CRITQUE OF THE BLACK NATION THESIS
Gary Achziger, Bruce Occena , Linda Burnham, Smokey Perry, Harry Chang, Barbara Pottgen, Neil Gotanda , Pat Sumi , Paul Liem, Bob Wing , Belvin Louie
Despite the fact that racism is a major social question in the U.S., there has not been a Marxist critique of racism. To be sure, many writers of Marxist orientation have made studies of the empirical and operational aspects of racism, and their contributions will long be appreciated. But, a thorough-going Marxist critique of racism must begin with an analysis of the dialectic of racial categories (e.g., White, Black or Negro), and then study the real relations which have produced these categories. This kind of logical-historical analysis, modeled after Marx's Capital, has been altogether absent. Instead, most writers have accepted racial categories as social immutables, either given by natural biology or derived by continental descent. In particular, the peculiarly chauvinist logic of assigning the offspring of Black-White "mixtures" to the side of Black has never been questioned by Marxists. (It is estimated that about 70% of Blacks in the U.S. are part-European. ) Thus, we find ourselves in the incongruous position of criticizing race relations while simultaneously embracing racial categories. This reminds us of an analogous dilemma of petty-bourgeois socialism which criticizes the profit-making activity of capitalists yet worships the category of profit (and interest) as an eternal economic entity.[1] [1] In fact, much of Marx's criticism of Proudhon had to do with such incongruencies. See, for example, Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy.
The failure to criticize the vulgar conception of racism led the Old Left to handle the race question in a schizophrenic fashion. On the one hand, racism was understood only within the limited scope of individual subjective attitudes of prejudice and bigotry, leaving unanswered the socio-economic reason for these attitudes ever becoming so widespread and sustained to begin with. On the other hand, Black people were depicted as "objectively" constituting a nation, a nationality, or a national minority by means of an argument which also made a shambles of the Marxist position on the national question. This created tremendous confusion in the communist movement in the U.S. -- the race question and the national question have been weaved in and out of each other, subject to the eclectic whim of whoever was "interpreting" the line at the moment. After all, to define a Black Nation is to make use of the racial category Black and to characterize racism as the persecution of a national minority is to negate racial oppression altogether. Matters are not helped by asserting that the oppression of Black people is a "combination" of racial and national oppressions, for this is merely an admission of analytic failure disguised as a melange of analytic profundity.
To be fair, the Left has not been alone in transposing the race question into the national question. In the absence of a logical and historical analysis of racism, racial minorities have been explained often through metaphors like caste, class, or nation. Most writers have been alert to the metaphoric mode of thought and refrained from stretching it to unwarranted limits. The nation metaphor, however, has been an exception. Be that as it may, the Old Left's effort differs from the usual school of this current in that it has seriously attempted to demonstrate a purportedly objective historical reality for the transposition of the race question into a national question. The famous thesis about the Black Belt being the national territory of the Black Nation (or "Negro Nation") and Blacks elsewhere being a national minority (descended, presumably, from this Black Nation) constitutes the "communist contribution" to this muddled debate. After a forty year career, the Black Nation Thesis was dying a quiet death until it was revived by certain New Left groups.
It may seem, therefore, that a critique of the Black Nation Thesis at this time is out of date by some forty years, or that it is overly solicitous of certain sectarian rumblings. Or, perhaps such a critique might be dismissed as a minor logical exercise on some obscure episode of illogicality. Unfortunately, the issue at stake here is far too great for such a comfortable view. The question of a Black Nation has become much more than the foible of a runaway metaphor; it is actually indicative of certain ideological currents in the Left whose outcome can only be a reproduction of the racist mode of thought in its ranks.
Perhaps the main ideological harm of the Black Nation Thesis is that it reproduces the categorical premise of racism in the name of Marxism-Leninism. What kind of a nation would a Black Nation be which precludes the linguistic and cultural naturalization of Whites into it or Blacks out of it? What kind of a national minority is it that negates two, three, or more generations of linguistic, cultural, and economic life outside of the origin nation? Furthermore, what is the logic behind the automatic assignment of immigrants from, say, Africa or the West Indies as descendents of this strange nation which they have never even heard of? Clearly, the determination of individuals as to their "national" membership must continue to rely upon racial logic, overriding such real national characteristics as language, culture, residency, etc. The Black Nation Thesis must be seen, therefore, as another attempt to give a non-racial name to a racial entity.
The political consequences of this are no less pernicious. To put it simply, the Thesis could lead to the assumption that the degraded condition of Blacks inside the U.S. is due mainly to the "undeveloped" or "underdeveloped" condition of the Black Nation and the transferred onus falling upon the descendents of this nation. Behind this apparently sympathetic and concerned tone of pronouncement lurks the rank mythology of racist historians. Is this not a replay of the same old racist tune which says, in effect, that the U.S. as a nation is essentially the "work" of Whites to which Blacks, as "outsiders," "contribute" occasionally, episodically, and inessentially? "Credit to one's race" now has its opposite, "debit to one's nation" -- presumably, if one had put more into the developing of one's own nation rather than into contributing to another nation, one would be less degraded. Some such argument is marshalled to drive home the point that the struggle against racism is a special task reserved to its victims while "progressive-minded" non-victims can only "support." In this way, the Black-White dialectic of racism is reduced to the need for Blacks to "catch-up" with Whites, and the struggle against racism is conceived as a latter-day Roman spectacle in which Blacks would be the gladiators and Whites would be the spectators.
It is a measure of the infiltrated racism in the Left that it translates the special stake Blacks have in dismantling racism into a special task reserved for Blacks. One of the ideological axioms of private property is that the "misfortune" of the dispossessed is their problem and not the problem of private property laws. That this mentality has had the standing of a general line in the Left indicates the need for a serious self-criticism. If we fail in this, the Black Nation Thesis will also become a theoretical justification for the present unsavory state of the racially divided organizational workings of the Left -- it will become a means of making "multi-national" virtue out of racial vice.
In this paper, therefore, we shall be interested as much in the habit of thought which has produced the Black Nation Thesis as in the specific logical errors of the Thesis. The Black Nation Thesis cannot be put to rest in its deserved crypt without all of us on the Left becoming alert to illogical thoughts, reproduced illusions, and ideological restorations. With this in mind, let us proceed in medias res.
1. Some Conceptual Clarifications
To begin with, we must take note of the fact that there are really two distinct presentations of Black nationhood. On the one hand, one could argue that there is a possibility of a Black Nation being formed sometime in the future and devise concrete programs to that end. On the other hand, one could argue that a Black Nation was already formed sometime in the past, that the Black Nation is an actuality. In the latter case, the purpose of theory would be to clarify this allegedly objective reality in terms of the political, economic, cultural, territorial, and other fronts of the national liberation struggle. The old communist movement espoused this view until the 1950's,[2] and today certain New Left groups have revived and refurbished it. This distinction of potentiality and actuality is quite crucial since most theorizers of the Thesis start out to prove the actuality, but end up arguing for the potentiality. This has added more confusion than clarity to the debate.
