Part of this broad coalition effort is the Reparations Bill, H.R. 40 “The John Conyers Bill, now preparing to go before Congress. To expand this effort, petition “reparations” drives should be presented to others of the Congressional Black Caucus. On the local level, each African American and progressive Councilperson, State Representative and Senators should be asked to raise the issue and to pass a resolution through their respective political institution. This was done in Cleveland, when Councilperson Fannie Lewis led the effort of the Cleveland City Council passing a resolution supporting reparations. It is within this context of mass action that African Americans can take their demand of reparations to Washington, D.C. with a mass march on the U.S. Congress and to New York with a march on the United Nations, as well as sending representatives around the world calling for international support for African Americans.
Within the context of independent African American political empowerment should come the question of how we implement tactical plans around reparations? In order to make reparations real for the masses of African American people tactics must flow from the defensive political “fight back” to the offensive, political revolutionary action. Mass revolutionary action means taking the political offense. It means agitating, both inside and outside of the capitalist political structure, to isolate the reactionary forces and cause a political polarization/realignment of political forces inside the U.S. Though this may occur on a limited scale at first, it will be of tremendous educational value in raising the class-consciousness of African Americans and all workers. This can be done on the local level by supporting an insurgent, independent third political People’s Party, with tickets, blocs and caucuses that are anti-establishment and anti-machine.
From below: that is outside of the electoral capitalist system, political “reparations” demonstrations by the army of the unemployed should call for full employment. Also within the demand for reparations should come the call for a “second reconstruction”, that establishes an urban conservation corps. This corps establishes funding for community development corporations that would institute job training and apprenticeships in the skilled trades between black trade unionists and unemployed city youth. The movement would also demand free university education and for organized African American workers to prepare to call on all labor to support a general strike led by African American workers.
The motion to build an independent political movement by African Americans, most notably around the campaign for a New South in Alabama, should be supported and built both regionally and around the nation. While many African Americans have remained outside of the ranks of the capitalist party, many need to take the struggle inside the Democratic Party in order to galvanize a “progressive people’s bloc” to force the KKK and conservative racist imperialist politicians either out of the Democratic Party, or to a political showdown, thereby impacting the local, regional and national political arena. The object would be to develop a broad infrastructure and to lay the groundwork for building an independent “People’s Party” by running “democratic socialist” candidates who have a base in the neighborhood movement.
The intergenerational cultural traits that have been transmitted in the African American community are inadequate for empowerment in the 21st century. The African American’s lifestyle must become one of a scientifically holistic spiritual/materialistic culture. This new movement culture must utilize the essence of eastern spiritual disciplines and the scientific aspects of dialectical and historical materialism, synchronized with the latest capitalist technology to mold a “new culture”, a “new people”, and a “new generation” free from all forms of substance abuse, disciplined and prepared to bring in a new socialist world.
The African American struggle for liberation will take years to be successful, and it will take years of mass revolutionary action to weaken, confuse, and overthrow the American capitalist class, which must be done in conjunction with workers of other races, if it is to be successful. Protracted struggle states that African Americans are a weaker force than the capitalist class; it will take many years of mass revolutionary assaults on the system, forming coalitions and alliances with other people of color and Euro-American workers, to spark a revolution.
The African American national liberation struggle for reparations and self-determination is central to the world revolution, because it is the internal Achilles’ heel (weak link) of U.S. imperialism, the citadel or headquarters of world imperialism and capitalism. Due to the supremacy of U.S. imperialism and the interdependence of all nations on the world market, which is dominated by Euro-American finance capital, national liberation breaks or “de-linking” from the imperialist system or socialist revolution can be stalemated by U.S. imperialism in the New World Order.
The key is to find the “international link” that can serve as the catalyst in the permanent world revolution. African Americans were a significant percentage of all unionized industrialized workers in the industrial core in the United States. They are rapidly being displaced, but still play a role there, as well as concentrations in the commercial and service sectors of society.
