Continued from left column

But the decisive force in determining the future course of events, and relations of the Southern fighters with the labor move­ment in the North and West, is the Negro move­ment itself. In this vital move­ment just unfolding there is great attractive power: in the relations between the Negro move­ment and the labor move­ment the Negroes hold the initiative. But only a proletarian leadership of the Negro move­ment will be able to utilize properly this strategic advantage and to draw the labor move­ment into support and inter­ven­tion. Such a leadership will grasp the political sig­nifi­cance of the situation.

Above all, the Negro move­ment must beware of the “isolationist” feeling that if the labor move­ment doesn’t seem to move, and if, as a consequence, the working class as a whole appears unmoved by and unconcerned with the heroic strug­gle in the South, then the Negro move­ment can turn its back and go its way alone. Such a course would be disastrous, would end in the crushing defeat of the Negroes and retard the whole labor strug­gle.

Such proposals arise from an underestimation of the task ahead and from the dangerous illusion that racial equality can be achieved without the over­throw and complete destruc­tion of the Southern social system. In this strug­gle, the Negroes will be the initiators, because of their super-exploitation and advanced con­scious­ness. But the fight can be won only by the united strug­gle of all toilers.

V.  What Political Road?

The advanced con­scious­ness of the Negro move­ment expresses itself politically. First, by their refusal to be taken in by patriotic war propaganda. Second, by their willingness to launch broad strug­gles in spite of the reaction. This political understanding also encompasses the knowledge that the problem of civil rights is neither a moral question, one of law, or of the “hearts and minds of men,” but that it is a political question which must be fought by means of political party.

The Negroes are also quite aware that the Democratic and Republican parties are their ene­mies, and that serious advancement of the strug­gle for equality is impossible through these channels.

But the Negroes are the captives of the labor bureaucracy: the alliance between labor and the Negro people finds its degenerate expression in the captivity of the Negro middle class leaders in the Democratic Party. We have every sympathy with the Negroes in this political bondage and with the dramatic move of Roy Wilkins, shortly followed by Representative [Adam Clayton] Powell, to the Republican Party, as signifying a protest against the hypocrisy of the liberals and the labor leaders rather than support to the Republican bankers.

But this situation dictates bolder action by the Negro leaders: the isolation of the Negro move­ment demands that it give full scope to its advanced position to raise the workers in the labor move­ment toward it: we call upon the Negro leaders to reject the degenerate alliance with the labor fakers in the party of the Bourbons as well as the ineffectual bolts to the Republican Party. We urge them to join with the Socialist Workers Party in the demand upon the labor unions that they form a party of the working class.

We call upon them to emulate the qualities of leadership of a Frederick Douglass, who was not afraid to break even with William Lloyd Garrison and to split the abolitionist society when an oppor­tu­nity appeared to prepare the way for the coming political party of eman­ci­pa­tion.

VI.  The Com­mu­nist Party

The Com­mu­nist Party, at one time the most successful of the socialist organ­iza­tions in attracting Negro mili­tants, has by now dissipated its influence in the Negro community and lost the large majority of its once powerful Negro cadre. This cadre was won by the prestige which the Russian Revolution commanded among peoples who seriously wanted a social change, and by years of devoted work by the rank and file of the party.

The basic reason for the present isolation of the Com­mu­nist Party in the Negro community lies in the following political cir­cum­stance: the leaders of the CP have never hesitated to sacrifice the inter­ests of the Negro people to the inter­ests of maintaining alliances with privileged sections of the white population who might temporarily be of use in furthering the inter­ests of the Soviet bureaucracy.

This was most horribly dem­on­strated during World War II when the CP openly denounced strug­gles of the Negro people as being disruptive of the “war effort” of American imperialism which was in alliance with the Soviet gov­ern­ment. Betrayals of a like nature have followed the various twists and turns of policy until the Negro mili­tants have become completely disaffected.

A second cause for the dissipation of the influence of the CP has been the persistence with which it clung to the erroneous idea that the Negroes con­sti­tute a nation and that their con­se­quent political de­vel­op­ment would lead them to assert the right to nationhood and national self-determination. The authors of this doctrine envisaged that their theoretical contribution was, therefore, to prepare the ground for this inevitable separation.

