Rhode Island Socialists' Response (Majority opinion) to FFWP's Observations on their Resignation Statement

In September of 2017 Facts For Working People published the resignation statement of the Rhode Island Section of Socialist Alternative (CWI). Facts For Working People thanked the RI Socialists for openly explaining their differences, we can all benefit from it and FFWP responded to their statement with some observations. 

As we commented in our observations, FFWP has much in agreement with the position of the views expressed in the RI Socialists resignation statement but wanted to discuss further the issue of racism and specially oppressed minorities. The Rhode Island Socialists have responded to our observations and we share their response below. Facts For Working People Blog will have a response to this latest RI commentary and will post our differences with the views expressed here tomorrow. We believe discussing these issues in a productive way is essential for socialists and all anti-capitalists that are fighting for a future for humanity.

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We begin by thanking Facts For a Working People (FFWP) for taking the time to engage our resignation letter in good faith. Cultivating an environment of open dialogue is necessary to build solidarity and evoke social change. As Marxists, we do not shy away from disagreement, because movement is the result of productive friction. That being stated, we submit the following commentaries in the interest of a greater understanding and future correspondence.

At the outset, we quote an astute observation made by the FFWP that warrants repetition and further meditation. We concur with the claim that: "whatever the color of the skin of whoever is in some position of power in the US, US capitalism is still, and always will be, a vicious racist state and society." Here, on the other side of the Atlantic, we have witnessed first-hand an ignoble descent into colorblindness and a politics of representation. This backward tendency was only exacerbated by the election of a black president, which heightened the age-old preference for diversity over decolonization. Liberation is now equated with multiculturalism: a superficial method of cherry-picking minorities and using their presence to window-dress racist institutions. Consequently, white supremacy/anti-blackness are retained as the baselines. While there are practical gains under affirmative action, we must be honest in pointing out that these programs also work to insulate racism. As the FFWP pointed out: there is a difference between "concessions" and progress. Decolonization, on the other hand, is the deep structural process of de-centering whiteness altogether. Decolonization is the radical transformation of the world as we know it.

The treatment of racism as a mere reflex of capital was a major source of dissent for the Rhode Island branch. For that reason, we are elated to read that "those around the FFWP" do not subordinate race to class. It is our opinion, however, that despite pronouncements to the contrary, the FFWP's statement is still immersed in a logic of class reduction. In the interest of helping the FFWP actualize their declaration against reductivism, we reserve the remainder of this commentary for a constructive criticism. Our hope is to explain the nuances of structural racism and strengthen the FFWP's position on the matter.

In response to our claim of class reductivism, the FFWP asserts that "under no conditions do we subordinate the fight against racism, sexism, etc., to the class struggle. This is an accusation used by much of the petit bourgeois left and left academia." Our sole interest, at this juncture, is to remark that we - Rhode Island Socialists - do not belong to either of the camps mentioned above. In that same vein, it is worth noting that some of the world's most notable freedom-fighters have taken a similar position against 'determination in the last instance' Marxism. For instance: Frantz Fanon (1961) and Huey P. Newton (1973) were revolutionaries who argued against a one-dimensional class politics. Unless we are prepared to argue that Fanon and Newton exemplify the 'petite bourgeois left' and/or 'left academia,' we must dispense with the logic forwarded on this score.

We appreciate the personal narrative shared by the FFWP, with respect to their comrade in Northern Ireland and religious persecution. While we can always benefit from voicing our experiences with each other, we find it necessary to submit a word of caution in response. In the absence of a thorough understanding of oppression, we eschew structural positions. There is a qualitative difference between the oppression of Catholics/Protestants in Ireland and the domination of blacks in the US. The suffering of blackness is without comparison. Blackness is the absolute bottom-line and metric against which all being is measured. To borrow from Frank Wilderson III (2008), it is a "ruse of analogy" to conflate blackness with any other group. The danger in comparing blackness to other oppressed groups is that it grants legibility to the struggle of the latter while rendering the former invisible.

The FFWP states that "the only force that can end capitalism and therefore racism and sexism, is the united work class with a revolutionary leadership." We would like to engage this idea further. The FFWP does well in quoting the late, great Malcolm X when he stated: "you cannot have capitalism without racism." The archive of oppressive regimes over the past four centuries testifies to this fact. While what Malcolm X said was important, we should also meditate on what he did not say . Declaring that we cannot have 'capitalism without racism' highlights only one side of an equation: namely, that the ruling class depends on racism. Nothing in Malcolm X's statement shall be construed to mean that racism requires capitalism. In fact, racism pre-dates capitalism by at least 150 years. The FFWP would be on more solid ground if they considered a passage from Huey P. Newton's autobiography. We quote the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense at length:

"I also saw the link between racism and the economics of capitalism, although, despite the link, I recognize that it was necessary to separate the concepts in analyzing the general situation. In psychological terms, racism could continue to exist even after the economic problems that had created racism had been resolved. Never convinced that destroying capitalism would automatically destroy racism, I felt, however, that we could not destroy racism without wiping out its economic foundation. It was necessary to think much more creatively and independently about these complex interconnections." (p. 70)

Put simply: anti-capitalism is necessary to dismantle racism, but it is not the panacea. We can now re-deploy Malcolm X's statement with a friendly amendment from Newton: you cannot have capitalism without racism, but you can have racism without capitalism . Seizing the means of production simply removes the profit motive from racism. In our resignation letter, we spelled out the differences and interconnections between the political economy of capitalism and the symbolic economy of humanity. We know what the former refers to, but the latter is less clear. The latter captures what Frantz Fanon (1952) termed the "collective cultural unconscious" which refers to "the sum of prejudices, myths, and collective attitudes of a given group" (p. 88).

