OMYGOD!
I am agreeing completely with Leo Casey.
There is a tendency to see racism, antisemitism, sexism, and hetereosexism in socialist and communist groups and regimes, and then dismiss it as either "not really socialism or communsim" or "not as bad as under capitalism," or worse, "after the revolution, there will be no [fill in the blank _______].
We need to face these issues squarely and use precise language to dissect them in a way that does not ignore the unpleasant realities. Tough challenge, but worth the effort.
-Chip Berlet
-----Original Message----- From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of LeoCasey at aol.com Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 6:49 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Eugenics, Racism and Fascism, Socialism, Communism, Etc.
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 --