T.O. 91: Elections 2024 – Whither Black Voters – LFN May Day – Black Workers Party – 100 Years Ago (Part 2)

Activists gather at 1981 Convention of the National Black Independent Political Party

The Organizer Newsletter
May 6, 2023 – Issue No. 91
Please distribute widely & Subscribe today!
http://www.socialistorganizer.org
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IN THIS ISSUE:

• Editorial: 2024 Presidential Campaign – and the Duopoly Is Off to the Races

• Whither Black Voters in 2024 – by Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist reprinted from Black Agenda Report

• OPEN FORUM: May Day Messages from LFN (South Carolina SCWP and California Immigrant Rights Activists)

• Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Party in the U.S. – by Alan Benjamin

100 Years Ago – December 30, 1922: The founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (PART 2 of two-part series)

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2024 Presidential Campaign – and the Duopoly Is Off to the Races

Editorial

It came as no surprise: On April 24, Biden announced he was running for re-election in 2024 – and Bernie Sanders, his main rival in the 2020 Democratic Party primary, was the first member of Congress to announce his support for Biden, stating, “I will do everything I can to see the president is re-elected.”

Sanders warned that a Republican victory would signify the end of democracy in America, which is why he was also discouraging any other high-profile “progressive” candidates from challenging Biden in 2024. “My job, and I think the progressive movement’s job, is to make certain that he [Biden] stands up and fights for the working class of this country.”

“What’s at stake,” Sanders told MSNBC, “is whether we have some right-wing demagogue running this country or pathological liar, somebody who’s trying to divide us up – or whether we re-elect somebody who is a very decent human being who’s trying to do the opposite, trying to bring the American people together.”

“Sheepdogging for the Democrats”

Black Agenda Reporter (BAR) co-founder Bruce Dixon called Sanders’ role “sheepdogging” for the Democrats, that is, rounding up all the disenchanted, dispossessed, and disenfranchised voting age people in the United States (the overwhelming majority) and funneling them back into the Democratic Party, one of the twin parties of Capital.

When it comes to the U.S.-NATO-provoked war in Ukraine or the impending threat of war against China, the only people toward whom Biden has acted “decently” are the merchants of death. Seeking to out-hawk the Republican Party hawks, Biden has upped the U.S. war budget to more than $1 trillion, when all indirect war expenditures are counted.

The arms manufacturers and the top military brass are laughing all the way to the bank. They are open about wanting to drag out the war in Ukraine as long as possible. Even moderate international calls for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war are ridiculed and rejected. The only “negotiations,” the White House has insisted, will be based on the total victory of the U.S., NATO and Ukrainian forces in Ukraine. It’s the peace of the graveyard.

Let there be no doubt: In 2024, Biden will be THE main war candidate. His stated goal will be to “unite” the American people behind the U.S. war(s) and interventions the world over. This is why leading voices in Wall Street and Corporate America have announced an initial $1 billion war chest for Biden’s re-election campaign.

“Labor’s Best Friend”?

Biden has been touted by the top AFL-CIO leaders as “the best friend that labor’s ever had.”

Tell that to the public-sector workers (teachers, firefighters, bus drivers, social service workers, etc.), whose real wages will be cut in the name of building “national unity” to pay for the wars abroad. Across Europe such cuts in wages and working conditions – as well as a sharp hike in the rates of inflation – have devastated the purchasing power of the working-class majority. The U.S. with its immense oil and other reserves is somewhat sheltered from this fate, but for how long?

And what kind of a friend is it who threatens to invoke the Railway Labor Act to prevent a national strike. The RLA would have outlawed a strike that had the overwhelming support of the railroad workers. Biden leaned heavily on the top officials in the rail unions and the AFL-CIO to put off the strike, which is what ultimately happened. He sided with the bosses against the workers.

What kind of a “champion of immigrant rights” continues to build the heinous wall along  the U.S.-Mexico border; to deport and jail tens of thousands of immigrants; to ban asylum seekers from filing their asylum applications from within the United States; and to send an additional 1,500 active-duty U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to “prevent an expected surge in immigration,” joining to the 2,500 National Guard members already stationed at the border.

Supporters of the “lesser evil” vote for Democrats argue that There Is No Alternative. This is simply not true.

On May 13, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) is holding a national conference to promote the fight for independent working-class political action. Panelists will address issues and topics such as why U.S. trade unions should get on board with LCIP in making a clean break from the Democratic and Republican parties and in building an independent working-class political party, the urgency of addressing immigrant rights legislation in the U.S., and the importance and role of the Black liberation struggle in organizing an independent working-class political party.

We urge our readers and supporters to register today. Click Here to =>>>Register Today .

In this issue of The Organizer we reprint the editorial by Black Agenda Report Executive Director Margaret Kimberley published in the latest issue of BAR under the title, “Whither Black Voters in 2024.” Also published are excerpts from the recent May Day statement by the Labor Fight Network as well as a piece titled, “Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Political Party.” All these pieces point working people and all the oppressed, beginning with the oppressed Black people, in an independent, fightback direction.

There is an alternative — and there is no time to lose. Join with us in advocating a way forward so that young people, workers, the unemployed, and retirees do not have to either abstain as a protest vote or hold their noses and vote for Democrats against their interests.

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Whither Black Voters in 2024

By Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

https://blackagendareport.com/whither-black-voters-2024

The duopoly trap for the 2024 election has been set, but Black voters can refuse to step into it.

President Joe Biden recently announced his reelection campaign with a video, rather than with the kind of public event that one would expect from an incumbent president. Of course if the incumbent is an 80-year old showing signs of cognitive decline, with an approval rating of only 39% , a stealth campaign announcement was in order.

Yet despite all these deficiencies, Biden could win again. He has already asked Democratic Party fundraisers to begin the process of raising $1 billion . If history is any guide, they will do just that. And in case anyone doubted, the Biden campaign held a two day fundraising strategy session for the deep pocketed, mega check bundling crowd who cast their votes before anyone else gets to have a say.

The ruling class, the 1%, the oligarchy, call them what you will, are making sure they get what they want, but what about everyone else? Specifically, what about Black people? Where do they stand politically, and what do they stand to gain from this election? Aside from stating the obvious, that they don’t want a Republican president, no one is asking questions about what they want or need. For a long time, Black politics has amounted to little more than wanting to keep Republicans out of office and the end result has been catastrophic. In 2024 the people must finally free themselves from the duopoly trap and make demands.

A recent study showed that Black workers in New York City have the highest unemployment rate of any demographic group, with a dismal 12% unemployment rate. Other non-white workers have unemployment rates between 6.5% and 7.5%, while white New Yorkers have an unemployment rate of only 1%. These terrible statistics are surely indicative of the state of Black people all over the country. Yet there is no political outcry on their behalf in New York or anywhere else.

One would think that a presidential campaign would be the perfect opportunity to raise the issue of the state of Black America. Instead, it is an opportunity for the Black misleadership class to do what they do best, namely, to act as the buffer between their people and their bosses in the ruling class, the ones who raise $1 billion to get the president of their choice. They aren’t raising money because they have nothing better to do with their time. They want their agenda acted upon, an agenda that is at odds with the needs of struggling Black people.

Biden’s age, health, and failure to act on behalf of the people, would disqualify him if this country really was the democracy that it claims to be. But it isn’t a democracy and that becomes very obvious every four years. Will 2024 be another year of quadrennial fakery in which lesser evilism and supposed harm reduction will be used to mobilize voters who don’t want what they’re voting for, or will there be a true political mobilization?

Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are vying for votes from progressive Democrats, but history tells us that at the assigned moment, they will drop out and urge their supporters to back Joe Biden. After all that is what Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders have done in the past.

Black Agenda Report’s co-founder and comrade Bruce Dixon coined the phrase “sheepdog” to describe Bernie Sanders. Dixon correctly predicted that Sanders would fold his tent and urge his supporters to back Hillary Clinton in 2016. Sanders did the same in 2020 and stood down in favor of Joe Biden. Only the names have changed, the playbook remains the same.

