The Black Liberation Movement at the Crossroads



The Black Liberation Movement at the Crossroads

In the late 1970s, the Black Liberation Movement began to slowly regroup from the state’s (U.S. Imperialism’s) attacks waged against it during the 1960s and early 1970s. The United League of Mississippi successfully fought the KKK, and united fronts and coalitions formed and mobilized against police murders and racist mayors. The Nation of Islam reorganized as a collective force, the Republic of New Africa and the African People’s Party survived, despite a continuous ten-year onslaught by the police against them. Revolutionary Nationalists became a leading viable force, mobilizing some 5,000 African Americans to march on the United Nations, demanding prisoner of war status for captured BLA soldiers and charging the U.S. government with the crime of genocide against African Americans and oppressed nations of the world.

As the 1980s approached, the mass movement of the Black Liberation Movement seemed to be on the rise once again. The Miami Rebellion (an embryonic insurrection) and the general call for a National Black United Front and a National Black Independent Political Party, both of which have formed, are concrete positive developments. But they gave the appearance that the movement was advancing at a faster pace than it actually was.

Simultaneously, with obvious compliance with the military-intelligence-industrial complex, a powerful, politically sophisticated, and illegal paramilitary right-wing army numbering at least two million, began to surface. It has terrorized hundreds, if not thousands in the last ten years with little or no publicity. Such a counter-revolutionary military onslaught caught many African Americans by surprise, because for even many revolutionaries failed to realize that bourgeois democracy is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

As the impending crisis for imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, is mounting, the right wing element of the bourgeoisie has gained hegemony in the monopolistic capitalist class circles. They are opting for fascism, military dictatorship, genocide, or any combination of these to ward off the internal contradictions that the international capitalist crisis is producing. As a result racism (national chauvinism) is again being fanned to further divide the U.S. proletariat (which is already divided) using “Reborn Christians” as its cover for a “native born AmeriKKKan style Nazi movement.”

With this crisis, the African American nationality is grossly affected. African American youth are 60-80% unemployed, and as things get worse, unemployment among all African Americans will increase. Thus, at a time when African American nationalist formations are re-emerging, the African American nationality is facing its worst crisis since the late 1880s.

What is the weakness in the Black Liberation Movement?

The central weakness is that there is no tactical plan of action for African American revolutionaries inside the imperialist U.S. There is no theoretical guide using a humanist, dialectical, materialist approach to address the “real” unique conditions that African Americans face, described in terms that African Americans can understand. There is no Malcolm X style program in the African American Democratic Socialist Movement.

Before the African American proletariat can fulfill its historical task as leader of the Black Liberation Movement, it must be awakened to both its national and class interest. Being in the belly of the beast (U.S. imperialism), the African American proletariat will not move on its own interest unless it consciously understands its interests as a proletariat of an oppressed nation. This is called “national consciousness.” It is only when the African American proletariat reaches a collective level of national consciousness that it will be able to develop a clear class-consciousness.

That means that the African American proletariat will see its true class interest; that the African American nationality’s oppression is the greatest strength of U.S. imperialist finance capital. It must first develop a collective consciousness and its (African American proletariat) specific needs. It must also organize around the power that they have, realizing that the African American working class is the most oppressed sector of the proletariat in the U.S. imperialist state, along with other oppressed nations held in captivity inside the American empire.[1]

African Americans, particularly African American workers, must be taught the potential of the revolutionary economic, political and military power that they have and their relationship to the cause of the international proletariat and the world socialist revolution. Since 40% of all capital investment in the world is planned for the southern United States, with the aim of extracting super-profits from African American workers, the conscious organization of the African American proletariat (particularly in the black belt South) against extraction of surplus value is the central antithesis to capitalism and U.S. imperialism in the present period.[2]

The central task for African American Democratic Socialists is to organize the African American proletariat/underclass (the unemployed) into special formations to fight for their national and class interests.[3]

The Black Liberation Movement will continually flounder until that occurs, so the process should begin on the local level. First, it is important that African American Democratic Socialists have to bear the responsibility of “fusing in,” that is working with and constantly projecting political ideas into the proletariat.

The revolutionary school for the masses is national/class struggle, which is developed through self-organization (spontaneous actions) and mass organization that is developed by organizers who work with the masses daily. There should also be conscious scientific, socialist education among the advanced sectors of all section of the population.