This is not the place, however, to dwell on the question of the Black Nation as a potentiality, even though we would also dispute the wisdom of this view. In any case, this aspect is better handled in the context of a political evaluation of the established programs of "nation-building." Instead, the Black Nation as an actuality will be the main object of this critique. This view has long been identified as the Marxist position on Black Liberation -- both because its authors have invoked the name of Marxism in advancing it and because no one outside of "Marxist circles" has ever seriously espoused it. But, strict attention to dialectical rigor and historical reality will show that such a view has no place in the Marxist method of historical analysis. If for no other reason than to dissociate Marxism from various incorrect views invoking its name, we wish to show that Black people in the United States have never constituted a nation or a national minority. We do not, of course, deny the existence of certain socio-historical characteristics which are particular to the Black people. However, we will show that these characteristics are not those of a national formation.
To say that a nation is an actuality is to say that it exists objectively, as a fact of social practice. Its existence would in no way depend on this or that theorizer, or this or that sect. Consider, for example, the territorial aspect of the national question. If the national territory of the Black Nation is, or ever was, an actual reality, then such territory would have been disputed in social practice rather than merely debated in scholastic exercises. This is not a mere verbal quibble; for real nations, the defense of the motherland is one of the most powerful slogans for the political movement. The recognition of necessity is here directly translatable into a freedom movement.
[2] The Communist Party of the U.S.A. partially abandoned this view in 1959, not as an incorrect view, but as a correct view of a past reality which is now supposed to be non-existent. Thus, this turnaround amounts to the dual assertion that a Black Nation was once a reality, but is now supposed to have been dissolved or dispersed. However, since the 1950's, as far as we know, none of the other communist or workers' parties around the world have referred to Black people as a nation or a national minority, or to Black Liberation as a national liberation struggle. The current nom de rigeur is "Afro-American people. "
By contrast, the defense of the Black Belt (or five southern states) has never been taken seriously by the masses, but not because this defense would be a hard task. Rather the contrary: one would be hard put to find a basis for convincing the masses that the very survival of the Black people as a people depends, say, on an armed defense of such a geographical area. Here, the Black Nation Thesis, by disguising its proposal as a recognition, inverts a recognition of necessity into a necessity of recognition.
This failure to reflect reality with accuracy is already in itself a sufficient ground for repudiating the Black Nation Thesis. But the Thesis, being indicative of certain illogical thoughts concerning the concept of nation, requires us to look into the logical process which led to such an anomalous conclusion. The formulation of nationhood most crucial in this connection is that of Joseph Stalin with his famous thesis about four characteristics of a nation.[3] Thus, the question is whether Stalin was wrong in his conceptualization of nationhood, whether logical errors are being made in the application of Stalin's thesis, or whether some of the concepts used by Stalin have been distorted in establishing the Black Nation Thesis. We believe that, overall, Stalin's thesis is logically consistent and conceptually sound, and that the error of the Black Nation Thesis is in misreading and misapplying Stalin's formulation.
[3] "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." Selections from V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin on National Colonial Question, Calcutta Book House, p.68. [Transcriber's Note: See Stalin's Marxism and the National Question. -- DJR]
The most prevalent error made in the application of Stalin's thesis is a logical one, namely the inversion of necessary conditions of nationhood into sufficient conditions for nationhood. What Stalin says is that if a socio-historically developed community lacks any single one of the four characteristic features, then it cannot possibly be a nation. (Stalin used the well-known expression "only when" to indicate this.[4] This is not the same as saying that if a socio-historically developed community exhibits all four characteristic features, then it is by that fact automatically a nation; those characteristic features which a nation necessarily exhibits are not always what is sufficient to make a nation. As every student of logic knows, what is useful in disproving a point is not always useful in proving a point.
[4] "It is only when all these characteristics are present together that we have a nation." Ibid., p.68. Note the phrase "only when" -- instead of "when" -- a well-known verbalization of necessity.
To give an example, we know that a school must have buildings, teachers, books, and students -- these would constitute characteristic features of a school. If an entity lacks any one of these, then it cannot possibly be called a school in the normal sense of the word. But this is not the same as saying that whenever an entity has buildings, teachers, books, and students, it is automatically a school -- public libraries, for instance, could also meet these requirements. Ultimately, only the social practice of "schooling" is the sufficient condition for a school. Buildings, teachers, books, and students are merely elements of this social practice. A school is what it is because of what it does.
For historical materialism, what is sufficient to define a socio-historical entity can only be historical practice itself; "characteristics," "features," and "criteria" are merely a highlighted theoretical recognition of practice. To assume otherwise is to fall into idealism, for it would invert the means of recognition into the object of recognition itself and render theoretical contemplation sufficient unto itself. Moreover, to take dismembered abstractions like "criteria" as a complete checklist toward a proof is to be metaphysical, since this would constitute the most narrow minded kind of close-ended logic. Whatever shortcomings Stalin might have had, ignorance of historical materialism -- let alone logical inversion -- was not one of them.
Stalin's thesis was quite suitable to serve its intended purpose: disproving a nationhood, e.g. the "Jewish nation" of Eastern Europe. Here, we shall also make use of Stalin's thesis to disprove the actuality of a Black Nation. For this purpose we need only demonstrate the absence of one characteristic feature. But, we wish to go beyond this logical minimum and dwell on two of the characteristic features: "common territory" and "common economic life." In doing this, we will also be able to gain a better insight into the political economy of racism. We will not, however, address the questions of "common language" and "common culture" since that would lead us into an extended discussion of the individuation of language and culture (as social phenomena and as individual behaviors). Suffice to mention that linguistic or cultural heterogeneity has never been a problem for Black liberation; the real question has always been the character of social determination for phenomena like "Black Culture."
Another important conceptual clarification for the correct application of Stalin's thesis has to do with the notion "common." Dialectical logic differentiates at least two kinds of common (or commonality, or community). One kind refers to the fact of being a part of a supra-individual entity; the other refers to the fact of being similarly situated but not necessarily directly or intrinsically interconnected. To say we have common ancestry is in the first sense, and to say we have a common blood-type is in the second sense. Thus, for instance, in the Grundrisse Marx discussed the differing developmental dynamics of the "being-together" (Verein ) of Roman cities and the "coming-together" (Vereinigung ) of German tribal communities.[5] Today, the first is often called gemeinschaft common and the second gesellschaft common.
[5] "With its coming-together in the city, the commune possesses an economic existence as such; the city's mere presence, as such, distinguishes it from a mere multiplicity of independent houses. The whole, here, consists not merely of its parts. It is a kind of independent organism. Among the Germanic tribes, where the individual family chiefs settled in the forests, long distances apart, the commune exists, already from outward observation, only in the periodic gathering together (Vereinigung ) of the commune members, although their unity-in-itself is posited in their ancestry, language, common past and history, etc. The commune thus appears as a coming-together (Vereinigung ), not as a being-together (Verein ); as a unification made up of independent subjects, landed proprietors. and not as a unity. The commune therefore does not in fact exist as a state or political body as in classical antiquity, because it does not exist as a city. For the commune to come into real existence, the free landed proprietors have to hold a meeting, whereas e.g., in Rome it exists even apart from these assemblies in the existence of the city itself and of the officials presiding over it etc." Martin Nicolaus, trans, Grundrisse, p.483.