Racism is not only generative of profit for the ruling class, but it also grants a sense of coherence for ordinary working class people. The human being's desire for stability has been underwritten by white supremacy/anti-blackness for the past 600 years - and structures our sensibilities. Socializing the productive process is not synonymous with a decolonization of that other economy . It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said:

“...racism is not based on some empirical generalization; it is based rather on an ontological affirmation. It is not the assertion that certain people are behind culturally or otherwise because of environmental conditions. It is the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior.”

The contention here is that racism is rooted in that other economy . A classless society is not the same as a raceless one. Without a firm understanding of this relationship, we are working towards a communist society that is still drenched in anti-blackness.

To recapitulate a point made in the resignation letter, Marxism does not automatically loan itself to anti-racist efforts. As Eldridge Cleaver argued in On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party:

“Every Black person knows that the wind may change at any given moment and that the Lynch Mob, made up of White members of the ‘Working Class’, might come breathing down his neck if not kicking down his door. It is because of these factors that when we begin to talk about being Marxist-Leninists, we must be very careful to make it absolutely clear just what we are talking about. On the subject of racism, Marxism-Leninism offers us very little assistance. In fact, there is much evidence that Marx and Engels were themselves racists - just like their White brothers and sisters of their era, and just as many Marxist-Leninists of our own time are also racists. Historically, Marxism-Leninism has been an outgrowth of European problems and it has been primarily preoccupied with finding solutions to European problems.” (1970, p. 4-5).

Understanding and dismantling anti-blackness requires a paradigmatic shift. The standard conceptions of alienation and class are insufficient in grappling with the colonial subaltern. In The Wretched of the Earth , Fanon (1961) critiques and recasts the orthodox Marxist perspective. He writes:

"When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. In the colonies, the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence: you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem. Everything up to and including pre-capitalist society, so well explained by Marx, must here be thought out again."(p. 40).

Racism is not simply a consequence of a nefarious ruling elite playing "divide and rule" to extract surplus value from foreign lands. It is the decisive factor in colonial contexts - an organizing principle in and of itself. Fanon amends the typical base/superstructure calculus to address the particularities of anti-blackness in the colonies. As a result, we must dispense with the class reductive attempt to universalize the particular experiences of Europeans. The Marxist tradition was spearheaded and is predominantly propped up by reference to European scholar-activists who superimpose the conditions of their local time and place onto the rest of the world; thereby assuming a paternalistic stance that tends toward erasure. That a Marxist analysis should be stretched at all to fit the conditions of a particular place and time is not something that dogmatic Marxists want to admit. Instead, lessons are to be lifted out of the European context, or out of 1917, and applied directly.

Relatedly, and on the point of "revolutionary leadership" raised by the FFWP, we point to the Black Panther Party. The Panthers were acutely aware of the colonial conditions in the US, and what that meant for social change. Consider the following passages:

" The principal reservoir of revolutionary potential in Amerika lies in wait inside the Black Colony. Its sheer numerical strength, its desperate historical relation to the violence of the productive system, and the fact of its present status in the creation of wealth force the black stratum at the base of the whole class structure into the forefront of any revolutionary scheme." - George Jackson [1971, p. 10, Blood In My Eye]

" The Black Colony can and will influence the fate of things to come in the U.S.A. The impact of black revolutionary rage actually could carry at least the opening stages of a socialist revolution under certain circumstances - not discounting some of the complexities created by the specter of racism. However, if we are going to be successful in tying black energy and rage in the international socialist revolution, we must understand that racial complexities do exist." - George Jackson [1971, p. 10-11, Blood In My Eye]

" I think, in terms of struggle and who will comprise the revolutionary front of that struggle, it will be oppressed people. Black people are in the vanguard position of the struggle because we have been the most dispossessed." - H. Rap Brown [1968, Interview with Gil Noble]

Any revolutionary struggle that is not led by or accountable to the 'faces at the bottom of the well' is automatically fraudulent. The revolution will not be led by a bunch of white men. There must be an emphasis on black women in particular. Any revolution that is not intersectional is not revolutionary at all. How comfortable are socialist organizations with blackness in positions of leadership? Is anti-blackness the driving impetus behind class reductivism - so as to ensure that the revolution does not center black folks? This quote from Selma James is appropriate in this context:

“How the working class will ultimately unite organizationally, we don’t know. We do not know that up to now many of us have been told to forget our needs in some wider interest which was never wide enough to include us. And so we learnt by bitter experience that nothing unified and revolutionary will be formed until each section of the exploited will have made its own autonomous power felt.” - Selma James [1975, p.1, Sex, Race & Class]

We, again, thank the FFWP for taking the time to engage us in this worthwhile discussion. We look forward to future correspondence.

In solidarity,

Rhode Island Socialists