1) Definition of a Nation: Stalin’s definition of a nation as presented in Marxism and the National Question has proved to be the most scientifically rigorous and valuable in presenting the objective criteria for nationhood. The definition is as follows: a nation is a “historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”.
While accepting Stalin’s definition, we must also be aware that very few nations will exhibit all four features of nationhood in a fully developed, mature form. This fact is especially apparent in the age of imperialism, in which the development of oppressed nations and colonies is stunted and retarded. It is a mark of Great Nation chauvinism to demand that a people exhibit all features of nationhood in a classical, full bodied form before bequeathing the right of self-determination on them.
At the same time, the strength of Stalin’s definition is that it puts the national question on a primarily objective footing. In other words, a people cannot be considered a nation simply because they believe that they are or even because they carry on resolute and militant struggle for self determination. Their nationhood is an historical, material reality grounded in a number of objective conditions (territory, economic life, language, culture).
2) National-Revolutionary Movements: As pre-monopoly capitalism develops into imperialism–decadent, moribund capitalism–the old bourgeois-democratic national movements must give way to national-revolutionary movements, which are the direct reserves of the international proletariat.
It is the internationalist duty of the proletariat in imperialist countries to give direct aid to the revolutionary movements, in the oppressed nations and colonies. In fact, proletarian revolution in imperialist countries is impossible without such a strategic alliance with the national-revolutionary movements.
In this second stage of the national question, the national liberation movements assume an internationalist, socialist character, under the leadership of the proletariat, and pass rapidly from an anti-imperialist New Democratic stage directly to the consolidation of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry.
The internationlist outlook of the national liberation movements results to some extent from imperialism’s world historical tendency to break down national barriers and assimilate nations. Through international intercourse and international unity of capital, imperialism brings oppressed nations and colonies into the orbit of world economy. It thus plays an unwitting progressive role in the strict sense of laying the objective, material foundations for the international unity of the proletariat and oppressed peoples.
Marxist-Leninists do not oppose the assimilation of nations and attempt to turn back history. What we oppose is the forcible means of exploitation and oppression used by imperialism to integrate nations and nationalities. This is why Marxist-Leninists uphold full democratic rights for oppressed nationalities, including the right of self determination where applicable.
3) The Rise of the Black Nation: It was during the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction that Black people in the United States developed all the basic attributes of nationhood. The Black people came to constitute a nation in the Black Belt South, although a nation greatly oppressed and deformed.
Class differentiation, which had begun before the Civil War, greatly increased. A small class of Black workers arose as well as a layer of Black farmers owning their own land. These classes provided an embryonic market for a Black petit-bourgeoisie. This nascent bourgeoisie never developed any real political or economic strength because the mass of Black people where still held in peonage, serf-like bondage to the land as sharecroppers. This mass of Black people was never able to rise above a subsistence level and thus provide a substantial market for Black-produced goods.
Thus, Black people did develop a “common economic life”, centered around the semi-feudal share-cropping system, but they were never able to develop a full fledged, independent economic cohesion. Such cohesion was dependent on the breaking up of the plantations and dividing up the land to the Black tillers.
This development, which would have been possible under pre-monopoly capitalism, never occurred because the rise of the Black nation coincided with the development of imperialism into a full parasitic force in the United States. The Black nation could not free itself by essentially bourgeois-democratic means. There could be no solution except national liberation armed struggle in alliance with the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.
Although greatly retarded, this development of at least an embryonic economic cohesion was decisive for the development of a Black Nation since the other factors of common culture, language, and territory were already present, having been consolidated through hundreds of years of slavery and Black resistance to oppression. The basis for a common land mass remained since the Black peasants and sharecroppers provided the rivet to a common territory upon which a historically constituted, stable community of Black people could arise.
4) White Chauvinism: White chauvinism is the main danger within the communist movement on the Black National question. Black nationalism is very much a secondary danger, being the ideology of the small Black bourgeoisie and sectors of the Black petit-bourgeoisie. It gains its strength through the objective existence of a Black Nation and as a reaction against the white chauvinism of the oppressor nation bourgeoisie and its systematic oppression and exploitation of the masses of Black people.
This backward ideology of Black nationalism which the Black bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie utilize to enhance their own political and economic position cannot be combatted without white chauvinism being targeted for the main blow by Marxist-Leninist forces. Masses of white working people must be won, through communist leadership, to uphold the democratic rights of Black People, including the right of self determination in the core region of the Black Belt.