In the first instance, the individual attributes descend from the communal attributes, but in the second instance, the associational attributes rise from the individual attributes. To put it more generally, in the first kind of common, the singular arises as the concrete of the general, and in the second kind of common, the general arises as the abstract of the singular. This distinction in dialectical logic is an attempt to reflect accurately the differing dynamic of social development. Germanic tribes, for instance, were dissolved in the national formations of England, Germany, Sweden, etc. while city-states often grew into nation-states or were incorporated by them as municipalities, provided, of course, they survived the Dark Age of European feudalism.
This clarification has crucial importance for the question at hand, since Stalin's use of "common" was in the gemeinschaft sense, while the Black Nation Thesis subverts it into the gesellschaft sense. An example will make this clear. A person may reside in Mexico, speak the Mexican national language (Spanish), partake in the Mexican economy, and be versed in Mexican culture, but may still be a foreigner to the Mexican nation. On the other hand, if a person is a member of the Mexican nation to begin with, then he is by that fact expected to reside in Mexico, speak the Mexican national language (Spanish), partake in the Mexican economy, and be versed in Mexican culture; otherwise, we say that he is in the process of denaturalization (at least in the sense of language and culture, if not in citizenship). National or nationality attributes of individuals (e.g., residency, language, culture, economic activity) are the consequence of their membership in a nation, and not vice versa.
All versions of the Black Nation Thesis rest on the faulty reasoning of first determining individuals by racial (i.e., non-national) considerations, then grouping them by this logic into a "nation." Such reasoning is entirely capable of inventing such "nations" as "youth nation," "women nation," "slave nation," "proletarian nation," etc. More seriously, it can also characterize a part of a nation as a nation itself, and thereby serve as a sophistic means to divide a nation. For example, according to this reasoning, South Korea would be a nation in its own right since its inhabitants live in the same contiguous area, speak the same language, eke out their living in the same economy, and partake in the same culture. It has taken considerable ideological struggle on the part of nations in Asia to expose the reactionary and nation-splitting character of such sophistry, usually promoted by kept spokesmen of imperialism.
2. "Common Territory"
The common territory of a nation is, therefore, something quite different from the aggregate of real-estate owned by its nationals or the residential areas of its nationals. In colonial situations, a considerable portion of a subjugated nation's territory may come into the ownership of alien colonizers without necessarily thereby negating the national character of the land. Conversely, many nationals may emigrate into another nation without converting their new residential areas to the nationality of the origin nation. The determination of a national territory is obviously quite different from private property rights in land or individual settlement patterns.
Matters are somewhat more complicated in the case of the "new" nations of the Western Hemisphere and parts of Africa. Here, national formations often took place as the outcome of capitalist colonization, rather than as the prelude to capitalist development as in the case of the "old" nations of Europe and Asia. Hence, the original settlement or the gesellschaft association of settlers is often mistaken to be the national formation itself. This in turn gives rise to the illusion that settlement as such, ownership as such, or residency as such, leads to a national territory. But, as history would have it, some settlements manage to evolve into national territories, while a great many others do not.
The question, therefore, is not land as such, but certain socio-economic relations on the land. An occupation of land seldom settles the question of its nationality, but certain developed relations on the land may convert it into a national territory. The importance of a territory to a nation is that it constitutes only one of the objective conditions for the sustenance of a nation as a nation, for the continuation of "national life"; that is, land is no more than an objective condition for the production and reproduction of certain particular forms of political economic relations among its nationals. This is why the necessity of defending the territorial integrity of a nation is only an aspect of a much larger struggle to assure the integrity of "national life." A national territory is an element in the social practice of "national life" and not merely the real-estate or settlement colony of a nation's nationals.
Thus, the Marxist way of examining an area like the Black Belt, for the purpose of deciding whether or not it constitutes the common territory of a Black Nation, would begin with the analysis of those "internal" socio-economic determinants which characterize Black people as a people and not merely the "external" relations developed between Blacks and Whites. From there, one would proceed to the examination of the territorial aspect of this "internal" social practice. Thus, if the Black Nation was indeed an actual reality and the Black Belt was indeed the very condition for the survival of the Black people as a nation, then the Black Nation Thesis would have dwelt primarily on the character of socio-economic relations among Black people, and secondarily on their relation to Whites. But, as it turned out, the manner of discourse exposed its own illogicality.
What was the manner of this discourse?[6] First of all, the Thesis determines individuals by means of racial, hence non-national, categories; from there, it proceeds to study the settlement pattern of racially determined individuals; and, finally, it collects such areas of racial concentration into a whole and calls it a "national territory" contrary to its non-national determination. Thus, the social determination of racism is disguised as that of nationalism without changing its developmental essence in the least.
Some theorists of the Black Nation Thesis have pushed this confusion to its most absurd limits. For instance, all those urban residential areas of Black concentration (i.e., "ghettoes") are gathered into a patchwork "national territory" by a logic so primitive that it reminds us of the juvenile gang notion of "turf." This conception forgets that residential areas are consumption territories which are, by and large, separated from production territories. A "nation" of bedrooms so systematically separated from workshops can only be a ghettoizing notion.
If the national territory of a Black Nation had any kind of social validity, then one must explain residential concentration (or dispersion) from this reality instead of conjuring a national territory from residential concentration. The fact that the Thesis had to make use of such inversion demonstrates that "Black Nation" is no more than a misleading name for a social entity whose determination has little or nothing to do with the purported national formation. Thus, the error in reasoning here amounts to the inversion of the object of proof into the means of proof. Eventually, such faulty reasoning produces more than incongruous conclusions; its illogicality strikes back with vengeance in the course of projecting future actions. An incorrect theory is bound to produce absurd "practice."
It was all but inevitable, therefore, that the Black Nation Thesis would immediately encounter the predicament of its own illogic. Even at the height of Black concentration in the Black Belt (1880), over 45% of Blacks in the U.S. lived outside of the Black Belt. Moreover, about 40% of the Black Belt residents were White.[7] This presented the knotty problem of (1) having to inform those Blacks outside of the Black Belt that they should derive their "national inspiration" from some small piece of land regardless of whether or not they had any ancestral connection with it, and (2) having to inform the sizable White minority in the Black Belt that they should consider themselves "aliens" from a certain date arbitrarily chosen by some obscure writers. The Old Left, under the influence of racism, came up with a few tortuous and contorted arguments to deal with the first problem, but remained more or less silent on the second. In racist America, it is much easier to tell Blacks where they belong than to tell Whites to move out or stay at the pain of being aliens.
At this point, an argument often arises that the Black Nation is such an unusual entity with such a unique circumstance of birth that it is a "nation without territory in the usual sense," a "dispersed nation," etc. Such an argument makes a mockery of what Marx called "categorical determinateness" and becomes quite alien to the dialectical materialist view of concepts and categories. One of the fundamental conclusions of Marxism about concepts and categories is that they are products of socio-historical practice, that they are entities with great social validity, and that, eventually, they are weapons for the revolutionary transformation of nature and society. Thus, concepts and categories are much more than pragmatist "conveniences" for communication, consensus, or contemplation. The task of theory is not simply to devise definitions, to confer names, or to combine ideas; by and large, this is already presented to the theoretician as the ideal side of mankind's socio-historical practice. The more important task is to analyze the dialectic of concepts, to discern the real relations they reflect, and to develop sharper and broader means of cognition so as to transform the world with a greater mastery.