While the scam and the sham continues, Black people have the greatest likelihood of experiencing negative outcomes. The group whose cohort is the most likely to be imprisoned, die at younger ages, survive on low wage work, or face discrimination of many kinds are not even being discussed as the president they gave 90% of their votes prepares to run again.

It is very obvious what is needed. There must be a mass movement which speaks to the needs of the 21st century. Without it Black political class figureheads like Congressman James Clyburn will be called kingmakers or some other meaningless drivel that is meant to fool us into thinking that he and his colleagues do anything to meet urgent needs.

The liberation movement which brought so many gains is now fetishized for cynical purposes. Every scoundrel in U.S. politics has marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, or shows up at Martin Luther King birthday events.

The duopoly trap gives white racists a safe haven and makes Black people afraid to do anything except vote for Democrats they believe will win a general election. The strategy can fail as it did in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, or it can “succeed” in 2020 when Jim Crow Joe wins the presidency but then gives Black people the back of his hand. The man who was marketed as “the most progressive president since FDR” is silent as emergency covid SNAP and Medicaid benefits expire. He famously took a knee in 2020 but as president allocated $30 billion for policing across the country.

Independent political formations with self-determination as an organizing principle are badly needed. The same people Biden depends on for campaign funds act against the interests of Black people. The check bundlers don’t want anything that Black people want to see realized, and therein lies the rub.

2020 should be the last year that Black people withstand the entreaties to prevent a Trump or DeSantis or fill-in-the-blank evil Republican presidency without making demands of their own. Those strategies must begin now before Biden and other Democrats treat Black voters as political dupes one more time.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon  and also find it on the Twitter  and Telegram  platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com.

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OPEN FORUM: May Day Messages from LFN

It’s a “Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living ” (Mother Jones)

A contribution by Donna Dewitt on the founding of the South Carolina Workers Party (reprinted from a posting by the Labor Fightback Network)

May Day, 2023, as the South Carolina Workers Party remembers struggles of South Carolina workers.

The South Carolina Workers Party was founded on March 26th, 2023, at the convention of the South Carolina Labor Party. Upon calling the convention to order there was a special order of business for consideration, voting to disaffiliate from the National Labor Party followed by election of officers.

Under other business delegates approved a motion to change the name of the party to the South Carolina Workers Party. Now they are fighting like hell to organize workers into a party that will fight for their interests!

We are the South Carolina Workers Party!

Preamble to the platform:

It’s a “Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living ” (Mother Jones)

May Day 2023 as the South Carolina Workers Party remembers and recognizes the many struggles of South Carolina workers. Now we are fighting like hell to organize workers into a party that will fight for their interests!

• We are the working people of South Carolina.
• We are the employed and the unemployed, the native-born and the immigrant.
• We are the keepers of the American Dream of equality, opportunity, and fairness.
• We do the work of building and sustaining the nation, but we do not enjoy our fair share of the wealth we create.
• We make the country run, but we have little say in running the country.
• We believe in a country that affirms the dignity of work, the value of community, and the importance of working people and their families to the prosperity of the nation.
• We believe in a country where a job is a constitutional right, everyone must be paid a living wage, and no one can be fired unjustly.
• We believe in a country where the right to organize a union, to speak freely and to be treated fairly at work is the law of the land and protected by the courts.
• We believe in a country where the needs of our families do not have to be neglected because of the demands of our jobs.
• We believe in a country where the opinions of others are tolerated, bigotry and discrimination are rejected, and everyone enjoys equal opportunity and the equal protection of the laws without prejudice.
• We believe in a country where the hungry are fed, the sick are treated, the homeless are housed, and those who want to learn are educated.
• We believe in a country that honors and respects the human rights of workers in all other lands, as well as our own.
• We believe in a country where taxes are fair.
• We believe in a country governed by the people and for the people.
• We believe that capitalism is the cause of today’s crises and in order to reach the full realization of our ideals we must create a more just and equal system for all.

We are the South Carolina Workers Party!

In the late 1800s, banned from membership in the Southern Alliance, African American farmers in South Carolina joined the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (also called the Colored Farmers’ Alliance) to address economic issues and oppression facing black farmers.
In 1934 seven strikers were shot in the back and killed in Honea Path, SC. The Chiquola Mill Massacre, also known locally as Bloody Thursday, was the violent dispersal of a picket line of striking workers outside the Chiquola Mills.

The Charleston Five are five men and International Longshoremen – Kenneth Jefferson, Rick Simmons, Peter Washington, Elijah Ford, and Jason Edgerton who were brought up on felony charges of conspiring to incite a riot on January 19, 2000 in the docks of Charleston, South Carolina as they were protesting the use of non-union dock workers.

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A day without immigrants — slogan of May 1, 2006 nationwide strike

Immigrant Workers’ Resistance Reclaims May Day for the U.S. Labor Movement!

A contribution of immigrant rights supporters of Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)

In 1996, two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, the Democratic Party passed a series of far-reaching counter reforms aimed at criminalizing immigrants. As a result of these anti-immigrant laws, today the United States operates the largest immigration detention system in the world, along with an inhumane deportation machine that deports hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year.

Today, Biden and his Democratic Congress continue to support and fund this odious system, and currently, there is no prospect for immigration reform for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country without basic civil and democratic rights. As a result of the demonization by the Republicans and the consistent betrayals by the Democrats, immigrant organizers and communities have fought for rights and reforms independently, mobilizing on a large scale in the streets, and not relying on the two- party system to champion their causes.

In 2006 – in a historic show of working-class power that culminated on May 1st, international workers’ day – over ten million undocumented workers participated in a de facto general strike, shutting down major economies and cities. Workers across the country walked out of their workplaces, and students walked out of their schools. The immigrant rights movement brought May Day back to the US labor movement, where it originated.

Over the last 20 years, the immigrant rights movement has become one of the largest working-class oppositional movements in the United States. It has increasingly learned to organize independently of the two ruling parties and to mobilize in the streets, schools, workplaces, and detention centers to stop detentions and deportations.

The immigrant rights movement, however, has yet to organize itself politically. This is an essential step which of necessity links the immigrant rights struggle with those of the entire working class. Labor and Community for an Independent Party, creating coalitions in local communities that are the building blocks towards the formation of a mass working-class party rooted in labor and oppressed communities, is the path forward.

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Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Party in the U.S.

By Alan Benjamin

The advocacy of an independent Black Working-Class Party in the United States is rooted in part in the discussions between Leon Trotsky and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. [Note: the term Black Party was used at the time. Black activists today tend to speak of a Black Working-Class Party to emphasize the predominantly working-class character of most Black people in this country.]

The political rationale for such a position was put forward in various SWP texts. This is how it was motivated:

“The coming American revolution will have a combined character. It will be a socialist revolution by the working class and its allies against the bourgeoisie. At the same time, it will be a revolution of national liberation by Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. Only through the establishment of workers’ power in this country will this combined struggle be brought to a successful conclusion.

“Only a government based on the working class and all the oppressed will guarantee the democratic rights of all oppressed nationalities. There can be no solution to the national democratic demands of the oppressed nationalities apart from the solution to capitalist exploitation by the workers. The revolution, if it is to be victorious, must combine the uncompleted tasks of the democratic revolution – including the right to self-determination of all oppressed nationalities – with the socialist revolution.

“The revolutionary party supports the independent organization of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. This will advance both their own struggles for self-determination and the struggle of the working class as a whole.” (Freedom Now!, 1963]

The struggle for the emancipation of the enslaved Black people was at the heart of the Second American Revolution—the Civil War. But the failure, or rather, the limitations of the post-war Radical Reconstruction period, enabled the struggle for Black freedom to retreat into the abyss of Jim Crow and segregation.