This whole line of thought is in diametric opposition to the real nature of the Negro strug­gle and its historical tradition. It is seg­re­ga­tion by skin color which is the traditional and present enemy of the Negroes, not national oppression.

The move­ment of the Negro people is the oldest social move­ment in existence in the United States. It is over 300 years old, and since 1818, the beginning of the strug­gle against the American Colonization Society, this move­ment has had a virtually unin­terrupted existence and one fun­da­men­tal direction: integration. Ever since then, the fun­da­men­tal course of the Negro strug­gle has been to reject the demand of the ruling class that they become a separate subordinate nation, through seg­re­ga­tion, and to demand the full rights of American citizen­ship and nationality. It will take a social catas­tro­phe, more devastating than any yet visited upon the Negro people, to change the fun­da­men­tal course of their strug­gle.

The Negroes considered that it was impudent, stupid and against their inter­ests for the Stalinists arbitrarily to brush aside this great tradition of strug­gle and say to them in effect: “You’ll take self-determination and like it. When you develop out of your great political backwardness, the CP will be vindicated.” The Negroes replied that they already had seg­re­ga­tion which was their worst enemy, and that the plans for a segregated social­ism didn’t appeal to them. In spite of this almost universal reaction in the Negro community, the Stalinists blindly hung on to this theory.

Another consequence of this theory was that it created an almost gravitational attraction between the CP and sections of the Negro middle class. This was the only social group in the Negro community in which there seemed to be any expression of nationalism. This nationalism took the form of a willingness to accept seg­re­ga­tion, the economic foundation of the Negro middle class and to confine the strug­gle to gaining improvements for its position within the framework of seg­re­ga­tion.

Even during the “left” periods, this alliance between the CP leaders and the Negro middle classes resulted in the frustration of efforts of the rank and file com­mu­nists, both white and black, to undertake serious strug­gle.

The present policy of “peaceful co-existence” is similar to the World War II jingoism in its betrayal of the Negro strug­gle. We call the attention of the Com­mu­nist Party to the following actions and policies of the past year which tend to place the whole radical move­ment in bad repute in the Negro community:

1. Support of the “Louisville Plan.” This reac­tion­ary scheme to compromise the demand of the Negroes for imme­di­ate deseg­re­ga­tion of the public schools, through “voluntary seg­re­ga­tion,” was bla­tantly supported by spokesmen for the Com­mu­nist Party. (See front page illustrated story People’s World, Sept. 21, 1956.)

2. Support of the Louisiana right to work law. This amended version of the original law was condemned by the National Agricultural Union and other spokesmen for Negro workers in Louisiana as a measure which gave to the largely white skilled workers certain immunities from the law at the expense of the Negroes and other agricultural, lumber, processing, etc. workers. The leaders of the CP committed the party to its support as an example of a “peoples’ anti-monopoly coalition” and even placed this support in its Draft Program. (See Draft Resolution for 16th National Convention of CP presented by NC, page 32, 1956.)

3. Support of the liberal betrayal of the civil rights strug­gle at the 84th Congress. This betrayal, now exposed by Rep. Powell and many others, consisted of devices whereby the liberal Democrats could guarantee the Bourbons that nothing would come of the Civil Rights legislation, but that the liberals should be permitted to appear as partisans of the legislation. In order to do this, however, they needed a smokescreen. The Daily Worker and the People’s World provided this admirably for them, and every time the liberals betrayed by giving in to the Bourbons, the CP leaders provided the smoke­screen by endless fulminations against Eisenhower or the “Dixiecrats.”

4. Support of the “moderate” wing of White Suprem­acy. The so-called moderate wing of the Southern white suprem­acists, represented by such figures as Lyndon Johnson, is also part of the projected “anti-monopoly coalition.” (See Political Affairs, June 1956.) But this group is just as com­pletely anti-Negro and anti-union as the rest of the Southern Bourbon pol­iti­cians.

