[lbo-talk] Michaels, Against Diversity

[c b]

Most of the bleeding edge everywhere recognizes both struggles are
intertwined. Guys like Chavez demonstrate the concrete truth behind
the interlocking nature of the battles for a socialist democracy. His
internal enemies are the wealthy bourgeoisie and their racists views
of who should be up and who should be down -

Chuck Grimes

^^^^

On the history of left analysis of the intertwined issues of class and
race, especially in the US, racism is the main tool used by the ruling
class to divide the working class, and thwart working class victory in
the class struggle. In _Capital_, Karl Marx said that labor in the
white skin shall not be free while labor in black skin is branded. But
the principle centrality of the liberation and equality of
African-Americans, and other oppressed races and nationalities to
working class liberation has continuing validity today. Sloganeering,
it was in the mid-twentieth Century "Black and white, unite and
fight".

In fact, this idea is a specific of the main Marxist slogan "Workers
of all countries, unite". Lenin expanded the slogan to combine
ant-capitalism and anti-imperialism "Workers and oppressed peoples of
all nations , unite."