One of the most solid presentations by the SWP of the Black Party question and how the Black Working-Class Party would tie into the overall struggle for independent working-class political action is contained in the resolution adopted by the 1963 convention of the SWP titled, “Freedom Now: The New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation and the Tasks of the SWP”. [Unfortunately, though, the political orientation contained in this text would soon be abandoned by the party.]

The section on “Independent Political Action” in this 1963 resolution correctly articulated the struggle for a Black Working-Class Party and the struggle for a Labor Party in its treatment of the “Labor-Negro Alliance.” [The term Negro was the one used predominantly by Black activists at that time.]

Basing itself firmly on what Trotsky, in his discussions with C.L.R. James described as the “dialectic development of the Negro struggle for self-determination,” the resolution stated that Blacks as such would have to “divide” from the whites and form their own independent political party to then “unite with the white working class in the overall struggle against capitalism.”

The resolution noted that “while the Negro community is predominantly proletarian, the Negro people are more than just another more heavily exploited section of the working class, and the Negro movement is more than just a part of the general working-class movement. As an oppressed minority … their position in society is special, their consciousness is influenced by racial and national as well as class factors.”

The 1963 resolution went on to note that “the labor and Negro movements march along their own paths” but went on to underline the fact that “they [the Negro and labor movements] march to a common destination, and the freedom of the Negroes from oppression and of the workers from exploitation can be achieved only through the victory of their common struggle against capitalism. … Negroes cannot win their goal of equality without an alliance with the working class.”

Noting further on that “the tempos of development of the two movements are uneven,” the resolution stressed the need for “Negroes to … first unite [in their own party]” in order than they could be able to “bring about an alliance of equals, where they [the Negroes] can be reasonably sure that their demands and needs cannot be neglected or betrayed by their allies.”

Finally, the resolution pointed out that there is no contradiction between advocating a Black Party and advocating a Labor Party: “Our support of such a [Black] Party in no way conflicts with our … continued advocacy of a labor party. On the contrary, we believe that a Negro party … and a labor party would find much in common from the very beginning, would work together for common ends, and would tend in the course of common activity to establish close organizational ties or even merge into a single or federated party.”

In fact, the resolution states elsewhere, if a Black Party were to be formed first, it would be a major spur for the development of a Labor Party: “The creation of a Negro party running its own candidates would rock the whole political structure to its foundation. … Advocates of a labor break with the old parties would get a bigger and better hearing from the ranks. Thus, the creation of a Negro party would benefit not only the Negro but his/her present and potential allies.”

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100 Years Ago – December 30, 1922: The founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

(PART 2 of a two-part series)

By François Forgue and Max Schumacher

Lenin’s elaboration of the question of nationalities in relation to the founding of the USSR did not end with the conclusions of the Central Committee of 6 October 1922 which have been recalled above. It continued in close connection with Lenin’s struggle against the bureaucracy. Weakened by illness, Lenin continued his struggle to impose his positions – and not only on the “question of nationalities”.

While on 30 December 1922, the First All-Union Congress of Soviets took the decision to found the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lenin dictated his “Letter to the Congress” (13), in which he expressed his regret, due to his illness, for “not having intervened energetically and decisively enough in the notorious question of autonomisation”. In response to the “Georgian incident”, Lenin demanded that “exemplary punishment must be inflicted on Comrade Ordzhonikidze” and emphasised: “The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky.” (14).

In his book Between Red and White, a response to attacks by Social-Democratic leaders such as Kautsky who were denouncing Soviet policy towards Georgia, Leon Trotsky quoted the appeal issued by the Georgian Congress of Soviets of 26 February 1922, which described the developments in Georgia and Transcaucasia under Menshevik leadership from the time of the October Revolution.

“[T]he Mensheviks took the lead in the civil war that united into one common camp against the workers’ and peasants’ Soviets, all the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets, and the ‘Black Hundred’ in the country. (…) Under Menshevik leadership all Trans-Caucasia was converted into counterrevolutionary trenches to crush the growing workers’ and peasants’ revolution. Thus, under the Menshevik leadership a dictatorship of the exploiters over the workers was set up in Trans-Caucasia, which was separated from Russia not on a national but a class ground.

“The Mensheviks seized the administrative and police apparatus, they set the tone to all Trans-Caucasia, and their control of Georgia was unchallenged. The intervention of the Turks and Germans in Trans-Caucasia sharpened the struggle between the different national factions of the bourgeois and middle-class front.

“The Mensheviks deemed this moment favourable for dismembering Trans-Caucasia and proclaiming the apparent independence of Georgia. Seeing that they were well protected against the northern danger by the Kaiser’s and the Sultan’s troops, the Mensheviks ruthlessly suppressed the workers’ strikes and peasant revolts which were continually breaking out in different parts of the country. (…) With the collapse of German militarism, Menshevik Georgia changed her masters, but not her international or home policy. This time the Mensheviks became a tool in the hands of the Entente imperialists.” (15).

“A rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is”

 The “Georgian incident” – mentioned above, which outraged Lenin – had been preceded by conflicts between Stalin and his lieutenant Ordzhonikidze and the Georgian Communist Party (CP) leadership. The Georgian Communists insisted that not the Trans-caucasian Federation as a whole but its individual Republics should each join the USSR. For Ordzhonikidze, this constituted an “unacceptable breach of party discipline”. During this conflict, in the course of which the majority of the Georgian CP’s Central Committee resigned, Ordzhonikidze resorted to violent insults and rudeness. Dzerzhinsky’s investigation of the incidents endorsed Ordzhonikidze’s characterisation (16).

For Lenin, this incident clearly showed that “the whole business of ‘autonomisation’ [i.e., counterposing autonomy to sovereignty] was radically wrong and badly timed”. Referring to the Constitution of the USSR, Lenin noted: “It is quite natural that in such circumstances, the “freedom to secede from the Union” by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.” (17)

Before the Twelfth Congress of the Bolshevik Party (17-21 April 1923), Lenin wrote on 6 March 1923 to the representatives of the Georgian CP:

“To Comrades Mdivani, Makharadze and others (Copy to Comrades Trotsky and Kamenev).

“Dear Comrades, I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech.” (18)

Lenin’s health deteriorated, and he was unable to deliver a speech to the Congress along the lines of his letter. On 5 March, he wrote to Trotsky: “It is my earnest request that you should undertake the defence of the Georgian case in the Party’s Central Committee [CC]. This case is now under “persecution” by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite to the contrary.” (19)

On 16 April 1923, one day before the start of the Party Congress, the Politburo received Lenin’s article “On the Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’”. On Trotsky’s intervention, Stalin had to send the letter to the CC members. On the initiative of the Presidium of the Congress, dominated by Stalin’s faction, communication of Lenin’s documents to the delegates was banned.

We quote extensively here from the minutes of the Party Congress, reproduced by Vadim Z. Rogovin in his book Was there an alternative? 192327, cited earlier.

“When Mdivani tried to quote some of the theses of Lenin’s article in his speech, he was curtly interrupted by Kamenev, who was chairing the meeting. The speeches by several delegates, however, contained references to Lenin’s article (described as a “letter”). Rakovsky quoted extracts from Lenin’s article at the meeting of the Commission on the National Question and stated bluntly at the plenary session of the Congress that Lenin, if he were present at the Congress, would prove to the party that “it was making fatal mistakes on the national question” and that the national question was one of those which “predict civil war if we do not show the necessary sensitivity and understanding towards it”.

Rakovsky stressed that in addition to national consciousness, “the feeling of equality of which Comrade Ilyich speaks in his letter – that feeling of equality by the nationalities oppressed for hundreds of years by the tsarist regime – has penetrated much more deeply and strongly than we think”. He said: “Today, the work has taken a wrong turn”, stressing that “this is not only my opinion – it is the opinion of Vladimir Ilyich.” It was necessary to fight against the manifestations of “the feeling of great power of the Russian man, who has never known national oppression, but who, on the contrary, has himself oppressed for hundreds of years.” …

Skrypnyk emphasised that the national question was more than differences of opinion “within the Georgian part of our party”, to which the Congress had reduced the treatment of this question. He clearly stated that Stalin’s theses contained nothing new, while “we are practically standing still on the national question and, although our principled solution is correct, we remain powerless”.