Thus, when we are asking whether or not Black people in the U.S. constitute a nation, it is not merely to settle some esoteric academic point or to wrap unanalyzed reality in a "convincing" package, but to see if the practical reality of national life is applicable for the Black people, and if the accumulated experience of political and economic struggle for national existence is valid for Black Liberation. In this, the misjudgement of a social entity can be as counter-productive as the misdiagnosis of a disease. Ultimately, the loss of categorical determinateness results in sectarian opinions since the possibility of social generalization is thereby precluded; it is an invitation to ten thousand different "interpretations" based on individual whims.
The requirement of categorical determinateness does not imply that concepts like "nation" are metaphysically eternal; nations are subject to historical changes and types of nation differ from one historical juncture to another. What is being pointed out here is merely this: that in order to prove that the Black Nation actually exists, its "creators" would arbitrarily modify the concept of nation, then assert that the Black people fit into this arbitrarily modified entity. This is the surest way of making theory pointless and rendering practice impotent. Real nations do undergo changes, but quite independently of the headstrong sophistry of certain individuals.
Metaphors like "a nation within a nation," "an internal colony," and "the Third World inside the belly of the imperialist monster" have been quite useful in advancing people's awareness of the era of imperialism. But they are hardly analytic entities with categorical validity. In fact, they can even be harmful if they begin to obscure the real historical process of national formation, capitalist colonialism, and imperialist subjugation.
A nation being formed within a nation is a process rather alien to Marxism; in fact, such a process, if it actually exists, would force us to re-examine all of the basic Marxian observations concerning the tremendous integrative momentum of nations in the bourgeois era (territory, language, economy, culture, etc.). After all, not just any part of a body is a "body within a body" (i.e., a fetus). Until such a process as a nation being formed within a nation is theoretically spelled out, it must remain no more than an intellectual fancy.
3. "Common Economic Life"
The dire economic condition meted out to Black people constitutes one of the key operational features of racism in the United States. In fact, most racism-conditioned social manifestations, like "ghetto life," are ultimately traceable to the observable difference in individual economic expectations along the racial line. The notion of the "Black Economy" was coined to express this general condition of impoverishment and oppression. Thus, analytically, the generalized situation of racially determined individual conditions is the content of "Black Economy."
The dire economic condition meted out to Black people constitutes one of the key operational features of racism in the United States. In fact, most racism-conditioned social manifestations, like "ghetto life," are ultimately traceable to the observable difference in individual economic expectations along the racial line. The notion of the "Black Economy" was coined to express this general condition of impoverishment and oppression. Thus, analytically, the generalized situation of racially determined individual conditions is the content of "Black Economy."
But a curious thing began to happen. In line with the "free enterprise" view that an economy is merely a given environment for the economic activities of individuals, "Black Economy" was taken by some as an economic unity-in-itself, a system of economic interactions among Blacks as opposed to between Blacks and the rest of the U.S. This conception went hand-in-hand with the semantic inversion of "Black capitalists" and "Black bourgeoisie": U.S. capitalists who are Black became "capitalists of the Black Economy" and U.S. bourgeois who are Black became the "bourgeoisie of Black Society." Thus, it was one short step to the notion of "Black Society," and the class struggle in U.S. capitalism was conceived as a dual struggle -- one within "Black capitalism" and the other within whatever is left of U.S. capitalism. As a result, an economic gesellschaft became misinterpreted as an economic gemeinschaft.
For Marxists, the "common economic life" of a nation could not possibly mean the aggregate of the individual economic conditions of its nationals; as an economic life of a nation, it can only mean a common system of economic relations among its nationals.[8] If the "Black Economy," or some variant of it, is to qualify as the common economic life of a Black Nation, then this economy must be an incipient mode of production in its own right. Specifically, this means that the dialectic of certain basic economic relations would be internal to the Black Nation, generating such polarizations as slaves vs. masters, landlords vs. peasants, capitalists vs. proletarians, etc. within the Black Nation, even though this dialectic may be severely constrained by an externally imposed national oppression. In particular, if "Black Capitalism" were to signify the mode of production of a Black Nation and not merely the aggregate of entrepreneurial efforts of individual Blacks in U.S. capitalism, then it would exhibit such "macro-economic" phenomena as an emerging monetary and credit system, a suppressed but distinctive average rate of interest, a germinal but separate equity market, etc. These are phenomena which even colonized nations (i.e., real nations which are colonized) stubbornly exhibit despite colonial edicts designed to snuff them out.
[8] This is not to negate international economic relations. But, analytically, economic relations within a nation constitute the sine qua non of national life whereas a nation may very well choose to minimize or eliminate economic relations with other nations without risking national dissolution. How such inner economic relations are created in the first place is not the question here. Nonetheless, let us be mindful of those colonial policies which are intended to facilitate a more systematic overseas exploitation but at the same time create incipient national economies within the colonies.
This insistence on the dialectical unity of economic relations is the very essence of Marxist economic theory and constitutes the point of its ultimate rationality. To speak of Black slaves, one must also speak of White masters; to speak of Black peasants, one must also speak of White landowners; to speak of Black proletarians, one must also speak of White capitalists. But, if only one pole of each of these basic relations is gathered into an "economy," all semblance of integralness is lost and all sorts of ludicrous conclusions are produced. Metaphor and reality become hopelessly merged: a slave nation becomes a "nation" of slaves instead of a nation with slavery, a peasant nation becomes a "nation" of peasants instead of a nation with landed property, a proletarian nation becomes a "nation" of proletarians instead of a nation with the capitalist or socialist mode of production.[9]
[9] Marxists use "bourgeois nation" and "socialist nation" to describe a nation with the capitalist mode of production and a nation with the socialist mode of production, respectively. A bourgeois nation is obviously not a "nation" of bourgeois, but also includes proletarians. But a nation with the socialist mode of production is not called a "proletarian nation" since this would exclude peasants, petty tradesmen, and the like; hence it would constitute a left-deviational term.
That "Black Economy" has always meant the gathering of those in one pole of an economic-relational dialectic is beyond dispute. Black slaves were almost never the slaves of Black slaveowners and Black peasants were very rarely peasants of Black landowners; a similar statement holds true for Black proletarians -- today less than 3% of Black workers are employed by Black-owned or Black-presided enterprises. Only in the case of self-employed tradesmen or independent farmers has this dialectic been convincingly obscured since buying-selling is here the main economic relation. Be that as it may, it should be noted that the much vaunted "Black Economic Development" is merely a program to "insure" a better business climate for Black-owned enterprises and to raise the level of "employability" and the wage of Black workers in the context of U.S. capitalism. Nothing like the formation of an economic structure (with its own monetary and credit system, for instance) is intended by the term. A piece of the action so to speak, and not the system of action itself. Whether or not one should support such a program is not the issue here; its content should not be mistaken theoretically and obfuscated ideologically.
