particular ruling class response to particular conditions of labor unrest. The problem of the 17th-century Chesapeake bourgeoisie was to find an adequate labor supply and a viable form of social control in their pursuit of profits. The method ultimately employed involved the creation of the "white race" as a bourgeois-social-control formation which was used to maintain order in a system of racial slavery in which the lifetime, hereditary chattel-bond laborers were Africans and Afro-Americans. Anglo-American colonies, the chattel-bond-labor supply was drawn in large part from English and other European sources. The peculiarity did not inhere in the fact that the supply of lifetime, hereditary chattel-bond-laborers was made up of Africans and Afro-Americans exclusively. Nor did it inhere in the fact that the "supply" of owners of bond-laborers was practically limited to Europeans and their descendants; that, too, was true for the Americas generally. The peculiarity of the "peculiar institution" had its being, rather, in the "control" aspect. Yet, not in the mere fact that the control of bond-labor depended upon the support of the free non-owners of bond-labor, as buffer and enforcer against the unfree proletariat; for that too was a general characteristic of plantation societies in the Americas. The peculiarity of the system of social control which came to be established in continental Anglo- America lay in the following two characteristics: (1) all persons of any discernible degree of non- European ancestry were excluded from the buffersocial- control stratum; and, (2) the bulk of the buffer-social-control stratum maintained against the unfree proletarians was, itself, made up of the mass of the free proletarians and semi-proletarians. The purpose of this present study is to understand the historical events and process which culminated in the establishment of that system of social control; to understand how, at a certain point not African slavery, but the "white" race bourgeois social control formation was the key Racial slavery in the United States was long referred to as the "peculiar institution." It was so referred to because, amongst other things, it differed from the forms of slavery developed elsewhere in the Americas. Understanding how it differed is crucial to understanding Allen's work, the role of white supremacy in U.S. history, and the tasks required for any revolutionary change in this country. In his work currently in progress Allen explains this particularity, and I quote from Allen at length: First, "the peculiar institution," or racial slavery, here refers exclusively to the particular form of labor supply and control, as it was established in the Anglo-American continental plantation colonies (and attempted in the Anglo-Caribbean), by the end of the first century after the landing at Jamestown. Secondly, the term "racial slavery" will be understood to refer not to the African ancestry of the bond-laborers, but to the "white race" system of control of the society based on Afro-American bond labor. The system's peculiarity did not inhere in its labor-supply aspect. Laborers everywhere in the plantation Americas were reduced to chattels and supplied through the market system. And, in the in our colonial pre-history, the "white race" the quintessence of the peculiar institution was invented, as a special form of class collaboration, for maintaining bourgeois social control in its specifically "American" form. Clearly, Allen's understanding of the "peculiar institution" is different from that of the authors of A House Divided, who define the "peculiar institution" as "U.S. white supremacist national oppression." [p. 140] For Allen, the particularity is in the control aspect in the "white race" as a bourgeois-socialcontrol formation a formation predominantly "white worker" in composition which was created by and serves the bourgeoisie against the proletariat a formation that defines itself as "white" a formation that acts "white." For the authors of A House Divided, whose definition sees the peculiarity in the oppression and fails to see the peculiarity in the control, their confusion on this point is profound. On the one hand, incredible as it may sound, the authors hold that whiteness is a non-concept, a bourgeois notion without substantive reality: a 'white race' does not exist," [p. 84, italics mine JP] Biologically, the concept of 33 the white race does indeed lack substantive reality but not socially. If this were the point the authors were making, they would be on safe ground. The authors, however, are not making this point. To the contrary, they argue that "any demand that the masses of white workers distinguish now between the social sense of 'whiteness' and 'white' pigmentation can have no effect at this time or in the foreseeable future." [p. 110] Their acquiescence in the use of "'white' pigmentation" (the biological) and opposition to the notion of challenging social "whiteness" is nothing less than total surrender to "white" opportunism. In contrast to the position of the authors of A House Divided, Allen provides an analysis of the "white race" as a bourgeois-social-control formation. This understanding in turn allows for an analysis of the interrelation between the objective and subjective components of the socially defined white race. Accordingly, he argues against "white race" privileges, the white-skin privilege system, and the "white race" social-control-formation. Allen also argues against the "white race" ideology and against acting and thinking "white." The recent Bakke and Weber arguments were premised on defense of so-called "white rights" and "white" interests. The odious Ku Klux Klan puts itself forth as the true defender of the "white race." Even the authors of A House Divided go so far as to speak of "a white nationality." [p. 12] Obviously, in