The support of these reac­tion­ary policies by the leaders of the CP disqualifies them completely from speaking with any authority on the civil rights strug­gle. We call upon them to repudiate these policies and join with us in a united front of action in defense of civil rights and the Negro strug­gle around the following propositions:

1. 1. That we jointly memorialize Congress to refuse to seat the Southern Bourbon pol­iti­cians, and con­tinue to so refuse until it has been dem­on­strated that their elections are not carried out in violation of the civil rights of the people of the South.
2. 2. That we demand of the president of the U.S. a second Emancipation Proclamation, pro­claim­ing the workers of the South free from the white suprem­acist rulers and proclaiming an imme­di­ate and unconditional end to all seg­re­ga­tion, dis­crim­ina­tion, ter­ror­ism, etc.
3. 3. For joint action in all local strug­gles against dis­crim­ina­tion.
4. 4. For a joint program for all socialists in the trade union move­ment on the civil rights question:
5. a. Demand of the international unions that they conduct a campaign in their Southern locals to bring them into conformity and support of the Negro strug­gle.
6. b. For the elimination of all Jim Crow locals and other discriminatory practices.
7. c. Against the extension of wage differentials and the privileges of skilled workers bought at the expense of the unskilled.
8. d. For a campaign to solve the dis­crim­ina­tion inherent in the fact that Negroes are the last hired, first fired. This dis­crim­ina­tion is perpetuated and frozen in most prevailing seniority systems. Seniority lists can be revised to advance the seniority of that number of Negroes required to maintain an equitable proportion of Negro workers in a plant at any given time, as is the policy of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
9. e. For all-out aid to the Southern strug­gles and to demand that the labor move­ment intervene directly, linking the problem of the organ­iza­tion of the South to the strug­gle against white suprem­acy.
10. 5. To prepare for the overthrow of the Southern system by a continued democratic dis­cus­sion of all issues at stake in the socialist move­ment with the object of creating a new rev­olu­tion­ary socialist party which is the only assurance of victory.

VII.  Negroes and the SWP

The Negro people have long been preparing for the oppor­tu­nity to open up the final strug­gle against white suprem­acy. Their prep­ara­tions have been, in the South, painstaking and systematic. As their oppor­tu­nity comes closer in time and more tangible in form, they must review their prep­ara­tions and consider what element is lacking or in insufficient quantity or inadequate quality.

They must consider that they are a vital part of a great world rev­olu­tion­ary process which has as its goal the reorgan­iza­tion of the whole globe along lines of complete equality for all, through social­ism.

They must recognize the crisis of this world rev­olu­tion­ary move­ment: that while the masses of the world have dem­on­strated their willingness to strug­gle for this aim, the leadership has not responded in kind, and therefore the move­ment fails to fulfill its historical goals. This has resulted in the historical crisis of leadership which is the basic problem of our epoch.

The critical point of all prep­ara­tion for strug­gle in this era is the creation of adequate leadership. The strug­gles of all peoples and all classes require the organ­iza­tion of leadership into a political party. This is the means by which leadership can be tried and tested and is the means for unifying program with practice, leadership with ranks—and keeping them all in proper balance.

We call upon all socialist-minded Negroes to take advantage of the ideological ferment in the general socialist move­ment around the question of the regroupment of socialist forces. This dis­cus­sion holds forth the possibility of clearing the political atmosphere and creating the foundation for a more powerful socialist party through the regroupment of the rev­olu­tion­ary currents.

We call upon them to participate in the dis­cus­sions which are taking place. They will bring to these dis­cus­sions the militance, realism and char­acter of the Negro strug­gle and at the same time broaden their own understanding of it through a heightened con­scious­ness of socialist ideology.

The Negro mili­tants have the following ultimate responsibility in this situation: to determine the pro­gram which corresponds to the objective needs of the whole strug­gle and to make it theirs.

We call upon the mili­tant Negro workers to join the Socialist Workers Party, the party of the American revolution. We stand before them as the party of the proletariat, of the poor and oppressed. We stand upon no economic, political or social privilege, but consider that the oppressed of the world must act together to gain peace, prosperity, security, equality; with abundance for all but special privilege for none. This is the only way to save the world from the catastrophes unleashed by decaying cap­ital­ism.

The SWP stands before the Negro people as the only party in the U.S. which has never under any cir­cum­stances forsaken or subordinated the needs of the Negro strug­gle in the inter­ests of alliance with privileged groups or enemy classes.

We call upon the Negro intellectuals to cast their lot with the proletariat. This is the class which will lead the Negro strug­gle to victory. But this means, first of all, to adhere to the program of rev­olu­tion­ary social­ism—which is the only road of the victorious proletarian strug­gle.




