THE ARTICLE by Zibigniew Kowalewski in our last issue was part of a much longer article in the French journal Crilique Communiste which is full of important insights into the struggle for black liberation in the United States.
However, Kowalewski's position on these questions is flawed in my opinion by a basic error: his virtually unargued position that blacks in the United States are a nation, and that therefore black struggle is vinually synonymous with a struggle for national liberation.
Uncritical
It is this basic theoretical position which underlies what is a curicusly unhis startling view that the Nation of Islam (the Black Muslims) are a progressive force. His argumentation culminates with the strategic position that marxists should argue for black nationalists (separatists?)
DEBATE "add' a socialise dimension to their Are blacks in America a nation? Kowaleski bases himself on the arguments of Trotsky in the 19305, the posttions of the US SWP, and an opinion poll rion; do black Americans consider themselves to be a separate nation, ie do they aspire to statehood in the form of the creation of a separate sate? This is at least unproved.
Of course black Americans could become a nation: that is a different question. But to be a nation there has to be a truly separate state. It is far from clear that this is the case today.
As Trotsky put it in 1933: "We do not of course obligate the Negroes to become their consciousness, that is what they desire and what they strive for.' And in 1939 he argued: • We are ready to help them (blacks) if they want it (their own neutral on this.... We can say to them "it is for you to decide. If you wish to cake part of the country, it is all right, but we you."
Racial oppression is not the same thing as national oppression, although the two Black Americans are of cal overtap. course a rockly oppressa group, they are one of the major specially oppressed groups in American society. This invests the struggle for black liberation in the United States with immense strategic sigof the underpinnings of the correct noTrotskyist phasc, of 'combined revolution'.
Socialists should thus of course chamIdeologically, strategically, we are not advocates of black nationalism, or any other type of nationalism for that matter, even if we defend black nationalism against the economist left. Socialism cannot simply be 'added' to nationalism. pion the autonomous self-organisation of black Americans. In any case, this is a powerful dynamic in American society, whatever position socialists have about But the basic strategic question which Marxists have to answer is this: what is the road to black liberation in the United States? The racial oppression of black Americans is deeply ingrained in US capitalism, and has been since slavery. It is inconceivable that racism will be uprooted without the destruction of capital. ism.
This means that. as with other oppressed groups. Marxists argue for autonomous black self-organisation, and reject any notion that blacks should walt to the walte working crass. but al the same time they point out that only through the destruction of capitalism, ie through a socialist revolution, will the institutions of racism be uprooted.
In this context we have to critically examine Malcolm X's notion that there black unity. Naturally the fight for black unity in struggle against racism and for black liberation is crucial. On the other hand, taken literally. the idea that there can be no unity in struggle between stasting Unice stales waist.
This must lead Marxists to a conception of the revolution as a combined one in the which the different strands of the anti-capitalist struggle, including the might for black nocration, are buer iwined. This is not the same as conceptualising socialist transition as the addition of different struggles which proceed autonomously, without cross-fertilisabon, mutual reinforcement and common strategic goals. That however is the programmatic difference between Marxists and black nationalists.
For us black liberation, like womens liocration. is an anti-canitalist task. We can say in the United States, not just as an expression of goodwill but as a material fact, there will be no socialist revolution without black liberation. But the other half of the couplet has to be iterated as well: there will be no black liberation Naturally. in a situation where the Militant, simply repeat that it is a matter of socialism or black nationalism' there is a natural response on the part of Marxists to defend the progressive impulses and dynamic of black nationalism. This is as it should be that we are simply consistent advocates of black nationalism, or that socialist siogans should be added to nationalism. Ideologically. strategically, we are not advocates of black nationalism, or any other type of nationalism for that matter, even if we defend black nationalism against the economist left. Socialism cannot simply be 'added' to nationalism.
Separatism
Marxists' strategic differences are particularly sharp with black separatism. This is not a moral question or some liberal wish to argue that, after all, white workers are not as bad as all that. No, it is a political question. a difference of estimate about how black liberation can be achieved; black separatism is incapable, by definition, of propelling the combined revolution which result in black liberation.
This brings us back to Malcolm X. Until the end of his life he was a black nationalist, not a socialist. But in the last year of his life his thought was in motion; se was an anti-imperialist and increas. ingly an anti-capitalist. The danger for US capitalism was that he was leading in the direction of arguing for black self-organisation in alliance with white workThat was an explosive mixture which could not be allowed; the combined revolution which will simultaneously deal a death blow to racial oppression and US Capitas
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 42 May 15, 1993. Page 11