Viewing page 19 of 94

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

AGAINST LIBERALISM IN U.S. NEGRO QUESTION     305

Negroes without any revolutionary battles and to make them class-conscious, to make them trust the American workers, and to act as the majority of the American workers and farmers will want them to act. But he forgets that so far this majority is still the incarnation of violence of white American imperialism in relation to the Negroes. Here is what Comrade Ford and Williams, two Negro Communists, write:

"The Negro proletarians as a rule understand their racial oppression, but they do not realize their class solidarity with the white workers. With very few exceptions, the most progressive Negro proletarians, those who are to a certain extent already class conscious, still regard themselves as Negroes first and workers second . . . If Negro workers have no faith in the white man, no matter what his programme this is the more so true of the Negro farmer who suffers from the survivals of a system of the worst form of exploitation, based on racial grounds, the system of slavery." (The Communist International, No. 31 and 32, 1928).

The best method of gaining the confidence of the Negroes in the American workers in the contemporary struggle against imperialism, is the recognition of the Negroes' right to choose their own form of conducting this struggle. Shick's argument that "separatist movements" will deepen the chasm dividing the Negro workers from the whites is a monstrous distortion of all that the Communists teach on the national problem. This wall exists only insofar as there is no real struggle going on against capitalism either by the Negro toilers or the American workers. As soon as this struggle begins every white workers will understand what a powerful ally the revolutionary movement of the Negroes of the South who want to be the masters of their own land and to drive out the representatives of American imperialism can be. It is clear that the Negroes will fight against imperialism, against the capitalist regime, and that there is yet no other regime, i.e. the proletarian dictatorship.

In order to discredit the "self-determination" idea Comrade Shick says in commenting that "the idea of giving the Negroes the right to self-determination and to create an artificial Negro country on American soil has many times been promulgated by some of the worst American white reactionaries." 

Moreover, Shick completely distorts the very idea of self-determination. He says: "At the same time the struggle for self-determination in the ordinary sense of this term is nothing but a struggle for the right to voluntary segregation." This is how Comrade Shick understands this problem. But if this is his idea of self-determination, if it is in his opinion merely a desire of the whites