Skrypnyk said: “Great Russian prejudices, absorbed with mother’s milk, have become an instinct among very many comrades”, who “always try to refute any accusation of great power chauvinism…with the opposite reproach: “You should first overcome your own nationalism”. “Such “principled supporters of the great power, “centurions”, in practice distort the party line. But basically, we have not been fighting a battle against Great Russian chauvinism. This must change.”

Bukharin’s speech was a fairly comprehensive exposition of the content of Lenin’s articles. He asked the following question:

“Why, then, did Comrade Lenin sound the alarm so insistently on the Georgian question? And why did Comrade Lenin not say a word in his letter about the mistakes of the dissidents, when he said everything and went into great detail about the policy against the dissidents?…

“This is because Comrade Lenin is a genius strategist and knows that it is necessary to strike blows at the main enemy and not to be content with eclectically lining up little allusions one after the other.” The emphasis, according to Bukharin, was made in the presentations by Zinoviev and Stalin and in many speeches discussing the criticism of “local” chauvinism, among other things Georgian chauvinism; “but when it comes to Russian chauvinism, only a little bit pops out (applause, laughter), and yet it is the most dangerous.” …

Yakovlev pointed out that Lenin’s critical speech at the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b) [Russian Communist Party Bolsheviks] had not been published, and that for some reason it was considered lost, and he said: “I fear that there may still be a missing letter (a voice: “That’s right!”). Would you be discussing the national question here at the Party Congress as it is being discussed now if Lenin’s letters did not exist? No. I think that a main guarantee that there will not be another lost letter here, but a series of practical measures, is the widest possible dissemination in the Party of the ideas and thoughts that have been developed in Comrade Lenin’s letters. Because it is such documents that force every member of the Party to reflect on the way in which the vile chauvinism of the great powers permeates through its apparatus.” …

In his conclusion, Stalin stated that “a group of comrades, headed by Bukharin and Rakovsky, have over-exaggerated the importance of the national question” and that “there are many comrades present at our Congress who misquote Comrade Lenin and distort him”. … In the main part of his speech, Stalin in practice distanced himself from Lenin’s position on Mdivani’s group, saying that it represented “a small group which in Georgia itself is constantly brushed aside by the Party”.

In the discussion on the national question, he suggested that Lenin’s support for this group was due to the fact that “Lenin has forgotten. He has forgotten many things lately. He forgot that we adopted the basis of the Union together.”

Budu Mdivani was executed on 10 July 1937, Christian G. Rakovski on 11 September 1941, Mykola Skrypnyk committed suicide on 7 July 1933 in the face of the “purges” in the Ukrainian CP, Nikolai I. Bukharin was executed on 15 March 1938, Yakov A. Yakovlev supported Stalin against the Left Opposition, but was nevertheless expelled from the party in 1938 and executed the following year (20).

The ban on publishing Lenin’s letter on the question of nationalities in the USSR was not lifted until 1956.

It is important for the members of the Fourth International to understand that Lenin’s struggle for equal rights for all component parts of the federation cannot be taken in isolation, but was part of the struggle against the bureaucracy.

Leon Trotsky referred back to what had happened at the Twelfth Congress in the years that followed, indicating that “Stalin’s fraction crushed Lenin’s fraction in the Caucasus. This was the first victory of the reactionaries in the party. It opened the second chapter of the Revolution – the Stalinist counter-revolution.” (21).

The bureaucracy eliminates workers’ democracy and therefore the peoples’ right to self-determination

In 1938, Trotsky wrote on this subject:

“The October Revolution proclaimed the right of every nation not only to an independent cultural development but also to state separation. As a matter of fact, the bureaucracy has transformed the Soviet Union into a new prison-house of the peoples. True enough, the national language and the national school continue to exist: in this sphere the mightiest despotism can no longer turn back the wheel of evolution. But the language of the various nationalities is not an organ of their independent development, but the organ of bureaucratic domineering over them.

“The governments of the national Republics are, naturally, appointed by Moscow, or to put it more precisely, by Stalin. But the astonishing thing is that thirty of these governments suddenly turn out to have consisted of “enemies of the people”and agents of a foreign government. Behind this accusation, which rings far too rudely and ludicrously even on the lips of Stalin and Vyshinsky, there lurks in reality the fact that, in the national Republics, functionaries, even those appointed by the Kremlin, fall into dependence upon local conditions and moods and become gradually infected with an oppositional spirit against the stifling centralism of Moscow. They begin dreaming or talking about replacing the “beloved leader” and relaxing the steel tentacles. This is the real reason why all the national Republics of the USSR were recently beheaded.” (22).

The elimination of workers’ democracy and the destruction by extermination of thousands and thousands of Bolshevik Party cadres and Communist activists involved resorting to the most extreme oppression of the peoples formerly subjected to tsarist rule, and thus a return, in the field of ideology, to “Great Russian” superiority, and therefore to the worst kind of chauvinism which Lenin had condemned.

It was this oppression, which Trotsky described as “bureaucratic banditry”, which made the demands for independence a component of the “political revolution”, which led Trotsky to write, in 1939:“The unification of the Ukraine presupposes freeing the so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist boot … The genuine emancipation of the Ukrainian people is inconceivable without a revolution or a series of revolutions in the west which must lead in the end to the creation of the Soviet United States of Europe. An independent Ukraine could and undoubtedly will join this federation as an equal member.” (23).

“They dared”

In the last document she was able to write on the Russian revolution, Rosa Luxemburg recorded her disagreements on many points with the policy followed by the Bolsheviks, and concluded this listing by affirming that the essential thing was that the Bolsheviks “had dared”, and that this was the indestructible basis of the support that should be given to them.

They “had dared” to act against the imperialist war, and to act for the seizure of power by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. The formulation “they dared” also applies to the way in which the Bolsheviks sought to solve the national problem while at the same time ensuring the defence of the social gains wrested by the revolution, which formed the foundation of the unity of the proletarians of all nationalities who had won them together.

The counter-revolutionary bureaucracy had, as Trotsky said, transformed the USSR into a new “prison of the peoples” before leading to its disintegration. That disintegration is inseparable from the destruction of what remained of the gains of the October Revolution, it is linked to the restoration of capitalism, and it has allowed the multiplication of counter-revolutionary initiatives provoked and fueled by imperialism, and thus of conflicts pitting one former USSR Republic against another.

The peoples, once united on the basis of the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and on the basis of the political power of the working class, will once again find the paths of their unity and their brotherhood in their common struggle against imperialism and all its auxiliaries.

This struggle is also the one that must be waged today against war. It is in no way underestimating the counter-revolutionary and warlike will of imperialism to note that the reactionary policy of the regime currently existing in Russia, that of Putin, is part of that will to crush the peoples.

This is what Putin has clearly expressed by placing his military intervention under the banner of anti-Leninism, i.e., the fight against the Revolution.

ENDNOTES

(13) V I Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.36, Progress Publishers (1966), pp.591-611. In an addendum to his letter dated 24 December 1922, Lenin stated on 4 January 1923 in his “Testament” (Collected Works, Vol.36, p.596): “Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post”.
(14) Lenin, “The question of nationalities or “autonomisation”, op.cit.
(15) Trotsky, Between Red and White, Appendix, op.cit.
(16) See Vadim Rogovin, Was There an Alternative? 1923–1927. Trotskyism: A Look Back Through the Years, London: Mehring Books (2021). This is the English edition of Vol.1 of Rogovin’s seven-volume series Was There an Alternative?, which was first published in Russian in 1992. The passages quoted in this article are an English

The Organizer Newsletter
May 6, 2023 – Issue No. 91
Please distribute widely & Subscribe today!
www.socialistorganizer.org
(Issue will be posted to website on May 7)
———————

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Editorial: 2024 Presidential Campaign – and the Duopoly Is Off to the Races

• Whither Black Voters in 2024 – by Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist reprinted from Black Agenda Report

• OPEN FORUM: May Day Messages from LFN (South Carolina SCWP and California Immigrant Rights Activists)

• Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Party in the U.S. – by Alan Benjamin

100 Years Ago – December 30, 1922: The founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (PART 2 of two-part series)

* * * * * * * * * *

2024 Presidential Campaign – and the Duopoly Is Off to the Races

Editorial

It came as no surprise: On April 24, Biden announced he was running for re-election in 2024 – and Bernie Sanders, his main rival in the 2020 Democratic Party primary, was the first member of Congress to announce his support for Biden, stating, “I will do everything I can to see the president is re-elected.”
 
