La social-démocratie ne nous sauvera pas

Le mouvement de libération des Noirs aux États-Unis a atteint un niveau de confusion idéologique presque sans précédent. Contrairement à ce qui s'est passé au 20e siècle, des sections importantes de la gauche noire contemporaine adoptent ouvertement une conception de la "politique des identités"[i] qui repose sur un idéalisme philosophique[ii]. Malheureusement, des sociaux-démocrates tels que DSA, Jacobin et Cedric Johnson dans son article primé[iii] ajoutent à la confusion idéologique.  Cet essai affirme que, contrairement à ses prétentions à faire progresser la démocratie et la liberté, la social-démocratie a constamment sapé la lutte pour la libération nationale et le socialisme.

En 1896, Eduard Bernstein, le principal théoricien de la social-démocratie[iv], écrivait que la IIe Internationale ou Internationale ouvrière[v] devait adopter une politique pro-coloniale. Sous la bannière de la social-démocratie, Bernstein proclame audacieusement que, grâce au colonialisme, les "races sauvages" peuvent être "contraintes de se conformer aux règles d'une civilisation supérieure"[vi]. Heureusement, d'autres socialistes, aux principes plus fermes, remportent le débat et la IIe Internationale adopte officiellement une position anticoloniale[vii].[vii] Bien que ce ne soit pas la première fois que les "radicaux" occidentaux trahissent les peuples colonisés,[viii] plusieurs dirigeants tels que Vladimir Lénine, leader de la révolution russe, y voient une trahison totale de la "question nationale" et du socialisme international[ix].

Lénine a théorisé qu'à la fin du 19e siècle, le capitalisme est entré dans une nouvelle phase qu'il a appelée impérialisme ou capitalisme monopolistique[x] Sous l'impérialisme, "les capitalistes peuvent consacrer une partie de ces superprofits à soudoyer leurs propres travailleurs pour créer quelque chose comme une alliance entre les travailleurs de la nation donnée et leurs capitalistes contre les autres pays"[xi] En bref, les capitalistes utilisent leurs profits extrêmes pour créer une aristocratie du travail en Amérique du Nord et en Europe qui brade et méprise les travailleurs du sud global. Au début de la Première Guerre mondiale, le processus était achevé : le Parti social-démocrate d'Allemagne et d'autres avaient rejeté leurs positions anticolonialistes et voté pour entrer en guerre aux côtés de leur propre classe capitaliste nationale[xii] Dans l'un de ses ouvrages les plus influents, Lénine a clairement démontré que la Première Guerre mondiale était fondamentalement une guerre visant à déterminer quel colonisateur contrôlerait quelle partie du monde. Il a qualifié ces sociaux-démocrates opportunistes de "sociaux-impérialistes, c'est-à-dire de socialistes en paroles mais d'impérialistes en actes"[xiii].

Un an avant l'ouvrage fondamental de Lénine, WEB Du Bois, dans "African Roots of War", soutient que le continent africain est la "cause première" de la Première Guerre mondiale.  Comme Lénine, Du Bois déclare :
"On a demandé au travailleur blanc de partager le butin de l'exploitation des "chinetoques et des nègres". Ce n'est plus simplement le prince marchand, ou le monopole aristocratique, ou même la classe ouvrière, qui exploite le monde : c'est la nation; une nouvelle union démocratique composée du capital et du travail"[xiv].

Selon Du Bois, les travailleurs blancs qui approuvaient, voire soutenaient carrément, le lynchage, la ségrégation légale, les taxes électorales et les politiciens racistes avaient une base matérielle dans le système impérialiste. Dubois affirmait que l'Amérique africaine était une semi-colonie[xv] avec, plus en commun avec les autres Noirs et colonisés du reste du monde que les travailleurs blancs américains. Précédant de trente ans l'appel de Kwame Ture et Charles Hamilton[xvi], Du Bois pensait que les Noirs devaient pratiquer une forme de ségrégation volontaire[xvii] pendant au moins une courte période, puis s'unir aux travailleurs blancs. Pour être clair, comme tous les théoriciens discutés dans cet essai, Du Bois croyait que les motivations premières du colonialisme étaient économiques.

