How to ask questions when you don't know what the questions are

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Jan 6 14:54:29 PST 2000


Currently on the marxism list there is a discussion -- fairly hot at times -- of "black nationalism," the discussion including some extended posts on what is meant by "nationalism" that context. Some of the posts have been very good, and all (from several clashing perspectives) have been of considerable interest. But clearly all of us there need to expand the list of questions we are dealing with. How to do that? The question asking procedure favored by Doug (which is fine for journalistic purposes or to harass an enemy, not only fails to lead to any sort of real discussion among comrades) but does not even help in uncovering the questions which need to be asked. I'm trying out there a way to try to begin discovering those questions posting the message copied below. I think it "asks" questions far more usefully than does Doug's method.

The place in working-class politics of independent black action is of course important on this list as well as the marxism list.

Carrol

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Post from Carrol Cox to the marxism list:
>
>
Philip L Ferguson wrote:


> If the class becomes unified, it would not be "under black
leadership".
> The leadership would necessarily, like the movement itself, be
thoroughly
> multi-racial.

Nestor's comments on the nature of "leadership" are germane here, and as several, including Philip, have noted, a sort of de facto black leadership of a more individual kind is also widely operative, even beyond the borders of the U.S. I wish also to incorporate by citation here Jose's remarks on the usage of the word *nationalism*.

Yes, the leadership would be, in most respects, "multi-racial" (and "multi-gender"), and that would be an accurate general description of the situation I provisionally envisage. But Lou's post on history brings

out another element which (as David Bruce recognizes) is difficult to see from a distance, or even up close for many. it is the immense difficulty black Americans have in trusting whites at all. Even the black activists that do trust us and do work with us have that difficulty, and it is a real one which I think whites should honor. And which the organizational forms of the u.s. left will have to honor in fairly specific ways, both as to program and bureaucratic structure. That is, program and leadership positions have to be so fashioned that whites have to prove trustworthy whether they are or not. (I am going to focus on "race" here, and on blacks in particular, though gender and other ethnic groups raise similar or identical questions and problems.)

Organizationally, I think this means that there must be two kinds of groups in any u.s. left: (1) black and white groups (2) black only groups, and the latter must have some say in the internal affairs of the former. Programmatically, it will mean (I would think) that strong positive affirmative action programs be essential demands in labor-management bargaining. That,of course, will mean very nasty fights within unions -- and victory in that fight may be nearly as far away as revolution itself. And moreover, those necessary fights will not even be initiated (this is an empirical prediction) without the presence of strong black caucuses within union locals, with those local caucuses probably having some form of national coordination and cooperation.

(Another empirical prediction: those black caucuses will not come into serious existence without the existence of strong caucuses of black women uniting (informally) without strong women's caucuses with black and white membership)

Another prediction: We are not, in fact, going to win a majority of white male workers to the kind of program imaged (not even outlined, just imaged) here. I hope we can win *large* minorities of minority workers and women to this kind of struggle, and a strong and active small minority of white men to it. It is a social-democratic daydream that, inside capitalism, a "class unified around socialist aims" refers to a majority in strictly census terms. Huge social transformations are always brought about by an active minority.

Any further and I would be engaged in writing recipes for the cook shops of the future.

Carrol



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