What perspectives for Black liberation in the 1990s?

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Why I joined Socialist Action:

you like this paper, For forums, classes and other activities, contact the Socialist Action IALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1990 19 The National Association of Black Organizations is a new group formed in mid August at a three-day conference held in Washington, D.C. According to Horace Sheffield, executive director of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, "The most important thing we did here is form an umbrella organization to pull together and maximize the leverage of 30 million members of the Black community to work, think, and act together."

What is the first project of this new group to "take the first step" toward putting African Americans on the road to self destiny? The organizations attending the gathering pledged to raise enough money to purchase a hotel large enough to convene annual conventions of Black organizations. Currently there are no major Black-owned hotels in the country.

Journalist Tony Brown told the meeting: "We could create our own financial institutions and economy," he said. "And all of our social problems could be solved because we'd have the dollars."

Of course the idea of developing Black capitalism is not new. The alternative is for fundamental social change, which they reject.

Why form a new group when the NAACP and other formations already exist? Because some 25 years since the adoption of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Act by Congress, institutional discrimination is as strong as ever.

Jim Crow legal segregation may be outlawed, but Blacks are at the bottom of every economic indicator: twice the unemployment rates as whites; inferior housing and education; devastating health care in I am writing this article on the reasons I left the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and joined Socialist Action not because I believe that my situation is of special importance, but because I consider it important that revolutionists today understand what is at stake.

The SWP was founded by militants who were expelled from the Communist Party for opposing its bureaucratic Stalinist degeneration. As committed communists, these comrades built their new party as the genuine continuation of the old one. They joined with similar forces around the world to form the Fourth International, the world revolutionary party led by Leon Trotsky.

My allegiance over the past five years to the SWP as a supporter and member was based on the belief that this party represented that heritage.

The reality, however, is that the SWP today has broken almost entirely from its continuity with Bolshevism and the party's founding program. This is the result of a revisionist political course begun a decade ago under the leadership of National Secretary Jack Barnes.

Over the last decade, the SWP has adapted itself uncritically to other political currents (the Cuban Castroists, the FSLN, the ANC, etc.) and has presented their analysis of world events rather than its own most urban areas; and little prospect for change as we enter the 1990s.

That reality leads many middle-class Black rights leaders to set up another coalition to coordinate their attempt to "self-help" the Black community. (It is noteworthy that the only major Black group not invited to the Washington Summit gathering was the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan. Although Farrakhan is pro-capitalist and supports establishing Black businesses, his use of nationalism to attack the white power structure, including many Blacks who support it, strikes fear among traditional civil rights leaders.)

New Black politics Not only middle class Black leaders are discussing the plight of Black America. Others claiming to speak for the most racially discriminated and exploited layers of the Black community are outlining their agenda for the 1990s.

"A New Black Politics," is the title of an article by Manning Marable in the August issue of the Progressive. Marable is a longtime activist in the Black movement. He was involved in attempts to form an independent Black political agenda, including helping to form the National Black Independent Political Party, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Currently he's a professor of political science and sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Marable argues that the current crisis of perspectives in the Black movement is the failure of the civil rights leaders to change strategy and tactics to meet the changed system of institutionalized racism. "We must rethink the concept of Blackness itself," Marable writes. to working people.

This tail-ending reflects a lack of confidence by the SWP leadership in the relevance of the Trotskyist program today. The most blatant example is the SWP's assertion last year that the rectification campaign in Cuba is a better example to the workers of the USSR and Eastern Europe today than the policies of the Bolshevik government under Lenin and the struggle of the Left Opposition led by Trotsky!

Marxist theory abandoned Another major element of the SWP's revisionism is its abandonment of tested Marxist theoretical principles—in the name of overcoming "sectarianism." Most obvious is the party leadership's rejection of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, which has been proven correct in every revolution since 1917.

Permanent Revolution has been replaced by a stagist theory which the party claims is Lenin's but which in reality is a MenshevikStalinist class-collaborationist one.

The SWP has also rejected its traditional practice of consistently educating workers in class-struggle self-reliance. Thus, there has been no public criticism of the self-defeating strategies pursued by the bureaucratic misleaders of the Eastern Airlines strike.