African Americans must create a mass action movement for people’s democracy and reparations to put an end to the genocide. The general social crisis besetting America will soon turn into a political crisis as fewer and fewer people support the status quo. Because African Americans are politically backward, rather than having a clear direction of social transformation (revolution), social chaos and anarchy is beginning to occur. African American males, who represent 1/20th of the population, now constitute fifty percent of the prison population. The institutional genocide and the lack of jobs is forcing African American males to become criminals in an effort to maintain their manhood. If they are going to go to prison, let it be for the political purpose of advancing the Black Liberation struggle, and not as victims of their own genocide. Don’t let us fall into the trap of becoming criminals without struggle against the system.
The ultra-right (KKK, Nazis, Skinheads), are utilizing this situation by secretly benefiting from the drug trade in the inner cities, building a dangerous paramilitary right wing movement, and systematically launching attacks against African Americans, other people of color, and progressives. Their intention is to further divide the proletariat (working class) and exploit the situation, creating a race war, and then seize power of the American state. Our slogan should be “turn the race war into a class war”. As the economy gets worse, the ultra-right will step up its attacks. We can expect an increase in racism and racist attacks, but at the same time, organizers must reach out their hands to other people of color and progressive Euro-Americans, forming unity with the small progressive community. It is hoped that the progressive coalition will weather the storm and be able to win over, or neutralize, previous reactionary Euro-American workers who come to see that the Euro-American capitalist class is their class enemy.
An African American revolutionary organization will be needed to achieve this monumental task in this time of social crisis, chaos, anarchy and political crisis. To guide such a vanguard will be an ideological unity (philosophical agreement) among the leadership and the membership, a vision of a new, more humane society, the science of strategy and tactics of revolutionary experience based on actual practice. We say that philosophical agreement can be “democratic socialism”. A political vanguard and people’s guard will be needed in the period of bitter struggle, attacks and strategic unity that is ahead.
Why is the African American Democratic Revolution for Reparations Related to the Overall Cause of Creating a New Socialist America?
African Americans, the most oppressed sector of the proletariat (besides the Native American) in the U.S. imperialist state, with the longest history of resistance against the state, makes them an important factor for the socialist revolution in America. Every revolution has a center or base. The African American as an oppressed nationality, has served as the inspiration for all people in America in the struggle for human dignity, economic democracy, and workers’ rights. Even within the center of the eye of the storm, the struggle in the South has been the continuous “spark” for the last forty years. The African American living in the center (metropolis, citadel) of world imperialism (U.S.A.) are suppressed by its direct control under U.S. imperialism. The U.S. capitalist class not only benefits from super surplus value reaped from African American labor that is produced from racism (300 billion to one trillion dollars) and a dual labor market (economic apartheid), but also sucks the consumer power of the captive African American nationality reaping billions of dollars annually. Self-determination, in any form, can only be achieved under socialism and probably under the late stages of socialism in America.
Why is this the Case?
It is because imperialism in its new form as Narco/U.S. imperialism, with its monopoly of technological resources, continuously stagnates the world revolution. It can do this through economically withholding foreign aid, control of world market prices, constant underdevelopment, maintaining dependent accumulation, unequal development and unequal exchange in the racist world economic world order.
The African American is in a strategic role as far as world economics/politics is concerned. Their national liberation revolution is the antithesis (opposite) of U.S. imperialism. The African American people are a major source of super surplus value (profit) for U.S. imperialism’s reaping hundreds of billions of dollars, making the African American the equivalent of being the sixth largest national economy in terms of per capita national income for U.S exploitation in the world (billions of dollars turned back into the system).
What White Americans can do?
Cadre should encourage African Americans’ white allies among the youth on white college and university campuses to form American Friends of African Americans, Caucasians for Reparations, Students for Reparations, and Labor for Reparations on campus and in their communities. They should start petition drives to ask their Congressional Representatives and Senators to support reparations for African Americans and the H.R. 40 bill in Congress.
Whenever possible, they should run for office as “Reconstruction” candidates in the white community in opposition to conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans when there is no progressive Democratic candidate inside the democratic party to increase the progressive sector of the Democratic Party and to put reactionary Democrats on the defensive inside the democratic party; also to defeat conservative republicans inside or centralist republicans as opposed to conservative republicans. As a progressive bloc of 54-plus million people, the Reparations/Reconstruction Coalition has the power to defeat the ultra “compassionate conservative” right. This coalition should try to get as many community organizations and unions to support the move to pass H.R. 40 as well.
