>>> Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.princeton.edu> 11/23/99 12:43PM >>>
>
>
> Max, the friendly warlord, mocks the notion that there are progressive
and backward nationalisms, this as he faints at Marxism. Take a look at
the analysis of that Marxist , Lenin. Not to bore with dogma, but
the key is to differentiate between oppressor and oppressed nations.
For example, in the Balkans, the main oppressor nation(s) were the U.S.
and NATO ( the imperialist nations. great power chauvinism ). In that context,
the national self-determination of Yugoslavia is defended. It really is not
at all as capricious as Max cutsies it. In Viet Nam, the NATIONAL liberation
front was organized by Marxist leadership for national self-determination of
the colonially oppressed (by the French and American great power chauvinists)
Viet Namese nation. Nothing wrong with that nationalism. Get it Max ?
> ___________________
Hi Charles, Yet Ho Chi Minh's communist front from the outset dealt harshly--imprisonment, harrassment, murder--with radical worker and peasant organizations and militants.
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Charles: When you say "with radical workers and peasant organizations and militants" do you mean all of them or some tiny, tiny number who were ultraleftists and sectarians ? The vast majority of radical worker and peasant organizations and militants were with the CP fighting the French and the Americans, otherwise the CP couldn't possibly have defeated the imperialists who had overwhelming military superiority.
So is it your position that the Viet Namese should not have formed a national liberation front against imperialism , but rather should have organized not based on nationalism but proletarian internationalism or what ? (((((((((((((((((
See NGO VAN 1913 VIET NAM 1920 1945 REVOLUTION ET CONTRE REVOLUTION SOUS LA DOMINATION COLONIALE <1995>
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Charles: For a different story see
1. Vietnam's History http://rubens.anu.edu.au/student.projects/vietnam/public_html/viethis2.html Details Ho Chi Minh's involvement in the French Communist Party and the formation of the ICP in 1930. Also details the 1973 peace agreement.
Or maybe Ho Chi Minh disagrees:
Bernard Fall, ed., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66. New York: Praeger, 1967.
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In his detailed, deeply knowledgable study of the twists and turns of Communist Rule after 1975, Gabriel Kolko whose anti imperialist credentials are impeccable (he has detailed as much as anyone the barbarity of the imperialist assault on Vietnam) seems genuinely surprised by the corruption, venality, exploitativeness of the govt in power over a unified Vietnam (Kolko pays special attention to the atrophy of workers' rights, massive new inequalities from decollectivization, the terms at which state owned enterprises were privatized, and the general incompetence and theoretial impoverishment of the leadership, etc).
But Van's beautifully writen treatment allows (and I have had access to English transations of excerpts; a full trans is in the works) one to trace the present problems to the way the party had been organized and dealt with dissent from the outset. It's time that the American left progress beyond a simple embrace of third world stalinist govts in the way that, e.g., the Bulletin of Concerned Asia Scholars (of which I have been a reader) too often has.
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Charles: Does Kolko say that the National Liberation Front and strategy of national liberation against imperialism were in error or wrong ? Does Van ?That is specifically the nationalism I referred to.
Does Kolko say Viet Nam should give up its national status because of all he alleges ? Does Van ?
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Now as for my putative assault on the right of the BRC to exist, one will note that my precise criticism, inspired by Reed, was centered on the attempt to achieve 'racial' or 'black operational' (West) unity, left or otherwise, via a congress organized on racially exclusive terms, which the BRC leadership (Alkalimat in particular) has progressively relaxed anyway. Neither you nor Carroll ever responded point by point to the grounds for my skepticism, expressed on MLK's birthday this year. Without attending to the reasons I gave, it is not possible to dismiss my argument as racist. I have never denied the necessity of an autonomous struggle against racism.
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Charles: Generally, Black organization and meeting without White people present is forced in Black people by the overwhelming history of exclusion and discrimination against Black people by White people. It is not Black people's preference , but a necessity forced on us by this history.
