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interest in the keeping of an open trade door in Africa...."
[My emphasis--H.H.]

Thus behind this whole utopian scheme stand the bayonets and warships of American imperialism! It is Negro Zionism in its most subtle and refined form. Although lacking the primitiveness of Garvey's "Negro Kingdom", it nevertheless contains all the reactionary features of the latter. It is a counter-revolutionary movement aimed to divert the Negro masses from struggle against imperialism.

Padmore--Theoretician of Neo-Garveyism

But this is not all. To strengthen its mass appeal the proponents of this reactionary utopian project seek to cover it with a cloak of pseudo-Communist phrases. Undoubtedly this has been furnished by the renegade Padmore. We are informed that the intentions of Mr. Jones and his friends are to build up eventually a Negro Socialist State in Liberia! They would have us believe that the situation in Liberia is such that it is possible to achieve this without revolutionary struggle against imperialism and its native bourgeois lackeys. In support of this false theory they advance the following argument: (1) That the native tribal organization in the Liberian hinterland is really Communistic in form, that the native tribal councils are themselves a form of village Soviets! (2) That a native capitalist class is non-existent in Liberia in as much as the native upper classes are neither industrialists nor financiers. "They are even friendly to Communism!" Therefore, the question of freedom of Liberia according to these people, is reduced to the simple question of buying off American imperialism and Harvey Firestone and the introduction of Socialism without a struggle.

First, in regard to the contention that the native tribal system is Communistic, that the tribal councils are actually a form of Soviets, etc. What are the facts? The facts are, 

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that the primitive tribal institutions of the natives are now being artificially preserved and perpetuated by imperialism and used as instruments for the imperialist exploitation and oppression of the masses. The chiefs, who formerly held their authority on the basis of the popular will of the tribe, have now not only become, in most cases, landlords and usurers (having with the aid of the imperialists stolen large tracts of the tribal lands), but active agents of imperialism in the Liberian hinterland. Not only are they tax gatherers for the Liberian government, but they act also as recruiters of forced labor for the plantations of Harvey Firestone. Their authority is now imposed on the native tribesmen at the point of bayonets of the Liberian Constabulary.

It is this system of robbery which is depicted by Padmore and his friends as "resembling village Soviets", as "Communistic in form"! What is the purpose of this fraud? Its purpose is to hide the brutal plunder of the Liberian masses by United States imperialism and its native lackeys. At the same time, this idea that the native tribal system is Communistic, that the native tribesmen are "natural Communists", etc., is another attempt to revive the reactionary theory advanced by the old Russian Populists, the idea against which Lenin fought; namely, that the peasantry are the leading class in the struggle for Socialism. Translated to the situation in Liberia, this theory means not only the denial of the role of the native working class as bearers of Socialism. It also means the denial of the role of the Liberian working class as the chief driving force in the fight for national independence against imperialism. 

The issue brings up the question of primitive Communism. Padmore et al., claim for Liberia a Communist economic and social form--of primitive Communism. In the first place, the status of primitive communism cannot be applied to a territory or people living under the yoke of imperialism. But, 

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