Eugenics, Racism and Fascism, Socialism, Communism, Etc.

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

Doug is correct that the CPUSA was superior to other organizations on the US 
left of the 1930s in terms of taking anti-racist struggles seriously. For all 
of its crudeness -- and it was rather crude formula which was even more 
mechanically applied in the US -- the Leninist/Stalinist theory of national 
liberation provided the CP with a means of addressing the specificity of 
anti-racist struggle that was altogether absent in the Trotskyist tradition. 
Thus, although the 'Black Belt' nation thesis was a poor policy which no one 
took seriously as a policy, it still provided a means for the CP to sink real 
roots in the African-American community, from the African Blood Brotherhood 
connection to the Scottsboro Boys case.

On the field of anti-racist struggle, the Socialists were not quite as bad as 
the Trotskyists and anarchists, as witnessed by the presence of a number of 
key African-American trade unionists in their ranks, most prominently A. 
Phillip Randolph. But it had a Debsian color blind, class politics which led 
it to de-emphasize anti-racist struggles. As a consequence, many 
African-American, from W. E. B. DuBois to Hubert Harrison, passed through it 
on the way to other political destinations.

But I must strongly dissent from the formulations presented here and designed 
to excuse anti-Semitism and racism in Poland, USSR, China and elsewhere, 
formulations which claim that it is pivotal that anti-Semitism and racism 
preceded socialist and communist organizations and states. Surely 
organizations and states which claim to bring a revolutionary new day, free 
of all exploitation and oppression, can not credibly lay blame for racism and 
anti-Semitism in their practices and ranks on the dead weight of past 
history. Anti-semitism and racism preceded the Nazis in Germany too, but who 
would argue, with a straight face, that this somehow absolved them from 
historical responsibility for their anti-Semitic and racist crimes. It is 
nonsense, in the light of Stalin's murder of leaders of the Jewish community 
in the early 1950s and the infamous trial of the 'doctors' plot,' to pretend 
that anti-Semitism was not official state policy in the USSR. And what is 
crucial here is not simply that anti-Semitism in Russia outlived the USSR, 
but that its main public advocate is to found in the leader of the 
reconstituted Communist Party. It is nonsense, in light of the anti-Semitic 
trials in Stalinist satellite states in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. It 
is nonsense in terms of the treatment of other non-Russian and non-Han 
Chinese minorities in China and in the USSR.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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