I responded in great detail and specificity to every element of your argument when this came up last time. I repost below several of my replies to you then. So, your claim to the contrary is false. It was not that hard to do since this is a very old argument. Since I did attend to your argument it is possible to rebuff it as invalid and a support for racism.
Although it is not a substantive argument to point to the fact that so many well-respected radical Black leaders such as Manning Marable, Angela Davis, Jarvis Tyner, Leith Mullings, Charlene Mitchell , etc. , etc. support the Congress, their support is an indirect argument. They certainly are aware of all of the types of objections you and Reed have made, and have rejected them. All of those listed are well known as working in close and comradely relationships with White radicals and other radicals of color.
See below for "point by point" response to your arguments last time.
CB
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old posts on BRC
Charles: I should add to what I said above about the progressive aspect of natonalism of oppressed groups, that I can understand Rakesh's concern about the contradictory reactionary potential and expression of Black nationalism and other nationalisms of oppressed groups. This is a mixed question, and to use a cliche, must be examined on a more case by case basis, that is concretely.
In my opinion, the Black Radical Congress was very, very progressive. In fact, as I posted earlier, it was not actually closed to whites. I have direct evidence of that. I sat next to and spoke with white people in the sessions. It was announced from the podium that this had been sanctioned by the leading committee. This demonstrated a new maturity in Black radicalism, including explicitly and conscious revolutionary nationalist radicalism.
Although it should be recalled that the Black Panthers were very internationalist AND NATIONALIST in their approach. I got a newsletter from the Institute of MultiRacial Justice, "Shades of Power", at the BRC, with a historical article on a Japanese American , Richard Aoki, who had been in a U.S. concentration camp as a youth and who was a member and "field marshall" of the Black Pantthers Party. According to Aoki there were several Asian American members of the Black Panther Party.
In Michigan, in the same era, we had the White Panther Party, a group of white radicals , and allies of the Black Panthers. The origin of the White Panther Party was part of a dialectic like that Louis describes above.
There is a sense in which one cannot be a good internationalist without being nationally rooted. Radicals of "great power" nations and nationalities recognize that there nationalism must not be in conventional political form, yet they are rooted in peoples with traditions, languages and historical class struggles. The "national" history for whites is the class struggles of the oppressed classes sketched essentially in The Communist Manifesto. In other words, the working classes of great power nations must recover and make their progressive national consciousnesses out of the same hidden historical working class struggles that Marx and Engels emphasized , in their new historical theory and method in The Manifesto.
Workers of all countries and colors unite !
Charles Brown
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Rakesh writes: Charles B faults me for failure to comply with Lenin's theses on nationalism >
Charles: I raise Lenin's analysis because he is not likely to be accused of undermining the interest of working class unity and victory in his arguments that oppressed national groups have the perogative to organize SEPARATELY for national liberation. This speaks directly to the issue in dispute here , separate meetings. That is short of setting up a whole nation, but the essence of the situtation is the same. In other words, Poles having exclusively Polish meetings without any Germans (or Great White Russians) in them would not undermine the Bolsheviks approach. What is your theory that is more faithful to the interest of proletarian revolution (workers of the world unite) than Lenin's ?
>>Rakesh: and for softness towards white racism and segregation (which
racially exclusive congresses may only strengthen) >>
Charles:Softness is not exactly the point. You fail to apprehend the specific history of the relationship between the oppressor white and oppressed Black groups which is central for deciding whether it is "absurd" to consider Black Americans a group with the elements of a nation with right of self-determination , i.e. the right within a working class revolutionary perspective to have separate meetings etc. You also fail to comprehend, what Lenin's theory does, the practical problem that the prejudice of oppressor group members creates a legitimate need in the oppressed group members to meet outside of that oppression to effectively plan for struggling specifically against national /racist oppression. That doesn't contradict also having other meetings with oppressing group members with developed enough revolutionary consciousness and common sense to understand the nature of special national oppression within overall working class oppresssion. Most actually existing white radic! als I ha! ve worked with have this common sense and are cool with moments of Black only meetings. They aren't offended or putoff by it. They are the ones who then get invited to the "separate"meetings, having demonstrated their solidarity. At the BRC there were lots of whites (but in a minority , which is important , and probably why there was a public pre-meeting discouragement of whites from coming) The whites there probably came on invitation of specific Black participants, which was some control over the level of their self-criticism about racism.
