I didn't say anything like what you describe below. I didn't say anything like the Browder thesis described below. The CPUSA repudiated Browderism, so it is not likely to characterize the CPUSA accurately beyond the mid forties.
As the theory of the national question and the African American people, I've heard your discussion of it a number of times, and your criticism of the CPUSA positions. What you say is ... I don't know what to call it...It's doesn't seem out and out wrong, but it's not particularly persuasive. I don't come away thinking you have refuted the CPUSA theses. I don't come away thinking that you have a better grasp of Lenin or Stalin's discussions of the national question and the right of self-determination as applied to the US than the CPUSA. In fact, the way you discuss the US history of Black people not as a nation or nationality, and the immigrant European workers as not like peasants removed from the country side seems your own form of American Exceptionalism. Evidently, to you, America is different than Europe ,which is to say , in a way , that the U.S. is an exception to the pattern that Marxism has analyzed with Europe. CB American Exceptionalism WL: This is really not a narrow subjective question but one that has been written about continuously since the 1980 publication of Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave." Some of these revolutionary changes were alluded to in his 1970s book "Future Shock." The revolution is not the insurrectionary movement that crowns the revolutionary movement in the economic structure of society. By "American exceptionalism" I do not mean what one might carry a bad political projection or a mis articulation of a general Marxist concept. American exceptionalism is the theory that America is an exception to Marxist economic and social laws. This "theory" was introduced by Jay Lovestone as General Secretary of the CPUSA, by Earl Browder as General Secretary of the CPUSA and by William Z. Foster as Chairman of the CPUSA.. Apparently in the case of Lovestone and Browder, the "material basis" for this theory was the fact that the economic cyclical crisis of bourgeois production, in America, was not as sever, wide spread or lengthy as in Europe. The general expansion of our Western frontier tended to mitigate the crisis with millions of ruined folks moving westward and we have a very large country that was at difference level of economic development. The crash of 1929 would seem to disprove this theory, but the expansion going into World War 2 provided our country with an impetus for industrial expansion. The temporary alliance between Soviet Power and bourgeois America sowed many illusions about the class struggle. Right off the bat I forget the name of the CPUSA leader who wrote "Teheran and After" which basically wreck parties like the Philippine Communist Party by spreading the illusion that a new era had opened in which communists could relay upon the bourgeoisie. American exceptionalism is a distinct body of ideology and politics peculiar to the evolution of the CPUSA. Besides being a syndicalist, William Z. Foster's contribution to American exceptionalism was him importing into Marxism and the National Question, the concept of a "nation within a nation" rather than the Marxist concept of the Stalin and Lenin pole, of various nations and national groups within a multinational state system. Here I should mention that even Leon Trotsky had harsh words towards the American Trotskyists concerning the national question and their approach to the Negro People. Now in the case of Foster all he basically did was borrowed an old concept form Martin Delaney - father of Black Nationalism in America. Dr. James Jackson - Negro psychopath of the CPUSA, borrowed from Foster his concept of African Americans as a nation within a nation and then declared that migration had destroyed the nation that the African Americans never constituted. On this basic a Marxist conception of the National Factor in respects to the African American people was abolished and replaced by the non Marxist concept that the national question in America was a question of race antagonism. This is how American exceptionalism operated in our history. I know this history from study. Being wrong is not the meaning of American exceptionalism and its various bodies of politics. In the case of the African American National Factor our history has mitigated against an understanding of the South as providing all the economic, politics and social and cultural centers of gravity up until the Civil War. The National Question emerged on this basis and the new nation formed on American soil was in fact in the North. The African American people are not a nation, were never a nation and will not ever be a nation and it was US - me and mutherfuckers like me, generated on the basis of Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967 that reformulated the Marxist approach to the Negro Question. We are not a nation and have never been a nation. You and I argue this same point on Pen-L when you repeated verbatim Dr, Jackson's Thesis concerning the dispersal of the African American people. The entire discussion is in the archives of Pen-L. I can love you and not agree with you and unravel your history as one who passed through the CPUSA. I do not hate the CPUSA but really understand its history. I grew up in the CPUSA bookstores and visiting Debs Hall in Detroit - the SWP meeting place where a couple of comrade were shoot in the 1960s. The Northern working class was formed from European immigrants as opposed to the destruction of the country side as in Europe and these immigrant workers, cherishing liberty and democracy simply had no understanding of the Negro Question other than what Lenin had wrote. I do not hold this against our class. No, my approach is not American exceptionalism, which Comrade Stalin wrote about. Let's assume that I am wrong. It is not because of or due to American excpetionalism which is a distinct and coherent political thread in our history. Perhaps, this is another items to be added to my political plate of things to write about. The current form of American exceptionalism in the CP is simply disgusting. A hodge podge of syndicalism from Foster - "class struggle politics," mixed with race theory as the national question and a total denial of the South as the economic and political genesis of America. Then there is this conception of the best paid workers as the revolutionary cutting edge in the class struggle, with the concept of class struggle defined as any struggle between worker and capitalist. Comrade Charles, I fought for and won my own emancipation of thought and have spent a life time trying to refine Marxism into a militant doctrine of combat applicable to America. I have had to fight with my own family members in the most personal sense because we all emerged as various leaders in the industrial conflict. This includes my own flesh and blood brother who is the most authoritative and knowledgeable International Staff rep in the UAW. No one could give me emancipation of thought and I never forget whose back I stand on. I stand on the back of heroic Slavic workers who pioneered the path for the unskilled, which I continue to travel. My approach is very different from that that is the legacy of the CPUSA. Comrade Charles you have and are a living witness to some this history. What happened in the CPUSAS during the late 1980s and what was the struggle about concerning blacks and leadership in the early 1990s? Did this not involve Charlene Mitchell? Did I ever mention and write about the work with Charlene Mitchell and Angela Davis in Gainesville Georgia in 1982? I was there and at the time was living in Atlanta Georgia. I sent her and Angela my photos of their Court case. Brother man . . . my shit flat out communism and rock hard Marxism. Did I ever write about them niggas in Atlanta and their mulatto aristocracy? I was fucking their before the movement of entertainers and shit into Atlanta. This was back when fucking James Baldwin hit the sense to do his book on the Atlanta Child Murders and shit. I wrote a series of articles on this shit and Baldwin's book - The Evidence of Things Not Seen, made me want to cut both my fucking wrist. Baldwin was the best of us. My shit real. And little by little will be made into a testimony. Your brother who you are pissed the fuck off with for calling your shit warm ed over chauvinism. Fuck it. We can still go to the motel. Hey . . .l the bourgeoisie and the proletariat overthrow the feudal system as its antithetical agents. This means that the serfs could not and became political and military reserves of the bourgeoisie and workers. This is how our pole articulate the politics of an era. Waistline. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