African American Democratic Socialists should place emphasis on developing a local African American workers’ newsletter that speaks specifically to the African American workers’ level of consciousness. This newsletter will be expanding the workers’ opinion (consciousness) by showing the interrelationships. After developing the initial nucleus, African American Democratic Socialists should develop African American workers’ nuclei, whose purpose (after intensive ideological training) would be to develop the African American Democratic Socialists, and the intermediate and elementary sections of the African American working class.

African American Democratic Socialists engage in point of production work because it is of strategic importance to build the labor power to effectively paralyze the system. The political consciousness of African American workers, however, is tied to the fact that all African Americans face racial exploitation, therefore political consciousness is very much tied to the political level of mass struggle presently taking place. After the initial development the question of “fusion” is of the utmost importance. A major task of African American Democratic Socialists is to build an organization of African American workers and to politicize broad sectors of the community.

Our task is to merge our activities with the practical, everyday questions of working class life, to help workers understand these questions, to draw the workers’ attention to the most important abuses (employers more precisely and practically), to develop among the workers consciousness of their solidarity, consciousness of the common interests and common cause of all the… workers as a united working class that is part of the international army of the proletariat.[4]

A central goal of African American Democratic Socialists is to organize study circles among African American workers to establish secret connections between them and the clandestine African American Democratic Socialist cadre; to publish and distribute literature, particularly geared to eventually connecting workers; to eventually connect centers; to agitate among African American workers and to train a body of revolutionary African American trade union agitators.

Now comes the key question: where to concentrate the work. This is very important for African American Democratic Socialists, because there are incorrect ideas about base building, especially among some nationalists who have a pre-1970 economic approach to base building. First, African American Democratic Socialists need to understand that the Maoist model of basing the revolutionary model on the rural proletariat/peasantry in rural areas just will not work in America because African Americans’ organizational strength is at the industrial workplace and in the urban city areas. African American Democratic Socialists must be good at drawing unorganized and backward workers permanently into the ranks of the organization. Socialist revolution is both an art and a science. Therefore, the organizational assessment of African American Democratic Socialists of where to proceed must be based on scientific data, trends and motion.

The general flow of internal, expanding capital is in the migration of industry from the north to the Sunbelt/Southwest/mid Southeast sections of the country. One of the reasons for this is that runaway shops are escaping higher wages demanded by unions for their workers in the Northeast and North central sections of the country. Therefore, as industry migrates to the South, sometimes the rural South, the black rural proletariat is rapidly displaced from the land and migrates to large southern cities to look for work. The highest concentration of African Americans in the next 10 to 20 years will be in major southern cities. It is here in the southern cities that you find a high concentration of African American workers working in factories (sweat shops) for low wages, usually non-unionized. It is here that great potential lies. African American Democratic Socialists must not dissipate their forces; they must concentrate their activities on the urban southern African American proletariat.

It is this group that is most prone to accept scientific socialism; it is the most developed intellectually, politically and by virtue of its numbers and concentration in the country’s present/future developing political centers. It holds the strategic balance of untapped power. The creation of a dynamic revolutionary organization among African American urban workers is therefore the first and most urgent task confronting African American socialists today. But, while recognizing the necessity of concentrating our forces, we do not in the least wish to suggest that African American Democratic Socialists should ignore other strata of the African American working class. An African American urban worker often comes into direct contact with the rural population through the African American factory workers’ family line.

Both economic and political agitation are equally necessary to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat; both economic and political agitation are equally necessary for guiding the class struggle of the … workers, because every class struggle is a political struggle.[5]

Both kinds of agitation enable workers to test their strength on immediate issues and needs to wring partial concessions from their enemy and thus improve their economic conditions, compel the capitalists to reckon with the strength of organized workers. Presently in almost every city, African American labor has been transformed from the private to the public sector.

They are, for the most part in the public sector, service workers in service industries. The largest employers are the “new” multinational corporations of universities and hospitals. African American workers also are concentrated in transportation, water and garbage departments; as well as maintenance, sanitation, security, postal and other municipal services. In the private sector, hotel and office maintenance and retail service workers are found in almost every city. The next fight will be to achieve parity for African Americans in the construction industry in these cities.

