Re: Racism and race are Marxist concepts

[Waistline2]

>CB: This list has not been a part of this discussion, so you might want to give more >background.

>The main point of contention between us is that you maintain that there is no >category of " race" compatible with Marxism or historical materialism, and I say >that there is.

>For a thread, (long thread !) related to your topic here, check out the Pen-L >discussion of the "Brenner thesis" , "Wood thesis "and the history of capitalism, >slavery, the primiitive accumulation of capital, etc.  I would argue that slavery was >integral to the primitive accumulation of capitalism, and that throughout capitalism:

>Capitalism  = wage-labor x oppressed labor

>Within the category "oppressed labor"   racially oppressed labor is a major >component throughout the history of capitalism including up through today


>CB



There is no such thing as "racially oppressed labor," as a material category.  What you express is a bourgeois ideological category and rationale to explain colonial entrapment and the consequent brutal political oppression of non-sovereign peoples and their exploitation through imperial capitalist relations.

The point of contention is the Marxist presentation of the National Colonial Question as it applies to the African American people. One can always reduce discourse to "he say - she say" but I have presented rather lengthy and detail explaining to at least describe the basis of my assertion while you present Eric Foner and nothing whatsoever to justify or explain the so-called Marxist conception of race.

The reason for this is that you were born into a mess of crap, that actually took shape before both of us were born. Talk about the sins of the father and reparations. Every generation must pay reparations from the past.

I do recognized that you and I represent a historic pole within the specific framework of the communist/Marxist movement, while many revolutionaries lack any conception of the complexity of the national-question in respects to our people.

You state that you "would argue that slavery was integral to the primitive accumulation of capitalism," and this is the historic position of the right-wing of the CPUSA. The material quoted by Marx makes clear the character of slavery in the South. "That is the secret."

The primitive accumulation of capital has nothing to do with the character of slavery  in the South. The historic position of the CPUSA - and I am by no means a "hater" or baiter of the Party whose glories struggles I embrace as a part of my own, is that feudal economic relations existed in the South. Consequently, slavery was a form of primitive accumulation of capital. This makes no sense to anyone that examines what Marx means by the primitive accumulation of capital.

An aspect of the historic contention that split the party on the "Negro Question" is the position later adopted by the party that the movement in the South is a continuation of the bourgeois democratic revolution and democracy as an abstraction and their program called for the complete elimination of the remnants of feudal economic relations. Not feudal-like social relations, but feudal economic relations.

This is the theoretical underpinning of James Allen's 1936 book "Reconstruction." (I hope I am not challenged on this because I have not seen the book in twenty-five  years but know I have it in the basement of my second wife home. Communist will given away any and everything except their good books and ink pens. )

Once the position is taken that feudal economic relations existed in the South the only way to explain slavery is as a form of primitive accumulation of capital. This of course is incorrect. Slavery as an economic institution was a form of capitalist production relations. There was no feudalism in the American south.

"I would argue that slavery was integral to the primitive accumulation of capitalism,"
is the historic position of the CPUSA and has no meaning without being specific. Marx describes the primitive accumulation of capital in precise terms.

I would argue that the primary form of primitive accumulation of capital on this land mass was the wholesale murder of the Native peoples and the taking of there land. I would argue this as a primary thesis because slavery itself underwent transitions and Marx speaks of  American slavery after it enters the vortex of capitalist relations.

"The so-called primitive accumulation of capital," according to Marx "therefore, is nothing else then the historical process of divorcing the producer fro the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it."

"the pre-historic stage of capital" is what compels me to place primary emphasis on the expropriation of the Native peoples. Further, there were no concrete feudal economic relations in America. I concede that the slave trade played a role in the primitive accumulation of capital but slavery in the American south as an institution is not identical to the world wide slave trade and its evolution.

This is so because the slave trade was an aspect of tearing of a world process acting as "levers for the capitalist class in course of formation; but above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and unattached proletarians on the labor-market."

Yes, slavery in the South was fueled by the slave trade and breeding in the border regions - and on the plantation, but the economics of the trade in flesh is somet\what different from the utilization of the labor power. Thus, you once again come under the wire and can use the word "intregal" in the historical sense.

What made slavery in the South a  blasphemy - distortion, was that surplus value was produced using slave labor. That is the contradiction, which has blinded the "sociologist" looking for laboratory purity and explains the peculiar institution and peculiar evolution of the Negro Question.

Comrade Charles, you have allowed me to put worth what I consider a very mature Marxist position on this important question and I love you for this. If I have been sharp or vulgar I beg for forgiveness. I didn't return your phone call because of the new job that has me running and my damn computer has been giving me the blues.

Comrade, Sir . . you are absolutely communist and at times I am an old fool. Even when I am being an old fool I never forget your heart.

Ain't nothing but love my brother.

Can I ask, why do you like the concept of "race?" I find it extremely distasteful personally. I feel we are from a unique people that are proletarian to the core and evolved in the heart of imperial capital relations - as a people.

Melvin P.

PS, don't answer the question but keep it in your hip pocket. One day I might sneak upon yo and easy the answers out of your pocket and peek at how much you hate the bourgeoisie.