"The emancipated slaves were the decisive force leading to the Union victory."

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emancipate themselves, were also charged by history to lead the democratic revolution.

In the Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called this perception of combined development "the revolution in permanence." This concept, as we shall see, is directly relevant to today's Black struggle for national liberation.

Capitalists sell out Blacks Very soon after their military defeat, the still powerful Southern landowners became junior partners of the Northern capitalist conquerors. Black people experienced their first big betrayal in the closing years of Reconstruction. Between 1872 and 1877 a counterrevolution was allowed to unfold in the South.

Federal amnesty was being granted to Confederate leaders, and Union troops were withdrawn from state after state. Blacks were left with no protection to face the armed might of the terrorist agencies of the former slaveowners, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Palefaces, and the White League.

The counterrevolution was sanctioned in 1877 when a deal was made between the political representatives of the new and old ruling classes. The white plantocracy would be allowed a free hand in the South in exchange for their acceptance of the unchallenged rule of capital.

The capitalist class, having used Blacks to establish their domination, no longer needed them. They opened the door to the former slaveholders' counterrevolutionary terror against the freedmen. The alliance of Northern capitalists and Southern landlords brutally hammered Blacks-especially in the South-into a new slavery. Between 1866 and 1879, 3500 persons, most of whom were freed slaves, were killed. Their murderers were never brought to trial or even arrested.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had joined the 10 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1987 orders on the store, which, by his employer...

"The only security the wretched Negro has under this arrangement is the conscience of the storekeeper—a conscience educated in the school of slavery, where the idea prevailed in theory and practice that the Negro had no rights which the white men were bound to respect, an arrangement in which everything in the way of food or clothing, whether tainted meat or damaged cloth, is deemed good enough for the Negro. For these he is often made to pay a double price." (from Philip S. Foner's "The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass," Vol. IV, International Publishers, 1955)

Why the capitalists betrayed Historian Philip S. Foner summarizes how an unfolding class struggle impelled the industrialists and financiers to make their peace with the former slaveowners and betray their Black allies. He writes:

'The former slaveowners were no longer a threat to big business and so it was no longer concerned about the Negro.

"Big business was having its troubles in the North, for labor, farmers and small property holders were in revolt....Militant strikes, unemployment demonstrations, and the growth of independent political action heralded the fact that the class struggle was sharpening.

"Frightened by the popular upheaval, the masters of capital began to look with favor at the prospects of an alliance with reactionary elements in the South.... Assured by the Southern conservatives that the status quo of the tariff, the national banks, and the national debt would not be disturbed, Northern capitalists no longer hesitated....Northern indus -stay in the South, I give you my hearty 'God-speed' in your emigration scheme. I believe you are doing a good work." (Foner, ibid.)

Second wave of Black nationalism A further review of U.S. history from the Civil War to the present day will show that the Black masses have followed the path to freedom which seemed most open to them. They readily collaborate with whites when convinced by the action of the potential ally that the alliance serves Black aspirations for freedom. It is only after betrayal, when the prospects for reliable white allies seems hopeless, that a separatist mood becomes dominant.

Such was the case after World War I. Capitalism during the war had encouraged a mass migration of rural Southern Blacks, to work in the war-expanded industries of the North. At the same time, however, the capitalists insidiously worked behind the scenes to disrupt instinctive moves toward cooperation between white and Black workers. Capitalists systematically encouraged the

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" The most recent example of a mass Black liberation movement is the Civil Rights movement against 'Jim Crow' segregation." most backward vent Blacks.

The Ku Klux Klan had steadily spread to the North after the crushing of Black resistance in the South. But it was kept within limits required by the needs of the imperialist war. After the war, Klan-like groups were given the go-ahead when the war industries were shut down and unemployment soared. Capitalism, which no longer required Black labor, unleashed the full fury of its racist shock troops to prevent a united working-class response to mass unemployment.

The Klan blamed Blacks for the misery of whites thrown on the scrap heap of the jobless. This effectively diverted the ire of the most backward workers from the capitalist criminals to their Black victims.

The bureaucratic, and often racist misleadership of the unions, failed to counter the boss-inspired scapegoating of Blacks. This capitulation had begun years before with the bureaucratic acceptance of "Jim Crow" employment practices built in to most unions from their inception. The disoriented unions were sitting ducks for the postwar anti-labor offensive of the bosses.