The Question of Reparations for African Americans and the Working Class Struggle towards Democratic Socialism
The demands for reparations for African Americans in terms of free post-secondary education and job retraining for ten generations, and free medical care, can be linked to the labor working class demand for free post-secondary education (college and university up to and including Ph.D. level) and free medical care for all workers and for all children of the working class making less than $60,000/year in family income in the 21st century.
What are the Prospects for a Renewed Mass Breakthrough in Consciousness?
More and more people are becoming improvised. If these sectors are mobilized in political struggle against the capitalists and stay free of drug and alcohol addiction (the new opium of the people), these mobilized sectors can be instrumental in the raising of the mass consciousness.
Revolutionary theory teaches that the world revolution can only succeed if the working class in the capitalist countries support the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples (Third World), and if the working class in the colonies and semi-colonies support the working class in the capitalist countries. In this period of time, it is essential that the working class in the capitalist countries struggle against the neo-colonialist globalization imperialist phase of their country’s capitalist government covering their multi (transnational) corporate designs. To enhance worldwide unity of the working class, the working class in the U.S. must become anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-neocolonialist.
It has been said, in the epoch in which imperialism exists, that it is impossible for a genuine people’s revolution to win victory in any country without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces, and even if victory was won, it could not be consolidated. With the U.S. being the center of world capitalism, neocolonialism and imperialism, we must build a worldwide united-front to support the revolution for democratic socialism inside the United States.
The Struggle Against Racism, Class and Gender Oppression is International
Malcolm X Said that people will begin to realize that racism is not something that you can confine to any one country, especially with the power and influence that America has. Malcolm X eluded that the United States is dictating to the entire world through its propaganda media and American racism is like a cancer spreading all over the world. He felt that because racism has become international, the fight against it should be fought on the international level.
Fulfilling the working classes’ historic mission depends on its ability to come to know itself, stand and fight for itself, and lead other classes and strata as well as itself. Accomplishing the historic mission of the working class presupposes that it is fully conscious of itself, and hence the necessity of unity within itself.
Unity within the working class pivots around many questions. Progressives believe that the fight against racism and for equality is decisive for building such unity. Given the present composition of the American population, there are 225 million white Americans, 36.5 million African Americans, 37.4 million Hispanic Americans and 11.5 Asian Americans. The Third World (people of color) population is expected to grow in the U.S. in the future that raises illuminating dimensions (questions?). If conditions continue in the present trend these “Third World” minorities in the U.S. will be rendered to the low-tiered marginal aspect of the labor market, and forced to compete against themselves for the low-paying jobs, which the capitalist hopes will weaken their unity.
If population projections continue to correspond with reality; in 2050, African Americans will constitute 15% of the American population, Hispanics, 33% and Asian Americans, 13%. Sixty-one percent of the American population in 2050 will be people of color. The struggle for racial equality and representation in government based on proportional representation could become a fierce struggle, unless a sizable portion of the white working class aligns itself with the cause for racial equality and proportional representation. America could look similar to a pre-liberation apartheid (without the signs, but a technological divide), South Africa.
But if the 61% of the internal Third World community builds “bridges rather than walls”, its unity and progressive action in alliance with the progressive sector of the white working class could produce a progressive majority that could galvanize the labor movement.
Proportional Representation
While mass demonstrations, strikes and insurrections play a major role in defeating imperialist/capitalist class rule, revolutionaries in America need to also utilize the political system to educate the masses. African American revolutionaries must advance the struggle for legal black political empowerment by building a legal third political party that breaks African Americans’ allegiance to the racist-capitalist system’s Democratic/Republican parties, and at the same time, educate African Americans that they cannot achieve freedom through the bourgeoisie legal political process.
Politically, we should ask ourselves what are the limits of electoral politics? Electoral politics will probably be an important arena of struggle for sometime to come, and should be utilized. But to speed the process of running independent progressive activists for office, African Americans must push the system to its limit, opening up parameters of a new uncompromising leadership to emerge. The issue or demand for proportional representation, which is nothing but reparations in government (democracy), according to African American numbers in the population, can be a revolutionary demand if properly addressed.