Au début du XXe siècle, le Socialist Party of America (SPA) a commencé à accepter les conclusions réformistes et racistes de l'opportunisme social-démocrate de Bernstein.  Hubert Harrison, l'un des principaux organisateurs noirs du SPA, s'est opposé au "socialisme évolutionniste" et aux voix explicitement racistes du parti.  Par exemple, Victor Weyland, rédacteur en chef de la publication la plus importante et la plus influente de la SPA, était un ségrégationniste strict[xviii] Dans la soi-disant gauche du parti, Eugene Debs, le politicien socialiste américain le plus connu, déclarait que "la lutte des classes était incolore" et que "nous n'avions rien de spécial à offrir au Noir"[xix]."Après avoir démissionné du SPA et s'être installé à Harlem, dans l'État de New York, Harrison a écrit : "Nous disons la race d'abord, parce que vous avez toujours insisté sur la race d'abord et la classe ensuite, alors que vous n'aviez pas besoin de notre aide"[xx]. En 1924, avant la création de l'Internationale communiste ou Comintern,[xxi] Harrison a fondé l'International Colored Unity League.  Faisant preuve de clarté sur la question nationale, l'un des objectifs centraux de l'ICLU était la création d'un "État noir"[xxii].

Harry Haywood était l'un des principaux théoriciens de la " question nationale "[xxiii] au sein du Comintern. Haywood a commencé à s'organiser en tant que membre de l'African Blood Brotherhood, une organisation nationaliste et socialiste noire clandestine fondée en 1919[xxiv]. En 1928, lors du 6e Congrès de la 3e Internationale ou Comintern, Haywood a fait pression avec succès pour l'adoption de la thèse de la black belt/ceinture noire[xxv]. La BBT affirme que l'Amérique noire, en particulier dans le Sud américain, constitue une nation opprimée ayant droit à l'autodétermination[xxvi]. La ligne du Comintern rejette le social-impérialisme de la IIe Internationale et accepte le potentiel révolutionnaire du mouvement de libération des Noirs dans la lutte pour mettre fin à l'impérialisme. Alors que les sociaux-démocrates prétendent que le nationalisme homogénéise des groupes entiers de personnes, Haywood a montré que la conscience nationale noire était, dans une large mesure, un produit de la lutte des classes[xxvii].
​
Bien qu'il soit souvent dépeint comme étroitement nationaliste, le Black Power Movement (BPM) était en fait un phénomène international[xxviii]. Walter Rodney, marxiste et partisan du Black Power, est un exemple de la portée mondiale du mouvement. Rodney était un universitaire et un militant aux États-Unis, au Canada, dans les Caraïbes et en Afrique. Rodney, ainsi que plusieurs militants américains du Black Power, ont participé aux débats sur la race et la classe qui ont mené au 6e Congrès panafricain en Tanzanie, un événement crucial[xxix]. Si les programmes de la Great Society ont eu une certaine influence sur le leadership du Black Power, comme l'affirme Johnson[xxx], ils ont surtout été influencés et façonnés par les mouvements panafricain, tiers-mondiste et socialiste qui étaient importants à l'époque. Le mouvement Black Power était une continuation de la "question nationale" de la vieille gauche et une expression nationale des mouvements de libération nationale de l'après-guerre[xxxi].

