We can say with confidence that the 17^th Convention of our Party has fulfilled its responsibilities.

When the national committee discussed convention perspectives some months ago and developed a general onward-and-outward outlook, many were not sure what particular place this convention would have in our party history. Generally we felt that it would be a step in the process of rebuilding a Marxist-Leninist Party. There were, however, some differences in assessing how ready our Party was for a national convention. Some of us were a little more optimistic, some less so.

But I think we can now all agree that it has been a very big step in the process of rebuilding the Party. Further, we have removed many serious obstacles from our path and can move forward at a faster pace than previously.

We can also say that we have had a meeting of the minds at this convention, While this would not be true under all conditions, under the present circumstances—in the period of rebuilding and remolding—it is healthy that nobody really had his way at this convention. None of us can say he is the same as when the convention opened. Because of the searching reports and the decisions, we are all better equipped to fulfill our responsibilities and are more mature Marxists. If there is a single comrade who feels this convention has not influenced him, I would say: look at yourself critically, not at the convention.

It is natural that in this type of gathering (and we did attempt too much in a four-day convention) there would be minor irritations and disagreements on various questions. But all in all, considering the rush and pressures, the convention proceeded in rather harmonious fashion.

Above all—and of crucial importance—emerging from the 17^th Convention is the fact that we have one party, one policy and one direction. And that is new. We have not had that fully in the last few years. Policy was not set down definitely enough; it was not concrete enough; it was not clear enough. And many of our difficulties stemmed from this. The policy, line and direction set forth at this Convention will be the policy, line and direction for the whole Party, for every member, including national committee members and officers.

Some Weaknesses

Many other positive things can be said about our convention, but we must also note some weaknesses. Among them is the fact that the agenda was too long and that we tried to hammer out policies and make corrections in too many fields in four days. But there were some others worthy of particular mention.

Possibly the most serious shortcoming is that concrete experiences in mass work did not emerge as the central feature of our convention. The electrifying effect of some that did emerge, like the speech of Archie Brown on his campaign for Supervisor in San Francisco, proves that we should have provided for more of this. I single out this convention weakness because we see here reflected a shortcoming in the Party’s daily work.

Somehow, that which holds the foremost position in our Party is the exhortation, the generality, the bombast. Somehow that is still dominant in our proceedings, in committees, in state organizations and even in clubs. We must elevate to a higher position in all committees, including the national committee, the examination of concrete experience in life and in leadership of masses. Bombast, exhortation and generalities must not replace examination, analysis, concreteness.

Now, a word about factionalism. This is necessary because even at this convention an element of this cropped up. We must draw the conclusion that this fight is not over; there are elements of factionalism yet, and it is unhealthy. We have no factions or “wings” in our party. We must not assess our cadre on past! positions but on present understanding, present performance, on today’s results. If I read this convention right, it gives the leadership a man. date to root out all elements of factionalism from our Party.

I want to add that even if you are presenting correct ideas—it makes no difference how right you are—if you do it in a factional way, you are wrong. To be right gives you no license to resort to a factional method of carrying your point. We have reached the point where there is no room for factionalism—and the Party decisions on this are not going to be on paper alone. Factionalism will not be allowed on any level. We have to make it as definite as that, and every member of the Party must be on notice of it.

We must find methods of work that show trust and confidence in the united Party we now have. In the past, when policy was unclear, there might conceivably be the excuse that factionalism existed because of the fight for a line. Today the Party has one policy, one direction, one line. There is no basis for .factionalism. Today a continuation of factionalism can be purely on the basis of unprincipled careerism, of opportunism. This, I believe, the Party will not permit.

On Leadership and the Individual

I don’t want to sound like a lecturer, but perhaps a word about the role of the individual in leadership here would not be amiss. In earlier years, when Marxist movements and Marxist-Leninist parties were fighting for a place in the sun—for acceptance and full recognition—it was understandable that individual leaders played important and sometimes the key roles. They necessarily became the spokesmen, the symbols, of the body of Marxist thought.

Today these economic, philosophical and theoretical principles have become established and widely accepted. They are the guide for nations and peoples numbering nearly one-half the world’s inhabitants. Political life does not require individual symbols in quite the same way as in the past. Today individuals can make their best political contributions only if they do so through the medium of the collective. Each individual will mature and grow only to the extent that the collective of which he or she is part develops and grows. Make no mistake about it: an absolute necessity in the structure of democratic centralism is the need for the individual to be part of a collective in the development of thought and work.

Maverick methods in political thought and work are by-products of a dog-eat-dog individualism (understandable, perhaps, in bourgeois politics, but not in ours). Marxist individualism is individual initiative, study, thought, work. This individualism seeks collective judgment and is ready to accept changes and additions to one’s own thought, fully accepting the scientific concept that no final thought is the product of any one mind. An individual who is unconcerned about the unity of the collective, the growth, morale, the fighting spirit, the togetherness, if you like, of the collective body—whether it be a committee, club, state or national organization—does not serve our Party or class. The enemy does all it can to disrupt and divert our work. Let not sincere but misguided comrades give them a hand.

Need for Greater Clarity

Now a word on some other matters. Our Party has adopted definite positions on a number of theoretical and policy questions, but this does not necessarily close the gate to developing and deepening these questions. This is an atmosphere we must preserve in the Party, and I don’t want to give the impression that I want to shut all doors on further discussion.

Take the peace question. I think we need some further clarity on this. There are some exaggerations and one-sidedness here and there. There is no disagreement on the proposition that the peace struggle is on a new level and that there are important new factors we must take into consideration. Neither do we disagree that it is central to us. This should not, however, lead us to one-sidedness.

Take the question of the role of President Eisenhower. I think the balanced position is that he is the spokesman for those circles which recognize the need for something new in U.S. foreign policy. This is clear and this we hail. Personally, Eisenhower apparently wants to go further, if possible. But he also has the problem of carrying other forces along with him. That also is true. But that should not blind us or lead us to become one-sided as to how far he has gone. In this connection I would like to read to you some remarks made recently by Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Talking about what is new since 1956, he said:

“The progress is in the direction of understanding the necessity of peaceful co-existence—that is the thing that is different from 1956.”

Further, in speaking about Eisenhower, he said:

“We felt a sincere desire on the part of the President to reach agreement to attain relaxation of international tension—that is very pleasant. True, so far this is nothing but our impression and a man’s feeling is not a very exact measuring stick. There can be a good deal here which is subjective. Nevertheless, we trust that the desire to improve relations will soon take on concrete form.”

Khrushchev made this speech just a few days ago. I think he placed the question in a very balanced way, particularly when he added the following:

“I think the President also wants that, but apparently he cannot take such a step for the reason that there are still strong groups in the US. that take a stand against disarmament. We must not deceive ourselves on that score. Why have bourgeois politicians come to recognize the idea of peaceful coexistence? It is said that being determines consciousness. There are some who put it this way, however: beating determines consciousness. I would say that both the one and the other are correct. The way it works out is that beating helps some people in being. At least they begin to recognize the necessity of peaceful coexistence.”

Considering that Khrushchev was at Camp David and thus had an advantage over us by being present in the negotiations, we can well regard his view as a balanced judgment based on a close examination of the concrete facts. So there is this great new development—but the cold war is not yet over. Our approach should be: we, along with the peace forces of the world, want to take advantage of everything that is new in the broadest and best possible way, but we recognize that it means struggle, mobilization, movement. One might ask: if the cold war is over, why a peace movement? There would be no need for it. But the need for a peace movement arises exactly because the cold war is not yet over. But the possibilities for ending it are tremendous—and that is what is new and must be taken into account.

On the Anti-Monopoly Coalition

Now a few words on the anti- monopoly coalition, another field where there are some possible differences, although there has been an increasing meeting of the minds on this question and very little basic disagreement remaining. We can say that the slogan of “anti-monopoly coalition” was much misused in the Party and has been used interchangeably with other concepts like the democratic front and the third party. Confusion necessarily resulted.

What is this anti-monopoly movement? Possibly it is more accurate to term it a political concept, a strategic political concept. It arises and develops out of present-day America; it is not invented by anybody. It is a realistic reaction to the class forces of our society. The era of imperialism brings forth this trustified, Big Business system of monopolies that rule and influence virtually everything in the nation from beginning to end. It has one main direction—towards maximum profits for the monopolies. The vic- tims of this monopoly domination are the majority of Americans, first of all the working class, the Negro people, the farmers, small businessmen, professionals, white collar people and, very definitely, sections of 95 the capitalist class. The present drive against organized labor is a part of the general process. Now, what is important about this is the very base of our broadest united front policy. If we do not understand the anti-monopoly coalition concept, we will not have the very broadest united front approach. To repeat, the anti-monopoly coalition is a political concept, expressed in a movement to organize the majority of American people to resist the domination of monopoly capital.

Now there will be stages in this. We must understand that all struggles, all rivulets of struggle, on all fronts, ultimately will meet the resistance of big monopolies. All struggles, whether for reforms of any kind, for a government not controlled by the monopolies, or any movement for democracy and progress and for socialism, will move through this avenue of resistance. The anti-monopoly coalition will grow in the resistance against the monopoly powers in America. This is a basic concept and from it flows our strategic view of the role of an anti-monopoly coalition in America.

Now, does this mean that if certain sections of the capitalist class and even certain sections of monopoly take positions that coincide with that of the great majority of Americans, that this nullifies our basic policy? Of course not. The basic policy remains and the antimonopoly movement will have to learn to take advantage of these differences. One of the reasons for con- fusion on this question is that we have not fully in our Party’s history appreciated how to take advantage of divisions and diverse interests among the monopolies. This is tactically important and, in an electoral sense, extremely so. But this does not basically change the concept of the anti-monopoly direction of our policy. For we all know that if sections of monopoly differ at times, their fundamental class character remains and the class forces at work in the country remain.

This is of importance because of some of the confusion evident in some resolutions presented in the pre-convention discussion that called for a “national front.” A national front is a practical outlook only under conditions when the whole nation or national existence is in danger. This is not what we face today, and it is a one-sided view of what is new in American conditions.

A further point. Does our basic anti-monopoly concept require that in united front relations everyone in the united front must share our understanding? The fact is that in most cases they won’t. We will be working with forces that will not under- stand the role of monopolies nor the fact that objectively the resistance to monopoly grows through such movements. Such lack of understanding is no obstacle to the broadest possible united front and we can set no such pre-conditions to united front work and policies.

If we take a realistic position, instead of setting up static concepts and generalized slogans in advance (although we have an outlook, a concept and a direction) we will realize that the main task of the Party is to work with an appreciation of the level of this anti-monopoly resistance, including the peace movement. We will then be able to work with this many-sided movement at many levels and help direct, guide, prod and nurse it along) in its manifold variations. As a result more forces will spring up, the anti-monopoly movement will grow and we will find words to describe it more scientifically than if we had first set up the concept and§- then tried to fit life into it—something we often do.

In a convention of this kind, one has an opportunity to hear not only speeches from the podium but also rich thoughts in personal and informal conversations. Based on such conversations, let me add a few thoughts about the ruinous negativism and cynicism which still persist in some quarters, and their side-effects. There are many degrees and levels of such effects. Some comrades so affected formally go through the motions of being active, even making speeches. But they cannot be effective because they lack real conviction. They cannot inspire or lead. Others hide their affliction by being critical about everything, making much ado about the insignificant. The figleaf for others is to be always looking for something “new,” something so “broad” that this be- comes the obstacle to any practical work or activity.

Such negativism affects relations not only in the Party but also with the mass of non-party people and organizations. Our theory as well as the time of day in history and the direction and speed of events realistically calls not for negativism but for the most sober, positive, optimistic outlook. We must have as our starting point not that on which we disagree with others but rather what we have in common. Criticism not based on the framework of points of agreement will fall on antagonistic and deaf ears.

Now a few words on the cadre question in the Party. To this we must give a lot of attention. Firstly, because our cadre is rather scattered and, while it is growing now, we need a lot of good Marxist-Leninist cadre. We are going to build and grow, all of us, in the process of work, but we must have a certain approach to this question.

I want to say these words especially in view of the fact that all the state conventions, except the state of Washington, will be electing leadership in the coming period. The leadership will have to show some real understanding of the present level of our process of rebuilding. In this connection I would like to suggest that we take to heart the warning that Comrade Mao Zedong gave to the Chinese Party about promoting and bringing into leadership “only those that are near and dear.”

We must be able to mold a leadership that takes into account the still different emphases that different comrades have, and that takes into account the infusion of both old and new as much as possible. We must have a unified leadership. We must understand that this is a process— a process of molding a unified leadership. Especially with the coming state conventions I urge we take such an approach in our cadre policy.

Finally, comrades, as we all agree, this has been a good convention. But when I say that, that is exhortation. That is bombast. Well, a little of that we have to have. But the fact remains that it does not necessarily prove that it is a good convention. The test of whether this is a good convention will have to come in the days and weeks ahead and months and years ahead. The approach we should use is that it has laid a good foundation for our work. We are a united party. We have an outlook. We have a united policy. But in about a year we should check the results. On such a concrete basis we will make final judgment as to how effective those proceedings have been and what place the 17th Convention will hold in our history. I have no hesitation in prophesying that the results will add up to a “well done.”

Our responsibilities and tasks are great. The obstacles are not small ones. But we need not be weary. Life and the direction of history, all subjective and objective elements, point only to one direction—to victory!

ince the 1970s, the American working class has been faced with a seemingly nonstop cycle of pauperization. It is of no coincidence that this reinvigorated assault on the working class came in parallel with the rise of neo-liberalism and later increased with the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union. This pauperization has been in a consistent accelerated state since the 2008 recession which was then compounded by the post-COVID recession.

In the last decade, there has been a visible increase of militancy within the labor movement, though in most cases it has been aimless, with at best spontaneous actions. The first hint of this militancy came in 2017 when over 1,800 workers walked off the job at Spectrum Cable in New York City, only to eventually be sold out by the typical craft-union misleadership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 five years later. We saw this militancy rise with the wildcat Teachers’ Strikes in 2018. Spontaneous as they were, at least in the short term they led to major gains.

COVID did not bring a screeching halt to the growing labor militancy, unlike much of the rest of society. COVID-induced speed-ups led to two major national strikes in 2021 at Kellogg’s and John Deere. On top of these successful strikes, 2021 saw the growth of the drive to organize workers at Amazon leading to the successful authorization vote at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island in April 2022. The massive organizing drive at Starbucks has been another sign of a growing militancy within the American labor movement.

Perhaps the most important industry to see a growing rank-and-file militancy has been the railroad industry. This became apparent during the 2022 contract fight that saw railroad workers reject tentative agreements (TAs) which blatantly ignored rank-and-file objections to increasingly dangerous working conditions, only to be forced by then President Biden and a bi-partisan majority in Congress to accept these TAs thanks to Biden-imposed provisions from the Railway Labor Act. More on them later.

What can be the solution to the movement’s inability to harness the growing rank-and-file militancy into strength to lead the fight against monopoly capital? In 1922, former Communist Party USA General Secretary William Z. Foster made it clear what the solution is in the face of these attacks:

“What must be done? The answer is that we must stop our stupid and ruinous tactics of single trades or groups of trades going alone against the companies while the rest stand around twiddling their thumbs and awaiting the pleasure of the companies to give them a beating. What we must do is to so combine our forces that every railroad worker will stand shoulder to shoulder. We must build up such a solidarity that the entire body of railroaders in the country will move as one man, so that if one section is attacked all the rest will rally to its support. When we have accomplished that, then the ‘open shop’ slave drive will soon come to an end. Really united, the … railroad workers would be invincible.”^[1]

What is Amalgamation?

What Foster is clearly saying is the only path forward to guarantee the maximum strength for the labor movement is amalgamation. What is amalgamation? Amalgamation is the very essence of industrial unionism, mainly one industry-one union. Communists and class-oriented trade unionists in the United States have been fighting for amalgamation for over a century.

The push for industrial unionism dates back at least to the 1890s. The American Railway Union (ARU) led by Eugene Debs was an attempt at industrial unionism among the railroads which led the Pullman Strike of 1894. The ARU would be crushed by the strike, thanks largely to its ultra-left nature as a dual union. Dual unionism is the formation of a separate union within an industry, in this case the more militant unionists, which divides the workers in an industry. Dual unionism failed because it separated the militant unionists from the broader rank and file making it easier to defeat.

The dual unionist concept of organizing industrial unions was later picked up by the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Before the October Revolution and the building of the Communist Party in the United States, the IWW was the center of not just the drive for industrial unionism, but militant unionism in general. Many soon to be leaders of the Communist Party would first pass through as a member of the IWW—also known as Wobblies—including William Z. Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene Dennis, John Reed and Earl Browder, among others.

Foster in his days as a Wobbly would go on to see clearly that its strategy of creating dual unions was not the answer to the workers problems. This started with a trip to Europe in which Foster became intrigued in France by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT). He witnessed how the syndicalists within the CGT organized militant cadre within their mainstream unions leading the workers’ everyday struggles. This led to Foster soon developing his strategy of “boring-from-within” aimed at organizing the rank-and-file of the moribund craft unions of the old American Federation of Labor (AFL).