At all times in the 21st century, we must call for and work toward political proportional representation. This idea simple means that as taxpayers and as a distinct racial and ethnic group in America, whatever numerical numbers we represent percentage-wise at the national, state and local level, correspondingly we should have that same amount of elected officials who are African Americans.
The demand for independent community control autonomy, plus raising class demands in an independent political movement such as demanding the public ownership of utilities, low-cost transportation, a reduction of income taxes for working people, a progressive income tax, raising taxes on the rich and corporations, and no taxation without representation, are key demands for the period.
Politically, organizers must demand reparations for African American soldiers who were forced to fight in U.S. imperialism’s racist wars. There are over 100 political prisoners in America’s prisons from the struggles of the 60s and early 70s. They are the most courageous soldiers and the most brilliant spokespersons. Organizers must demand their immediate release and amnesty of all charges against them. Organizers must demand restitution for all victims of COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program), and above all, politically we demand reparations for the African American people from the United States government. Politically, we encourage the young African American cadres to run for political office locally, as independent candidates for a People’s Party.
In order to be successful, African Americans must engage in a mass direct action civil disobedience “resistance” movement against racism and capitalism. Struggling against the system allows African American and poor working people a positive social outlet, turning the negation of self, the internal self-hate that racism and class exploitation creates in us (alienation), and turning it toward the enemy of our race and class-the racist capitalist class. Nonviolent and other direct action is an effective means for creating crisis for the system. Direct action is most effective when it uses civil disobedience or creative disorder; that is when it disrupts the system’s “business-as-usual” and threatens the interests of businessmen and politicians.
If African Americans are to be successful in our liberation, we must combine legal strategy, direct action, cooperative economic development, and electoral politics. All four are necessary ingredients for a winning strategy. The concept of creative disorder, civil disobedience and by “any means necessary” should be combined. In most cases, we should attempt nonviolent civil disobedience, and/or general strike before resorting to violent civil disobedience (urban rebellions). The object would be to drain the system as well as engaging in economic boycotts. The object of protracted strategy must lead to the mobilization of millions of African Americans for revolutionary, total (active) resistance. Tactics should mobilize the youth into active civil disobedience against the system and encourage thousands upon thousands of African Americans to join the revolutionary African American organization and to build a multinational, independent third political party that systematically moves to the transition of socialism in America.
African Americans must develop an organization and program that helps them in their personal survival under capitalism and also teaches them to engage in scientific, collective action against the system. The people’s organization should have a holistic health culture that encourages people to pro-active safe sex, discourages them from smoking and drinking, which are health hazards, and seeks to motivate them to abstain from drugs, and to discipline their cardinal sensations or hedonism, which they have learned from capitalism. The organization must provide a complete social analysis, which will give the people a social meaning and purpose in life. This will provide the people with a survival culture, but must be combined with revolutionary direct action or “any means necessary”, if we are not to face institutional genocide. One common objective that many African Americans can presently agree upon is unity in trying to get H.R. 40, the John Conyers Bill, passed in Congress. H.R. 40 fundamentally states:
“To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States, and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865, and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.918
There are presently 39 African American Congresspersons in Congress. African Americans have the potential of a unified front nationally, for the purpose of the passage of H.R. 40. With that goal, we can ask our allies to support us in achieving this objective that is only the beginning of a protracted struggle to benefit the interests of the people. So African Americans are calling for an accountability of elected officials to the electorate, not to rich business interests. We, the people, will try a nonviolent legal political transformation of the political system. If it doesn’t work, then we must address Dr. King’s question, “Where do we go from here?”
African Americans need to realize that while we can win concessions and polarize the contradictions of the system against our enemies through the electoral process. We will not be able to vote in freedom, justice and equality. Eventually, with others of the working class, the majority of the working classes will have to overthrow the capitalist class, using any means necessary.