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I.  The Permanent Revolution in America

The objective conditions have matured for the eruption of the class strug­gle in the South. The task of this strug­gle will be to overthrow the fascist-like yoke of white suprem­acy.

Since the destruc­tion of popular gov­ern­ment in the South at the close of the Recon­struc­tion, the Southern Bourbon oligarchy, in close alliance with the whole American cap­ital­ist class, adapted the social relations of chattel slavery to the require­ments of property rela­tions and cap­ital­ist pro­duc­tion.

The cap­ital­ists and planters achieved this Jim Crow system by a method which has been copied by all the imperialist ruling classes of the world. They broke up the working masses into hostile racial groups by the use of organized murder and ter­ror­ism against the Negroes and all who would stand side by side with them. They degraded labor through the enforced peonage of the Negroes. They created a white middle class which derived special privileges from the degradation of labor in general and the Negro in particular. They eliminated popular gov­ern­ment and substituted the rule of a small minority of the privileged, the rich, the powerful: the white suprem­acists.

By creating a living hell for the Negro people, the ruling classes were thus able to achieve a super-exploitation of all Southern labor, bringing in profits which could be compared with those from colonial exploi­ta­tion.

Thus, a whole social system became organized around the degradation of the Negro—a system which became an inte­grated and indispensable part of the economic, social and political structure of American cap­ital­ism.

The eman­ci­pa­tion of the Negro people through social, political and economic equality is the fun­da­men­tal condition for this lib­era­tion of all the oppressed in the South. This requires the destruc­tion of the whole Southern system. Short of this there can be little change and few democratic rights for anyone.

However, the permanent revolution in America reveals itself in the following manner: the Southern system represents massive survivals of chattel slavery. These survivals take the form of great social problems unsolved by the Civil War and Recon­struc­tion: an antiquated system of land tenure, the absence of democratic rights, seg­re­ga­tion and racial dis­crim­ina­tion. The solution of these questions was the responsibility of the cap­ital­ist class when it took the national power from the slaveowners in 1860. But they proved incapable of this. So these survivals of an antique system of exploi­ta­tion have become inte­grated into the cap­ital­ist structure and form a component part thereof.

Capitalism could not solve these problems during its youth and virility, even under conditions of waging a bitter war against the slave power. Now, when amidst the decay and death agony of cap­ital­ism, these problems have become inte­grated into its very structure, the cap­ital­ist class will positively not prove able to solve them. This cir­cum­stance leads to the inescapable con­clu­sion that although the tasks of the lib­era­tion of the South are of an elementary democratic nature, they have no solution within the framework of American cap­ital­ism: they become a part of the socialist strug­gle of the proletariat to overthrow the whole cap­ital­ist system of pro­duc­tion.

The second manifestation of the permanent revolution lies in the question of leadership of the Negro strug­gle. The goal of the Negro strug­gle has been determined historically: the elimination of racial dis­crim­ina­tion lies through the strug­gle for economic, political and social equality. The axis of this strug­gle is the fight against seg­re­ga­tion. At the present time the leadership of this strug­gle is in the hands of the middle class. This Negro middle class suffers social, economic and political dis­crim­ina­tion because of skin color. It is a far more terrible dis­crim­ina­tion than is the usual lot of privileged layers of an oppressed group. This cir­cum­stance has pro­duced a great galaxy of Negro scholars who have brilliantly analyzed and plumbed the depths and sources of racial oppression.

But, at the same time, the position of the middle class as a whole derives from and feeds upon seg­re­ga­tion, the axis of the social force which oppresses them as Negroes.

This conflict between their racial and class inter­ests causes the middle class leadership to act in a hesitant and treacherous manner. They will prove totally incapable of giving adequate leadership to the move­ment as it develops on to higher planes of strug­gle.

But the Negro workers have no such conflict of inter­est. They receive no such economic privileges from seg­re­ga­tion. On the contrary they are super-exploited at the point of pro­duc­tion and in all economic spheres. Discrimination against them as Negroes is intimately connected with their exploi­ta­tion as workers. Finding themselves below the standard of living of even the white workers, they must of necessity open up a strug­gle for racial equality as the key to raising their standard of living as workers.