Even though a defense of Black workers' rights by this time was too late to be fully effective, it would have minimized the defeat and laid the basis for a subsequent united working-class counteroffensive.

But, instead, lynchings of innocent Blacks escalated along with other forms of repression, abuse, and insult. And there was no meaningful response coming from the labor bureaucracy.

This betrayal led to a second wave of nationalism engulfing the disappointed Black masses. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association grew into the largest mass movement of Blacks since the Civil War.

The UNIA was more than a "Back to Africa" movement. Garvey tapped the deep sentiment for organizational, economic, and military independence and power.

In the post-World War I lynch-atmosphere and rising Ku Klux Klan terrorism, Garvey's organization attempted to meet a desperate need. The UNIA raised an army—which under the given circumstances was essentially symbolic-complete with officers, uniforms, and a "Black Cross" nurses corps "for the reconquest of Africa."

Blacks enthusiastically flocked to the UNIA. They saw the Garvey-led "army," above all, as a bold and necessary step that they hoped would be filled with real content. At its height the Association numbered several million members and had amassed considerable capital for its independently owned business ventures.

Black nationalism, Permanent Revolution Leon Trotsky, who along with V.I. Lenin, led the Russian workers to victory over Russian capitalism in 1917, understood the progressive character of the nationalism of oppressed peoples-especially Black nationalism.

Lenin had blazed the trail on this. He taught that the nationalism of the oppressed is a distorted expression of class consciousness—an organic part of the class struggle. It called for unequivocal solidarity by the workers of the oppressor nationality. After Lenin's death, Trotsky carried on this defense of true proletarian internationalism and class solidarity.

Trotsky had also blazed a trail on a related theoretical principle. He had foreseen, 12 years before the Russian Revolution, that the democratic revolution-which includes the right of oppressed nations to selfof nations.")

The working class would first overthrow the capitalist government, Trotsky's theory predicted, and then give its peasant allies the land, dealing a fatal blow to the economic power of the combined landlord-capitalist class. After thus firmly cementing its alliance with the peasantry, the workers would then go on to destroy the economic power of the capitalists and advance the socialist character of the revolution.

Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution carried the implications of Marx's "revolution in permanence" to its logical conclusion. His theory was confirmed by the actual course of the Russian Revolution. He later went on to generalize it, applying it to any country which had not completed its own democratic revolution-including the United States.

Trotsky's contribution

In 1939, Trotsky engaged in a discussion about Marcus Garvey and Black nationalism with his co-thinkers in the American socialist movement. Listening carefully to the factual presentations, he argued for an understanding of the entirely progressive sentiment Black nationalism represents. He said:

"The Black woman who said to the white woman [who had pushed her in a street car], 'Wait until Marcus is in power. We will know how to treat you then,' was simply expressing her desire for her own state.

"The American Negroes gathered under the banner of the 'Back to Africa' movement because it seemed a possible fulfillment of their wish for their own home. They did not want actually to go to Africa. It was the expression of a mystic desire for a home in which they would be free of the domination of the whites, in which they themselves could control their own fate. That also was a wish for self-determination." ("Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination," compiled and edited by George Breitman, Merit Publishers, 1967)

Trotsky had earlier explained, "I do not propose for the party to advocate, I do not propose to inject, but only to proclaim our obligation to support the struggle for self-determination if the Negroes themselves want it." (Breitman, ibid.)

Indeed, to do otherwise would itself be a violation of the right of oppressed people to determine their fate. It would also cast a cloud over the absolute commitment of revolutionary socialists to a united working class based on true equality.

Black experience with emigration Blacks have had mixed feelings toward emigration for a number of reasons. Pro-slavery whites and other enemies of Black freedom seized on the idea as early as the late 18th century as a means of ridding themselves of freed 1965 protest against housing discrimination in New York City Blacks, whom they considered a danger to the institution of slavery. Blacks also were not unaware of the enormous material resources required for such a migration.

Daniel Guérin, a French Trotskyist and well-known author, describes some of these experiences in his excellent book on the modern Black movement for liberation, "Negroes On The March." He writes in 1951:

"Beginning in 1822, about 20,000 Negroes were transported to Africa and settled on an inhospitable land which adopted the name Liberia. The undertaking ended in failure. The capital needed [and deliberately withheld by the white patrons of emigration] was inadequate.

