TOWARD A REVOLUTIONARY LEFT FRAMEWORK ON AN AGE-OLD DEBATE
By Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report.
January 29, 2021 | STRATEGIZE!
Neither Class Reduction Nor Race Reduction.
White supremacy and class struggle must thus be taken together as parts of a
whole social system rather than separate categories of oppression.
Socialist policies cannot be truly achieved within a racist power
structure, and racism cannot be fully eradicated without a transformation of
class society.
Activists in the U.S. have debated race and class for decades to no
resolution. Nonetheless, in this moment of U.S. imperial decay and crisis,
the debate over whether race or class takes precedence in the struggle for
liberation from U.S. capitalist and imperialist domination rages on. Two
prominent strands of the debate have emerged over the last year which
intersect with the rise of Bernie Sanders-led democratic socialists and
the uprising against racist policing led by the slogan Black Lives Matter.
For many leaders of the Sanders camp, white supremacy is either a
distraction or a secondary issue that can be addressed through the
amelioration of class exploitation vis-à-vis policies such as Medicare for
All. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter camp often discuss white supremacy as
the primary problem of U.S. society even if it intersects with gender,
class, sexuality, and other aspects of the human experience with oppression.
Both arguments are limited and dragged down by the weight of liberalism.
Liberalism presumes that the United States economic and political system
possesses innate qualities of self-correction once the demands of the masses
are fully heard. In the case of the Sanders camp, Medicare for All and other
universal programs will disproportionately benefit Black Americans. Racism
will wither away or be significantly reduced after the white masses have
received what is rightfully theirs on an equal basis with Black people.
For many leaders of the Sanders camp, white supremacy is either a
distraction or a secondary issue.
In the case of the Black Lives Matter camp, the Black Lives Matter Global
Network Inc . has championed a movement whose mission is to eradicate white
supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black
communities by the state and vigilantes. This is done in part by combating
and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and
innovation, and centering Black joy. . . As a non-profit beholden to mainly
Democratic Party donors, BLMs Global Network has focused on reminding the
world of the contributions of Black people, getting out the vote for
Democrats, and demanding prosecution of police officers responsible for the
murder of Black people.
While BLM talks of liberation, its activity and analysis are decidedly
liberal in that they center the eradication of racism via mild and selective
concessions from the U.S. state. Black Lives Matter activists and
organizations are of course politically diverse and contain militant
elements, with Black Agenda Report having covered the movement extensively
since it emerged in 2014. The Black Lives Matter Global Network has been
given the most attention from establishment channels seeking to develop a
common sense among the population that effectively neutralizes radical
possibilities. Instead of the further development of mass demands, the
debate over how to make Black Lives Matter has predominantly centered on
questions of diversity and whether institutions of power can speak the
language of consultant-driven racial politics.
BLMs Global Network has focused on reminding the world of the
contributions of Black people, getting out the vote for Democrats, and
demanding prosecution of police officers.
Both ideological frameworks repeat the errors of race reduction and class
reduction. The reaction from both camps following the January 6th riot on
Capitol Hill offers a clarifying example. Some on the Left interpreted the
mass of white hordes walking (and at times climbing) into Capitol Hill as a
marker of frustration among the working class. If Medicare for All or
monthly payments had been provided to the masses, then the riots would not
have occurred. Others immediately called out the white supremacists and
fascists who descended on Capitol Hill and demanded that these forces be
apprehended by law enforcement and censored by tech monopolies in a renewed
War on Terror campaign.
Liberalism is by definition ahistorical so it should come as no surprise
that race reductionists and class reductionists get events like January 6th
so wrong. The white supremacist state cannot censor itself, nor does it have
any interest in creating the economic conditions for its own dissolution.
White supremacy and class are not separate phenomenon, especially in the
context of the United States. Gerald Horne and Theodore Allen have both
proven through historical record that white supremacy is embedded in the
capitalist political economy of the United States. Malcolm X stated this
plainly when he remarked that you cant have capitalism without racism.
White supremacy and class struggle must thus be taken together as parts of a
whole social system rather than separate categories of oppression.
White supremacy and class are not separate phenomenon, especially in the
context of the United States.
White supremacy appeared in the historical development of the United States
as an intentional policy meant to consolidate the rule of settler
colonialism and capitalism. European settlers of all classes would be united
by their racial affiliation rather than divided by contradictory class
interests. Black and other non-white peoples would be terrorized by the
racialization of their being, thereby enhancing class exploitation by way of
chattel bondage, Jim Crow fascism, and the like. White supremacy justified
colonial expansionism, slavery, and the violence necessary to conduct each.
White proletarians were kept fed with superiority even as white capitalists
intensified the rate of exploitation for all workers, albeit to varying
degrees of brutality and theft. When the U.S. became an imperialist power,
so too did white supremacy reproduce its relations of domination between
white proletarians and their global counterparts in the majority non-white
world.