A significant fact about the economic activity of individual Blacks in the U.S. is that so little of it occurs with other Blacks and so much of it occurs with the U.S. populace at large. In 1971, the aggregate income of Black households amounted to about $51 billion, but nearly all of it was in the form of wages and transfer payments (e.g., welfare) from "White institutions." In the same year, most of this income was spent on goods and services of enterprises that were neither Black-owned nor Black-presided. Moreover, that portion of income spent on "Black enterprises" was mostly in transferred value rather than in added value, hence ultimately paid to the "White suppliers" of "Black enterprises." It is not unreasonable, therefore, to assume that the degree of economic integration in the above sense is probably more than 95% -- even higher than the percentage of non-Blacks, 88%.
To see this in another way, let us consider the "Black Economy" in the integral framework of production, distribution, circulation, and consumption. In production, over 97% of Black workers produce outside of Black-owned or Black-presided enterprises; indeed, the distinguishing character of Black labor in the U.S. has always been objective integration in production (with job discrimination and wage differential), side by side with subjective segregation in appropriation. In distribution, there have never been separate categories of wage, profit, interest, rent, etc. for the Black Economy, only highly unfavorable and quantitatively erratic discrepancies within them. In circulation, a separate monetary system, credit network, or commodity market for Black people has never been a reality; instead, the overwhelming "fate" of Black people has been a shortage of U.S. money, discrimination in the U.S. credit market, and having to pay higher prices for U.S. commodities. Finally, in consumption, virtually all goods are obtained from outside of the Black community; more than that, a salient aspect of racism determined consumption has to do with the humiliation of being the object of Whites' consumption as house-slaves or domestic servants.
By contrast, those few enterprises which cater to the Black community as their main line of business are limited to the area of production spilling over into consumption, e.g., restaurants, night-clubs, garment shops, record companies, car agencies, insurance firms, and cosmetic manufacturers. In turn, these are often tied to the credit-market of U.S. capitalism (i.e., "White bankers") for their meager capitalization. Plainly, there is nothing that would make the Federal Reserve System begin to worry about the development of a Black monetary structure, Black credit system, Black inflationary rate, Black equity market, Black prime interest rate, etc.
Clearly, it is ludicrous to identify this "Black capitalism" as the national economy of the Black Nation. Therefore, most theorizers of the Thesis have chosen an indirect route and have pointed to "Black capitalists" and "Black bourgeois" as "evidence" that a national economy is being shaped within the Black economy. For this purpose, they have translated U.S. capitalists who are Black into "capitalists of the Black economy" and U.S. bourgeois who are Black into the "bourgeoisie of Black society." The upshot of all this is to describe the class struggle of U.S. society as a two-ring circus, one within the "White society" and the other within the "Black society"; and, finally, the two are "combined" as the oppressive interference of a "dazzling" performance over an "inept" performance.
Thus, the point of contention is no longer the character of Black capitalism, but the character of its personifications. It should be pointed out that the theoretical approach being used here by the Black Nation Thesis is the exact opposite of the Marxist approach. Instead of determining various classes by the mode of production (as Marx does), the Thesis first groups certain economic personalities into "classes" then combines these "classes" into a mode of production. To put it differently, as far as Marx is concerned, the mode of production as the drama requires classes as its characters; but in the Black Nation Thesis the actors are in search of characters. This confusion is further embellished by an inappropriate borrowing of concepts like comprador capitalist and comprador bourgeoisie in an apparent attempt to give roles to actors. To clear this fog of obscurantism, we must briefly examine the social essence of "Black capitalists" and "Black bourgeois" and determine the social arena of their being.
As for "Black capitalists," a cursory examination of Black-owned or
Black-presided enterprises shows their true socio-economic character. As of
1973,[10] there were 163,000 such enterprises, of which only about 3800 employed one or more hired hands -- the rest were so-called "mom and pop" stores. Some 347 enterprises had annual gross receipts of $1 million or more, but only twenty or so came anywhere near the social standing of capitalist enterprises (measured, say, by the capitalization requirement of incorporation). Among this select few, commercial outlets and thrift institutions pre-dominated, and only three firms were in "manufacturing." Unless one vulgarizes the concept of industrial capital into "manufacturer's asset," there is thus virtually no Black owned or Black-organized industrial capital properly speaking, hence no (commercial) bank capital. (Johnson Products of "Afrosheen" fame, however, might become the first exception.)
This anemic situation regarding enterprises is also reflected in the paucity of capitalist households. If we take a net worth of $2 million or more as the minimal condition for the reproduction of a capitalist household as a capitalist household, then only a few hundred Black households meet the requirement. Needless to say, nearly all their assets are in such capitalized properties as real estate and securities, and seldom in real capital. A reality like this demonstrates not the "undeveloped" or "underdeveloped" capital formation of a Black Economy, but rather the systematic socio-economic dispossession of racism; not the unequal competition of "White capitalism" and "Black capitalism," but a racially assigned disinheritance pole within the dispossession dialectic.
For the same reason, the conception of the "Black bourgeoisie" as the harbinger of the capital-relation of and among Black people misplaces and sanitizes the dialectic of racism. Historically, what little capital formation that has taken place among Black people has been limited to the pooling of meager savings within the general development of U.S. capitalism. Nothing like a primitive accumulation of capital with its own essential polarization among Black people was ever witnessed. Such ventures as life insurance and mutual savings banking, for instance, occurred as isolated episodes within the much larger drama of Jim Crow, whose economic content was the wholesale dispossession of independent Black tradesmen and independent Black farmers.
The "Black bourgeoisie" as a social strata, therefore, did not arise as a phoenix from the ashes; its essential social raison d'etre is determined by the logic of dispossession rather than by a defiance of it. Some have emerged as a variant of the aristocracy of labor, as "kept spokesmen" of the Black laboring masses; some have become coordinators of certain consumption activities such as "cultural needs," "religious needs," "welfare needs," etc.; some have attained the status of petty-bourgeois in U.S. society at large,
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"professionals" for example; some have carved out a corner in the commercial distribution of the U.S. economy; some have become owners of residential real estate; and some have evolved into unproductive labores in government, social agencies, real estate brokerage, entertainment establishments, insurance agencies, and so on. In any case, they are hardly the national bourgeoisie of an incipient nation.
The real content of this social strata is also manifested in its political outlook, often aligning itself with labor movements and quasi-socialist thought. Thus, "Black bourgeois" are more likely to be what Engels called "bourgeoisified proletarians" rather than proletarianized bourgeois.
In any case, "Black capitalists" and "Black bourgeois" are definitely not comprador capitalists. Comprador capitalists are those engaged in the procurement or realization stage of (imperialist) industrial capital and branch operations of (imperialist) bank capital. Thus, their command of social wherewithal can be considerable -- a modicum of state power with its standing army and police, financial networks with extensive landed property, cultural and educational organs, etc. Comprador capitalists are real capitalists in the same sense that commercial capitalists are. By contrast, Booker T. Washington, the "Black bourgeois" par excellence, came to command some schools, but hardly an educational system. Actually, his "power" was derived from his role as a conduit of capitalist philanthropy.
