Black Socialism
Socialism has never been a movement only for white people. Surprising as it may seem socialist principles have always been a part of the black American tradition. African-American socialism or Black Socialism emerged as a strong political wave in the 20th century dating back to the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Great Depression devastated the black community. It rendered a majority of black workers unemployed and left the remaining underpaid. Black Americans had already been influenced in the past by trade union struggles of the 1920's and the 1930's. Mass organization among both black and white factory workers gave rise to powerful unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO), United Automobile Workers, United Mine Workers, United Steel Workers, etc. These organizations attracted over 500,000 black members.
The 1940’s also saw the second Great Migration during which almost 6 million black people left their homes in the rural South in order to escape racism and for jobs in the more industrial North. However, the sheer scale of the Great Migration led to widespread urban chaos in the North. By the 1940’s almost half of the black population lived in northern cities. There they faced the horrors of the ghettos: racism, police brutality, poverty and unemployment. Furthermore, racist Jim Crow laws mandated the segregation of public schools, spaces, transportation, restaurants, restrooms etc which made life in the cities miserable for most black people.
World War II brought about a major transformation in the attitude of the blacks. Thousands of black soldiers were enlisted in the US army and fought and died for the United States. During the war black soldiers were struck by the glaring hypocrisy of the war. They were fighting alongside the capitalists against the racism of the Nazis, while in their own country an even more horrific racism was the norm. The war emboldened many black soldiers who returned home and became activists against segregation.
Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, the traditional Civil Rights Movement saw leaders like Martin Luther King and organizations like National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C) dominating the black freedom struggle. They operated under a strict philosophy of nonviolence and with the aim of integration in American society. But in the late 60's the Civil Rights protest met with extreme and violent white backlash. White resistance in places like Cicero, Illinois stunned black America. The black masses realized that nonviolence was a dated idea and the youth especially became disillusioned by it and more open towards militant forms of protest. The ghettos exploded with hard-line parties like the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, Black Muslims, the League for Revolutionary Black Workers etc. During the Meredith 'March against Fear' in Mississippi in June 1966, S.N.C.C Chairman Stokely Carmichael rallied marchers by chanting “We want Black Power.” Thus Black Power had made it to the mainstream.
As the U.S. lost more battles in Vietnam, the black power radicals observed that Imperialism and Capitalism could be defeated. They increasingly saw Socialism as a viable alternative to capitalist hegemony. New socialist and independent states had begun to outdo the West in areas of science, healthcare, and more importantly in social areas like elimination of racism and gender discrimination working class empowerment. Black Power members also began to look towards socialist struggles around the world for inspiration.They were influenced by the Cuban revolution, and the freedom struggles of Ghana, North Vietnam and China.
China offered black radicals a Third World Marxist model that enabled them to challenge the western vision of class struggle. Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party went on to state that ‘the end goal being the people; to be a revolutionary nationalist, you would by necessity have to be a socialist" Socialist ideology was a perfect fit against the struggle for civil rights. Socialist principles asserted the following : Being anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist and Utilizing class struggle, to end oppression. In Harlem in the late 60's and early 70’s most blacks were rumored to own a copy of Chairman Mao’s quotations. Black radicals like Newton and W.E.B DuBois had visited China and were impressed by the organization of socialist society. The great black nationalist leader Malcolm X had stated ‘You cannot have capitalism without racism.’ Turn this around and it meant that unless capitalism was annihilated, racism would continue, which meant that a reorganization of societal structures was necessary . Moreover the black people were resisting US imperialism in solidarity with other Third World Nations and hence they saw their struggle as not just against race but also against capitalism.
By far the most important of the black power organizations was the Black Panther Party which openly proclaimed its Marxist-Leninist affiliation. While not ignoring race, the party strove for a class-based, solution to the problem of American blacks. This fit in line with Marxist theoreticians such as Mao Tse-tung who stated that “The racial struggle is fundamentally a matter of class struggle.” The members of the party realized that since the black population made up only 13% of the population as a whole, the blacks by themselves could never completely transform American society. Thus, they saw that black liberation was inseparable from the liberation of the working class as a whole. Black Panther leader Bobby Seale confirmed this view when he said” “We fight racism with solidarity”. In effect it meant fighting racism with a united class struggle.
Black power parties like the Black Panther Party consciously reached out to the downtrodden, sections of the black community which they described, using Marxist phrase, as the 'lumpenproletariat'. Committed to serving the community, they established free breakfast programs for children. They also operated free health clinics ,clothing distribution, liberation schools, elderly escort, bus and maintenance services. .
Some Black Power parties concentrated on trade unionism, being inspired by socialist ideology of class struggle. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was a radical organization of black autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan who were dissatisfied with working conditions at Chrysler . DRUM grew out of the Black Power Movement and engineered shutdowns of plants in May and July '1968 where on an average more than 3,000 black workers participated. These union movements culminated in an umbrella organization, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW).
The Black Power vision of socialism was a more embracing form of socialism than the traditional left had been. They sought to ally with and accommodate the gay liberation. They also embraced other groups working towards a strategy for ‘alliance building’ like the “Rainbow Coalition ” which included the Young Lords that were based in Puerto Rico and the Young Patriots Organization composed of poor whites. Women too played lead roles in the black power parties, though there many instances reported of sexism and violence against women. Some Black Power organizations like the Black Panthers contested elections with the Peace and Freedom Party, (PFP). However, neither the PFP, nor any of the organisations the Panthers worked with, had a significant base among the white working class. Newton recognized this, explaining in 1971: "Our hook-up with the white radicals did not give us access to the white community, because they do not guide the white community".
The tragedy of the Panthers was that, having failed to develop a rounded-out Marxist approach. They leaned too much towards militancy rather than socialism. This saw a rapid decline of themselves and a disappearance of their supporters. Some like Eldridge Cleaver turned to terrorism. Later, Newton reflected on their mistakes: "We were looked upon as an ad-hoc military group, operating outside the community fabric and too radical to be part of it. We saw ourselves as the revolutionary vanguard and did not fully understand that only the people can create the revolution. And hence the people ‘did not follow our lead in picking up the gun’."
At the height of their influence, J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, described the Black Power organizations as "The number one threat to security in the USA". According to a Justice Department report the Black Liberation Army was suspected of involvement in over 70 incidents of violence between 1970 and 1976. On July 31, 1972, five armed individuals hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841 en route from Detroit to Miami, eventually collecting a ransom of $1 million and diverting the plane, after passengers were released, to Algeria. In another high-profile incident, Assata Shakur, Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were said to have opened fire on state troopers in New Jersey.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) attacked the Black Liberation Movement with a ferocity that was unparalleled in the history of the country. Hundreds of the principal organizers of the movement were arrested on false charges. Many spent years in prison or in forced exile. Dozens of others were assassinated such as Bobby Hutton, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Ralph Featherstone, Che Payne Robinson, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, George Jackson, Hugo Pinnell, etc. The COINTELPRO project was also designed to discredit the revolutionary movement and prevent it from gaining respectability.