Cultural Pluralism in 21st Century America
The Multinational Proletariat Concept and Socialism
Most Marxists in America view the U.S. proletariat as a monolithic proletariat with common material interests. U.S. Marxists theoreticians constantly discuss the United States of America as a multinational capitalist state without doing a scientific national, race and class analysis. The U.S.A. is a multinational capitalist state, but it is also an imperialist colonial settler state. Its foundation and expansion was based on colonialism and imperialist oppression. This imperialist oppression takes on deep forms of national oppression today. Within the boundaries of the U.S. imperialist state are oppressed nations and an oppressor nation. The lack of a clear understanding of the national question within the domestic borders of the U.S. imperialist state has led the majority of the socialist movement to make incorrect formulations.
Will socialism in America mean the dismantling of the imperialist state known as the United States of America? It may mean that and much more. It will mean granting the right of self-determination, including the right to succession, to the oppressed nationalities held in imperialist bondage by the monopoly capitalist state. The terms of self-determination, cannot be dictated by the white working class, because the white working class has been class collaborators with the monopoly capitalists – imperialists for years, thereby sharing in oppressing, and having benefited materialistically from imperialistic and racial oppression.
The white working class’s historical support of the capitalist ideology of racism has made them the bulwark of reaction and slowed down the historical trend towards socialism in the Americas and throughout the world. A truly revolutionary socialist government in America, however the national geo-boundaries are changed, would have to consider granting reparations to the oppressed nationalities who are under the present imperialist government and the Third World in general. The white working class received partial benefits from the super-exploitation of labor extracted from the internal oppressed nationalities and the external neo-colonies of the Third World under imperialism and monopoly capitalism.
Lenin’s report to the Second Comintern Congress was a model of how a historically concrete situation is analyzed to determine the content of the national question in the imperialist epoch. Lenin stressed that his most important point on the national and colonial question is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor peoples. Dealing with the subject at the end of 1922 in the “Question of Nationalities or Autonomisation”, he stressed the importance of a truly internationalist working class approach in establishing fraternal relations between previously oppressed and oppressor peoples. Not only should formal equality be observed, he stressed, but the former oppressor nation should assume inequalities that would compensate for the actually existing inequality. Therefore, the revolutionary socialist government919 of the United States of America would have to reorder its productive forces to partially repay the Third World for the crimes of genocide committed by the imperialist government. This means that preferential treatment and material benefits will not go immediately to the majority of the white working class, even after the formal elimination of racism and after the achievement of the revolutionary socialist government of the United States of America. The majority of the white working class in the U.S. would have to be prepared for a period of austerity.
This means, in the process of protracted struggle in what now constitutes the United States, that socialists must struggle to develop within the white working class, a revolutionary internationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective. The white American working class should be educated that they are a “minority” of workers in the world who have received material incentives and benefits; U.S. standard of living from the neo-colonial imperialist exploitation of the majority of the workers of the world; the Third World worker, both inside and outside of the U.S. Therefore, it is their revolutionary duty to give up the material and cultural benefits they have achieved by living in the capitalist center and supporting the capitalist class for so long. If white workers want to unite with the majority of the workers of the world, they will have to engage in proletarian self-sacrifice (arrested development) and pay reparations to the Third World.
An interesting political development is the increasing Third World population inside the United States. Recent estimates state that by the year 2020, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other Third World people will make up 50%-60% of the total population of the United States. The ratio of whites to African Americans and Hispanics alone will be 2 to 1; African Americans will constitute 18.9% of the population, Hispanics, 20.7% and Anglo Americans, 63%. This data shows that if African American and Hispanics form a progressive alliance along with 20% of Anglo Americans who are left of liberal center, they could form a progressive majority in that period, even if Anglo American males are still the bourgeoisified privileged minority reactionary sector of the U.S. proletariat.
As the proletariat in the U.S. becomes majority Third World, the question of socialist revolution, and the democracy of the proletariat may take on new dimensions, possibly even cultural dimensions. The national question, the right of self-determination for the oppressed nationalities, might be resolved through autonomous regions or republics, designed for preferential economic and social development, but still being part of a Union of Socialist States of America. This may the form of the future socialist revolution. In addition, the formation of a mass multi-national Democratic Socialist party would require proportionate membership of the Third World workers’ numbers in order to truly represent the working class.
