2 The presentation of the National and National Colonial Question within the Stalin polarity of the American Communist Movement has evolved and is not identical to the formulations forced on the CPUSA in 1928 and 1930.
A concise statement is necessary to clarify our specific body politic. 1. American in is economic, social, cultural and political genesis was Southern and remained such up until the Civil War in America. All the centers of gravity were in the South and they were connected to the capitalist market of England. The entire country was organized around the core Southern states. Economically everything swirled around them. 2. The industrial revolution in England and later in the Northern States relied upon slavery and the slave system. Slavery was the pedestal upon which it stood and developed. The Northern states, manufacturing the necessities for the slave system, grew as am appendage to the South. As the US grew, the North entered into an economic revolution from manufacturing to industry. 3. The new nation to evolve in America was in fact in the North. This new nation in the North formed its working class from European immigrants, whereas the working class of the South was composed of slaves - some bred and some imported into the country. What made the Southern nation culturally "Southern" was the slave class. What made the North culturally "Northern" was the working class formed from European immigrants. 4. The "Southern nation" or Black Belt Nation or what was called the "Negro Nation" is that historically evolved, stable community of black people, along with the historically evolved stable community of Anglo Americans, who live in the Black Belt and the economically dependent area of the Southern US. This nation, which evolved from the specifics of slavery, is a historically evolved stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. This theory outlook and body politics is what constitutes the heart of the Stalin pole in American communism and distinguishes it from other trends in American Marxism - according to those who identify themselves as spokes persons for and inheritors of the old Stalin pole rather than their detractors. This old Stalin polarity within world communism spans a diverse body of politics. No one can deny that what is called the National Factor or in history the National Question and then the National Colonial Question has dominated world politics since the founding of the Third International - eighty years. Thus, the 1928 document on the Negro Question, which roughly coincide with Stalin's personal victory in the Soviet party and his personal stamp on the Soviet policy of industrialization of their country, is the definitive turning point in American Marxism for us rather than his struggle against Trotskyism, as he called it. With this understood fact - which is disputed by some even within the Stalin pole, has evolved a particular form and language of Marxism as theory and doctrine of the class struggle within American Marxism. Allow me to restate our position on the National Factor in American history as we have maintained for the better part of the last 40 years. The African American people as a people who exist across the breath and depth of America as a country, are very distinct from the concept of the "Southern Nation" or "the Black Belt Nation" or "the Negro Nation." There is a sharp line of demarcation between the Negro Nation (the Southern Black Belt named for its rich black soil) that is composed of all the people that live there, and the African American as a people who live everywhere in America. A modern nation - generally born of the era that is the transition from "feudalism to capitalism," embody the same characteristics except a nation shares a common territory. The problem within American Marxism is that comrades define a "common territory" to mean a common land mass rather than a "territory" whose commonality consists of economic relations that is the market. Without question the plantation system - its concrete economic relations, is the common territory providing the impetus for the evolution of the Black Belt Nation, while in the North the economic impetus was the transition from manufacture to industry. After the Civil War as the Black Belt Nation was consolidated as a colony of Wall Street Imperialism - Yankee Imperialism, white supremacy and then white chauvinism as violence and Jim Crow segregation consolidated the African American people as a people. The African American as a people were consolidated and held together by Jim Crow every where across America and with the defeat of Jim Crow began a dispersal into their respective classes alongside their Anglo American counterparts. On the other hand the Black Belt Nation is held together by historically evolved economic factors. The African American as a people can feasibly be integrated into and our being integrated in the economic and cultural life of the country, while the Black Belt nation cannot. The Black Belt Nation can only coexist within the state that is the multinational state of America as a colony and the area of lowest wages and economic backwardness, until liberated as the act of proletarian social revolution. Even the Comintern document of 1928 draws a sharp line of distinction between the Blacks of the South and the blacks of the North. Never have we taken the absurd racial position that black people in America constitute a nation. In fact, it was William Z. Foster - former General Secretary of the CPUSA, who imported this bourgeois nationalist concept within Marxism. Here is the reason in my personal history I evolved along a path of Marxism that inherits the Stalin pole of American communism. Along with this pole is a different language of Marxism that expresses with clarity the life and social movement of our working class for the past eighty years. More to come Waistline _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