>>Rakesh: and intersperses his
post with excerpts from mine, though the passages quoted are used more as
pauses to catch his breath than arguments to be refuted.>>
Charles: More silliness, as if I have to struggle to crack on your stuff. It wasn't hard at all. In fact, I think I did it in my sleep.
>>Rakesh:
I only want to reply to his accusation that my posts have reeked of racism.
He blames me for using "colored" and "Negro". I referred to minority
bidnesmen as 'colored' as a way of distinguishing them and their interests
from those of the 'black' masses; as Charles doubtless knows, ordinary
African Americans often mock bourgie blacks for a reluctance to
self-describe themselves as black. Colored was used then to make a class
point.>>
Charles: I said you were making a racist argument. If you want to talk Black, you better get it right. Black people don't use that slang among a bunch of white people, Brother man.
Rakesh: >>I referred to Negro intellectuals in the course of one post as a way of mocking the insidious reduction of black intellectuals as experts only qualified to opine on what has historically been called the Negro question. This tragic constriction of black intellectual life is discussed profoundly by Reed, Jr in the intro to his DuBois book. As tragic is the tendency to reduce the social question in this country to the question of racial inequality and blacks (as the Thernstroms and D'Souza are anxious to do) much as the social question was once reduced by renegade socialists in Germany to the Jewish question.>>
Charles: Consider that "Workers of the World unite" places the national question at the very center of the class question.
>>Rakesh: I remain opposed to Stalinism, social democracy, left or structural keyensianism (I have been thinking about Palley's book), third world and black nationalism (progressive, reactionary or otherwise)--all the terrible things of the 20th century we are now free to leave behind, if we only dare to be free>>
Charles: You have a right to be opposed to what you want. But being absolutely opposed to all "third world and black nationalism" is subject to the cricticisms I made. For example, the Viet Namese National Liberaton Front was "third world" (nationally oppressed group, colonialist victim) nationalism. So, objectively there you are with the imperialists and against the world proletarian revolutionay movement.
Charles Brown
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>>> Jim heartfield writes:
So let me get this right.
The sum effect of our debate over the BRC was that Rakesh, for failing to wholy endorse the BRC was denounced as a naive racist and resigned, leaving us a little closer to being an exclusively white list.
Happy?>>>
Here, Jim and I do not agree. Rakesh is being a bit thinskinned in quitting. As I said earlier to him, don't dish it out if you can't take it. His rhetoric in attacking the BRC was very provocative. The counter arguments came on the same rhetorical level as his, so his posturing as "victim" now is phony.
Jim makes a critical misrepresentation when he says Rakesh was "denounced" for "failing to wholy endorse the BRC." Rakesh did not endorse the BRC partially, as one might think from this phrase. He made a vigorous, blanket attack on the BRC, using emotionally charged words, such as "Negro" and "colored". As far as I remember, the responses merely picked up at the rhetorical level he established. I repeat, don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Let me say that a specific and important tactic of the New Racist hegemony established by Reaganism in the U.S. has been to stigmatize the use of the terms "racist" and "racism". Although there is an important difference between rightwing racism and left, it is outrageous to try to make the use of the term out of bounds for " polite " argumentation, including dropping out of debates as if you have been "fouled" when the criticism is raised.
What I said was Rakesh was making a racist argument in denouncing in vivid and sharp terms the BRC as reinforcing socalled reactionary Black nationalism. Absolute opposition to any self-organization of oppressed national groups is reactionary and racist. I will say it unabashedly anytime it comes up.
One doesn't demonstrate the political superiority of one's position by animated posturing in frustration and anger with progressive nationalism, and then, worse, posturing as a VICTIM in the crackback on your pronouncements of absolute anti-nationalism.
Charles Brown