This strategy is largely still used by many left-wing forces within the labor movement through the various concepts of rank-and-file movements. This strategy played a major role in the development of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s. Since the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955, many unions have consolidated to form larger unions.

TUEL Attempts to Amalgamate the Railroad Unions

The fight to amalgamate the railroad unions goes back to the days of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL). In 1922, TUEL launched a drive to amalgamate the sixteen railroad craft unions in the U.S. into one industrial union. Foster noted then that:

“When American railroad men embark upon the amalgamation of all their trade unions into one industrial union they will not be pioneers blazing a trail through an unknown wilderness. On the contrary, they will be setting forth on a well-travelled road. … In fact, the United States is the only important country in the world where the industrial form of union is not predominant among railroad workers. Here alone, where the need for solidarity is greater than anywhere else is the antiquated craft type supreme—which does not speak well for our spirit of progress.”^[2]

There was some early success with the campaign as by the end of 1922. Eleven State Federations with the AFL passed resolutions in favor of amalgamation. As future General Secretary Earl Browder reported:

“A great call for the solidarity of Labor has gone out from the State Federations. Taking the form of a demand for industrial unionism through amalgamation, this call has swept through the Federations like a whirlwind, gathering victories at every turn. Many of the State bodies meet in the late Summer and early Fall, and in 13 of them the issue was raised. In 11 instances, the demand for amalgamation was adopted by an overwhelming majority, in many cases with only a scattered vote or two in opposition. It has been a veritable upheaval of sentiment for solidarity.”^[3]

In December 1922, a National Railroad Amalgamation Conference took place consisting of, “some 425 delegates, of all trades and callings, including smaller delegations from the four Brotherhoods, from all over the United States and Canada.”^[4] In a report for the International Press Correspondence, Foster wrote:

“They endorsed it 100%, declaring wholeheartedly for one union for the entire railroad industry. Then, organizing a committee of 100, members of which be located in all the principal railroad centers, they prepared to launch a great campaign to bring the many organizations together. …

“The conference adopted a general plan of action looking forward to the calling of a general amalgamation convention, at which all railroad unions, or as many as possible of them, shall be combined into one body. Instructions were given the executive officers to push this relentlessly. The plan of this program is of the utmost importance, destined in fact to mark an epoch in American trade unionism.”^[5]

Unfortunately, the campaign faced many setbacks, and neither TUEL or Foster would live to see the railroads amalgamated.^[6] On a positive note, the failure of this campaign would provide lessons which ultimately helped in the formation of the CIO in the 1930s.

Partial amalgamation would eventually come to the railroads with the 1969 merger of the Order of Railway Conductors (ORC), Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (BLFE), the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT), and the Switchmen’s Union of North America (SUNA) into the United Transportation Union (UTU). Then in 1986, the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees (BRAC) would merge with the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC) to form the Transportation Communications Union (TCU) which would then merge into the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) in 2005. The UTU would later merge in 2014 with the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association (SMWIA) to form the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART).

The Need for Amalgamation Today

With this in mind, is amalgamation still applicable today? The answer to this can only be yes; although there are fewer, but larger unions, many industries are still divided among multiple unions. This can be seen in industries such as warehousing, transportation, service, etc.; but perhaps where it is most glaring is in the railroad industry.

As briefly mentioned earlier 2022 saw a prolonged contract fight between the different railroad craft unions and the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC)—the modern day cartel of railroad corporations. Of the remaining twelve railroad unions, ten unions came together to bargain as the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition (CBC) in these negotiations. This positive step towards possible amalgamation led to major wage gains in the tentative agreement that was ultimately rejected by the rank and file. Two unions did not join the coalition, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) and SMART-MD (Maintenance Division).

Ultimately, the rank-and-file membership would reject the tentative agreement because the NCCC would not address the increasingly dangerous working conditions faced by railroad workers. This would lead to then President Biden invoking provisions of the Railway Labor Act of 1926^[7] which would force so-called “cooling-off periods”, arbitration and eventually lead to Congress and the President forcing the rejected tentative agreement on the railroad workers in December 2022.

Throughout this fight, which actually lasted three years, there was a cross-craft caucus of railroad workers leading the way in organizing the rank and file to fight back against the speed-ups of the railroad cartels. This group, Railroad Workers United (RWU), was the voice of the rank and file throughout this fight. They put a spotlight on the draconian “Hi-Viz” attendance policy being implemented, as well as, the massive cuts to maintenance and speed-ups caused by so-called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) while the capitalist media claimed the only hold-up was sick days^[8]. The path forward for amalgamation is through rank-and-file caucuses like RWU.

How Can Amalgamation Be Fought For Today?

RWU has consistently passed resolutions calling for coordinated bargaining among the railroad unions; they passed a new resolution in February last year with a new reinvigorated push to unite the railroad unions:

“Whereas, In 2022, the last round of bargaining for the national contract covering over 100,000 railroad workers made headlines around the world, bringing attention to the crisis in the U.S. railroad system and the poor conditions of railroad workers; …

“Whereas, While a coalition of the various railroad unions was formed for the last round of negotiations, unity broke down as individual union officials began to accept tentative agreements based on the inadequate Presidential Emergency Board recommendations …

“Whereas, Very little was done to involve rank-and-file railroad workers in negotiations or mobilize them in actions designed to put pressure on the companies in order to break the deadlock; and

“Whereas, The lack of strike preparation carried out by the unions meant that the companies felt confident in delaying negotiations and not offering any serious improvements …

“Therefore be it resolved RWU calls on rail labor to adopt a new approach for future contract negotiations, one based on real unity of all unions and crafts where no union settles until all unions have a satisfactory agreement, open negotiations with clear communication to the rank and file about progress, and mobilization of the membership for actions to build up a credible strike threat; and

“Be it finally resolved that RWU is calling for and willing to help organize a conference of all members of rail labor committed to discussing, debating, and developing a strategy for an aggressive, united contract campaign going forward into the upcoming round of national handling in freight service.”^[9]

RWU is taking a proactive step towards uniting the railroad craft unions. Actions like these are the only steps forward to ultimately amalgamate the different crafts into one industrial union in the railroad industry.

This latest push towards amalgamation has not come without backlash from the misleaders of the railroad unions. Throughout 2024, several of the unions agreed to individual tentative agreements with several of the individual rail carriers leading to a split in the CBC. There is no doubt that these misleaders of labor saw the growing push from RWU as a threat to their power.

As Foster noted in 1922:

“A more powerful objection to amalgamation, however, than any of the foregoing is one that is never expressed by those holding it; viz, the fear of the higher officials of the craft unions concerned that in the new, more economically operated industrial union they will lose their authority, and probably their very jobs. This fear is by far the most serious hindrance to amalgamation; it always does more to block the fusing of labor organizations than any other factor. Few officials can rise above it.”^[10]

It is clear the struggle to amalgamate the railroad unions is far from over. We must mobilize all possible forces to support RWU in their goals. With this, the railroads are not the only industry where amalgamation is necessary. For example, the Building Trades is another industry in need of a cross-craft rank-and-file movement similar to RWU with the goal of amalgamating the different crafts into one industrial union.

Organizing at Amazon Needs to Amalgamate within a Single Union

While the earlier mentioned organizing victory at the JFK8 Amazon Fulfillment Center was a sign of breakthrough of a budding militant labor movement, the campaign to organize Amazon has been a spotlight on the fragmentation of the labor movement as a whole.

This campaign was launched with a pandemic-era organizing effort by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) in Bessemer, Alabama. This campaign was riddled with both organizing mistakes and an all-out assault by Amazon which ultimately led to its defeat in April 2021. As the workers in Alabama were casting their votes, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) JFK8 unionization effort kicked off in Staten Island, followed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) passing a resolution to organize Amazon at their convention that June. To add to the disarray, multiple unionization efforts were launched after the ALU victory at JFK8, some affiliated with the new ALU, others independent on their own.

What has been the result of this fragmented, disorganized effort to organize Amazon? The answer is simple, nothing has changed for Amazon workers. Foster, when talking about the Steel Workers Organizing Committee’s (SWOC) efforts to organize the steel industry, made it clear how a mass industrial unionization campaign should be national in scope:

“The organization movement must be industrial and national in character. That is … in every steel center, not simply here and there spasmodically in individual mills or steel centers.”^[11]

The solution is clear, the campaign to organize Amazon cannot succeed until it becomes national in character, and not simply a loosely-connected effort in a handful of locations nationwide. Amalgamating these efforts within a single, united union is necessary for this organizing drive to reach its ultimate aim in unionizing Amazon. This process began in June 2024 when ALU members voted to affiliate with the IBT forming Local 1 of the new division of the Teamsters, ALU-IBT.

More still needs to be done as the RWDSU campaign in Bessemer is awaiting a third election, and Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), an independent union, lost an election at the RDU1 facility in Garner, North Carolina earlier this year and has continued their campaign there. These movements must unite into one united effort to organize Amazon.

The Communist Role in the Struggle for Amalgamation

It is clear that these campaigns mentioned are attempting to move the labor movement in a progressive direction. However, there is something lacking within these movements preventing them from reaching their logical end—an amalgamated and united labor movement. This is where the Communists come in.

Another core part of a major organizing drive, such as what is necessary at Amazon as well as amalgamation of the railroad unions, is discipline. Foster made it clear when again talking about SWOC’s efforts:

“The campaign must develop a strong discipline among the organizers and workers in order to prevent the movement from being wrecked by company-inspired local strikes and other disruptive tendencies. The necessary discipline cannot be attained by issuing drastic orders, but must be based upon wide education work among the rank and file and the development of confidence among them in the cause and ultimate victory of the movement.”^[12]

When looking at the state of the American labor movement since the CIO organizing drives of the 1930s, it is clear the only period in which this necessary discipline existed was the heyday of the CIO. It was Bolshevik discipline and what Foster termed “characteristic Communist clarity” that helped play a decisive role in building a nascent industrial union movement in the 1930s.

[1] Foster, William Z., “Amalgamation or Annihilation”, The Labor Herald, April 1922, p. 6.

[2] Foster, William Z., Railroaders Next Step—Amalgamation; Trade Union Educational League: Chicago, 1922. Available in Selected Works of William Z. Foster, Vol. 1; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2025, p. 40.

[3] Browder, Earl, “Eleven States Demand Amalgamation. What Are You Going to Do About it Mr. Gompers?”, The Labor Herald, December 1922.

[4]Foster, William Z., “The National Railroad Amalgamation Conference in the U.S.A.”, International Press Correspondence, January 23, 1923, Vol.3, No. 9, p. 69.

[5]Ibid., pp. 69-70.

[6]For more on the TUEL’s campaign in the 1920s you can find several pamphlets and articles by Foster in Selected Works of William Z. Foster, Vol. 1; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2025. You can also find the complete collection of TUEL’s The Labor Herald at https://luel.us/publications/the-labor-herald/.

[7] For more on the Railway Labor Act see: Foster, William Z., The Watson-Parker Law: The Latest Scheme to Hamstring Railroad Unionism; Trade Union Educational League: Chicago, 1927.

[8]You can find more on the railroad workers struggles of 2022 here: https://youtu.be/HhjlDc3uKic?si=dGentqGxBW3I8QTo

[9]The full resolution can be found at https://www.railroadworkersunited.org/resolutions.

[10] Foster, Op. Cit., 1922 in Op. Cit., 2025, p 56.

[11] Foster, William Z., Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry; Labor United Educational League: Staten Island, 2025a, p. x.

[12] Ibid.

Editor’s Note: This is the concluding chapter from Comrade Winston’s larger book of the same title.

Does the US Military Economy Help Workers?

It seems paradoxical that the recent avalanche of books and articles portraying the Black condition in the U.S. as that of a colony has been issued by the same monopoly-controlled book and newspaper publishers who use most of the rest of their ideological output to deny the imperialist nature of U.S. state monopoly capitalism.

It seems paradoxical but it is not. This development marks a new state of sophistication in the ideological offensive of U.S. imperialism. The colony theory is particularly useful to the monopolists because it appears to be so radical; in fact, it contains the admission that the oppression of Black people in the U.S. is comparable to colonial oppression in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This emphasis on the intensity of Black oppression gives the colony theory its ring of authenticity.

But this admission of oppression is not as candid (one might even say benign) as it might seem. By promoting the colony theory, the white ruling class aims to define and determine the direction of the Black liberation movement. In yet another form, the monopolists are striving to prevent Black people themselves from defining the specific features that constitute the special oppression they experience.

By analogy, this theory directs attention to those aspects of the Black condition in the U.S. which most closely resemble colonial conditions. These similarities are so powerful that one’s attention may be diverted from what is unique in the status of the triply-oppressed Black peoples in colonial or semi-colonial situations, past or present.

Via the colony analogy, and variations on this unscientific, anti-Marxist theme, U.S. imperialism’s ideologists are trying to influence the Black liberation movement into adopting a self-defeating strategy. While the U.S. “internal Black colony” theory resembles a winning strategy for an oppressed majority living in a colony, it would mean certain defeat for an oppressed minority—which has indeed been the Black condition for more than 350 years in this part of the world.

The supposedly “revolutionary” (even so-called “Marxist”!) books on the colony analogy, now in mass circulation, were written by white radicals who have abandoned the struggle against racism, and by Black radicals who seek rhetorical shortcuts to liberation. By portraying the status of the Black people in the U.S. as a colony, these radicals assist the ruling class’ aim of diverting the Black liberation movement from a winning strategy: one that would advance the self-organization of the Black liberation movement, and simultaneously combine this independent strength with that of allies—the working class, Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and white, together with all the poor and exploited—in a new formation. This is the basis for an anti-monopoly coalition, the only strategy that opens the way to a future without racism, exploitation, poverty or oppression.

Genesis Of the Colony Theory

Among the radicals, Black and white, who have popularized the colony theory are Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Regis Debray, James Foreman, Tom Hayden, Harold Cruse, James Boggs, Stokely Carmichael and Robert L. Allen.

It is ironic that many of these radicals, who claim that Marxism is European in origin and must be revised in order to apply to the Black people in the U.S., advance theories based on revisions of Marxism by such Europeans as Herbert Marcuse, Leon Trotsky and Regis Debray, as well as the Trotsky-like revisions to be found in the “thought” of Mao Zedong.

It was especially under the influence of Marcuse and Maoism that the New Left radicals began to be attracted to one or another pseudo-revolutionary theory, including the concept of an “internal colony” of Black people in the U.S. While Marcuse’s ideas are not identical with “the thought of Mao,” the views of both stimulated anti-Marxist misconceptions of the world revolutionary process, the historic role of the working class and its relationship to the liberation struggles of oppressed people, and the imperative need for strategies based on the specific features and historic development of each country, each working class and each national liberation movement.

During every upsurge in the people’s struggles, especially those of the mainly working-class Black people, there is a more extensive activation of counter-measures designed to sustain disunity and block alliance between Black and white workers, together with the Black people as a whole, against corporate monopoly.

In writing about this, Marcuse is revealed as very much a part of the problem, rather than the solution:

“Contemporary society seems capable of containing social change … [T]he capitalist development has altered the structure and function of these two classes (bourgeoisie and proletariat) in such a way that they no longer appear to be agents of social transformation. An overriding interest in the preservation of the status quo unites the former antagonists in the most advanced areas of contemporary society.”^[1]

Marcuse also makes it clear that his elitist contempt is not limited to the working class:

“Technological controls appear to be the very embodiment of Reason for the benefit of all social groups and interests—to such an extent that all contradiction seems irrational and all counteraction impossible.”^[2] (my italics—H.W.)

And he spells out even more precisely which “social groups” are included in his elitist contempt in the following quotation:

“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation (!!!—H.W) indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”^[3]

There is, of course, no more truth to Marcuse’s assertion that Ford assembly line workers go to “the same resort places” as the Ford family (except as moonlighting waiters trying to make ends meet!) than to his racist stereotype of the Cadillac-owning Black workers.

It is with such fantasies that Marcuse seeks to convince us that, even though classes have not disappeared, the struggle for class and national liberation has been eliminated because of “the extent to which the needs and satisfactions … of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”

This Alice-in-Wonderland vision of mass satisfaction—instead of mass hatred of exploitation, poverty and racist oppression—forms the core of Marcuse’s “revolutionary” ideology. And his inclusion of Black people among those incapable of “counteraction” is a direct ideological descendant of the racist stereotype of the “happy,” “docile” slave.

It is logical that Marcuse’s contempt of the working class and of Black people be accompanied by hatred of the Soviet Union! The Soviet Union embodies the power of the working class and of formerly oppressed peoples. It is precisely such forces that will end exploitation and racism in the U.S. and internationally.

The Historic Distinction

It is not far-fetched to assert that those influenced by Marcusian ideology—which dismisses the masses, Black and white, as incapable of struggle against racism and exploitation—would be receptive to any theory seeming to offer a “shortcut” to mass struggle.