So as it falls to the American working class as a whole to solve the basic contradictions of American society, so does it fall upon the shoulders of the Negro proletariat to take the lead in the strug­gle for equality.

II.  The Significance of Montgomery

The successful strug­gle of the Negroes of Mont­gomery shows a changed relationship of forces in the South. This is the first successful sustained mass strug­gle of the Negroes of the South in nearly seventy years. It demonstrates the decay and disin­te­gra­tion of the power of white suprem­acy and reveals that the situation is ripening for the lib­era­tion of the people of the South from the Jim Crow system.

The changed conditions have been brought about by the industrialization of the South and the deepening of the penetration of monopoly cap­ital­ism into all spheres of life. The salient features of this change have been: (1) The urbanization of the Negro population which now finds its center of gravity shifted from the dispersed rural areas into powerful mass forces in the cities. (2) The under­mining of the mass base of the Southern system through the partial destruc­tion of the white middle class and the proletarianization of large con­tin­gents of this former mass petty bour­geoi­sie.

This changed relationship of forces results in the inability of the white ruling classes to crush at will the aroused and organized Negro masses. The mag­nitude of the Negro strug­gle, reaching national and even international proportions, has rendered the U.S. gov­ern­ment helpless to intervene decisively in behalf of the white suprem­acists.

These objective conditions have been ripening for decades and provide the groundwork for the outbreak of the Montgomery masses. The imme­di­ate factor preparing the masses for the actual strug­gle was the [Emmett] Till case and its after­math, which dem­on­strated to the Negroes that the Federal Government would do nothing against the Jim Crow system, that any feeling that the Negroes had an ally in the national capital was an illusion, and that if anything was to be done they would have to do it themselves.

The strug­gle is now beginning to unfold. As it develops, all the resources of the American cap­ital­ist class will be aligned against it: all the forces of reaction, all agencies of gov­ern­ment, the army, the avenues of information and the schools, churches and courts. Yet, the victory of the masses will be assured under two conditions:

1. That the strug­gle of the Southern workers, led by the Negroes, will rekindle the fires of the class strug­gle throughout the country and bring into play the great powers of the American proletariat in solidarity with them.

2. That the Southern masses will produce a rev­olu­tion­ary socialist leadership fully conscious of its aims, the road of strug­gle, the magnitude of the task.

The Montgomery boycotters forecast the unfold­ing move­ment which will take the lead in the eman­ci­pa­tion of the Southern masses.

We support the courageous internationalism of their sympathy for and self-identification with the strug­gles of the dark-skinned colonial masses. This kinship arises from the common bond forged by years of common strug­gle against white suprem­acy. It is our elementary duty, however, to warn the Negro people away from Gandhi’s program of “passive resistance” as a means of their lib­era­tion.

This program, fostered by the Indian bour­geoi­sie, paralyzed the action of the masses of people, kept the Indian cap­ital­ists at the head of the move­ment for Indian independence and made it possible for the native bour­geoi­sie to reap all the rewards of the strug­gle against imperialism at the expense of the masses.

In the United States this program has been super-imposed upon the strug­gle in Montgomery by its petty bourgeois leadership. By thus identifying a dynamic strug­gle with “resistance in the spirit of love and non-violence” they blunt the con­scious­ness of the masses who require a program which cor­responds with the reality of their mili­tant actions.

We hail the emergence of the proletarian mili­tants in the Montgomery strug­gle. They are the coming leaders of the strug­gle of all the Southern masses. It is they who have nothing to lose and the world to gain. Their class position gives them courage and insight, for it is they who have the fun­da­men­tal stake in the strug­gle against the Jim Crow system.

We salute the women of the South both black and white for their heroic role in the strug­gle.

The unbounded rev­olu­tion­ary energy of the triply oppressed Negro women is making itself manifest in the initiative and leadership which they have given to the move­ment in its initial stages.

The decay of the Southern system which foretells its doom is expressed by the defection of the white women away from the forces of white suprem­acy and by their organized appearance in greater and greater numbers in joint strug­gle with the Negroes. This is the proof that they recognize that they, too, are the victims of the system of white suprem­acy. They understand that the so-called “chivalry” of Southern tradition degrades them: that the pedestal of “sacred” white womanhood is in reality a prison for chattels which denies independence, the rights of citizens and the status of human beings.