Sanders warned that a Republican victory would signify the end of democracy in America, which is why he was also discouraging any other high-profile “progressive” candidates from challenging Biden in 2024. “My job, and I think the progressive movement’s job, is to make certain that he [Biden] stands up and fights for the working class of this country.”
 
“What’s at stake,” Sanders told MSNBC, “is whether we have some right-wing demagogue running this country or pathological liar, somebody who’s trying to divide us up – or whether we re-elect somebody who is a very decent human being who’s trying to do the opposite, trying to bring the American people together.”
 
“Sheepdogging for the Democrats”
 
Black Agenda Reporter (BAR) co-founder Bruce Dixon called Sanders’ role “sheepdogging” for the Democrats, that is, rounding up all the disenchanted, dispossessed, and disenfranchised voting age people in the United States (the overwhelming majority) and funneling them back into the Democratic Party, one of the twin parties of Capital.
 
When it comes to the U.S.-NATO-provoked war in Ukraine or the impending threat of war against China, the only people toward whom Biden has acted “decently” are the merchants of death. Seeking to out-hawk the Republican Party hawks, Biden has upped the U.S. war budget to more than $1 trillion, when all indirect war expenditures are counted.
 
The arms manufacturers and the top military brass are laughing all the way to the bank. They are open about wanting to drag out the war in Ukraine as long as possible. Even moderate international calls for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war are ridiculed and rejected. The only “negotiations,” the White House has insisted, will be based on the total victory of the U.S., NATO and Ukrainian forces in Ukraine. It’s the peace of the graveyard.
 
Let there be no doubt: In 2024, Biden will be THE main war candidate. His stated goal will be to “unite” the American people behind the U.S. war(s) and interventions the world over. This is why leading voices in Wall Street and Corporate America have announced an initial $1 billion war chest for Biden’s re-election campaign.
 
“Labor’s Best Friend”?
 
Biden has been touted by the top AFL-CIO leaders as “the best friend that labor’s ever had.”
 
Tell that to the public-sector workers (teachers, firefighters, bus drivers, social service workers, etc.), whose real wages will be cut in the name of building “national unity” to pay for the wars abroad. Across Europe such cuts in wages and working conditions – as well as a sharp hike in the rates of inflation – have devastated the purchasing power of the working-class majority. The U.S. with its immense oil and other reserves is somewhat sheltered from this fate, but for how long?
 
And what kind of a friend is it who threatens to invoke the Railway Labor Act to prevent a national strike. The RLA would have outlawed a strike that had the overwhelming support of the railroad workers. Biden leaned heavily on the top officials in the rail unions and the AFL-CIO to put off the strike, which is what ultimately happened. He sided with the bosses against the workers.
 
What kind of a “champion of immigrant rights” continues to build the heinous wall along  the U.S.-Mexico border; to deport and jail tens of thousands of immigrants; to ban asylum seekers from filing their asylum applications from within the United States; and to send an additional 1,500 active-duty U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to “prevent an expected surge in immigration,” joining to the 2,500 National Guard members already stationed at the border.
 
Supporters of the “lesser evil” vote for Democrats argue that There Is No Alternative. This is simply not true.
 
On May 13, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) is holding a national conference to promote the fight for independent working-class political action. Panelists will address issues and topics such as why U.S. trade unions should get on board with LCIP in making a clean break from the Democratic and Republican parties and in building an independent working-class political party, the urgency of addressing immigrant rights legislation in the U.S., and the importance and role of the Black liberation struggle in organizing an independent working-class political party.
 
We urge our readers and supporters to register today. Click Here to =>>>Register Today .
 
In this issue of The Organizer we reprint the editorial by Black Agenda Report Executive Director Margaret Kimberley published in the latest issue of BAR under the title, “Whither Black Voters in 2024.” Also published are excerpts from the recent May Day statement by the Labor Fight Network as well as a piece titled, “Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Political Party.” All these pieces point working people and all the oppressed in an independent, fightback direction.
 
There is an alternative — and there is no time to lose. Join with us in advocating a way forward so that young people, workers, the unemployed, and retirees do not have to either abstain as a protest vote or hold their noses and vote for Democrats against their interests.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Whither Black Voters in 2024

By Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

https://blackagendareport.com/whither-black-voters-2024
 
The duopoly trap for the 2024 election has been set, but Black voters can refuse to step into it.
 
President Joe Biden recently announced his reelection campaign with a video, rather than with the kind of public event that one would expect from an incumbent president. Of course if the incumbent is an 80-year old showing signs of cognitive decline, with an approval rating of only 39% , a stealth campaign announcement was in order.
 
Yet despite all these deficiencies, Biden could win again. He has already asked Democratic Party fundraisers to begin the process of raising $1 billion . If history is any guide, they will do just that. And in case anyone doubted, the Biden campaign held a two day fundraising strategy session for the deep pocketed, mega check bundling crowd who cast their votes before anyone else gets to have a say.
 
The ruling class, the 1%, the oligarchy, call them what you will, are making sure they get what they want, but what about everyone else? Specifically, what about Black people? Where do they stand politically, and what do they stand to gain from this election? Aside from stating the obvious, that they don’t want a Republican president, no one is asking questions about what they want or need. For a long time, Black politics has amounted to little more than wanting to keep Republicans out of office and the end result has been catastrophic. In 2024 the people must finally free themselves from the duopoly trap and make demands.
 
A recent study showed that Black workers in New York City have the highest unemployment rate of any demographic group, with a dismal 12% unemployment rate. Other non-white workers have unemployment rates between 6.5% and 7.5%, while white New Yorkers have an unemployment rate of only 1%. These terrible statistics are surely indicative of the state of Black people all over the country. Yet there is no political outcry on their behalf in New York or anywhere else.
 
One would think that a presidential campaign would be the perfect opportunity to raise the issue of the state of Black America. Instead, it is an opportunity for the Black misleadership class to do what they do best, namely, to act as the buffer between their people and their bosses in the ruling class, the ones who raise $1 billion to get the president of their choice. They aren’t raising money because they have nothing better to do with their time. They want their agenda acted upon, an agenda that is at odds with the needs of struggling Black people.
 
Biden’s age, health, and failure to act on behalf of the people, would disqualify him if this country really was the democracy that it claims to be. But it isn’t a democracy and that becomes very obvious every four years. Will 2024 be another year of quadrennial fakery in which lesser evilism and supposed harm reduction will be used to mobilize voters who don’t want what they’re voting for, or will there be a true political mobilization?
 
Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are vying for votes from progressive Democrats, but history tells us that at the assigned moment, they will drop out and urge their supporters to back Joe Biden. After all that is what Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders have done in the past.
 
Black Agenda Report’s co-founder and comrade Bruce Dixon coined the phrase “sheepdog” to describe Bernie Sanders. Dixon correctly predicted that Sanders would fold his tent and urge his supporters to back Hillary Clinton in 2016. Sanders did the same in 2020 and stood down in favor of Joe Biden. Only the names have changed, the playbook remains the same.
 
While the scam and the sham continues, Black people have the greatest likelihood of experiencing negative outcomes. The group whose cohort is the most likely to be imprisoned, die at younger ages, survive on low wage work, or face discrimination of many kinds are not even being discussed as the president they gave 90% of their votes prepares to run again.
 