In the recent period these “shortcuts” took the form of advocating “instant revolution,” “power out of the barrel of a gun,” “urban guerrilla warfare,” etc. However, as this rhetoric became increasingly exposed as a roadblock to mass struggle, the colony theory emerged as a new diversion.

The colony theory, with its radical ring of protest against oppression, has great attraction for radicals on the Left and for advocates of “Black capitalism” on the Right. Although concealed by a rhetorical facade of “colonization,” “under-development,” etc., both these groups can be found on a parallel—or even a common—platform of accommodation to monopoly.

However, those radicals who advance the “Black colony in the U.S.” theory fail to see the historic distinction between the effect of the slave trade on Africa—which altered Africa’s relationships internally and externally and resulted in the colonial subjugation of many African peoples—and the role of slavery within the United States.

The African people transported to slavery within the U.S. became the basis of and impetus for the most rapid rate of original capitalist accumulation in history. Every people, on every continent, has passed through one or another form of slavery in the course of world history. But slavery in the United States was unique: it was the most massive, the most brutal type, because it was directly tied to the capitalist market, to the rise of capitalism. Karl Marx wrote:

“as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labor … are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc. … But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the Negro and sometimes using up of his life in 7 years of labor became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of production of surplus-labor itself.”^[4]

Many times Marx compared the inhuman exploitation of workers in the textile mills of England and New England in the pre-organization days of the working class with that of the slaves in the South. At the same time, Marx did not confuse analogies in intensity of exploitation with scientific explanations, as do the contemporary advocates of the colony theory. Marx never lost sight of the distinction between the nature and role of exploitation on a directly capitalist basis.

Marx, for instance, quoted this statement from the County Magistrate of Nottingham, which appeared in the London Daily Telegram of January 17, 1860:

“There was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world. … Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate. … We declaim against the Virginian and Carolinian cotton-planters. Is their black market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh more detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes place in order that veils and collars may be fabricated for the benefit of capitalists?”^[5]

As Marx demonstrated, the intensity of exploitation—though it required different strategies of struggle—developed for a considerable period of time, in England and the Northern United States, along parallel lines with that of slavery in the Southern United States. Marx quoted the following from a speech of a member of the House of Commons, April 27, 1863:

“The cotton trade has existed for ninety years. … It has existed for three generations of the English race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period it has destroyed nine generations of factory operatives.”^[6]

Then Marx went on to state:

“That which today, e.g., in the State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the North-American Republic, has been proclaimed as the statutory limit of the labor of children under 12, as in England, even in the middle of the 17^th century, the normal working-day of able-bodied artisans, robust laborers, athletic blacksmiths.”^[7]

These are some of the many examples Marx used to show the relationship between the effects of the rise of slavery in the South and the rise of the capitalist mode of production in the North and in England.

But in making these analogies in human misery, Marx—unlike those who now make an analogy between colonial oppression and the oppression of the descendants of slaves in the U.S.—always sought out the specific strategy of liberation of the oppressed and exploited.

For example, the emerging proletariat, still in its unorganized state, suffered inhuman exploitation comparable to that of the slaves in the South. But the development of capitalism opened up the material basis for collective class resistance of the workers; while the slaves, within a different and lower form of production, did not have the objective possibility of carrying out anything except fragmented, though heroic, struggles.

Marx saw that “The establishment of a normal working-day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.”^[8] He saw this as the center and generator of the class struggle. And, along with Frederick Douglass, he was in the forefront of forging the broad strategy to destroy the slave power. He knew that only when the oppressed Blacks became a part of the same mode of production as the other exploited could the class struggle in North America achieve the full collective might of labor with a Black skin joined to labor with a white skin.

And Marx warned that just as the English ruling class used religious and national prejudices to divide the Irish and English working class, the U.S. capitalist class would do all in its power to disfigure and divide the class struggle through racist practices and ideology in order to hold off the day when Black and white labor would lead the struggle against monopoly capital and achieve what Marx’s and Douglass’ strategy achieved in ending the slaveocracy.

A Different Liberation Strategy

Marx recognized that the strategy of struggle under slavery could not be the same as that against capitalist exploitation. And today, despite similarities in oppression, the liberation strategy for the oppressed Black minority in the U.S. cannot be the same as that for a colony. Both, for example, need and would be greatly aided by allies on an international scale; but the Black liberation movement requires first of all a strategy that involves internal allies.

While Marx demonstrated what was similar in the intensity of exploitation under slavery and capitalism, he also showed what was different in the nature of the oppression of the slaves as compared with that of “free” labor. Along with Frederick Douglass, Marx developed a strategy that combined the struggles of slave and “free” labor within the Abolition movement. Because of this strategy, Marx and Douglass were able to combat and overcome weaknesses in the Abolition movement and bring about a broader anti-slavery coalition, resulting in national power strong enough to defeat the slavocracy.

This strategy succeeded because Marx and Douglass distinguished between the condition of the oppressed Blacks in the U.S. and those coming under colonial subjugation in Africa and elsewhere. Despite the similarities in this oppression, Marx and Douglass based their strategy on the specific economic and political developments in the U.S. It was a strategy in which the fate of the slaves was recognized as more immediately tied to that of “free” white labor in the North than to Black people within the African colonies.

In the course of advancing their closely parallel anti-slavery strategies, Marx and Douglass strongly advocated the principle of international solidarity of the oppressed and exploited—while recognizing that each develops under different conditions.

A New Sophistication

The monopoly-controlled publishers have been demonstrating a new sophistication in the books they issue by radical writers on the colony theory and other subjects. But there has also been a spate of materials written, as well as published, by direct representatives of the ruling class, and these, too, display in many cases a new sophistication.

Take, for example, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which made quite a stir when it was published a few years ago. Popularly known as “The Kerner Report,” it was the work of the commission, headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, which President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed following the 1967 ghetto upsurges in Newark and Detroit.

In substance, this massive report is no different from its predecessors dealing with “civil disorders”; in 600 pages of historical and contemporary material on the Black experience, it avoids any mention of the class source of racist oppression. And the “solutions” offered by the report are also an echo of the past, as the well-known Black scholar Dr. Kenneth B. Clark in effect forecast when he appeared at the hearings of the National Advisory Commission:

“I read that report … of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading a report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’35, the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of ’42, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot.”

“I must again in candor say to you members of this commission—it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture re-shown again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, the same inaction.”^[9]

In its class essence, the “Kerner Report,” issued after these hearings, reflects the same state monopoly capital interests as the report of the McCone Commission, which was chaired by John J. McCone, former head of the CIA and currently an official of ITT, the giant conglomerate so actively involved in Wall Street’s and Washington’s efforts to block freedom struggles in Chile and other parts of the world, as well as in this country.

However, there is an interesting difference between the Kerner Report and its predecessors—its “solutions” are presented in a more sophisticated style, even including echoes of the rhetoric used by the radicals who have popularized the “internal colony” theory.

Where the McCone Commission spoke in the language of “law and order” to maintain segregation and racist oppression, the Kerner Report adapts radical concepts for the same purpose, as well as for diverting the mass struggles of the oppressed.

In the hands of the Kerner Commission, the pseudo-revolutionary “Black colony” concept becomes a liberal admonition, a “warning” that the country is divided into “two societies” and that this may become a condition:

“To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and outlying areas.”^[10]

The resemblance between this statement and the “Black colony” theory is inescapable: all the radical adherents of this concept also assert that the country is composed of “two societies.”

But two separate societies do not and cannot exist in the United States. The segregation and triple oppression of Black people occur within a single system, a system that locks all forms of class and racist oppression into one society based on the same economy.

The concept of separate societies—whether presented in terms of an “internal colony” or “two societies”—obscures rather than explains the special character of segregation and triple oppression of Black people within the same society, the same economic system dominated by the same racist monopolists who control the lives of the white as well as the Black masses.

Those in the Black liberation movement who advance the idea of “two societies” or an “internal colony” inevitably become attracted to the separatist fantasy of a “Black revolution,” i.e., a revolution without allies; or to the other extreme of the same separatist illusion—”Black capitalism.”

Monopoly’s Role Obscured

The Kerner Report advances the “internal colony” concept of “two societies” in order to promote directly the separatist fantasy of “Black capitalism.” But in doing this it simultaneously feeds illusions about a separatist “Black revolution.” By concealing the special character of Black oppression, the Kerner Report seeks to divert the oppressed from a strategy of liberation as a people within a single economy and a single society.

In pursuing its “two societies” theme, the Commission also projects the fantasy of a “predominantly white and affluent society,” thus obscuring monopoly’s role in the special oppression of Black people as a whole, the super-exploitation of Black workers, and the exploitation of white workers.

In this way, the Commission suggests a complementary fantasy, i.e., that the conditions and class interests of white workers on the GM assembly line are identical with those of the GM Board of Directors and are therefore contradictory to those of their fellow Black workers.

The Kerner Report skillfully uses the “radical” concepts of the advocates of separatism to camouflage its Washington-Wall Street strategy. It exploits the “separate society”—”separate colony” theory in an effort to divert the Black liberation movement with the allurement of the “Black capitalism” fantasy of “ghetto enrichment.” “We believe,” states the Kerner Report, “that the only possible course for America” is a policy “which combines ghetto enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration of substantial numbers of Negroes into society as a whole.”^[11]

When the commission suggests that a “substantial number” (read: a small minority of the Black petty bourgeoisie) be given a limited degree of opportunity outside the ghetto, while the vast majority—offered the illusion of “enrichment” via the fantasy of “Black capitalism”—are to continue to be contained within the ghetto, we can see the link revealed more clearly between the “two societies” and “internal colony” theory and monopoly’s strategy against the Black liberation movement.

For serving the aim of the monopolists, the Black bourgeoisie is offered the myth of ghetto “enrichment,” a euphemism for the permanent segregation and inequality of Black people within the single economy of monopoly capitalism.

The only path for “enrichment” of the people is through a great anti-monopoly formation, with Black and white workers at its center and in its leadership, which—in moving to break the power of monopoly over the total economy—can bring about Black liberation and end poverty and exploitation for all.

The concept of an “underdeveloped,” “colonized” people represents a backward step from the direction taken by Martin Luther King before his death. In fact, such concepts were often advanced as a substitute for King’s increasing orientation on Black workers united with all the exploited and oppressed in struggle against the ruling class.

The programs advanced by those who advocate the “internal colony” and “underdevelopment” concept are not aimed at challenging monopoly through struggle against racism, inequality and poverty. Instead, they offer either the rhetoric of “revolution” or the illusion of “Black capitalism” as alternatives to mass struggle.

Substituting the “underdevelopment” concept for that of struggle against racist oppression and class exploitation is not just a question of semantics. The idea of “underdevelopment” in the ghettos would bury the struggle against racism, poverty and war by obscuring the fact that the oppression of Black people arises directly out of the national economy, which is totally controlled by state monopoly capitalism.

Nixon Exploits the Fantasy

Richard M. Nixon also exploits the fantasy of the Black people determining their own destiny through the perpetuation of ghetto enclaves. In a radio broadcast on March 28, 1968, Nixon stated that it was his aim that the Black people should have power “over their own destinies, the power to affect their own communities… the power that comes from participation in the political and economic processes of society.”

Nixon then went on to make it clear that by “participation in the political and economic processes of society,” he meant the continued exclusion of Black people from equal participation in the economic and political life of this society as a whole. Along with the bourgeois liberals of the Kerner Commission and the “radical” adherents of the “internal colony” idea, Nixon based himself on the “two societies” concept. And upon this false premise he projects his own strategy for the defense of corporate monopoly.

“What we do not need now,” continued Nixon in a broadcast on April 25, 1968, “is another round of unachievable promises of unavailable funds. What we do need is imaginative enlistment of private funds, private energies and private talents, in order to develop the opportunities that lie untapped in our underdeveloped urban heartland.” (my italics—H.W.)

Here, of course, we see how the anti-Marxist concept of Black Americans as a “colonized” people living within “underdeveloped” urban enclaves fits right into Nixon’s racist, imperialist ideology and strategy. This strategy seeks to impose on the Black people a “Nixonized” version of Booker T. Washington’s “self-help” submission to racism, segregation, poverty and inequality. According to this idea, Black people should not demand equal participation in the nation’s total economy, but should instead determine “their own destinies” through “Black capitalism” within the ghettos, shut off from the economy they helped build.

To accept the colony analogy in any form is to allow pseudo-radical theories to condition us to accept imperialist ideology, and thus to submit to monopoly capitalism’s offensive against the Black liberation movement.

Unlike a subjugated people who form a majority within a viable though underdeveloped economy, this country’s Black minority is segregated within the urban ghettos not because of underdevelopment but because of racism and inequality within the most highly developed economy in the capitalist world.

The populations of the so-called “underdeveloped” ghettos in the “urban heartland” of the U.S. are certainly more directly a part of the laboring process of the single developed economy of this country than, for example, many better-off white suburban ghettos of the country.

When Nixon speaks of “unachievable promises and unavailable funds” for Black people, he is simultaneously trying to use the power of the Federal Government to make good his promises to Wall Street to make funds available for imperialist profits and aggression, instead of for the needs of the people.

The true “opportunities that lie untapped” in the urban ghettos consist of maximum mobilization of the Black masses in the struggle for full equality and unrestricted political and economic participation in order equally to share in the highly developed economy built through more than 350 years of Black oppression and super-exploitation.

The Black people in the U.S. will reject the misleading, though radical-sounding, colony analogy because they will not accept permanent inequality in the guise of overcoming “underdevelopment” within the most industrially developed economy in the world. And while rejecting the “tokenism” inherent in the colony theory, the Black people will just as resolutely reject the pseudo-revolutionism that it gives rise to.

The colony theory lends the appearance of nationalist militancy to cover both conservative and “radical” accommodations to state monopoly capitalism—accommodation to new and devious forms of “self-help” which amount to no more than fake alternatives to struggle against the racist oppressors.

Differences Outweigh Similarities

Of course there are many similarities between the oppression of the Black minority in the U.S. and of present and former imperialist-controlled colonies. But in terms of strategy for the Black liberation movement in the U.S., the differences in status outweigh the similarities in oppression.

In colonially-subjugated countries, the people’s movement emerges in the struggle for independence from foreign domination of the country and its economy. When independence is won, the economy of the country, depending on circumstances, comes either under the control of the people or of the national bourgeoisie allied with and accommodating itself to neo-colonialism.

But can the struggle against racist oppression in this country enable either the Black bourgeoisie or the Black masses, a minority within the country, to take control of the state and the economy? Even to ask the question suggests the absurdity of the “Black colony” or “Black capitalism” concept.

Those who use the colonial theory as the basis for advocating “Black capitalism” do so in the hopeless effort to somehow give the word “capitalism” a revolutionary sound. In fact, placing “Black” next to “capitalism” is supposed to cancel out the negatives that people now associate with capitalism. Even to get the ear of the Black masses, any proposed solution to the hard fact of oppression must at least appear to have a revolutionary potential.

At a time when the people’s anti-imperialist movements all over the world—from Hanoi to Santiago—find that even independence does not mean liberation unless a non-capitalist, socialist direction is taken, it is ironic that some in the Black liberation movement who like to consider themselves revolutionary, propose “Black capitalism” as the solution to oppression.

Those who talk of taking over the economy of the ghettos either through “Black revolution” or “Black capitalism” fail to understand the fundamental difference between the position and demands of a colonial people and those of the oppressed Black people in the U.S.

When freed of imperialist control, the colony has the possibility of developing a separate, viable economy on its own territory. But the ghetto enclaves across the country cannot form the basis for a viable economic life apart from the nation’s total economy—either on a capitalist or a socialist basis.

Unlike colonies, the ghettos scattered across the country have no economy and territory that can be separated from the monopoly-controlled economy dominating every nook and cranny of the country, including the ghettos. Moreover, unlike colonies, there are no riches in the form of oil, minerals and agricultural products to be extracted from the ghettos.

Overlooking the history of capitalism in this and other countries, the advocates of “Black capitalism” pursue the illusion that the white monopolists stand ready to share their control of the country’s economy with Black capitalists. This is particularly ludicrous since any would-be Black capitalist can recount the difficulties he faces in even trying to get a petty loan from the Small Business Administration to get his projected business venture off the ground.

Black business has always been marginal even within the ghetto. And capitalism in its present stage takes the form of giant conglomerates that increasingly devour all small business. Any possible “enrichment” for Black business lies not within monopoly’s strategy of perpetuating the ghettos but within a broad all-encompassing people’s strategy—an anti-monopoly movement in which the primary force is the working class, Black, white, Brown, Yellow and Red, together with the organized Black liberation movement as a whole.

Ghettos, Descendants of Slave Quarters

A liberation movement in a colony consists of a majority struggling to take over the economic life of a common territory. But Black liberation in the U.S. cannot be based on a colonial strategy of political independence to be won for a majority within a common territory and a viable economy. The ghettos of this country, despite the intensity of their oppression, are economically and politically unlike a colony. These ghettos are the descendants of the original Southern Slave quarters, and as economic units they are no more viable than were their forerunners on the plantations.