'The equatorial climate and the scant resources of the country did not permit the establishment of prosperous communities. Besides, the American Negroes collided with the hostility of the European colonial powers, England and France, who regarded the installation of these intruders with a baleful eye and forced them to surrender part of their territory...

"In our time Senator Bilbo of Mississippi, one of the most rabid opponents of the Negro race, proposed a bill aimed at 'repatriating' the Negroes in Africa and boasted of having found support for his project among the Negroes themselves." (Guérin, New Park Publications Ltd., 1956)

It would be wrong to conclude from this, however, that Black nationalism is in any sense reactionary. It only proves that the white oppressors are fully capable of twisting the progressive aspirations of the oppressed to suit their own evil purposes. It is similar, in principle, to the many instances in which reactionary capitalist political groups and governments hide their policy of exploitation and oppression under a "socialist" label to trick the masses.

Third wave of Black nationalism The most recent example of a mass Black liberation movement is the Civil Rights movement, which made its mark on history from the early 1950s to the mid(continued on page 12)

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... Black nationalism "It has never been the fault of Blacks, it must be stressed, that such a united struggle has not been fully realized."

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(continued from page 11) 1960s. This moyement, nominally integrationist, was primarily directed against the most malignant form of racism incorporated in Southern segregationist laws.

Black targeting of these "Jim Crow" laws-originally enacted to re-subjugate the former slaves-correctly focussed the Civil Rights movement on the "Jim Crow" system in the South. This made it easier for Northern white liberals, not directly affected, to give enthusiastic support to this struggle.

But as the Civil Rights movement made gains, it inspired Northern Blacks to carry the fight into their own areas. The Northern form of racism, known as "de-facto" segregation, was based largely on directly class forms of social and economic injustice and exploitation.

There were no "Jim Crow" laws in most of the Northern cities, but Blacks-especially those at the lowest economic levels—were practically excluded from the better public schools, housing, and jobs. The Black movement for democracy in the North fused with a directly economic struggle, according to the laws of Permanent Revolution.

As the Black revolution moved North, it more and more came into conflict with the economic interests of landlords and other capitalists.

White upper and middle-class liberals and the most backward sections of the white workers saw the new stage of the struggle as a threat to their privileged class and caste positions. The hostile response to the natural evolution of the Black liberation struggle was gleefully egged-on and slyly justified in the capitalist news media as a "white backlash" to Black "extremism."

This growing hostility from formerly sympathetic white supporters gave rise to the third post-Civil War wave of Black nationalism. The Nation of Islam, then Malcolm X's group, and still later the Black Panthers were the most prominent reflections of the new separatist mood.

But unlike the previously mentioned phases, in which Black hopes were first raised and then dashed, small but important layers of whites were not hostile to the Black nationalists. Students and other young people tended to be most responsive to the bitterly unvarnished truths articulated by Black nationalists.

The Trotskyists (then organized in the Socialist Workers Party-and now, in their majority, in Socialist Action) responded with continued enthusiasm to the evolving Black struggle-particularly to the Black nationalists led by Malcolm X. Their theoretical grounding had prepared them for this development.

The Trotskyists explained the positive contributions of 12 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1987 Black nationalism. This educational role had an effect that cannot be underestimated-particularly among the youth of the country. Malcolm X voiced his appreciation of this more than a few times.

The SWP-at that time a Trotskyist party—was the only multinational political party to organize public forums to give Malcolm X a hearing within the workers' movement. (This writer, then the organizer of the New York City branch of the SWP and a member of its National Committee, arranged three such "Militant Labor Forum" meetings with Malcolm X as the featured speaker during the last year of his life.)

Obstacles to Black-white class unity Revolutionary socialists in the United States have long worked tirelessly for a united struggle of Black and white workers for their common class interests.

It has never been the fault of Blacks, it must be stressed, that such a united struggle has not been fully realized. This is entirely due to the systematic efforts of the ruling capitalist class to inculcate in white workers the absolutely false notion that they benefit, as a class, from the oppression and super-exploitation of Blacks.

This is part and parcel of the worldwide capitalist strategy of divide and rule.