It is very obvious what is needed. There must be a mass movement which speaks to the needs of the 21st century. Without it Black political class figureheads like Congressman James Clyburn will be called kingmakers or some other meaningless drivel that is meant to fool us into thinking that he and his colleagues do anything to meet urgent needs.
 
The liberation movement which brought so many gains is now fetishized for cynical purposes. Every scoundrel in U.S. politics has marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, or shows up at Martin Luther King birthday events.
 
The duopoly trap gives white racists a safe haven and makes Black people afraid to do anything except vote for Democrats they believe will win a general election. The strategy can fail as it did in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, or it can “succeed” in 2020 when Jim Crow Joe wins the presidency but then gives Black people the back of his hand. The man who was marketed as “the most progressive president since FDR” is silent as emergency covid SNAP and Medicaid benefits expire. He famously took a knee in 2020 but as president allocated $30 billion for policing across the country.
 
Independent political formations with self-determination as an organizing principle are badly needed. The same people Biden depends on for campaign funds act against the interests of Black people. The check bundlers don’t want anything that Black people want to see realized, and therein lies the rub.
 
2020 should be the last year that Black people withstand the entreaties to prevent a Trump or DeSantis or fill-in-the-blank evil Republican presidency without making demands of their own. Those strategies must begin now before Biden and other Democrats treat Black voters as political dupes one more time.
 
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon  and also find it on the Twitter  and Telegram  platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com.
 
* * * * * * * * * * *
 
OPEN FORUM; May Day Messages from LFN
 
It’s a “Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living ” (Mother Jones)
 
A contribution by Donna Dewitt on the founding of the South Carolina Workers Party (reprinted from a posting by the Labor Fightback Network)

May Day, 2023, as the South Carolina Workers Party remembers struggles of South Carolina workers.

The South Carolina Workers Party was founded on March 26th, 2023, at the convention of the South Carolina Labor Party. Upon calling the convention to order there was a special order of business for consideration, voting to disaffiliate from the National Labor Party followed by election of officers.

Under other business delegates approved a motion to change the name of the party to the South Carolina Workers Party. Now they are fighting like hell to organize workers into a party that will fight for their interests!

We are the South Carolina Workers Party!

Preamble to the platform:

It’s a “Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living ” (Mother Jones)

May Day 2023 as the South Carolina Workers Party remembers and recognizes the many struggles of South Carolina workers. Now we are fighting like hell to organize workers into a party that will fight for their interests!

• We are the working people of South Carolina.
• We are the employed and the unemployed, the native-born and the immigrant.
• We are the keepers of the American Dream of equality, opportunity, and fairness.
• We do the work of building and sustaining the nation, but we do not enjoy our fair share of the wealth we create.
• We make the country run, but we have little say in running the country.
• We believe in a country that affirms the dignity of work, the value of community, and the importance of working people and their families to the prosperity of the nation.
• We believe in a country where a job is a constitutional right, everyone must be paid a living wage, and no one can be fired unjustly.
• We believe in a country where the right to organize a union, to speak freely and to be treated fairly at work is the law of the land and protected by the courts.
• We believe in a country where the needs of our families do not have to be neglected because of the demands of our jobs.
• We believe in a country where the opinions of others are tolerated, bigotry and discrimination are rejected, and everyone enjoys equal opportunity and the equal protection of the laws without prejudice.
• We believe in a country where the hungry are fed, the sick are treated, the homeless are housed, and those who want to learn are educated.
• We believe in a country that honors and respects the human rights of workers in all other lands, as well as our own.
• We believe in a country where taxes are fair.
• We believe in a country governed by the people and for the people.
• We believe that capitalism is the cause of today’s crises and in order to reach the full realization of our ideals we must create a more just and equal system for all.

We are the South Carolina Workers Party!

In the late 1800s, banned from membership in the Southern Alliance, African American farmers in South Carolina joined the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (also called the Colored Farmers’ Alliance) to address economic issues and oppression facing black farmers.
In 1934 seven strikers were shot in the back and killed in Honea Path, SC. The Chiquola Mill Massacre, also known locally as Bloody Thursday, was the violent dispersal of a picket line of striking workers outside the Chiquola Mills.

The Charleston Five are five men and International Longshoremen – Kenneth Jefferson, Rick Simmons, Peter Washington, Elijah Ford, and Jason Edgerton who were brought up on felony charges of conspiring to incite a riot on January 19, 2000 in the docks of Charleston, South Carolina as they were protesting the use of non-union dock workers.

* * * * * * * * * *

Immigrant Workers’ Resistance Reclaims May Day for the U.S. Labor Movement!

A contribution of immigrant rights supporters of Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)

In 1996, two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, the Democratic Party passed a series of far-reaching counter reforms aimed at criminalizing immigrants. As a result of these anti-immigrant laws, today the United States operates the largest immigration detention system in the world, along with an inhumane deportation machine that deports hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year.

Today, Biden and his Democratic Congress continue to support and fund this odious system, and currently, there is no prospect for immigration reform for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country without basic civil and democratic rights. As a result of the demonization by the Republicans and the consistent betrayals by the Democrats, immigrant organizers and communities have fought for rights and reforms independently, mobilizing on a large scale in the streets, and not relying on the two- party system to champion their causes.

In 2006 – in a historic show of working-class power that culminated on May 1st, international workers’ day – over ten million undocumented workers participated in a de facto general strike, shutting down major economies and cities. Workers across the country walked out of their workplaces, and students walked out of their schools. The immigrant rights movement brought May Day back to the US labor movement, where it originated.

Over the last 20 years, the immigrant rights movement has become one of the largest working-class oppositional movements in the United States. It has increasingly learned to organize independently of the two ruling parties and to mobilize in the streets, schools, workplaces, and detention centers to stop detentions and deportations.

The immigrant rights movement, however, has yet to organize itself politically. This is an essential step which of necessity links the immigrant rights struggle with those of the entire working class. Labor and Community for an Independent Party, creating coalitions in local communities that are the building blocks towards the formation of a mass working-class party rooted in labor and oppressed communities, is the path forward.
 
* * * * * * * * * * *
 
Why We Support the Call for an Independent Black Working-Class Party in the U.S.
 
By Alan Benjamin
 
The advocacy of an independent Black Working-Class Party in the United States is rooted in part in the discussions between Leon Trotsky and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. [Note: the term Black Party was used at the time. Black activists today tend to speak of a Black Working-Class Party to emphasize the predominantly working-class character of most Black people in this country.]
 
The political rationale for such a position was put forward in various SWP texts. This is how it was motivated:
 
“The coming American revolution will have a combined character. It will be a socialist revolution by the working class and its allies against the bourgeoisie. At the same time, it will be a revolution of national liberation by Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. Only through the establishment of workers’ power in this country will this combined struggle be brought to a successful conclusion.
 
“Only a government based on the working class and all the oppressed will guarantee the democratic rights of all oppressed nationalities. There can be no solution to the national democratic demands of the oppressed nationalities apart from the solution to capitalist exploitation by the workers. The revolution, if it is to be victorious, must combine the uncompleted tasks of the democratic revolution – including the right to self-determination of all oppressed nationalities – with the socialist revolution.
 
“The revolutionary party supports the independent organization of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. This will advance both their own struggles for self-determination and the struggle of the working class as a whole.” (Freedom Now!, 1963]
 
The struggle for the emancipation of the enslaved Black people was at the heart of the Second American Revolution—the Civil War. But the failure, or rather, the limitations of the post-war Radical Reconstruction period, enabled the struggle for Black freedom to retreat into the abyss of Jim Crow and segregation.
 
One of the most solid presentations by the SWP of the Black Party question and how the Black Working-Class Party would tie into the overall struggle for independent working-class political action is contained in the resolution adopted by the 1963 convention of the SWP titled, “Freedom Now: The New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation and the Tasks of the SWP”. [Unfortunately, though, the political orientation contained in this text would soon be abandoned by the party.]
 