the arena of ideology there is a vital struggle to be waged. What is the culture of a "white nationality" but a culture of oppression? Does not the "white race" set itself over and above all other "races"? What are "white" interests but interests of the bourgeoisie? Are not "white" interests directly opposed to proletarian interests? One of the progressive developments that came out of the struggles of the fifties, sixties, and seventies was the self-definition of Afro-Americans in terms such as Black or Afro-American. These selfdefinitions had a host of positive attributes, not the least of which was that they were in fact selfdefinitions, not oppressor-imposed definitions. A highly significant aspect of these self-definitions was the fact at they posed a stark challenge in the ideological 1m to the bourgeois white-supremacist order. Certainly it is long past the time when European-Americans should pose a related challenge to the bourgeois white-supremacist order by refusing to think and act white. Clearly one of the tasks ahead is for European-Americans to begin acting not-"white," to see the odiousness in defining themselves as and acting as of the "white race," and to see the revolutionary import and basic humanity of joining the race. To this struggle, too, Allen makes a contribution when he calls for European- Americans to Resign from the 'white' race. This break from the "white race" is not to be understood as being merely on an ideological plane. The break from the "white race" as a bourgeois-socialcontrol formation is made in the interest of revolution in this country. Whereas the authors of A House Divided see this as having no effect at this time or in the foreseeable future [p. 110] and consider it as a matter useless to speculate on [p. 113], Allen offers insights from a totally different perspective. In the previously cited letter to Ignatin, Allen responds to a scenario suggested by Ignatin with the following: It is only the adherence of the white workers that converts what would otherwise be a simple front of European-American bourgeois classes, into the white race, a monolith of all rich and poor European- Americans. As a "race," however, it must remain a monolith, or it ceases to exist. The breakaway of a third of the European-American workers from the white race to the cause of the revolutionary proletariat would, therefore, mean the end of the white race. There is thus better reason to believe than to doubt that, if such a "healthy minority" of European-American workers opted for their class rather than their "race," that same tide of proletarian regeneration would sweep on through their ranks to the overwhelming majority. At the beginning of the foregoing speculation, I assumed one-third to be the requisite "healthy minority," but came to the conclusion that the proportion necessary to make the minority "healthy" would transform it qualitatively into something no longer definable as part of the white race. It is possible then to define precisely what will constitute the "healthy minority" in those terms, as follows: The "healthy minority" will be that level of defection of European-Americans from the white race at which the white race is rendered defunct in its historical role as an instrument of social control for the United States bourgeoisie. [Letter to Ignatin, p. 10] Surely, in stark contrast to the authors' specious charges, Allen's understanding is based on historical analysis and makes a signal contribution toward an explanation of how the "white race" was formed, how it has functioned, and how it can be ended by revolutionary struggle. Criticisms of Slogan and Strategy The authors of A House Divided go to some lengths to explain that they prefer to use only the term "white skin privileges" and not "the white skin privilege." [p. 109] They then go on to argue that the slogan "repudiate the white skin privilege" is ahistorical, is only a propaganda slogan, and is a slogan that is not for the entire working class, [p. 115] The criticism of the use of the term "white skin privilege" is, like so many of the criticisms by the 34 authors, both deceptive and hypocritical. First, throughout White Blindspot Allen speaks of both the white-skin privilege and white-skin privileges and calls for both the repudiation of the white-skin privilege and "repudiation of the white-skin privileges." [See, for example, White Blindspot, p. 10] The hypocrisy of the authors over the use of the term in the singular is most apparent when they themselves, defending themselves from critics, argue "that several factors recommend also keeping the phrase 'white skin privilege.'" [p. 14] The authors also claim that the slogan is not for the entire working class, that it is ahistorical and only a propaganda slogan. All of Allen's writings, however, argue clearly that the struggle against the white-skin privileges is in the interests of the entire working class. In "The Most Vulnerable Point" (one of the works cited by the authors), Allen argues that "the white-skin privileges [are] privileges which are ruinous to the short-range and long-range interests of the entire proletariat, of whites no less than Blacks and other victims of national oppression." [p. 2] Clearly the struggles of Afro-Americans and other non-whites against white supremacy directly challenge the whiteskin privilege system. The authors go on to argue that "the focus on the failures of white labor to the exclusion of other strategic problems, most significantly those concerning the national revolutionary movements themselves" [p. 116], "translates into a failure to grapple with the problems facing the national revolutionary movements and their relation to the general labor movement." [p.117] On the one hand, this criticism is a bit hypocritical coming from the authors, who themselves write: "the emphasis on the 'white