A colony, which always has a common economy and territory, is usually geographically separated from the “mother” country. But whether separated or adjacent, a colony’s economy is detachable from the imperialist country to which it is linked. When we speak of colonial economies, we are talking about diamonds, cocoa, sugar, cotton, bananas, copper, spices, oil, silver, coffee, tin, jute, gold, uranium, tea, nickel—the sources of untold billions in imperialist super-profits. The raw materials of industry and agriculture are found in the colonies—but not on the barren, rubble-littered streets of a U.S. ghetto.

In the colonies, some of the key imperialist investments go into developing mechanized means of transporting the resources of mine and field from the colony to the “mother” country. In U.S. ghettos, such as Watts, the monopolists do not provide even the semblance of adequate human transportation despite the fact that the majority of Black workers have to travel long distances to jobs—if they can get them—outside the ghetto.

In a colony, the agricultural and other raw materials come from a common territory with more than ample scope for development—the consistent hallmark of such colonies is always and everywhere their underdevelopment. Obviously, this underdevelopment cannot be equated with the condition of economic, social and political inequality within the ghettos of the U.S.

Central to a colony’s underdevelopment is the imperialist’s export of capital for the purpose of controlling its resources and economy. No matter how great the extent of imperialist penetration into a colony, imperialism prevents production of the means of production.

As a consequence, many former colonies and semi-independent countries remain underdeveloped and tightly controlled by neo-colonialism except, in today’s context, when and to the degree that they join with the world anti-imperialist forces, with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, break the shackles of neo-colonialism and take the non-capitalist path of development toward socialism.

Are Ghettos Detachable from U.S. Economy?

The people who live and toil in a colony earn their living within that colony. But do the majority of the people of Harlem, Watts, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Chicago’s South Side, etc., earn their living in these ghettos? Are these ghettos geographically separated or detachable from U.S. monopoly capitalism—except in the eyes of those who confuse segregation with economy and geography? Do these ghettos possess fields, mines, oil wells and an economy separate or detachable from the U.S. economy? A colony does have the possibility of providing complete economic, social and political development for its people. But is this possible in a Harlem or a Watts?

Stokely Carmichael claims that it is possible. He equates the barren ghettos with colonies that have provided the raw materials for the super-profits of imperialism. He states:

“The struggle for Black Power in the United States, and certainly around the world, is the struggle to free these colonies from external domination, but we do not seek merely to create communities where black rulers replace white rulers, controlling the lives of black masses and where black money goes into a few black pockets. We want to see it go into the communal pocket.”^[12]

Carmichael’s rhetoric about “black money” going into the “communal pocket” contributes nothing to the struggle to put money into the pockets of unemployed, underemployed and underpaid Black masses. That requires a different strategy.

In equating U.S. ghettos with colonies, Carmichael also distorts the meaning of Black power. He equates the strategy of Black liberation with that of colonial peoples fighting for independence and liberation. Despite his radical rhetoric, what Carmichael proposes closely parallels the “Black capitalism” myth of “enrichment” within the ghetto advanced by Nixon and other advocates of segregation and inequality.

That Carmichael’s program is camouflaged as “communal” instead of capitalist does not conceal its accommodation to racism and oppression; power and liberation for the Black people cannot be won via a separatist “strategy” based on the illusion that they can be found within the confines of the ghetto.

When we talk about power, we are talking about political power—the shift of power from one class to another. The Civil War resulted in the change of power from the slave-owners to the rising capitalist class. Today the monopoly capitalist class controls the total economy of the United States. Therefore, all talk of self-determination in the ghetto is a fraud. And this certainly includes the concept—called “Ujamaa”—advanced by Imamu Amiri Baraka:

“Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)—To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit together from them.”

Baraka offers not a strategy for Black liberation but a recipe for bourgeois nationalist accommodation to the white ruling class against the interests of the Black people. The Black bourgeoisie will share in the limited Black market, while the mass of the Black people are diverted from the wider anti-monopoly struggles for equality and jobs—that is, for jobs where, as and if they can be found, outside the ghetto.

An Indivisible Part of National Economy

If the possibility of a separate economy for Black people in the U.S. ever existed, it was before Southern agriculture was transformed into large-scale capitalist agriculture. With the massive penetration of monopoly capital throughout the South, any possibility whatsoever for a separate economy disappeared. The area of the former Black majority in the South became an indivisible part of the total national economy, in which Wall Street, not cotton, is king.

In the period between the betrayal of Reconstruction and the end of World War II, while the majority of the former slaves worked the land as sharecroppers and tenant farmers—a serf-like condition somewhere between chattel slavery and wage labor—the economy of the South was gripped in a process of dual development. Though coming more and more within the orbit of the national economy, the South—and especially the area of continuing Black majority—still retained aspects of differentiation from the country’s total economy. The pattern of economic development in the area of Black majority was until recently neither fully separate nor identical with the national economy.

It was in the period when the South’s dual process of development had not yet brought its economy fully into the national pattern of monopoly control, and along with it the shifting of the former Black majority to the urban ghettos, that the Communist Party was organized. It developed from the Left forces within the old Socialist Party and the Left forces that emerged from the struggles of Black people in the post-World War I era.

A central difference between the Left and the Right in the old Socialist Party was the rejection by the founders of the Communist Party of the anti-Marxist, simplistic denial of the special character of racist oppression in the U.S. While the Communist Party saw from its inception that the struggle against racist oppression was part of the class struggle, it also recognized that Blacks were oppressed as a people and that labor with a white skin and labor with a Black skin could not be free unless the special demands of the triply oppressed Black people were put at the center of the struggle for progress and socialism.

At that time the Communists based their approach to Black liberation on an analysis of this continuing duality in Southern development. In October, 1930, the following resolution was adopted at a Congress of the Communist International, describing this duality and its significance for the Black people:

“It is not correct to consider the Negro zone of the South as a colony of the United States. Such a characterization of the Black Belt could be based in some respects only upon artificially construed analogies, and would create superfluous difficulties for the clarification of ideas. In rejecting this estimation, however, it should not be overlooked that it would be none the less false to try to make a fundamental distinction between the character of national oppression to which the colonial peoples are subjected and the yoke of other oppressed nations. Fundamentally, national oppression in both cases is of the same character, and is in the Black Belt in many respects worse than in a number of actual colonies. On one hand the Black Belt is not in itself, either economically or politically, such a united whole as to warrant its being called a special colony of the United States. But on the other hand, this zone is not, either economically or politically, such an integral part of the whole United States as any other part of the country.”

This analysis was made at a time when the duality in the South’s development had not yet culminated in the changes which would eventually wipe out the main differential between its economy, with its huge Black majority territory, and that of the rest of the country. At that time the Communist party adopted a program calling for the right of self-determination in the area of Black majority in the South, but even then the Party placed the primary, immediate emphasis in every struggle, North and South, on the fight for full equality.

Some may feel there is room for differences on whether the Party was correct in adopting the program of the right to self-determination in the Black Belt—a policy it discarded after the South’s economy had become an integral, undetachable part of the total economy of state monopoly capitalism. This basic change in the South’s economy was accompanied by a fundamental shift in Black/white population ratios in the South, one that above all meant the reduction of the former Black majority in the 189 counties comprising the Black Belt. In turn, this transformed the existence of the majority of the Black people from agrarian to urban in character.

But when the Communist Party advanced the slogan of the right of self-determination, the circumstances were fundamentally different from those of today. By contrast, adherents of the “Black colony” theory continue to advance the idea of self-determination when it no longer has even the semblance of relationship to present-day economic and political reality. As a result, the colony analogy has given rise to distorted, anti-Marxist variations of the slogan of self-determination sometimes in the form of “Black capitalism,” sometimes as “revolutionary” self-determination in the scattered ghettos of the country.

Of course there are profound historic differences be­tween earlier periods when the Communist Party advanced the slogan of the right of self-determination and today when, among the adherents of the “Black colony” theory some can be found advocating a conservative, some a “revolutionary” form of self-determination. The reasons are many.

For one, the area of Black majority in the South is gone. Yet even more important than this change are the basic economic and political differences underlying the shift of the Black majority from the rural South to the big urban ghettos—North, South, East and West. This mass population shift, literally involving millions, reflects a transformation in the class composition of the overwhelming majority of the oppressed Black people.

From a predominantly agrarian population constituting a majority in a vast contiguous Black Belt and plantation area, the oppressed Black people, goaded by hunger and fleeing oppression, have been transformed in their overwhelming majority from peasants to proletarians—suffering new forms of super-exploitation and racist discrimination within the total national economy under the control of corporate monopoly.

It was in this context that James E. Jackson, a leader of the Communist Party, wrote:

“The objective factors operating in relation to the Negro people in the United States are working not in the direction of national insularity or separate development of its nationhood.”^[13]

Contrast with the Status of Puerto Rico

One need only contrast the status of the people of Puerto Rico and their relationship to U.S. imperialism with that of the oppressed Black people to expose the fallacy of the “internal colony” analogy.

While the analogy suggests some of the common features of oppression, it conceals the fundamentally different position of Afro-Americans from that of Puerto Ricans within the system of U.S. monopoly oppression. As a result, it obscures the basically different strategy and demands required by the Black liberation movement in the U.S. compared to the Puerto Rican or other independence movements against neo- or semi-colonial rule.

The people of Puerto Rico occupy a territory in which they are a majority. Puerto Rico’s economy, now linked to and dominated by U.S. imperialism, is—as was Cuba’s—detachable from the U.S. economy. And the first demand of the Puerto Rican people—like that of the Cuban struggle, which opened the way for national and social liberation—is for political independence: Puerto Rico is forcibly kept within the orbit of U.S. monopoly capitalism under the so-called “Commonwealth” formula. This demand for political independence represents the starting point of the Puerto Rican strategy for sovereign control of Puerto Rico, its economy and government.

The bourgeois nationalists of Puerto Rico, however, continue to oppose political independence. To the demand for independence, they counterpose the myth of Puerto Ricans jointly determining their future with the U.S. within the “Commonwealth.”

It is interesting in this connection to see what Lenin wrote concerning radicals in his time who misunderstood the meaning of the right to self-determination:

“Our Polish comrades like this last argument, on joint determination instead of self-determination; so much that they repeat it three times in their theses! … All reactionaries and bourgeois grant to nations forcibly retained within the frontiers of a given state the right to ‘determine jointly’ their fate in a common parliament.”^[14]

And today we see how the position of the Puerto Rican bourgeois nationalists merges with that of U.S. imperialism; for Puerto Rico—which has its own separate economy on the common territory occupied by the Puerto Rican people—the monopolists do not fear to offer the “right” to “determine jointly” with the U.S. Congress the fate of that country.

Any formula for so-called joint control of Puerto Rico is a fraud, a one-way street. The Puerto Rican liberation movement is not out for joint control or participation in the U.S. economy in any form—it is demanding an end to so-called joint control of its economy.

In Puerto Rico, the Puerto Ricans constitute more than a majority—apart from the handful of representatives of U.S. imperialism, they make up the entire population. On the other hand, the Black liberation movement represents a minority which seeks equality in determining the economic and political life of the U.S. But the ruling class does all in its power here to prevent, to stifle, to block the right of Black people to determine, “jointly” or otherwise, or even to share in the economy of this country along with all other segments of the oppressed and impoverished.

Of course, the oppressed and exploited within the U.S. do not have the objective of even becoming “partners” in a joint enterprise with U.S. imperialism! The task of the majority of the people of all races and backgrounds, under the leadership of Black and white workers, is to break the power of monopoly over the government and the economy. It is this anti-monopoly struggle—which cannot be waged by the Black minority alone, but only in unity with the non-Black majority—that alone can bring about joint power to the people and control of the economy.

U.S. imperialism uses and has always used its economic and military power to oppose self-determination in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Chile and the other countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America where the people have in some degree their own separate economies. Ironically, it is this same U.S. imperialism that deliberately fosters every form of separatist fantasy for Black people, including “self-determination” for a people who have no common territory or separate economy but whose population on the contrary is dispersed in more than 160 major urban ghettos around the country. The same U.S. monopolists who propose “joint control” of Puerto Rico with the Puerto Ricans offer Black people the trap of “self-determination” in ghettos where that is impossible—either in the form of “Black capitalism,” Baraka’s “cooperative economics” or Carmichael’s “communal” concept.

Black liberation in the U.S. calls for a strategy the exact opposite of Puerto Rican and other liberation movements outside the U.S. In colonial and dependent countries, the people’s aim is to break the links that artificially tie their economies to imperialism. A liberating strategy for Black Americans does not involve a break with the U.S. economy, but instead must aim at overcoming forcible exclusion of Black people from their rightful participation in the U.S. economy: The goal here is for full equality within the total economy.

Thus, James E. Jackson wrote:

“The path of development of the Negro people toward individual and national equality does not take the route of struggle for national independence and political-geographical sovereignty and statehood. The Negro people in the United States historically, now, and most probably for the future, seek solutions to its national question in struggle for securing equality of political, economic and social status.”^[15]

The fact that Black people were forcibly transported to this country and held in chattel slavery for over two centuries should not be allowed to obscure the specific reality of the Black condition in the U.S. today, which has been transformed into the opposite of what it was in the past. Today, instead of being forcibly attached to the economy, Black people are increasingly excluded from it by racist discrimination and underemployment. The only path to liberation is through resistance to the forces that now forcibly separate, segregate and exclude Afro-Americans from full equality within the total economy.

Revolution Proceeds in Its Own Way

Lenin wrote, “One must understand the changes and growth of every revolution. The revolution proceeds in its own way in every country.”^[16] And on another occasion, Lenin declared that “different nations are advancing in the same historical direction, but by very different zigzags and bypaths.”^[17]

For colonial peoples, liberation starts with rejection of the myth that their fate can be determined “jointly” within the framework of the tight controls that link it to the U.S. economy. For the Black people in the U.S., on the other hand, liberation is realizable only on the basis of overcoming exclusion and inequality through an anti-monopoly movement, in which the Black people and all who are exploited by the common corporate enemy seek to establish joint control of the country’s economy. It is within such a revolutionary process that Black people will gain full and equal participation in the entire economy, and equality of representation in all aspects of the social, political, economic and governmental life of the country.

The ideology of separatism, of determining “Black destiny” on a go-it-alone path—rejecting united action with non-Black opponents of monopoly power—is in today’s context equivalent to the idea of emigration to Canada or Africa counterposed by some as an alternative to Douglass’ strategy of forming an anti-slave power coalition—the strategy which did ultimately bring an end to chattel slavery.

This becomes most apparent when one considers the parallelism between the separatist ideology of Imamu Amiri Baraka and the racism of George Wallace—a contemporary version of the pre-Civil War parallelism between Black emigrationism and the American Colonizing Society, formed by slavery-supporting antecedents of George Wallace for the ostensible purpose of returning slaves to Africa. However, the real purpose of the American Colonization Society was not to abolish but reinforce slavery by stimulating separatist tendencies aimed at bringing about the withdrawal of Black people from the emerging Black and white majority movement against the slave power.

Today there is a coincidence between the Baraka and the Wallace stand on busing—but for both it is a false issue. Nixon, Wallace and Baraka have demagogically inflated this issue at a time when less than 3% of busing is used to alleviate school segregation. Wallace and Baraka are well aware that busing is only a small part of the school segregation question, but each has his own separate but parallel ideological and political motives for opposing it.

Wallace exploits the busing issue in order to serve the pro-fascist forces of monopoly capital, who aim at preventing the unity of Black and white—especially of Black and white labor—by vastly intensifying the ideology and patterns of racism. Baraka’s opposition to busing is related to his strategy of exploiting every issue in order to promote the ideology and politics of separatism, of withdrawal from the struggle against the racist monopolists Wallace serves.

Separatism also distorts the meaning of valid features of the struggle for Black liberation. For instance, all varieties of separatist ideology, including Baraka’s and Carmichael’s, equate “community control” and Black institutions with liberation. Black institutions and control of communities in which Black people constitute a majority are a vital part of the struggle for liberation. But Black liberation can develop only as a part of a wider struggle for “national control” over the economic and political life of the entire country, a struggle which cannot be carried out by Black people alone.

There is no realistic basis for the Black people determining their lives through a strategy limiting the struggle to “community control”—which is but one of the key starting points in the struggle to take national control out of the hands of the monopoly power.

There are some, however, who will admit that “self-determination” in the ghettos is impossible—but who nevertheless entertain an equally unrealistic view: by expanding the idea of community control to Black control of a separate state, these forces maintain that the concept of Black separatism would then become a viable instead of an illusory one.

However, the reality of the matter is that the shift of national power from the monopoly oppressors to the people calls for a wider strategy in which the self-action of the Black minority becomes a vital, independent part of the total struggle in alliance with the non-Black majority against the common enemy.