The section on “Independent Political Action” in this 1963 resolution correctly articulated the struggle for a Black Working-Class Party and the struggle for a Labor Party in its treatment of the “Labor-Negro Alliance.” [The term Negro was the one used predominantly by Black activists at that time.]
 
Basing itself firmly on what Trotsky, in his discussions with C.L.R. James described as the “dialectic development of the Negro struggle for self-determination,” the resolution stated that Blacks as such would have to “divide” from the whites and form their own independent political party to then “unite with the white working class in the overall struggle against capitalism.”
 
The resolution noted that “while the Negro community is predominantly proletarian, the Negro people are more than just another more heavily exploited section of the working class, and the Negro movement is more than just a part of the general working-class movement. As an oppressed minority … their position in society is special, their consciousness is influenced by racial and national as well as class factors.”
 
The 1963 resolution went on to note that “the labor and Negro movements march along their own paths” but went on to underline the fact that “they [the Negro and labor movements] march to a common destination, and the freedom of the Negroes from oppression and of the workers from exploitation can be achieved only through the victory of their common struggle against capitalism. … Negroes cannot win their goal of equality without an alliance with the working class.”
 
Noting further on that “the tempos of development of the two movements are uneven,” the resolution stressed the need for “Negroes to … first unite [in their own party]” in order than they could be able to “bring about an alliance of equals, where they [the Negroes] can be reasonably sure that their demands and needs cannot be neglected or betrayed by their allies.”
 
Finally, the resolution pointed out that there is no contradiction between advocating a Black Party and advocating a Labor Party: “Our support of such a [Black] Party in no way conflicts with our … continued advocacy of a labor party. On the contrary, we believe that a Negro party … and a labor party would find much in common from the very beginning, would work together for common ends, and would tend in the course of common activity to establish close organizational ties or even merge into a single or federated party.”
 
In fact, the resolution states elsewhere, if a Black Party were to be formed first, it would be a major spur for the development of a Labor Party: “The creation of a Negro party running its own candidates would rock the whole political structure to its foundation. … Advocates of a labor break with the old parties would get a bigger and better hearing from the ranks. Thus, the creation of a Negro party would benefit not only the Negro but his/her present and potential allies.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
100 Years Ago – December 30, 1922: The founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
 
(PART 2 of a two-part series)
 
By François Forgue and Max Schumacher
 
Lenin’s elaboration of the question of nationalities in relation to the founding of the USSR did not end with the conclusions of the Central Committee of 6 October 1922 which have been recalled above. It continued in close connection with Lenin’s struggle against the bureaucracy. Weakened by illness, Lenin continued his struggle to impose his positions – and not only on the “question of nationalities”.
 
While on 30 December 1922, the First All-Union Congress of Soviets took the decision to found the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lenin dictated his “Letter to the Congress” (13), in which he expressed his regret, due to his illness, for “not having intervened energetically and decisively enough in the notorious question of autonomisation”. In response to the “Georgian incident”, Lenin demanded that “exemplary punishment must be inflicted on Comrade Ordzhonikidze” and emphasised: “The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky.” (14).
 
In his book Between Red and White, a response to attacks by Social-Democratic leaders such as Kautsky who were denouncing Soviet policy towards Georgia, Leon Trotsky quoted the appeal issued by the Georgian Congress of Soviets of 26 February 1922, which described the developments in Georgia and Transcaucasia under Menshevik leadership from the time of the October Revolution.
 
“[T]he Mensheviks took the lead in the civil war that united into one common camp against the workers’ and peasants’ Soviets, all the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets, and the ‘Black Hundred’ in the country. (…) Under Menshevik leadership all Trans-Caucasia was converted into counterrevolutionary trenches to crush the growing workers’ and peasants’ revolution. Thus, under the Menshevik leadership a dictatorship of the exploiters over the workers was set up in Trans-Caucasia, which was separated from Russia not on a national but a class ground.
 
“The Mensheviks seized the administrative and police apparatus, they set the tone to all Trans-Caucasia, and their control of Georgia was unchallenged. The intervention of the Turks and Germans in Trans-Caucasia sharpened the struggle between the different national factions of the bourgeois and middle-class front.
 
“The Mensheviks deemed this moment favourable for dismembering Trans-Caucasia and proclaiming the apparent independence of Georgia. Seeing that they were well protected against the northern danger by the Kaiser’s and the Sultan’s troops, the Mensheviks ruthlessly suppressed the workers’ strikes and peasant revolts which were continually breaking out in different parts of the country. (…) With the collapse of German militarism, Menshevik Georgia changed her masters, but not her international or home policy. This time the Mensheviks became a tool in the hands of the Entente imperialists.” (15).
 
“A rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is”
 
 The “Georgian incident” – mentioned above, which outraged Lenin – had been preceded by conflicts between Stalin and his lieutenant Ordzhonikidze and the Georgian Communist Party (CP) leadership. The Georgian Communists insisted that not the Trans-caucasian Federation as a whole but its individual Republics should each join the USSR. For Ordzhonikidze, this constituted an “unacceptable breach of party discipline”. During this conflict, in the course of which the majority of the Georgian CP’s Central Committee resigned, Ordzhonikidze resorted to violent insults and rudeness. Dzerzhinsky’s investigation of the incidents endorsed Ordzhonikidze’s characterisation (16).
 
For Lenin, this incident clearly showed that “the whole business of ‘autonomisation’ [i.e., counterposing autonomy to sovereignty] was radically wrong and badly timed”. Referring to the Constitution of the USSR, Lenin noted: “It is quite natural that in such circumstances, the “freedom to secede from the Union” by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.” (17)
 
Before the Twelfth Congress of the Bolshevik Party (17-21 April 1923), Lenin wrote on 6 March 1923 to the representatives of the Georgian CP:
 
“To Comrades Mdivani, Makharadze and others (Copy to Comrades Trotsky and Kamenev).
 
“Dear Comrades, I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech.” (18)
 
Lenin’s health deteriorated, and he was unable to deliver a speech to the Congress along the lines of his letter. On 5 March, he wrote to Trotsky: “It is my earnest request that you should undertake the defence of the Georgian case in the Party’s Central Committee [CC]. This case is now under “persecution” by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite to the contrary.” (19)
 
On 16 April 1923, one day before the start of the Party Congress, the Politburo received Lenin’s article “On the Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’”. On Trotsky’s intervention, Stalin had to send the letter to the CC members. On the initiative of the Presidium of the Congress, dominated by Stalin’s faction, communication of Lenin’s documents to the delegates was banned.
 
We quote extensively here from the minutes of the Party Congress, reproduced by Vadim Z. Rogovin in his book Was there an alternative? 192327, cited earlier.
 
“When Mdivani tried to quote some of the theses of Lenin’s article in his speech, he was curtly interrupted by Kamenev, who was chairing the meeting. The speeches by several delegates, however, contained references to Lenin’s article (described as a “letter”). Rakovsky quoted extracts from Lenin’s article at the meeting of the Commission on the National Question and stated bluntly at the plenary session of the Congress that Lenin, if he were present at the Congress, would prove to the party that “it was making fatal mistakes on the national question” and that the national question was one of those which “predict civil war if we do not show the necessary sensitivity and understanding towards it”.
 
Rakovsky stressed that in addition to national consciousness, “the feeling of equality of which Comrade Ilyich speaks in his letter – that feeling of equality by the nationalities oppressed for hundreds of years by the tsarist regime – has penetrated much more deeply and strongly than we think”. He said: “Today, the work has taken a wrong turn”, stressing that “this is not only my opinion – it is the opinion of Vladimir Ilyich.” It was necessary to fight against the manifestations of “the feeling of great power of the Russian man, who has never known national oppression, but who, on the contrary, has himself oppressed for hundreds of years.” …
 
Skrypnyk emphasised that the national question was more than differences of opinion “within the Georgian part of our party”, to which the Congress had reduced the treatment of this question. He clearly stated that Stalin’s theses contained nothing new, while “we are practically standing still on the national question and, although our principled solution is correct, we remain powerless”.
 