Along with the rejection of Trotskyist politics has come the re- jection of the Trotskyist Fourth «The first and most important measure we must take to restructure and resurrect a viable Black protest movement is to forge a new synthesis of an old feud."

All past strategies and tactics, Marable says, were based on integrationism and Black nationalism. Both strategies, he says, are inadequate. Selective integration of Blacks into the political mainstream has been achieved. Black nationalism has achieved reaffirmation of Black identity, culture, and values. But racism remains. A synthesis of the two "race-based strategies," first advocated by W.B. Du Bois, Marable says, is required.

"The changing forms [of domination] thus require activists to shift ground, from a racial to a truly multi-ethnic focus," Marable says. He points out that within three decades Latinos, not Blacks, will be the largest minority in the country.

Marable adds, "We must refocus our tactical approach toward the majority of white Americans as well."

Malcolm X's example

The view that Blacks should seek International. The SWP has maintained a deceitful relationship with the world organization from 1983 until this year, when the party and its co-thinkers in other countries formally split from the FI.

The truth is that the split really occurred in 1983-84, when the SWP purged the Trotskyists from its ranks. The SWP leadership has now publicly written off the Fourth International and all other political tendencies in the workers' movement (except the Cubans) as "petty bourgeois."

The nature of the SWP's political degeneration was made increasingly clear to me over a period of months beginning in late 1989 as the party defaulted on its responsibility to deal concretely with the most important world event of the present period, the developing political revolution in the Stalinized workers' states.

I also studied the recent history of the party, and discovered that the analysis of the opposition expelled in 1983 had in fact been proven correct by subsequent events.

As I began to see where the party had gone wrong, I started to defend the traditional Trotskyist program in conversations with individual comrades and in branch discussions. It eventually became apparent to me, however, that the party cannot be seriously changed from within.

After a decade of the "new course," no balance sheet has been SOC alliances with other oppressed minorities and progressive-minded whites is not a new idea. Malcolm X first explained this in the 1960s. But he emphasized that Black unity based on a program of self-determination was needed first in order to forge effective alliances with others.

Malcolm, a revolutionary nationalist and internationalist, also explained that the system of capitalism was the source of racism and national oppression.

Amazingly, Marable leaves Malcolm's perspectives out of his article. Malcolm X's view are as relevant today as the 1960s. Marable's call for a nonracial or "multifocus" strategy, outside of a framework articulated by Malcolm, can become a diversion in a discussion of Black politics today.

The road to a nonracial U.S. society is only possible through the independent organization and mobilization of Blacks fighting in alliance with other minorities for their self determination, and the working class as a whole for socialism.

Marable, while critical of the made by the leadership, despite the fact that the party's line has been changed on a number of important points. Any party that can reverse its positions without explaining what was wrong with the original ones is not a party that takes its members seriously.

Since 1 resigned, 1 discovered what increasing numbers of former SWPers are discovering: There is a Baltimore P.O. Box 16005 Baltimore, MD 21218 Boston P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 (617) 497-0230 Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 (312) 327-5752 Cincinnati P.O. Box 21015 Cincinnati, OH 45219 (513) 272-2596 Cleveland P.O. Box 6151 Cleveland, OH 44101 (216) 429-2167 Detroit P.O. Box 32546 Detroit, MI 48232 Los Angeles P.O. Box 862014 Los Angeles, CA 90086 (213) 660-2891 Minneapolis P.O. Box 14087 Dinkeytown Station Minneapolis, MN 55414 (612) 430-1476 For information about other areas, contact the national office of Socialist Action at (415) 821-0458. middle-class Black leaders who formed the National Association of Black Organizations, sees reform of the system as the road to Black equality. Marable supported Jesse Jackson's Democratic Party presidential campaigns, for example. He's now critical of Jackson's Rainbow Coalition attempt to reform the Democratic Party, but only calls for more community-based organizing among all "people of color."

Neither this type of organizing or Black capitalism, however, can end institutionalized racism.

The new Black politics of the 1990s must be based on independent Black organization and mobilization as Malcolm X advocated. We need a strategy based on the power of the working class that challenges the capitalist system.

ment" to fight racism is urgently needed. It will be out of such protests that new leaders-Black, Asian, Latin, and from the labor movement-will emerge.

party which represents the real traditions of the SWP and carries on the struggle of the party's founders. That party is Socialist Action.