They are aware that the myth of “sacred” (i.e., segregated) white womanhood is one of the focal points of the ideology of white suprem­acy and ties the strug­gle for the eman­ci­pa­tion of women directly to that of the Negroes.

Other large sections of the white population hide their disgust with the Southern system in fear of reprisal. We recommend the example of the women and urge them to give organized support to their courageous strug­gle.

III.  The Labor Movement

The existence of the Southern social system is a constant mortal threat to the entire labor move­ment in the U.S. Every factor of political and economic life shows that the extension of unionism into the open-shop South is a life and death question.

But unions cannot exist on any mass scale in the total absence of elementary democratic rights. On the other hand labor unions will grow hand in hand with the successes of the Civil Rights move­ment. Consequently the labor move­ment must dedicate itself to the destruc­tion of white suprem­acy as the only way to assure the extension of unionism into the South.

We call upon the officials of the AFL-CIO to begin the campaign to organize the South with a repudiation of their political alliance with the liberal Democrats who are the protectors and defenders of the Southern Bourbons. We call upon them to take the next step in the Southern drive: to declare for the formation of a political party of labor which would become the political and organ­iza­tional center of the strug­gle against Jim Crow.

IV.  The Advanced Position of the Negro Movement

The strug­gle for racial equality is an integral part of the strug­gle of the American working class for social­ism. The connection between these two goals is so fun­da­men­tal that one cannot be envisaged without the other.

This connection has been implicit from the very beginning of the anti-slavery strug­gle and found clearest expression in Karl Marx’s dictum to white American workers: “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” The consistent logic which led many abolitionist leaders such as Douglass and Phillips to embrace socialist principles confirmed this connection.

The power of the ruling class and the pernicious influence of the Southern system has kept the American working class divided along color lines for long periods of time. However, the past twenty years have dem­on­strated again in life the identity of inter­est which had been implicit all along.

The close connection between the Negro strug­gle for equality and the labor strug­gle became one of the paramount features of the great strug­gles of the 1930’s. One of the greatest achievements of union­ism during this stormy upsurge was the successful con­clu­sion of the long strug­gle to build the Brother­hood of Sleeping Car Porters. This achievement was capped by the emergence of the CIO which repre­sented the first mass joining of the two move­ments in modern times.

Together during the 30’s the two move­ments made giant strides. But with the prep­ara­tion for World War II they diverged: the CIO under the pressure of a newly created bureaucracy capitulated to the bosses and the gov­ern­ment and it wasn’t long before the Com­mu­nist Party did likewise. Together they sacrificed the inter­ests of the working class to the needs of the U.S. imperialist war machine. But the Negro move­ment, under the stimulus of workers arising from great depths of super-exploitation, refused to be taken in or intimidated by the patriotic hysteria.

Ever since the beginning of 1941 the unions have taken one backward step after another and the bosses have followed through with body blows. Although the labor move­ment was able to mobilize briefly in 1946 for a successful defense when mortally threatened, it soon gave in again and as a result has endured a never ending string of humil­iat­ing repressive measures inflicted on them by the gov­ern­ment and the employers.

But all through this period and even at the height of the worst wave of reaction which has been unleashed against the American workers in many decades—the Negro move­ment has registered steady advances. The source of this difference in achieve­ment lies in the divergent lines of de­vel­op­ment which were laid out in 1941 when the Negroes were organizing for a March on Washington in defiance of the needs of the gov­ern­ment for domestic tranquility at the very time that the labor bureauc­racy was giving no-strike pledges to this same government. The Negroes were able to withstand the patriotic pressure upon them and to see through the lies of American imperialism because of their advanced con­scious­ness derived from super-exploitation and dis­crim­ina­tion.

Upon this background the Montgomery uprising propels the Negro move­ment into a greatly advanced position which, coinciding with the ebb tide of the labor move­ment, approaches isolation.

And this poses a dual danger: First, that this great move­ment may remain isolated and be crushed for lack of needed support from the labor move­ment. Second, that such a defeat inflicted upon this dynamic sector of the working class would set back the de­vel­op­ment of the labor move­ment.

It is the duty of all socialists to spare no energy in rallying the working class and the labor move­ment to the aid of the Negroes struggling in the South and to connect and integrate the strug­gles.

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