While African American Democratic Socialists do not feel that it is strategic at this time to send their forces into rural areas, they do feel that the rural areas are very important. So African American Democratic Socialists will try to bring about an awareness among the advanced African American workers, seasonal rural workers and rural semi-proletariat, so when these workers come in contact with their less developed brothers and sisters, they will educate them with the ideas of national oppression, race and class struggle, socialism and the political road to national liberation in general and the particular role the African American proletariat will play in accomplishing that task.

Legal struggle and mass resistance transitional stages:

The African American national liberation revolution for Reparations and self-determination has taken many zigzag forms and has had several high tides and setbacks. It is important for people to understand that before another mass revolutionary era can occur that would be sustained by transforming it into a mass resistance movement against the state, the legal means of struggle must be exhausted first, at least in the minds of the people. Waging a mass struggle for reform does this, and in the process of struggling for reform the people learn the necessity for revolution. At the same time, revolutionaries need to conduct literacy campaigns among the masses to enhance their ability to comprehend political theory.

Reform struggles under capitalism to improve the lives and conditions of the people are important in themselves. They should not be seen merely as a means to an end. The struggle for reform limits the capitalists in their relentless drive to intensify exploitation of the working class. Material gains in our share of the social product and advances in democratic rights gives workers a stronger base from which to fight.

At the same time revolutionaries have objectives beyond immediate reforms. We know that capitalism is fundamentally incapable of satisfying even many of the most important requirements of the people, especially in times of periodic recession and high unemployment, and because of capitalism’s inherent drive for greater productivity and profitably. At the same time revolutionaries can and must have the patience to unite with the masses of the people who, as yet, do not share our perspective, but who are making justifiable and important demands that arise out of the logic of capitalistic oppression.[6]

The movement for national democratic human rights cannot be achieved within the framework of U.S. monopoly capitalist imperialism. African Americans must struggle to change institutional racism and class oppression within the present system in order to understand that the system cannot survive without race, national, class and gender oppression. Only a violent overthrow of the capitalist class can achieve parity in human rights and self-determination. This means African American revolutionaries must master all forms of struggle, including mass legal struggle. Transitional political demands for proportional political representation for African Americans in the political system, unionization of African American workers, economic democracy, democratic rights at the workplace, nationalization of industry and an Economic Bill of Rights for the Poor, are key political demands to advance the struggle forward.

Revolutionaries should be in the forefront of building independent political parties, possibly a people’s party, and registering the masses to vote. By breaking the allegiance of the African American nationality with the two capitalist political parties, the struggle for self-determination and Reparations will advance. By forming mass people’s parties, the question of Reparations for War Crimes committed against the African American nationality by the U.S. imperialist government can emerge inside the political and public communications process. In addition the question of self-determination for the domestically oppressed nations, including the right of succession can be addressed. This, along with mass agitation for human rights, could lead to a mass African American national movement and another revolutionary period.

How will a tactical plan for Reparations be implemented? In order to make Reparations real for the masses of African Americans, tactics must go from defensive “fight-back” political action to offensive “revolutionary action” political action. Mass revolutionary action means taking the political offensive. It means agitating both inside and outside of the capitalistic political structure to isolate, expose and oust (vote out of office), the racist conservative politicians and cause a political polarization/realignment of political forces inside the U.S.

How do we proceed to do this? By having a people’s coalition inside the Democratic Party and developing a constitutional recall movement of conservative/racist politicians around their anti-people voting records. This could entail convening democratic people’s conventions, people’s courts, political tribunals and civil lawsuits. From below, or outside the capitalist political structure, having political “Reparations” demonstrations by the army of the unemployed with teach-ins concerning the use of voting records, deals and conspiracies that politicians used to crush the people’s movement.

Realistically, while many African American revolutionaries have remained outside the ranks of the capitalist parties, many need to take the struggle inside the Democratic Party to galvanize a “progressive people’s bloc.” Their purpose would be to force the KKK, racists and conservative politicians either out of the Democratic Party or to a political showdown, thereby impacting the local, regional and national arena. They would develop a broad infrastructure and run “Democratic Socialist” candidates with a base in the neighborhood movement.