The strength of white chauvinism historically can be demonstrated in the way Marxist-Leninists have had to fight every inch of the way for a correct position on the Black National Question. Until 1928 the Communist Party upheld, in its essentials, the old chauvinist position of the Socialist Party that Black people were an oppressed racial minority. Through the work of Leninists in the Comintern and in the U.S. Party, the correct position was hammered out, which argued for the existence of a Black Nation in the Black Belt south and upheld the right of self-determination, state unity, and confiscation of the landed property of the white landowners and capitalists.
This position came under attack from the Lovestone faction and its theory of American exceptionalism, and later in the 1930’s came under full scale assault from the Browder faction, which gained control of the Party and tied Black people’s liberation to the Democratic Front which supported Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although Browder was later expelled, the new revisionist leadership of the CPUSA continued the course of liquidating the right of self-determination, and eventually in the late l950’s expelled many of the members who continued to fight for a revolutionary position on the Black National question.
It has been left to the young Marxist-Leninist forces, battling against the temporarily more powerful historical force of revisionism, to re-discover the basic principles on the Black National question and tie these principles scientifically to the concrete conditions Black people face today.
5) Continued Existence of the Black Nation: Despite the increased use of capital-intensive farming and the emergence of Agri-business in the South, the common material foundation of the Black Nation has not been liquidated.
Groaning under its general crisis, U.S. imperialism has moved capital into the South, particularly since World War II, to take advantage of the low wages in the region and thereby hope to blunt its falling rate of profit. Large Agribusiness and its attending capital-intensive farming have displaced the plantation as the dominant relation of production. In no way has this movement of capital solved the agrarian problem, which is endemic to capitalism, nor has it relieved the national oppression of Black people.
Although substantially reduced, the potentiality for Black people’s autonomous development still exists in the Black Belt region. The area of Black majority in the Black Belt has been “officially” reduced as of 1970 to 105 counties. But given the traditional under-estimation of the Black population in the Census and the common gerrymandering of county lines to assure white majorities, this figure doesn’t point to the liquidation of the territorial integrity of the Black people so much as it does to the remaining common land mass upon which Black people can develop autonomously.
In the rural areas of the Black Belt, Black people are still the majority. This is the case because while in the entire country the Black peasantry comprises only 5% of the Black labor force, the majority of this Black peasantry still lives in the Black Belt. Thus, the question of the ownership of the land, upon which Black people have toiled for centuries, is still a vital issue.
Because of the change of the specific weight of different classes of Black people in the countryside, the resolution of the agrarian problem can take place at a higher level. Unionization of the 168,000 Black farm laborers and 200,000 pulpwood cutters still working under semi-feudal relations of production takes on prime importance.
The Black bourgeoisie is a weak class economically, but still this class is politically active and exerts an influence and control far beyond its size and economic power. As an example, the Black church is one of the chief levers through which the Black bourgeoisie exerts its political and social leadership. Prime examples of this activity are the Nation of Islam and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Thus, we can see that class differentiation, a Black market and exchange between town and country are not fully developed. But, the restricted development of the Black Nation is to be expected, as with any small oppressed or colonized nation. The basic rudiments of a Black Nation are still in place, requiring free and full development in order to achieve a mature form. Such free and full development is only possible under socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
6) Defense of the Right of Self-Determination: Dramatic developments have taken place in the objective situation of Black people, especially since World War II. Most Black people no longer live in the Black Belt, and Black people do not constitute a majority in that region as a whole (there are roughly four Black people for every six white people.) Most Black people no longer live in small towns or rural areas, but reside in large urban centers both in the North and South. Most Black people are no longer peasants or sharecroppers, but are workers (the Black working class comprises approximately 85% of the entire Black population.)
Capitalist relations of production in farming have become dominant in the Black Belt and have super-imposed themselves over the old, declining semi-feudal relations of production.
These developments have not yet been fully analyzed and summed up in a scientific fashion by Marxist-Leninists so that the defense of the right of self-determination can be put on a solid footing. Instead, many Marxist-Leninists have tended to downgrade the role of theory in relation to the Black National question and have substituted dogma and metaphysics in its place and have reduced the consistently internationalist stand of the proletariat to petit-bourgeois moralizing and idealism.
