>Charles: Let me repeat that what you
>said was that what I said was dangerous
>and you claimed I was exoticizing
>the other and ignoring or
>insulting Mexicans, Chinese
>and other non-Black oppressed
>national groups. You said nothing
>about what you say immediately
>above.
As something of a student of Marx myself, I am interested as to how a Marxist like Charles reconciles his black liberation politics with Marx's own views on the question of racial oppression in the article On the Jewish Question.
It seems unavoidable to me that Marx was an assimilationist, except that he put the responsibility upon society to transform itself to accept the Jew, rather than putting the responsibility upon the Jew to adapt himself to society. But, and this is the sticking point for most, Marx is clear in arguing that the liberation of the Jew necessarily entails his liberation from his own Jewishness. The charge of anti-semitism against Marx (in my view unjustified) comes about because he does indeed intend the abolition of the Jewish race, in the sense of the abolition of all racial differences.
Nor can Marx's early essay On the Jewish Question be considered a youthful abberation. The argument there is the model for Marx's later assessment of the historical mission of the working class, namely its own abolition, with the abolition of class society.
Doesn't that reduce the slogan of black power to an intermediate demand before the abolition of racial difference as such? Isn't the marxist goal the abolition of blackness (and whiteness) rather than its realisation?
Fraternally (as we used to say) -- Jim heartfield