The search for a mode of production or an economic system internal to Black people has some unsavory racist implications. In line with the class-conditioned view which sees slaves as "ignoble" masters, peasants as "retarded" landowners, and workers as "unsuccessful" capitalists, racism has also depicted Blacks as "imperfect" versions of Whites. Such a purpose is usually disguised in the tone of "liberal concern": the "lamentable failure" of the community of slaves to produce its own aristocratic leaders, the "grievous failure" of the Black peasantry to evolve into landowners, and now the "regrettable failure" of Black capitalism to develop fully. Beneath such apparently sympathetic tones lies the assumption that the "disparate" condition of Whites and Blacks in racism is due to an "unequal competition" between two interacting but distinct entities rather than due to the dialectic of dispossession. In this way, the dire consequence of systematic dispossession becomes sanitized as the sorry situation of frustrated accumulation. Even though such a view may constitute a partial criticism of racism, the part it fails to criticize harbors a gangster logic.
If individuals are ultimately products of social determinations, then proscribing the arena of social development into a ghettoized "society" in some small corner of the U.S. cannot be but an attempt to reproduce the racist verdict that Blacks are "retarded" versions of Whites. A systematically instituted "disparity" thus becomes a developmental "gap" between an advanced people and a backward people. How a "drop of African blood" can somehow put a "gap" of several generations into the social developmental time-scale is, of course, not explained.
4. Black Nationalism
The impetus for the Old Left's original formulation of the Black Nation Thesis came mainly from the need to address itself to the mass magnetism of the Garvey movement. In the process, however, the requisite analysis of Garvey's and similar movements was sacrificed and, in the end, the subjectivist view that a nation is essentially "national spirit" was unwittingly embraced. Thus, the Old Left's theoretical work amounted to little more than conjuring up a territory, economy, culture, and language to go along with this Black "national spirit" or "national identity."
Many a political movement of the past hundred years, however, has called itself a national rnovement. But, as Marx said, we should not judge a man by what he says about himself. A movement like Garvey's, therefore, should not be taken at face value by its self-description. Instead, we must analyze the real character of the movement, and then explain the reason for its peculiar self-description. In fact, a correct analysis would focus on the dialectic of the objective and the subjective in the Garvey movement.
A self-described national movement which lacks a real basis of nationhood must eventually conjure up such a basis, if it is to survive and sustain itself. The Eastern European Jewish "national movement" around the turn of the century is an excellent example of this dynamic. (The criticism of this movement was the point of departure for Stalin's thesis.)
Precisely because a real basis of nationhood was absent, a colonization scheme was devised to "create" this basis; and, the result is known today as Zionism.[11] For the same reason, Garveyism, too, eventually veered to a colonization program of "Back to Africa" A pseudo-nation is in search of territory as a Hegelian spirit is in search of civil society.
Thus, the Garvey movement, especially its search for territory, is a proof of the absence of the actuality of a Black Nation, and not, as is usually assumed, a proof of its presence. To be sure, the mass character of this movement is indicative of certain deeply felt aspirations of the Black people; but the content of these aspirations should not be confused with its nationalistic form.
To be fair, we must not lump what is today called Black Nationalism together with the Black Nation Thesis, since the former seldom engages in futile exercises to prove the reality of a non-existent entity. Instead, when Black Nationalist groups talk of a "Black Nation," they are primarily concerned with what they consider to be a viable process of building a nation, i.e., the potentiality of a Black Nation. Thus, one may disagree with them on the point of judgement, but not criticize them on the point of illogical deductions about the past.
A criticism of judgement might have to do with the abstract character of such programs. To be concrete, the attempt to fashion a nation out of a racial minority would embody a specific program to forge the objective conditions of national existence. Especially on the questions of territory and economy, it would put forth a concrete program of carving out a definite potential territory and mapping out a more or less precise process of constructing a national economy, beginning with its own monetary system, circulation network, and capital construction. Instead of wishing that "this will somehow all work itself out" in some unspecified future, a nation-building program ought to be a concrete proposal for national existence in the objective.
Short of that, "nation-building" becomes a number of purely subjective things. It could be an intellectual stance or an ideological "self-defense"; at any rate, nothing which can be described as process-oriented. Or, it could be a colonization slogan of a "promised land," a rhetoric which hides the brutal necessity of dislodging some hapless peasants in Africa or elsewhere in the manner of Zionism uprooting the Palestinians. Or, it could be an entrepreneurial thrust to build various self-help cooperatives or business concerns within the general framework of U.S. capitalism, i.e., a program of "alternative" enterprises, far short of being an alternative socio-economic system. Finally, it could be a program of "community control" within the prevailing political structure of the present U.S. Even though some of the above may have merit in themselves and deserve some support by all, a nation is not built in these ways.
So far, we have assumed that Black Nationalism is primarily or exclusively concerned with nation-building, but this assumption may not be valid. If there is one common theme in the various Black Nationalist manifestoes, it is the need for the solidarity of Black people in the face of racism, even though this need is expressed in the misleading language of national formation. Therefore, we must distinguish the reason for the rise of movements like Black Nationalism from the reason for such movements taking on the language of nationalism, for the two are by no means the same. If we fail to make this distinction, we become susceptible to such voluntarist conclusions as taking Black Nationalism as a material sign that a Black Nation is becoming a realizable prospect, i.e., "an idea whose time has come." But, as we have learned from Marx and Engels, the rise of religious movements, for instance, is hardly a material sign that the "kingdom of heaven" is about to be realized; instead it may only be reflecting the hell-like condition of reality in this secular world.
That such a large part of the Black movement in the U.S. has assumed the language of nationalism is quite significant and not at all accidental.[12] No doubt, this is a complex question, but perhaps a reasonable answer may be sought by investigating the connection between the national formation of the U.S. and the racial formation within it. We must recognize that nationhood is the unity of the objective and the subjective: the objective "national life" determined by the political economic relations among its nationals (together with its linguistic, cultural, and territorial setting), and the subjectiue "national spirit" or "national identity" reflecting the material and spiritual benefits of the proposed or realized national life. Note that this dialectic is not always a simple identity.
Black labor has always been an integral part of the "work" of U.S. nation-building throughout its 350-odd years of history. More significantly, this labor has been performed not as the labor of a people in temporary captivity (like the proverbial Israelites in Egypt or Babylon), but as the labor which transformed the laborer himself in his linguistic and cultural capacity. This is objective integration in production. Yet, much of the material and spiritual fruit of the U.S. nation has been systematically denied to Black people. In fact, the essence of racism can be best described as a differential proletarianization within the bourgeois development of the U.S., as opposed to a systematic exclusion of Blacks from national production. In the 18th century, this meant sanctioning slavery in the midst of the bourgeois emancipation of labor; in the 19th century, this meant driving Blacks out of urban petty-bourgeois trades and rural independent farming; in the 20th century, this meant ghettoizing "the reserve army of labor" in urban centers surrounded by suburban development. This is subjective separation in appropriation. It is not that Blacks are disqualified as workers of the U.S. as a nation, but rather that a formally distinct "subcategory" of proletarians becomes justifiable if its application is exclusively limited to Blacks.
Given this, it is entirely expected that Whites' monopolized claim of the subjective would meet with a counter-claim by Blacks, even if they must envision a separation in the objective in doing so. In this sense, Black Nationalism is quite similar to the desire of some workers to set up their own utopian colonies or cooperative communes in order to escape capitalist appropriation, if not upturn capitalist production altogether. (The heyday of Black Nationalism in the U.S. has often coincided with the heyday of the non-Marxist socialist movement.) This also explains why Black Nationalism is better nurtured in the northern urban setting than in the southern rural setting, i.e., in a more developed condition of capitalist production.