With the new racist restructuring of the U.S. labor market; the industrial concentration shifted from the inner city to the suburbs and rural areas; Euro American workers will continue to be the privileged workers of U.S. imperialism. They will constitute the “largest minority” of the U.S. labor force and they will have the highest concentration at the industrial point of production. Instead of racism decreasing, and wage differentials between them and African American workers getting smaller, racism is increasing and the income gap is widening. “White skin privilege”, the material basis for racism, is being refortified by the capitalist class in a deliberate attempt to split the U.S. working class. White (Euro American) workers in the 21st century will hold the “industrial concentration key” to call a general strike. They will also be in a position to keep industrial production running if they retain a racist false class consciousness and support a right wing fascist movement. Euro American comrades really need to relate to raising the political consciousness of this strata of workers. By the year 2020, white men will be the second largest minority in the U.S. behind white women, consisting of 30% of the population. White males, who are the most privileged sector economically, control the majority of political positions of power and business administration will no longer be the majority of the country. The material (population) base for a great anglo “white” chauvinism (fascist nationalism) is deteriorating at the same time as the reactionary sector of the capitalist ruling class is fostering a Euro American right wing fascist movement to counter the inevitable trend towards socialism in America.
The Third World sector of the American proletariat represents the lower sectors of the proletariat whose oppressed nationalities have faced race, national, gender and class oppression. The Anglo-Saxon (WASP) sectors of the proletariat represent the higher (privileged) sectors of the U.S. proletariat who have received partial fringe benefits from race, national, gender and class oppression; that is the imperialist relation of the U.S. to the oppressed nationalities in the U.S and the Third World. The white skin privilege that Euro American workers have benefited from provides us with the peculiar characteristics of a multinational socialist revolution in America.
Ernie Mkalimoto described the white skin privilege as principally a material one which has resulted in the blunting of class-consciousness among proletarian whites. Mkalimoto says that all North American workers share in the U.S. plunder of the Third World; a process that began around the turn of the last century and continues today. However, due to the existence of “white skin privilege” African American workers have benefited far less, this advantage is almost meaningless.920
The white proletariat, which benefits from the super-exploitation of surplus value extracted from the backs of the Chicano, African American nationalities and other minorities, is the proletariat of the oppressor nation. In reality it has acted historically, it acts presently, and reacts as a racist nation proletariat. Benefiting from national oppression economically, structured in a dual labor market and reinforced through an imbalance in educational capital, upward mobility in the labor market, the white working class has developed a false imperialist class-consciousness. But this false class-consciousness has a material base that is based on national oppression of oppressed nations, internally and externally. The key questions for Marxist-Leninists in correctly applying the laws of development, objective reality to the U.S. imperialist state, is upholding the right of self-determination, including the right of succession of oppressed nations domestically. The situation is developing that, in the next twenty years, inside the United States, a politically under-represented majority, suffering from high rates of under- and un-employment (hidden economic apartheid) will exist, which will make the United States of America appear very similar to that of a South Africa.
Presidential Election 2000
The 2000 presidential election will no doubt go into the history books as one of the most controversial finishes in the 200-year history of American democracy. Strikingly similar to the election of 1876 when the country was divided around political issues and divided on partisan lines, which ended Reconstruction, the presidential election of 2000 was equally contested around political issues, elimination of Affirmative Action and Abortion: the Women's right to choice, all equally split on partisan lines.
The 2000 presidential election was the first election, which ended up in the courts, with the Supreme Court ultimately determining the presidential winner, George W. Bush. In 2000 only 51 percent of the adult population voted, a little more than 100 million people. The discrepancy is that the election was decided by 200 votes in a state that George W. Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, is Governor -- the state of Florida.
As shown in the Electoral College results there were sharp regional divisions in the vote of 2000. Bush ran strong in the South and Mountain West whereas Gore turned in a good showing in the Northeast and Pacific Coast States. Bush won the Electoral College by 271 to 266. Gore won the popular vote by 48.4 to 47.9 percent. This is the first time since 1888 that the winner of the popular vote lost the decisive Electoral College count.
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