Skrypnyk said: “Great Russian prejudices, absorbed with mother’s milk, have become an instinct among very many comrades”, who “always try to refute any accusation of great power chauvinism…with the opposite reproach: “You should first overcome your own nationalism”. “Such “principled supporters of the great power, “centurions”, in practice distort the party line. But basically, we have not been fighting a battle against Great Russian chauvinism. This must change.”
 
Bukharin’s speech was a fairly comprehensive exposition of the content of Lenin’s articles. He asked the following question:
 
“Why, then, did Comrade Lenin sound the alarm so insistently on the Georgian question? And why did Comrade Lenin not say a word in his letter about the mistakes of the dissidents, when he said everything and went into great detail about the policy against the dissidents?…
 
“This is because Comrade Lenin is a genius strategist and knows that it is necessary to strike blows at the main enemy and not to be content with eclectically lining up little allusions one after the other.” The emphasis, according to Bukharin, was made in the presentations by Zinoviev and Stalin and in many speeches discussing the criticism of “local” chauvinism, among other things Georgian chauvinism; “but when it comes to Russian chauvinism, only a little bit pops out (applause, laughter), and yet it is the most dangerous.” …
 
Yakovlev pointed out that Lenin’s critical speech at the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b) [Russian Communist Party Bolsheviks] had not been published, and that for some reason it was considered lost, and he said: “I fear that there may still be a missing letter (a voice: “That’s right!”). Would you be discussing the national question here at the Party Congress as it is being discussed now if Lenin’s letters did not exist? No. I think that a main guarantee that there will not be another lost letter here, but a series of practical measures, is the widest possible dissemination in the Party of the ideas and thoughts that have been developed in Comrade Lenin’s letters. Because it is such documents that force every member of the Party to reflect on the way in which the vile chauvinism of the great powers permeates through its apparatus.” …
 
In his conclusion, Stalin stated that “a group of comrades, headed by Bukharin and Rakovsky, have over-exaggerated the importance of the national question” and that “there are many comrades present at our Congress who misquote Comrade Lenin and distort him”. … In the main part of his speech, Stalin in practice distanced himself from Lenin’s position on Mdivani’s group, saying that it represented “a small group which in Georgia itself is constantly brushed aside by the Party”.
 
In the discussion on the national question, he suggested that Lenin’s support for this group was due to the fact that “Lenin has forgotten. He has forgotten many things lately. He forgot that we adopted the basis of the Union together.”
 
Budu Mdivani was executed on 10 July 1937, Christian G. Rakovski on 11 September 1941, Mykola Skrypnyk committed suicide on 7 July 1933 in the face of the “purges” in the Ukrainian CP, Nikolai I. Bukharin was executed on 15 March 1938, Yakov A. Yakovlev supported Stalin against the Left Opposition, but was nevertheless expelled from the party in 1938 and executed the following year (20).
 
The ban on publishing Lenin’s letter on the question of nationalities in the USSR was not lifted until 1956.

It is important for the members of the Fourth International to understand that Lenin’s struggle for equal rights for all component parts of the federation cannot be taken in isolation, but was part of the struggle against the bureaucracy.
 
Leon Trotsky referred back to what had happened at the Twelfth Congress in the years that followed, indicating that “Stalin’s fraction crushed Lenin’s fraction in the Caucasus. This was the first victory of the reactionaries in the party. It opened the second chapter of the Revolution – the Stalinist counter-revolution.” (21).
 
The bureaucracy eliminates workers’ democracy and therefore the peoples’ right to self-determination
 
In 1938, Trotsky wrote on this subject:
 
“The October Revolution proclaimed the right of every nation not only to an independent cultural development but also to state separation. As a matter of fact, the bureaucracy has transformed the Soviet Union into a new prison-house of the peoples. True enough, the national language and the national school continue to exist: in this sphere the mightiest despotism can no longer turn back the wheel of evolution. But the language of the various nationalities is not an organ of their independent development, but the organ of bureaucratic domineering over them.
 
“The governments of the national Republics are, naturally, appointed by Moscow, or to put it more precisely, by Stalin. But the astonishing thing is that thirty of these governments suddenly turn out to have consisted of “enemies of the people”and agents of a foreign government. Behind this accusation, which rings far too rudely and ludicrously even on the lips of Stalin and Vyshinsky, there lurks in reality the fact that, in the national Republics, functionaries, even those appointed by the Kremlin, fall into dependence upon local conditions and moods and become gradually infected with an oppositional spirit against the stifling centralism of Moscow. They begin dreaming or talking about replacing the “beloved leader” and relaxing the steel tentacles. This is the real reason why all the national Republics of the USSR were recently beheaded.” (22).
 
The elimination of workers’ democracy and the destruction by extermination of thousands and thousands of Bolshevik Party cadres and Communist activists involved resorting to the most extreme oppression of the peoples formerly subjected to tsarist rule, and thus a return, in the field of ideology, to “Great Russian” superiority, and therefore to the worst kind of chauvinism which Lenin had condemned.
 
It was this oppression, which Trotsky described as “bureaucratic banditry”, which made the demands for independence a component of the “political revolution”, which led Trotsky to write, in 1939:“The unification of the Ukraine presupposes freeing the so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist boot … The genuine emancipation of the Ukrainian people is inconceivable without a revolution or a series of revolutions in the west which must lead in the end to the creation of the Soviet United States of Europe. An independent Ukraine could and undoubtedly will join this federation as an equal member.” (23).
 
“They dared”
 
In the last document she was able to write on the Russian revolution, Rosa Luxemburg recorded her disagreements on many points with the policy followed by the Bolsheviks, and concluded this listing by affirming that the essential thing was that the Bolsheviks “had dared”, and that this was the indestructible basis of the support that should be given to them.
 
They “had dared” to act against the imperialist war, and to act for the seizure of power by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. The formulation “they dared” also applies to the way in which the Bolsheviks sought to solve the national problem while at the same time ensuring the defence of the social gains wrested by the revolution, which formed the foundation of the unity of the proletarians of all nationalities who had won them together.
 
The counter-revolutionary bureaucracy had, as Trotsky said, transformed the USSR into a new “prison of the peoples” before leading to its disintegration. That disintegration is inseparable from the destruction of what remained of the gains of the October Revolution, it is linked to the restoration of capitalism, and it has allowed the multiplication of counter-revolutionary initiatives provoked and fueled by imperialism, and thus of conflicts pitting one former USSR Republic against another.
 
The peoples, once united on the basis of the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and on the basis of the political power of the working class, will once again find the paths of their unity and their brotherhood in their common struggle against imperialism and all its auxiliaries.
 
This struggle is also the one that must be waged today against war. It is in no way underestimating the counter-revolutionary and warlike will of imperialism to note that the reactionary policy of the regime currently existing in Russia, that of Putin, is part of that will to crush the peoples.
 
This is what Putin has clearly expressed by placing his military intervention under the banner of anti-Leninism, i.e., the fight against the Revolution.
 
ENDNOTES
 
(13) V I Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.36, Progress Publishers (1966), pp.591-611. In an addendum to his letter dated 24 December 1922, Lenin stated on 4 January 1923 in his “Testament” (Collected Works, Vol.36, p.596): “Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post”.
(14) Lenin, “The question of nationalities or “autonomisation”, op.cit.
(15) Trotsky, Between Red and White, Appendix, op.cit.
(16) See Vadim Rogovin, Was There an Alternative? 1923–1927. Trotskyism: A Look Back Through the Years, London: Mehring Books (2021). This is the English edition of Vol.1 of Rogovin’s seven-volume series Was There an Alternative?, which was first published in Russian in 1992. The passages quoted in this article are an English