Methods of proceeding:

Agitating the advanced sections of the African American proletariat is the accurate way to arouse the entire African American proletariat. The dissemination of socialist ideas and ideas of national race oppression and class struggle among urban workers will inevitably cause those ideas to flow to wider and wider areas. Essentially it means these ideas taking deep root among the more “politically aware” elements and spreading throughout the consciously aware. Cadre needs to comprehend the unique historical features of their local (base) situations and how they relate to the national movement.[7]

While concentrating all its forces on activity among workers, African American Democratic Socialists are ready to support and unite with other elements of the population. These alliances should not lead to compromises or concessions on matter of theory, program or slogan. The doctrine of scientific socialism, national oppression, and race, class and gender struggle is the only revolutionary theory that can serve as the beacon for the revolutionary movement. African American Democratic Socialists will exert every effort to spread this doctrine, to guard it against false interpretation and will combat every attempt to steer the African American working class from its revolutionary mission; to galvanize the entire U.S. working class towards revolution.

In order to do this, propaganda should be directed primarily toward winning advanced workers to wage a protracted struggle for self-determination of the oppressed African American nationality. At the same time, it must be understandable and appealing to the broad “middle forces” as well.

This approach requires a consistent and responsible approach to the question of working with reformist leaders. In attempting to do so, we will find a real test of our political maturity and flexibility—and perhaps of the strength of our understanding of, and commitment to, our political principles. In general African American Democratic Socialists’ approach to working with reformist leaders should be to unite with their positive aspects, whether substantial or merely superficial public rhetoric. In the latter case, African American Democratic Socialists support reflects what people believe the leaders stand for and part of our strategy must be to push the contradiction between assertion and action.

In conducting propaganda among the workers, African American Democratic Socialists deal with the practical political problems of the masses. They strive to spread an understanding of African American relationship to the system, national oppression, race, class, and gender oppression and what it means. In addition the necessity to overthrow the system, the impossibility of waging a successful struggle for workers’ cause without self-determination from the capitalist system must also be understood.

Agitating African American workers on their immediate economic demands, African American Democratic Socialists must inseparably link this with the immediate political needs of African American people. Their political power and proportional representation take on a new light within this context.

Just as there is no issue affecting the life of the workers in the economic field that must be left unused for the purpose of economic agitation, so that there is no issue in the political field that does not serve as a subject for political agitation.[8]

In this respect African American Democratic Socialists constantly try to show leadership that the Black Liberation Movement should try to alter structural changes in the labor market. Organizing African American workers to wage a scientific, economic and “political” struggle at the workplace can advance this. By doing this, the Black Liberation Movement will also be enabling other workers to see the true class contradictions within the U.S. imperialist state.

What is the objective/subjective situation, and how do we proceed to develop a broad mass proletarian line? Of the 8.31 million African Americans employed in 1977, about 33% were unionized by 1981, as compared to only 26% of white workers. African American and other oppressed nationality workers made up 48% of the Laborers union, 37% of the Service Employees union, 30% of the Food and Commercial Workers union and 30% of AFSCME, the largest public workers union in the United States.[9] In 1960 six percent of the AFL-CIO was African American, by 1981 it was 17%.

The percentage of African Americans who are either members of, or represented by unions fell from 31.7% in 1983 to 16% in 2006, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit organization. African Americans were also more likely to be union members (14.3%) than whites (11.3%), Asians (10.9%) or Hispanics (9.8%), a union report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics stated.

A recent study showed that African American workers held 55% of union jobs lost in 2004 and African American women accounted for 70% of the jobs lost by women. The Center for Economic and Policy Research also reported that between 1979 and 2006 the share of all African American workers in manufacturing jobs declined from 23.9% to 10.1%. While there is limited representation in the construction industry and industrial unions are losing African American members because of shrinking jobs, the service sector unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has grown to 1.4 million members and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has 1.9 million members nationwide. Both unions are surging among African Americans who now represent about 16% of the total membership.

The question that African American Democratic Socialists must address is that 33% of the approximately 2.5 million African American workers are in unions controlled by the labor aristocracy (bureaucrats), who don’t represent either the class or national interests of African American workers. Then it is necessary to organize a revolutionary African American caucus movement inside these unions to push these unions in a revolutionary direction, and also to form an organization which represents the national and class interests of the African American proletariat. It would link its common interests with the revolutionary sectors of the proletariat inside of the United States imperialist state, the Third World and the international proletariat in general. Each has a different character and the forms of unity may come in various phases of development.

