thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a day when most Americans get together and eat an enjoy their family. When I came to this country first I did not know anything about thanksgiving so I asked what it was about. I was told it was for giving thanks for getting to America safely. This puzzled me so I asked about the Native American people who were already here and who originally helped the European settlers to survive but were then slaughtered and forced into reservations in which they remain today.  Did they celebrate thanksgiving day? I asked also about the millions of African Americans who were brought to this country against their will and died in the middle passage. I asked about the millions of Irish who were forced off their land by British capitalist and landlord policies and died on the death ships. This history is not taught. 

But maybe you think if we think about all those things how could we celebrate? This is a wrong way to look things. Facing up to reality and taking the side of the oppressed is the only way we can really give thanks. 

For instance we could celebrate the many many instances when working class Americans of all races and backgrounds came together to fight against the powerful wealthy forces like the slave owners, the American capitalists and landlords, the British and French colonialists, who carried out the exploitation and division and slaughter and in the process these working class Americans fought for a better life. 

Look at what we are not taught about working class people coming together. Around two hundred years ago African American and White and Native American people were marrying together and living together so much that this tendency towards coming together threatened the upper classes. So what did they do? They passed a law to make marrying or living together illegal. Racism comes from the top down. It is a conscious and deliberate policy. Divide and rule. How can a small minority which rules a big majority and robs it blind keep control unless it keeps the big majority divided and fighting amongst itself. 

Look at the lies we are told. I only heard this one the other day. Of course I had always heard about the savage lynchings of African American men which went on in this country up to a few decades ago. And we see now racists are hanging nooses again. They will have to be stopped. The bosses history, told to us through their schools and universities and media tells us that the lynchings were mostly motivated by African American men disrespecting White women in the main, but also White men. 

There is a much more real explanation for these savage lynchings.  After slavery was ended, mainly by the great walk off of African American labour from the slave owners plantations in the South during the civil war between the capitalists and the slaveowners, there was a tremendous increase of free labour onto the labour market. A lot of this labour was very skilled as the slaveowners had needed skilled workers for their luxurious living conditions and for the tools and implements they used. So they had developed very skilled labour. 

But there were lots of small White business men and more importantly White craftsmen with their own shops and businesses already in existence. They were threatened by this wave of skilled African American labour on the market and its potential to open its own workplaces such as forges and woodworking shops etc., and from there accumulate capital and open its own stores. The white business owners were not prepared to allow the African American skilled labour compete on an equal basis. So with the backing of the Federal government who did not want this new "free African American labour" to vote much of the lynchings were actually carried out to break the potential of this skilled African American labour. This deskilled what was originally skilled African American labour and ensured that it was kept in severe poverty. It was only really when the CIO movement of the 1930's and the African American revolt of the 1960's took place that African Americans could get into the better paid jobs such as auto and steel and get into the skilled trades.  The capitalists who backed the KKK to do this handy work for them do not want to admit this. After all they "believe in the free market" and they would not want to admit they got rich at least by lynching African American skilled workers. 

While recognizing this today we could celebrate how in the 1930's the uprising of the Congress of Industrial Organizations took on the racist and sexist policies of the employers and the old American Federation of Labour and built a new union movement which united workers of all races and genders and won big increases for the working class of all races and genders. 

We could also gives thanks for the great movement of the 1960's, the African American revolt in which people of all races and genders joined and which won gains for people of all racial backgrounds and give a tremendous boost also to the women's movement. 

Karl Marx developed a way of thinking which helps us understand the world. One of the main elements is that we take an all sided approach to things. Capitalism does not like this approach as it brings all their dirty linen into view. They prefer their own their selective one sided approach which hides their crimes. For thanksgiving we should take an all sided approach. 

Another element in Karl Marx's method was that society is based on class struggle. Yet another is that all things in our world has to be seen as part of a process, not isolated and not static, but as a process in motion. And finally that this method will help us understand the world, if properly applied, can help us come to a view which corresponds to reality. 

And if we have a view that corresponds to reality this is the best way to have contentment in our lives. This is the best way to celebrate giving thanks. We give thanks for the struggles of working class people in the past whose struggles improved our lives. This is the reality that most corresponds to our reality as working class people at this time in history.

But this is not enough on its own. Celebration will not last for long if we do nothing about our understanding of the world. A view that corresponds to reality today tells us that the world capitalist system need to be overthrown and replaced by a Democratic Socialist World Federation. This means that we have to take up the struggle of the working class. So celebrate today and tomorrow get back into the struggle. Well even today. Go and see whoever is struggling to keep from foreclosed on, or being fired, or has no health care, or who is suffering from the after affects of war or who is still at war and give them your support.  

Happy thanksgiving. Sean