On tactics of stopping racist speech

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Mar 16 13:16:30 PST 2000



>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 03/16/00 03:53PM >>>

Charles Brown wrote:


>
> This has nothing to do with outlawing fascitic racist speech as a narrow exception to freedom of speech.
>

Charles, I think I have a new way of articulating my disagreement with you on this. Let's see if this makes sense. (I am taking for granted what I have already said several times: if a way can be found to do it, racist speech and writing should be suppressed.)

I start with a question. Under what social and political conditions could such a law (outlawing racist speech) become law in the United States in the near future? There are two possible answers to this question:

a. If the capitalist class decided that it was in its interest to pass such a law.

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CB: This was the case with the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th Amendments, and all the Civil Rights laws of the 1960's.

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b. If the working class (i.e., the anti-racist elements *within* the working class) became strong enough to *force* such a law on the bourgeois state.

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CB: Actually , this was also the case in the passage of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th Amendments, and all the Civil Rights laws of the 1960's.. These laws are passed in a complex situation of working class victories and ruling class concessions and accomodation to a new situation such that they make it somewhat in their favor.

This happened with the fall of Apartheid too. The ruling class jumps out and says we are going to have to do this, so lets see if we can do it to our best advantage.

**********

In the case of (a), we probably confront a Trojan Horse -- that is, we confront a situation in which the various fears expressed in opposition to such a law would be realized. The practical results would be a further limitation on the rights of *anti*-racist speech and the continued liberty of racist speech.

********* CB: As I say, situation "{a}'s are always combination situation "{a}" and "{b}'s. So, there is a Trojan Horse element and an actual working class victory element. Actual history comes messy like this.

**********

In the case of (b) we would be in a position to suppress much racist speech through our own activities, without appealing at all to the police power of the state. (E.g. it would be possible to beat up professors who spouted *Bell Curve* trash and then defend the act politically.) Under those conditions we would not need such a law and in fact would be better off without it.

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CB: Leninism has the capacity to consider legal and illegal parties. But history has taught us that the slightest illegality in a Communist Party will be used by the bourgeoisie to destroy us, or more accurately the bourgeoisie will fabricate illegalities about the Party and distort and exaggerate any "illigitemacies" of the Party, such as beating people up, as an excuse to ban the Party. Thus, Marxist-Leninists are forced to be hyperlegal in some contexts, less we be attacked by the state as illegal.

When we rally very strong and enduring mass working class support and membership for the Party, it may be possible to violate some bourgeois bad laws without consequence. But for now, given McCarthyism and the history of U.S. bourgeois tyranny and repression of Communists, ironically, we have to discipline ourselves to be more legal than anybody else. Part of the way to do this is to propose everything in the form of a law.

This is being non-dogmatic and drawing lessons from the actual experience of Communists (Marxists) in the U.S.

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You hypothesize a situation in which somehow we can convince the ruling class (or its lackeys) to pass an anti-racist speech law and use in our favor. I am sceptical. Your proposition is true as a statement of substance but misleading as a guide to political action.

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CB: We have gotten lots of anti-racist laws passed in the history of the struggles of laboring peoples. We got pro-labor laws passed too. But they are fleeting and pervertable. These lessons the working class must recall from its history.

CB



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