Anyone can observe that it is the capitalists who systematically pay working people less than the value they produce. And it's not hard to deduce from this that the even lower wages paid to those branded by race prejudice mean higher profits for the capitalists, amounting to billions in yearly profits.

But this basic fact of life in capitalist America is muddied by the racism carefully nurtured by the ruling class in white working people. This contributes to the impression that whites, not capitalists, are the enemy.

Frederick Douglass, who had himself been a wage laborer after escaping from slavery, saw this clearly. Speaking at a Convention of Colored Men in Louisville, Ky., in September 1883, he appealed directly to the trade unions to welcome Black workers into their ranks:

"Their cause [Blacks] is one with the labor class all over the world. The labor unions of the country should not throw away this colored element of strength.... It is a great mistake of any class of laborers to isolate itself and thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between those on whom the burden and hardships of labor fall.

"The fortunate ones of the earth, who are abundant in land and money and know nothing of the anxious care and pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may afford to be indifferent to the appeal for justice at this point, but the laboring classes cannot afford to be indifferent.... Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other." (Foner, ibid.)

The old American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft unions, notoriously deluded by the fantasy of being beneficiaries of racism, barred and restricted Blacks (and often other national minorities and women) from membership. Many unions still do, although nowadays it tends to be disguised by one or another subterfuge.

The CIO breaks from labor's racist past But when the mass-production workers began their historic assault on the citadel of American industrial capitalism in the 1930s, they made a profound break from the racist patterns of the past. They had drawn the bitter lessons of the previous harmful policy of the segregationist AFL unions; a policy which had led to great defeats.

The insurgent workers' industrial union movement, organized in the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), consciously united Black and white, male and female, for the stupendous task of forcing the auto, steel, and other giant corporations to kneel to industrial unionism.

The CIO was more than a union. It was a social movement for freedom and equality. This is what gave it its great strength. The CIO also took the first steps in allying itself with Blacks as a people.

As history has proven time and again, when whites take this road, Blacks naturally respond. And so did virtually the entire Black working and middle class —from common laborers to intellectuals and even small business people.

The conquests of this movement, although eroded by the privileged, self-seeking labor bureaucracy, are still alive and remain a source of great potential power. But most important, labor's giant step forward toward class unity taken in the mid-1930s inspires the way forward The working class has been in retreat for nearly two decades. The unions have been crippled by a labor misleadership that foolishly, and criminally, whines for "unity" with alleged "good" capitalists in place of a struggle against them. A class-struggle policy in which all of capitalism's victims will fight together for economic and social justice is the logical way forward—not "unity" with the labor-bashers.

A break from the policy of supporting politicians in either capitalist party is indispensable for such a class-struggle policy. An independent labor party based on the unions is the logical political step toward uniting the working class and its natural allies for a generalized struggle.

But the labor bureaucracy has obstinately obstructed this independent road. The irresistible force of historic necessity, however, will impel labor's rank and file onto the center stage of history. They will be compelled to sweep aside the privileged labor bureaucracy.

The resurgent masses will pick up where their predecessors left off. A new anti-capitalist alliance of all the disposessed will arise which will uproot capitalist exploitation and national oppression.

This instinctive drive toward class independence has already been manifested in repeated efforts by Blacks to initiate such a break. Although so far unsuccessful, efforts have been made by Blacks to launch a political party and field Black candidates independent of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Malcolm X's evolution reflected this tendency. He was clearly under the influence of revolutionary events on a world scale which involved genuine revolutionaries of all colors in a united working-class struggle for emanci -pation from wage slavery.

Symptomatically, in his last year, Malcolm X relentlessly attacked the two capitalist parties—both the Democratic foxes and the Republican wolves. And in his last months, he more explicitly focussed his attack, explaining that capitalism was the fountainhead from which sprang racism, super-exploitation, and national oppression.

Malcolm X showed in his most mature writings and speeches that he had begun to see the outlines of the coming combined revolution. He sensed that the national liberation of his people would be won in the course of the coming workers' socialist revolution. If for no other reason, this marked him as a candidate for assassination by U.S. capitalism.

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Protests came from the Jerusalem Journalists' Association; from the very prestigious Association for Civil Rights, which is far from being a "leftist" front; against the closing of the Center and my

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determination—would be carried out by the Russian workers. (Czarist Russia was known as a "prison-house

" The Northern form of racism became known as 'de facte segregation."