A. Philip Randolph et Bayard Rustin sont deux exemples de la politique modératrice, anticommuniste et sociale impérialiste que le BPM rejetait. Par exemple, pendant la peur rouge anticommuniste, ces deux "gauchistes" ont activement travaillé pour éloigner et isoler les compagnons de route et les membres du parti communiste des principales organisations de défense des droits civiques[xxxii] Rustin a même déconseillé aux Etats-Unis de soutenir les mouvements de libération en Afrique parce qu'ils étaient dirigés par des communistes[xxxiii]. Dans les années 1960, Rustin affirmait que les Noirs devaient s'éloigner de la politique militante et des mouvements de masse pour rejoindre le parti démocrate impérialiste[xxxiv]. D'autre part, les secteurs radicaux du BPM prônaient une politique anti-impérialiste et socialiste en solidarité avec les mouvements révolutionnaires à Cuba, au Vietnam, au Mozambique, en Angola et en Chine.
​
La similitude de Rustin avec le "socialisme évolutionniste" révisionniste de Bernstein, soixante ans plus tôt, est évidente, tout comme les influences révolutionnaires léninistes du BPM. Contrairement aux affirmations de Johnson, c'est en suivant la stratégie de politique électorale de Rustin que l'Amérique noire a pu passer du colonialisme domestique à une forme de néocolonialisme domestique[xxxv].

Bien que Johnson et d'autres aient raison de critiquer la politique idéaliste et libérale émanant de certains secteurs de la "gauche" noire, ils ajoutent finalement à la confusion idéologique en déclarant que nous devrions "soutenir les candidats démocrates dans des localités spécifiques"[xxxvi], ce qui est une continuation du révisionnisme de Bernstein, Browder[xxxvii], Rustin, Bernie Sanders[xxxviii] et d'autres sociaux-démocrates qui promeuvent le réformisme et l'impérialisme social. Un mot à l'attention de la gauche milléniale et de la génération Z : ce qui distingue historiquement la gauche noire américaine, c'est notre position sur l'anti-impérialisme et la "question nationale". C'est l'une des principales raisons pour lesquelles l'ASD, même après une augmentation du nombre de membres, reste une organisation disproportionnellement blanche et de classe moyenne[xxxix]. Notre mission générationnelle[xl] est claire : construire une organisation ouvrière révolutionnaire panafricaine et s'unir avec la classe ouvrière internationale.

A bas la social-démocratie!

En avant vers le socialisme!

C'est l'heure de la nation!

Libérez la terre!

Izwe Lethu I Afrika! (L'Afrique est notre terre)

La liberté économique de notre vivant!

(et enfin, mais certainement pas le moindre,)

Black Power!!!

​[i] The first known usage of the term ‘identity politics’ in text was the Combahee River Collective Statement. “Combahee River Collective Statement”in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Ed. Taylor, Keeanga Y. Haymarket Books: Chicago. p 20.  The CRCS was grounded in Marxist theory or dialectic materialism.  In their own words… “We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources…. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.”



[ii] Tse-Tung, Mao. “On Contradiction.” 1937. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm



[iii] Johnson, Cedric, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now”, The Catalyst, Vol. 1, No. 1 

https://catalyst-journal.com/2017/11/panthers-cant-save-us-cedric-johnson For an extended conversation see ibid. The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now. Verso: New York. 2022. 



[iv] Bernstein, Eduard. Evolutionary Socialism.Social Democracy is the idea that society can transition from capitalism to socialism through ‘evolutionary’ or nonviolent, parliamentary means.  Bernstein wrote the “task of social democracy is to organise the working classes politically and develop them as a democracy and to fight for all reforms in the State which are adapted to raise the working classes and transform the State in the direction of democracy.”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/preface.htm



[v] The Second or Socialist International was an organization of organizations from around the world committed to building a socialist society.  The First International was established by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels in 1864.  For more information see Foster, William Z. History of the Three Internationals. USA. 1955. “The congress which established the Second International opened in Paris on July 14, 1889, on the 100th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille in the great French Revolution.  Called by the German and organized by the French Marxists, it brought together 391 delegates from 20 countries, four of the delegates being Americans. It was by far the largest international gathering in world labor history. The congress was held amid a great blaze of enthusiasm.”



[vi] Bernstein, Eduard. “Amongst the Philistines: A Rejoinder to Belfort Bax” (November 1896) Justice, 14 November 1896.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1896/11/reply.htm



[vii] Foster, History of the Three Internationals.



