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FREEDOMWAYS          THIRD QUARTER 1972

ple in advanced imperialist countries such as the United States, West-ern Europe, and Japan.  It is not the road of development for Afro-American workers, who, along with other oppressed nationalities in this country, must aid our sometimes reluctant white brothers in ad-vancing democracy in this country.  Respecting aid from former colonial countries, the statement of a relatively moderate African leader, Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, is revelatory:  "This is the question of whether or not the former colonial powers have been useful to their former colonies after independece was achieved.  I am afraid the answer is no."
  This paper would be one-sided if it did not give due attention to the motion from below of young Afro-Americans such as Owusu Sadankai of Malcolm X Liberation University, Mark Smith of the African Liberation Day Co-ordinating Committee, Tim Thomas of SOBU, among others, who organized the workshops and fought against this conference's being turned away from a focus on the colonial and neo-colonial oppression to a focus on expanding ties among elites.  Moreover, the March on Saturday attested to the mass character of the sentiment of black people regarding liberation and was objectively anti-imperialist.  By that fact alone, the black liberation movement is, indeed, at the crossroads.  It will now have to become subjectively anti-imperialist or it will be turned into its opposite as was the case with the Pan-American movement and the Pan-Arab movement.  
  The resolutions emanating from the workshops affirmed the pro-gressive, democratic bent of the rank and file participants in the con-ference.  They supported the common desire of all peace loving peoples to strengthen the role of the United Nations and international law in preserving international peace and security and the equality of nations.
  As with all other recent conclaves held by Afro-Americans, the national question thrust itself to the fore as a salient problem, Pan-Africanism and nationalism being dominant ideological thrusts at this conference.  How can one make accurate judgments as to the progressiveness of the respective positions of leaders on the right of self-determination which is a much broader question than the ques-tion of nationalism, which is an aspect of the question.  This right cannot be denied an oppressed nation or nationality except under two conditions; if the exercise of that right would strengthen im-perialism (hence, Ibo nationalism and Jewish Zionizm are to be re-proached) or, if the grouping seeking self-determination is a reaction-ary class (hence, the souther slaveholders in the U.S. had no right 

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INTERNATIONALISM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS          RHODES

to self-determination, no right to secede) . Nor does a group of inter-national compradors in intimate relation with imperialism have the right to self-determination.
  However, it should be stated that if a nationalist or internationalist is fighting against national and colonial oppression, we should support that fight; if said nationalist is fighting for special privileges which the class in power will give him (as a client) , then we should oppose such nationalism.  We should judge the character of a nationalist by the allies he seeks.  If the nationalist is pro-democratic, pro-working class, then we should support him.  If he is anti-democratic and anti-working class, we should oppose him.  Since the majority of black people in the U.S. and overseas are workers, an anti-working class position is an anti-black position.
  Of the new subjective currents on the scene, one current which has grown with astonishing rapidity in some strata of the black com-munity in the last three years has been the ideological current of Pan-Africanism, as pecies of internationalism.  What then is the class content of Pan-Africanism?  Is it the same as working-class interna-tionalism?  What are its material roots?  Since "there is nothing more international than colonial or neo-colonial) products and nothing more parochial than colonial (or neo-colonial) peoples, all progres-sive leaderss of the Third World and the Afro-American community had to reconcile their nationalism with the international character of their economic life.
  In the age of imperialism, the metropolitan bourgeoisie attempted such reconciliation under such slogans of bourgeois cosmopolitanism as Pan-Germanism, Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, Pan-Slavism, and Pan-Americanism, among others.  This specious internationalism was a disguised form of national chauvinism, combining nationalism with racism to justify policies of domination of weaker nations by larger nations.  In the colonial countries, the slogans Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism, and Pan-Americanism (before its cooptation) were slogans to combine nationalism with internationalism in a united front against foreign domination.  After independence, the progressive national democrats have indulged in national reconstruction in in-timate contact with the new, most rapidly growing international division of labor, the socialist camp via the non-capitalist road of development.  Hence, in this age of internationalism, such progressive leaders have been able to reconcile their national interests with the international character of production.  Moreover, it has forced the imperialist countries to maneuver by making concessions in their 

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