Baraka Exploits the Views of Nyerere and Senghor

While radicals such as James Boggs, Stokely Carmichael and James Foreman falsely attach a “Marxist” label to their variations on the theme of separatism, Imamu Amiri Baraka, an openly anti-Marxist bourgeois nationalist, exploits the views of Julius K. Nyerere and Leopold Sedar Senghor to advance his divisive separatist aims. For instance, in calling for “Ujamaa, collective or cooperative economics,” Baraka says it is the “’traditional’ way of distributing wealth for the Black man.” But, he points out, “Ujamaa is not, as it has been said, ’African Socialism.’ Ujamaa has always been the African attitude towards the distribution of wealth … It has never been a European attitude, but rather a theory. Can you get it?” (See Julius Nyerere’s paper Ujamaa in Uhuru na Umoja). Italics in the original.

Baraka uses the “outer forms” of African tradition in order to mystify—i.e., to conceal his adherence to capitalism in both Africa and the United States. There are differences as well as similarities in Nyerere’s conception of Ujamaa as “African socialism” and Baraka’s Ujamaa as “collective or cooperative economics.”

Even a cursory examination of Nyerere’s views reveals that when he refers to “African Socialism,” he is really talking about African capitalism:

“In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude of mind which distinguishes the socialist from the non-socialist. It has nothing to do with the possession or non-possession of wealth… The basic difference between a socialist society and a capitalist society does not lie in their methods of producing wealth, but in the way that wealth is distributed.”^[18]

In the traditional African society, Nyerere states:

“Both the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ individual were completely secure. … Nobody starved, either of food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal wealth; he could depend on the wealth possessed by the community of which he was a member. That was socialism. That is socialism … Socialism is essentially distributive. Its concern is to see that those who sow reap a fair share of what they sow.”^[19]

Nyerere equates the early, classless African tribal society with the present day. But today there is no “traditional” or “third” way for countries that have broken the external chains of imperialism: they must take either a capitalist or non-capitalist path. Those who take the path of capitalism become involved in submission to new forms of imperialist domination.

On the other hand, those countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America which take the non-capitalist path and move toward socialism—are able to consolidate independence and insure liberation on the basis of internal socialist development and with the solidarity and support of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, together with the worldwide anti-imperialist forces of class and national liberation.

When Nyerere says that “Socialism is essentially a distributive system,” he reveals his hesitancy to break with the internal and external opponents of scientific socialism for his country, Tanzania. Socialism is based on abolition of capitalist control of the means of production. Nyerere’s so-called “distributive system” would imply simply to allow the means of production to remain in the hands of a developing capitalist class. He makes this very clear when he says:

“Just as the Elder, in our former society was respected for his age and his service to the community, so, in our modern society, this respect for age and service will be preserved. And in the same way as the ‘rich’ Elder’s apparent wealth was really only held by him in trust for his people, so, today, the apparent extra wealth which certain positions of leadership may bring to the individuals who fill them, can be theirs only insofar as it is a necessary aid to the carrying out of their duties.”^[20]

This, of course, is Nyerere’s rationale for denying the development of classes. In the meantime the new bourgeoisie are gaining control of the economy of Tanzania. For Nyerere, these newly rich Tanzanians are not capitalist exploiters. They are the “Elders,” the preservers of the ancient traditions of African “communal” society.

In exploiting Nyerere, Baraka calls for “the African attitude toward the distribution of wealth” in monopoly-controlled United States. His purpose is to divert the mass struggle against the class controlling the means of production—which, in the United States, means the monopolies, who control the entire economy.

But for Baraka, monopoly control is irrelevant. In effect, he calls for submission to instead of struggle against monopoly. He would pacify the Black liberation movement with the fantasy of an “African attitude towards the distribution of wealth”—which could mean only the continued distribution of poverty instead of jobs to the ghetto millions.

Baraka’s concept of “race” and a “nation” is also based on exploiting Senghor’s ideology of Negritude. In Senegal, Senghor’s ideology of Negritude is turned into an instrument for enrichment of a tiny minority and of accommodation to new forms of colonialism. In the U.S., the role of Baraka, who exploits the ideology of Negritude, reveals that all forms of separatism—whether his own “militant” rightist variety or one or another “leftist” variation—serve to separate, to divert the Black working class from leadership of the liberation movement.

There is a profound difference in the objective role of Nyerere and Senghor, and that of Baraka, despite the fact that Baraka, for his own purposes, seeks to project himself in the image of the views of these two African statesmen.

Both Nyerere and Senghor, though inconsistently, operate within the framework of the struggles for the independence of their own, and of all African countries. On the other hand Baraka’s role is to subordinate the Black Liberation Movement in the U.S. to the aims of bourgeois nationalist accommodation to racist monopoly at home—and to the new phase of U.S. imperialism’s neo-colonialist strategy against African liberation.

Baraka plays with the symbols of Africa’s past, adapting them to his own separatist aims in order to evade the substance of the Black condition and the imperative of an anti-monopoly strategy for Black liberation in the U.S.

However, the majority of Afro-Americans long ago decided that their roots and rights were second to none in this country.

Even before Frederick Douglass challenged separatist concepts, strong opposition appeared to such tendencies, expressing what is to this day the main thrust of the struggles and aspirations of the Black majority. As early as January, 1817, James Forten organized a protest meeting to combat separatist influences among his people, and to oppose the American Colonization Society. This meeting, held at the Bethel Church in Philadelphia, adopted the following resolution:

“Whereas, our ancestors (not by choice) were the first successful cultivators of the fields of America, we, their descendants, feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessing of her luxuriant soil, which their blood enriched, and that any measure or system of measures, having a tendency to banish us from her bosom, would not only be cruel, but in direct violation of those principles which have been the boast of this Republic.”^[21]

The resolution then went on to make it unmistakably clear that all forms of separatism were contrary to the interests of the majority of oppressed Blacks:

“Resolved that we will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of this country; they are our brethren by ties of consanguinity, suffering and wrong; and we feel there is more virtue in suffering with them, than fancied advantages for the season.”^[22]

Forten believed that “any tendency” separating Black people from a strategy to win full equality within the “bosom” of the country’s economy was contrary to the aspirations of the Black majority. This was underscored a few months later at another protest meeting organized by Forten, which adopted a resolution written by him, stating:

“Let not a purpose be assisted which will stay the cause of the entire abolition of slavery and which may defeat it altogether, which proffers to those who do not ask for them benefits, but which they consider injuries, and which must insure to the masses, whose prayers can only reach us, misery, suffering and slavery.”^[23]

The principles advocated by Forten, and later by Frederick Douglass, are still applicable. They need only be adapted to today’s total industrial economy, which has been “enriched” by the blood of Forten’s and Douglass’ ancestors and descendants. Today, the extension of these principles means that “any measure or system of measures, having a tendency to banish” the Black people from full and equal participation in the national economy would indeed mean offering “to those who do not ask for them benefits, but which they consider injuries.”

As others said to the separatists of today: “Let not the purpose be assisted which will stay the cause” of the formation of a great new people’s challenge to the common enemy—the monopolist descendants of the slave power. This is the strategy for today’s Black agenda—the strategy for Black liberation.

[1] Quoted in an article by Graubard, Allen, in Beyond the New Left; McCall Publishing Co.: New York, 1970, pp. 147-148.

[2] Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man; Beacon Press: Boston, 1966, p. 9.

[3] Ibid., p. 8.

[4] Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. l; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 227-228.

[5] Ibid., pp. 233-234.

[6] Ibid., p. 267.

[7] Ibid., p. 271.

[8] Ibid., p. 270.

[9] Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Bantam Books, New York, 1968, p. 483.

[10] Ibid., p. 22.

[11] Ibid., p. 24.

[12] Carmichael, Stokely, Stokely Speaks; Vintage Books: New York, 1971, p. 87.

[13] Jackson, James E., Theoretical Aspects of the Negro Question in the U.S., February 1959, p. 11.

[14] Lenin, V.I., Collected Works, Vol. 22; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, p. 322.

[15] Jackson, Op. Cit., 1959, p. 10.

[16] Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, Vol. 28; Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974a, p. 123.

[17] Lenin, V.I., Collected Works, Vol. 29; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974b, p. 195.

[18] Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Unity/Uhuru Na Umoja; Oxford University Press: London, 1967, pp. 162-163.

[19] Ibid., p. 164.

[20] Ibid., p. 168.

[21] Forten, Charlotte L., The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten, Macmillan Co., New York, 1967, p. 15.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., p. 16.

The State of the Left

In December 2024, a United Healthcare CEO was assassinated by a lone gunman. Much of the public in America did not react with remorse, but instead shared their frustrations with the state of healthcare in this country; stories of denied claims, expensive bills that cause many families to go into debt, and overall lack of quality care. It is understandable that in the wake of such an act that many Americans would express indifference. The ultra-left, in their typical “super-revolutionary” fashion, proceeded to applaud the vigilante proclaiming that we need to replicate this same scenario for every CEO. In doing so, many so called “communists” and anarchists fall victim to what Gus Hall expresses as “petty-bourgeois radicalism”.

In Gus Hall’s “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism”, the former CPUSA General Secretary breaks down the logic of the ultra-left:

“Thus the very premise of petty-bourgeois radicalism is that it is impossible to win the working class in the struggle against capitalism. From this it follows that mass concepts of struggle are not possible, necessary or realistic. This leads to actions based on small elite groups––or to individual action. Because this concept is not concerned with winning over masses, it promotes and condones actions that alienate masses. There is an inner logic to this path. Specific actions are taken because there is a lack of confidence in mass–in class–actions. These ill-considered actions result in widening the gap between the petty-bourgeois radical movements and the masses. This widening gap then becomes ‘proof’ that you cannot win masses and therefore the line of conduct of these movements is justified. Each step leads to a further isolation. This is the inner logic of petty-bourgeois radicalism.”^[1]

The ultra-left have shown a fetishization with “action” in the form of terrorism that does not progress the working class struggle, but instead hampers it. Their lust for adventurism blinds them to the serious, consistent, and stubborn work that must be done on a daily basis to win the working class over to the side of the Communists.

In America, the surge of individuals towards leftist beliefs began around 2016 when Social-Democrat Bernie Sanders ran for president on a platform calling for many progressive reforms to the healthcare system, transportation, workers’ rights, etc. What naturally happened with his defeat (and the Democrats’ loss to Donald Trump) was a leftward swing among those in the center left. Many were seeking a more concrete solution to society’s ails, which led many to discover Marxism for the first time.

The death of Gus Hall in 2000 left a vacuum in the American Marxist-Leninist camp as the party adopted anti-Sovietism and Social Democratic views. Until the People’s School for Marxist-Leninist Studies formation in 2016 by the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA), there was effectively no party providing a dialectical outlook in the United States. Naturally, this caused many on the left to fall into either the Maoist/Trotskyist or Anarchist tendencies which comprise the bulk of the ultra-left.

While the ultra-left may disagree on issues such as the State, they make up for it in uniting on tactics and their general disdain for any organizing beyond super-revolutionary cliques and slogans. This is evident in Maoists and Anarchists adoption of what Henry Winston would call the “transference of strength”:

“Lenin long ago exposed the anti-Marxist, anarchist nature of such views. In one of his 1902 Iskra articles, Lenin quoted the following from a Socialist Revolutionary leaflet:

“‘Every terrorist blow, as it were, takes away part of the strength of the autocracy and transfers all this strength to the side of the fighters for freedom.’ Such a theory, Lenin said, ‘turns upside down, not only all past experience, but all common sense as well.’ He said further: ‘we know from the past and see in the present that only new forms of the mass movement or the awakening of new sections of the masses to independent struggle really rouses a spirit of struggle and courage in all.’^[2]

“As Lenin pointed out, strength cannot be transferred. It develops out of involvement in mass struggle, for which there is no substitute. Mass struggle generates greater and greater unity, strength and consciousness as the science of socialism is more and more closely linked to the struggles by the Party of the working class.”^[3]

What we are witnessing is a repeat of mistakes that revolutionaries have already experienced and adapted our theory through scientific process. The ultra-left (Maoists and Trotskyists specifically) claim to be the next “heirs of Lenin” and can’t be bothered to understand his disapproval of economic terrorism, instead fanning away criticism as “liberalism” or no longer applying to the current situation. Their claim that the Marxist-Leninist theory, advanced by Comrades Lenin and Stalin, is no longer applicable is thinly veiled anti-Sovietism wrapped up in revolutionary vigor.

In the 20^th Century, the CPUSA was able to withstand right opportunism and ultra-leftism in their theoretical struggle. Led by General Secretary Gus Hall and National Chair Henry Winston, the party gave American Communists an unbreakable foundation to understanding Marxism-Leninism and how it applied to America. Most prominently, the theory of the anti-monopoly coalition led by the working class, which is now at the forefront of the tactics utilized by the PCUSA. In his book, Working Class USA: The Power and the Movement, Hall says:

“Those who would reject the anti-monopoly concept proceed from two lines of argument. The first of these downgrades and discards the democratic struggle, and calls for a ‘pure’ revolutionary strategy —an ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-imperialist’ strategy. It pits these ‘revolutionary’ strategies against the allegedly ‘non-revolutionary’ anti-monopoly strategy. It is adherence to such a ‘non-revolutionary’ strategy, say these upholders of ‘pure’ revolution, that makes the Party itself a conservative, no longer revolutionary organization. They refuse to see the interrelationship of the democratic anti-monopoly struggle and the revolutionary struggle for socialism.

“Views of this kind distort the attitude of Communists toward the democratic movement. ‘Theoreticians’ of this brand maintain that Communists call for postponing the struggle for socialism until the democratic struggles are won. But this is sheer nonsense. The fact is that the development of the anti-monopoly coalition as a political force is impossible without the development of a powerful Left, without simultaneously advancing the class consciousness of the workers and building a socialist-conscious contingent within their ranks. The very process of radicalization is the necessary foundation for developing the anti-monopoly movement.”^[4]

The ultra-left today removes the rich history of the CPUSA and the American Communist movement, opting for theories of national nihilism (“America is a settler colonial state”) and that America is ultimately doomed with no redemption. They see the United States and ultimately the working class of this country as nothing more than “settlers”, who must be sent back to their country of heritage, even those who were born here and have been here for generations. This is not to excuse the history of America, the genocide of the Native Americans, the enslavement of Black people, etc. but the ultra-left have fallen into a trap of attempting to turn back time and right all wrongs by claiming the working class is “labor aristocracy” while glorifying sections of the lumpen-proletariat. In doing so, they continue to capitulate to reactionary forces in this country. The “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement in America is one such iteration that uses patriotism and American pride as a tool against the non-white sections of the working class and pushes xenophobic and racist rhetoric, effectively splitting the working class among color lines. The ultra-left commit the same error, instead opting to exclude white workers. In Strategy for a Black Agenda, Henry Winston comments on what he calls a “suicidal skin strategy”:

“Differences in skin color are used by monopoly capital to create and perpetuate division between the white majority and the Black minority in the United States, a division that originated not in differences of skin color, but from a different system—slavery—which was grafted onto the rising capitalist system.

“This different system was the basis for developing the differential in the nature, intensity and character of the special oppression and exploitation of Black people as compared to the white masses.

“But today the Black minority and the white majority are no longer separated by different economic systems. Now only the power of monopoly-fostered racism maintains disunity between Blacks and whites, and perpetuates discrimination against and super-exploitation of the Black minority.”^[5]

Ultimately, much of the left today refuse to do the substantial amount of work required to propel the working class into a revolutionary situation required to transition the United States into Socialism. Instead, many have opted to spending hours on social media, creating and dispensing memes proclaiming we need revolution now. The problem compounds when those sharing “revolutionary” propaganda online have no party education, are not cadre in any party, and have a grasp of Marxist theory based only on a small handful of books they have read, but are the ones claiming to have the most accurate positions. This then leads to people who are newer to Marxist theory being exposed solely to ultra-left views as well as driving away those who could be won over, but are now alienated and given a bad impression of the left. The reality is, none of them are to be found on the factory floors, in the trade unions, building working class consciousness and unity. As Gus Hall also said in Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism: “It is a way of keeping a radical image when in fact one has retreated and given up the struggle.”

History of the American Communist Movement

Henry Winston, in Strategy for a Black Agenda addresses one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century, the alliance of the CIA and Maoist groups against their common enemy, the Soviet Union and the working-class movement around the world. The CIA had found the use for these Left-Wing adventurists in order to dismantle an “anti-imperialist, internationalist [working class] strategy with a bourgeois nationalist policy, dividing and thereby weakening the struggle against oppression.” [find from SFBA]

In South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement that was led by the African National Congress (ANC) inspired by Nelson Mandela was set-back due to the reckless, individualistic actions of the separatist Maoist formation of the Pan African Congress (PAC).

The PAC was headed by a South African trade unionist linked with the C.I.A, and had the support of anti-Soviet, Maoist intellectuals like George Padmore. Padmore had the support of the so-called International Free Trade Unions, whose operations were financed by the C.I.A.

With Padmore’s encouragement, this group returned to South Africa, supported by the Chinese Maoists. The group’s first aim was to subvert the ANC’s revolutionary program. The members joined the ANC with the intention to influence it with its separatist, gun-toting, “revolutionary” ideology and organized the Pan-African Congress. The group formally became the PAC as a split off from the African National Congress in 1968.