As of 2008, there are 16.9 million members in all trade unions. Of these 2.4 million is African American, 1.9 million Hispanic, and 657,000 are Asian American, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[10]

The majority of African American workers are still not unionized, which is a question that the African American Democratic Socialist movement must seriously address. At the same time, as unemployment is increasing, a sector of the African American proletariat has fallen victim to bourgeois cultural genocide and are becoming lumpenized.

Important to every great national liberation movement is the political socialization of the youth. From 1970 to 1980, the great African American mass movement for self-determination lost momentum as the state regained the offensive, through physical repression, and through more subtle methods, psychological warfare, media genocide, chemical warfare, (drugs) and monetary co-opting. As a result, an entire generation of youth has emerged who are more politically backward than the last generation. This proves the point that critical revolutionary political consciousness does not remain intact or a dominant force within the African American community unless it is institutionalized and transmitted to each forthcoming generation through mass struggle.

Beginning in the early 1970s, particularly with the showings of “Superfly” and “Coffy,” the pimp, prostitute and drug-pusher became the glorified hero/heroine of African American street culture in the inner cities. This psychological media genocide blitz of Black-exploitation films coincided with the state’s flooding of drugs into the inner cities, building the ‘black mafia’ in conjunction with the ‘white mafia’ and the CIA. This altered the images of the African American liberation fighter who had been the hero/heroine for African American youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were replaced with the ‘romanticized’ lumpen.

Published estimates state that one-third of all African American men in American are narcotics users. Approximately one million African American youth between the ages of 11 and 19 make a living from their participation in the drug traffic and are not in the labor market. Approximately three million African Americans are part of the drug traffic (selling drugs). Black on Black crime is the highest ever in the history of the African American nationality, which says something about their subjective condition.

The present situation is a result of the African American community’s struggle to de-segregate public facilities in the South, breaking down the legal barriers that kept them from upward mobility within the capitalist system. As long as segregation existed in the superstructure, African Americans, regardless of class mentality or class status within the larger class structure of American society, identified collectively with African Americans. What the Black Liberation Movement did not take into consideration is that African Americans had been imbued with the same individualistic go-for-self mentality as the white community was imbued with. As the economy expanded in the sixties, and racial discrimination in the superstructure was defeated, the class contradictions within the African American community began to emerge full bloom.

At the same time the petty bourgeoisie gained hegemony over the Black Liberation Movement and African American revolutionaries were imprisoned en-masse, driven underground, exiled or assassinated. The co-opting of the Black Liberation Movement by the African American petty bourgeoisie and their failure (in the past 15 years) to develop effective leadership or a program has led to a complete demoralization of the entire African American community, who then turned inward on themselves.

The African American community faces a crisis that is affecting the entire African American nationality. Cutbacks in social services and employment of the poor present an economic crisis, but an even greater crisis is the loss of unity in the community and the misdirection of African American youth.

This misdirection is a growing problem in every African American community in the country and is a direct result of magazines, movies and all forms of media from the “new street culture” that has emerged from the drug traffic. Institutions (church, school, family) that had previously provided African Americans with a value system for the day-to-day realities that they face have not responded adequately to the growing crisis. As a result, facing 50-60% unemployment, this generation of African American youth, have lost all sense of having values or morals. They have little or no respect for elders, parents, or any responsible person in the African American community. Since they have not been taught of the struggles that African Americans endured, even to get to where they are now, they are easy victims of the ‘pimp—prostitute—drug pusher—rip off artist—hustler’ culture.

With the loss of a sense of identity and sense of community, African American youth have taken to ripping off (stealing) from any easy prey they can find. There is a precipitous rise of black-on-black crime perpetrated by these youth in our neighborhoods. They, like the larger African American community, have been ‘lumpenized” by the media culture’s conception of what they should be.

Unlike the generation in the 1960s, when African American youth took to the streets to change the system (Black Social Responsibility), today’s youth are engaging in anti-social behavior, blatant disrespect for adults and even life itself. This tendency towards black-on-black crime is sorely dividing and destroying the African American community, even as it faces the most severe repression it has faced in years.