The Capitol Hill riot was an outgrowth of a profound popular confusion that
has taken hold in the United States over this basic history. Only a negation
of the history of white supremacy could produce the conclusion that Medicare
for All and $2,000 per month would have prevented the addle minded white
Americans from storming Capitol Hill. Many of the rioters believe that
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are communists aligned with China against
rightwing freedom fighters in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The self-described
patriots who stormed Capitol Hill are the spawn of the Trump eraa period
where the crisis of U.S. imperialism opened a lane for white reaction to
pose as working class interests. This lane was opened primarily by the
Democratic Party, which used the Trump era to promote racist conspiracies of
Russian collusion and antagonize non-ruling class white Americans as
deplorables. All the while, white liberals and the so-called leadership of
Black Lives Matter have followed the Democrats down a race only
framework which seeks inclusion within a decaying imperialist state
alongside openly racist blue MAGA demagogues like Joe Biden.
The crisis of U.S. imperialism opened a lane for white reaction to pose as
working class interests.
Many on the white left have lamented identity politics while others in the
Black Lives Matter camp have condemned socialists for ignoring race. The
only means of combatting this irreconcilable contradiction is to return to
politics. Radicals and revolutionaries must set the parameters of political
debate by raising what the narrow prison cell of liberal politics erases
from historical memory. For example, both race-first and class-first
advocates often side with the U.S. ruling class on the critical question of
war and peace. U.S. aggression toward Syria, China, and a host of countries
is virtually ignored in place of false equivalencies between the victim and
the perpetrator of imperialist crimes. Class-first and race-first activists,
while differing in their approach to domestic affairs, often stand on the
same side when it comes to U.S. militarism beyond the red, white, and
blue-painted colonial borders of the United States.
Unity around endless U.S. wars is a racist unity at its core. But militarism
isnt the only aspect of U.S. imperialism erased by race-first and
class-first politics. So too is the plight of political prisoners such as
Mumia Abu-Jamal and Julian Assange . The same goes for censorship and the
ongoing repression of the real Left, which has gone virtually ignored since
the advent of Russiagate. Also left off the table is the question of power,
entirely. For if power was on the table, then it would be quite easy to link
the struggle against U.S. militarism to the freedom of Julian Assange and
Mumia Abu-Jamal, not to mention the demand for an end to censorship by
corporate tech monopolies and their allies in the intelligence apparatus.
These questions dig into the very roots of the U.S. imperialist system and
decenter its ideological framework of American exceptionalism. Race
reductionists and class reductionists, in the final analysis, are religious
zealots of American exceptionalism which orients the fight for justice as a
battle for a more perfect America where the so-called values of liberty
and democracy are truly applicable to all.
Both race-first and class-first advocates often side with the U.S. ruling
class on the critical question of war and peace.
One doesnt have to look far for examples of how to place politics in
command and transcend the long debate regarding race and class in the United
States. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed for venturing down the long road
of international solidarity and peace. His list days were spent organizing
with striking Black sanitation workers and demanding an end to the U.S.
invasion in Vietnam. In his speech Beyond Vietnam , King declared,
I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We
must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a
person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of
being conquered.
King is but one of scores of revolutionary activists and thinkers,
particularly in the Black movement, who by their word and deed demonstrate
that the debate over race versus class is marked by opportunism. Socialist
policies cannot be truly achieved within a racist power structure, and
racism cannot be fully eradicated without a transformation of class society
i.e., the seizing of the means of production from the ruling class by the
exploited classes. The war on Black America is a race war AND a class war.
Class must factor into the analysis, and scholars have been popularizing the
term racial capitalism to assist new generations of activists in avoiding
the pitfalls of the race versus class debate.
The debate over race versus class is marked by opportunism.
A revolutionary framework must approach all struggles from the vantage point
that racial capitalism or imperialism is incapable of securing socialism,
self-determination, and peace. Only from here can we possibly discuss how to
move forward in this moment of crisis. While race reductionism and class
reductionism must be rejected, attention to self-determination should not.
Revolutionaries should reject the liberalism of the streets to the suits
phenomenon that has occurred in Black politics AND so-called class-centered
movements like the Bernie Sanders campaign. Careful attention should be paid
to the conditions that gave rise to each. This means that popular demands
for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal must speak to, and take into
account, the particular conditions of a thoroughly racist social order. The
United States role as the worlds foremost imperialist power must also be
placed at the forefront of all political struggle, as no truly social
democratic movement can be sustained by championing the imperialist thuggery
of its homegrown military apparatus. Whatever 2021 holds for the political
future of the United States, it is far time that a revolutionary left
framework on the debate over race and class be injected into what is, at
this time, a still politically immature movement.