Winston in “South Africa: Neo-Pan Africanism and Maoism”goes into how the PAC members sabotaged the leadership of the ANC by promoting their adventurist protests in front of police stations in Sharpeville, South Africa:

“The ‘leaders’ of the Pan Africanist Congress, who called the people to the police stations in the name of ‘Congress,’ were serving the apartheid rulers through a strategy directed against the liberation movement. They undermined unity and diverted the people’s forces from a realistic action under conditions of fascist terror, [emphasis ours—Ed.] which the ANC had set to begin the March 31 Anti-Pass National Work stoppage—an action aimed at confronting the regime with the mass unity of the people. By calling upon the people to appear at the fascist police stations, the PAC provocateurs were not only signaling to the fascist regime that the united front of the liberation movement had been breached—in addition, by deceitfully calling this separate action they trapped an unarmed people into a direct confrontation with armed, strong points of South African fascism. Even now [in 1972 when this was written], in the new stage of guerilla warfare led by the African National Congress, this would be sheer adventurism! Clearly, the Sharpeville massacre could not have taken place except as a direct result of the PAC ‘leaders’ splitting of the liberation movement deliberately misleading the people.”^[6]

The adventurist’s protest of the PAC put Nelson Mandela and others into prison and impeded the struggle against apartheid. But despite the hindrance of the PAC’s one-day strike in Sharpeville and the massacre that happened afterwards, the ANC was continuing to gain popularity. While the PAC was falling apart due to infighting and disunity within their organizations, the late 70s and 80s marked a turning point for the fight to end the racist regime in South Africa.

Winston mentions that there was a United Front effort that included the armed-resistance against the fascist apartheid coinciding with the peace movement. That was a possibility due to the coordinated effort of the ANC. Winston continues:

“The recent strikes of African workers in mines, factories and on the docks are an historically necessary, revolutionary part of the mobilization of masses for ever-higher levels of struggle for liberation in South Africa. One reason why this mass action takes the form today of direct strikes as compared to the ANC’s stay-away-from-work day—an equally revolutionary tactic in an earlier period—is the difference in the present level of struggle. [emphasis ours—Ed.)

“The strikes are taking place against a background of developing armed struggles led by the African National Congress of South Africa and by organizations of the liberation movements in Rhodesia and Portuguese-occupied areas. The armed struggles are adding to the people’s unity and confidence in all forms of struggle—and intensifying the crisis of white minority rule in South Africa and other countries.

“These armed struggles are directed at the most vulnerable points of fascist rule, while in contrast, when the neo-Pan-African misleaders called upon unarmed people to attack the police strong points, the armed struggle had not even begun.”^[7]

What should be apparent by Winston’s analysis is that the PAC wreckers started an isolated struggle prematurely removed from the masses. In contrast, the strategy of the ANC which had the support of the Soviet Union, would lead the struggle from the 60s until the early 90s leading the masses where they were in struggle. The Soviet Union would train thousands of cadres of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, to fight against the apartheid regime to attack the fascist apartheid at its weak points, but along with this, continued non-violent strikes, and the protests to free Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders was all part of the popular United Democratic Front strategy.

Today, ultra-leftist use similar strategies and tactics that take the form of advocating “instant revolution,” “power out of the barrel of a gun,” “urban guerrilla warfare,” etc. These short-sighted radicals can never gain the support of masses of people. Objectively, their actions allow the ruling imperialists and capitalist leaders to destroy any semblance of solidarity needed to fight against oppression.

American and Anti-Soviet-”Communists”

It is not only the ultra-leftists and Maoists that found interest in the support of the Anti-Soviet groups that claimed to be communists. On the world stage, the U.S. imperialists through the CIA and its shell organizations, found efforts to undermine the anti-imperialists liberation movements led by a working-class coalition. The goal was to secretly cultivate influence, outsource America’s dirty work and undermine the national liberation movements that were progressive and pro-Soviet.

Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski under Lyndon B Johnson and Jimmy Carter described how he convinced China to support the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

“I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” According to Brzezinski, the USA “winked, semi-publicly” at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge. Well into the 1980s, the United States itself would support the Khmer Rouge against Cambodia’s neighbor and America’s old wartime enemy, the Vietnamese Communists which was supported by the Soviet Union.

Integrated closely into the CIA’s intelligence and psychological warfare units after WWII, organizations, according to the CIA’s own website like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, helped to solidify the CIA’s emerging strategy of promoting the non-Communist left – the strategy that would soon become the theoretical foundation of the agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades.

In the case of Afghanistan, handpicked by U.S. administrators to participate in a UNESCO/Columbia University program, Hafizullah Amin was sent to New York in 1957. He later completed a master’s degree at Columbia–coincidentally, at a time when Brzezinski was gaining prominence there as a professor. Later Amin would become General Secretary of the Afghan Communist Party.

Amin would develop an analysis that was nothing but in name Marxist. Rather than pulling a Marxist-Leninist theory of leading a revolution through a labor-led strategy, Amin through his education at Columbia put those responsible for the education of the youth of the country, in the intelligentsia in the seat of the “revolutionary class.” It was through intelligentsia that the ground would gradually be prepared for the revolution, according to Amin’s analysis that he took back to Afghanistan. His revisionist strategy aimed first at the radicalization of Afghan teachers, and through them the radicalization of the Afghan population, especially the rural population. This would gain the support of Maoist China.

While in power, General Secretary Amin’s ultra-leftist tactics were unleashed within the party to liquidate the pro-soviet party members. The agricultural development was hit hard in the rural and religious communities, people were rounded up and detained. Amin deliberately initiated a policy closing mosques which only fueled a growing religious fanaticism that would empower the anti-socialist movement of the Mujahadeen, which included the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

The Soviet Union saw Amin as reckless and denounced his cruel reign. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev himself told then Afghani President Muhammad Tarekhi in a meeting that the Afghan government must broaden its political base and stop shooting people. Amin would only continue to promote ultra-leftist tactics while demanding the Soviet Union to send troops in the skirmishes it was fighting with CIA and Maoist Chinese-backed radical Islamic groups like the Mujahideen.

Among the many lessons of Afghanistan, the one described here is that ultra-leftist  deviations did not develop the proletarian class in the country to lead. The Party was led astray due to Amin’s overemphasis on intellectuals and violent repression of the clergy and peasantry.

Erasure of the American Communist Movement

Much of the theoretical outlook of the ultra-left, besides coming from a petty bourgeois radical view, is disconnected with the broader American Communist movement. The majority of them have not read the likes of Gus Hall and Henry Winston, the CPUSA’s most influential leaders that produced the most consistent Marxist-Leninist world outlook in the United States. In ignoring our history, the ultra-left seek to repeat the mistakes Hall and Winston warned us about. Issues of sectarianism and isolation plague the Maoist and Anarchist circles, making the average American worker unrecognizable to them. One such prominent issue is the two state solution with Israel/Palestine. The ultra-left have sunken to a level of national nihilism that further adds to their isolation, nationally if not globally from the Communist movement. Many now feel the need to call Israel “the Zionist entity”, implying that Israel has always been and will only ever be Zionist and should therefore be destroyed. They applaud Hamas’ actions against any and all Israelis because to the ultra-left, Israelis are nothing but “settlers” from Europe.

Many would be shocked to learn that it was the Soviet Union under Comrade Stalin’s leadership that sought to advocate for the creation of Israel along a two state solution. The CPUSA held the same line on Israel/Palestine, citing Hyman Lumer’s Zionism – Its Role in World Politics and Israel in Crisis by A.B. Magil. The ultra-left intentionally conceal the Communist movement’s historical stance of a two state solution.

“The basis for the coming into being of the State of Israel was not created by Zionism. Until the advent of Hitlerism with its monstrous crimes against the Jews, comparatively few Jews were induced by the Zionists to migrate to Palestine (in 1931 the Jewish population was about 175,000, a little more than one-fourth of the 1946 figure). It was the wave of immigration of refugees during and immediately after the war that first created a substantial Jewish community, and the new wave of immigration from Eastern Europe after 1948, stemming from the horrors of Hitlerism, that swelled the size of this community, doubling its numbers within a few years. But it was the Zionists who retained control and who fashioned the state according to their own design. The validity of Israel’s existence as a state derives from the UN partition resolution. However, the state envisioned by that resolution is not that conceived of and established by Zionism.”^[8]

Further erasure of American Communist history is the concept of industrial concentration. Many of the ultra-left, if asked, would profess that the industrial worker are no longer relevant in 2025 as America has sent many manufacturing jobs overseas to foreign countries. The truth is America is still the second highest manufacturing country in the world still, behind China and over double the output from Japan in third. It would be a grave mistake to conclude that industrial workers are no longer the backbone of the American economy. As Gus Hall says in Working Class USA:

“Communists have always pursued a policy of industrial concentration, with special emphasis on the basic section of the industrial working class. Basic industrial workers occupy a special position in the engine room of capitalism, and the system has developed in them a high degree of collectivity and cooperation. For this reason, industrial workers are the most revolutionary section of the working class.”^[9]

We’re faced with the age old question from Lenin: what is to be done? The American Communist movement must regain its industrial and working-class base. Historically, Communists have come from within the trade union movement. The vast majority of the American left are not located in the trade unions. As Lenin says, “[Communists] must learn to penetrate into prohibited premises where the representatives of the bourgeoisie are influencing the workers”. This includes methods such as “boring from within” the reactionary trade unions because setting up our own “revolutionary” unions would only further isolate us from the working class. In refusing to do this, the left “cannot hope to win over the majority of the workers”.

On the same premise, American Communists must get involved in bourgeois elections. Of course, elections under the capitalist system have limitations and cannot be looked upon as the end all, be all tactic, which is the line of Social Democrats. Lenin in Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder says, “it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with”. Yet, much of the American left view bourgeois elections as a waste of time and that willingly participating in it makes one complicit to the continuing of the capitalist system. Such views are born out of the nihilist tendencies within the left and are not of Marxism-Leninism.

Finally, and perhaps the most pressing and important tactic of our generation, promoted by Gus Hall and Henry Winston, is the anti-monopoly coalition. Gus Hall, in Working Class USA, explains, “Anti-monopoly movements do not call for the abolition of the capitalist system, but objectively they are anti-capitalist because they weaken the position and power of the capitalist class and give broad-based support to the issues and struggles of the working class. The movements against monopoly are not in and of themselves for socialism. But objectively they clear the path toward socialism.”

To echo Gus Hall, Americans have a rich history in anti-monopoly struggle. Much of the right-wing use American history to further jingoistic, anti-working class, and counter-revolutionary language when instead the case should be made that events like the American Revolution, which Lenin regarded as “one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars”, inspire the American people to take action against the monopolies.

The American left have a rich history to inspire the working class of this country, regardless of how much the ultra-left deny the revolutionary potential of the industrial proletariat and the working class at large. Instead, the Maoists and Anarchists want to throw all Marxist-Leninist tactics in the “dustbin of history”, viewing them as outdated. On the contrary, the theory of Marxism-Leninism has withstood the attacks of the ultra-left and provides the most concise and correct theoretical outlook for the working class to this day.

“Someone is talking about a one-state solution. If you believe that a one-state solution now is possible, it will be an apartheid state, because Israel has all powers in its hand and they can control all Palestine as they are doing now. And they are committing discrimination policy even against Palestinians inside Israel who are citizens of Israel. You can imagine how they will treat Palestinians in West Bank or in Gaza under the Israeli occupation.

“Someone is talking about a one-state solution. If you believe that a one-state solution now is possible, it will be an apartheid state, because Israel has all powers in its hand and they can control all Palestine as they are doing now. And they are committing discrimination policy even against Palestinians inside Israel who are citizens of Israel. You can imagine how they will treat Palestinians in West Bank or in Gaza under the Israeli occupation.”^[10]

[1] Hall, Gus, “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism”, The Communists, Vol. 2; Party of Communists USA: Seattle, 2022,p. 46.

[2] Lenin, Op. Cit., 1977, pp. 189-191.

[3] Winston, Henry, Selected Works of Henry Winston, Vol. 3; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2024, pp. 173-74.

[4] Hall, Gus, Working Class USA: The Power and the Movement; International Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 293-94.

[5] Winston, Henry, Strategy for a Black Agenda; International Publishers: New York, 1973, p. 18.

[6] Winston, Henry, “South Africa: Neo-Pan Africanism and Maoism” in Selected Works of Henry Winston, Vol. 3; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2025, pp. 233-34.

[7]Ibid., p. 238.

[8] Lumer, Hyman, Zionism – Its Role in World Politics; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2024, pg. 11.

[9] Hall, Op. Cit., 1987, p. 59.

[10] Taqaz, Dr. Aqel, “Palestinian Communist Leader Dr. Aqel Taqaz Supports Two-State Solution”, The Daily Worker.

Under the new Trump presidency, the issue of the protection of the foreign-born has taken on a new urgency. To quote Trump’s Executive Order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,”

The Attorney General, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall take all appropriate action to prioritize the prosecution of criminal offenses related to the unauthorized entry or continued unauthorized presence of aliens in the United States.

Furthermore, looking into his other order “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats”:

“… And the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

From these orders, we can clearly see what the Trump Administration is trying to do with immigrants. But what has been the communist position historically on immigration? Communists have always been in the forefront of defending the foreign-born that come to our country. In the 1930s, communists set up the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born led by Louise Pettibone Smith. Their job was to defend foreign-born progressives against deportation.

Communists have remained consistent in their support of rights for the foreign-born. But the capitalists want to have it both ways. They want to be able to bring in cheap labor and scab labor, but get rid of them when they become more militant. It is the job of communists to organize these foreign workers into unions, and to prevent the native workers from falling into reaction regarding the foreign-born. In other words, “foreign-born and native-born unite and fight!”

This policy is exemplified in the following section from the program of the Party of Communist USA, most recently amended at its Third Congress in April 2024.

Immigration Policy

We are a nation of immigrants; a “melting pot” of many ethnic backgrounds. Immigrants built this country. Emma Lazarus, a socialist Jewish-American who worked with Jewish victims of anti-semitic pogroms (indiscriminate massacres of Jewish villages in the Tsarist Russian Empire), wrote a famous poem, “New Colossus.” Lazarus’s poem is emblazoned on the foundation of the Statue of Liberty and calls for welcoming foreign immigrants to American shores.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

“Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

“The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

“I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Immigrant history included: indentured servitude, forced importation of people from Africa as slaves, those fleeing religious intolerance, workers and farmers escaping oppression and seeking economic opportunity, victims of political persecution from fascism, imperialism, feudalism, and monarchy.

Capitalists historically, and in the present day, have divided workers on ethnic lines by using intolerance and bigotry. We must not fall into these racist traps and we must unite workers against our collective exploitation regardless of our background.

It is the U.S. Corporate economic policies, using oppressed nations as military bases, which cause peoples in over-exploited economies of the world to flee their poor economic situation and seek more economic stability in the U.S. Most people would prefer to stay in their home country if it was economically stable, but it is the U.S. corporate policies and its militarism that prevents this. Historically speaking this was not an issue in places like the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations because their economic policy did not create unfavorable economic conditions.

Immigrants who have lived in this country for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, or their entire life knowing this country as their own should be granted American citizenship.

Those who are undocumented living in the United States are under the worst conditions. They are paid less and often don’t receive benefits; their rent and housing cost more; they cannot use emergency services like the rest of us; and due to threats of deportation, they cannot participate in union collective bargaining. Their immigration status forces them into a more precarious life. The capitalists benefit from this situation while the citizens and immigrants do not. Therefore, we demand a workable, accessible path to citizenship for all those in this country.

We must address the country’s historically racist policies that have created super profits for the employers when it comes to hiring immigrants. Such a stain on our history includes laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), Mexican Repatriation Act (1929), the Japanese Internment Executive Order (1942), and the Muslim Travel Bans (2017). Also, the Immigration and Nationalities Act (1952) authorizes the exclusion of foreign immigrants on the basis of Communist affiliation from entering the country. We must push for creating legislation that prohibits discrimination based on racial, ethnic, national-lines or Communist affiliations.

We are calling to extend legislation to help set up a Federal agency that would deal with immigration services, United States citizenship, and employment that will ease the integration process into this country and help immigrants find jobs. Emulating the famous Emma Lazarus plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty, we welcome the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and the wretched refuse to our teeming shores.”

On the other hand, fascist leaders, hired thugs, and collaborators of failed US supported dictatorships (for example, Marcos – Philippines, Batista – Cuba, the Shah – Iran) who terrorized masses of their own people, must be denied entry into our country; they are unwelcome here.

What exactly is fascism? Is it the same as authoritarianism? Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov at the 7th Congress of the Communist International (1935) defined fascism as the “open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

No longer should we allow America to be a safe haven for foreign Nazis and other fascists. It was scandalous that 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed to our shores after WWII through “Operation Paperclip”. We now know that these Nazi collaborators were used to empower the interest of American imperialist influence, both in this country, and on the world stage.