But the real question for Marxists in the U.S. concerns the attitude toward Black Nationalism rather than a programatic critique of nation-building. In order to approach this question correctly, we must add one more clarification to the substance vs. self-description distinction previously discussed: namely, the particular vs. the general. In the absence of the reality (or the realizability) of a Black Nation together with the presence of a mass empathy for Black Nationalism, the practical workings of Black Nationalism invariably evolve into a particular response to racism. This response might be popularly characterized as "promising" but "incomplete." For this reason, it becomes a program for some Blacks, but not necessarily for all Blacks. The problem of racism can be dissolved only by the complete dismantling of the real relation of racism as well as its ideological reflection -- racial categories. Black Nationalism does not pretend to aim at this eventuality. On the contrary, it tends to be pessimistic about, if not opposed to, such a far-reaching outcome. On the other hand, the hardship which racism imposes upon millions of people demands many modes of individual or particular responses, of which Black Nationalism is one of the most concerted and concentrated.
Therefore, for Marxists, the question is not whether Black Nationalism has the right to exist or not, nor whether it is in itself progressive or reactionary. The real question is how Black Nationalism as a particular response may contribute or detract, at a specific time and in a specific context, vis-a-vis the general resolution of racism. Given this, in the broader movement to express the urgency of an all-out assault on racism and to mobilize the people to that end, Black Nationalism has been an asset. Even though Black Nationalism could momentarily become a focal point of defections, detractions, and deflections from the general assault on racism, the overall response so far has been one of ready and willing closing-the-ranks in the face of the larger issues of racism. The will to survive in the face of general dispossession is not always an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of dispossession, any more than it is automatically a will to upturn the dispossession itself. Each case demands a specific analysis.
5. Concluding Remarks
It is no accident that most versions of the Black Nation Thesis have found the period 1865-1930 to be the safest historical juncture in which to posit the origin of the supposed Black Nation. This was precisely the period when racism was at its most virulent height and racial categories, thanks to Social Darwinism, enjoyed a pseudo-scientific standing. Thus, those theoretical premises required by the Black Nation Thesis were also best found in this era, when racial categories were conceived of as natural categories and racism was described simply as the "social misuse" of such categories.
But, racial categories are too peculiar to be of any use in natural science. The logic of assigning the offspring of Black-White "mixed" parentage as Black instead of White, for instance, can find no scientific justification. In fact, the classification of mankind into races makes as little sense to genetics as the classification of light into three primary colors does to the physics of the electromagnetic wave. The peculiar dialectic in which Whites are required to be "pure" Europeans while Blacks need merely be "contaminated" by a drop of African blood clearly exposes the social character of racial categories. This is nothing but a chauvinistic calculus of "pedigree" vs. "mongrel" -- the logic of private property inheritance. Obviously, the racial distinction is no innocent classification scheme indulged in by natural scientists.
In light of modern research, natural scientists have more or less abandoned the notion of "natural races" and now devote themselves to the study of genes and DNA molecules. (Fascist scientists, however, are notable exceptions.) In their stead, social scientists have evolved the concept of "social races"; yet, the socio-historical element thus introduced has been unfortunately minimal. The most widespread myth in this connection is the view which takes racism as a spontaneously developed antipathy between European descendents and African descendents, an antipathy supposed to be either rooted in the inherent human psyche (of fearing the strange, mistrusting the unusual, desiring to dominate, etc.) or derived from a long history of separate existence. This view of racism alludes to the undoubted fact that, at the inception of continental contact, Europeans and Africans did recognize the difference in each other's physiognomy, perhaps even with a sense of bewilderment and distaste. But, from there to the categories of White and Black, the social process is neither automatic nor spontaneous. "White" is not just another name for "European-descent," nor is "Black" just another name for "African-descent." In the United States today, it has been estimated that about 70% of Blacks are part-European, and that some 20% of Whites are part-African (i.e., ''passing").[13] Clearly, there is an unmistakable "dialectical leap" from the European-African dichotomy to the White-Black opposition, from the original antipathy to the reproduced antipathy. Blacks and Whites have lived together for 350 years in North America, long enough to get "acquainted" and to overcome initial antipathy; racism clearly requires something more than a psychic penchant or historic separation.
Indeed, the quality which distinguishes racism from "traditional" ethnocentrism (of religion, culture, nation, tribe, etc.) is faithfully reflected in the dialectic of racial categories. In philosophical terms, the traditional ethnic is absolute in its determination (i.e., self-determinate) whereas the racial "ethnic" is relative in the sense that "Black" and "White" require each other to detemmine themselves. In historical terms, this is the language of differing social formational dynamics: the traditional ethnic announces to others the fact of its own inner development, whereas the racial "ethnic" requires the more crucial step of devising physiognomic rules first, then engendering an ethnic-like quality to population blocks so classified. This is the reason why racial categories are widely accepted not only by the excluder but also by the excluded -- they have a kind of pseudo-objectivity. In its essential content, therefore, racial formation is a forceful dispossession-disinheritance imposed on a segment of the population for the purpose of rationalizing the systematic denial of certain benefits of social development (for example, the bourgeois emancipation of labor). For this reason, legal statutes like the "anti-miscegenation" acts arose, not as preventive measures against an impending tide of "race-mixing," but as juridical details of the instituted racial logic, i.e., measures intended to clarify the status of the "grey area" in the Black-White dichotomy and to plug the "loophole" of marriage and parentage in "race-crossing." In its more developed form, racism may even engender an appearance of an "ethnic" unity-in-itself to the "cast-off race" through the simple misinterpretation of the organized political formation against racism as the incipient socio-political development for itself. The cruel edict of disinheritance, "fend for yourself," is rendered non-chauvinistic by the ideological formula of self-determination, "care for yourself."
The hallmark of racist theories of racism (theories entrapped by racism-generated illusions) is the habit of thought which takes racial categories as social immutables of one sort or another. It is imperative, therefore, that the method of Marxist social analysis be brought to bear on the race question with due speed and rigor. The Marxist approach to racism would begin with the analysis of the dialectic of racial categories, then proceed to the investigation of the real relations which produced this form of thought; i.e., racism as the unity of race relations and racial categories. In this way, racial categories will be seen as the ideological reflection of those real relations which we now call, ex post facto, "race relations." Given this, the natural in the social of racial categories will be seen as nothing more than a vulgarized conception of human genetic variation, a conception which racism gives birth to and makes use of. Racial categories are racist categories.
The failure to proceed with a dialectical analysis of racial categories puts us in the compromised position of rejecting the practical consequence of racism while simultaneously accepting the theoretical premise of racism. As a result, the pre-racist past and post-racist future are seen through the tinted glass of the present racist mode of thought, and the historical specificity of the origin and demise of racism becomes hopelessly obscured. Thus, for example, the pre-racist past is popularly seen as a time of "racial harmony," when in fact the recognition of physiognomic differences had not yet evolved into a systematic classification of "races" with woeful socio-economic consequences. Similarly, the post-racist future is tamely postulated as an era of "racial equality,"[14] which thus presumes the social validity of racial categories even beyond the realm of racism. The similarity with the non-revolutionary critique of capitalism is striking; this critique sees the pre-capitalist past as a "backward" version of capitalist production (with a "naive consciousness" about profit and interest), and postulates the post-capitalist future as a "rational" version of capitalist production (with an "equitable distribution" of capital and labor). Ideological failings always result in the compromised action of an outward assault and an inward worship.
