20 20 The most important Black Power group to emerge with a working-class constituency was the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The League was a network of independent black militant workers’ organizations including Detroit’s DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), FRUM (Ford Revolutionary Union Movement), and the United Black Brothers of Mahwah, New Jersey. Although the League had disappeared by the mid-1970s, it left a vibrant political legacy that merged Marxist theory with the black militancy of industrial factory workers.
GENERAL PROGRAM (HERE’S WHERE WE’RE COMING FROM)
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is dedicated to waging a relentless struggle against racism, capitalism, and imperialism. We are struggling for the liberation of black people in the confines of the United States as well as to play a major revolutionary role in the liberation of all oppressed people in the world.
In U.S. society, a small class owns the basic means of production. There aren’t any black people in this class, nor are the masses of whites; however, they are not in the same position as blacks.
Our black community is virtually a black working class, because of our relationship to the basic means of production. Black workers comprise the backbone of the productive process in this country. Since slavery, we have been the major producers of goods and services. In addition, we’ve produced goods under the most inhumane conditions. Our black community is comprised of industrial workers, social service workers, our gallant youth, and many ad hoc community groups.
The racist subordination of black people and black workers creates a privileged status for white people and white workers. While the imperialist oppression and exploitation of the world creates a privileged status for the people and workers of the U.S., the white labor movement has failed to deal with the worsening conditions of black workers and the key role of black workers in the economy and the working class. The white labor movement has turned its back on black worker problems such as less job security, speed-up, less pay, bad health (silicosis, in particular), the worst kind of jobs, and in most cases, exclusion from skilled trades.
These two systems of privilege become the basis for the aristocracy of white labor which gives white labor a huge stake in the imperialist system and renders white labor unable and unfit to lead the working class in the U.S.
United States society is racist, capitalist, and imperialist by nature. It is aggressively expansive, exploitative, and oppressive. The expansion of U.S. imperialism is primarily by means of worldwide financial penetration, backed up by a worldwide military regime. This gives a monopoly control of the resources, wealth and labor of the capitalist world to U.S. finance capital. They use the most barbarous methods of warfare and subversion to maintain its billions of dollars in profit.
U.S. imperialism supports every reactionary and fascist regime in the world by means of subversion, CIA assassinations, invasions, terror bombings, and criminal means of warfare. U.S. imperialism also resorts to nuclear blackmail, to intimidate the revolutionary peoples of the world. Imperialism faces its inevitable destruction as the national liberation struggles, currently focused in Southeast Asia, become worldwide. This involves the rest of Asia, including populous India, along with the emerging struggles in Latin America and the developing struggles in Africa. The workers and peoples of Europe are also drawn into the anti-imperialist struggle as the grip of U.S. imperialism loosens on Europe as the result of the struggles waged in the rest of the world.
The oppressive, imperialist nature of U.S. society is evidenced at home in the suppression of the black liberation struggle, workers’ struggles, and anti-war struggles, in an increasingly militaristic fashion. One of the essential domestic props of U.S. imperialism is the white labor aristocracy which shares in the spoils of the plunder of the world and is based in the domestic subordination of black workers.
The white labor aristocracy collaborates with the U.S. imperialist government in its aggressive wars, its CIA subversion and supports its political line. It also colludes with monopoly corporations at home to allow speed-up and unsafe working conditions, inflation that outstrips any wage gains, leaves most workers unorganized, and supports the brutal subordination of black workers.
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers emerged specifically, out of the failure of the white labor movement to address itself to the racist work conditions and to the general inhumane conditions of black people.
Our strength comes from the historical and heroic struggles of our people, our inspiration comes from the revolutionary upsurges of the international struggles, and our convictions are guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is a political organization. We relate to the total black community. Our actual practice involves us with industrial and service workers, youth, and several ad hoc groups; these categories make up the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Our duty is to plan the most feasible means to insure freedom and justice for the liberation of black people based on the concrete conditions we relate to. In addition, we have the task of training our people for leadership and other special capacities that make a viable organization. Most importantly, the direction of our organization is clear. We’re not talking about dealing with a single issue as the only factor, nor are we talking about reforms in the system; but we are talking about the seizure of state power.
It is clear to us that the development of our struggle based on concrete realities, dictates the need for black peoples’ liberation political party. We state, unequivocally, that this must be a black Marxist-Leninist party, designed to liberate black people, dedicated to leading the workers’ struggles in this country, and resolved to wage a relentless struggle against imperialism.
The League’s program for building a black Marxist-Leninist party is as follows:
Our short-range objective is to secure state power with the control of the means of production in the hands of the workers under the leadership of the most advanced section of the working class, the black working-class vanguard.
Our long-range objective is to create a society free of race, sex, class, and national oppression, founded on the humanitarian principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs….
Deep in the gloom
of the firefilled pit
Where the Dodge rolls down the line,
We challenge the doom
of dying in shit
While strangled by a swine….
… For hours and years
we’ve sweated tears
Trying to break our chain—
But we broke our backs
and died in packs
To find our manhood slain….
But now we stand—
For DRUM’s at hand
To lead our Freedom fight,
and from now til then
we’ll unite like men—
For now we know our might—
and damn the plantation
and the whole Dodge nation
For DRUM has dried our tears….
and now as we die
we’ve a different cry—
For now we hold our spears!
U.A.W. is scum—
OUR THING IS DRUM!!!!!
Source: “General Program (Here’s Where We’re Coming From),” General Policy Statement and Labor Program (Highland Park, MI: League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1970).
Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975); Updated ed. (Boston: South End Press, 1998).
James A. Geschwender, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
Jim Jacobs, “Our Thing Is DRUM!” (Boston: New England Free Press, 1970).