The United States should not be a home for these fascists. We cannot import fascists from other countries due to their negative influence on the American public through lobbying, propaganda, and normalizing their reactionary rhetoric. That is why we must not allow fascism to fester in our country. The Party is unconditionally against fascists entering our shores.

As William Sylvis, founder of the National Labor Union, reminded us in 1869:

“What is wanted is for every union to help inculcate the grand ennobling idea that the interests of [working people] are one; that there should be no distinction of race or nationality; no classification of Jew or Gentile; Christian or infidel; that there is one dividing line, that which separates mankind into two great classes, the class that labors and the class that lives by others’ labor.” In closing, the position of communists and all progressive elements of society must be on the side of the protection of the foreign-born.

The essence of the minimum program generally remains the same (i.e., the struggle for expansion of suffrage and democracy, civil liberties, reduction in working hours and days, and better working conditions). The form, however, changes. Though one general constant is the striving of unity between the left (general left, not just communists) with the political center (those who agree on questions of expanding democracy, civil rights, and working conditions, but do not yet see the utility in social revolution).^[1]

The Left-Center Unity has come in a range of forms, from the temporary coalition of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the Liberals to overthrow the Tsarist monarchy, to the United Front during the period of counter-revolution after the October Revolution, to the People’s Fronts against fascism during WWII. Today, with the domination of society by monopoly capital, where bourgeois democracy still exists but in a severely hampered state by a dominant oligarchy, the necessary intermediate form is a coalition of all forces opposed to the anti-democratic rule of monopoly. This coalition can also be called the Anti-Monopoly Coalition. We will discuss various forces and their interests within the coalition.

Comrade General Secretary Gus Hall, in his report to the 20^th National Convention of the Communist Party USA stated:

“Our [the Communist Party] approach is based on the basic premise that there is no other purpose or reason for any activity in the organized society except to serve the people. Costs, private profits, are totally irrelevant to the basic purpose of an organized society.”

He continues:

“Our position is – make the monopoly corporations pay the tab. If the corporations say they cannot operate – which is fakery in 99 percent of the cases – then take the operation over. Nationalize the industry. We are for a law which states that before a corporation can move a factory, it must have the agreement of the union and the community. If it disregards the wishes of the people – take the operation over.”^[2]

Herein lies the essence of the Anti-Monopoly Coalition and its role in today’s society: to build a broad, working class led democratic coalition against monopoly parasitism. We will discuss the concept further in the following sections.

What is the Anti-Monopoly Coalition?

At the Third Congress of the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA), the Party passed a motion to build such an anti-monopoly coalition as a modern iteration of the People’s Front against the growing fascist threat. What is the basis of such a coalition? As Gus Hall, then General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), advised:

“The anti-monopoly concept is a broad, flexible term reflecting the varied nature of the struggle. Anti-monopoly struggles take place in every sector of life because monopolies dominate every sector of life. The anti-monopoly struggles are laying the bricks for an anti-monopoly coalition. The specific issues that give rise to anti-monopoly struggles are economic, political, anti-war, for civil rights, and for democracy. The working class is forced to take an anti-monopoly position. The struggles in all sectors move toward a confrontation with monopoly corporations.”^[3]

Comrade Gus Hall continues:

“The basis for anti-monopoly politics is political independence from the twin parties of capitalism. There will be a period when the independent forces will use the two-party, one-class electoral apparatus, which serves monopoly, but the struggle must be for the breaking of that political vise and the setting up of a new anti-monopoly party based on the working class.

“The aim of the anti-monopoly struggles must be the creation of an anti-monopoly coalition strong enough to break the economic and political stranglehold of monopoly capital. This, of necessity, means a struggle for economic and political power. Economic and political power cannot evade the question of state power. It means anti-monopoly state power.”^[4]

In its essence, the anti-monopoly coalition is a mass movement of all anti-monopoly forces aimed at wresting power away from monopoly capital. In this period of rising fascism, the anti-monopoly coalition acts as the modern incarnation of the People’s Front, which, with Communist leadership, is the bulwark needed to defeat fascism. The ultimate goal is to usher in the transition towards socialism with a People’s Front government.

Left-Center Unity as the Basis of the Anti-Monopoly Coalition

As was stated previously, there are two main trends within the Anti-Monopoly coalition: the Left and the Center. The left forces are those who have arrived at a class-conscious approach to labor and other progressive struggles, as opposed to the right forces that push for anti-strike, class collaboration with the bosses, and their agents. The Center within the Left-Center Anti-Monopoly Coalition is the masses of people, including a large chunk of the working class, who lack their own direction but are honest and operate in good faith. Taking wisdom yet again from Gus Hall, we see:

“Examining the forces involved and their positions, it is clear that the Center forces have an intermediate position on economic struggles, not consistently militant; a Center position on the struggle against racism sometimes seeks opportunistically to get around the issue; and on political action they are moving in a Left direction but have not yet reached the level of the Left and broken with the two old parties. They are honest, positive, militant forces, often influenced by Left concepts and ideas, but they have some limitations.”^[5]

This observation is an important concept to understand in the building of the Anti-Monopoly Coalition. The Center’s lack of direction causes it to attach itself to either the Left or the Right. Sectarianism within the left is most fatal to building a coalition. This sectarianism causes the Left to reject the Center when the Center does not agree with the more militant demands of the Left. When rejected by the left forces, the center will move rightwards. When Capitalism is in crisis, and the Center becomes disillusioned with the class-collaborationism of the Right, they begin a transition to the left. This transition should be viewed positively by the Left, which can lead the Center to a greater militancy through a patient, yet determined, struggle.

Within both the Left and Center, there are subsections which, in general, share the same interests and demands as the whole but also have special needs that must be met to bring about unity with the whole. These sections include racial minorities, women, the elderly, youth, the foreign-born, LGBT+, and others. Among some, even on the “Left,” there is a fatal error of ignoring these special demands and instead declaring that “the working class is the working class and nothing else.” In reality, society is dominated and shaped in the image of monopoly capital. This monopoly capital institutes inequality among social classes, namely between the minority class that owns the vast proportion of capital and the majority that does not own capital and must work to make ends meet. How then can this monopoly minority maintain control over the majority of toilers?

Comrade Henry Winston correctly remarked,

“But a strategy for Black liberation—as well as a strategy for building a mass alternative to monopoly’s two parties—must first of all recognize the special role of Black workers within the Black liberation movement as a whole, and in the general class struggle of the multi-racial working class.

“Despite the divisiveness of racism, the objective historical process is merging Black workers with the general class struggle. … The Black liberation movement as such does not and will not merge with the working class. To advance the idea of such a merger can be of assistance only to those who would ideologically disarm the Black workers, and divert them from their dual historic role of participating fully and leading equally in the general class struggle, while leading the Black liberation movement. To convey the impression that the Black people as a whole merge into the working class obscures in particular the responsibility of white workers in building an alliance between the multi-racial working class, the Black liberation movement, and all the oppressed as central to the anti-monopoly struggle.”^[6]

The truth is, as pointed out by Winston, that the working class is already disunited on many forms of bigotry and chauvinism created and imposed upon the working class by Wall Street and their cronies. To properly build a people’s movement and anti-monopoly mass party, the communist and progressive forces cannot ignore the double and triple oppression that certain minorities face on top of class oppression. Winston above specifically discusses black liberation struggle, but his analysis can and must be applied to other struggles, such as the struggles for women’s and LGBT+ equality, the struggles for equal access to housing, healthcare, and quality education, the struggle for environmental protection from corporate destruction, and others. These struggles, while not directly focused on exploitation in the workplace, are nonetheless workers’ and people’s struggles whose victories will deal a massive blow to monopoly capital.

Anti-Monopoly Struggle Unites Working Class with Class Allies

In the Anti-Monopoly Coalition, just as in all intermediate forms of the past, societal unrest was not restricted solely to the industrial proletariat. The labor movement serves as the nucleus in which all the frustrated masses belonging to all classes who suffer under the conditions imposed by monopoly capital. Comrade Lenin spoke clearly on this reality:

“… strengthen our faith in the might of the labour movement we lead; for we see that unrest in the foremost revolutionary class is spreading to other classes and other strata of society, that it has already led, not only to the rousing of the revolutionary spirit among the students to a degree hitherto unparalleled, but to the beginning of the awakening of the countryside, to greater self-confidence and readiness to struggle on the part of social groups that have until now (as groups) not been very responsive.

“Public unrest is growing among the entire people in Russia, among all classes, and it is our duty … to exert every effort to take advantage of this development, to explain to the progressive working-class intellectuals what an ally they have in the peasants, in the students, and the intellectuals generally, and to teach them how to take advantage of the flashes of social protest that break out, now in one place, now in another, We shall be able to assume our role of front-rank fighters for freedom only when the working class, led by a militant revolutionary party, while never for a moment forgetting its special condition in modern society and its specific historic task of liberating humanity from economic enslavement, will raise the banner in the struggle for freedom for the whole people and rally to this banner those of the most varied strata …”^[7]

While the other classes, ruined and made destitute by monopoly capital, will flock around such a coalition to wrest basic standards of democracy and living, the coalition must be led by the working class, who are most conscious of the class nature of exploitation. The intermediate classes and working class strata: the petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals, labor bureaucrats, etc., are compelled to vacillate between the two dominant classes. As Comrade Stalin puts it, the:

“… intermediate middle strata, which either take the side of one or the other of these two conflicting classes, or else take up a neutral or semi-neutral position in this struggle …”^[8]

For this reason, when the agitated masses of the intermediate classes and strata take up struggle against the oligarchic order without a labor leadership, they tend generally towards either: class-collaboration, aimless protest, or even nihilistic individualism. One can look to protests such as the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 that lasted two months and ultimately fizzled out due to a lack of a concrete platform of demands and organization. The point is not to reject such mass movements wholesale, but to understand that, with a lack of leadership of the working class and particularly an advanced working class vanguard, such movements are doomed to dissipate or be limited in their achievements against Wall Street’s political domination. We will now take a closer look at the role of the working class within the Anti-Monopoly Coalition.

Working Class as the Leaders in the Anti-Monopoly Coalition

US society is at a critical crossroads. The path society takes can lead the country forward into a stronger democracy that allocates its resources for the good of humanity over the profits of private monopolies. Conversely, society can also move further towards fascism, where democracy is at best an empty word and where the working class can barely afford to survive. The direction society takes is largely dependent on the will of its constituents. If we as a country choose democracy and prosperity, we need to form a multi-fronted force that struggles for political independence from the monopolies: big business, banks, and Wall Street.

Labor, and in particular, a class-oriented trade union movement, has a crucial role to play within this Anti-Monopoly Coalition. Labor is to be the heart of this coalition. While the coalition is to unify all progressive and democratic forces (such as workers, students, urban professionals, farmers, small business owners, etc.), the working class is the force that has the power, if leveraged correctly, to bring the economy to a halt until its demands are met. The workers control the production, the shipment, and even the commerce of goods. The bosses and monopolies that dictate policies onto society are the ones who rely on the working class the most.

For labor to play the leading role in the Anti-Monopoly Coalition, it first has to work tirelessly to bring unity to the trade union movement. Concretely, this effort will have the following immediate goals:

1. Ending any prejudices within the unions, such as racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant sentiments, which breaks up solidarity and even prevents entry to the organized labor movement by key sections of labor.
2. Organizing the unorganized to bring unity between unionized and non-unionized labor.
3. Pushing for a nationwide right to organize and against any attempts at systematic opening of shops, such as so-called “right to work” laws.
4. Amalgamating small craft unions into unions on industrial lines.
5. Pushing to overturn laws, such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which restrict solidarity strikes.
6. Forming caucuses within unions that struggle for trade union democracy, such as the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).

As the Anti-Monopoly Coalition emerges, organized and militant labor must be ready to take leadership. To ensure success, labor has to work on the above goals. In working on these goals, militant labor leaders will inevitably clash with the bosses’ agents and reactionary trade union leaders within the unions that obstruct the independent political action of labor.

The Anti-Monopoly Coalition in Politics

Drawing again from his report to the 20th National Convention of the CPUSA, Gus Hall asserts:

“We must reject any narrow idea that elections are limited to a few demagogic speeches and casting a vote. We must see it as a form of mass struggle in which millions are actively involved.”^[9]

“What are our overall goals?”

Comrade Hall asks. He responds:

• First, they are to halt the present dangerous and reactionary course of developments in the nation.
• Second, to turn the country towards an anti-monopoly course of peace, economic stability, and a wider-based democracy; to bring about the crystallization of a broad people’s coalition, of the anti-monopoly, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-fascist, pro-labor forces in the United States.
• Third, to force an end to US aggression in Indo-China [today in the Middle East; my comment]. …
• Fourth, to bring about the defeat of the most reactionary anti-labor, racist, pro-war candidates, and the election of independent candidates – the election of workers, Black Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, women, youth, poor farmers, of progressive, left, and Communist candidates in their place.
• Fifth, to give the people an opportunity to hear, read, and see where the Communist Party [Party of Communists USA] stands on the issues.
• And sixth, to get the largest possible votes for the Communist candidates as the strongest, longest-lasting, most meaningful protest against the reactionary policies of Monopoly Capital.

And finally:

“In general terms, our aim is to expose and defeat the reactionary candidates, to sharply criticize the [establishment] liberal candidates, and to give support to the progressive independent candidates. We will expose to defeat, we will criticize to strengthen, and we will support to elect.”

The ultimate goal of the Anti-Monopoly Coalition is to unite all progressive forces of the Left-Center people’s front away from the two-party duopoly towards independent political action. This can take multiple forms as it builds towards the ultimate goal of a labor-led political party (most commonly understood as a labor party) to go against the parties of monopoly capital.

These paths are featured within the PCUSA’s three-legged stool approach to electoral politics. The three-legged stool consists of:

1. The first leg is running our candidates under the Party of Communists USA, where and when feasible.
2. The second leg is running with other forces in a formation that is independent of the Two-Party setup, where possible. This formation can be referred to as an “Electoral Front”.
3. If the other two avenues are not possible, or appropriate, the third leg of the stool is to support regional or national progressives who are members of established political parties whose platform is pro-labor, against imperialist war, and thus anti-fascist, and against bigotry.^[10]

This shows that the PCUSA’s electoral strategy is based on the anti-monopoly coalition. A recent example of the anti-monopoly coalition in action: New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City Mayor.

The Zohran Mamdani campaign has been rooted in an anti-monopoly message, uniting New Yorkers of all backgrounds in a movement against the monopoly-controlled Democratic Party establishment in New York City. Comrade Hall made it clear how the mood of the masses affects bourgeois politics:

“As a rule, election time speeches by bourgeois politicians are a much more accurate reflection of the mood of the masses than they are of where they themselves stand. The candidates are either ‘turning the country around,’ or they are offering ‘a totally new beginning’ …”^[11]

Assemblyman Mamdani has run a progressive, borderline Socialist campaign representing the interests of the working class of New York City. At the heart of this campaign is a volunteer network of well over 40,000 New Yorkers led by an active rank-and-file movement within labor. While the misleaders of labor were on board with endorsing the boss-backed candidate, disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, in the Democratic Primary, then rank-and-file movements sprang into action:

“… as many of NYC’s misleaders of labor were preparing to endorse Cuomo, rank-and-file leaders stepped up to fight back against this betrayal. The misleaders of AFSCME DC37  and UFT, two unions who led a massive betrayal by spearheading Mayor Eric Adam’s plan to force all retirees into a privatized Medicare Advantage plan, were set to back Cuomo until rank-and-file leaders got word and organized members against Cuomo. In a surprise move, DC37 ended up endorsing Mamdani, while the UFT, in attempt to face no political backlash, would refrain from endorsing anyone in the primary. The since voted-out leadership of SEIU Local 1199 endorsed Cuomo in April, now a rank-and-file movement is fighting to rescind that endorsement as well.”^[12]

We cannot forget the rank-and-file-led United Auto Workers District 9A, leading the way in pushing an endorsement of Assemblyman Mamdani in December 2024, long before he was viewed as a viable candidate.

With a robust rank-and-file movement behind him, Assemblyman Mamdani would go on to win the Democratic Party nomination for Mayor, receiving the most votes ever in a New York City Mayoral Primary. This is a clear sign that an anti-monopoly electoral strategy is not just a viable option to show the failures of bourgeois democracy, but can be a successful catalyst towards building working-class power.

A Brief Polemic Against the Ultra-Left that Scoffs at the Anti-Monopoly Coalition

Within the Left, three trends have historically and still exist today on the question of participation in electoral politics and the struggle for legislative reforms. There is a central current that understands the utility of bourgeois politics. This current uses electoralism as a tool in securing better conditions for the working class and the building of broader democratic coalitions.  They also make use of parliamentarism as a propaganda tool to expose the politically bankrupt bourgeois parties and their reactionary leadership. This trend, which the Marxist-Leninists belong to however also understands parliamentarism as a tactic and not an end in itself.  On either side of the central current exist the right opportunists or the ultra-left, both of which do not make an attempt to differentiate between the minimum and maximum programs and thus see the struggle for democratic reforms as the same struggle for a socialist mode of production. These two extremes both display their petty bourgeois wavering in their own way. The right opportunists ignore the need for any eventual social revolution and substitute a gradualist theory of reform whereby socialism will come from parliamentarism under a bourgeois state. The Ultra-Left, which today poses a bigger threat to the Communist and democratic movements, will be the main focus.

