CHAPTER TEN

CONCLUSION: TOWARD A SOCIALIST AMERICA

All phases of development are temporary and transient and are destined sooner or later to give way to something else . . . The capitalist epoch is not quite over and those who live at a particular point in time often fail to see that their way of life is in the process of transformation and elimination . . . Socialism has advanced on imperialism’s weakest flanks—in the sector that is exploited, oppressed and reduced to dependency. Socialism aims at and has significantly achieved the creation of plenty, so that the principle of egalitarian distribution becomes consistent with the satisfaction of the wants of all members of society.

—Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, pp. 18-20.

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America evolved from a concern with the contemporary race/class situation in the United States. Like Rodney’s seminal work, I have attempted to delve “into the past only because otherwise it would be impossible to understand how the present came into being and what the trends are for the near future.” As we have seen, the basic social division within the Black community, the Black worker majority vs. the Black elite, was an essential by-product of primitive capital accumulation in slave societies. This class division became more pronounced in the twentieth century, and represented a tendency among many “middle class” Blacks in electoral politics, the church, small business and education to articulate a “capitalist road” to Black liberation. With Rodney, I have argued the thesis that Black economic, political and social development is possible “only on the basis of a radical break with . . . the capitalist system, which has been the principal agency of underdevelopment.” The data and historical examples I have collected, in my judgment, more than justify the thesis. What remains to be developed, however, is the “formulation of a strategy and tactics” implied within the historical evaluation, which will uproot the hegemony of American capitalism.1 By necessity, such a strategy cannot be limited to Black Americans and their conditions, because the symbiotic processes of institutional racism and capital accumulation affect all American working and poor people.

The road to Black liberation must also be a road to socialist revolution. But what strategy is required, keeping in mind the special history of American society, and the convergence of racism, sexism and economic exploitation which comprises the material terrain of this nation? I would suggest ten points of departure, programmatically and theoretically, which may provide some tentative suggestions for social transformation and the end to the “underdevelopment” of Black America:

1) Any authentic social revolution in the United States must be both democratic and popular in character and composition. A majority of Americans, Black, Latino and white, must endorse socialism. By this statement, I do not imply that a majority of Americans will become socialists or Marxists. I mean that a clear majority of American people, with a large base in the working class, will support the general program of socialist construction. That expression of support may be electoral, but it should not be interpreted narrowly by social democrats to mean a constitutional majority within the electoral apparatus as it now exists. Visions of a revolutionary Black, radical feminist, or “Marxist Presi­dent of the United States” are illusions fostered by the implicit acquisition of the logic of the bourgeois “democratic” process among some American progressives.

2) The American state apparatus is capitalist and racist in its operations and social trajectory, yet it also manifests the class contradictions and struggles which are always present within bourgeois civil society as a whole. U.S. bourgeois “democracy” is oppressive and under Reagan is even moving toward unambiguous authoritarian­ism, yet is not specifically fascist in the classical sense. Progressives can have a direct impact upon public policies and the behavior of the state in certain respects, via electoral participation, lobbying, civil disobedience, mass demonstrations, etc. The state bureaucracy under a bourgeois “democracy” often accommodates the demands of the left into its own public policies. Progressives can gain positions within the state, especially at municipal and state levels, which can help fund and support grassroots interests and indirectly assist in the development of a socialist majority.

Critical support for progressive and anticapitalist politicians (e.g. Ronald Dellums) who run for office within the Democratic Party, at the present time, may be a necessary and constructive activity in building an anticorporate consensus within the working class. Yet to view either major capitalist party as the primary or fundamental terrain for building socialism would be to court disaster. The Democratic Party will never be transformed into an appropriate vehicle for achieving the political hegemony of Blacks, Latinos, feminists and the working class. This requires the creation of an antiracist and antisexist political formation which is distinctly anticapitalist, and represents the interests of working and poor people.

3) Direct confrontations with the coercive agencies of state order are inevitable in the future. Yet any socialist strategy which deliberately provokes the repressive powers of the capitalist/racist state against working and poor people cannot win in the U.S. A series of urban rebellions can shake the perception of the American working class in capitalism as an inherently “fair” and “democratic” system, but these will not topple the powers of the State. The U.S. government cannot be directly equated, in short, with czarist Russia or Somoza’s Nicaragua. A putschist strategy by the left will not only fail in overthrowing the racist/capitalist state, but will create the chaotic political conditions essential for the installation of U.S. fascism. From Gracchus Babeuf to Auguste Blanqui, ultraleftists have confused social revolution with conspiratorial coups which implicitly express an unstated distrust and even hatred for the people.2 “When most Americans think about a revolution, all they can think of is a coup d’état,” write James and Grace Lee Boggs. “But people do not make anything as serious as a revolution to rub out a government or system. The only justification for a revolution is the fact that social, political and economic contradictions have accumulated to the point that the existing government and the existing institutions obviously cannot resolve them. Therefore it is not so much that the revolution overthrows the government and the system as that the government and the system, by their failure and their misdeeds, drive the people to rescind their mandate to rule.”3

