WL:Classical Marxism? You mean classical American Marxism - as you understand it?
^^^^ CB: I mean do you or do you not consider that your theory is the same as the classical theory of Marx , Engels and Lenin , or do you consider that you have a different theory than they ? ******************* WL: First of all my theory is the theory of the American Social Revolution (in particular) or the Third Edition of the American Revolution or the Proletarian Revolution within the state that is the multinational State of the USNA. By definition it is and must be different from the "theory-doctrine" of the proletarian revolution advanced by Marx and later reoriented by Engels and that of Comrade Lenin. Specifically, the approach of Marxist-communists, as grouped in the Third International, was very different from the approach of the classical Marxist of the Second International. The Second International approach - doctrine of combat, was different from the "classical" Marxists and revolutionaries grouped together in and around the First International. My approach to the national factor is different from that of Karl Marx. This difference is a doctrine difference as opposed to a theory difference on the movement of society in class antagonism. Lenin's approach to the National Question was different from that of Karl Marx doctrine approach to the class struggle. Actually, my approach to African American Liberation and the AANQ is different from that of Lenin's approach to the Negro Question, as he understood it and wrote about it. The theory grid and doctrine underlying Marxism as insurgency is that the advance of industry digs the grave of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat is inevitable. Here there is no difference with what Marx and Engels wrote. "Classical Marxism" is just buzz words that means what ever the author of these words want it to mean. My approach and definition of class is not identical to that of Lenin's definition of class in his Three Components and Three Sources of Marxism. My definition and concept of relations of production or production relations or social relations of production is basically lifted from what Marx wrote and the source and quotation already provided to you. My conception of the class struggle is identical to Marx and Engels outlines, in their many descriptions of how the bourgeoisie and proletariat arose as class, based on changes in the means of production and why this undermined and lead to the collapse and overthrown of landed property relations - feudalism. How I explain this is different from the doctrines of the Third International, which was different from "the classical" Marxism of the Second International. Here is our (you and I rather than Marx and I) difference on class: You state that class means property or is a property relations in its fundamentality. I state that class is and has always been fundamentally a material relations of actual species activity - production, with the property relations within or embedded into this social activity. The only thing left if for you to provide Marx actual words where he writes that class is fundamentally a property relations rather than a material relations of actual species interactivity in production. ******************************* WL: Any comment on Birmingham 63, Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967? What of the real history which I have never heard you speak of? ^^^^ CB: Malcolm X spoke in Detroit of the "ballot or the bullet". With '67 and then Coleman Young's election, it was the bullet and then the ballot. *********************** WL: How enlightening. I do remember the actual process leading to Coleman Young's election. the role of the State of Siege Movement and a series of events that actually was sparked before the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. I refer to the police murder of a prostitute on Detroit East side in 1966, which sparked the mini-rebellion. Even before this much work in the political arena going back to the Freedom Now Party and before that activity centered out of Local 600, involving the Detroit City Council election. You may recall that that many activists had struck a political deal with Coleman Young which was our principled basis for supporting him. An aspect of this "deal" was dismantling the Red Squad of the Detroit Police Department. Whether Coleman - a real man of the people, was in the CPUSA or not was not really relevant to us. By all accounts we had a more vibrant and activists organization in Detroit than the CPUSA, although we were not hostile to the party. The real issue was practical politics and what troops one had at their disposal. That is who could one field to knock on doors and man polls and distribute literature and conduct a grass root campaign. At that time the SWP had a political apparatus and reliable troops. My article actually speaks of the political continuum expressed in the movement of the African American people and its polarization, rather than a single individual such as Coleman Young. That is why Birmingham 1963, Watts 1965 and then Detroit 1967 was so important. During the 1960s and into the 1970s there was well over 200 rebellion in America. The point is who the proletarian revolution in America is evolving and must evolve. Here is an example: the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992 was and is understood as very different from the rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s. Rodney King was the catalyst, but