Hey, comrade,we got a blizzard here today. I know you glad you out of town.
More below CB: As famous as Coleman Young is in Detroit, very few people know that he was a CPUSA official. When the House UnAmerican Activities Committee called him before it, they had the right one, baby. He was a top Red. And he chased them out of town and they never came back.<< Waistline's Reply : This part of working class history has been lost and many of us (pardon, let me speak for myself and myself only) - I, had always understood Young's defense to not only be brilliant, but the turning point in the battle against McCarthyism. One can still hear the actual presentation he made, which was broadcast at the time and recorded. Brilliant. ^^^^ CB: Yes, I heard it recently somewhere. Also, his auto-bio, _Hardstuff_, reports the whole situation ,of course. I'd like to get another printing of _Hardstuff_. Maybe we should just make it communist property,and start printing new copies underground. He learned his dialectics in barbershop in Black Bottom, my kinda schooling. ^^^^ Waistline: On the other hand some folks have a radical misunderstanding of the actions of the UAW and the role of Reuther. Reuther lead the purge of the communist and a militant campaign against the militant black workers. The UAW has a left wing reputation that it does not merit. Reuther was reactionary. ^^^^ CB: You know you right, and in _Hardstuff_, Coleman, of course, lets Reuther have it. I don't know if you remember, but when the preliminary copies of _Hardstuff_ came out many months before its mass publication, the UAW ( now this is the mid 90's , 25plus years after Reuther was dead, and after Coleman had been mayor for 20 years), the UAW International wrote a letter to the Free Press denouncing and preempting Coleman's denounciation of Reuther. Their letter came out before the book did ! ^^^^^ Waistline: What is skillifully deleted from history is actual history. Who but a handful of Marxists and communist workers have passed the actual history of our class and country from one generation to another? Very few people remember or even know that George Crockett Sr. went to jail for defending communist workers and intellectuals during the McCarthy period. The FBI dogged Coleman Young Jr. until his death and made him the target of all kinds of outrageous schemes designed to place him in jail. The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s remained whitewashed but things are slowly looking better as articulated history. ^^^^^ CB: Yea, Crockett was held in contempt by Judge Medina, for "too" vigorously defending Carl Winter, the CP District Organizer in Detroit in the 40's. By the way, Carl Winter is the one who started the Midwest Library for Labor Studies, which General Baker is now the librarian of. I gotta take some of your books over there and give them to the library. Carl W. gave lectures to a few of us on early CPUSA history. I recorded them and transcribed them. We really do have to attend to this issue of passing on our history to the next generation. The bourgeoisie counts on intergenerational amnesia to get over on us. ^^^^^^ Waistline: We were well into the 1990s at Chrysler before the last bastion of white chauvinism was broken preventing blacks from entering the skill trades through enforcement of upgrading. There is still resistance. General Motors was and remains worse. ---- CB: I just spoke with our friend S___, who is at a Ford plant. They skipped over her for a position advance. She's in a fighting mood, and is writing complaints. She's got a BA, and this is an education position, yet ,they didn't even give her an interview. ^^^^^^ CB:I think I have a copy of that "Negro Liberation" compilation. In general, I think it was and is difficult to say what was and is the precisely correct position on Negro Liberation in that era and this one. But here's a good place to knock it around. There still seems validity to me, in the CPUSA concept that African -American liberation is central to working class revolution in the U.S.<< Reply Waistline: The older I get the more grateful I am to the historical work of the CPUSA. I have stated perhaps a thousand times, that the actual formation of our industrial working class mitigated against an indigenousness Marxist estimate of the African American Liberation Movement. Our working class was formed from European immigrants whose concepts and frameworks of Marxism was more than less rooted in the economic and social feature of their native lands. Today, long after the defeat of legal segregation and the growth and expansion of the African American intellectual elite, a different approach to our collective history is being made. Historical comrades like Claudia Jones, black and immigrant virtually stood alone, along with folks like Harry Haywood - a "native" African American. I of course include Nelson Perry in the continuum because he was there and part of this history. I do believe that African American Liberation as opposed to the old concept of the industrial proletariat, is central to social revolution in America and viewing the National Factor as subsidiary or "the proletariat liberating the African American people" to be a mistaken formulation. The Comintern did write the 1928 Resolution on the Negro Question and the 1930 Resolution, which altered the orientation of the party and gave it gusto. Then again, the Comintern did the best it could across the board in spreading Leninism. ^^^^ CB: Yea, maybe I will reread some of Solomon's _The Cry was Unity_. I remember his full discussion of Haywood and these resolutions. Then I'll give a book report to the list. Mark is a truly great guy and comrade. He was "there". He circulated petitions for Dubois running for Senate in New York. I think he got Charlie Parker to sign and support it. ^^^^^^ Waistline: What is happening in Detroit is very interesting and critical. Not to mention exciting. African American Liberation and social revolution is so intertwined that one is the other. The Minister Louis Farrakan did set the pace of the form of protest called the Million March and this form of protest has shed its purely African American feature. Million Women, Million Workers, Million this that and the other. Life definitely does not wait for anyone to define it. The proletariat is slowly moving into action and it is a cross section of the entire economic stratification of the workers. Local 22? Guess I need to lay off of that General Motors thing and the GM section of the Union. Never really cared for them. Took much longer to make inroads at GM. The old Cadillac plant maintained the policy of hiring blacks and whites from Georgia as a priority to keep that plantation shit in operations. The Chrysler plants tended to have more blacks, Arabs and older Slavic workers. How is that for the bottom of the social order in the imperial industrial center. ^^^^ CB: True, though Lee Cain used to tell us stories about the racism in Dodge Main, circa 1951. The Mississppi racists did vote for him for Committee man at one point, class over race. I have to recall those stories. The plant I handed out papers at the most was Jefferson Avenue. Local 7. I spent a lot of time at Locals 22 and 15 when they were closing Fisher and Cadillac, in the plantclosing struggle. Dave Sole was vp at 15. He's an AFSCME local pres for the City now. He's leading Detroit MWM organizing. ^^^^^^ Waistline: History makes the every present quest for equality the cutting edge of the social revolution but this is a different kind of "equality movement." Seems you folks getting ready to write another chapter of history. Engels was correct: the demand for equality is in the last instance a demand for the abolish of classes. Interesting time. Texas is off the chain and I am told things have gotten a little better in the last decade. This is about as close to open fascism as I have ever experienced and I am in the liberal part of the state. People are very vocal in their support of the death penalty and get a morbid thrill out of rushing that ass to the execution chamber . . . provided it is not their ass. Dead man walking? It more like dead man running. Seems like half the state is on probation or awaiting parole. The state operates off of fining the people and everyone brags about no state tax, although the pensions of the Northern autoworkers is more than the average wage of the working Texan. There is a very intense and mean spirit against wealthy people without regard to color and intense feelings about the high wages of the Northern workers. The polarization between wealth and poverty is really striking. You know me . . . if you like it I freaking love it. Nevertheless the weather is great. Yesterday it was 74. Very sobering experience. Peace Waistline ^^^^^ Yea, well the weather outside is frightful, here. My driver's side door is frozen locked. ...and Power ! Charles _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
