>I might be biting off more than I can chew here:
>In relation to the post someone made about Negroes in the USA being a 'nation'
>and using the old 4 part definition of Stalin’s (common language, territory,
>economic life and psychological make-up ). I have never seen this applied to
>Black Americans in that way before. What "common economic life" do they have
>that's different from other citizens? (I mean that would justify a claim to a
>separate state). A separate language? territory? even the cultural
>differences I would have read as those of an ethnic minority which would give
>rise to claims to equality but not to a separate nation. Not that equality
>would occur without a revolution but that's the point isn't it that Blacks
>need to fight to overthrow the US ruling class alongside white workers not for
>a separate state.
>Is this a common understanding in the US left (this is a post from Australia)
>or am I missing something?
>Shane
Reply
The Marxist presentation of the National-Colonial Question requires the most militant defense of the standpoint of Marx in examining social phenomenon. The Leninist presentation of the question acknowledges not simply exploitation and exploited classes, but exploiting imperial peoples and exploited and oppressed peoples and nations.
The African American people are not a nation.
There are various nations and advanced national groups in America. In my opinion you pose the presentation of the national colonial question incorrectly and confuse the attributes of a national formation with the formation of the state as the historical product of the irreconcilability of class antagonism. The state as such emerged thousands of years before the emergence of nations.
The nation or national formation that evolved in the South of the United States of North America, is a historically evolved stable community of Colored people, along with the historically developed Anglo-American people, who lived in the old slave holding area of the South –the Black Belt, and the economically dependent area of the Southern USNA.
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 makeup manifested in a common culture. This is the classical Marxist definition of a nation written by Stalin, edited by Lenin and propagated by the Third Communist International.
In our country there is also the Anglo American nation proper. The general frontiers of the Anglo-American nation are the Canadian frontier to the north to the Atlantic sea coast o the east; proceeding from the Canadian frontier south to the beginnings of the areas associated with the plantation belt in Delaware. The border region then proceeds west along the northern edge of the area associated with the plantation system. This line proceeds generally west and south in an inverted arc into Texas and south into the Gulf of Mexico. The western frontier proceeds south from the Canadian border along the Pacific Coast to the area generally associated with the struggles of the Mexican national minority. The border then proceeds in a northeasterly direction to the north of Denver, connecting to the Gulf of Mexico to the east of San Antonio, Texas. Within this national territory, there are numerous autonomous areas that belong to the Native Bands of peoples, whose economic, territorial and political rights have yet to be restored.
The exact delineation of the frontier must be set by economic and population factors, which cannot be known today. The proletariat in power will address this issue.
Comrade in place of a common language you inject the concept of “A separate language?” What may I ask is the “separate” languages that distinguish the English from the Americans?
In place of a historically evolved people that first evolved based on the specifics of slavery, you inject the concept of “an ethnic minority.” In posing the question incorrectly you are prevented from grasping the nation in the South, which is composed of the “historically evolved stable community of Colored people– black people, along with the historically developed Anglo-American people, who lived in the old slave holding area of the South – the Black Belt.
The question of a common economic life is a conception of development from feudal economic and social relations to capitalist economic and social relation and must be posed free of a “Marxist concept of race.”
. . What "common economic life" do they have
>that's different from other citizens?
The common economic life that distinguishes the nation in the South from that, which arose, based the transition from manufacture to industry in the North was the system of slavery. The system of slavery was not feudal economic relations but production for the world market and consequently capital conversion with all its social consequences. This capitalist slavery constituted the common economic life of the black and white people in the slaveholding area as distinct from the Northern manufacturing areas.
The issue of cultural difference is also posed incorrectly and misunderstood due to the thick ideology of our imperialist bourgeoisie and their absolute control of the ideological sphere. I assure you that on continental America – in respects to the issue we are discussing, the most pronounced cultural difference are between the black and white people of the North, - Yankees as distinct from the black and white people of the old slaveholding areas.