4) A long and painful ideological struggle must be mounted by progressives to create a “counter-hegemony” essential for socialism. Every aspect of the capitalist civil society—educational institutions, the church, the media, social and cultural organizations—must be undermined.4 This “war of position,” to use Antonio Gramsci’s concept, must be viewed as the development of a popular “historic bloc” or “revolutionary social bloc” which is comprised of all progressive forces of divergent class and racial groups: women, Blacks, Hispanics, trade unions, Native Americans, antinuclear energy groups, environmentalists, anticorporate “populists,” socialists, Communists, community and neighborhood associations, etc. A Common Program among these divergent forces would not be an informal alliance or a temporary convergence of formations as in a classical popular front. It would become the crystalization of a mass revolutionary bloc which would explicitly call for the transformation of the system as it now exists. It would wage a “war of position” for state legitimacy, for the majoritarian mandate to overturn the State. Within its structured forms, the embryonic models of what a socialist society would look like would be developed.5

5) The immediate and preliminary goal of this historic bloc would be the achievement of “nonreformist reforms” which can be won within the present capitalist state. These would include, for instance, the passage of: the Equal Rights Amendment; abortion rights; antidiscriminatory legislation against gays and lesbians; strict restrictions to halt plant closings; affirmative action; massive job training programs; universal health care; the abandonment of nuclear power plant construction, and so forth. The successful achievement of these legislative socioeconomic reforms does not create a socialist society or state. But combined with legislation which restricts the legal prerogatives of private capital, and a mass mobilization of popular forces in the streets as well as in the legislatures, it will create the social and material foundations for a logical “alternative” to the bourgeois authority and hegemony. Throughout this initial process, a transitional program must be devised to divide and “win over” proletarian sections of the coercive apparatuses of the state, such as working class volunteers within the armed forces. The essential base of the historic bloc, however, must be the working class—not the petty bourgeoisie.6

6) Progressives can only succeed in constructing this historic bloc if they articulate their demands in a popular and historical discourse, in a language readily accessible to the majority of American workers and nonwhite people. This is not an issue of “public relations.” The symbols of the American tradition of struggle from past generations must be planted deeply in the socialist praxis of the future. Thomas Paine’s moving essays which denounced British tyranny must become our contemporary anti-imperialist vision. Frederick Douglass’ belief in the humanity of Blacks and women must become our own worldview. Ida B. Wells’ courage in the face of the Memphis lynch mob must become our inner strength. Osceola’s fierce determination to fight for the preservation of the Seminole nation must become our will.

The “Other America” of Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Eugene V. Debs, Sojourner Truth, and Harry Bridges must be the historical starting point for our fresh efforts to build a genuine peoples’ democracy, and a socialist economic system. We cannot create a revolution in the United States if we mistakenly view the enemy as Reagan alone, or all males, or all white people, rather than the State. In the midst of another social revolution, Amílcar Cabral observed that the people of Guinea-Bissau “criticise Salazar and say bad things about him. He is a man like any other. . . But we are not fighting against Salazar, we are fighting against the Portuguese colonial system. We don’t dream that when Salazar disappears Portuguese colonialism will disappear.”7 The Boggs make the same observation somewhat differently. “A revolutionist does not hate the country in which the illegitimate and oppressive system and government continues to rule. Far less does the revolutionist hate the people of the country. On the contrary, a revolutionist loves the country and the people, but hates what some people are doing to the country and to the people.”8

7) Any Common Program or set of “transitional demands” developed by the anticapitalist bloc must be based from the beginning on the basic contradictions which have dominated American political and civil societies throughout the twentieth century. This program must be a) uncompromisingly antiracist h) antisexist c) anticorporate—that is, it must call for fundamental and powerful restrictions on the rights of private capital, and d) it must promote the necessity for world peace, and advocate an end to the escalating conventional and nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Support must be given to all legitimate national liberation struggles, and opposition to any wars of imperialist aggression waged by Western capitalist nations and their clients against the Third World (e.g., the El Salvadorian junta’s bloody suppression of that nation’s peasantry and working class); the South African reich’s terror against the peoples of Angola, Namibia and Azania. In short, the bloc must commit itself in theory and practice to struggle against racism, sexism, U.S. imperialism and capitalism. The principal force for oppression in the world is not the Soviet Union: it is the racist/capitalist state, best represented by the United States and South Africa.

8) Racism and patriarchy are both precapitalist in their social and ideological origin. The successful seizure of state power by the U.S. working class and the creation of workers’ democracy within the economic sphere would destroy the modern foundations for racial prejudice and sexism; however, it would not obliterate the massive ideological burden of either form of oppression in the practices of millions of whites and males. Separate and even autonomous apparatuses must be created after the revolution to effectively uproot racism and patriarchy. In practice, this means that the historic bloc in the presocialist period, the war of position, must build antiracist and antisexist structures within their own organizations. Organizations comprised solely of Blacks, Hispanics, and/or women must be an essential part of the struggle to build a new society.