[viii] Horne, Gerald. “Against Left-Wing White Nationalism,” Monthly Review. 2017 Horne asserts “the attempt to build “class unity” without confronting these underlying tensions often has meant coercing oppressed nationalities—Blacks in the first place—to co-sign a kind of “left wing white nationalism,” as reflected in the lengthy attempt to convert slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson, into a unifying symbol. Black failure to do so leads to our denunciation—in today’s terms as “identitarian” [sic], in previous decades, as “narrow nationalist.”  Actually, the class collaboration embodied in “whiteness” was seeking to impose “class collaboration” on the descendants of the enslaved, inducing us to align with enslavers and their descendants.  And given that pre-1865 U.S. history—and to a degree the era thereafter—involved deputizing Euro-American settlers as a class to patrol and coerce the Indigenous and the Africans, this too involved an often undetected class collaboration.  It also involved often lush material incentives for those settlers who complied and harsh disincentives for those who did not.” 



https://monthlyreview.org/press/gerald-horne-against-left-wing-white-nationalism-organizing-upgrade/



For a more in-depth materialist analysis of settler colonialism and class collaboration See Horne, Gerald. The CounterRevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York University Press: New York. 2014. Horne, Gerald. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in Seventeenth Century North America and the Caribbean. Monthly Review Press: New York. 2018. Horne, Gerald. The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. Monthly Review Press: New York. 

[ix] Lenin, V.I., “The collapse of the Second International” (1920). PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements. p. 62 “The collapse of the Second International has been most strikingly expressed in the flagrant betrayal of their convictions and of the solemn Stuttgart and Basle resolutions by the majority of the official Social-Democratic parties of Europe. This collapse, however, which signifies the complete victory of opportunism, the transformation of the Social Democratic parties into national liberal-labour parties, is merely the result of the entire historical epoch of the Second International—the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The objective conditions of this epoch—transitional from the consummation of West European bourgeois and national revolutions to the beginning of socialist revolutions—engendered and fostered   opportunism. During this period we see a split in the working class and socialist movement in some European countries, which, in the main, was cleavage along the line of opportunism (Britain, Italy, Holland, Bulgaria and Russia); in other countries, we see a long and stubborn struggle of trends along the same line (Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland).”

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1671&context=prism



[x] ibid. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin states Imperialism has 5 characteristics: “(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm



[xi] ibid. “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”, Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm



[xii] Luxemburg, Rosa. “Rebuilding the International.” Die Internationale, No. 1, 1915

https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/xx/rebuild-int.htm



[xiii] Ibid. Imperialism



[xiv] Du Bois, WEB. “African Roots of War”, The Atlantic, May 1915. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1915/05/the-african-roots-of-war/528897/



[xv] Pinderhughes, Charles. “21st Century Chains: The Continuing Relevance of Internal Colonialism Theory”, Boston College, 2009. p. 20. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151481277.pdf



[xvi] Hamilton, Charles & Ture, Kwame. Black Power the Politics of Liberation. Random House, New York, 1967. “The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks”



[xvii] Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Voluntary segregation, ca. 1935. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries



[xviii] Perry, Jeffrey B. Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918. Columbia: New York. p. 143.



[xix] Debs, Eugene. “The Negro in the Class Struggle” International Socialist Review, Vol. IV, No. 5. November 1903. 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1903/negro.htm



[xx] Harrison, Hubert. “Race First versus Class First” from A Hubert Harrison Reader Ed. Jeffrey B. Perry. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut. p. 109.



[xxi] Benjamin, Jesse & Kelly, Robin D.G. “Introduction” in The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World. Verso: London. p lvi “Founded in 1919, the Comintern played a pivotal role in promoting revolution and Communist parties not only throughout Europe and the United States, but around the world. Unlike the Frist International (the International Workingman’s Association, 1864-1872) and the Second International (the Socialist International, 1889-1916), the Third International included ‘colonial and semi-colonial” people in its ranks and helped to promote and coordinate anti-imperialist movements.”