question' might represent a necessary corrective to the common view among the left that the fight against white supremacy is a 'special task' of the Afro-American, Chicano and oppressed peoples. (This book has a similar focus, for that and related reasons.)" [pp. 116-17] On this subject, too, Allen offers some useful comments. In a letter to a member of the Sojourner Truth Organization in March 1979, Allen writes: If Afro-Americans ask my opinions in the matter of the national question theory and the Afro-American people's struggle for liberation from white oppression [and I do not expect to be asked], I will express my opinion if I have one which I think worth expressing; but not otherwise. This attitude seems to me to proceed logically from adherence to the principle of self-determination for oppressed peoples. Furthermore, I believe it helps to keep the focus of my attention directed to problems more appropriate to me as a European-American, i.e., those of analysis and exposure of the race-privilege system and the fights against its paralyzing effect on the proletarian will in this country. On the other hand, if I am asked to participate in a discussion around the question: "Do the 'white' people in the United States constitute a nation?", I will do so: and begin, at least, by arguing the negative." [Letter to [STO member], March 1979, pp. 9-10] As to the authors' contributions to what they refer to as the "strategic problems . . . concerning the national revolutionary movements" [p. 118] they are virtually nil. Like the great proliferation of predominantly "white" self-proclaimed "communist" groups before them, they have offered little save the now-quite-familiar pronouncement about the need for "a resolute fight for the right of self-determination of the oppressed, the Afro-American people." [p.. 118] The mimesis of the "white" left on this point and the seeming failure to learn anything from the previous use of this slogan itself constitutes a barrier to revolutionary struggle. Here too, Allen, in reviewing the twists and turns of the U.S. communist movement on this very issue, makes the prescient point that: Both in the acceptance phase, and in the rejection phase, the fact of holding or having held the Black Belt Nation theory served to give a gloss of sophistication to the essential process of the Party's abandonment of a revolutionary stand against whiteopportunism a sophistication far in advance of the simple-minded "race" notions of the earlier generations of white American socialists. In short, although the national theory of the oppression of Afro-Americans has been shown to be incompatible with the fullest and most general triumph of class collaborationism, it is equally well demonstrated that the holding of the theory by white radicals does not constitute the slightest obstacle to the betrayal of their special obligations in the struggle against white supremacy, in general, and white opportunism among white workers in particular the betrayal which, if unchecked, is the guarantee of the full and general triumph of class collaborationism. [Letter to [STO member], pp. 12- 13] Allen's comments seem well worth considering for the authors of A House Divided, who speak of a "white nationality" [p. 12] and who have put the struggle against white supremacy on the back burner in order to concentrate on the struggle against "Left" sectarianism. Note: The reader interested in obtaining copies of Allen's writings may write to HEP, P. O. Box M-71, Hoboken, NJ 07030.The first condition for building a Marxist-Leninist Party in this country is the recognition of the following facts about the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which constitutes the principal contradiction of United States capitalist society:
(1) The principal aspect of U.S. capitalist society is not merely bourgeois domination, but bourgeois white supremacist domination; and therefore, the proletarian revolutionary strategy for the overthrow of bourgeois rule in the United States requires that the main blow be directed at white supremacy.
(2) The principal aspect of the U.S. working class movement today is not merely opportunism, but white racist opportunism; and therefore, the central and decisive task in the struggle against all forms and aspects of opportunism is the struggle against white chauvinism in the ranks of the proletariat.
(3) The principal aspect of opportunism is not merely white supremacism, but the white racist privileges conferred by the bourgeoisie on the white workers; and therefore, the indispensable condition for the participation of the white workers in revolutionary struggle is the repudiation of their whiteskin privileges, privileges which are ruinous to the short-range and the long-range interests of the entire proletariat, of whites no less than Blacks.
The second condition for building a Marxist- Leninist Party is bringing together the critical mass of cadre, sufficient in number and sufficiently national in scope, who understand the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy in the terms stated above; and who understand it not as a liability, but as the expression of the redoubled revolutionary power resulting from the conjunction of national liberation and proletarian revolution.
The third condition for the building of a Marxist- Leninist Party is that, as a result of practice in applying this strategic line in tactical political, economic, and ideological struggles over a sufficient period of time, the cadre has built a mass base of support among its fellow proletarians, let us say twenty to fifty times as numerous as the cadre it29 self, which understand and consistently supports the cadre, fair weather or foul. [ "Introduction to White Blindspot," pp. 1-2. Note: this work is" cited by the authors of A House Divided on p. 113 but not included in their Bibliography.]