9) Every decisive gain achieved by the anticapitalist forces will be countered by the state against the working class. This repression will be significantly greater against Blacks and other national minorities than experienced by other sectors of the working class. Socialists must come to the conclusion at the outset that there will be no peaceful culmination in the achievement of state power. If every Congressional district elected a socialist, and if the executive and judicial branches of government were dominated by Marxists, capital would not sit by benignly and watch its power erode or be destroyed through legal measures. Chile illustrated this feature of capitalist “democracy” decisively. Major corporations will not turn over the keys to their factories willingly to the workers.

The final question of power will be determined in a “war of maneuver,” at a point in history wherein the capitalist ruling class will find no alternatives left except raw coercion. C.L.R. James makes his point in his brief discussion of the past European revolutions. “Why did not Charles I and his followers behave resonably to Cromwell? As late as 1646, two years after Marston Moor, Mrs. Cromwell and Mrs. Ireton had tea with Charles at Hampton Court. Cromwell, great revolutionary but great bourgeois, was willing to come to terms. Why did not Louis and Marie Antoinette and the court behave reasonably to the moderate revolutionaries?” James asked. “Why indeed? The monarchy in France had to be torn up by the roots.”9 The racist/capitalist ruling elite in this country will do whatever is necessary to stay in power. Today it uses racist ideology to divide Blacks and whites, relies upon patriarchy to perpetuate males’ suppression of women, and urges white workers to literally destroy a half century of labor reforms in the workplace through unionization by the relocation of factories and by pressuring the rank-and-file to accept contractual “give-backs” to corporate directors and owners. Tomorrow it may cloak itself in the flag and the Constitution while negating the civil liberties of millions of nonwhite, poor and working people.

There can be no long term “Historic Compromise” with capitalism. The choice for Blacks is either socialism or some selective form of genocide; for the U.S. proletariat, workers’ democracy or some form of authoritarianism or fascism.

10) We must always remind ourselves that history is an organic process, the evolution of the forces of production as they affect and in turn are influenced by the civil and political institutions, ideologies and the cultures of human beings. Nothing in Black history, American history, or world history has ever been predetermined by any single factor or force. “Underdevelopment” and “socialism,” when reduced to bare economic categories, outside of a particular history, become meaningless abstractions. The socialism we construct will have to encounter racial, sexual, and class components which do not exist anywhere else in the world, exactly as they appear here. If we apply some rigid “iron laws” of revolution gleaned from the dusty textbooks of other revolutionaries, in the name of Marxism, we will not only succumb to a left form of economic determinism but will fail to build an alternative to the oppressive state which we seek to overturn. “Men make their own history,” Marx observed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”10 I have devoted a great deal of space in these pages toward analyzing Black history, therefore, because the transition to socialism and an end to Black underdevelopment did not begin in the 1980s, but in the racial and class struggles of past generations.

Our challenge is to interpret society in order to change it. But we must grasp that the particular manifestations of the American war of maneuver, the transition to socialism, will not be fixed or predetermined. C.L.R. James emphasized this point in his discussion of the Russian revolution. “The thing that we have to re­member” about the development of the Petrograd’s Soviet or workers’ council of 1905, James noted, “is that nobody invented it. Nobody organized it. Nobody taught it to the workers. It was formed spontaneously. . .”11 A workers’ democracy in America will not look precisely like anything we can ever imagine at this moment. A revolutionary rupture with the petty bourgeoisie’s tendencies toward accommodation within Black America will generate new Black social organizations, new Black political institutions and workers’ councils which many Marxists and revolutionary Black nationalists will not comprehend, and may at some point even oppose as “deviations” from their “master plan.” We must consciously learn from other peoples’ revolutionary experiences without reifying them into a pseudo-revolutionary catechism.

A final word: progressive white Americans must succeed in overturning their own racism, in theory and practice, if a successful revolution can be achieved in this country, which will in the process write the final page on Black underdevelopment. Nothing short of a commitment to racial equality and Black freedom such as that exhibited by the militant white abolitionist John Brown will be sufficient. Nothing less than the political recognition that white racism is an essential and primary component in the continued exploitation of all American working people will be enough to defeat the capitalist class. And to the Black working class, the historic victim of slavery and sharecropping, rape and lynching, capital punishment and imprisonment, I leave the advice of C.L.R. James:

Marxism is the doctrine which believes that freedom, equality and democracy are today possible for all mankind. If this (book) has stimulated you to pursue the further study of Marxism, we will have struck a blow for the emergence of mankind from the darkness into which capitalism has plunged the world.12