[xxii] Harrison, Hubert. “The Program and Principles of the International Colored Unity League,” from A Hubert Harrison Reader Ed. Jeffrey B. Perry. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut. p. 402. 



[xxiii] Stalin, Joseph. Marxism and the National Question. Prosveshcheniye, Nos. 3-5, March-May 1913. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm



[xxiv]  Kelly, Robin D.G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Beacon Press: Boston. p. 45-6



[xxv] Haywood, Harry. Negro Liberation. Liberator Press: Chicago p. 205. Haywood recalls “In 1928 an historic turn was achieved in the scientific understanding of the Negro question in the United States. In that year, the Communist Party adopted a program which clearly placed the Negro problem as a question of an oppressed nation suffering from an especially oppressive form of subjugation. The program pointed out that in the Black Belt all the objective prerequisites exist for a national revolutionary movement of the Negro people against American imperialism. It established the essentially agrarian-democratic character of the Negro movement, which under conditions of modern imperialist oppression could fulfill itself only by the achievement of democratic land redivision and of the right of self-determination for the Negro people in the Black Belt. Thus the new line of the Communist Party brought the issue of Negro equality out of the realm of bourgeois humanitarianism, where it had been the special property of bourgeois philanthropists and professional uplifters who sought to strip the Negro struggle of its revolutionary implications and to make it a feeble adjunct of safe and sane reforms— all obtainable presumably within the confines of imperialist law and order.” 



[xxvi] Ibid. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press: Chicago. 1977. p. 232 Haywood writes “Under conditions of imperialist and racist oppression, Blacks in the South were to acquire all the attributes of a subject nation. They are a people set apart by a common ethnic origin, economically interrelated various classes, united by a common historical experience, reflected in a special culture and psychological makeup. The territory of this subject nation is the Black Belt, an area encompassing the Deep South, which, despite massive outmigration, still contained (and does to this day) the country’s largest concertation of Blacks. The imperialist oppression created the conditions for the eventual rise of a national liberation movement with its base in the South. The content of this movement would be the completion of the agrarian democratic revolution in the South; that is, the right of self-determination as the guarantee of complete equality throughout the country.”  Also see Jones, Claudia. “On the Right to Self-Determination for the Negro People in the Black Belt,” in Beyond Containment: Autobiographical Reflections, Essays, and Poems.. Ed. Carol Boyce Davies. Ayebia Clarke Publishing. 2011. p. 60-70.



[xxvii] ibid. “The Struggle for the Leninist Position on the Negro Question in the United States”The Communist, September 1933. Herbert Aptheker, ed. “These struggles have led to a growing class consciousness of the Negro working class and its emergence upon the political arena as an independent class force in the Negro liberation movement. In the course of these struggles the Negro working class is rapidly liberating itself from the treacherous reformist influences. Thus the characteristic of the present stage of development of the Negro movement is the maturing of this most important driving force of Negro liberation — the Negro industrial working class. The Negro workers, in close organic unity with the white working class….is the only force capable of rallying the masses of Negro toilers in a victorious struggle against capitalism.” 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/haywood/1933/09/x01.htm



[xxviii] Swan, Quito. “Caveat of an Obnoxious Slave: Blueprint for Decolonizing Black Power Studies From the Intellectual Governors of White Supremacy” The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.6, no.2, July 2013. p. 55-63. “While several works critically address the inherent transnational dynamics of Black Power, a growing body of literature collectively demonstrates that Black Power globally was more than just a sidebar of Black activism in the US.” https://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol6no2/6.2-7%20Quito.pdf  For more info on Black Power in the United Kingdom see Egbuna, Oba. Destroy this Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain. William Marrow & Company Inc.: New York. 1971.  Also seeEd. Kate Quinn. Black Power in the Caribbean. University of Florida Press: Gainesville. 2014. Also see Ed. Nico Slate. Black Power Beyond Borders: The Global Dimensions of the Black Power Movement. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. 2012. 