The distinctions between the black and white people of the North are rooted in the specific colonization and development of the North. The working class in the historical manufacturing centers of the North was drawn from European immigrants. After generations of development what emerged was a base of culture referred to as Anglo. This Anglo base of culture is not static and is wedded to that which could be referred to as “Negro” culture – that is the specific articulations of the slave and their descendants. The reason is remarkably simple.
In the development of our country as a land of immigrants, the immigrant arrives with the cultural content of the land from which he or she comes. It requires several generations for the immigrant to fully absorb or assimilate the Anglo base of culture peculiar to the Yankee as distinct from say that of the English. From this flux and chemical mixture arose the concept of the “melting pot.”
What is peculiar about America is that the specific cultural trappings of the Negro people, who were formed as a distinct people, became the axis helping to stabilize the base of Anglo culture. This is so because the Negro People as a people was not subjected to growth as a people based on immigration. Thus we have a peculiar situation where no serious Marxist can speak of a “black and white” culture in America. This matter becomes confused in the ideological sphere owing to the segregation of social life and the need by the imperialist to keep the black masses in a state of police violence to maintain the unity of the productive forces and relations of production.
For example, what is called black music today is not really black music or the music of the African American people but American music. It is true that in history a form of music arose peculiar to the Negro slaves, but this music itself was a specific rendering of European harmonic structure and African rhythm and laid the basis for American music. This “specific rendering of European harmonic structure and African rhythm” was called Jazz – its own definition, and blues –its own definition. How this specific rendering of European harmonic structure and African rhythm is rendered by Anglo and African American artist and peoples varies of necessity, due to variations in tonal qualities, but one who care to listen to the Beach Boys hears the Motown Sound. That is to say European harmonic structure is more accentuated.
“I wish they all could be . . .
Californiagirllllllllllll.”
“I . . . wish . ..they . . . all . . . could . . . . be
Within the historic enclaves that house the black industrial worker workers of the Midwest – the North, and in Detroit in particular arose the Motown Sound, which in fact was the “Sound of Young America” and not the sound of the Negro people. Because this “sound”was articulated by black Yanks the variation accentuates African rhythm to a slightly different degree than say, the Beach Boys or Chicago. Actually the Motown Sound was the direct results of the historic impact of the mechanization of agriculture and the influx of the Southern black into the heartland of Anglo-America, who combined and further fused with the generations of black industrial workers and black Yanks.
We American are so silly about this matter although the rest of the world knows that American music is a “specific rendering of European harmonic structure and African rhythm. ”Our" imperialist bourgeoisie also knows the truth through importing this sound through the world. I of course will be charged with dogmatic Marxism and “workerism” but this presentation is an elementary summation designed to combat the concept of race within ideological Marxism. Race simply does not exist and what we are addressing is the chemical mixture of peoples called forth by capitalist development and the presentation of the national colonial question from the standpoint of the Marxist modality.
Now a difference between this “specific rendering of European harmonic structure and African rhythm”in the old slave holding South and that of the Yanks remains to this very day but is not as distinct due to changes in the productive forces and the increased interactivity of the world at large.
Outside of the North and South context and differences in national development in the rather large base of Hispanic culture and elements of the Native peoples heritage and expressions. All of his has added somthing specifcal and wonderful to the culture.
I have read Comrade Stalin’s “Marxism and the National Question” as well as the numerous articles he penned on the national-colonial question many times and apparently derived a very different application of his modality. May I suggest a rereading of “Marxism and the National Question,” “The October Revolution and The National Question,” printed in Pravda November 6 and 19, 1918, which is to say supported and approved by Lenin, or he most surely what have stated something. “The Policy of the Soviet Government on the National Question In Russia,” February 10, 1921, is also worth reading. “Concerning the Presentation of the National Question,” November 10, 1921 is also excellent.
Racial concepts and a non-Marxist approach to the color factor in history and subjective idealist approach, blind many revolutionaries to the actual life of our working class –their social, cultural and intellectual strivings. I oppose the so-called authentic concept of race within Marxism as the ideological pressure of the bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeois intellectual attempting to articulate a voice for the proletariat.
Melvin P.