Socialist Action is a party where the members count and which maintains an unshakeable commitment to the principles of Bolshevik -Leninism. It is the real revolutionary vanguard in the United States I urge all comrades in the SWP to rediscover and fight to reconquer the party's old program. The course of the SWP leadership under Jack Barnes is a dead-end. Only the program of Trotskyism can save the party as a revolutionary organization.

I invite all comrades who have left or will leave the Socialist Workers party-join Socialist Action!

Now York P.O. Box 20209 Ca. Fin 693 Columbus Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10025 Pittsburgh 1625 Pillow Ave.

Harwick, PA 15049 San Francisco 3435 Army St., Suite 308 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 821-0458 Santa Barbara P.O. Box 90644 Santa Barbara, CA 93190 (805) 962-4011 Seattle P.O. Box 1182 Bothell, WA 98041

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'Although the Fort Bragg rally was a strong initial attempt to attraet workers, the movement would be more iccessful if it addressed ti fears of the workers' By KRISTIN DEMPSEY FORT BRAGG, Calif.—Redwood Summer has brought national attention to the depletion of the redwood forests by major logging operations. Initiated and organized by the Earth First! environmental group, the summer-long campaign was an attempt to bring hundreds of young activists into this northern California region to save the forests.

The concept was based on the Mississippi Freedom Summer actions in the early 1960s, in which "freedom riders" brought national attention to the Black struggle for democratic rights in the South and helped build the civil rights movement.

Based in camps on the outskirts of mill towns, Redwood Summer activists were bused to sites in which they participated in non-violent civil disobedience. In one action, in the mill town of Samoa, 44 environmental activists were arrested on June 20 while attempting to blockade the Louisiana Pacific export dock, which ships logs to Mexico for processing.

Here in Fort Bragg, on July 21, the streets were swollen with thousands of locals and "out of towners." In a vacant lot on the north end of town, Earth First! and a local environmental coalition were holding a rally to protest overcutting by the town's largest employer, Georgia Pacific.

Meanwhile, local residents in pick-up trucks with yellow ribbons on their antennas—the symbol signifying solidarity with the lumber companies-hurried to a Georgia Pacific-financed "counter-demonstration" at the high school football field eight blocks away. The pro-company rally was organized by Don Nelson, business agent for the International Woodworkers of America local "Blinded by dollar signs"

The environmentalists' rally at Fort Bragg was a departure from smaller civil disobedience demonstrations that typified most of the Redwood Summer actions. Over 2000 demonstrators attended the rally, giving it a mass, peaceful —and militant—character.

The featured speakers included anti-war activist Brian Willson, local independent loggers, environmental activists, and members of the Native American and Black communities. Almost every speaker made the point that monitoring the harvest of lumber was in the interest of lumber workers, since clearcutting forests translates into no harvestable trees and therefore no jobs for thousands of workers.

Local "gyppo" (independent) logger Walter Smith's comments typified the disgust with corporate greed and concern for future foresting expressed by many of the speakers: "We've been living a lie... where are the sustainable-yield forests? Where are the companies who care about their workers? They are blinded by dollar signs."

Ben Drees, 23, and Kerry White, 19, of Oakland, Calif., had seen fliers throughout Berkeley publicizing Redwood Summer, but were attracted to the Fort Bragg event because they believed it would be an educational as well as a political action, accessible to new people. Ben stated, "This seems like a really critical issue. ... I didn't know before how this liquidation practice was related to Wall Street hanky-panky."

Clearcutting and over-cutting The three major logging companies in Northern California-Georgia Pacific, Louisiana Pacific, and MAXXAM—all employ clearcutting as a method of harvesting forests.

Clearcutting is simply removing entire forests; the trees that are too small to make into boards and planks are made into log chips. This method of clearing land is highly profitable since no time or money is wasted in selecting trees large enough to be harvested. Large-scale clearcutting can lead to soil erosion that will permanently damage 20 SOCIALIST ACTION Socialist Action the growth of new seedlings—as well as destroy fisheries and wildlife habitat.

The rate of overharvesting by timber corporations in Mendicino County alone is 320 percent greater that the rate of forest growth. At this rate, the forests are being cut three times faster than they can grow back.