[xxix] For an example of these debates see Rodney, Walter. “Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America,” April 1974.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/works/internationalclassstruggle.htm



[xxx] ibid. Johnson p. 22 



[xxxi] Dawson, Michael. Blacks In and Out of the Left. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass. 2013. P 47-8. Dawson writes “there was less continuity between these periods of Black radicalism than one might expect largely due to what I call the ‘sundering’-the decade between 1945 and 1955, in which Black racial activists became isolated from other activists in variety of domestic and international domains.” Anticommunism had a detrimental impact on the Black Liberation Movement, but it did not completely break the movements continuity.  Several Old Left activists mentored the New Left such as Jack O’Dell, William Patterson, Ella Baker, Richard Moore, Harry Haywood, James Boggs, and Audley ‘Queen Mother’ Moore. 



[xxxii] Anderson, Jervis. Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen. University of California Press: Berkeley. 1998. p. 205. Rustin “realized you couldn’t really build a mainstream democratic left in this country with communists in it.”  

For Rustin’s views on fellow traveler Paul Robeson see D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. 2003. p. 179. 

For Randolph’s views on Communists see Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. University of California Press: Berkeley. 1986. p. 372. In a 1940 New York Times article Randolph is quoted “The Communist party is not primarily, nor fundamentally, concerned about the Negro or Labor in America but with fulfilling and carrying out the needs and demands of the consolidation of the foreign position of the Soviet Union in world politics.” 

[xxxiii] Rustin, Bayard. “Africa, Soviet Imperialism, and the Retreat of American Power” Commentary October 1977 https://www.commentary.org/articles/bayard-rustin-2/africa-soviet-imperialism-the-retreat-of-american-power/



[xxxiv] Ibid. “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement”, Commentary, February 1965.



https://www.commentary.org/articles/bayard-rustin-2/from-protest-to-politics-the-future-of-the-civil-rights-movement/



[xxxv] Allen, Robert L. Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History. African World Press: Trenton, NJ. p. 194 “The American capitalist, the American businessman…deeper interest is in reorganizing the ghetto ‘infrastructure,’ in creating a ghetto buffer class clearly committed to the dominant American institutions and values on the one hand, and on the other, in rejuvenating the Black working class and integrating it into the American Economy.”   Also, for an explanation of neocolonialism see Nkrumah, Kwame. Neocolonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism. PanAf: London p ix. “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty.  In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” Others have argued that the US government used a Velvet Glove/Iron Fist strategy to maintain its oppression of the Black nation. See Bush, Rod. We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the United States. New York University Press: New York. “The repression of the radical wing of the Black Power Movement was accompanied by the cooptation of its more moderate elements, who were opposed to the system’s racism but thought the system could be reformed if Blacks were admitted to the system.” 



[xxxvi] Johnson p. 174.



[xxxvii]Foster, William Z. “The Struggle Against Revisionism”, Report to the Special Convention of the Communist Political Association, held in New York City, July 26-28, 1945, which reconstituted the Communist Party of the U.S.A. https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1945/07/28.htm Also see “Discussion Article by Claudia Jones,” Political Affairs (August 1945): 717. Claudia Jones believed that Browder’s line was “based on a pious hope that the struggle for full economic, social, and political equality for the Negro people would be ‘legislated’ and somehow brought into being through reforms at the top.” 



[xxxviii] Greene, Doug.  “Not On Our Side:  Bernie Sanders and Imperialism” Left Voice, June, 18, 2019. https://www.leftvoice.org/not-on-our-side-on-bernie-sanders-and-imperialism/



[xxxix] Du, Charles. “How to build a multiracial DSA” December 11,2019. “Within DSA, many members feel that our organization is “too white,” a shorthand that includes many different diagnoses of and solutions to the problem. And although DSA members of color have striven to achieve a nuanced balance between developing separate networks (such as the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus) and involving themselves in the general work of their chapters, these efforts have not yet brought working-class people of color into the organization at the scale needed to qualitatively change the makeup of DSA.” How to build a multiracial DSA – Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)



Benjamin Woods



Source : https://hoodcommunist.org/2022/11/10/social-democracy-will-not-save-us/amp/