Black-on-Black Crime

When the Black Liberation Movement is at its highest tide, black-on-black crime recedes. The intra-hate complex that African Americans harbor due to the oppression psychosis produced by the racist monopoly capitalist system has a creative outlet. It is a form of therapy for the African American nationality and also takes the form of mass social dislocation, mass demonstrations, mass uprisings and revolutionary violence against the system.

Most so-called crimes committed by African Americans have been out of economic desperation and self-hate. Crimes committed against whites, or forms of white power structures (banks, insurance companies, etc.) are economic wars of the oppressed class. Black-on-black crime, (murder, drug-pushing, ripping off neighbor’s homes) are crimes stemming from self-hate, even though they have an economic motivation.

The Black Liberation Movement must address itself to black-on-black crime and create the means to eliminate it. It should attempt to restore love and respect in African Americans for African Americans. While the objective conditions exist for the highest level of mass revolutionary organization, (cutbacks in social services, high unemployment, mass racist attacks, blatant police brutality, and a rapid moved toward fascism), African Americans cannot collectively organize because of the low level of their “national” consciousness. So with the impending crisis, African American revolutionaries must address creating the special organizational forms that fit the masses’ objective and subjective needs.

In the present period, the African American unemployed should be organized and mobilized into unemployment councils, part of a national organization of African American workers’ that raises a tactical program of action. The entire African American left can unite around forming and galvanizing the thousands of unemployed, (especially African American youth), into unemployment councils. These councils should be broad united front organizations based on economics on the local level. Their purpose would be to get welfare, social security and unemployment insurance guarantees and to pressure for the opening of jobs previously reserved for white workers. In addition, pressure on the capitalists/government, an economic bill of rights for the poor, guaranteed income (full employment) and a call for the nationalization of basic industries, as a solution to the unemployment problem would be additional areas to be addressed.

Part of a tactical African American workers’ unemployed program could be:

1. Recognize the rights of all workers to unemployment insurance.

2. Expand benefits and the cessation of all cutbacks, with benefits paid by the employer and the government.

3. Simplify all laws and rules on unemployment insurance, eliminating bureaucracy.

4. Eliminate racism at the workplace in: hiring; promotions; unequal pay; harassment and unfair treatment; firing; sexual abuse of black women on the job.

5. Equal pay for African American women workers to male workers.

6. Affirmative action in the skilled trades.

7. Affirmative action in skilled and unskilled unions.

8. Oust all reactionary union bureaucrats.

9. Organize the unorganized (non-union shops).

10. Complete benefits to the elderly.

11. Complete benefits to welfare recipients.

12. Restitution to African American ex-soldiers forced to fight in U.S. imperialist’s racist wars.

13. Immediate release of all political prisoners.

14. Nationalization of industry and the establishment of a 36-hour workweek with full pay as a means of obtaining full employment.

15. Immigrant workers right to same benefits as native-born workers.

16. End to all rules disqualifying the unemployed from benefits.

17. Maternity grants of 26 weeks, with access to these at any time during pregnancy; also available to adoptive parents.

18. End all waiting restrictions.

19. No penalty for firing or voluntary resignation because of the unsuitably of work.

20. Unemployed staffing of unemployment offices.

21. Continuation of benefits during illness or injury without penalty.

22. End to chauvinism, harassment, and racism practiced by unemployment agencies toward oppressed nationalities and immigrants.

23. Unemployment centers staffed with Bi-lingual workers.

24. Struggle for full workers’ democracy in decisions affecting their working conditions and environment.

It is important, in this period, to create mass proletarian organizational forms where the advanced class-conscious workers can surge forth to leadership and propel the self-organization of the African American proletariat. With this development, based on agitation and actions, is socialist political education. This, often neglected arena, “The ideological struggle,” will become increasingly sharper in the forthcoming period. The ideological front, like the economic, political, military and cultural fronts, is very important. Actions can be guided by precisely developing a clear ideological line.