The environmental movement, on the other hand, is demanding "sustainable-yield" foresting, which requires that the rate of harvesting equal the rate of forest growth. Most importantly, sustainable-yield cutting can help stem the long-term fall in employment in the timber history as well as protect the environment.

Ironically, company-organized counterdemonstrators at Fort Bragg carried yellow signs proclaiming, "Save our Timber Jobs, Families, Community, County and Sustainable Forests" [our emphasis].

By demanding sustainable-yield harvesting, the counter-demonstrators are supporting environmentalist objectives, even though the company which financed their rally would just as soon wipe out the forests for a quick buck and leave thousands without jobs.

Union leadership's wrong policy The union bureaucracy is one of the main forces separating the environmental movement from the workers. The union tops have advised lumber workers to pin their hopes of keeping the industry alive on the giant corporations. Don Nelson, a long-standing business agent of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) local in Fort Bragg, assisted greatly in funneling workers into the Georgia Pacific-backed Community Solidarity Coalition (CSC).

By means of the CSC, the workers have been fed company-inspired misinformation on the intent of the environmentalists. It was alleged, for example, that members of SEPTEMBER 1990 CORPORATIONS Earth First! and other groups are violent and do not care about loggers' jobs or families. Such misinformation struck an emotional chord in workers who have seen fewer and fewer logging jobs due to depleted forests and new technology.

Maribelle Anderson, the wife of a small logging-operation owner, stated clearly the concerns of many CSC supporters: "We are doing this for our families, for ourselves— not for the industry. We want to continue to live here."

But in order to continue living as a logger in California, a sustainable forest yield is necessary. By leading workers into a company-backed grouping which doesn't challenge the clear-cutting and over-harvesting policies of major logging companies, the IWA bureaucracy is undercutting the livelihood of its ranks.

However, a challenge to both Georgia Pacific and the union bureaucrats is coming from within the IWA itself. A grouping calling itself the IWA Rank and File has come out publicly in the local press in opposition to overcutting the forests.

In a letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Rank and File stated disagreement with a policy that means, "To make a living wage we must serve as unwilling co-conspirators in the stripping of the forests and the destruction of our own jobs."

The Rank and File grouping is an example of how workers need to challenge the companies in order to maintain their jobs and the forests.

In the past, other workers have organized against the environmental policies of their own employer. Members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) organized opposition to the strip-mining practices of the coal bosses.

Kristin Dempacy/Socialist Actiol Strip-mining destroyed the land on which the workers, their families, and neighbors lived and eliminated jobs because the practice was less labor intensive. Loggers and mill workers are faced with a similar situation Need for mass action The main strategy of Earth First! and other environmental groups has been civil disobedience. This tactic, which many of the environmental activists have elevated to a strategy, has failed to involve the majority of lumber workers—who justifiably are in no rush to be arrested or lose their jobs.

Instead, mass action in the form of demonstrations and teach-ins is needed to involve workers, students, and others in the day-to-day building of the movement.

Although the Fort Bragg rally was a strong initial attempt by the environmental movement to attract workers, the movement would be more successful if it addressed more fully some of the workers' fears. One way of doing this would be to propose practical solutions to overharvesting, such as workers' committees to monitor the timber harvest.

To fight the high rate of unemployment among loggers and mill workers, the demand for a shorter work week with no cut in pay should be raised. Environmentalists should link up with the workers' demands for occupational safety and adequate health care.

In the last analysis, it is the loggers and mill workers who have the clout and social weight to take the lumber industry to task for its rape of the forests.

Under capitalism, every living thing is ultimately threatened by extinction. Capitalism thrives by exploiting all natural resources in order to make a profit. Guided by the laws of capitalist competition, individual companies survive by cutting costs, not protecting the environment—or the jobs of workers.

Only in a socialist society can survival for the environment be guaranteed. The economy should be rationally planned, taking into account the long-term needs of human society instead of profits. A workers government and workers' control over industry will bring us closer to this ultimate goal.

Working people have the ability and the need to protect the environment. The environmental movement must make every effort to win over workers. In that regard, the Fort Bragg rally was a good first step.

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By Malik Miah

look us up! branch in your area!

At the same time, Marable's call for "a viable Black protest move-