[14] "Racial equality" is, of course, a worthy aim to strive for, but only [cont. onto p. 29. -- DJR] within the limited confine of rendering racism less virulent; i.e., as a "progressive demand" in the context of bourgeois demoeracy. But the overthrow of racism will also involve the abolition of racial categories by depriving them of their socio-economic base. This is not to suggest that "race mixing" is the solution to racism. What is meant by the abolition of racial categories is simply that human genetic variation or geneological diversity would not be pushed into the Procrustean bed of racial distinction. Instead, the genetical and geneological richness of mankind will probably remain, but with this crucial proviso: truly democratic spirit would be completely indifferent to it, due to the absence of socio-economic reason for differentiating, and assign to skin-color the same kind of social significance as weight, height, or hair-color. To promote "race mixing" as a means of social policy is as fascist as prohibiting it. Let such matters as love be enhanced by a social revolution and not be subsumed under "social engineering."
The ideological force of racism is perhaps most awesome in the degree of success with which racial categories have penetrated the contemporary psyche, the extent to which racial categories have become "second nature" in the U.S. One of the peculiar aspects of the American psyche is its incredible acuity in detecting a minute trace of African ancestry, together with its indifferent recognition of a minute trace of European ancestry. This psyche readily recognizes a one-eighth African (and seven-eighths European) as Black, but stubbornly refuses to recognize a one-eighth European (and seven-eighths African) as White. More than that, "a single drop of African blood" is somehow postulated as generating a vast qualitative gap in a person's cultural attributes and as transcending the "culture of racism." Even half-brothers are torn apart as "aliens," despite the fact that they may have been born in the same household, raised in the same neighborhood, educated in the same schools, and versed in the same cultural tradition. In the U.S., the social phenomenon of racism penetrates even the kinship unit of the family.
The thesis that the Black people constitute a nation or a national minority is, in essence, a refurbishment of this psyche -- a point of view which also makes a mockery of the objective process of "national life." Nations have the naturalization process to absorb aliens linguistically and culturally; in the U.S., this process usually takes no more than one generation.[15] By contrast, the whole point of racial categories is to eliminate all possibility of socially acquired crossing, to decree different life-destinies according to a physiognomic rule which overrides all other social considerations. Giving respectable or non-chauvinistic names like "nation," "nationality," or "national minority" to this social edict does not negate the logic of its development. "Mongrel" is not simply a "pedigree of a new type"; rather, such thought is merely another instance of succumbing to the vulgar genetics of animal breeders.
[15] In this connection, "national minority" (as used in Marxism) and "national origin" should not be confused. "National origin," as the term is used in the U.S., does not necessarily indicate the fact of an integral life of a self-perpetuating "national minority"; in most cases, it merely signifies one's geneological episode, "inherited" only in the family-name. A national minority in the Marxist sense would imply the capacity for its continual reproduction, especially linguistic and cultural sustenance, from generation to generation. Given this, in the U.S. today, only certain Indian tribes (now mostly on reservations) and certain self-sufficient religious colonies (now mostly extinct) would come near the Marxist conception of "national minority." On the other hand, there are numerous "ethnic communities" mainly on the East and West coast, which are in fact half-way houses of immigrants on their way to eventual "assimilation"; they are usually unable to "keep" their U.S.-born offspring for the purpose of linguistic or cultural reproduction, and must rely on a fresh wave of immigrants for their continuation. Matters are vastly complicated, however, when it comes to immigrants from Latin America, especially Mexicans and Puerto Ricans; geographic proximity, the large number of transients, etc. contribute to a certain "viability" in linguistic and cultural reproducibility. However, none of these should be confused with racial ghettoes. The latter are sustained from generation to generation, not because of their own inner developmental impulse, but because of the workings of the social economy of the U.S. Immigrant "ethnic communities" are essentially alien elements in the process of being incorporated into U.S. society. For instance, in a generation or so, Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans become grouped into a racial entity: "Asian-Americans" or "Orientals."
The Black Nation Thesis is, therefore, a more pedantic version of popular
misconceptions. In the context of the unproductive dichotomy of separatism and integrationism, the Thesis has not only reflected this dichotomy, but also combined the worst in separatism with the worst in integrationism. The shibboleth about the national territory of the Black Nation is, in essence, an argument for negating the (Black) producer's right outside of the Black Belt; the shibboleth about the "national minority" status of Black people is, in essence, an argument for affirming the (White) appropriator's claim as the "national majority" from whom a guarantee of "minority rights" must be begged. In either case, it supports the ideological premise that the national formation of the U.S. is essentially the "work" of Whites, to which Blacks "contribute" incidentally and episodically, and thus adds one more grist to the mythology mill of racist historians.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the current revival of the Black Nation Thesis is that it is probably an attempt to make "multi-national" virtue out of racial vice. The unsavory state of the racially divided organizational workings of the U.S. Left seems to be crying out for a theoretical justification. The lack of a Marxist analysis of racism has long been the Achilles heel through which a chauvinistic approach to the anti-racism struggle has managed to seep into the Left. The inroad of racism into the Left has usually taken the same theoretical route: sunder the dialectic of racial categories, then set the stage for conceiving the anti-racism struggle as the exclusive province of Blacks. This way, Blacks are supposed to be attempting to achieve what the implied "White Nation" is supposed to have achieved long ago. Black Liberation as a "national minority" struggle is merely the most outspoken version of this formulation, a formulation which makes Blacks the gladiators and Whites the spectators in the latter-day Roman arena.
That Black people have a greater stake in the ultimate dissolution of racism needs no explanation. That this urgency will also express itself in a concentrated and organized fashion is also a foregone conclusion. But the isolation of this most determined and organized contingent in the anti-racism struggle as a "Black Affair" would also be an expected racism-conditioned response. The real task facing us here is how to respond to the call of Black Liberation, not how to accomodate it somehow into some dingy cellar of specialization.
Racist thought is probably the most inhuman thought produced by the bourgeois era. In its origin, it carries the bourgeois birthmark, being premised on the dissolution of tribal, religious, and cultural "ethnics." In its career, its virulency closely parallels the progress of primitive accumulation from Portuguese and Spanish colonies, through Dutch and French colonies, to the English-speaking world. In its death-throes, it has become married to fascist thought. The proven ability of Marxism to smash all the illusions of the bourgeois era must now come to aid us in our effort to keep vigilant against all attempts to reproduce racist thought, in our movement to expose its inhuman irrationality, in our struggle to destroy its socio-economic base.
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The Racism Research Project is a group of people who have been studying various historical and theoretical questions concerning racism, especially its formative period in the seventeenth century. The Project is not a formal organization. Racism Research Project is an identifying name chosen for the convenience of publication.
The Critique of the Black Nation Thesis grew out of unpublished articles written by Harry Chang during the past several years. The following people were involved in one way or another in the development of the present article:
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