It is beyond question that imperialism is incapable of solving the Black national question. In seeking to squeeze out extra profits from capital-intensive farming in the depressed Black Belt, imperialism does not solve its contradictions but only alters the form of their operation. At the same time, it must be clearly recognized that imperial ism does have the political and economic capacity to break down national barriers and assimilate nations. To ignore this tendency in relation to the Black National question is to neglect to apply the method of dialectical and historical materialism.
The consistent stand of Marxist-Leninists in relation to the Black National question since Reconstruction has been to uphold the right of self-determination in the Black Belt South. Through the work of Lenin and followers of Lenin in the Comintern and in the CPUSA, this position was fully developed and, put into practice, advanced the cause of Black national liberation and proletarian revolution.
The main burden falls on those communists who no longer believe that Black people constitute a Nation to demonstrate this position in a thorough-going fashion and point out its revolutionary consequences in practice, especially in developing multi-national unity of the proletariat and the unity of the proletariat with the oppressed Black nationality. However, this situation does not absolve orthodox Marxist-Leninists from doing systematic investigation in order to be able to give a dialectical and historical explanation for the continued existence of the Black Nation. To fail to carry out this task is to reduce orthodoxy to a political and theoretical catechism.
7) Full Democratic Rights: Central to Black people’s struggle against national oppression is the demand for full democratic rights, full social and political equality. This is a demand that white workers must be won to take up and struggle for. This key task is vital in order to build the strategic alliance upon which socialist revolution in this country will be based–the alliance between the multi-national proletariat and the liberation struggles of oppressed nationalities such as Blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans.
In order to cement this alliance, the Black industrial proletariat must assume the central role in the Black national liberation struggle and determine the fundamental direction it must take.
A number of communist groups have made white chauvinist errors in sacrificing the struggle for full democratic rights, including the right of self-determination, for Black people in the name of an illusory, short-term unity of the working class. In order not to be “divisive” and in order to find a common ground of working-class exploitation around which both white and Black workers can unite, these communists have undermined the only real lasting foundation upon which that multi-national unity could be built–the recognition of the national and racial oppression of Black people and the fight to eradicate it.
Fighting this chauvinist error, other Marxist-Leninists have tended to make the opposite error, i.e., taking a moralizing, petit-bourgeois stand on the liberation of Black people. As an example, the way the right of self-determination is upheld in the Black Belt, the fate of the white national minority living in the region is almost completely ignored. As a national minority, they should be guaranteed full democratic rights, with participation assured in any governmental bodies established.
To fail to carry out this program is to make a fatal moralistic error of putting race before class, ignoring the common class interests between poor whites and the mass of Black people and their common history of struggle. This mistake only provides grist for the mills of the bourgeoisie, which has a long history of using white supremacy to divide white and Black working people.
8) Regional Autonomy: Upholding the right of self-determination is the primary demand put forward by Marxist-Leninists during the revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism. But this stand does not mean that communists must remain neutral on the question of how this right should be exercised.
In general, Marxist-Leninists favor the formation of large national states because the latter provide the best material resources for overcoming any kind of national inequality and oppression. The consistent stand of Marxist-Leninists is to fight for the international unity of the proletariat and for the consequent unity of nations.
In order to promote this unity, under capitalist conditions of oppressor and oppressed nations, Marxist-Leninists uphold the right of self-determination, the right of oppressed nations to secede. Upholding the right to secede, however, is not synonomous with demanding secession. In general, Marxist-Leninists would advocate against secession unless common national life proved to be intolerable for the oppressed nationality.
Marxist-Leninists must respect the choice of Black people to secede even under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it is the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat itself which provides the best guarantee that common national life will not be intolerable. With the dictatorship of the proletariat firmly in place, Marxist-Leninists should encourage Black people to choose the alternative of regional autonomy under this multinational dictatorship.
Regional autonomy signifies that nationalities inhabiting a common territory shall have the right of self-government, ever and above the normal functions of local organs of state power. The autonomous region shall have the power to make rules and regulations pertaining to the specific situation of the region, develop its own economy in line with local conditions, and manage local finances.
Marxist-Leninists do systematic education around the concept of regional autonomy under the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to lay the groundwork for its eventual realization after the overthrow of capitalism. But this work does not negate the fact that the struggle by the multinational proletariat for socialist revolution must be tied primarily to the right of self-determination of the Black Nation. The fundamental goal of the Black 1iberation struggle is political power, which can be exercised either through sucession or through remaining in the multinational state and exercising regional autonomy under the dictatorship of the proletariat.