For over forty years, since the early 60s, from the days of SNCC, RAM, Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Black Workers Congress, BLA, Republic of New Africa, African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) to the present, (NBUF, NBIPP, Black Workers for Justice (BWFS), BRC, Black Workers League) there has been a lot of mobilizing and organizing of the African American community. What has been lacking is comprehensive, ideological cohesion, and internal education in the Black Liberation Movement. This weakness gives rise to ultra-leftism, which sometimes takes the form of adventurism, sectarism or right-wing tailism of the mass movement or petty bourgeois leadership.

In the process of mobilizing and organizing the masses around immediate issues that they see as important, such as housing, jobs, wages, workers’ benefits, and political empowerment. If this mobilizing, tactical line does not flow from a strategic line, then actions will lead to a blind alley, as they have in the past. This is where strategy coming from the theory of Democratic Socialists helps.

In working with the African American proletariat in an organized and systematic way in organizational forms, (workers’ control), African American revolutionaries will also have a forum in which to learn from the masses; as arena to ‘listen’ to them, learn and re-learn and how to correctly address their needs. At the same time, this organizational arena will give African American revolutionaries a chance to concretely address the question of ‘how do you take day-to-day issues and relate them to the theory of revolutionary internationalism?’

Internationalism we will win:

Since 1981, when the first Plenary Session on Black Self-Determination was held in New York, sponsored by the National Black Human Rights Coalition, an ever-increasing struggle has been sharpening around the national question. Responding to an already developing people’s struggles inside the U.S., over 400 people met May 28-30th in 1982 in Denver, Colorado at the National Conference Against Repression. All called for unity. One Struggle, Many Fronts calls for an understanding of the “actual” character of internationalism inside the imperialist state, and also outside of it. It means that African American workers need a ‘fresh’ non-sectarian approach and education to revolutionary internationalism.

This socialist internationalist perspective is very important for the developing African American proletarian leadership. Only if African Americans see the world correctly, knowing the revolutionary forces, know their true friends and allies, will African Americans be able to see their enemies.

The legacy left by Brother Malcolm X for African American revolutionaries to deal with is “socialist education” of the masses. It includes support for the Palestine Liberation Movement and elimination of Zionist control of the Black Liberation Movement. It is just as meaningful for the African American ‘on the block’ as when the brothers and sisters in South African rose to destroy apartheid, because it’s One Struggle, Many Fronts.

The African American National Democratic Revolution has unique national conditions that are subjective. It also has general, objective (class) laws that have followed the basic laws of National Democratic Revolutions and Socialist Revolutions worldwide, since 1917. We need to see our organizing of the African American community and developing pre-party cadre organization as the African American ethnic sector of a future multi-national multi-racial people’s party that organizes a majority of the American masses through the transitional process leading to people’s democracy and democratic socialism.

African Americans need to understand that, while they are in a unique situation, one that is historically different from others, their self-determination is tied to the international struggle for socialism. This is because their enslavement played a central role in the building of the world capitalist system. The victory of the African American Democratic Revolution is therefore linked to the victory of the socialist revolution in the U.S. and throughout the world. While each has its own laws of development, they are linked by general laws of development of the world revolution and by the objective historical process.

The principal enemy of African Americans is the U.S. imperialist state, and the capitalist system. African Americans call on all freedom-loving progressive people of the world to unite to destroy the enemy of the world’s people. It is this political understanding that will carry the Black Liberation Movement towards victorious liberation.

Muhammad Ahmad

P. O. Box 34463

Philadelphia, PA 19101

The

Black Liberation Movement

At the Crossroads

Dr. Muhammad Ahmad

Written between 1984 and 1986

(Circulated 1987)

Updated: 2008

-----------------------

[1] Rally Comrades, Volume 2, Number 4, August, 1982, p. 2

[2] Workers Tribune, Number 9, July-August, 1982, p. 3

[3] Ibid. p. 3

[4] V.I. Lenin, On Building the Bolshevik Party: Selected Writings 1894 [Chicago, Illinois: Liberator Press, 1977], p. 37

[5] V. I. Lenin, Ibid. pp. 40-41

[6] Bay Area Socialist Organizing Committee, Confronting Reality, Learning from the History of our Movement [San Francisco: 1980], p. 12

[7] Cedric Johnson, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007]

[8] V. I. Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 40

[9] “Black Workers: The Black Nation and the Black Liberation Movement,” Worker’s Tribune, No. 3, June-July 1981, p. 4

[10] .

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