The Ultra-Left, just like their right opportunist siblings, obfuscate the minimum and maximum programs. However, their confusion takes on a different form than the rightists. For the ultra-leftist, parliamentarism has no role in left politics. They will, under various facades, reject all democratic reforms and electoralism under the capitalist system and instead demand “revolution now.” They cannot fathom any progress unless under a proletarian state, or no state, according to the anarchists. Lenin rebukes this concept, saying:

“Parliamentarism has become ‘historically obsolete.’ That is true as regards propaganda. But everyone knows that this is still a long way from overcoming it practically. Capitalism could have been declared, and with full justice, to be ‘historically obsolete’ many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the soil of capitalism. Parliamentarism is ‘historically obsolete’ from the standpoint of world history, that is to say, the era of bourgeois parliamentarism has come to an end and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history reckons in decades. Ten or twenty years sooner or later makes no difference when measured by the scale of world history; from the standpoint of world history, it is a trifle that cannot be calculated even approximately. But precisely for that reason, it is a howling theoretical blunder to apply the scale of world history to practical politics.

“Is parliamentarism ‘politically obsolete’? That is quite another matter. Were that true, the position of the ‘Lefts’ would be a strong one. But it has to be proved by a most searching analysis, and the ‘Lefts’ do not even know how to approach it. In the ‘Theses on Parliamentarism,’ published in the Bulletin of the Provisional Bureau in Amsterdam of the Communist International, No. l, February 1920, and obviously expressing the Dutch-Left or Left-Dutch strivings, the analysis, as we shall see, is also hopelessly bad.”^[13]

The reality facing us today is one where the masses, including the working masses, have not yet reached the point of abandoning the old system for the new. It should seem obvious that substituting all legislative reforms for “revolution now” can lead to nothing but so-called “revolutionary” adventurism, which will be discussed in more detail within this issue. Communists (those who follow the lead of our forefathers: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin), correctly understand that the masses, with the working class as the leadership, are the motive force behind social revolution. Without the connection of the so-called “revolution” to the masses, all one can expect at best is to achieve a minority insurrection or coup d’etat (i.e., replacing one leadership for another under the same bourgeois system). However, more likely than not, the insurrection will be drowned in blood and so will give pretext by the most reactionary capitalists to institute martial law and throw society into a new indiscriminate reign of terror.

Conclusion

Experience shows that with every attempt to introduce progressive reforms into the Democratic Party, the monopoly-dominated Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its special interest leaders thwart attempts by the American people to institute progressive policies. This has been exemplified by Bernie Sanders’ campaigns, or the newest example: the Zohran Mamdani NYC mayoral campaign, being attacked from all angles, especially by the DNC establishment.

Finance capital, viewing progressive candidates within its ranks as a threat, is compelled to push anti-democratic means to prevent these candidates from coalescing within the Democratic Party.

All the while, the masses, including the working class, are paying attention to these anti-democratic actions and are living through a lesson on the class nature of the bourgeois Democratic Party. Lenin, affirming the need for intermediate forms of struggle as a school for the masses, states:

“But, needless to say, the masses learn from life and not from books …”^[14]

And further,

“One of the most profound causes that periodically gives rise to differences over tactics is the very growth of the labour movement. If this movement is not measured by the criterion of some fantastic ideal, but is regarded as the practical movement of ordinary people, it will be clear that the enlistment of larger and larger numbers of new “recruits”, the attraction of new sections of the working people must inevitably be accompanied by waverings in the sphere of theory and tactics, by repetitions of old mistakes, by a temporary reversion to antiquated views and antiquated methods, and so forth. The labor movement of every country periodically spends a varying amount of energy, attention, and time on the “training” of recruits.”

History has shown that the progressive-center forces will gravitate to the reactionary forces in the event that the left cannot break away from its sectarianism. The bourgeois political machine will spare no efforts in blocking any lasting progressive reforms and the center forces will make compromises with the bourgeoisie. This is why the Communists need to work within the Anti-Monopoly Coalition to pull the masses away from the right and answer the burning needs of the working class.

On this point, Comrade Henry Winston states:

“The aim of monopoly is to force a reversal of every aspect of bourgeois democracy, limited as it is, in order to open the way for fascism. The aim of the anti-monopoly program, as advocated by the Communist Party [PCUSA], is to bring about a strategic breakthrough to a deeper and wider degree of democracy…”^[15] Initially, the Anti-Monopoly Coalition will be led by the petty-bourgeoisie. However, this class being unstable, will eventually turn towards capitulation with the monopolists. Therefore, the working class and the Communists, with their consistent ideology, must struggle to take leadership.

[1] Hall, Gus, Working Class USA; International Publishers: New York, 1987, p. 159.

^[2] Hall, Gus, Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion – the People’s Struggle for a New Beginning; New Outlook Publishers: New York, 1972, p. 42.

^[3] Hall, Gus, Imperialism Today; International Publishers: New York, 1972, p. 367.

^[4] Ibid., p. 367.

^[5] Hall, Op. Cit., 1987, p. 164.

^[6] Winston, Henry, Class, Race, and Black Liberation; International Publishers: New York, 1977, p. 164.

^[7] Lenin, Vladimir, Collected Works; Vol. V, Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1960, p. 188-189.

^[8] Stalin, Joseph & Wells, H.G., Marxism Versus Liberalism, New Century Publishers: New York, 1945.

^[9] Hall, Op. Cit., 1972, p. 46.

^[10] https://partyofcommunistsusa.net/program/

^[11] Hall, Op. Cit., p. 46.

^[12] Cifone, S.M., “Misleaders of Labor Coalesce Behind Cuomo as Rank-and-File Shifts Leftward”, Labor Today.

^[13] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 55-56.

^[14] Lenin, V.I., “Differences in the European Labour Movement”; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974

^[15] Winston, Henry, Selected Works of Henry Winston, Vol. 2; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2024, p. 203.

From 2016 to the present our Party has been involved in movements warning the American people of the fascist developments taking place in American politics. Since the Counter-Revolution in the Soviet Union in 1991, elements within both the Republican and Democratic Parties have shifted gradually to the Right. From a “whiff of fascism” which emerged during the Ronald Reagan years, the onslaught of the most rabid sections of monopoly capital have developed into a stench of fascism.

In 1926, Comrade Joseph Stalin forewarned the world “[that] if Capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets, there would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”[1]

As we previously explained, Trump’s first Administration was in reality a test run in setting the groundwork for the eventual implementation of Project 2025 and destroying the last remnants of Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was during his first term, that Trump focused on stacking the Supreme Court with loyal justices that would rubber stamp his reactionary domestic executive orders.

Toward the end of Trump’s first Administration, the Party of Communists USA correctly analyzed the future direction of Trump’s MAGA movement.

The PCUSA’s public statements outline this direction.

I. January 6, 2021 – Capitol Hill Putsch

On January 6^th, 2021, the day that Congress was set to ratify the results of the 2020 election, a far-right mob descended upon the Capitol, with the explicit goal to conduct a coup in support of Donald Trump. This mob, consisting of supporters of failed movements, such as the Confederacy, South Vietnam, and other anti-communist reactionaries, came together to support this anti-democratic, fascistic goal to install a reactionary dictatorship.

There was very little resistance from the Capitol Police; however, once the mob reached the chamber’s doors, there was a limited armed stand-off, which resulted in the death of one of the far-right protesters. Despite this fact, it is quite clear that there was collusion between the fascistic forces and the Capitol Police. Police were seen interacting with the protesters in a friendly manner, taking pictures with them, shaking their hands, and even opening the gate for them. It is impossible for the police and the military to be unaware of a planned mass protest at the center of the Federal Government. How else could it be that for almost four hours, and the mob be allowed to ransack the Senate and House chambers? Despite the mayor of Washington D.C.’s request to send in the National Guard, days before the protest, it was refused. It is more than suspicious that the request for the National Guard to be sent in was refused; it is a clear sign of collaboration between the police and the far-right mob.

In response to the mob’s attack, President-Elect Joe Biden stated, “our democracy is under unprecedented assault” and called on Donald Trump to call for the protesters’ immediate dispersal on national television. This milquetoast response was an embarrassment, and it is unimaginable for the President-Elect to not call for the arrest of those behind this attempted coup. If these had been Black Lives Matter, peace, or communist, protesters they would have, at best, been arrested before they even reached the steps of the Capitol. More likely than not, they would have been shot. Black protesters would most certainly have suffered a worse fate.

Why did this insurrection happen now? After 250 years of this country’s history, why are we only experiencing a situation such as this now? What has transpired is a result of capitalist decay; our economic and political system has failed to adequately address the global pandemic that has accelerated our economic decline. The ruling class has run out of ways to continue to extract profit from working people, with neoliberal reforms resulting in a decades long decline in the working class’ quality of life and ever-rising unemployment. Only a united working class has the capability to make drastic social change because of their relationship to the means of production –factories, natural resources, and the labor force itself.

II. January 2025 — Trump’s Inaugural “Decree”

“My proudest legacy will be that of a Peacemaker and Unifier.”

–President Trump at his Inaugural Address, January 20, 2025

Only days into his second term, rather than be a Peacemaker, Trump has created new conflicts where previously none had existed. Trump declared that the United States would annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. Along the way, one of his executive orders included the immediate renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. In addition, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Trump wants to be a Unifier – but for whom? Unification normally means inclusivity. Trump has declared that all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs are to end immediately. Federal employees have already received notices in their workplaces based off of this executive order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs […].” DEI programs include affirmative actions programs, which have historically been supported by progressives Americans since 1961, when President Kennedy issue Executive Order 10925 calling for affirmative action in federal hiring.

Trump’s unification is only a unification of the capitalist class represented by multi-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the proposed members of Trump’s Cabinet, signaling a more open dictatorship of the capitalist class.

Many of Trump’s executive actions amount to an attempt to reduce the role of the federal government and shift the responsibility to individual states and the question of states’ rights. These actions include calling for the abolition of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as well as supporting Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education, who has publicly stated her intent to abolish the Department of Education and defund public schools.

Furthermore, Trump thanked Hispanics for their support during the election, but then turned around and immediately closed all American asylum refugee processing centers in Latin America. He has declared his goal to be the deportation of up to 11 million undocumented workers and the removal of birthright citizenship, which is protected by the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution.

Trump stated that he will remove the onerous censorship that he and others have experienced over the last four years. In reality, Trump is now reacting to progressive thought by threatening to pull funding from schools which teach subjects such as Critical Race Theory. At the same time, he is supporting the anti-Communist Crucial Communism Teaching Act, alongside other things.

This statement only scratches the surface of the contradictions between Trump’s Executive Orders and his stated goals of Peace and Unity.

Secretariat,
Central Committee of Party of Communists USA

III. March 2025 — Development of Fascism in America under Trump

Two months into Trump’s second term, what was originally a “whiff of fascism” has now become a “stench.”

Historically, the Communist movement has identified two major indications which signal the emergence of fascism: 1) the suppression of the trade union movement, and 2) the suppression of the Communist movement.

With respect to the trade union movement, Trump wasted no time in dismantling the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which adjudicates issues of organized labor at the national level. This was done by firing the leading members of the NLRB, to the point where it no longer was able to form a quorum, and thus was unable to pass any decisions. Now, through court order, only one member, Gwynne Wilcox, has been reinstated. The general counsel was not reinstated, and Trump’s pick for their replacement, Crystal Carey, is a partner at the notorious union-busting law firm Morgan Lewis. Furthermore, Trump has appealed the decision to reinstate Wilcox. His appeal has the potential to go to the Supreme Court, which is hostile to the interests of labor.

Furthermore, Trump has, through Executive Orders, nullified the Collective Bargaining Agreements which were reached with federal government unions prior to his presidency. Through the actions of the “Department of Government Efficiency”, his administration, with the help of monopoly capitalists like Elon Musk, has sought to terminate the employment of as many federal government workers as possible. These terminations result in reduced dues payments to the government unions, thus weakening them further. Now, there is a bill being advanced through the Senate to ban Federal employees from organizing unions altogether.

In terms of the Communist movement, the Trump administration has not given it much focus per se because of its lack of prominence in the United States today. However, in his view, liberalism is Communism, and this he has attacked. These attacks have manifested as portraying liberals as “Marxian leftists”, enemies, and traitors. Project 2025, which is the playbook of the second Trump administration, states the following in its introduction: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” Furthermore, Project 2025 makes it its goal to “Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.” Thus, from Trump’s own point of view, he is doing everything he can to attack this so-called “Marxist” movement.

Finally, as the Trump administration proceeds to dismantle the American economy through measures such as tariffs, and as the hegemony of American imperialism collapses abroad, the familiar tactic of scapegoating oppressed minorities has become prominent. Within a few short months, there has been an explosion of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-DEI (which is a dogwhistle for anti-LGBT+ and racism), anti-immigrant, anti-liberal, and anti-science behavior among those in positions of power within our country. This behavior has ranged from hateful rhetoric, to oppressive legislation and actions. These are age-old tactics which fascists use to divide people and prevent the formation of a coherent resistance movement against their power. All progressive Americans must continuously fight against these tactics, because they will never cease so long as the capitalist system is in place. Americans must understand that the drive of fascism is not one of abstract totalitarianism, but rather it should be seen as a concrete expression of the will of corporate America and the military-industrial complex, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to suppress democratic institutions.

[1] Stalin, J.V., “Once More on the Social-Democratic Deviation in Our Party”, Works, Vol. 9; Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow, 1954, pp. 28-29.

Capital – through multinational companies and their staunch supporters Britain, the US and other Western countries – tried to impose their hegemony through so-called free global trade, advocated through the World Trade Organization and described rightly as LPG (Liberation, Privatization and Globalization).

This process was initiated during the presidency of Republican Ronald Regan. It is interesting to note that this policy continued during the regime of Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. The reason is clear, as both wanted to continue with US dominance.

However, subsequent developments like the rise of China, Russia and other Asian countries like India, Japan and South Korea led to rethinking in the US. Fardeen Zakaria has rightly described the process as “the rise of the rest.” This challenged the dominant position of US. Hence, under Republican president Donald Trump, the trend of policy reversal is clear as he talks of imposing unilateral tariff or taxes on imports from other countries.

When Trump became president for the first time in 2016, he targeted Russia and China and helped create tensions between Europe and Russia through NATO. Europe was dependent on cheap Russian oil and gas, but this conflict forced Europe to abandon the Russian oil and gas and turn to US for the same. Thus, the US is now the biggest supplier of oil and gas to Europe. The conflict also led to the Ukraine-Russia war.

This new situation brought Russia, China and Iran together. Similarly, Russian attempts to use BRICS countries to challenge the dollar currency is also seen as a challenge by the US; hence Trump is threatening BRICS countries and even those that are interested in joining the BRICS.

German and French interests prevailed in the 20th century through the development of the common European market, the single currency of the Euro, and bringing together the European countries through the formation of the European Parliament. This development is perceived as a challenge to US hegemony and hence it is Trump’s strategy to compel them to divert their funds by increasing their defence spending through NATO.

By advocating a ceasefire between Russian and Ukraine, Trump is trying to create a wedge between China and Russia. For a long time, Russians have considered themselves Europeans and thought a weak Europe could be dominated by them, but pulling Russia away from China seems to be the new strategy of Trump in his second term. The military industrial complex and its interest are looked after by Trump, using US military power on one hand and US economic power or market strength and technological dominance on the other.

Meanwhile China is also preparing by developing AI technology (through DeepSeek) and through the Belt and Road Initiative. It is deliberately avoiding an arms race with the US, as this led to grave consequences for the USSR.

Return of the Nation State

After the Second World War most of the countries in the “Third World” became independent and colonialism was ended. During that period the US dominated the world and defeated existing socialism led by the USSR – it is no wonder that Trump in his second term is trying to repeat the same experience. But the world has changed, so the tactics of “democratic socialism” and projecting the West as the defender of democracy is no longer going to work. Thus, compromising democracy and democratic values is becoming common in the process of “Return of the State.”

The emergence of nationalism all over the world in 20th century, when people were fighting their colonial masters, resulted in anti-imperialist and independent countries. This strengthened the non-alignment movement. People’s interests were primary in this process; however, in the 21st century it is mostly the fascist or rightist, conservative forces that are leading the return of the nation state. Hence, people’s interests are pushed back, leading to increasing unemployment, a widening gap between classes, and inflation.

Because of the rivalry between European countries during 1930-40, the world faced the Second World War and five million civilians lost their lives. The return of the nation state and competition may again lead to a war, or multiple wars, and a death blow to democracy and its values unless people unite to defeat fascist forces.

New Age (Communist Party of India)