"Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but

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whites as a race are unreformable-s an idea that, at one time or another, must occur to every Black victim of the American racist social system.

This concept has an inherently revolutionary side. It implies that only sweeping changes can make life significantly better for Black people. This leads to a variety of radical measures and is completely progressive.

Some Black nationalists have gone further, advocating a separate state with their own territory, economy, and government. The right of the Black people to choose this option is also completely progressive. It is in accord with the basic democratic principle of the right of nations to self-determination.

Material foundations of Black nationalism Integration of Black people into existing American society is another natural aspiration. History provides shining examples of alliances between Blacks and whites that have brought gains to both through a joint struggle.

But history also provides evidence where Black strug -gles and aspirations were betrayed. That experience provides the major objective foundation for Black nationalism.

A review of various chapters of U.S. history is instructive.

The American Civil War liberated Blacks from chattel slavery. The abolition of slavery was a leap forward for both the Northern capitalist class, which was led by President Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans, and for the masses of freed slaves.

The capitalists, however, had their own material interests which drove them on the road to abolition of slavery. While individual capitalists may have been

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... Black nationalism (continued from page 9: “Black nationalism's revolutionary potential”) economic power of the feudal lords and distributed the land to the freed serfs.

But the second American revolution-against the system of chattel slavery-took place in a different world. The working class had significantly developed since the Revolutionary War. Together with the liberated Blacks, the workers would have been a threat far more deadly to capitalism than the slaveowners had been.

This lesson, first revealed in the course of the mid19th century revolution against feudal power in Germany, was given once again in America. Capitalism had already reached middle age. The capitalists feared the plebian masses more than they feared their rival possessing classes. They could come to terms with the latter, but never with the former.

Karl Marx's "revolution in permanence"

Karl Marx, the founder of modern scientific socialism, concluded from the German Revolution of 1848 that the capitalist class was no longer able to carry through the democratic revolution.

For this reason, Marx explained, every revolutionary struggle for democratic rights would tend to combine with the workers' struggle against capitalist exploitation. Thus the workers, designated by the logic of history to abolitionist movement shortly after his escape from slavery in 1838, went on to become the foremost-and most uncompromising-—advocate of Black liberation. He described the new slavery in 1888 after visiting South Carolina and Georgia and seeing for himself how badly his people had been betrayed:

"Do you ask me why the Negro of the plantation has made so little progress, why his cupboard is empty, why he flutters in rags, why his children run naked, and why his wife hides herself behind the hut when a stranger is passing? I will tell you. It is because he is systematically and universally cheated out of his hard earnings.

"The same class that once extorted his labor under the lash now gets his labor by a mean, sneaking, and fraudulent device. That device is a trucking system which never permits him to see or save a dollar of his hard earnings. He struggles and struggles, but, like a man in a morass, the more he struggles the deeper he sinks. The highest wages paid him is $8 a month, and this he receives only in trialists and financiers were ready to unite with Southern propertied interests in the superexploitation of millions of human beings through the oppression of the Negro people." (Foner, ibid.)

Another motive impelling Northern capitalists to come to an understanding with their former enemies was their growing hunger for new territories and markets to exploit. At the same time that Blacks were being betrayed, the Northern big bourgeoisie was looking hungrily to the Caribbean-particularly Santo Domingo and Cuba-in anticipation of annexations.

Imperialist expansionism ultimately led to the raid on Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific at the turn of the century. The Southern junior partners of Northern capital proved to be eager and loyal collaborators in imperialist conquest.

Post-Civil War separationism

By 1876, the re-enslaved Black people in many southern states were receptive to movements for emigration to sparsely settled areas of the country. The idea of separation was, of course, not new. Blacks were obsessed with the dream of going back to Africa beginning with the 18th century.

In 1878, a group organizing an exodus from the Southern states had recruited 98,000 Black victims of racist terror from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. By 1879, thousands had attempted migration to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Foner writes: "The exodus proved a failure. The emigrants were attacked and denied transportation by white mobs who realized their importance to the Southern labor market." (Foner, ibid.)

Frederick Douglass, who still had faith in a capitalistled reformation of the South, had opposed the exodus up until his visit to South Carolina and Georgia in 1888. Soon after his return he wrote a letter in favor of emigration to one of the leaders of this movement:

"I had hoped that the relations subsisting between the former slaves and the old master class would gradually improve; but while I believed this, and still have some such weak faith, I have of late seen enough, heard enough, and learned enough of the condition of these people in South Carolina and Georgia, to make me welcome any movement which will take them out of the wretched condition in which I now know them to be. While I shall continue to labor for increased justice to those who

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now it's more like a vulture." —Malcolm X