the roots cause is to be found in the shifting economic and social relations of Los Angeles. Computers, advanced robotics, new type automated production is replacing and pushing a section of the working class out of bourgeois production. These new part time, unemployed, minimum wage and temporary workers form a new class at society's edge. This social grouping arises on the basis of the new technological regime and is economically and politically different from the mass of unemployed during the time of Marx and Engels. Computerization and computer control accelerates the shift of production to the low wages areas of the world. Further opening the neo colonies national boundaries to greater penetration of financial investments and industrial production further destroys the subsistence economies and unsettles literally million of workers, who then migrate to foreign countries including America. What expressed itself in Los Angels 1992 was the face of the new American proletariat and it is multinational in dimensions unlike the rebellions of the 1960s, although in Detroit the Southern white immigrants did more shooting at the police than the blacks. Los Angeles 1992 was different from say Liberty City in the 1980s or even Battle Creek Michigan in the new century. Malcolm's "Ballot or the Bullet" speech exists on a political continuum and is directly related to the speech he made in Detroit 6 months earlier: his famous Message to the Grass Roots. The point is that the social movement leaped forward between the time of Malcolm's speeches and his assassination and later the Coleman Young's election. During this period of "Leaping" - transition, the material polarization's between the black workers and our own bourgeoisie had intensified and spilled over as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Now this intensified polarization is no abstraction and most certainly involves the state and its evolution as an organization of violence. The state and its police agencies changes in unity and conflict with society and the social struggles that spill into the streets. The state and its agencies also become polarized internally and in relationship to society at large. I do not know if you are old enough to remember when the crime infested slums housing the Negro were governed by the "Big Four." The "Big Four" were terror on wheels. These were police cars with four of the biggest white man the department could find and their specific task was to rid the streets of blacks after dark. The mini-riot and then July 1967 over ran the Big Four as an organizational form and rendered them useless. The department was reorganized on the basis of the Tactical Mobile Units. An aspect of the polarization throughout America was also the organization of the Black Guardians section of the police departments. The black officers were immediately thrown into conflict with white officers and the old chauvinistic structures of police authority. The point again is the changes taking place in the social movement - the labor movement, leading up to what is called the "Black Power Movement" as opposed to the Civil Rights Movement. Coleman Young's election expresses a juncture in the labor movement, which is incorrectly called the "Black Movement" because anything involving African Americans is abstracted outside the proletarian Revolution, made a subsidiary part of it and hurl on the stage of history as a struggle against racism. Without question what I have written is not "Classical American Marxism." No, Marx did not write about this because the African American people as a people were barely in formation during the time of Marx. The African American people as a people consolidated on the basis of 90 years of segregation. The colored mass coming out of slavery - freed by the Civil War, underwent another economic and social evolution under the harsh fist of Jim Crow and fascist rule in the old plantation south. No, my approach is not the same as that of the combatants of the Third International and in this sense is not "Classical Marxism." My approach is not the same as the various theoreticians of the CPUSA, although I have been more than generous in my descriptions of the party's history. The CPUSA was initially formed in the same way the Northern working class was formed - from immigrant European workers. Our history is peculiar and the family farm was not destroyed as the basis of the formation of the Northern working class. It makes perfect sense to anyone whose heart beat justice and freedom, that the entry of the African American people into the heart of the proletariat would demand a reshaping of American Marxism. Not because the African American workers are black but because they are native born and serve as the pivot of that which is distinctly American. Here is the secret that is obvious to those of us generated on the basis of Detroit 1967. Take this secret and make it yours. Whether Coleman Young or Rosa Parks were CPUSA is irrelevant. What of unraveling of a social movement? The issue concerning the CPUSA was as I stated the change in their orientation and revolutionary approach to the Negro Question. Dr. Jackson was a scoundrel and his writings on the Negro Question are laughable. He is almost as bad as CLR James on the Negro Question and he was a strange one. CLR James writings are available on line and here is a guy who did not understand the elementary difference between North and South. 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
